Netflix 4K on PCs requires Kaby Lake, Windows 10, and Edge

[HEXUS]

Kaby Lake for hardware 10-bit HEVC decoding, Microsoft Edge for the PlayReady DRM.

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[jimbouk]

Wowsers, chalk another one up to content protection. With a 4K TV (sadly without built in 4K streaming) and a PC sat underneath it I thought we'd be all set for taking the plunge if our broadband ever improved, but this is definitely a step back. We'd maybe invest in a Chromecast Ultra when the time comes but we shouldn't need to!

[LeetyMcLeet]

Do these companies never learn? Restricting people like this forces them to obtain their media 'through other means' (I think you all know what I mean).

* Sigh.

[darcotech]

I bought Xbox One S for this.
But DRM was, is and will always be blocking point until media owners do not learn what their clients REALLY want.
Affordable, easy to access and large choice of entertainement.
Ideally in one place.

I know, I am dreaming...a lot...

[Tunnah]

Do these companies never learn? Restricting people like this forces them to obtain their media 'through other means' (I think you all know what I mean).

* Sigh.

Well said. For most people moving to Kaby Lake would be an entire rebuild - CPU/mobo/RAM, which is quite the bloody investment. They must be straight up retarded if they think people will do that simply to stream 4K content.

[azrael-]

So... currently this is available to users with a Kaby Lake-based notebook with a 4K/UHD screen running some flavour of Win10. A very exclusive group...

[Dashers]

I'm not upgrading my Haswell-E and 970 SLI combo to play 4K video. I'll opt for LeetyMcLeet's suggestion.

[Unique]

I wonder how many days it will be till someone has a crack for it so it will play on any computers. Like the any HD software that let's multi region discs play on computers.

[shaithis]

Wowzers, that is going to annoy a lot of HTPC users......

[Spud1]

Thing is that it sounds bad - but how many of you actually have a 4K PC monitor right now - and one that is big enough to take advantage?
4K on PCs is incredibly niche right now that I don't think this is really an issue. It works wonderfully on my TV so why would I want to watch it on a (relatively) tiny screen?

By the time most people have a screen capable of displaying the content they will likely have a PC that can decode it too. If you have a 4K tv worth it's salt then you will have netflix 4K built in anyway so will have no need for your PC to power it. The people who are caught out will likely have first gen 4K models (or a SEIKI/HiSENSE) which is unfortunate - but you can easily add a streaming box for £30, or go for the Amazon Fire TV as a better, but more premium & pricey, offering.

I completely get why they have not prioritised support for PCs and it doesn't worry me in the slightest.

[EvilCycle]

...4K on PCs is incredibly niche right now that I don't think this is really an issue. It works wonderfully on my TV so why would I want to watch it on a (relatively) tiny screen?...

Nearly all the PC users I know have a hdmi cable running from their PC to their TV for such activities, I wouldn't say it is as niche as you think, or at least not for long. I agree with comments above that all they are doing here is persuading the morally corrupt that obtaining movies by other means is now more justified.

[Percy1983]

Oh well my TV and monitors aren't up to as they are 'only' UHD.

Funny thing is my HTPC is still running in 1080p to my UHD TV as is can't do UHD above 30hz and I don't really have any UHD/4k content.

Also I refuse to pay for fibre broadband so streaming is out of the question anyway.

[bridges009]

When there's a video service as good as Spotify is for music (large, high quality selection, transparent fidelity, highly flexible) then I'll subscribe. Been totally unimpressed with Amazon Prime and UK Netflix trials.

[aniilv]

Video streaming in UK is a joke anyway. You are better off getting VPN and spoofing as american.

[Kato-2]

Netflix do not use HEVC, there are toxic licensing arrangements around HEVC that make it ill suited for internet streaming.

Netflix and others as part of the Alliance for Open Media settled on VP9 as the interim solution until their next gen codec AV1 is ready.

Furthermore Kaby Lake supports VP9 in hardware decode and Edge also supports VP9 media.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Polaris has 10 bit HEVC:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9886/a...architecture/2

Its apparently not supported via drivers.

Also,10 bit output is pointless:

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/hdr..._via_hdmi.html

Both AMD and Nvidia have issues with using 10 bit output which is only really needed for HDR.

To stay within the bandwidth limits it turns out that AMD is applying 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 sampling and thus shares red and blue color components to get to a lower bitrate over HDMI. The information itself is not exactly a secret, in fact AMD shared this information already during the Polaris launch. Hower AMD claimed that they supported 10-bit HDR gaming as well, and that is not right. On HDMI 2.0a the color depth is also lowered to 8-bit with dithering. Considering that the Playstation 4 also is Polaris based, we can only assume the same happens there.

In a test at heise they checked out Shadow Warrior 2 in HDR a Radeon RX 480 which showed similar visual results towards a GeForce GTX 1080. So it seems this is the case for Nvidia as well and likely Nvidia is using a similar trick at 8-bit also. Nvidia has not yet shared info on this though. According to heise, they did see a decrease in performance with Nvidia whereas the RX 480 performance remained the same.

The solve if you have a 10-bit compatible HDR-monitor for only to use DisplayPort 1.4 (supported by Polaris), though these will become available in volume early next year. At this time we are not sure what this entails and means for playback HDR supported movies on a HDR compatible Ultra HDTV at HDMI 2.0