How Does Widevine Video Technology Work on Android?

When we review the features or technologies present in our mobile, some that are as important as others are often overlooked. Many are part of certificates or software that acts as a link for others to function properly. One of the most unknown to the general public is Widevine , despite the fact that it is responsible for millions of people enjoying multimedia content on the most popular streaming platforms on a daily basis .

Widevine Video Technology

Digital rights management, or DRM, is frequently used by copyright holders to limit the use of digital content to certain devices. It is frequently applied to multimedia content such as music, movies, books etc … Our mobile is an ideal multimedia playback center, with access to dozens of platforms protected by copyright.

Widevine on video platforms

Widevine software, patented by Google, is a technology that manages DRM . Therefore, it allows restricting consumer access to video content, based on rules defined by the creator of the same. Companies such as Amazon Prime Video, BBC, Hulu, Netflix, Spotify or Disney +, use Widevine DRM to manage the distribution of Premium content.

Widevine relies on industry standards to protect content that travels over the network and plays on devices. It does this by using a combination of CENC (Common Encryption) encryption, license key exchange, and adaptive streaming quality, which manages and delivers video to users.

widevine plataformas

Security levels on mobile

At Widevine, the playback quality depends on the certification of the mobile, as well as its level of security. Ultimately, it is the content provider itself that can grant access or restrict the content to make the transmission quality dependent on the security of the receiving device. In addition, Widevine has three levels of security, being levels L1 and L3 those used in Android. It depends on them that the contents of platforms such as Netflix can be viewed in HD (Widevine L1) or SD (Widevine L3) quality.

drm info app

However, it is possible that even with Widevine L1, a certain device cannot play HD content on platforms such as Netflix. This is because companies certify or create whitelists, with those terminals specially approved for reproduction. However, not being on these lists does not mean that the content will not be played in HD.

How to know which Widevine has a mobile?

Among the technical specifications of the mobile phone, the box, the manufacturer’s website etc… it is not easy to find information related to Widevine at a glance. Luckily there are tools that will allow us to get out of doubts in seconds. Perhaps the best is DRM Info, an app available on Google Play that offers various information about this software, including its level of security.

DRM info