Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

4K Netflix Arrives On Windows 10, But Only Via Microsoft's Edge Browser (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-hardware-required dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Netflix 4K streaming is finally heading to Windows PCs this week. While a number of TVs and set-top-boxes already support 4K Netflix streams, the PC has largely been left out of the high-quality streams due to piracy fears. Netflix is now supporting 4K streaming through Microsoft's Edge browser, but you'll need a new PC to actually make use of it. Netflix is only supporting 7th generation (Kaby Lake) Intel Core processors, and there aren't many laptops that actually support both the 4K display required and the new Intel processors. As a result, Microsoft is using the 4K Netflix support as a marketing effort for its Edge browser and to encourage people to upgrade their hardware to watch new episodes of the Gilmore Girls. It all might seem like a bit of a con, but it's largely the fault of DRM requirements from Hollywood studios and TV networks. Content providers have strict controls for 4K playback, so that streams can't be captured and redistributed illegally. The latest hardware decryption features simply aren't available on older Intel processors, and the new Kaby Lake chips now support 10-bit HEVC, a popular 4K video codec.

22 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. If only... by Rockoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If only things could be decrypted without "hardware decryption features."

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
    1. Re:If only... by oakgrove · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In case you're wrong, you should probably friend everyone too. Just to be sure.

      --
      The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
    2. Re:If only... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Content providers have strict controls for 4K playback, so that streams can't be captured and redistributed illegally

      And somewhere, a pirate goes "Another challenge! Bring it on."

    3. Re:If only... by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Of course they can be decrypted in software. The fly in the ointment is that Netflix can't stream the movies and TV shows without Hollywood's approval. And Hollywood insists only on approving solutions on a hardware device basis. This is what delayed Netflix coming to Android. The software itself was easy enough, but Netflix had to get Hollywood's stamp of approval for every Android handset out there running the same software. That's why during the rollout, the Netflix app for Android was or wasn't available in Google's Play store depending on which phone or tablet you had.

      So likely Hollywood is pulling the same shenanigans again, and only approved 4k Netflix streaming for Kaby Lake and the Edge browser at this time. Maybe they'll give approval for older processors and different browsers in the future. Maybe not. It's up to Hollywood - their content, their rules. If you don't like it, support independent artists and producers instead of the Hollywood establishment.

    4. Re:If only... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Did you know that splitters work by using the TV's authentication handshake and therefor sending the unencrypted signal down the other cable?

      That is incorrect. There is no "unencrypted signal" in HDCP. Even after the handshake the signal is still encrypted. They work because the HDCP master key was leaked, or rather enough device keys were extracted that the master key was derived by inverting the matrix. I don't know that the HDCP2 master key has been publicly discovered yet.

      With HDCP it didn't really matter as you could already go to your favourite parts supplier and buy chips from TI or AD, among others, that had the keys builtin and would output the video as unencrypted LVDS. Connect one of those back to back with an HDMI transmitter IC and you have your HDCP stripper.

    5. Re:If only... by exomondo · · Score: 2

      If only things could be decrypted without "hardware decryption features."

      They can, there's plenty of different processors that support 10-bit HVEC decoding, in fact there's even many Android set-top boxes with ARM processors that can do it just fine. In this case their decoder implementation is taking advantage of Kaby Lake features because they are more efficient at doing it.

    6. Re:If only... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

      Are you talking about SGX? I thought that was only going to be for specific enterprise features? If not, that's going to open up the possibility of impossible to detect malware.

    7. Re:If only... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You could always just resort to piracy. You see, pirated content doesn't care if your hardware supports the latest DRM, it just fucking works.

    8. Re:If only... by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be honest, what do many of us care about the higher resolution? I've been renting movies from Google Play for a while now, and I never buy the high-def version (which is always a buck or two more), and unless I'm standing about six inches from my TV, I couldn't tell the difference. I guess if I hard a very large TV or a projection TV, that would make a difference, but then again, people watch DVDs on those TVs without too many complaints. Beyond that, I'm on a shitty DSL connection that I get nailed if I go over a limit (something like 30gb, can't quite remember), so if I start viewing streaming video at highest resolution, well, I'm going to breaking that particular thermometer every month.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    9. Re:If only... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      What a great idea. That way people can just walk into the studio in your delightful little heaven, put guns to the producers' heads and force them to hand over the video, because FREE!!!!!

      You do understand that New Hampshire is part of the United States, and you can't have a "free state" inside a nation state or a constituent jurisdiction. You'd best relocate your little commune to Mars.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    10. Re:If only... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      What about Netflix's original content? Last I checked, they still cap the resolution at 720p for people using HTML5 + Widevine, which is how I use it on my Linux laptop.

    11. Re:If only... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem is that if DRM stuff can hide its execution and memory contents, then malware can hide itself from debuggers and other means of developing countermeasures. SGX should not be a thing at all, in my opinion, in the same way that other crappy technology such as ActiveX shouldn't have ever been a thing. If enterprises are concerned about application security, then they should segregate it on a type 1 hypervisor.

