Safari in macOS Big Sur Works With 4K HDR and Dolby Vision Content From Netflix on Newer Macs

[dantracht]

I'm doing a lot of eye rolling at Apple lately, and I have a home filled with their products.

C'mon.....

 

[CarlJ]

Can you share more info on this, first I was aware of it.

I don’t recall much beyond that, sorry. If I remembered more details, I would have been more specific. It was at least a couple years ago, got covered here on MR.

 

[konqerror]

Netflix are literally using Apple's Fairplay DRM implementation, so it is something Apple controls.

But the likelihood is that earlier implementations of the T2 chip didn't support it in hardware and newer ones do, so nothing about it is going to change.

They support 4K via PlayReady on Windows without hardware support (SGX) by running everything in the GPU.

Netflix also supports all three major DRM vendors by necessity.

 

[JGIGS]

I am of the age where I notice little or no difference when it comes to HD and 4K etc. Most things on my screen look fine to me. Bit I am surprised to see that people paying for 4K Netflix and using Safari have only been viewing Netflix at 1080p. Is that really the case? I have only ever subscribed to Netflix "standard" on the grounds I probably wouldn't notice the difference. I wonder how many people have paid for the "premium" and have only been seeing 1080p anyway, and have not even realised. I may have misunderstood this article after a glass or wine too many, which is probably another reason why I would see little difference anyway.

You might not notice a big difference between HD and 4k but you should notice a heck of a difference with HDR/DolbyVision and regular HD.

 

[The Phazer]

They support 4K via PlayReady on Windows without hardware support (SGX) by running everything in the GPU.

Netflix also supports all three major DRM vendors by necessity.

The GPU has to have hardware support for PlayReady in that instance, SGX is not the only mechanism to do that (in fact it's probably the worst from a security point of view, for the content owner, given how broken SGX is).

 

[amartinez1660]

With some of the codecs earlier in the same(?) series, I recall Apple’s position being that while the codecs were being offered as “royalty free”, Apple believed that they may actually be infringing on some patents. And Apple has large piles of cash laying around and they’re quite risk adverse, and likely didn’t want someone coming after them. I don’t know how that contributes to their current position.

That’s actually a fair point. With their armies of lawyers, programmers, advisors and consultants if they say that maybe some of those codecs are violating patents then maybe they got a valid point.

 

[MacBH928]

Well, Apple built its ecosystem around HEVC, and are patent holders as well. Plus AV1 wasn't out yet, and even when it came out, it kinda sucked. Remember, Apple had implemented HEVC in shipping product way back in 2016. The AV1 standard wasn't even finalized until 2018 and was inferior at launch in several ways compared to HEVC.

Live Photos are HEVC (or rather, HEIF). iTunes movies are HEVC. FaceTime is HEVC. Final Cut and iMovie use HEVC. Hell, even Sidecar is HEVC.

yes but we moved on things developed. I can't imagine the horror of having to re-encode the whole iTunes library from HEVC to AV1.

 

[Birkan]

Did anyone test if they can play non-HDR 4K content on their 2017 Macs (Kaby Lake generation) using the UHD Netflix plan? I get that HDR is limited to 2018 Macs with T2 chip but I wonder if they also restrict 4K HEVC DRM (without HDR) only to their T2 based Macs as well. I guess they are leveraging T2 based FairPlay DRM scheme for 4K HDR but wonder if the same also holds true for non-HDR 4K content?

 

[The Phazer]

Did anyone test if they can play non-HDR 4K content on their 2017 Macs (Kaby Lake generation) using the UHD Netflix plan? I get that HDR is limited to 2018 Macs with T2 chip but I wonder if they also restrict 4K HEVC DRM (without HDR) only to their T2 based Macs as well. I guess they are leveraging T2 based FairPlay DRM scheme for 4K HDR but wonder if the same also holds true for non-HDR 4K content?

It's the same for anything above HD SDR.

 

[Birkan]

It's the same for anything above HD SDR.

Oh, I see. Just to confirm, you tested a non-HDR 4K Netflix clip on a 2017 Mac using Safari 14 on Big Sur with UHD Netflix plan, right?

 

[steve gee]

Well, Im using the Safari Technology Preview in Catalina - (which is also supposed to work) in a 16" macbook pro and no - go for me. Just getting 1080p in Netflix. Has anyone here actually gotten this to work?

 

[ErikGrim]

Well, Im using the Safari Technology Preview in Catalina - (which is also supposed to work) in a 16" macbook pro and no - go for me. Just getting 1080p in Netflix. Has anyone here actually gotten this to work?

Just 1080p in Big Sur as well. EDIT: Oh, 2018 Macs required for some reason.

 

[The Phazer]

Well, Im using the Safari Technology Preview in Catalina - (which is also supposed to work) in a 16" macbook pro and no - go for me. Just getting 1080p in Netflix. Has anyone here actually gotten this to work?

It isn't supposed to work. 4K is Big Sur only as the relevant APIs are Big Sur only. The Netflix Help pages even say this explicitly.

 

[Birkan]

It isn't supposed to work. 4K is Big Sur only as the relevant APIs are Big Sur only. The Netflix Help pages even say this explicitly.

I just checked Netflix macOS help article since you mentioned it. Apparently, they updated it to mention that both non-HDR 4K and HDR 4K content requires macOS 11.0 and 2018+ Mac with T2 chip (probably due to FairPlay DRM only supporting 4K on T2 based Macs). So they do not support non-HDR 4K on 2017 Macs with Kaby Lake CPUs which is sad considering Windows supports it on the same hardware.

 

[Birkan]

Curiosity got the best of me so I decided to upgrade to UHD Netflix plan to test if it would work on my rMBP 2017 (also test some HDR videos on my iPhone Xs) even though I didn't think it would. So as I expected, I only get up to 1080p streams but apparently I can receive 8-bit HEVC 1080p streams (Dark S01E09) with bitrate of 5800 now. I didn't test if I could get a HEVC 1080p stream using my Standart Netflix plan so this might not be a new addition. However, this still feels like a welcome addition compared to AVCHIGH streams thanks to additional compression efficiency even though max bitrate seems to be around the same ~5800 kbps.

 

[NervousFish2]

So annoyed that I can't playback in 4K on my 2017 iMac Pro. It has the T2 chip for hardware decoding of H265 so this is an asinine, arbitrary cutoff by Apple.

This is one thing I feel Apple are not fully honest about. I got a 2019 iMac which is totally compatible in every way except the lack of the T2 chip. So many Apple websites say "every Mac after 2017" but its not true. It needs to be a post-2017 Mac WITH the chip. Last year's iMac is excluded.

 

[The Phazer]

This is one thing I feel Apple are not fully honest about. I got a 2019 iMac which is totally compatible in every way except the lack of the T2 chip. So many Apple websites say "every Mac after 2017" but its not true. It needs to be a post-2017 Mac WITH the chip. Last year's iMac is excluded.

Honestly I am quite surprised there wasn't a class action lawsuit about it. The Catalina product page flat out lied about it.

 

[steve gee]

16" big sur. No go.