I guess I am old and did not have that issue yet. I have fought computing for so long by using Linux as my primary OS since the mid 90s, I guess sometimes I stop thinking when something just works. I am not Stallman and I realize even there that I am limiting myself but when it just works and the damage is less than what is possible in my mind I will accept it. I cannot see a solution that works currently and Netflix etc do provide something that works for a price which you do not have to think about and you do not have risk of the feds running in. Maybe there is something here as a middle ground. Annoying as it is when you think about it, it seems to improve... You are right and yes when I think about it it is annoying as hell, but a) netflix simply cannot do without or they would have no content (my question about ownership remains) b) we have no good rapport for just opening up all. I understand we all are doing that anyway but not for most and so it is a hard sell.

Edit: as someone who grew up in the 80s, Linux is the best thing that happened to computing outside the internet and Linux was a large part of that as well. It was hell before with MS, Sun, HP, SGI, Digital, etc and their flavours of hell. They did a lot of good but the closed off nature was terrible.

> What do you do if you have some random small ARM or Atom box running Linux with an UI that's convenient to use on the big TV screen it's connected to and using a remote control?

Myself, I run a small ARM box running (an embedded and completely inaccessible) Linux, designed as a dedicated streaming device (or sometimes a similar device that is included in the workings of my Blu-Ray player). I'm not particularly interested in using a TV as a display for a general-purpose computing device, so this works well for what I want to do.

I have a few ARM boxes that can't play anything DRMed other than what's handled by libdvdcss or libaacs, but those are the devices that I wouldn't use to play video even if I could.