Netflix is removing offline downloads from its Windows app

https://twitter.com/ArtemR/status/1794513583650329036

by archon810 • 2 years ago

43 84 2 years ago

archon810• 2 years ago

Coming soon: A new Windows app experience

The update includes access to live events, compatibility with ad- supported plans, and more! Downloads will no longer be supported, but you can continue to watch TV shows and movies offline on a supported mobile device.

tjpnz2• 2 years ago

Yet another area where piracy offers the superior watching experience.

ilrwbwrkhv• 2 years ago

I feel piracy offers a superior watching experience in all areas once you set it up. I guess the setup part is where Netflix is better?

umvi• 2 years ago

There's also that pesky thing called a conscience that makes people prefer legitimate sources first where possible even if the "watching experience" is inferior

vundercind2• 2 years ago

It’s not really cheap in time or money (hard drives cost money, if you want a good experience the server needs to be on basically all the time which costs meaningful amounts in energy use) but enough things can’t be had any other way that if I want them I’m gonna be doing that regardless… may as well get everything high-quality and in one interface, then.

I would much, much rather just pay some reasonable amount to achieve similar results, but you literally can’t.

hapticmonkey• 2 years ago

I set up my own media server and run Infuse on the AppleTV. For my wife and kids, it's the ultimate setup.

Everything is in one place (not spread across different apps), the UI is consistent and not buggy (official apps can be terrible at times). All they do is put in a request to dad and their TV show or movie appears shortly after in the "newly added" section on the TV. Not only that, but content doesn't disappear from one service without warning. It's always going to be there, and I get to curate the kids content.

It require piracy, and the kids don't know that, but it's the only way to get this setup.

99912• 2 years ago

It doesn’t require copyright infringement. If you wanted, you could buy and rip blurays.

freitzkriesler22• 2 years ago

Yeah the only reason I pay for streaming services is convenience of finding new content. Disney plus is crack for kids.

I missed the boat for some of the invite only private trackers and I don't have enough time to set up the crazy cool torrent streaming equivalents. Kid stuff is so hard to find on the bay.

One day I'll take a week off of work and get my Xbox Kodi set up right with my stream box to do it.

clatan• 2 years ago

Don't look into stremio

ChuckMcM• 2 years ago

Pretty sad. They are so lucky it's impossible to run something else on Windows that can record what is on a screen into a file. If such a capability existed, what would they do? /s

karlgkk2• 2 years ago

You should try doing that for the Netflix app. It’ll surely work, because nobody’s ever thought of that hole before!

Mindwipe3• 2 years ago

Unless you want the DRM to limit the delivered resolution to a pretty low point then Windows cannot see into the encrypted video memory, nor can anything in userland.

quenix2• 2 years ago

What if we load our video rip code as a kernel driver? Has this been done to circumvent Windows Netflix DRM?

ClassyJacket2• 2 years ago

You're being sarcastic but what you said is literally true thanks to the cancer that is HDCP

evilduck• 2 years ago

HDCP is easy enough to downgrade and then remove.

imchillyb• 2 years ago

Netflix's value proposition is no longer what it was even a decade ago.

Competitors and alternatives to 'netflix-&-chill' exist at lower price points.

I'm not sure why folks are still giving Netflix money.

wordofx• 2 years ago

We give money because they still have good value proposition.

candiddevmike• 2 years ago

Or we forget to cancel

djbusby• 2 years ago

Bundled w/T-Mobile

XorNot2• 2 years ago

Netflix feels like they made a very bad bet that their technology was some sort of leading advantage (which was silly because if BitTorrent exists then fairly obviously...no it wasn't).

nomel4• 2 years ago

It has the advantage over torrent that you don’t have to hide yourself behind a VPNs to keep from getting sued for illegal doings.

slothtrop2• 2 years ago

Presumably by competitors and alternatives, you aren't strictly referring to streaming platforms. What of it? People still want to stream film and tv, and among legal platforms Netflix is still tops.

geodel• 2 years ago

Could be that they don't use internet so they have no idea how to get those cheaper options.

dangus4• 2 years ago

I agree that there are competitors but I think the obvious answer is that Netflix has content.

There is a laundry list of specific shows that have a wide following on Netflix.

Here’s a list of 100 critically acclaimed ones: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-netflix-show...

They’re starting to do live sports as well, like NFL games.

I would say that all the major streaming services are gradually becoming roughly equal.

paulddraper• 2 years ago

I'm a Windows developer.

If any Netflix engs would like help supporting this on Windows like their other platforms, I would be happy to help out.

