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  • surfnaround - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Funny, " Netflix streaming membership required" no, not just any Netflix streaming membership...
    The fancy four screen 4k membership that it is 11.99...
    The standard 2 screen membership will not do.
  • euskalzabe - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Yup, and this is the shameless part of the equation. I'm not paying Netflix anymore for 4K, I'll stay at 1080p until they bring it down to their regular 2 screen plan. Amazon Prime gives me 4K shows at no additional cost, so there's 0 reason for Netflix not to do the same.
  • usernametaken76 - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    You act as though there's not a cost differential between 1080p and 4K streaming on the provider side.
  • SunnyNW - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Was going to post something similar. Yes Netflix could give 4k at no additional cost to you the subscriber but at what cost to them. Amazon has racks and racks of servers, enough to stretch all the way to the moon lol. But seriously, I'm sure it costs Amazon a lot less for the additional bandwidth versus Netflix when looking at the respective bottom line.
  • Jumangi - Sunday, April 30, 2017 - link

    The scale that Neflix operates at when it comes to bandwidth there's no way they anything but the absolute minimum for it. Plus they have many deals to put content servers in local markets ISP centers to save bandwidth. So no its just them wanting to squeeze a little more money out.
  • billybeer321 - Sunday, April 30, 2017 - link

    Funny, I'm sure there are some ISPs running cable modems out there that think the same thing when it comes to Netflix eating up the majority of their bandwidth - and they don't see a dime from Netflix for it.
  • btsfh - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link

    Well, except that the cable ISP's are being paid by their customers to provide access to Internet resources that the customers want to use. If a cable ISP chose to cut off access to non customers (Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc,) what value tdo they provide to their paying customers?
  • celestialgrave - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    When will content providers realize all this complicated DRM is what drives consumers to less legit sources for its content? Even just playing blurays tends to be a pain.
  • dstarr3 - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    That's why it's called DRM. Digital Rights Management. Nothing about consumer rights. There's nothing about DRM that's meant to benefit consumers in any way. DRM is just a legalized way for media industries to treat all legitimate consumers like criminals.
  • Azune - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    And they will keep losing money because of it.
  • philehidiot - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    I STILL can not get Blu Rays to play on my PC. I don't want to be downloading illegally (possibility of losing my career if caught) but it's getting ridiculous. I finally went and got a new monitor as my old one was dying and had the old HDCP and I thought that was causing the issue (it was) but now the bloody software starts whinging about how its integrity can't be assured and it's closing. It's maddening and when you have a decent media set up which would make Blu Ray pretty awesome and you're basically shafted by overzealous DRM you just end up not buying any Blu Ray content. It just pushes people into downloading, especially as when you do get the bloody things working they force you to watch loads of trailers and adverts. If only I could get VLC to work properly with Blu Rays.

    Frankly I can see why people download illegally. It's easier. If it wasn't for the serious potential impact on my career I'd be at it also. And yes, you can pay and download it but then you're often limited even more as to how you can use it - if I'm buying a film I want to be able to take it round to a friend's house or watch it on any player in the house. The prices of digital content (I hate that term, it's all bloody digital) don't reflect the limitations of the format.

    They will not stop piracy. It has happened since the days of VCRs and tapes. All they're doing is starting a war which they will not win (despite even getting the British Government to block access wholesale to certain websites, China styleee), spending massive amounts of money which then gets passed onto consumers in the price of the media, making tech more complex (I AM NOT buying a 10 series GeForce card just to watch 4K when there's no legitimate hardware requirement, only a manufactured one, that's diabolical) and making purchasing it harder. They need to totally reverse course and (like when tax rates are lowered, tax revenue increases, to a point), embrace the digital platform rather than resisting it and trying to lock it down and make buying and watching as easy as possible. Stop spending money on fancy hardware restrictions and huge legal operations and charge less for the damned content in the first place and people won't baulk at paying so much for it.

    Amazon have got it right - multiple platforms all linked with accessible pricing. You can link any telly with HDMI to their service and watch anything you have bought. You can watch it on a TV, phone, tablet or PC. Importantly here, the hardware required to work with a TV is cheap enough. They know you'll buy their content or have to sign up to Prime so they can afford to sell the hardware at a loss or at cost. Still can't take it round to a mates and pop it in the DVD player but it's getting there. Quite why the rest of the industry resist so hard I don't get.
  • HomeworldFound - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    If you can't get Blu-Ray movies to play on your PC, then I wonder how you'd even be able to operate a VCR.
  • philehidiot - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    And I call myself a nerd. :(

    Seriously, every time I've bothered trying it has been so much more effort to get around the problems imposed artificially by DRM that I've simply considered it not worth the time investment to overcome them. I have no doubt I could but I resent having to fart arse about for something that should just work. I get the same feeling when I have to go through multiple layers of piracy protection bullshit just to play a PC game that I've paid for.
  • bill.rookard - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Part of the problem with the 4k support on older cards with HDMI 1.x might be the fact that at it's best (1.4) it's limited to 4k@30fps. The 900 series does have HDMI 2.0, so I'm not sure where the issue would be in just straight up decoding a 4k video stream beyond 'buy a new card hahahaha'.

