If you're talking about doing the playback on Ubuntu, you lose the high-definition. I guess it may not be important for you, but I expect someone who sunk a fair amount of change on a high-end TV to care.

At that point, hit the high seas and ditch the nonsense

Even then, last time I checked HDR playback on linux was a very hit-or-miss thing.

Do you mean HDR? High definition video playback works fine on Linux. Very performant even with low end hardware.

The content providers will refuse to serve the video to you without DRM, attestation, HDCP, whatever new crap some MBA came up with to justify a paycheck to some other MBA…

Oh, well using linux to use the same services would be pointless of course. I thought the point was to play local media.

A lot of streaming services limit the resolution they provide via DRM restrictions on Linux unfortunately.

What is meant is that services explicitly short change Linux users by restricting resolution based on client in a fashion that isn't trivially circumvented by fudging the user agent.

For instance a given content may be available in glorious 4K only via an app on a TV, 1080p via a windows or mac machine, and dogshit 720p that actually manages to look worse than old SD on Linux.

This is basically true of every service with Youtube TV being the least bad and showing at least reasonable quality. In theory showing lesser quality streams to less locked down platforms is supposed to make piracy harder. In reality popular shows are always available same day anyway.

Ultimately if you want creators to get paid and to enjoy the highest quality on Linux you need to both pay for and pirate the content and watch for instance on jellyfin.

Is Youtube TV different from regular Youtube? I've never heard of that in France, but I'm admittedly not big on TV / streaming / movies.

For my needs (random videos I search on an ad-hoc basis) I can get 4K with no issue on Firefox on Linux.

YouTube TV is a cable replacement service and costs around $70/mo last I checked. It has all the network and local tv channels as well as the usual hbo/showtime/espn/etc packages for an added cost. TV guide, DVR, multiple streams, etc.

I've heard the others are as you say, but Youtube delivers 4k to me on Linux, in Firefox or mpv.

Youtube has the video service with cats, puppies, howtos, reviews, and conspiracy theories and YoutubeTV which has live TV, as well as movies, and shows. It is the latter which is artificially limited on Linux but LESS so than for instance hulu or Amazon.

In case any confusion remains these latter are available at tv.youtube.com with a subscription.

Huh, I didn't know this exists. Seems antithetical to the point of youtube to be honest, is this actually popular?

It's a cheaper version of a cable package that can be used by up to five google accounts that might not share the same physical household. EG a subscription with multiple premium channels and a good range of channels available in two households could easily be $400-$500 not including internet. YoutubeTV for a similar range of content would be ~$100.

The purpose of youtube for most consumers is to consume video content. Much of the professionally produced video content is TV shows and movies which obviously remains popular. This includes by reference content originating from a range of platforms HBO/Showtime/Starz/Paramount/AMC and so forth

EG you select HBO and Showtime as part of your package and can view the same content as is on MAX or showtime in the singular unified youtubeTV interface. Kind of a mixture of TIVO and netflix with a better interface.

And then be limited to 720p because you don't have the right DRM because Linux.

That's assuming you get the content through the services themselves rather than through other means.

This right here. You're anti-consumer? Enjoy losing money with your content "monopoly"

I also enjoy spending time on shady websites with scams ads and virus. That will teach Netflix and Apple.

I don't spend any time on shady websites with scams, ads, and viruses, and I surf the high seas for video content with regularity. It's very easy to do safely, and in this day and age, it beggars belief that this comment was made in good faith.

Stop spreading misinformation.

It's not really misinformation though. Most vuln researchers aren't burning browser 0-days targetting pirates, but many piracy sites host malicious content, even if that content isn't looking to deliver malware through browser vulnerabilities.

There is a significant segment of the internet that thrives in the gutters between paid services, straight up piracy sites, and actual "dark web" sites that require TOR or other specialized access. The restreamers that live in those gutters are questionable at best, straight up illegal at worst, and fund themselves through fraudulent ads, or legit ads for sketchy or dangerous services and sites.

It is entirely possible to use those sites safely, just like it's also possible to navigate dark alleys in major urban centres in the late hours, but that doesn't make it a low-risk activity.

I don't navigate any dark alleys in order to perform piracy. I pay a service to host/run torrents, and I browse the available torrents through their associated torrent aggregator.

The only danger involved here is in the actual downloaded content. There have been a few codec/filetype vulns for video files in the past, sure, but one that deploys through the browser through a local Plex instance would be pretty interesting, to say the least.

Please share the websites because I never found them.

Am I allowed to share links to piracy websites on HN or are you baiting to get me banned?

I don’t know, it doesn’t seem to be mentioned explicitly in the guidelines but if you don’t want to risk your account I can understand.

