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Streaming on Linux - chmod - 07-27-2014

Those of you who use Linux as a daily OS may be aware that streaming video from services such as Netflix and Amazon is not supported by them. This is because they use Microsoft's silverlight plugin to handle the DRM. After spending months arguing with the support and technical staff about their refusal to support Linux I decided to take matters into my own hands and see if I could get this to work natively (I know you could use a VM with Windows installed but I wanted this to work with my existing browser).

The first issue is that silverlight is not available for Linux and the Linux community has refused to allow an official port but there is a way to get it. We will be using pipelight which uses a patched wine version to provide a windows environment to the plugins. I will go through the installation of pipelight under Ubuntu/Mint since this is the most popular distro here but will link to installation page at the end of this tutorial for those running a different distro.

First pipelight is not in the standard repo's so we will have to add it (you should run all of these commands as root so either add sudo to the beginning of the command or log into the terminal as root)

Code:
add-apt-repository ppa:pipelight/stable apt-get update apt-get install --install-recommends pipelight-multi pipelight-plugin --update

This will install the software and ensure all of the plugins are up to date, next we need to enable the silverlight plugin so again as root

Code:
pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight5.1

You will be met with an EULA which you should read and then hit 'y' to accept, pipelight will then download and install the plugin for your browser (I use Firefox but should work with Chrome and most other common browsers)

OK that's the hard part and we're almost there, I tried to view Netflix after this step but got an error message telling me my device was not supported and so playback would not continue. We need to spoof the user agent of the browser to trick the service into thinking we're using Windows I used this Firefox plugin and found this for Chrome after a little experimentation (considering the version of sliverlight we are using I found FF 15 for Windows gave the best results so that's the one I'll provide but feel free to play around and see what else works.

Code:
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:15.0) Gecko/20121011 Firefox/15.0.1 App Code Name: Mozilla App Name: Netscape App Version: 5.0 (X11) Platform: Windows

Select this as your user agent and then go to the streaming service you wish to use and it should now stream. It's long winded but as far as I can tell this is the best method to get these services to stream natively under Linux. One more thing this method does not work with all services, so far I have tested this with Amazon instant, Netflix and NowTV, and only NowTV is refusing to play nice I might play around with different user agents and plugin versions to see if I can get this to work but will be at a later date.

For those of you not using Ubuntu/Mint see this page for pipelights installation instructions
Also I should mention you should disable the silverlight plugin when not in use
Code:
sudo pipelight-plugin --disable silverlight (as root)
as the plugin will cause your browser to lag on launch due to having to start wine and inject the plugin.

RE: Streaming on Linux - Templar.Clown - 07-30-2014

Nice work! Honestly one reason I haven't switched to full linux use is because of lack of features like netflix. I'll have to give this a shot on my Ubuntu distro and see what happens.

RE: Streaming on Linux - chmod - 07-30-2014

(07-30-2014, 09:46 PM)Templar.Clown Wrote: Nice work! Honestly one reason I haven't switched to full linux use is because of lack of features like netflix. I'll have to give this a shot on my Ubuntu distro and see what happens.

I can honestly say it works flawlessly with netflix, it's a huge pain to set up though just because they insist on using silverlight for the DRM when it could be implemented in other ways which would be truly independent and cross platform but they flat out refuse to do it.

RE: Streaming on Linux - Plexcon - 07-30-2014

Seems like a nice work-around. Still find it weird why netflix doesn't support HTML5 on linux right now since Safari on OSx yosemite is using it.

RE: Streaming on Linux - Anima Templi - 07-30-2014

I can then announce that Netflix are working on porting their video player to HTML5.

In the next version of OS X (Yosemite) is it possible to see Netflix with a HTML5 video player in Safari. The same is possible within Chrome OS.

The reason why Firefox and Chrome are not supported, is that it's still too easy to leach content from the HTML5 player in those browsers. Which would result in Netflix getting in troubles with their partners.

I know that Mozilla is working on bringing DRM to Firefox, so it might not be too long before Netflix supports Firefox with their HTML5 player, too.

RE: Streaming on Linux - chmod - 07-30-2014

(07-30-2014, 10:49 PM)Plexcon Wrote: Seems like a nice work-around. Still find it weird why netflix doesn't support HTML5 on linux right now since Safari on OSx yosemite is using it.

(07-30-2014, 10:55 PM)Anima Templi Wrote: I can then announce that Netflix are working on porting their video player to HTML5.

In the next version of OS X (Yosemite) is it possible to see Netflix with a HTML5 video player in Safari. The same is possible within Chrome OS.

