They will still be rendering the interface and probably the video with standard HTML5 components, in fact even the DRM - Browser mechanism is standardized. It's just that the DRM code itself may be proprietary. So this is still a step forward.
In what way is it a step forward? Okay, they can now use default video codecs in their proprietary plugin, instead of the same codec being used in Flash.
So does that make it anymore cross-platform than Flash was? And now instead of having "one" monolithic proprietary plugin, it's now more "decentralized" and you'll have to use "many" such proprietary plugins from Netflix, from Hulu, from Amazon, and many others, that may or may not be cross-platform.
Why is the news only about IE (11 even). Does it work in Chrome and Firefox, too?
Well, the good news is that as an end-user you'll probably only have one monolithic proprietary chunk of code that's even conveniently integrated into your web browser. The bad news is that you'll have to hope that all the DRMed video sites you're using support the proprietary scheme your particular browser and platform use. In this case, it's Microsoft's PlayReady DRM.
Also, the codec used is actually part of the proprietary blob, and there are no requirements as to which codecs or containers a particular DRM scheme supports, so in theory every DRM scheme could require a different, incompatible proprietary codec and they'd still all be 100% standards compliant.
There is also no reason to think that these binary blobs will be built for platforms that the video providers have not given two shits about in the past. Anyone who is supporting this stuff because they think it will get them Netflix on a GNU/Linux desktop (not ChromeOS or Android) is crazy. That's not what this does, and they don't care about supporting us.
So far, Google's binary DRM blob isn't just restricted to ChromeOS either; it only runs on official Chromebooks running the official Google-provided image that haven't been rooted.
AFAIK it doesn't care if your Chromebook is rooted. My Glacier Snow Chromebook is "rooted" and Netflix (the reason we bought it) continues to work well on it.
ChromeOS runs on a Linux kernel, but the entire experience is very different from what you would normally expect from a Linux distro. I call the more recognizable distros "GNU/Linux" to differentiate.
Theoretically one piece of it is now cross-platform, however the core functionality only works on one platform, and actually seems explicitly engineered to be incompatible with the Ubuntu computer I have hooked up to the TV in my living room.
This is a pretty disappointing move, since I'm pretty sure Netflix will never run on that computer, and Netflix doesn't care.
