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Netflix on Linux with Chrome

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Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#11
post #2

i don't think the explanation as to why this works is correct. the poster says it's because Google and Microsoft "have been working closely with Netflix to get the needed DRM code required for HTML5 streaming", yet: 1. the user-agent switch involves adding a Safari identifier (rather than IE or a new Chrome one) 2. at WWDC 2014, Apple announced that it had been working closely with Netflix along those lines, and that…

What they mean is that the "Digital Restriction Management in HTML5" proposal is pushed by Google, Microsoft, and Netflix into the W3C spec. Apple has simply followed the proposal and implemented it as well. AFAIK Chrome, IE, Safari ship with it. Firefox will follow suite by adding a Restriction Module from Adobe (given Adobe's track record it will certainly be an amazingly fast, flexible, beautiful, efficient, and nice way of viewing videos...).

So Web-Restrictions is kinda unstoppable now. Instead of having a plugin-free future with HTML5 we have an even worse situation.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#12
post #9
post #2

i don't think the explanation as to why this works is correct. the poster says it's because Google and Microsoft "have been working closely with Netflix to get the needed DRM code required for HTML5 streaming", yet: 1. the user-agent switch involves adding a Safari identifier (rather than IE or a new Chrome one) 2. at WWDC 2014, Apple announced that it had been working closely with Netflix along those lines, and that…

For a humorous history of why exactly the Chrome UA string claims to be Safari, see this: http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

It's not complete without the new Windows Phone user agent, though:

https://mobile.twitter.com/0xabad1dea/status/497122542885556...

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#17
post #14

If you use Ubuntu 14.04 (like me) you have to install a newer version of libnss3 (at least 3.16.2) and than it works. Runs smoother than pipelight + firefox at least for me.

Full instructions for reference. Run:

  wget http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/n/nss/libnss3{_3.16.3-1ubuntu1_amd64,-1d_3.16.3-1ubuntu1_amd64,-nssdb_3.16.3-1ubuntu1_all}.deb
  sudo dpkg -i libnss3*.deb
Create a new Tampermonkey script:

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name         Netflix HTML5 for Linux
  // @namespace    0d0a3443-cc79-4f86-bf62-2dac581d2b3a
  // @version      0.1
  // @description  Enables HTML5 video support for the Linux host platform
  // @match        *://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?*
  // @user-agent   Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/37.0.2062.68 Safari/537.36
  // ==/UserScript==

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#18
CentOS-6.5 and later with Pipelight and Firefox 24.7.0 ESR works flawlessly. God knows what it's installing and what security holes I opened up by downloading it though.

Looking forward to any native solutions.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#19
post #11
post #2

i don't think the explanation as to why this works is correct. the poster says it's because Google and Microsoft "have been working closely with Netflix to get the needed DRM code required for HTML5 streaming", yet: 1. the user-agent switch involves adding a Safari identifier (rather than IE or a new Chrome one) 2. at WWDC 2014, Apple announced that it had been working closely with Netflix along those lines, and that…

What they mean is that the "Digital Restriction Management in HTML5" proposal is pushed by Google, Microsoft, and Netflix into the W3C spec. Apple has simply followed the proposal and implemented it as well. AFAIK Chrome, IE, Safari ship with it. Firefox will follow suite by adding a Restriction Module from Adobe (given Adobe's track record it will certainly be an amazingly fast, flexible, beautiful, efficient, and n…

"No DRM" was never an option. The option was between 1 DRM standard and 50 (so silverlight and widevine and....).

The W3C made the most pragmatic choice, here. I think DRM is still crap, but one system is unambiguously better than >1.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#20
post #11
post #2

i don't think the explanation as to why this works is correct. the poster says it's because Google and Microsoft "have been working closely with Netflix to get the needed DRM code required for HTML5 streaming", yet: 1. the user-agent switch involves adding a Safari identifier (rather than IE or a new Chrome one) 2. at WWDC 2014, Apple announced that it had been working closely with Netflix along those lines, and that…

What they mean is that the "Digital Restriction Management in HTML5" proposal is pushed by Google, Microsoft, and Netflix into the W3C spec. Apple has simply followed the proposal and implemented it as well. AFAIK Chrome, IE, Safari ship with it. Firefox will follow suite by adding a Restriction Module from Adobe (given Adobe's track record it will certainly be an amazingly fast, flexible, beautiful, efficient, and n…

> Instead of having a plugin-free future with HTML5 we have an even worse situation.

Indeed. Now we need to have one plugin, per browser, per operating system supported.

Guess which next emerging OS wont be able to fully access "standard-compliant" HTML5? Yeah. All of them.

W3C should be thrown to the sharks for this.

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