Poco F1 Can't Play HD Videos on Netflix, Amazon Prime

If you happen to be a Netflix buff and have bought the super-charged affordable flagship, the Poco F1, for its attractive, notch brandish – which BTW, has great colors and sharpness – I have a bad news for y'all. The smartphone which is being hailed for its astonishing hardware does not support HD playback on apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu – although it can Total Hard disk drive videos on YouTube.

Well, this is because the Poco F1 does not feature what is called a "Widevine L1" license. Basically, Widevine is a licensing platform past Google used for digital rights direction (DRM). If all those jargons just flew over your head, Widevine is a certification standard which restricts videos to lower resolution on certain phones in order to prevent pirates from screen-recording a moving-picture show or a proveand distributing copies illegally.

As this article explains, to be able to allow HD admission on devices, manufacturers must laissez passer a exam and are thus graded from L3, L2, or L1 (L1 being the highest) depending upon hardware back up. The Pooc F1 scores L3 here and thus the video resolution you lot tin achieve on it is limited to 540p.

Not Fixable by OTA

In case you're wondering, smartphones tin be upgraded to L1, which is essential for 720p and higher playback, simply in society to enable that, the Poco F1 must be taken to the service heart or even worse, might have to be sent back to the company. A bummer, correct? Every bit the official Widevine documentation says,

The Widevine keybox must be encrypted with a device-unique hugger-mugger cardinal that is not visible to software or probing methods outside of the TrustZone. The Widevine key-box must be installed in the factory or delivered to the device using an approved secure delivery mechanism.

OnePlus 5T and 5 users had to face a similar tussle last year to get the feature enabled and really send their devices to the company, in typically the aforementioned mode such equally a call up of a specific car model.

You can verify this on your smartphone by using an app called DRM Info.

Outcome of Cost Cutting? Non Really!

As elaborated in this article, Widevine DRM licensing does not crave manufacturers to pay. So, the only possible explanations I can think of right now are: offset, Xiaomi hurried on the Poco F1 launch to slice through Laurels Play's sales just because mobile gaming is all of a sudden booming, and second, it did not want the phone to leak – which, however, the telephone did anyway.

Substantially, there needs to be some transparency in the mode DRM rights are handled as spec sheets usually do non talk about it.

Meanwhile, we've written to Xiaomi to know whether they would be opening up a replacement program to enable the feature on the large number of Poco F1 already bought by users.