Does your smartphone supports HD streaming on Amazon Prime video and Netflix? Check here

Nokia 7 Plus supports HD streaming on Amazon Prime and Netflix

| Published: Saturday, August 11, 2018, 12:48 [IST]

Amazon Prime video and Netflix are probably the most used premium streaming services in India, which offers a numerous number of exclusive shows without actually worrying about advertisements.

Does your smartphone supports HD streaming on Prime video and Netflix?

However, it seems like most of the smartphones that we use are not able to offer the full potential streaming experience even on the high-end smartphone like the OnePlus 5.

Most of the Android smartphones do not support Widevine DRM Level 1 (L1), which is a necessary certification to stream HD content mainly on Amazon Prime and Netflix. Most of the Android devices come with Widevine DRM Level 3 (L3), which only supports SD content. So, even though the smartphone has an FHD+ display with a powerful processor, the smartphone cannot stream HD content primarily on Amazon Prime videos and Netflix.

What is Widevine DRM?

Widevine DRM is a certification, which will be issued by Widevine Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect online content and to prevent online copying and internet piracy.

Widevine standards integrate Common Encryption (CENC) offers Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 certification via Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH).

A smartphone should have L1 certification to support HD streaming and having an L3 certification can only stream SD content. In fact, not only laptops, even the computer browsers need to have certification to offer online content streaming.

DRM offers these certifications for free of cost and does not change any license keys and as of now, there is no information on why so many smartphone OEMs are not offering Widevine DRM Level 1 certification.

Reality check

We tested some of the smartphones in our office and here are the results. We installed DRM Info application from Google Play store on the Honor 7x, Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro, Nokia 7 Plus, and the OnePlus 5.

Based on the details that we obtained in the app, OnePlus 5, Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro, and the Honor 7x have Widevine DRM Level 3 certification and only the Nokia 7 Plus has Widevine DRM Level 1 certification and it is the only smartphone, which can stream HD content via Amazon Prime and Netflix.

How to check Widevine DRM certification?

Download the DRM Info application from Google Play store and check for the Widevine CDM security level. If your smartphones have Level 1 certification, then the smartphone can stream HD content and if it has Level 3 certification, the device will not be able to stream HD content.