Re: Netflix HTML5 player in IE 11 on Windows 8.1

Mark Watson wrote:
> Microsoft ship PlayReady as part of
> Windows Media Foundation. In principle, any browser running on Windows can
> make use of the same APIs that Internet Explorer uses to play back
> protected content. The DRM is contained in the Operating System, not
> shipped with the browser.

So basically anyone that can currently view encrypted video (via
flash/sliverlight) will continue to be able to do so when their
operating system creates a CDM, and anyone on a FOSS OS is out of luck
(still).

I asked previously whether Mozilla would be able to implement EME and
didn't really understand the answer. From recent discussion it seems
that they could on Windows/OSX, but probably not Linux (unless someone
like Ubuntu implemented a compatible CDM).

Can anyone from MS confirm that Firefox/Chrome/Opera would be able to
use the same "Microsoft PlayReady DRM" CDM as IE?

Overall it seems like a case of SSDD, the people who can't access
premium/encrypted/DRMed content now still won't be able to, and that
type of content will still be a black-box for the browsers (limiting
the use of CSS/JS to manipulate the video).

Given that several major players are marching ahead anyway, the only
relevant discussion is whether the W3C is an appropriate place to
standardise those features.

I was on the fence about this issue (i.e. believing that DRM is a
flawed concept, but there should be a way to charge for content), but
things are moving along anyway so it seems silly to moan from the
sidelines. This set of features would be better if standardised, and
since they will exist anyway let's make them as good as they can be.

-Alastair

Received on Thursday, 27 June 2013 10:46:29 UTC