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HD Monitor Causes DRM Issues with Netflix
Jeremiah Cornelius points us to Davis Freeberg's blog, where he discusses his "nightmare scenario" of losing access to his DRM-protected purchases by upgrading his PC monitor.
"When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue. Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup."
Tag this Vista only. I ain't got no problems like that with XP.
This perhaps doesn't directly address the problem mentioned, but this is what I do. I only bother with Netflix DRM because I get it "free" anyway with my subscription.
Anyway, using a script I wrote, I parse the HTML saved from Firefox (pretending to be IE7) and download the highest bandwidth version of a movie. I then cringe and for the only time each month boot Windows and using Mirakagi, FreeUse4Win, WMP and unDRM the file. Then I can play in perpetuity in Linux/MythTV.
The size of the files is normally 1-2GB. Yes, that's less than DVD quality, but pretty acceptable in most cases. You can fetch the keys for 9 hours of movies per month (for the basic subscription), but they round up, so if you do it carefully and get keys for 8.5 hours of movies, you can make the last one a 3 hour epic - about 5-7 movies total.
This is all based upon information I got from here: http://forum.rorta.net/showthread.php?t=1134&page=6 (link to last page)
Kaffeine didn't play the resulting WMVs very well. mplayer and VLC do a better job.
AnyDVD + Handbrake + VideoLAN
"We work hard, so you don't have to"
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
Oh, I wish I'd copied the text while it was still mysterious red. Anyway, he provides screenshots, model numbers, and so forth. There's a "DRM reset" tool that Netflix recommended that they say will nuke anything from other vendors. It's clear that his digital restrictions keystore became corrupted somehow, and Netflix, Amazon, and Microsoft all directed him to each other. In the end he wonders why he bothered paying at all, noting that he could obtain higher-resolution rips for less money using bittorrent.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
He changed the monitors, which caused Vista to invalidate the DRM, much like a Windows Genuine Advantage. Now his Netflix account is invalid and has to revalidate it and for this the application will scan all his licenses and reset all license it finds (which means he would have to contact Amazon and all the other companies and request to have the licenses activated again). Or something like that.
Even though I'm an HDTV fanatic, it wasn't until this past weekend, that I finally made the jump to an HD monitor. While I don't have HDTV tuners on my Media Center, I do have an HD camcorder and it was important for me to be able to edit my high resolution videos.
After doing a little bit of research, I decided to pick up a SyncMasterTM 226BW from Samsung. Between the new monitor and my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card, the resolution looks absolutely stunning. Even my home movies look fantastic in HDTV. I really couldn't have been happier with the upgrade.
Unfortunately, Hollywood isn't quite as thrilled about my new HD Media Dream Machine and they've decided to punish me by revoking my Watch Now privileges from Netflix.
I first found out about the problem on New Year's Eve, when I went to log into my account. When I tried to launch a streaming movie, I was greeted with an error message asking me to "reset" my DRM. Luckily, Netflix's help page on the topic included a link to a DRM reset utility, but when I went to install the program, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this warning.
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The minute I saw"this will potentially remove playback licenses from your computer, including those from companies other than Netflix or Microsoft" I knew better than to hit continue. Before nuking my entire digital library, I decided to call Netflix's technical support, to see if I could get to the bottom of my C00D11B1 error message.
When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue.
Technically, there is a way to back up the licenses before doing a DRM reset, but it's a pretty complex process, even by my standards. When I asked Netflix for more details, they referred me to Amazon for assistance.
Perhaps even worse than having to choose between having access to Netflix or giving up my Unbox movies was the realization that my real problems were actually tied to the shiny new monitor that I've already grown fond of.
Netflix's software allows them to look at the video card, cables and the monitor that you are using and when they checked mine out, it was apparently a little too high def to pass their DRM filters.
Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup.
As part of their agreement with Hollywood, Netflix uses a program called COPP (Certified Output Protection Protocal). COPP is made by Microsoft and the protocol restricts how you are able to transfer digital files off of your PC. When I ran COPP to identify the error on my machine, it gave me an ominous warning that "the exclusive semaphere is owned by another process."
My Netflix technician told me that he had never heard of this particular error and thought that it was unique to my setup. When I consulted Microsoft, they suggested that I consult the creator of the program. Since Microsoft wrote the COPP software, I wasn't sure who to turn to after that.
The irony in all of this, is that the DRM that Hollywood is so much in love with, is really only harming their paying customers. When you do a DRM reset, it's not your pirated files that get revoked, it's the ones that you already paid for that are at risk. I'm not allowed to watch low res Netflix files, even though I have the capability to download high def torrents? How does this even make sense? It's as if the studios want their digital strategies to fail.
While I understand the need for the studios to protect their content, I believe that these measures g
Sorry everyone /. was a little too powerful for my hosting company and they won't let me up my quota. If anyone knows of any webhosting companies that can handle the /. effect, I'm in the market for a new one. In the meantime, here is a link to another copy of the article in case you would like to read it. If someone can get Commander Taco to update it in the main article, I would appreciate it. Thanks for all the support and I hope that you don't hate me too much for making the mistake of buying Vista and DRM movies. Sometimes you have to experience how crappy DRM is first hand, in order to realize how much value it strips from your content.
Never Pick A Fight With Someone Who Buys Ink By The Barrel.
AnyDVD is commercial software for Windows that decrypts + rips DVDs. There is also an 'HD' version out now that supports HDDVD and BluRay. It can be used to rip commercial DVDs to a DVD-R disc with region-free playback, or simply to an ISO on your hard drive. (http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html)
Handbrake is an open-source DVD-to-MPEG4 converter. (http://handbrake.fr/)
VideoLAN is a media player that can play back the MPEG4 files created with Handbrake. In addition to local plaback, it has the ability to unicast/multicast video & audio across a network. (http://www.videolan.org)
So basically, the idea is, rip the video to make it DRM-free, convert it to a smaller, more efficient format for storage, stream across a network.