Summary
Widevine is not the most well-known name in tech, but it’s crucial for anyone who wants to stream media on a tablet or phone. If your intended device doesn’t have Widevine, or the right version of it, then you may be in for a less than entertaining time.
Widevine Is Video DRM From Google
When you stream video from one of the big services like Netflix or Disney+ that video stream is subject toDRMorDigital Rights Management. This describes all the different technologies that aim to prevent people from making pirate copies of content.
Widevineis one of the most widely-adopted forms of DRM for streaming video. The technology was purchased by Google in 2010 from a company called Internet Direct Media and it’s everywhere now.
You Need Widevine on Your Phone or Tablet to Stream Premium Content
The bottom line is that if your device does not support Widevine, then you can’t get the best quality streams. Widevine isn’t free from a hardware perspective. It requires that certain hardware features be present in a device. So some lower-end devices don’t have enough hardware support to qualify for high-end streaming quality. Therefore, despite having, for example, a 1080p screen on your phone, your streaming quality will be limited to 480p, which is standard definition.
Now, this may not bother you, especially on a small phone screen, but this also applies to some cheap Android tablet where a 480p signal would definitely be on the fuzzy side of things.
Widevine Has Levels
To complicate things further, Widevine is divided into levels. There are three tiers:
There’s nothing you’re able to do to alter the Widevine level your device supports, so you are stuck with whatever it has access to. It’s not just streaming quality that’s affected. Some “high value” premium content might refuse to play on L3 devices, though this is of course up to the content provider to decide.
Check Widevine Support When Buying Cheap Android Devices
The most important takeaway here is that you need to check what level of Widevine support an Android phone or tablet has before you buy it. I think this is especially important for Android tablets, because one of the main appeals of a cheap tablet is that you may use it to watch Netflix or YouTube on a nice big screen without breaking the bank. Something that’s harshly undermined if it turns out you’re limited to 480p!
While it’s rare, you’re able to sometimes find the Widevine level as part of the listed device specs, but since the lowerst levels of support are usually found in the cheapest devices, this makes it more likely that the specs are wrong or minimal.
Doing an internet search for the device in question can yield information from other people who may have noticed they can’t get better quality streams for some reason, or it might be something that professional reviewers mention.
If you already have a device, and need to know what level of Widevine it has, you can use an app likeDRM Info. If it shows that you have an L1 or L2 device, but you’re still struggling to get higher resolution, you might have to look atother ways to get better quality.
