PlayReady DRM

[tft]

Hi all, I'm helping a group of people port Android to a new hardware
platform (ARM based) and we have a question regarding the playready
DRM from Microsoft. The Android that is included in most sold devices
out there (phones, pads, set-top-boxes, etc) has the playready DRM
included already. Yet we're a bit baffled as to how to include it on
our port in order to watch the likes of Netflix, etc.

I've been told that when Google ships Android in binary format it
includes the playready DRM (ie. the "secret sauce") but doesn't make
it available, is that true ? And if so I can understand its
unavailability in source format but can we have access to this "secret
sauce" (application or library) even in binary format to include into
our compilation of Android in order to have the same functionality ?

If access is unavailable, though I'd love to find out why that is, are
there binaries we can tap into in order to have this functionality in
any other form/format ? How does GoogleTV deal with this topic ?

Any help on this topic would be great - we're looking to resolve this
conundrum and would VERY much like to include PlayReady DRM.

Regards.

[Karthik Kannappan]

I might be wrong in this.  But, I do not believe PlayReady is part of the vanilla Android distribution.  Widevine is.  Companies such as TrustedLogic support PlayReady in their products such as TrustedShow, which is now available on Android as well.  I believe there is a "drmplay" effort underway between NFLX and GOOG that will hopefully incorporate a unified set of OMX APIs that will allow both DRMs to be used.

Currently, integrating PlayReady into an ICS-based device was quite gnarly.

Rgds

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[riazrahaman]

Playready isn't part of the vanilla Google code. The binaries are not shipped in the Nexus devices.

Netflix must be having itz own native playready DRM libraries that gets installed as part of the application install but this was during the GB time frame.  

With ICS, all DRM libraries are loaded by DRM framework as plugins. Google WV implementation is a reference design that netflix could think of using for their app for ICS.

I have never used a Google TV and can't comment if it uses playready or not. Some one in the group who has a Google TV can confirm this.

[tft]

Well, I'm still baffled.  As it stands there are two possible means by which Netflix
seems to be "natively" supported on Android,

 1. Netflix is using WV, (ie. WideVine) which Google acquired awhile back,
     which is available by default on Android and which supported Netflix
     a. Its possible that Netflix has two different streams available - one
         encrypted with PlayReady and another with WideVine and offers
         whichever is more suitable to the requestee based on source platform
 2. Netflix, as part of its own app installation, is installing its own libraries

I find it difficult to believe #2 above as Netflix relies on Microsoft's PlayReady DRM
on windows, etc which leads me to believe that they're not in the business of
"developing" their own mechanisms and are simply looking to use what is available
out there that would placate the movie industry content owners.  Plus if option #2
was in play then Netflix would have been available on Linux (which it currently isn't).

So I'm back to the original question of "what is it within Android that is allowing
Netflix DRM support ?"  How does Google-TV deal with this - in other words, how
is it that Netflix is supported within Google-TV without PlayReady DRM ?

Your comments/help/insight would be much appreciated.

On Wednesday, June 27, 2012 9:40:20 AM UTC+4, riazrahaman wrote:

Playready isn't part of the vanilla Google code. The binaries are not shipped in the Nexus devices.

Netflix must be having its own native playready DRM libraries that gets installed as part of the application install but this was during the GB time frame.