Wait, they’re not letting you stream because of your OS? That’s bullshit, I’d pirate it on principal at that point. No sense in waisting time trying to get your browser to report a different OS to work around it.
Using Linux means DRM protected content either plays in terrible quality or in RakutenTV’s case not at all. Netflix is limited to 720p with low bitrate and Amazon limits to ~540p.
Changing user agent doesn’t work because it’s the DRM who decides whether the OS is supported.
Linux users have to decide between low quality legal streaming services, or piracy with high quality. It’s not a difficult decision for me and my giant HDD.
Edit: I forgot the third option: streaming sticks (Roku, FireTV).
a funny thing that I’d like to add, is that pirate streaming sites don’t have this limitation. You just open a website, write in a name, and play in on any platform, with good enough quality, free from all streaming services. Piracy is just too good to be true.
Because without the proper DRM implementation it’s trivial to rip it. So they’re only letting you rip the low quality version. Which feels really stupid, because people who know how to rip the 4K content exist and are happy to share the results.
On Windows Microsoft/Nvidia/AMD sign their graphics drivers, which guarantees the DRM that the content isn’t recorded on the system.
Disclaimer: The following is my understanding from reading things here and there. I’m a layman on this topic, so please don’t quote me.
On Linux drivers aren’t designed to prevent users from recording on their system, so the DRM doesn’t play high quality content. Also, because drivers aren’t directly provided and signed by MS/NV/AMD, there’d be no way to prevent users from patching the graphics drivers to allow recording again.
That is, if DRM support was implemented in the driver, which it won’t, because there’s no interest and the current distribution model makes it near impossible.
tl;dr
DRM is (always?) closed-source, else it could be easily circumvented. The Linux driver/desktop stack isn’t designed to prevent users from accessing content played on their own device, so rightsholders disallow playing high quality content on Linux.
PS: I’ve noticed on Amazon or Netflix some shows are higher quality than others on Linux. I guess this might be due to rightsholders requiring different Widevine levels for the same quality.
A regular capture card will adhere to the HDMI DRM HDCP, which means it’ll only record a black screen. As you guessed, there’re capture cards which either don’t implement HDCP (unlikely for major brands), or which have been hacked and can be flashed with custom firmware.
I’ve read OBS on Windows also only records a black screen, at least with hardware encoding enabled (NVENC, AMF, Quicksync also implement DRM as part of the driver). Software encoding might work.
As always with content: If it’s on your device, it can be copied.
PS: Now I remember Crunchyroll also uses Widevine, but I’ve seen it streamed over Discord. So either Widevine L3 doesn’t prevent recording, or it doesn’t work in Firefox, or Discord doesn’t use hardware encoding on Windows (unlikely), or something in my comment is wrong information -> Disclaimer, I’m just repeating from memory what I’ve read.
Roku is really locked down, which allows them to control what users can do. This means DRM is more powerful on Roku Linux, than on desktop Linux. Same is true for Android. Not allowing Linux makes sense from the rightholders standpoint (just like it makes sense for me to pirate).
Hey OP. I’m a bit late to the party, but I figure I’ll throw in my two cents.
Generally speaking, you’re going to want a VPN (I suggest Mullvad), a torrent client (I suggest qBitTorrent), a NAS (for storing data), a movie server (Jellyfin is great), and something that can connect to your streaming server.
I suggest Mullvad as a VPN because 1. it’s a no log service, 2. you can pay for your subscription using Monero (a type of private/anonymous crypto), and 3. it has a “Lockdown mode” which will block any traffic from your PC that isn’t routed through your VPN preventing IP leaks.
I suggest qBitTorrent as a torrent client because it has an advanced setting that allows you to specify which network interface is used for torrenting. You’ll want to set that to the virtual network that Mullvad creates so that even if for some reason your VPN goes down, your torrent client won’t leak your IP.
For actually hosting movies you’ll want to store them somewhere. Network attached storage is good for this. I built my own using a raspberry pi, and it’s separate from my torrenting PC, but there’s no reason you couldn’t also configure your torrenting PC to also be a NAS. If you don’t want to think too hard about a NAS, there are companies like Asustor make premade network storage.