  2. Re:Image All The Idiots by unixisc · · Score: 2

    Yeah. And I didn't get this 'Edge' thing - there already exists an app for Netflix that one can download from the Windows Store. Shouldn't that automatically detect what type of hardware you are using and adjust the resolution accordingly?

  3. Re:What is the point? by SumDog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    YES! I own a 4k MSI laptop and can totally tell a difference with 4k. I can even use that laptop to power a 4k DCI display:

    http://penguindreams.org/blog/running-a-lg31mu97-on-linux-at-4096x2160-at-60hz/

    It is night and day; even on small screens. If you do a lot of photography work and have a camera that captures over 4000x?, it's really amazing. I love being able to pull up photos in Lightroom and see the entire image in fullscreen without scaling. They're really amazing:

    http://journeyofkhan.us

  4. Re: Image All The Idiots by BlytheBowman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Judging by all of the HDTVs i've seen hooked up through an SD composite connection to an HD compatable *box and the pictures being in both stretchovision and cropovision, I would not be suprised.

  5. 4k on 2560x1440 and 1080p monitors by BrookHarty · · Score: 3, Interesting

    4k looks night and day different on a 1080p monitor compared to a normal 1080p blueray. When downsampled, the picture looks more detailed.

    There are some 4k nature demos on youtube, using chrome you can test multiple resolutions, 4k/2k/1080 on your monitor and test for yourself the difference.
    4k sampled down, I can see higher detail in the water compared to a 2k resampled. Check out the Nature Relaxation channel to check out its demo videos, they are watermarked, but make great test videos.

    I saw a video blog that said the reason that 4k on a 1080p looks so well, is the 4 pixel blocks downsampled are no longer sharing chroma, but each pixel is independent, so the higher detail. (I'm recalling from memory, so forgive me if I'm wrong).

    I have a 2560x1400, and 4k looks great even it. So people who say you can see a difference, really need to try some of those 4k youtube videos on chrome.

    1. Re:4k on 2560x1440 and 1080p monitors by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      If that's true, then it's a case of bad compression rather than any upsides of 4k.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  6. Public scams and collusion by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    4k is an interesting marketing scam given perceptible "quality" issues are a direct result not of limited resolution but rather deliberate efforts to minimize bandwidth requirements for Internet streaming, satellite and cable to just below the threshold where most people would bitch.

    Hey Russia if you could "locate" documents demonstrating collusion with what remains of the Wintel cartel I would be most grateful.

  7. Re:Edge is designed from the ground up for perform by ahabswhale · · Score: 2

    Edge is irrelevant. Their using Kaby Lake's fancy new hardware decoding to get the job done. There's really no reason it couldn't be supported on any browser.

    --
    Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
  8. I tried to warn you. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Informative

    I told you this was coming but nobody listened.

    the lack of a CDM specification was an intentional action by the companies currently drafting the EME for the express purpose of creating hardware dependance. While the EME does not preclude a system agnostic CDM specification, the companies drafting the EME have a vested financial interest in preventing it. If it's too late in the process to add a CDM specification, then the EME should be withheld from the approval process until an accompanying system agnostic CDM specification is approved.

    This has already had real consequences.

    Due to the lack of a proper CDM specification, Microsoft was able to make deals with major content providers to require Microsoft Playready 3.0 which uses a CDM that only works on a few browsers, only on Windows platforms and only if you have the latest Intel or AMD CPU. This is also the reason why Linux computers cannot view 4K videos on Netflix website. The only Linux computers that can view 4K content are SmartTVs made by companies that paid Microsoft.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  9. Some of it is the chroma by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is true that basically all video encoding these days is done with a 4:1 luma:chroma ratio. So ya 4k video has 1920x1080 chroma samples. However another, probably more important part when talking Youtube is just bitrate. Youtube is pretty aggressive about the bitrates they use to save on bandwidth costs and play on a wide variety of connections. For 1080p30 it uses a bitrate of about 2.5-3mbps. That's pretty crap, considering Blu-rays are usually more in the realm of 25mbps at the same picture size. More bits = more detail in compression, regardless of how many pixels.

    Well it gets a lot better at higher picture sized. 2.5k video is about 8-9mbps and 4k video is about 16-18mbps (these are all for VP9 streams). It's a big jump, more than the resolution increase itself would require for equal quality. Hence, a better output even when downsampled.

    In fact if you were to take a 1080 video from a camera, upsample it to 4k at a high bitrate and feed that to Youtube, the result would look better played at 4k and downsampled to 1080 on your screen than if you just uploaded the 1080 video directly to Youtube simply because Youtube will allocate more bits to its compression.

  10. Re:Meh by markdavis · · Score: 2

    There is a hugely diminishing return. I guarantee if you double-blind test 1000 random people and place them 10 feet from two identical 70" 4K TV's both playing the same identical video, one playing it from 1080P video upscaled to 4K and the other playing the 4K native, almost nobody would be able to notice any difference, resulting in about a 50/50 chance. And remember, we are not talking about text and stills on monitors... we are talking about Netflix video.

    Sure, there are some small cases where it will be useful, but generally it is just a marketing gimmick. If they focused on things that actually matter, like HDR or color space, it would be different.