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Qiana Thieklin

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Aug 2, 2024, 12:36:54 PM8/2/24

to ernadinwie

How come videos won't play while using sidecar, no problem playing when using a normal second display? The videos won't play on my MacBook Pro display or the iPad Pro display. As soon as I disconnect the video is right there playing.

Netflix uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect content. In a web browser, this is done using EME (Encrypted Media Extensions), and uses DRM products such as Google's "Widevine" (found in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, etc.), and other technologies.

When connecting an external display or other device, these DRM technologies require those devices to support something called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), which is an anti-piracy mechanism. It ensures the external device is "safe" and is not a recording device being used to duplicate the video feed. Many modern external monitors, TVs, projectors, etc. establish HDCP through an HDMI cable connection, and everything "just works."

I believe Apple's Sidecar feature works differently. Instead of sending a typical display feed to the iPad, it is sending an HEVC/H.265 video feed using technology similar to FaceTime video streaming. This is a non-standard/proprietary implementation for attaching a secondary display. It likely does not support HDCP and thus would be seen as an unauthorized display and probably why Netflix video playback stops working. I suspect the same issue arises with most other popular video services.

I saw this same behavior using the app Duet. Chrome works (as it does now with Sidecar) but Safari nor Apple TV App. I am going to open a support ticket because as most think on this forum, you should be able to play video on a Sidecar device.

I do believe product teams read the forums, at least on occasion. There are some feedback mechanisms like Product Feedback and Developer Bug Reporting. My theory is still speculative & not 100% confirmed, but it seems to jive with other comments I've read. I don't know a ton about the inner-workings of HDCP, but I hope it's technically feasible to solve this.

I have the newest MacBook Pro and iPad Pro, sidecar works, but when I try and play a movie, either web based like Netflix, or in the Apple TV app there is only a black screen and sound until a disconnect sidecar. Same problem using wifi or usb c cable with the iPad Pro.

Hope you've found some good answers to that. I've been struggling since I use Helium for watching netflix while I'm doing my job with my MacBook Pro with two-thundervolt ports 2017. I started using sidecar, and found that expensive sort of **** wasn't working properly... so I decided to watch netflix in iPad Pro using PIP(Picture-in-Picture) while I connect my airpods with the ipad..