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Netflix Now Works On Linux With HTML5 DRM Video Support In Chrome
An anonymous reader writes "Beginning with the Chrome 38 Beta it's now possible to watch Netflix without any Wine/Silverlight plug-ins but will work natively using Chrome's DRM-HTML5 video capabilities with Netflix. The steps just involve using the latest beta of Chrome and an HTTP user-agent switcher to tell Netflix you're a Windows Chrome user, due to Netflix arbitrarily blocking the Linux build."
If they do not want my OS, they do not want my money... I mean it is nice that it can work, but I am not signing up yet.
Because no matter how strongly they state that a configuration is not supported, if it's not expressly blocked, people will try to get technical support for it. And with the distro landscape as it is, supporting mainstream software on "Linux" is a nightmare.
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, was also on the Board of Directors for Microsoft from 2007 through 2012.
So yes, they can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Hastings
I used to be a long term NF user (the mail dvd's, that is) but the service started getting slow (mailings were not as fast as before) and many titles were dropped (not NF's fault, but I still had less choice).
TPB does what I need and there's never a problem with compatibility ;)
sorry, entertainment industry, but I gave up on you. for decades (quite a few of them) I helped fund your overpriced shite. that has now ended.
my cost is that of a VPN and that's it. and so, I'm 'there' until things drastically change, and I don't see that happening even in my lifetime.
so, even though linux is now 'working', I could actually care less. too little, too late.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Ex-Microsoft people, always causing trouble to their new companies to benefit their old company. See also: Stephen Elop.
Circumcision is child abuse.
So exactly how much less could you actually care then?
Desktop is over. Everything is now tablet, and a few years ago was "The Year Of Linux On The Tablet," or Android anyway...
(Slight sarcasm alert)
From the replies on the linked blog post, people are having distro-specific successes / failures even after following the instructions. I can imagine this being anything from distro specific paths, to permissions on certain binaries that could be different for say, Fedora from Mint, to codec issues (though as I understand it with Chrome the codecs are all basically wrapped up in the binary?) The specific technical details of this situation are a bit out of my area of expertise but I don't think any of the things I guess at here are out of the realm of possibility.
Technical issues aside - I welcome this development. I know and understand completely that a lot of people have issues with DRM making it's way into the core HTML (5) specs, but I kind of see it as unavoidable if we want to enjoy commercial content without needing completely non-standard garbageware like Silverlight or Flash. I have used Netflix with the Compholio Wine / Pipelight stuff, and while it works, it struggles to do so.
Yeah, there is a slippery slope and lots of compromise - but I would have less reason to ever boot into Windows if my paid subscriptions to content that I enjoy could work natively under "Linux". And just don't ask me to stop watching movies or playing 3xA game titles, because I won't.
A Linux user calling tech support...that's rich.
If it is browser based, is it really THAT hard to "support"?
Yes. I have actually done phone support, and you would not believe how dumb some people are. Many will call for support before they even turn their computer on. They want someone to babysit them through the entire process before they even try to do it themselves. The only way to deal with these people cost effectively, is to hire a bunch of Indians or Filipinos, and have them walk the users through a canned script. Once you start throwing in additional variables, and Linux has a lot of variables, then the complexity of the script increases exponentially. Pretty soon, you end up having to hire expensive tech support people that are actually capable of thinking and troubleshooting. Why should Netflix do that for an extra 1% in sales?
To the same kind of people who consider a lottery ticket an investment.
He also was CEO of Pure Software. The guys who did the Purify malloc debugging tool for UNIX. Being in the board of directors does not mean much.
Oh, I've heard Linux users calling tech support all sort of things. Most of them not suitable for polite conversation, but still...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"due to Netflix arbitrarily blocking the Linux build"
i.e., generating a valid page based on detection of a Linux-based USER-AGENT from the browser, to save the user from trying to troubleshoot what has been, until recently, a problem that the user could not fix. Hardly sinister.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Depends on the circumstances, doesn't it?
In these cases, the issue is a want (consume content) and not a need (consume food/water/air). So, you are ripping someone else off because you want what they have but do not need it.
And in those circumstances, you are the one being unethical. Only when you have a need that someone acts unfairly to address it, does ethics start to play a role.
Otherwise, you're just being inaccurate and melodramatic.