PostOnce• 2 years ago

Netflix salaries can pay for any imaginable feature, this is a business decision, not a technical problem.

Some netflix programmers make more than some neurosurgeons according to https://www.levels.fyi/companies/netflix/salaries/software-e...

bnj• 2 years ago

My interpretation is that this change is the result of the "Recall" feature on Windows which captures the activity on the machine... does the timing line up for that to be plausible?

karlgkk2• 2 years ago

That wouldn’t affect Netflix at all, since it respects the protected draw or secure draw or whatever rights management term it is

Spivak• 2 years ago

Microsoft Information Protection

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/information-protection/dev...

Havoc2• 2 years ago

It's unlikely that recall will be able to bypass the DRM on netflix

Raed667• 2 years ago

Speculating here: maybe they found out that it was easier to bypass DRM on windows? So they'd rather shut it down.

jimbobthrowawy• 2 years ago

I would guess it's pressure from rightsholders, assuming whoever made this call inside of netflix knows this isn't a good or common way to get or create pirated versions of media. I don't think defeating DRM on at-rest files is going to be any easier than the DRM on streamed chunks of files.

tithe• 2 years ago

"Microsoft PlayReady - complete client identity compromise": https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2024/May/5

HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40308261

ggm• 2 years ago

It's not that we can't afford to pay for the content, it's that we don't want to pay the amount they want to charge. The cost/price disfunction in entertainment is amazing, you would think by now it would be trending closer to cost, but no: *wood, Bolly and Holly, is owned by Lawyers and Financiers who love that massive 3x speculative gain component, and don't want to settle for an ROI which matches the real world 7% longterm across all investment. The thing is, that across hit and miss, they probably DO match the trend. But this is so much more exciting for them, than simply producing material with a lower ROI expectation.

Chasing "gone with the wind" box office success is more gooder better than chasing "I love lucy" success.

I sometimes wish that the idea a film was a box office smash had never taken hold, and that movies were 10c entry and bring your own coke was fine. Watch at home is now trending up to a spend per month which exceeds the amount I ever used to spend to go and watch the same material in a cinema.

I seriously miss FTA. I even miss the shitty ads we had when it was 3-4 FTA channels. I miss the sense of communal alignment when people watched entertainment broadly inside the same window of time. I miss the back-pressure that a TV station doing binge watch has to actually think about it, rather than just feed one ep. into another.

I kinda miss the midnight switch-off and the vanishing dot in the middle with the Ooooooooooooooooooo RF tone.

Havoc2• 2 years ago

They're really intent on worsening their value proposition

dangus4• 2 years ago

I think nobody’s discussed yet just how few people likely use the Windows Store app version of Netflix.

Windows has basically no marketshare on tablets compared to iOS and Android. You can kind of sort of consider the Surface Pro to be one but those users are using them much more like traditional PCs.

The Windows Store not even that popular within Windows itself.

I’m not that surprised that Netflix isn’t prioritizing support for features on that platform.

kyriakos2• 2 years ago

At least for me it's my primary use for Netflix. I know I'm a statistic of one but when travelling I carry a company laptop and don't intend to carry a tablet as well for entertainment.

derwiki• 2 years ago

I don’t mean this as an insult, but I am surprised whenever I hear of someone using a work laptop for personal use. So much risk for very little upside.

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

you need that app to watch in higher qualities due to drm and/or hdr. the browser only supports sdr upto hd or fullhd iirc.

regardless it is a baseless thing to say for a service we pay for. if this happens in macos we would see disproportionate uproar compared to their market share.

Mindwipe3• 2 years ago

That isn't correct. Edge has always supported the same resolutions and HDR as the app, and Chrome now does as well if you have the correct combination of hardware.

MacOS has literally never had an app due to it's market share, or any download functionality at all, and Netflix blocked the iOS app from running, so I am unsure why you'd bring that up.

pentagrama• 2 years ago

How awful way to announce a redesign, is dark comedy a la Coen Brothers.

For the affected users who use that feature, at least is available on the browser? For at least Chrome desktop on Windows should work, not sure about Firefox. YouTube Premium just recently enable the feature for Firefox (or Firefox for YouTube, don't know).

dzhiurgis3• 2 years ago

All these streaming downloads are still worse experience than torrent. Can't download 4K (and can't stream one because it thinks your connection is too slow). Downloads expire in 30 days. And let's not forget geolocked content, hard to search catalog, lack of subtitles, etc.

M95D• 2 years ago

Netflix is removing offline downloads from its Windows app

Yeah, but who uses that...?! I didn't even knew it existed.

Netflix is removing offline downloads from its Windows app

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