A few days ago I was really bored and thoughtā¦ Fck it, it canāt really be that bad and paid for a month, wouldnāt hurt to tryā¦
Well that was a waste of moneyā¦
1st issue: Canāt stream over airplay.
A common thing i do because Iām a lazy piece of sh!t is I have a piece of software called āuxplayā which is a software airplay server that works way better than it has any right to. So what I do when Iām too lazy to get up from my couch is I connect my Mac with the uxplay server and just watch things that way. Itās a bog standard M3 MacBook air, nothing done to it, nothingā¦
So imagine my surprise when I tried to play Netflix while streaming over airplay and just saw a black screenā¦ Yep, it just did not workā¦ I couldnāt believe it at 1st but yep, apparently itās a part of their DRMā¦
Issue 2: 4k is a lieā¦
Ok, I thought to myself, fine, Iāll watch it on my Mac directlyā¦ But the quality lookedā¦ Off. Sure enough, it was streaming at 1080p with a bit rate so low I could practically count the pixelsā¦ Ok, I thought to myself, Iāve heard of Netflix having issues on Linux (why I didnāt even try it on my PC) maybe I have something setup wrongā¦ So I look at their docs and they state that safari should be able to play 4k full quality (yk, the thing Iām fucking paying for), I was trying to watch it on Arc (chromium based browser) so I thought, fair enough, Iām just gonna use safariā¦ I log in do everything.
Still 1080p with an ass bit rate
Wtf
At this point Iām proper pissed off, I would have had less issues had I pirated the fcking show I wanted to watch at this pointā¦ But I gave it one last attempt, windows.
3rd issue: Windowsā¦ Itās by itself an issue
So, I have a stealth windows GPU passthrough virtual machineā¦ The kind that most kernel level AC canāt detect. So I went āeh, if kernel level AC canāt detect it, surely Netflix wonāt be able toā. And to itās (the virtual machineās credit) it was not detectedā¦ Problem is, 4k still didnāt fucking work. On Netflixās own fcking website it states that edge should be able to play 4k no issue, so I relented and reinstalled edge to my debloated VMā¦ Well that was a waste of time, the bit rate was a bit better but it was still 1080pā¦ I tried extensions, changing flags, nope, Netflix just did not wanna stream at 4kā¦ DESPITE ME FUCKING PAYING FOR ITā¦ Ok, I thought, I have one last option, Netflix has an official windows app, except itās only on the Microsoft store which just sat there for 5 minutes and then threw an error āunable to apply updateā when trying to install the appā¦
Idk why people would ever pay for this shit, honestly. I didnāt expect anything and I was still disappointed. I didnāt expect it to work on Linux which is my daily driver but to be having issues on supposedly supported platforms, both Windows and Mac is completely unacceptable.
Afaik, their 4k plan is a straight up scam as I could not get it to stream at 4k, regardless of what I triedā¦
And I know itās not my internet or my setup, I have gigabit internet ffsā¦
Sorry for the rant, Iām just really butthurt about having spent money on a service that doesnāt fcking workā¦
4k thing may not be Netflix itself. Thereās a ton of DRM that has to be working just right built into a lot of hardware and software. Many things can cause it to have issues and itās designed to break if there is anything it considers abnormal. Problem is that itās kinda, sorta new and hardware canāt be updated. Same issues happened with 1080p at the time. My PS3 HDMI port broke multiple times during warranty and then I gave up after it expired. Just the slight distortion caused by the defect made the TV and all the other devices decide it was being used to pirate content and so they refused to work. These days the devices are more stable and the media industry has stopped aggressively enforcing the DRM to be so aggressive. But they still are doing it with 4K. Any little bug in a driver, software, or hardware firmware and it falls back to 720p or 1080p if youāre lucky.