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by Insanity·9y ago·view on hn ↗
Looks interesting, but in the comments here I found out that it is similar to other software that already exists.

I'm happy with my 90s like setup. Films and series in a folder, VLC to play them. I did give Netflix a try but did not like that it only has a browser player and on top of that annoying restrictions.

3 comments
If you were using the Netflix browser player, you were missing out on high quality audio and video, which are only available from within the Windows 8 or 10 "app". If you were using the browser player on a non-Windows platform, you likely were stuck at the lowest quality 480p grainy video, as I am on the Ubuntu device I'm typing this on.

For better or for worse, legal content distribution has been avoiding PCs as a target platform because of how easy it is to copy and redistribute anything that goes through a PC. If they keep it to more limited set-top boxes like Rokus or SmartTVs themselves, the management will feel like piracy is being prevented.

The video quality was not that bad to be honest in the browser. (Ubuntu, Chrome) but I could not run it on Chromium without enabling other plugins which I did not want to do.

I was running it on a low-end ubuntu device and the quality was at least 720p as far as I could tell.

One of the main issues with it, at least for me, is that the content is restricted to content here in Belgium. My wife is Mexican and thus we sometimes want to watch Mexican movies or simply see things in Spanish or with Spanish subtitles. Things that are not available on the Belgian netflix.

What? I almost always get 1080p on my laptop when watching Netflix in a browser.
So you're using IE or Edge? Netflix explicitly only supports 1080p or higher in Microsoft or Apple browsers, Chrome and Firefox get 720p at best.

If you want 5.1 audio, no browser is an option and the Windows store app the only solution.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

Neither IE nor Edge. Usually watch Netflix in Safari.

720p on Chrome and Firefox is also better than your initial claim of "you're probably only getting 480p".

So my guess for 720p was quite a good one then! That's quite annoying though for people who actually care about watching netflix in high quality. Can't imagine why this is done.
I use both. On my laptop, about 50% of the time I use the shell and mplayer to play a movie, the other 50% I use the Plex web player.

But Plex is really cool for streaming to the phone, watching on TV, watching when you don't have your own laptop, giving access to friends and so on.

I wouldn't want to give up either.

Yeah, this is fine for playing back local media on a computer or a computer attached to a television. These new-fangled setups are for people who want to stream out to their phones, TVs, tablets, laptops, etc...