Netflix Watch Instantly Technology
Quick Review
There are so many ways to get movies from the Internet, and they seem to be multiplying daily. We've talked about the Netflix Watch Instantly feature in the past, but want to take a few minute to give it a closer look. Sometimes you need a movie right away. With Blockbuster you just swing by the store, withVUDU you just queue a download, but with Netflix you're our of luck, right? Wrong. If you have a computer connected to the TV - or at least one you can get to the TV pretty easily, you can download and watch any of a selection of movies instantly.
Minimum Requirements
- Computer running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, or Windows Vista
- Internet Explorer version 6 or higher
- Windows Media Player version 11 (DRM version 5145) or later
- An active broadband connection to the Internet
- 1.0 GHz processor
- 512 MB RAM
- 3 GB free hard disk drive space
Recommended in addition to minimum requirements
- An active broadband Internet connection of at least 1.5 Mbps
- 1.5 GHz processor
- 1 GB RAM
So you can see that there's no Mac or Linux support, and no Firefox support. And you need to have Windows Media Player 11 installed. We've got a few machines that meet those requirements, so we press on. The first time you watch a movie, you need to install theNetflix player. It's pretty easy and only takes a minute or two. Once installed the movie will play back right in your browser window. There's an option to go full screen to get rid of all the browser tool bars and such.
The selection is pretty sparse. No new releases, and not even close to the total number of discs available from Netflix through the mail. There are some good movies in there though - nothing to replace the mail order, but maybe something to solve a problem in a pinch. Playback controls are limited to play and pause, no fast forward or rewind. You can skip around in the timeline by dragging around, but it's very imprecise and takes about 35 seconds for the player to find your new spot. All of the movies we sampled were in Stereo, even running through a fully surround sound capable sound card. Video quality is sub-DVD.
While it won't replace rentals anytime soon, but it is neat to play with. We can see the benefit to the feature if you find yourself with nothing to watch, or are stuck in a hotel room somewhere with nothing to do. ButNetflix has a little bit to improve if they plan to make this a full fledged VOD system. There are public reports that Netflix will be moving to the living room with some sort of set top box or relationship sometime in 2008. Maybe Watch Instantly is just a test bed for what's to come.
DRM - Digital Rights Management
We came across a blog post about DRM the other day and decided that it might be a good idea to put together a brief overview of the topic. Most of us have heard the acronym, and are probably pretty familiar with it, but for those who aren't, DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is a technological way to protect copyrighted content, such as a song or movie. A multimedia file with DRM is usually restricted to play back only on specific, authorized, pieces of hardware.
In the blog, titled
The Future of DRM, the author, Peter Glaskowsky, first covers the DRM technology used to protect DVDs. This DRM technology wasn't meant to lock a file to particular hardware, but rather to prevent copying the disc and thereby disallow any unauthorized sale or distribution of its content. The scheme is called Content Scramble System or CSS. It was introduced in 1996 and cracked in 1999. The original intent was for a disc player companies to build decryption modules into their hardware that would only work if they were granted special decryption keys. They were supposed to keep these keys secret, but as it turns out, it didn't really matter. CSS uses a very weak encryption algorithm that can easily be cracked without a key.
The next generation players, HD-DVD and Blu-ray, have opted to use the next generation protection scheme, AACS or Advanced Access Content System. Released in 2005, it is a much more advanced algorithm, but has also been compromised by those who have been able to extract keys from players that didn't protect them properly. While the keys on a device can be updated, thus rendering the compromised keys useless, this is a tricky problem, and not fool proof. There are open source programs available that can crack the encryption on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray if given the right keys.
So both of these attempts have failed somewhat. Apple has their own protection scheme that isn't open to outside developers. Called FairPlay, it allows the purchaser of a song or video to play that file on any one of 5 devices that they authorize. It has become somewhat trivial to remove the protection from Apple's media files, rendering it useless to those willing to go the extra step to strip it off. Microsoft also has a DRM system that is more open to outside developers and has thus been embraced by a wider variety of products. It isn't fool-proof either.
Recently Apple started offering DRM free downloads at it's very successful iTunes Music Store. Does this mean that they have thrown up their hands and are admitting that DRM will never work? Knowing Apple, absolutely not. They protect absolutely anything and everything. If it can be protected, they'll find a way to do it. So what is needed to make DRM work. Again the blog had a suggestion. His four requirements for effective DRM are:
1. The DRM system must use secure hardware components integrated into the playback devices (e.g., displays and speakers) so there is no accessible digital pathway carrying decrypted data. Playback devices must be able to communicate with an authentication server the first time it sees each protected work.
2. Playback devices must not be able to play full-quality unprotected content.
3. All copies of a given work must not be identical. When practical--with downloaded content, especially--each copy should be separately encrypted. When this can't be done--as with pre-recorded optical media--critical portions of the content should be distributed separately at the time of authentication. Even then, the number of copies sharing the same decryption keys should be limited as much as possible.
4. The authentication process must use a secure communication channel between the DRM hardware and the authentication server, and transfer only the information necessary to play that specific copy of the work on that specific presentation device.
While it is true that this model would provide a perfect DRM situation, it isn't all that practical. Nor would anybody go for it - and the author says as much by refering to it as perfect DRM but not commercially practical DRM. So what is the future of DRM? How about some ideas:
1. None. This is really the best choice. In this model, file size and availability are the limiting factors. People will pay for highly reliable downloads of high quality content, and will most likely be unable to share them, thus preventing unauthorized distribution. Smaller files of lesser quality could be available for free.
2. Individual keys. A user must purchase a "license key" from an authorized license key vendor. They then use that key to purchase any media they want. Since they have the key, they can watch their own content on any device they choose. If the key gets leaked to the internet, it can be revoked, thus forcing the user to purchase another one. If th cost of the key is high enough, people will not share them.
3. Central servers. People authorize their equipment with central servers on the Internet - similar to the few root name servers that are currently online. When they purchase content, they tag it with a user id of some sort, that user id maps back to all devices owned by that user and viola, the media plays.
4. No change. Files continue to be "protected" until someone figures out how to crack them or simply remove the protection. The annoyance gets worse that it is now, but we continue to live with it because we have no choice.
