A few days ago I was really bored and thought… Fck it, it can’t really be that bad and paid for a month, wouldn’t hurt to try…
Well that was a waste of money…
1st issue: Can’t stream over airplay.
A common thing i do because I’m a lazy piece of sh!t is I have a piece of software called “uxplay” which is a software airplay server that works way better than it has any right to. So what I do when I’m too lazy to get up from my couch is I connect my Mac with the uxplay server and just watch things that way. It’s a bog standard M3 MacBook air, nothing done to it, nothing…
So imagine my surprise when I tried to play Netflix while streaming over airplay and just saw a black screen… Yep, it just did not work… I couldn’t believe it at 1st but yep, apparently it’s a part of their DRM…
Issue 2: 4k is a lie…
Ok, I thought to myself, fine, I’ll watch it on my Mac directly… But the quality looked… Off. Sure enough, it was streaming at 1080p with a bit rate so low I could practically count the pixels… Ok, I thought to myself, I’ve heard of Netflix having issues on Linux (why I didn’t even try it on my PC) maybe I have something setup wrong… So I look at their docs and they state that safari should be able to play 4k full quality (yk, the thing I’m fucking paying for), I was trying to watch it on Arc (chromium based browser) so I thought, fair enough, I’m just gonna use safari… I log in do everything.
Still 1080p with an ass bit rate
Wtf
At this point I’m proper pissed off, I would have had less issues had I pirated the fcking show I wanted to watch at this point… But I gave it one last attempt, windows.
3rd issue: Windows… It’s by itself an issue
So, I have a stealth windows GPU passthrough virtual machine… The kind that most kernel level AC can’t detect. So I went “eh, if kernel level AC can’t detect it, surely Netflix won’t be able to”. And to it’s (the virtual machine’s credit) it was not detected… Problem is, 4k still didn’t fucking work. On Netflix’s own fcking website it states that edge should be able to play 4k no issue, so I relented and reinstalled edge to my debloated VM… Well that was a waste of time, the bit rate was a bit better but it was still 1080p… I tried extensions, changing flags, nope, Netflix just did not wanna stream at 4k… DESPITE ME FUCKING PAYING FOR IT… Ok, I thought, I have one last option, Netflix has an official windows app, except it’s only on the Microsoft store which just sat there for 5 minutes and then threw an error “unable to apply update” when trying to install the app…
Idk why people would ever pay for this shit, honestly. I didn’t expect anything and I was still disappointed. I didn’t expect it to work on Linux which is my daily driver but to be having issues on supposedly supported platforms, both Windows and Mac is completely unacceptable.
Afaik, their 4k plan is a straight up scam as I could not get it to stream at 4k, regardless of what I tried…
And I know it’s not my internet or my setup, I have gigabit internet ffs…
Sorry for the rant, I’m just really butthurt about having spent money on a service that doesn’t fcking work…
I think it’s great value for money. Use it every day and lots of choice.
Say you want a ham sandwich. I’m going to sell you a ham sandwich. However the sandwich you get is missing the titular ham of said sandwich. There is still good bread and mayo and cheese. But did you buy a cheese sandwich? Would you complain?
This is the crux of OPs post. They’re not getting what they pay for.
Isn’t it more like buying a 4K texture pack dlc for a game and finding out your GTX 1070 can’t run it? The problem here seems to be getting max settings on unsupported hardware.
I think Netflix sucks and that OP should get a refund…but I also think Netflix provided what was paid for
No, the thing is, I never even mentioned Linux because I paid for Netflix, knowing it won’t work on it. My problem is that even on supposedly “supported” platforms like my M3 MacBook air, I’m still not getting 4k.
It’s an unmodified, unfiddled with, bog standard MacBook air. If that isn’t “supported” or “trusted” hardware I don’t know what is…
And if we’re talking hardware capabilities, this thing can play multiple 8k streams at the same time without even warming up so… I highly doubt it’s a hardware capability issue.
No, linux and Firefox are both capable of running 4k resolution.
If you want to use the gaming analogy this is like buying a triple star game but not being able to play it due to buggy performance from kernel level anti-cheat.
You cannot place the onus on the consumer with this.
You can see here that Netflix is throttling the bitrate even on compliant hardware.
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1602743673
Fair enough on my analogy being bad. Your second one is much better but I think it would be more accurate to modify it to “not being able to play a triple A game because you use Linux and the anticheat won’t run.”
I think we can both agree that these are both anti consumer practices.
You’re telling me. I work in pro AV/networking and have to worry about DRM and HDCP handshakes all day.
I honestly think that their 4k premium plan is a scam. I pay more for 4k but can’t use said 4k… SO THEN WHY EVEN OFFER IT
4k works great on most TV devices, that’s where they expect people are consuming it. I think the crux of the complaint is actually that they don’t make any of that clear before you waste money on it.
Not when Netflix is throttling 4K bitrate. Shitty site but there’s a good writeup here. I’d suggest ublock origin or Firefox reader mode.
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1602743673
https://github.com/Rick45/quick-arr-Stack
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin
https://signup.easynews.com/bonus-offer/?a_aid=urz&a_bid=ef2f9ea1&chan=en_urz_nzb
https://www.howtogeek.com/66214/how-to-forward-ports-on-your-router/
https://shop.gandi.net/en/domain/suggest?search=netflixisacheesesandwich
https://www.paulcostan.com/2024/06/how-to-setup-dynamic-dns-with-cloudflare/
I get every resolution I download. Natively on my linux and mac machines. Follow the above recipe and you can too.
I’m no stranger to 🏴☠️. I have the entire *arr stack and jellyfin setup on my server… Unfortunately it’s dead atm (waiting for a replacement drive). I just wanted to try the other side for once while waiting… Yep, not making that mistake again.
Zfs and redundancy are your friends. I’ve not been stopped by a dead drive in over a decade
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/setup-zfs-storage-pool#1-overview
https://www.diskinternals.com/raid-recovery/zfs-raid-types/
My boot drive died, all my other ones are in a RAIDz1
Ach! Did you have btrfs? Sometimes you can load the OS read only if it’s an ssd and shunt the OS to a ramdisk. I only boot to RAM now. I have a backup iPXE server in a container as well to emergency boot over the network.
Nope… Idk honestly, I use TrueNAS scale and am not sure what filesystem that uses for the boot drive