
Enlarge (credit: Orange Is The New Black, Netflix)
Netflix 4K streaming is coming to Windows PCs later this week—but only for the lucky few using seventh generation Kaby Lake processors from Intel.
Netflix launched 4K streaming in 2014 on a select number of TVs before rolling it out to dedicated streaming boxes like the Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and Nvidia Shield. 4K streaming on PC was notably missing from the rollout, due in part to piracy and DRM concerns from Hollywood studios and TV networks.
In an effort to placate the studios, Microsoft introduced “PlayReady 3.0” with the Windows 10 Anniversary update. PlayReady 3.0 is a hardware-based DRM (digital rights management) system that requires dedicated decoding hardware, either on the CPU or on the graphics card, preventing the video stream from being captured in software or via an external capture device.
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Source: Ars Technica – Netflix 4K streaming comes to the PC—but it needs Kaby Lake CPU