That means you do care, at least a little.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Right click on video player, "Save video as...", then when the Save dialog comes up, where it says "File type" switch from ".drm" to ".mp4".
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I also think "I could care less" is dumb. I just wanted to point out how zero is not always the lower limit, because obviously this is an important topic to many a Slashdotter.
Frankly, if you mean "I don't care", then by all means say so, there's no need to put it in any fancier terms. Especially when you get it wrong, which is what frequently occurs whilst endeavouring to overliteralize, perchance even hypercorrect matters.
Of course, if you actually say "I don't care about $x", there's still a non-zero level of caring. If you genuinely don't care, you won't even think about it, you just walk away.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
He's really not. Right now, for example, he mostly works on a Chromebook. At least that's what he's usually on when I see him working in the kitchen*.
(I work at Netflix)
* Reed doesn't have an office / cubicle / set location, so he tends to work either in a common area or in a random conference room until you kick him out because you reserved the room
I was able to get this working using the instructions in the original post - with the following changes:
I first tried with Debian stable. The google-chrome-unstable deb installs OK, but I couldn't get the video to play. /var/lib/libvirt/images/siddy.img -cpu kvm64,+nx -enable-kvm -m 1536 -soundhw hda -usb
I saw posts that it might work with sid. So I cooked up a sid vm.
My default NAT network was disabled, I found some instructions to re-enable it.
Once I had a sid vm, I found that there was no sound. I set it to ac97 in virt-manager but ended up abandoning virt-manager and using this command line
sudo qemu-system-x86_64
Once I had sound and networking going, I installed the google-chrome-unstable deb in the VM. Then I found the user-agent extension and installed that. I created a user-agent using EXACTLY the string given in the original post...
And now I'm watching a netflix movie.
Right now I have the chrome in the VM displaying to a Xephyr window in the host environment, will be interested to see if there is a better way.
And it's true we should not have to do crap like this to use our netflix accounts!
I work for an engineering college at a big research university. As such, lots of computers, some of them Linux. Despite the smug assurances you may see online that Linux users don't need support, nothing could be further from the truth. Some people who choose to use Linux at work do it because they've a lot of experience with it, and aren't much trouble. However many more do it either because:
1) They have a tool that only runs on Linux, or more accurately that they can only figure out how to make run on Linux. It is usually something cobbled together by a researcher at another university for Ubuntu and only compiles easily on that. If you knew what you were doing you could modify it for something else, but they don't. They usually end up needing a moderate amount of support.
2) They have the idea that Linux is the "l33t professional" OS and it's what you need to use if you want to be a serious computer user, so they want it. No thought goes in to it, they have no experience with it, no understanding, they figure it'll just be easy. These kinds need a ton of support.
A few examples:
--A grad student said she needed Linux on the computer she had bought and configured (without consulting IT). All the software she wanted run on Windows and out Linux guy even told her she'd be better off with Windows. Nope, had to have Linux. We got a continual stream of tickets when she couldn't figure things out, had problems with the AMD driver and so on, and he finally told her "Let us install Windows or go away."
--A professor who bought a system and FPGA card, again without consulting us, and then said he needed Linux. This was after his grad student tried and failed to install it, hosing the system in the process. We put Linux on, and then it turns out neither he nor his grad student have any idea how to make the FPGA card work. It has no programming, you have to do it from scratch. They also don't know how to use Linux to the point they whined about "not having admin" on the Linux install which they had full control on, they just couldn't work out sudo.
--A couple of grad students that insisted a new server needed to be Linux "for best performance". This was during a time when we didn't have a Linux guy (we are a small team, and our last one had left we were in the process of hiring the current one) so I looked in to it, and found the lead and recommended platform was Windows. I talked to the professor about it and she said go ahead with Windows, they grad students could deal, since support would be easier on Windows. Got the server up and running, first thing they wanted? Two programs that are Windows only and were mandatory to what they were doing. Had we given them Linux, we would have been reinstalling the server right away because it literally couldn't run the software they needed.
The flipside of Linux seeing increasing use is that there are plenty of clueless Linux users. They don't go in to Linux saying "I really enjoy computers and learning about them, I want to learn all about this OS, how it works, how to support it, how to modify it, etc." Rather they go in saying "Oh Linux is free!" or "Oh Linux is what hackers use!" and have no idea what the fuck they are doing, and need help.