Netflix 4K comes to PC with multiple caveats
Netflix 4K streaming is finally coming to the PC. Unfortunately, it comes with a bunch of strings attached, four to be precise.
Along with the prerequisite 4K subscription plan, you will also need to have a Windows 10 PC running on the latest seventh generation Intel 'Kaby Lake' processor. And you will have to use Microsoft Edge. And have a 4K display.
The reason for this is two fold. First, only the latest Kaby Lake processors have 10-bit HEVC decoding that is necessary to playback Netflix 4K video on your computer. Second, the video is DRM protected and uses Microsoft PlayReady 3.0, which is only available on Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge. This was also the reason why you could only stream up to 720p in other browsers on Windows but needed to use Edge or IE to stream in 1080p.
This limits the current list of compatible devices to a handful of Windows 10 computers and if you're reading this it's quite likely you won't have one of those at the moment.
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Reader comments
- Anonymous
- 03 Mar 2017
- g5u
I wonder if the pirate versions will have the same restrictions...
- AnonD-401277
- 24 Nov 2016
- kn%
Absolutely. You don't NEED kaby lake, just hardware decode and PlayReady 3 support, which the pascal-based GPUs already have. It's the DRM path they've chosen to go down. This is why i've put off building a new HTPC for so long.
- AnonD-523490
- 24 Nov 2016
- gNV
I generally don't have most of the things written in most of gsmarena's articles. Why to hurt the readers by saying it specially in this article? Damn, even Netflix isn't launched in my country
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