
Adventures in Netflix - deng
https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2019/02/14/adventures-in-netflix/
======
echelon
I was somewhat disappointed this went from promising an evaluation of Netflix
originals to detailing his 4K streaming setup.

I care much more about the content than how it looks. I've watched films off
bootleg DVDs and been happier than watching comic book movies on IMAX screens.

> According to Wikipedia, there were about 70? 80s? of these movies in 2018,
> so presumably there’ll be a similar amount this year.

I'm curious if anything Netflix is pumping out is worth the time investment.

~~~
dewey
> I was somewhat disappointed this went from promising an evaluation of
> Netflix originals to detailing his 4K streaming setup.

Aren't there enough movie review sites that also have lists of Netflix
Originals with their reviews / votes?

~~~
mmahemoff
Yes, but it was promising to be more than a review. Author was going down the
path of a whacky binge watching adventure, probably comparing 1940s cinema to
2019 Netflix Originals on the way, before detouring off to a story about
gaming the resolution.

For people like GP and I, who care more about content than format, the first
premise was more enticing.

------
hnarn
I can't help but groan a little at the fact that this entire voyage of dongles
and hardware and head-scratching is based on the ridiculous axiom that letting
your smart TV access the net would be "insane".

Guess what, the smart TV will stream 4k, and the app allows you to display the
current bitrate and resolution to verify it (complaint in the article).

When you're done consuming online stuff on your TV, why not just cut the
power? Or hook it up via ethernet to a port you can easily disable? Or both?

Sure, these types of articles can be interesting but this comes off as navel
gazing and unnecessary complexity of what the actual issue is.

~~~
lima
But he wants to take screenshots, which I assume the smart TV won't let him do
for HDCP-protected content? And then he overengineered it to the fullest
extent, which was fun to read.

Agreed on the smart TV - better to assume your home network is already
compromised, plan accordingly.

------
wpietri
I'm glad I'm not the only person who ends up with a baby-smooth yak like this.
And it's much more fun to read somebody else's narrative of it than to do it
myself!

------
dessant
> Apparently, there’s no way to make the Netflix app say what resolution it’s
> streaming in, or what the bitrate is.

There is, search for "test patterns" on Netflix:
[https://i.imgur.com/nOb7BX4.png](https://i.imgur.com/nOb7BX4.png)

~~~
Yizahi
Nope, "Test patterns" doesn't show this real bitrate and other info on my
devices. There is no yellow text like on the screenshot, at least in my case.
There was a real test in Netflix which did show this, I used it when testing
my phone a few years ago, when I learned that it doesn't support Widevine L1.
It was called "Example Short 23.976" but it looks like it was deleted since.
This year I changed phone to model that supports Widevine L1 and I wanted to
test it, but it looks like currently there is no way to do it.

~~~
filleokus
For me it’s shown when using Chrome/Safari on macOS but not when using the app
on iOS

~~~
minxomat
It might show info only in some modes. E.g. I only got bitrate tests with the
60FPS test screen, but not any other.

------
Vomzor
You can watch Netflix in 1080p on macOS by using Safari. Chrome and Firefox
don’t support the drm used by Netflix.

As for 4k on macOS:

>The DRM Netflix uses for 4K content is the new HDCP 2.2 (High-bandwidth
Digital Content Protection), which macOS does not support as of Mojave.
[https://www.howtogeek.com/412033/how-to-watch-netflix-
in-4k-...](https://www.howtogeek.com/412033/how-to-watch-netflix-in-4k-on-a-
mac/)

~~~
anaisbetts
On Windows you need to use Microsoft Edge (not the new one, the one that ships
in-box) and it will render in 4K

~~~
bepvte
Using the netflix microsoft store app also does this

~~~
nullify88
The Netflix app has additional benefits such as higher bitrate audio and
multichannel 5.1 sound.

Also supports downloads and offline viewing.

~~~
Breza
I have a 100-minute subway commute and a Windows 10 laptop. The ability to
download is nice. If I wanted to, I could watch two movies a day in 4k.

------
Dylan16807

      (/ (* 4000 2000) (* 1400 720))
      => 7
    

...huh

So here's what to remember about resolutions.

All the common resolutions these days are multiples of 360p.

720 is 2x2

1080 is 3x3

1440 is 4x4

4k is 6x6

So you can fit a grid of 3x3 720p screens into a 4k screen. 9x the pixels.

And the actual resolutions are 1280x720 and 3840x2160.

~~~
kzzzznot
I stopped reading when he said calling it 720p was quaint, then got the
horizontal pixel width wrong.

~~~
Dylan16807
That's pretty judgemental for a 10% difference.

------
saurik
So the reason this person had to go through all of this trouble--the reason
why it didn't "just work" to plug his laptop into his TV and watch movies in
4K, something that clearly should "just work"\--is because if Netflix allowed
arbitrary devices, like general purpose computers that work for the user (as
opposed to being effectively owned by content studios and licensed to you), to
have access to 4K video, then people could pirate movies and watch them in
high quality, something we all know is currently impossible, which is why the
hardware for pulling off this impossible feat wasn't something that he was
able to _just buy off of Amazon for $65 or anything_... oh. (The logic of DRM
pisses me off :/.)

~~~
zozbot234
How many people would even _care_ about pirating this sort of content? A 4K
movie can easily take up 50-100GB in its _native_ format - even the cost of
storing this on durable media is quite non-trivial. I suspect that there's
nothing of substance behind this renewed "protective" push besides content
studios' artificial paranoia, the point of which is mostly to cling onto a
delusion that their content is somehow uniquely valuable.