    It's sad to see that services are pretty much actively screwing the customers by both simultaneously making it available while imposing ridiculous (and artificial) hardware standards before you can view it.

    Do they not realize that those on the technological bleeding edge are for the most part the ones who would also be most able to know how to bypass all these artificial restrictions? That the bulk of people who would be likely to buy and enjoy the 4k content are also NOT going to pay for the new hardware?
  • djsvetljo - Sunday, April 30, 2017 - link

    960 has HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 I believe.
  • Bateluer - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Getting BDs to play on a PC is easy. Its just that the software to do it is universally terrible. Its easier to buy the BD, rip it, and watch the raw data file with VLC.
  • Inteli - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    If you've got a Blu-ray drive, why not just use something like MakeMKV to rip the video off the disc? As long as you're not distributing it, it's legal, you get uncompressed video, and you can play it on just about anything given enough time to transcode it. Ripping the video takes all the fuss out of playing Blu-rays as long as you can handle the fact that most Blu-rays are going to spit out a 25+ GB file.

    Ripping keeps all the audio tracks that were on the disc and strips out the DRM, so you can watch it where you want to and how you want to. It really does just work provided you have the storage for it. We can't rip UHD Blu-rays quite yet because those have even more DRM, but people are working on it. Things should speed up now that PowerDVD 17 has launched.
  • Golgatha777 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link

    Actually it's not legal due to the DMCA, and specifically the need to break the DRM to access the data.
  • Dribble - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link

    I have a laptop that plays blurays but I have had to in the past use the software that bypasses the encryption because I got a bluray for Christmas or whatever and my software wouldn't play it without an update that wasn't available yet. I don't pirate movies, but I know how to do it because it was the only way to get my legally bought film to play. Movie studios are so stupid.
  • BlueScreenJunky - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    I agree that it's really a pain for consumers to have to deal with that, but to be fair what drives most people to less legit sources is that they don't want to pay for their content (or at least if they have a choice between paying or not they prefer not to pay).

    My main complaint about DRM on video is that they're useless, so they *only* bother legitimate customers. I would have no problem with something like Denuvo : It's efficient enough that many games using it are never cracked, or at least weeks or months after their release, and I've never been negatively impacted by it or have any trouble running Denuvo protected games.

    I don't think we can have something efficient for video content though, all existing DRMs are both inefficient and a pain for the customer.
  • philehidiot - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    I'd say it's actually worse than that - it's not just inefficient and a pain for the consumer, it actually gives potential customers damned good reasons to go and pirate the thing because it works better!
  • Exodite - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Man, I remember the whole Starforce debacle with the old UFO: Aftermath/Afterlight games,

    While I had already played through Aftermath at the time I decided to try the noCD/Starforce-removal crack and it sped up loading and turn processing by a factor of 3!

    The gaming industry has partially woken up to it but we're not all the way there. I'm never buying an Ubisoft game again as long as UPlay is a thing. Same with Origin. Those publishers went from draconian DRM to draconian service packages, not much of an improvement.

    Luckily GOG and, to an extent, Steam is there to save the day.

    As for bluray I've had a friend go through similar issues with the PC and endlessly moving goalposts, to the point that I'd recommend sticking with dedicated players for that content and skip PC playback entirely. I don't know what copyright law looks like on your end but speaking for myself and any media I already own I'd just rip it or download an existing rip from <your favorite torrent site> if I need it to play on PC.

    As long as I already own a license (the bluray disc in this case) that's perfectly legal over here.
  • philehidiot - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    I was half way through a reply and my phone crapped out. I HATE uplay and origin with a passion. My issue is that my TV is worth less than the sound card in my PC. The PC monitor is 27" of IPS goodness whereas the TV is frankly shit. Because it's used to watch shit. I resent being told how I can watch the content for which I have paid. The idea of hacking the neighbour's WiFi, going through a VPN and downloading all the stuff I already have has crossed my mind but frankly it's far too much effort and the download stats would make the arseholes think more people want their content. I'd rather vote with my feet, forego batman begins and buy from services (interestingly auto correct turned "services" into "weevles" - Freudian?) which make life easier rather than harder.