The reason why Firefox and Chrome are not supported, is that it's still too easy to leach content from the HTML5 player in those browsers. Which would result in Netflix getting in troubles with their partners.

I know that Mozilla is working on bringing DRM to Firefox, so it might not be too long before Netflix supports Firefox with their HTML5 player, too.

HTML5 is already supported within netflix, in fact you can set your browser to prefer the HTML5 player (which FF does support, although not DRM), but the same DRM and OS checks are performed (the OS checks are a higher priority by the looks of it as this seems to happen before the player checks for silverlight) and playback is blocked. I wasn't aware of the leaching properties (is that the right phrase?) of Firefox though so I'll look into that

RE: Streaming on Linux - h3r0 - 07-30-2014

So I had this issue too a while back and used this method. http://www.howtogeek.com/130372/how-to-watch-netflix-on-ubuntu-with-the-netflix-desktop-app

I like it a lot more since I don't have to pipe anything and it just works really well.

RE: Streaming on Linux - chmod - 07-30-2014

(07-30-2014, 11:37 PM)h3r0 Wrote: So I had this issue too a while back and used this method. http://www.howtogeek.com/130372/how-to-watch-netflix-on-ubuntu-with-the-netflix-desktop-app

I like it a lot more since I don't have to pipe anything and it just works really well.

I've tried this method before and to be honest didn't have much success with it. and seemed to be very choppy once I did finally get it to run. (it's basically the same idea as this one wrapped up in a fancy package)

Also just found this which is related to the subject at hand and may be of interest to someone

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238421/Netflix_to_dump_Silverlight_Microsoft_s_stalled_technology

So by 2021 we *might* have native Linux support for netflix :Grin:

RE: Streaming on Linux - h3r0 - 07-30-2014

(07-30-2014, 11:46 PM)chmod Wrote:
(07-30-2014, 11:37 PM)h3r0 Wrote: So I had this issue too a while back and used this method. http://www.howtogeek.com/130372/how-to-watch-netflix-on-ubuntu-with-the-netflix-desktop-app

I like it a lot more since I don't have to pipe anything and it just works really well.

I've tried this method before and to be honest didn't have much success with it. and seemed to be very choppy once I did finally get it to run. (it's basically the same idea as this one wrapped up in a fancy package)

Also just found this which is related to the subject at hand and may be of interest to someone

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238421/Netflix_to_dump_Silverlight_Microsoft_s_stalled_technology

So by 2021 we *might* have native Linux support for netflix :Grin:

I can only hope netflix drops silverlight. It's a bunch of garbage. As for netflix desktop originally I didn't have issues but checking just now it seems a little choppy (But I am downloading a blockchain right now..). It really depends on your hardware. If you have the processing and memory to spare I suggest netflix-desktop for less of a headache. Else use the silverlight pipe. This is why I just watch it on my ps3 haha

RE: Streaming on Linux - chmod - 07-31-2014

(07-30-2014, 11:54 PM)h3r0 Wrote:
(07-30-2014, 11:46 PM)chmod Wrote:
(07-30-2014, 11:37 PM)h3r0 Wrote: So I had this issue too a while back and used this method. http://www.howtogeek.com/130372/how-to-watch-netflix-on-ubuntu-with-the-netflix-desktop-app

I like it a lot more since I don't have to pipe anything and it just works really well.

I've tried this method before and to be honest didn't have much success with it. and seemed to be very choppy once I did finally get it to run. (it's basically the same idea as this one wrapped up in a fancy package)

Also just found this which is related to the subject at hand and may be of interest to someone

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238421/Netflix_to_dump_Silverlight_Microsoft_s_stalled_technology

So by 2021 we *might* have native Linux support for netflix :Grin:

I can only hope netflix drops silverlight. It's a bunch of garbage. As for netflix desktop originally I didn't have issues but checking just now it seems a little choppy (But I am downloading a blockchain right now..). It really depends on your hardware. If you have the processing and memory to spare I suggest netflix-desktop for less of a headache. Else use the silverlight pipe. This is why I just watch it on my ps3 haha

I have multiple ways of watching it (phone, tablet, ps3, smart TV) I did this out of principle lol. As for hardware I run a 2.5ghz i3 with 8gb ram (plus 16gb swap) so I have the hardware to run it but just doesn't seem as smooth. They should have dropped it years ago imo the last major update ss far as I can tell was was back in 2010 so the protect has well and truly been abandoned, Microsoft have also stated that they will cease to support silverlight in 2022 (which is quite a way off but will at least force them to stop using it) what we need to do is expose some major vulnerability within the plugin and force their hand :Grin: