High Refresh rate displays (>60Hz) and Netflix/Amazon Video (DRM content) on Windows 10 cause stuttering

Hi,

first, let me give an overview of my hardware setups:

#1: Asus FX502VM Laptop: i7-7700HQ, 16GB DDR4, GTX 1060 (3GB), Windows 10 Pro and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

#2: Desktop: i5-4670k, 16GB DDR3, GTX 1070Ti (also Radeon HD 7790 for testing purposes), Windows 7 Ultimate

#3: Desktop: Ryzen 5 2600, 16GB DDR4, GTX 1070Ti (also Radeon HD 7790 for testing purposes), Windows 10 Pro

Displays for all 3 machines:

• Asus VQ248QE (144Hz, also tested with 120Hz, 100Hz and 85Hz in all scenarios)
  • connected to machine #1 via DisplayPort, to machine #2 and #3 via DVI-D cable.
• AOC 2343F2 (60Hz)
  • connected via HDMI to all machines

A friends setup:

#4: Desktop: Ryzen 7 1700X, 16GB DDR4, GTX 1070, Windows 10 Pro

Monitors on #4: BenQ XL2411Z (144Hz) and Samsung T27A550 (60Hz)

Here goes:

The following happens when I'm viewing DRM protected content (Netflix, Amazon Video), when there is no browser tab with netflix/amazon video open, there are no issues at all.

Whenever I have a display with a refreshrate of more than 60Hz connected, i get periodic stutters (pretty much every second).

This is especially noticable when moving the mouse across the screen (either one), the cursor just freezes for maybe a 10th of a second and jumps forward and runs smoothly until the next lag, a second later, happens. It's also noticable when paying attention to the video being played having periodic lags every second.

This happens if I connect only the 144Hz display or both displays together. If I use only the 60Hz display, there are no lags at all.

Also I tested with the following browsers: Edge, Chrome, FF, Opera and the Netflix Windows 10 App.

In the browsers the lagging starts when netflix starts playing videos (so trailers in the netflix menues and actual movies/series), for amazon video the lagging starts once a page of a move/series is opened, even without visible video playback. The netflix app behaves the same as any browser. 

It doesn't matter on which display the content is being played.

It seems that this is a Windows 10 specific Problem. Since I dont have these Problems on machine #2 with Windows 7 and machine #1 with Linux. To eliminate the problem being related to the GPU manufacturer I switched my 1070Ti for an old HD7790 and got exactly the same issues.

So, now I'm pretty much done on my end, I hope somebody on here might have a solution/idea on how to fix the problem or someone from the Microsoft team might forward this to some developers who could handle this.

edit: I installed Virtual Box on machine #3 and configured an Ubuntu guest, at least like this I can watch lag free Amazon Video and Netflix streams now, but it's obviously a totally unacceptable workaround.

edit2: Tested on a friends machine (#4) with the exact same results (problems) as described above.

edit3: Also happens while watching DRM encrypted live streams (specifically live stream of german TV channel prosieben MAXX)

edit4: Also happens when listening to DRM encrypted audio content in a browser, in my case amazon music (Chrome, FF, Opera, Edge). No problems though when using amazon music's desktop application. NussDerivat2232 confirms it's also happening while using spotify's webplayer.

Cheers,

Dominik