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Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

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Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#51

Post by pbhjpbhj »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

> Thanks to recent efforts at Netflix and Canonical, Ubuntu now supports watching Netflix with Chrome version 37. Funnily, Chrome 38 is now out ( http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2014/10/stable-chan... ) after an emergency release, which shows how long these press releases take to plan.

It makes it sound like Canonical made some sort of concerted effort, didn't they just package Chrome (or do the Chrome people do that)?

Packaging and uploading to the repos is work of course but I imagine most of that is automated, the feeling here is that Canonical strived in some way to get this result. I'd be interested to know what Canonical did out of the ordinary to get to this result?

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#52

Post by sejje »

Reebles wrote: post #28
rwl wrote: post #18

So why does this work? Is Chrome 37 for Linux now being shipped with support for Encrypted Media Extensions, i.e., HTML's built-in DRM, with Netflix relying on EME? Or has something happened with Moonlight to support Netflix DRM? Or what?

Its HTML5 DRM built into Chrome. Its actually worked for ~a month in Chrome for Linux if you just spoofed the user-agent string to Windows, absurdly. The only thing really prompting this announcement is that Netflix is no longer blocking Linux user-agents. It only works in Chrome at the moment, as Firefox does not support the required DRM.

> The only thing really prompting this announcement is that Netflix is no longer blocking Linux user-agents.

And, presumably, that they didn't announce it a month ago.

I had no idea.

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#53

Post by jiggy2011 »

gph wrote: post #32
asadotzler wrote: post #25

Why do these "Linux gets Netflix" stories not have the same bad attitude from folks as the "W3C caves to DRM" stories? They're the same topic, essentially.

I wasn't a vehement opponent of W3C implementing DRM, but I'll put my two cents in; I don't mind if private companies implement DRM in their own products. I do mind DRM being standardized, meaning every vendor has to implement it in order to be complaint with the standard. Ubuntu != linux, it is just a distro. Similarly Chrome is not the browser standard, it's only an implementation. If this story was actually "Linux…

I've made this point before on HN. The standard does not require browser vendors to include any DRM scheme to be fully compliant. Netflix however can require a specific DRM component in order to play their content.

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#55

Post by ep103 »

asadotzler wrote: post #25

Why do these "Linux gets Netflix" stories not have the same bad attitude from folks as the "W3C caves to DRM" stories? They're the same topic, essentially.

Because the problem is that the encryption is still happening within Chrome, not within linux itself (if I understand this correctly), and the latest build of Chrome for Linux now includes this drm. So the issue is either still 1) W3C caves to DRM or 2) Linux caves to Chrome, and #2 will not be nearly as popular a story because its both a slightly more complex issue (only slightly), but mostly because there are too many google fanboys on this website for it to gain much traction.

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#56

Post by chc »

riffraff wrote: post #37
warfangle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W3C implementing DRM is only an extension of W3C implementing encryption. And W3C implementing encryption is a Good Thing, IMHO. DRM may be a stupid, silly idea: one that causes more problems than solved; one that can and will be circumvented. For media you have purchased to own, it is arguably Evil(tm). But for media that you have rented, or media that you have access to via a subscription? I don't see the problem w…

> W3C implementing DRM is only an extension of W3C implementing encryption. why do you think so? Encryption is good for every interested party (except NSA, perhaps) while DRM means at least someone is being screwed. It's like saying that "fast lanes" are only an extension of TCP. (I don't have a strong opinion on whether DRM should be standardized by W3C or not, but I disagree with this reasoning)

In the scenario "Now you can watch Netflix" (which entails implementation of DRM), who is being screwed?

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#57

Post by LaSombra »

It should be noted that it works on Fedora as well with Chrome 37 and 38.

On Chrome 37 you need a specific user-agent, at least that's how I got it working.

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3, Win64, x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2114.2 Safari/537.36

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#58

Post by deeviant »

asadotzler wrote: post #25

Why do these "Linux gets Netflix" stories not have the same bad attitude from folks as the "W3C caves to DRM" stories? They're the same topic, essentially.

Maybe some people want both of these things:

* Have a linux HTC * Watch netflix without some horrible hack

and are now happy that this is possible?

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#59

Post by TallGuyShort »

schoen wrote: post #50
TallGuyShort wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your distaste for DRM, but wanted to throw in a comment of support for Netflix. A couple of years ago I was quite disgusted by how a Netflix employee was heckled on stage at the Linux Collaboration Summit. It seems hypocritical of our community to tout user freedom and then fail to treat a public speaker with decency. The right to redistribute other people's stuff unconditionally is not such a basic human rig…

I think one could take a position in between between treating invited speakers disrespectfully and endorsing their work. (It seems like that's maybe actually the position you're taking.) It would be great to find a way to articulate and strengthen anti-DRM norms in more parts of the technical community, so that people don't keep thinking of DRM as natural or inevitable (and so other people can see that there's actual…

>> It seems like that's maybe actually the position you're taking

That's definitely part of it. I'm all for free-as-in-libre software, but the fact is very few people are willing to bet their entire business on free-as-in-gratis software, and that's understandable. When we attack companies who contribute heavily to free software because they do not contribute exclusively to free software, we're harming the free software movement as much as they are.

As a side note, I agree we need to come up with better ways to stop consumers from thinking of DRM as inevitable. Like most people on HN, I'm sure, I'm often asked for help with technical things - I find it has a big impact on people (albeit one at a time) when I explain how the vendor of the product makes it difficult for me to help them or for them to help themselves, and how they should consider vendors who place freedom above profit.

Re: Watch Netflix in Ubuntu today

#60

Post by userbmf »

smacktoward wrote: post #4

I just tried it in Chrome 38.0.2125.101 (64-bit) and... Unexpected error There was an unexpected error. Please reload the page and try again. Error Code: M7063-1913 So... yeah. UPDATE: Looks like the problem was I had an old version of NSS installed (see http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/09/ubuntu-rolls-updated-nss-... ). Upgraded that with sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade libnss3 ...and now Netflix works fine in Ch…

Hmm. Debian only has 3.14.5. Frustrating. Ah wait unstable has it...
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