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Netflix Ditches Silverlight With HTML5 Support In IE11
An anonymous reader writes "Netflix today announced that it has finally taken the first step towards ditching Silverlight for HTML5, largely thanks to Microsoft, no less. The company has been working closely with the Internet Explorer team to implement its proposed 'Premium Video Extensions' in IE11 on Windows 8.1, meaning if you install the operating system preview released today, you can watch Netflix content using HTML5 right now. Back in April, Netflix revealed its plans to use HTML5 video in any browser that implements its proposed 'Premium Video Extensions.' These extensions allow playback of premium video (read: with DRM protection) directly in the browser without the need to install plugins such as Silverlight or Flash."
I like how it touts the fact that you don't need to install flash or silverlight but you still need to install Netflix's DRM stuff to decode the data. And if your operating system or machine isn't supported by Netflix, then you can't view the data. I don't see how this is any better than flash or silverlight. With those, you just need to install either flash or silverlight but now you need to install a DRM from each provider.
The joke is that they did their content licensing deals based on MS drm( so that it is stipulated that on desktop it has to have their magic sauce because it's soooo unrippable) because of MS influence, the meat of the joke is that MS discontinued silverlight.
that's why you have netflix clients on phones and what have you but the only desktop platform is with silverlight!
Ahh, so it seems that it is using the W3C extensions, it's just that Microsoft has implemented them in IE before other browsers have.
Bravo!
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I don't have to install a plugin. I have to install an extension instead. Can someone tell me how/why this is better/different? FFS!
A) people don't like Silverlight
B) the rumor is Microsoft is dropping Silverlight
If (B) is true then you probably want some sort of alternative. For example, depending on how they code, the plug-in could be fairly modular. If that company / group goes belly-up then hopefully by then there are more modules to pick from.
I agree with you for the most part.
If I can't find something on Netflix TPB or ExtraTorrent is my next stop. I like Netflix because I like watching movies I haven't seen in a long time and they have a pretty good anime selection, way better than my local video store (now closed) ever had and I don't have to spend days snooping the interwebs to find episodes. Also there's good content there for my two year old to watch. For eight bucks a month it's worth the effort it'd take me to find and download stuff for her and saves physical space in my house for crap movies/shows she'd only watch once and never look at again.
If they had newer movies and shows there, I'd be willing to pay more. Espically if I could get rid of my cable. If I could get rid of the cable I'd save nearly $100/month, but my wife is addicted to having crap playing in the background even when she's reading a book and not watching it. I just got Sickbeard setup a couple of weeks ago to auto download shows we watch and I'm starting to wean my wife off of channel surfing, but she still insists we can't get rid of the cable.
Part of the reason for getting Sickbeard is we live on the East coast (Atlantic time) and a lot of shows we want to watch don't end until almost midnight for us, we have a two year old and are up early every day so staying up late is less and less of an option. The cable company wants to charge us ANOTHER $15/month for one PVR or $25/month for two so we could have one for the bedroom and another for the living room, all on top of the $150/month for internet and cable we already pay. With Sickbeard I have it downloading to a 3TB ($250) external drive on a laptop in our bedroom closet that's hocked to our bedroom TV (HDMI cable through the wall). Then I use Plex to stream content to our downstairs Smart TV, it's a pretty awesome setup and I'm considering ripping, or just downloading, all the movies we own and sticking the DVD's in a box in the attic to save space in our living room. But it's a shame I have to expend all the energy to setup that system when I'd be perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price for a similar service.
I don't like cable, I don't like sitting through 20 minutes of useless commercials for every hour of TV I watch and have movies and shows interrupted, I don't like having to pay for tons of crap I don't want and pay extra to get the two or three channels I do want, then be nickled and dimed for equipment that's inconvenient to use and I have to give back if I cancel my service anyway, $300/year for two PVRs on top of the $1,650/year for basic cable and internet is stupid.
Take your own head out of the sand and face it, DRM is a broken concept. It's not only that DRM is unworkable, DRM is contrary to the social good. You think only of the mythical starving artist who deserves a chance to make a living, and skate right past the point that copyright is not the only way or even the best way to profit from artistic endeavor. And you don't think about the millions who are robbed, by this implicit tax, because adding DRM to everything is very costly, and most of all by breaking our implicit social contract to love thy neighbor. Sharing valuable information is more than a courtesy, it's the core of our lives. We are social animals. Artists' bosses will have to accept this eventually.
As an example, do you think it might be a good idea to apply DRM to knives? If a knife refused to function when held by anyone but the owner, you might think criminals could not take your knife and stab you with it, and so it would be safer. They couldn't steal your knife and use it themselves or sell it to a 3rd party. If you were ever convicted of a crime, or diagnosed as mentally troubled, the manufacturer could disable all your knives. Maybe just a speeding or parking ticket would count. This ability could be used to coerce you on other matters, such as being late on paying the rent or utility bills or those parking tickets. Disable your knives until you pay. This could be implemented by making the knife retractable, like a typical utility knife, and adding finger and palm print sensors to the handle. Would need batteries in the handle. The DRM knife would be far bulkier, clumsier, more expensive, and less useful than a knife without DRM. We would also have to outlaw non-DRM knives. Would be quite a task to make sure no one ever makes knives, out of stone, as our ancestors did in the Stone Age, or out of sheet metal or broken glass or who knows what.
Now you may think that's all a strawman. It is not. Trying to apply DRM to knives is just silly. Might not be silly to apply DRM to guns, but knives are just too simple. As silly as it is to apply DRM to knives, it's even sillier to try it on information. Being a physical item, a knife takes some effort to duplicate. Might be easier to make your own design than bother trying to copy another. By comparison, the effort required to share information is trivial.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"