Edge based on Chromium, unlike Chrome, plays Netflix in 4k

The leaked version of Microsoft’s browser Edge based on Chromium has functions on board to play Netflix videos in 4k. This puts it ahead of Google’s Chrome browser, which can do that on Windows in 720p resolution.

A Reddit user spotted support for PlayReady drm in the browser, which requires Netflix to view content in 4k resolution in the browser. For this, users will need a PC with Windows 10, an Intel Kaby Lake processor or newer and a video card from the Nvidia GTX1000 series or newer. Otherwise, the browser will fall back to 1080p resolution. That’s still higher than 720p from Google Chrome and other Chromium browsers.

The ability to play Netflix in higher resolutions is nothing new to Edge. The browser can already do this with its own render engine. Until now, it was not known whether this would also be possible with the new Chromium version of Edge.

Microsoft recently announced that it will base Edge on the open source version of Google’s browser. The move should ensure that the popularity of Edge will increase. The browser has barely managed to gain market share since 2015, partly due to compatibility issues, start-up problems with missing functions and the fact that the browser only ran on Windows 10. It is unknown when the Chromium version of Edge will be released. An early version leaked recently.