For actually hosting movies you’ll want something like Jellyfin running on a computer that has access to where your movies are stored. Again, Jellyfin can run on the same computer that’s running your NAS, and your Torrent client. It can all be the same computer. This step may require some configuration on your part. You may want to give your Jellyfin server a static IP so that your devices will automatically reconnect if your router resets.
Finally, you’ll want to actually watch your movies. I have Roku boxes in my house, so my setup for this was downloading the Jellyfin app, and then typing in the local IP address of my Jellyfin server. You don’t necessarily need an external box for this, Android TVs can install the Jellyfin app.
And that’s a kind of high level example setup. There’s other things that you can do that’ll make your setup more secure like properly configuring wireguard in mullvad to obfuscate your traffic so that your ISP won’t know that you’re torrenting through a VPN, or encrypting your NAS data, but that’s something you should decide if it’s worth doing.
And their catalog is actually super small now. My wife and I watch a bunch of horror movies, and I think there’s only like 20. They try to pad that number by pretending that foreign films are actually in English.
And they change the pictures around all the time to make you think it’s something new, when in fact you’ve seen it before. And because it’s bland as all fuck, you notice this like 45 minutes in.
I got a picture of Matt Smith on one horror movie about a black couple. He was in it for like 2 minutes. It wasn’t terrible, but they’re algorithms are basic bitch enough to just go “you white? here’s a white man”
I’ve been spending the last 2 days downloading a bunch of horror, ramping up for when I finally get rid of the rest of our subcription services. I can’t even remember when Netflix’s horror selection was even remotely good. Like they have The Ritual and Apostle, but yeah it’s mostly crap.
Yeah the foreign films coming up are the worst. I’m sure it’s great for the people who speak those languages but I don’t generally find it entertaining to watch with subtitles. It’s annoying when they keep coming up on recommended and even worse when it takes more clicks to see the language then to just start it.
Somehow Netflix thinks I speak Norwegian and I didn’t see a way to turn that off
Anyway -1 premium account, when they started down their path to enshittification
Eh, I’m personally completely fine watching content in other languages and so is pretty much everyone I know. I would never want to limit myself to content in languages I understand. Actually, I think the majority of stuff I watch is foreign content.
But to each their own of course and I guess it couldn’t hurt if they added the option, but I think expecting it as a “fundamental configuration” says more about you than about how bad Netflix is. There are much better arguments for that.
Netflix used to be famously good at suggesting films. Articles were written about it, and there was even a cash reward for anyone who could contribute to its performance. Then it just turned to shit.
And the funny thing is that it would have helped counteract the shrinking library. Sure, there would be fewer films on the platform, so you’d be less likely to find a specific title, but at least you could select a film Netflix recommended based on your past ratings and be fairly confident you’d enjoy it. Now? Absolutely not.
I find the same thing with music streaming on Spotify. I used to discover lots of new music I liked on it but these days I can’t get it to generate an interesting playlist. It’s songs I already know interspersed with things that are boring. Seems like the recommendations got worse.
I quit Spotify when the “New Library Experience” completely fucked the music library side of the app. If you mostly use playlists, it was a lateral change. If you used it to collect some songs here, and album there, and keep them all sorted, it’s like it dumped your entire collection on the floor and expected a thank-you for the new organization system.
My guess, as others have mentioned, is that Spotify tries to squeeze more profits by pushing certain songs, whether because they get paid to promote them, or the royalties are lower. That’s easier to do with their playlists and recommendations, so they pushed people to that side of the app by making everything else dogshit. And now, apparently, the curated side took it too far and is awful, too.
I still use Apple Music, which is one of like two services that actually let you organize your music in a sensible way outside of playlists. That said, after I cut cords with video streaming services and set up my own library, I think I might do the same with music.
Discovery was always the thing that made streaming services better than buying recordings individually. If these services stop being good for finding new music, then there’s not much reason to keep using them.
Hell, I remember when they had ‘Max’ back when I watched on my PS3. I absolutely loved that it would ask me a bunch of questions and then give me a movie to watch. I’m surprised I haven’t seen that more around, that was an amazing feature.
BakaBT is a private tracker that has lots of high quality anime/manga artbooks, soundtracks and extras like that. That’s all I use aside from Nyaa, but my needs are pretty basic in general
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