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Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

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Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#21

Post by lstamour »

booi wrote: post #14
sxp wrote: post #5

Is there any info on the level of DRM support? Widevine has multiple levels which means watching Netflix, Hulu, etc on a PC with Chrome will limit your video to 480p or 720p. In some cases, Edge will increase the video resolution to 1080p. I haven't found a way to legally access 4k video on a PC. I'm guessing the same limits apply on the RPi. You can test this by going to a video page like https://www.netflix.com/wat…

Is this true? It seems insane that you cannot watch 4k video on arguably the most powerful platform there is..

On Windows, in Microsoft's Chrome-based Edge browser, with the HEVC extension installed[1] (might not be required), I see 2160 when I run that command on the test video in that URL. Using an Nvidia graphics card hooked up via HDMI to a 4K TV in HDR mode, with HDCP 2.0 enabled according to the TV.

I've also had success streaming 4K using the Netflix app for Windows, as well as using Safari on a Mac. A 4K plan from Netflix is also required.

That said, when I tried to stream HBO Max or Disney+ in 4K HDR10 from the same web browser, I wasn't able to. Best I could get was 1080p, I think, for either. For those other services, I had to stream instead using my TV or set-top box to get full resolution and full HDR quality.

[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/hevc-video-extensions/9nmz...

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#22

Post by lxgr »

Mindwipe wrote: post #17
lxgr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There‘s all kinds of uses for a Raspberry Pi. Not everyone is in it for ideological reasons, and I‘d argue just watching Netflix on it is a valid use case too.

Is it? I mean, it's still not very good at it - you will only get lower resolutions, and at this point a Raspberry Pi and storage/power/cases are not cheaper than buying a Fire Stick or a Chromecast which works better for that use case.

Not as a primary use case, of course. But if somebody wants to buy exactly one cheap single-board computer, why should they be prevented from being able to watch "non-free" content on it (as long as the DRM required to play it is strictly optional and does not come preinstalled)?

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#23

Post by lxgr »

imode wrote: post #13
lxgr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There‘s all kinds of uses for a Raspberry Pi. Not everyone is in it for ideological reasons, and I‘d argue just watching Netflix on it is a valid use case too.

I'd think privacy concerns over data collection aren't ideological, more ethical.

No data is being collected by the possibility of installing a DRM plug-in, which I understood the grandparent comment to be in objection to.

Preinstalling the plug-in would be an entirely different matter for me, and I'd see the ethical concerns there.

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#24

Post by ac29 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #11
LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

tl;dr Install libwidevinecdm0 and Chromium receives Widevine support. It seems to be only in the armhf repo - not available for aarch64.

AFAIK there are no aarch64 widevine binaries out there since chromeOS doesn't have an aarch64 variant.

The kernel ABI for recent ARM devices is aarch64 according to this: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f...

I suppose they could still be running armhf userland, but that'd be a little odd.

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#25

Post by my123 »

ac29 wrote: post #24
aidenn0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK there are no aarch64 widevine binaries out there since chromeOS doesn't have an aarch64 variant.

The kernel ABI for recent ARM devices is aarch64 according to this: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f... I suppose they could still be running armhf userland, but that'd be a little odd.

They still run an armhf userland for Chrome OS, yes. See the User ABI column.

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#26

Post by anakaine »

Mindwipe wrote: post #17
lxgr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There‘s all kinds of uses for a Raspberry Pi. Not everyone is in it for ideological reasons, and I‘d argue just watching Netflix on it is a valid use case too.

Is it? I mean, it's still not very good at it - you will only get lower resolutions, and at this point a Raspberry Pi and storage/power/cases are not cheaper than buying a Fire Stick or a Chromecast which works better for that use case.

Chromecast still requires another device to send the video to it. Using a media serving device like a pi can mean you avoid tying up another device and the whole solution winds up being just like any other media system attached to your TV. Remote control, and interface.

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#27

Post by krageon »

Mindwipe wrote: post #17
lxgr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There‘s all kinds of uses for a Raspberry Pi. Not everyone is in it for ideological reasons, and I‘d argue just watching Netflix on it is a valid use case too.

Is it? I mean, it's still not very good at it - you will only get lower resolutions, and at this point a Raspberry Pi and storage/power/cases are not cheaper than buying a Fire Stick or a Chromecast which works better for that use case.

> a Fire Stick or a Chromecast

Corporate scrip is essentially fine too if all you care about is buying cheese (and you can exchange it for cheese...), but that doesn't mean that it's good or that regular money isn't objectively better.

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#29

Post by detaro »

sdfhbdf wrote: post #7

Do you have to hand over your whole privacy to google and agree to them collecting data from your grandchildren when installing? On a serious note I thought Widevine was closed sourced and only licensed in some way, how has it made its way to Raspberry Pi OS without any consents and such? Is it libre? Or is this the new direction of the raspberry foundation to cooperate with big corps? Like when they included the Mic…

Raspberry Pi has basically forever shipped closed components, that's not some "new trend"...

Re: Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

#30

Post by Mindwipe »

krageon wrote: post #27
Mindwipe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I mean, it's still not very good at it - you will only get lower resolutions, and at this point a Raspberry Pi and storage/power/cases are not cheaper than buying a Fire Stick or a Chromecast which works better for that use case.

> a Fire Stick or a Chromecast Corporate scrip is essentially fine too if all you care about is buying cheese (and you can exchange it for cheese...), but that doesn't mean that it's good or that regular money isn't objectively better.

But in this case a Pi is literally worse than either of those things at doing the video playback use case for the same investment. It's not a case of the Pi being as good but doing other things, you compromise the use case.
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