Native Netflix Support Is Coming To Linux

sfcrazy writes: Native support for Netflix is coming to Linux, thanks to their move from Silverlight to HTML5, Mozilla and Google Chrome. Paul Adolph from Netflix proposed a solution to Ubuntu developers: "Netflix will play with Chrome stable in 14.02 if NSS version 3.16.2 or greater is installed. If this version is generally installed across 14.02, Netflix would be able to make a change so users would no longer have to hack their User-Agent to play." The newer version of NSS is set to go out with the next security update.

Comments

When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[DarkOx]

When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox; that is what I care about, Chrome's interface sucks! and I don't want to run two browsers.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusingly, they're relying on NSS, a Mozilla library, to get it working with Chrome. But to answer your question, Firefox support is being actively developed, now that Google have mostly ceased screwing around with the specs for MSE and EME and HTML5 video in general. It's still a few versions away at least, since it's a lot of work, and that's assuming that Netflix supports them. Last I checked the only people willing to write an EME module for Firefox were Adobe, and it's not ready yet either.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[rikkards]

Screw that when will XBMC have support for it.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[Cajun Hell]

(I'm not even sure why you'd want to use any web browser at all for this kind of thing. They should just make XBMC, MythTV, etc plugins. No, scratch that: they should publish APIs, and then let those teams write the plugins themselves. But anyway...)

If a vendor can't use standards well enough to be compatible with what you use, then just pirate. They'll either supply the files that you can use, or someone else will.

I don't see the problem, unless it's that you feel compelled to fight someone who tells you they don't want your money. If that's the case, then get over it. You can't make someone be greedy, and it'd be a pretty shitty world if you could.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[Ost99]

It already works with XBMC on Linux with pipelight and full screen browser to show he video.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[SpzToid]

XBMC supports UPnP just fine, and if you can manage to run a headless Windows server and playon.tv, then you're golden. UPnP folks. UPnP.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[flu1d]

I'm outraged I can't watch Netflix on my Lynx browser!

Re: When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the identicalness you guys keep insisting is there. I really don't. If that's what you consider "identical" to Chrome, then Chrome's UI is identical to Firefox 2's, and Firefox 2's is identical to any other tabbed browser. Seriously. Even on startup it looks obviously different to me, and the moment I start actually using the browser it's as different as these things can be without looking alien... the tabs look different, the menu is different, the address bar dropdown is different, and that's not even counting how easily you can customize it to look vastly different... or how obviously differently it behaves. I honestly don't see any case that can be made to claim it's "identical" to Chrome. Nor that it's inferior - but that's a debate to have with people who aren't so invested in the old UI that they consider any change to be detrimental.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[shadowknot]

That's a completely fair criticism of Firefox. Thankfully there's something one can do about it, Classic Theme Restorer is fantastic. I'm not a fan of the Chrome look and feel so this suits me well.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[Aggrajag]

Requiring a running server is IMHO against the idea of having a HTPC.

Does playon.tv support HD content from Netflix?

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[serviscope_minor]

I'm waiting on Lynx support using ASCII. Damn!

Well oddly enough if it didn't have DRM then that would work.

You see, lynx can fire off MPlayer and MPlayer has an aalib and libcaca output mode allowing it to play in a terminal in monochrome or in colour.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[houstonbofh]

wget is still broken too... Bastards.

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[rikkards]

Sorry let me rephrase that (while I move the goalposts), when will it work on my Pi with Xbian?

Re:When will it work in Seamonkey and Firefox

[mattventura]

What "false equivalencies"? When I look at firefox 31 and chromium 35 side-by-side with a fresh profile, the only major difference in UI is that Firefox doesn't combine URL and search bars. The other differences are trivial, namely:
1. Firefox puts some buttons on different places on the toolbar
2. Firefox doesn't follow my GTK theme for buttons
And yes, I'd rather Firefox catered to Firefox users. What's so wrong with that? Right now they're trying to cater to Chrome users/potential Chrome users, which is idiotic because they're not going to sway anybody from using Chrome by making a poor imitation of it. In everything from the UI to version numbering, it's hard to deny that they're just trying to copy google.
They're not "fixing" their UI in the least bit, they're just driving users away from it as shown by their marketshare numbers.