Well. I am sure you can do some googling (not as an asshole response). The service I use does torrent de-duplication, so if some other user has already downloaded that torrent, you receive it immediately instead of waiting, and you get $x size of cloud storage for the output.

They have an associated aggregator that has no ads on it, it's just a search bar and "What can we hook you up with?".

I pay $20 a month for it. Some may question what the point of paying for a torrenting service is, instead of paying the streaming sites. However, I used to pay for netflix and prime video, and I only went BACK to torrenting after things started happening to enshitify the product (like struggling to get full res videos because I run linux). The answer is simple: Ease of access.

PTP, BTN, HDB

It takes 10 seconds to find high quality content without crawling the underbelly of the internet. Hell if you are so included your torrent client can find it for you without actually opening your browser and drop in in your jellyfin media directory where its indexed by the time it finishes downloading.

I literally end up doing this for things I'm actually paying for when I want to watch the high quality version on a PC. I haven't owned an actual TV in years.

Please share because a source of high quality content isn’t easily found. Unless you are into blockbusters I guess.

Well this is probably not the best place to link to pirated movies but I was able in 10 seconds to find options both on google and within the integrated search function a popular opensource torrent client. I would suggest it is incredibly easy to find. I'm sure you can do it if you so choose.

All my favorite shows download automatically to my server. I can stream them to any of my devices. There are no ads or viruses.

This infographic is a bit out of date, but you get the idea https://i.imgur.com/IrxoHI3.png

It's overall a vastly superior experience.

I mean, blame is probably better assigned "because capitalism", not "because Linux".

I don't have (all of) those services but they're not like for like comparable for any services using Widevine, e.g. Amazon, Netflix and Disney. A Linux install will give you access to L3 content using the browser (usually limited to 720p but you can get a 1080p stream out of Netflix using a browser extension). I think the poster was having a bit of a joke though.

I'm really surprised that no one has bothered (or managed) to create an open-source TEE emulator. I mean, there's a ton of different ARM CPUs around there, and it's all ARM under the hood, so it should be possible to create a virtual TEE/TPM and provide it transparently to a VM?

What I'm more surprised, is that since most of the decoding and stuff is done on the GPU anyways, and the GPU has to be HDCP compliant, why can't they just directly send the stream to the GPU as is, tell it where to display it, and be done with it.

Well, then you couldn't have a play button, or pause button, or video text over the top of the video; unless there was some way of turning the GPU into a hardware-level compositor... which is generally not recognized as a good idea.

> unless there was some way of turning the GPU into a hardware-level compositor... which is generally not recognized as a good idea

I admit this isn't a domain I'm particularly fluent in. As a matter of fact, I thought that was already the case with all the talk about "GPU acceleration" of desktops. I think there was an HN post about Windows a few days ago, with people commenting on how all this changed between Windows 95 and 8/10.

It's not that it can't be done, just that it's an arms race of reverse engineering to try and keep it working against a motivated and financed adversary

My guess is that Widevine is pretty universally supported across multiple streaming platforms (i.e. won the DRM format war, even for audio) and 720p is good enough for most users. L1 also requires hardware decryption keys which are unique per device AFAIK (assuming Android - {I know browsers use a shared L3 key but not sure how L1 is implemented on PC formats}) and easily blacklisted.

For Linux users wanting a home theatre experience, I feel they are probably more inclined to go the bluray/piracy route. Personally I use my Android TV to stream in 4K with surround sound but am satisfied that I can still play everything using Linux, albeit at a lower resolution.

Given how readily available 4K HDR content is on the high seas, I assume Widevine is cracked.

Nah, it's HDCP that's cracked. You can grab HDCP strippers (or rather, "splitters"/"signal multiplexers" that happen to strip HDCP) for cheap on alibaba and the likes. From there, all you need is a HDMI framegrabber or if you want the best possible quality, an SDI converter and a BlackMagic Decklink SDI capture card. That's a few hundred bucks.

Yes, given the 4K WEB-DL releases it seems a few groups/individuals possess the knowledge of decrypting L1 content. Occasionally an L1 key will be leaked but is burnt quickly. I think the requirement of "unique" keys stops an interest in a public effort to make L1 content work under Linux, especially as there is already support for L3 content. Even under Windows and macOS end users must be using Microsoft Edge or Safari (platform specific) - given Chrome's huge marketshare I imagine lots of non Linux users are consuming exclusively L3 content on desktop platforms so I'm not sure there's much demand for full/ultra HD content, although many users may simply be unaware that their browser choice affects the quality of content they are streaming.

If you want an inferior experience due to DRM you could absolutely do that. [1]

Please don't grease the wheels of the attestation hype train.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/n8ilcz/4kuhd_on_li...