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> - Netflix will only send you "high quality" (over 720p) streams on certain browsers (IE on windows, Safari on OSX, ???? on Linux) that support Encrypted Media Extensions.

It's not only netflix that does this, all of the streaming services do (though some of them limit to 1080p instead of 720p).

Such an utterly pointless anti-piracy measure... every show ends up on torrents in 4k regardless, only serves to punish those actually paying for the service.

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I believe it's rooted in agreements that content producers (including Netflix I am sure) insist on for distributing media. My impression is that all anti-piracy measures are intended to "just" extend the exclusivity period for official sources for that media. So almost anything you can do to delay high quality rips appearing will be worthwhile for the company financially.

Torrents for popular movies and tv shows tend to appear within hours (in good quality even) so not sure how successful that attempt at delaying is

Netflix 4k titles certainly don't. It's often weeks at this point for web-dls.

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