
HTML5 Video in Safari on OS X Yosemite - znep
http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/html5-video-in-safari-on-os-x-yosemite.html
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mccr8
For those not hip to the lingo, "premium video" means DRM.

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atonse
Yea but honestly, this doesn't bother me.

I can't think of a single way where this hurts the consumer:

\- I don't own the video, so there's no need to be able to do a backup to
multiple places, or to have an un-encrypted copy.

\- I get better battery life (although this isn't related to DRM, but if we
wanted a native playback in the browser, we'd need this.

\- Sounds like WebCrypto will probably do hardware-accelerated
encryption/decryption (using AES-NI probably?), which is a win overall on the
security side.

Cons:

\- I don't get to rip the video anymore.

\- I can't just play the video on any device (although it's hard nowadays to
find a device that doesn't have Netflix playback)

\- I can't look at the back and forth JS-based traffic on this netflix site

Where I get more mad is if I _purchased_ the movie, and it's encrypted and I
can't do anything with it.

Rentals? Don't care.

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brador
Well, you can always "rip" the video. Worst case you use a screen recorder.

But, what does Netflix gain from using DRM?

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rsynnott
To a large extent, probably, their contracts with content owners require it,
for it is customary for such contracts to require DRM. Look at the music
industry; did it _actually_ make piracy easier when iTunes dropped DRM? Not
really, but the content owners (or one in particular) fought it for years.

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chaz72
As far as I can tell, as long as the DRM is in Flash or Silverlight then some
people still hope that "getting rid of DRM" is a winnable fight.

I doubt that's true, myself. It'd be nice, but I don't see it happening.

My online video watching is primarily Netflix with a healthy dose of Hulu
Plus, iTunes, and Youtube. Not much of it is available without DRM. That is
not a _technical_ choice. That is a _commercial_ choice being made by the
people who own the content. Since I'm not going to steal it from them, their
choice matters more than mine.

So DRM stays. Might as well have it built-in, more efficient and more secure.

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thrillgore
I can CHOOSE to not use Silverlight or Flash. I know it seems like an RMS way
of thinking, but with plugins I can choose not to use them.

Now, I have no choice. And the EME spec branches out beyond HTML5 Video. If
additional working groups dictate it, soon you won't even be able to view page
source or take content.

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chaz72
You are presumably already choosing not to use Netflix now. I'm not. I'm
choosing to use Netflix now, and I want the more secure, more efficient built-
in method.

That said, I would like a more secure, more efficient built-in method for any
non-DRM video source that chooses to be distributed openly too!

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timonovici
How on earth having an unknown, unsecure, unreviewed binary blob running on
your computer be "the more secure method"? Compared to what? But having a blob
in the browser running in a sea of proprietary code (MacOS), I don't think it
makes such a big difference.

"a more secure ... non-DRM video source" \- more secure compared to what? What
does security means to you? If you are going to watch non-DRMed video, it's
already as secure as it can get, all you need for the efficiency part is
better codecs, think of VP9, or Daala.

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chaz72
More secure than Flash or Silverlight which are what I personally use today.
VP9 and Daala are not, as far as I know, available for me to use when watching
netflix.

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leorocky
> "which provides the content protection needed for premium video services
> like Netflix"

I don't think the qualifier "premium" and DRM are so tightly coupled as
Netflix suggests. I could imagine a universe in which premium, that is high
quality content, could exist without DRM. So it's not "needed" as such. Those
are weasel words.

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oddevan
I can imagine it too, and I'm sure Netflix can as well. But nearly everyone
making high quality/premium video TODAY requires DRM.

Edit: To clarify, if someone wants to make a service like Netflix and have it
actually ship today (or any time in the near future), then yes, DRM is
"needed."

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pmx
I love how they spin DRM into the fancy sounding "Premium Video".

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vitd
Keep in mind that the choice you have with Netflix is not "DRM" or "No DRM".
It's "Microsoft's old unsupported (or soon-to-be unsupported?) Silverlight" or
"Something new that will be maintained going forward and doesn't rely on
Microsoft to keep it alive."

Also, this is for rentals, not stuff you own, so for me, at least, it's not a
big deal if there's DRM on it.

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higherpurpose
So this is how freedom dies: with applause for +2h of battery life watching
videos.

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mikeryan
I know that EME is a sticky wicket for a lot of folks, but what freedom have
you lost here? Netflix was already encumbered with DRM requirements from their
license terms. They just chose to go with a more standards based and
performant solution.

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jfb
I think you can see the argument that putting this into the standards is a
different order of lossage than simply having various implementations.

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morganw
Agreed.

Also, EME isn't limited only to traditional Movie & TV uses of video. It could
be used for web-like content (rendered and encoded at the server) with un-
blockable ads.

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Tiktaalik
Now that Apple has implemented MSE does this mean that I'll have a
significantly higher chance of HTML5 Youtube videos actually playing on
Safari?

At the moment I get the "install flash" message on Youtube videos a
disappointingly often amount of the time. Weirdly I've had the experience
where embedded HTML5 Youtube videos will play, but they won't when I click
through to watch the full-size video on Youtube.

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ashearer
YouTube appears to require Flash when playing a video with ads from the
YouTube site. Embeds of the same video show the HTML5 version ad-free.

Here's a tip I've found useful: if you run into the "Install Flash" message,
you can usually edit the URL to play in HTML5 instead. Change "watch?v=" to
"embed/" (and if there are other querystring arguments starting with an
ampersand, just strip them off). There are a few YouTube gateway sites that do
something similar, but I remember the 'embed' trick better.

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lylebarrere
Is this the same DRM over HTML5 that was discussed a few months ago or is this
another fragmented DRM?

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morganw
The "same DRM" is inherently fragmented because of CDM plugins. But, yes, this
is the W3C's EME.

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hackerguy0217
Hopefully this takes us one step closer to Netflix on Linux

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valarauca1
pipelight gets us there. We'll never a libre solution for netflix video on
linux, because now its in the W3C standard.

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Touche
One would assume they'll stop supporting the Silverlight version once all the
major browser vendors support the DRM.

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valarauca1
Eh they'll likely have to keep silverlight as a fallback for at-least half a
decade.

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Touche
A fallback for what, exactly? Once IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari support it,
that's all they care about. I think they're more likely to drop old-IE than
the typical webapp.

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wjoe
IE11 only works on Windows 7/8, and OS X 10.10 is only supported by Macs up to
about 5 years old. Even then, a lot of people don't actually keep their
OS/browsers up to date. I expect Netflix's demographics are quite broad, and
probably still quite a lot of people on XP and 5+ year old computers. There's
not really any reason for them to drop support for Silverlight, they'll
probably just keep new features for the HTML5 player.

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Zikes
Still no options for Linux?

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higherpurpose
Can GNU/Linux use blackbox DRM?

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jkrems
Why not? You any install closed-source software on Linux. Firefox will solve
this by downloading the binary component for DRM on startup IIRC.

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JonoW
Does anyone know what DRM/CDM it uses? I assume FairPlay, but cant find any
info about it at all

