Netflix and Apple TV movies no video only sound when using sidecar?

Netflix uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect content. In a web browser, this is done using EME (Encrypted Media Extensions), and uses DRM products such as Google's "Widevine" (found in Chrome, Firefox, Brave, etc.), and other technologies.

When connecting an external display or other device, these DRM technologies require those devices to support something called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), which is an anti-piracy mechanism. It ensures the external device is "safe" and is not a recording device being used to duplicate the video feed. Many modern external monitors, TVs, projectors, etc. establish HDCP through an HDMI cable connection, and everything "just works."

I believe Apple's Sidecar feature works differently. Instead of sending a typical display feed to the iPad, it is sending an HEVC/H.265 video feed using technology similar to FaceTime video streaming. This is a non-standard/proprietary implementation for attaching a secondary display. It likely does not support HDCP and thus would be seen as an unauthorized display and probably why Netflix video playback stops working. I suspect the same issue arises with most other popular video services.

If accurate, it's unclear why Apple implemented Sidecar this way – maybe technical limitations with iPad hardware, USB-C/Wi-Fi, HDCP licensing fees, time constraints, or something else. I hope there's a path to a proper solution. Watching streaming video using Sidecar is definitely a big use case for me.

I saw this same behavior using the app Duet. Chrome works (as it does now with Sidecar) but Safari nor Apple TV App. I am going to open a support ticket because as most think on this forum, you should be able to play video on a Sidecar device.

I do believe product teams read the forums, at least on occasion. There are some feedback mechanisms like Product Feedback and Developer Bug Reporting. My theory is still speculative & not 100% confirmed, but it seems to jive with other comments I've read. I don't know a ton about the inner-workings of HDCP, but I hope it's technically feasible to solve this.

Here's an interesting twist though – Netflix actually works w/ Sidecar when playing in Firefox, at least for me. Not sure why. They seem to use the same Widevine DRM as Chrome. Maybe a different, less-stringent version is bundled?

Sidecar uses the same HEVC/H.265 codec that Facetime uses, and requires the compatible Macs below, and iPads that can both support iPadOS 13 or later, and the Apple pencil.

These Macs:

These Macs because they can do either Intel's Quick Sync HEVC/H.265 encoding on the CPU (not GPU), or they have a T2 chip which does this encoding.

Hope you've found some good answers to that. I've been struggling since I use Helium for watching netflix while I'm doing my job with my MacBook Pro with two-thundervolt ports 2017. I started using sidecar, and found that expensive sort of **** wasn't working properly... so I decided to watch netflix in iPad Pro using PIP(Picture-in-Picture) while I connect my airpods with the ipad..

I noticed this too. Very frustrating as I have found that I like Sidecar. I wonder what Apple's official response is.

So, I can watch a movie in TV on the Mac

I can watch a movie in TV on the iPad

I can watch it in Google's browser but not safar if connected.

But if I watch the movie when they are connected is a no go.

I don't understand.

It also now suddenly seems to be working in Chrome/Brave. Ironically, Safari is the only browser with issues for me.