A few days ago I was really bored and thoughtā€¦ Fck it, it canā€™t really be that bad and paid for a month, wouldnā€™t hurt to tryā€¦

Well that was a waste of moneyā€¦

1st issue: Canā€™t stream over airplay.

A common thing i do because Iā€™m a lazy piece of sh!t is I have a piece of software called ā€œuxplayā€ which is a software airplay server that works way better than it has any right to. So what I do when Iā€™m too lazy to get up from my couch is I connect my Mac with the uxplay server and just watch things that way. Itā€™s a bog standard M3 MacBook air, nothing done to it, nothingā€¦

So imagine my surprise when I tried to play Netflix while streaming over airplay and just saw a black screenā€¦ Yep, it just did not workā€¦ I couldnā€™t believe it at 1st but yep, apparently itā€™s a part of their DRMā€¦

Issue 2: 4k is a lieā€¦

Ok, I thought to myself, fine, Iā€™ll watch it on my Mac directlyā€¦ But the quality lookedā€¦ Off. Sure enough, it was streaming at 1080p with a bit rate so low I could practically count the pixelsā€¦ Ok, I thought to myself, Iā€™ve heard of Netflix having issues on Linux (why I didnā€™t even try it on my PC) maybe I have something setup wrongā€¦ So I look at their docs and they state that safari should be able to play 4k full quality (yk, the thing Iā€™m fucking paying for), I was trying to watch it on Arc (chromium based browser) so I thought, fair enough, Iā€™m just gonna use safariā€¦ I log in do everything.

Still 1080p with an ass bit rate

Wtf

At this point Iā€™m proper pissed off, I would have had less issues had I pirated the fcking show I wanted to watch at this pointā€¦ But I gave it one last attempt, windows.

3rd issue: Windowsā€¦ Itā€™s by itself an issue

So, I have a stealth windows GPU passthrough virtual machineā€¦ The kind that most kernel level AC canā€™t detect. So I went ā€œeh, if kernel level AC canā€™t detect it, surely Netflix wonā€™t be able toā€. And to itā€™s (the virtual machineā€™s credit) it was not detectedā€¦ Problem is, 4k still didnā€™t fucking work. On Netflixā€™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 VMā€¦ Well that was a waste of time, the bit rate was a bit better but it was still 1080pā€¦ I tried extensions, changing flags, nope, Netflix just did not wanna stream at 4kā€¦ DESPITE ME FUCKING PAYING FOR ITā€¦ Ok, I thought, I have one last option, Netflix has an official windows app, except itā€™s only on the Microsoft store which just sat there for 5 minutes and then threw an error ā€œunable to apply updateā€ when trying to install the appā€¦

Idk why people would ever pay for this shit, honestly. I didnā€™t expect anything and I was still disappointed. I didnā€™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 triedā€¦

And I know itā€™s not my internet or my setup, I have gigabit internet ffsā€¦

Sorry for the rant, Iā€™m just really butthurt about having spent money on a service that doesnā€™t fcking workā€¦

  • MrVilliam@lemm.eeEnglish
    4Ā·
    3 days ago

    Iā€™m not against piracy, but publicly posting about intending to pirate would just invite cops to come and snoop around. Iā€™m not dumb. I should either shut the fuck up about this topic and feel free to pirate or I should not pirate so I can freely speak up about how bullshit it is to pay for these things when piracy is far and away the better experience. I chose the latter, and especially now that resources have been provided to help others to choose the former, others can do so without even asking where to start.

    I can afford to buy my media, but I wasnā€™t always so financially stable and I refuse to forget those chapters of my life. People are really struggling right now, so I wouldnā€™t dare judge anybody for pirating instead of paying these absurd streaming bill amounts just to get a dogshit selection, bad UI, and pisspoor video quality. As everything in life seems to be going to subscription model, Iā€™m becoming more interested in owning my media. It also just seems like building a NAS and ripping my discs to build a library within it could just be a fun tinkering tech project.