The media decode pipeline on Android is nearly 100% different from the media decode pipeline on any other flavor of Linux I can think of. I don't know how having Netflix running on Android is really relevant to having it running on vanilla desktop Linux - the effort required is still large and the upside still simply isn't worth it to them, so they don't do it.
The decode would be largely the same unless it were written completely in ARM assembly. A quick disassembly of the Android libs suggests that it's largely C++ (based on calling convention and name mangling). In that case it's the UI and the rendering that would be quite different.
Coding a UI and some video isn't a zero-time process, but it's practically trivial (i.e., they could have an intern or two do it).
Releasing a product of any sort is not trivial when you're someone like Netflix - your product needs to be thoroughly vetted by your partners (who are interested in content protection), tested, and supported by real people.
I never said releasing the product would be trivial, I just conjecture that coding it would be. As far as content protection goes, they already have DRM code that they've already released and their partners have already vetted. Now all they need is a GUI of some sort.
That's true now, but the android market started from 0% at some point in the past and back then Linux on the desktop was non-zero.
I can understand the growth predictions from one and the other but honestly don't see what's the difficulty on writing a multi-platform player, it cannot be because of the DRM requirements I would assume, since they already have it for a linux based machine.
Linux has and continues to be a rounding error in terms of marketshare. If it were to grow to something like Android marketshare I'm sure they would consider it, but just saying "android market started from 0% at some point" isn't really justification for them to do Linux right now.
Same as the difficulty of writing a multi-platform anything. All development takes time and effort, which equates to money. Netflix is simply measuring expenditure against likely reward.
As much as I enjoy what Netflix does, I wish they'd improve the raw speed of the Android app. Its often faster for me to do queue manipulation through the Netflix website on Firefox Mobile.
My guess is that it's sluggish because it uses HTML/Webview for the UI (according to the article at least). I am yet to find any app that feels like a native app which uses any of the javascript/HTML5 platforms.
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