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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!
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.