    If they're gonna make buying their stuff a pain in the arse then I will show zero interest. They're behaving like petrol companies who have inelastic demand. Theirs is very fucking elastic and I don't need their stuff.... Grump grump.
  • Meteor2 - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    I would say the primary reason for the use of illegal media is simplicity and choice. Anything you can think of is available for download; once downloaded, you can probably play it anywhere you want -- big TV to phone. Simples.

    In my own experience Amazon is good but has a limited catalogue; Netflix has much more content but subscription options are a PITA.

    If they make their catalogues broad and pricing options flat like music providers do (Spotify, Play etc.) they'll be much more successful.
  • Lord of the Bored - Sunday, April 30, 2017 - link

    Seriously. I remember when DVD was new. We threw a DVD-ROM drive in our PC and BAM, good to go. None of this "approved video card, processor, motherboard, and monitor" nonsense. And it would've been years before we got any DVDs if we'd had to match a compatibility list.
    ...
    Well, okay, we also threw in a decoder card because MPEG2 decoding was quite taxing on processors of the time. Creative DXR2, I believe it was. Had a VGA passthrough, just like a Voodoo 2.
  • Jumangi - Sunday, April 30, 2017 - link

    There's no complication except on a PC where only a fraction access 4K content like this. 99+% are just going to use a box like a Roku or Fire TV.
  • ET - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link

    As long as sales grow regardless of DRM, nobody will learn this (likely totally erroneous fact).
  • Gich - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    "This strongly hints that Windows 10 itself was the piece of the puzzle holding back 4K Netflix support."
    How come if it works with Kaby Lake since november?
  • Ryan Smith - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Kaby Lake has an on-die GPU and Intel's SGX. It's a small distinction, but depending on how the DRM works, it may very well be that developing/validating PlayReady for a dGPU required additional work.
  • LordSojar - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Meh... have 4K Netflix on my Smart 4K TV, and don't really care about it on PC so much. By the time I build a brand new HTPC to run the house media content (currently using Plex on my main tower, via WiFi + Chromecast), this issue will be moot.

    Netflix is a company that is out to make money. Unlike Amazon, their revenue comes from streaming packages, and Amazon gets $99.99/year for mostly free shipping. Their content is far more limited than Netflix. Having both is a win though. Plus... Netflix can be shared with family or friends that you trust, and you could have family or friends give you a few bucks each month for access, which is a win/win for everyone involved.
  • Ej24 - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    So, do I still need Kaby Lake cpu? That wasn't clear in the article, nor on Nvidia's website. I have a 4790k currently. I don't understand what is so different in the cpu architectures that would suddenly make a 4k stream less protected on a haswell cpu vs Kaby Lake.
  • eddman - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    It's not about the architecture. It's about supporting the Playready 3 DRM in the hardware, which only intel's kaby lake CPUs do.

    Pascal cards already have hardware support for Playready 3, so a kaby lake processor should theoretically not be needed.
  • billybeer321 - Sunday, April 30, 2017 - link

    That was specifically for 4K UHD Blu Ray playback (as in, the physical disc). This is for Netflix 4k streaming playback.
  • Hung_Low - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    It's kind of counterintuitive to use Nvidia's format for Netflix, most people watching Netflix will either be using a laptop (Intel) or TV that already supports the new DRM. It's plausible but rare occasion where people watch Netflix on their Desktop.
  • Kakti - Sunday, April 30, 2017 - link

    If you're using an HTPC or just have your computer connected to your TV, and your computer has a dGPU you'd need this.

    This is exactly my scenario - have an HTPC with a 970 in it, since I run the video through the GPU I need this support. My Kaby Lake processor would work, but only if I used the mobo's HDMI out and not the 970's.
  • bill44 - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Once this mess is sorted, the next problem will be how to play Ultra HD Blu-ray on a PC. Currently, no dGPU supports Intel's (or equivalent) SGX tech.

    Back to the drawing board, get ready for Volta/Vega, which will probably not support HDMI 2.1/DP 1.5. Maybe 2019/2020 by the time all gets sorted, inc. color management in Windows.
  • SydneyBlue120d - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Is HDR supported?
  • vvume - Saturday, April 29, 2017 - link

    Yay! Got Netflix 4k working on Edge and Windows app after installing 381.74 on the Creators Update build. I just got the MSI LP 1050 Ti card 2 days ago for my HTPC... The number of hoops one has to go through for 4k on PC is ridiculous.

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