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Netflix Ditches Silverlight For HTML5 On Macs

Posted by Unknown on from the giving-up-freedom-for-tv dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Netflix yesterday furthered its plans to ditch Silverlight for HTML5 on Macs, having already done so last year in IE11 on Windows 8.1. HTML5 video is now supported by Netflix in Safari on OS X Yosemite, meaning you can stream your favorite movies and TV shows without having to install any plugins." Courtesy of encrypted media extensions.

5 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Linux soon? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So presumably, Firefox will bring Netflix to Linux as well. While I can't say I'm happy to see DRM, I'm happier to be able to play the content than not be able to, and I don't think not including support for broadly-used technologies is going to win any wars.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Linux soon? by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I really don't see why they just don't abandon the whole "watch video in your web browser" scenario. Since Netflix only supports paying customers, it isn't really much to expect that people will download an app/application to play the videos. They already have apps for Android, iOS, Windows, XBox 360/One, Playstation 3/4, Wii (U), a bunch of apps integrated into various smart TVs. There's probably a few that I'm missing here. I don't know why they just wouldn't require that you install an application to view videos on Mac, Windows 7, or Linux. If the Linux client was a pre-compiled binary, it could probably be made reasonably secure against people trying to copy content. At least as secure as a DVD or BluRay anyway.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. Re: They've been doing this for a year by tysonedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People willingly use $200 computers that only browse the Internet when all they want from a computer is to browse the internet.

    --
    Thirty four characters live here.
  3. Re:no plugins? by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's still a binary blob that has to do some function that is not covered by any standard. Calling it by a different name or pretending that such plugins are part of the official standard doesn't really change anything.

    You still need a platform specific binary blob.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  4. saves battery by Noah+Haders · · Score: 5, Insightful

    also, it saves a bunch of battery to run it in html5 than in the silverlight. for a macbook air you can get an extra 2 hours watching netflix in html5 instead of silverlight! that's huge!