~~~
FooHentai
The cost and hassle of storing 1080p back when it first became common is about
on-part with the cost of handling 4K content today. Lots of folks have
100-1000Mbit connections, and storage capacities have increased to keep pace.

Although, anecdotally, after setting everything up for 4K I've been
underwhelmed by the content - Modern film CGI at 4k looks garbage, the kind of
fidelity leap we saw with HD isn't nearly as ubiquitous. On tbat basis, 4k's
not 'must have'.

~~~
Godel_unicode
For me the point of 4k isn't actually 4k, it's HDR.

------
dantondwa
This post made me laugh because it seems to be about movies but it's about
something else entirely. I guess what he really enjoys are not the movies, but
the process of watching them.

------
mxfh
On recent _LG_ s with _WebOS_ it's quite easy to get that type of information
with the native _Netflix_ app.

So if you happen to watch on one of those, just make sure you have that info
button[1] on your app or real remote.

When pressed, you get the basic bitrate and resolution information for the
video stream:
[https://twitter.com/mxfh/status/1081721617741430785](https://twitter.com/mxfh/status/1081721617741430785)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP040UKE69w&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP040UKE69w&feature=youtu.be&t=55)

~~~
Matthias247
On the authors Sony too. At least it works fine on my lower end model. Can’t
remember whether it shows Bitrate, but resolution is certainly there. And no
color format issues. I think they made their life voluntarily complicated.

~~~
lostlogin
> I think they made their life voluntarily complicated.

Giving your TV access to the internet might make some things easier, but
you’re giving a quite a lot away if you care about privacy.

------
bouvin
I am delighted to see that Lars Ingebrigtsen has not changed a bit since I
subscribed to the Gnus mailing list.

------
ebg13
The Roku app has a secret mode for displaying streaming details in the corner
without all this hassle by pressing * on the show/movie selection screen.

------
freetanga
Articles like this make me resent my kids (/s) and all the money and time I
cannot dedicate to important life endeavors like this guy does...

------
tw1010
Related to "watching every new netflix release", this podcast tries to do just
that: [https://player.fm/series/recently-
added](https://player.fm/series/recently-added)

------
pizza
OT: anybody know a way to use widevine on aarch64? Can't use spotify or
netflix on my nvidia jetson nano.. boo drm

~~~
tyingq
Probably a red herring, but:
[https://packages.debian.org/stretch/arm64/chromium-
widevine/...](https://packages.debian.org/stretch/arm64/chromium-
widevine/download)

------
hn17
On PS4 Netflix app you can check "live stats for nerds" like resolution and
bitrate pressing a single button ("option" AFAIR). It's not much fun but
doesn't cost as much time and $$$ No screenshot thou :-(

------
ananonymoususer
The best line (toward the end) is: "Well, that went well! See how easy it is
to watch 4K content from Netflix?"

~~~
Mindwipe
I mean, it is. He has a TV with a perfectly good Netflix app that plays back
in UHD without having to touch anything.

He just didn't want to turn it on due to paranoia, and ended up using a bunch
of extremely dodgy devices that seem to have broken his viewing chain and
created lots of problems instead. Well... yeah?

~~~
Tempest1981
Definition of a hobbyist?

------
Finnucane
Almost makes me glad to be getting older and my vision isn’t going to notice
anything better than 2K no matter what.

~~~
shantly
On anything short of a monster TV at a too-short viewing distance I can’t tell
the difference between 4K and 1080p. And for a high percentage of the content
I watch there’s no benefit to anything over 720p. If I could get HDR on a
1080p tv and save some money I’d do that.

------
Ericson2314
I'll be happy if I can get a PinePhone next year. After that, I'll call it
victory and just watch other people's TV. This streaming fiasco is too crazy
to entertain.

------
trapatsas
I stopped reading here: "My TV is “smart”, but I’m not insane enough to ever
let it go on the interwebs." Anyone can give me a TLDR?

~~~
saagarjha
TVs that connect to the internet often send data about what you're watching
back to their manufacturers.

------
BeetleB
Can't believe no one pointed it out:

> Meanwhile, there’s another output on the splitter (that can either be 4K or
> 2K (some people quaintly call this “1080p”))

Nope. 1080 is the horizontal resolution as is 4K. So 1080p is _not_ 2K. 1080p
is 2 MP, and 4K is 8MP.

~~~
glitchc
4K is 2160p, exactly double 1080p in the vertical. In the horizontal, it’s
1920 for 1080p vs 3840 for 2160p (colloquially known as 4K). The industry
naming convention is not consistent.

~~~
bitbang
Your both wrong, conflating standards from the world of cinema and broadcast.

4k (a cinema format): 4096x2160

2k (a cinema format): 2048x1080

UHD (a broadcast format): 3840x2160

HD (a broadcast format): 1920x1080

 _UHD also includes 7680x4320_ *HD also includes 1280x720