But the movie selection still sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Except... I just took a look at instantwatcher.com yesterday to see what was trending, and their movie selection is still shit. There was a time years ago when that list would be full of recognizeable indy and blockbuster movies, at least ones that I recognized and would like to watch. Now I see a few but I have zero desire to reactivate that account. I would have been all over this a couple years ago. I'm writing this while running the latest Linux Mint btw.

Re:But the movie selection still sucks

[Tyler Durden]

You can find a selection of pretty good movies they offer here. I ended up watching Dredd and was blown away - something I wouldn't have done if not for word of mouth. (So you're trying to tell me someone made another movie on Judge Dredd that's actually good?) And of course, sometimes the movies you at first don't recognize end up being the ones you love the most.

Re:But the movie selection still sucks

[nine-times]

Yeah, Netflix should get their act together and stop showing shit movies like "The Elephant Man" and "There Will Be Blood". Comedies like "Grosse Pointe Blank" and "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"? Who would ever want to watch those? Netflix is absolutely useless unless they can show truly great movies like "Transformers 4: Age of Extinction".

Re:But the movie selection still sucks

[DarkOx]

I agree I like Netflix a lot. $8 a month is a bargain compared to pretty much every other option.

I am going to go see the major "Block Buster" titles I am actually interested ( maybe three of four a year ) at the cinema with buddies; those are social events and quite honestly, (/me ducks the incomming flames) movies like Avengers while good are only great out with pals. Take the social component away and try watching the film alone in your living room and its far less compelling.

Maybe its because I don't generally watch movies for the sake who can show me the most photo real destruction of NYC and the occasional boom mike or obvious cardboard cutout in the shot does not ruin the suspension of disbelief for me; but I find that many of the Indie stuff Netflix offers me is just as entertaining as the AAA stuff Hollywood churns out. In the end that is what I want out of it to relax and be entertained.

Rating everything definitely helps you get good suggestions and the flat rate all you can eat model makes it safe to take a chance on something. If after 30min you find you are not enjoying a flick switch to something else and you are not out anything more than a little time. Even placing $2 bets on iTunes or something you could easily exceed the cost of Netflix without having had much fun to show for it.

Re:But the movie selection still sucks

[Anubis IV]

Your logic is all flipped. The question you should be asking is simply, "Am I getting $8 worth of entertainment?" Netflix has never had a great selection of the latest stuff (even back a few years ago it wasn't that great), so if you're analyzing the value proposition through that lens, you're ignoring the actual value that it provides. Rather than asking what they don't have, the type of question that should be asked is if what they do have is worth the paltry asking price.

The more I've used Netflix, the better it's gotten at making recommendations, and at this point my queue is mostly filled up with great movies I either missed the first time around or had never even heard of at all but which Netflix recommended to me. And while it definitely doesn't hit a home run with each and every one of them, it's better at providing good recommendations than most of my friends are, so I'm getting tremendous value out of the service since it's supplying me with an endless stream of films I'm enjoying, despite it lacking the latest and greatest. But for those times when I'm impatient and can't wait to watch something that was just released, only paying $8/mo. for Netflix means that it's easy to justify supplementing it with rentals from Amazon, iTunes, Redbox, or some other service.

I find that I'm much happier in life if I stop asking what I lack, and start focusing on what I have. Maybe Netflix really doesn't offer any value to you since you're only interested in watching new releases, and if that's the case, that's fine. But if you have any interest at all in watching stuff you may have missed the first time around, Netflix continues to be an absolutely incredible deal, and it'd be a shame if you missed out on it because you couldn't look past its lack in another area.

Re:But the movie selection still sucks

[houstonbofh]

I guess it would be nice if their selection were better, or if they had an option for $25 for every movie and every TV show in existence, but that option doesn't exist anywhere.

Yes it does. It ain't legal, but it exists all over the place. And if the industry would get it's collective heads out of it's collective asses (Or the ass in front of it) it would wake up and realize that people would pay a LOT of money for a legal Pirate Bay. And in actuality, a lot of them are. Secure VPNs and seedboxes ain't free.

Re:Finally!

[i kan reed]

It almost seems like an accident, though. They need to move to HTML5 because Microsoft supports its technologies like high school students support their relationships.

It's just a coincidence that HTML5 also broadens deployment targets a little.

DRM should not be in HTML5

[ciaran2014]

Accommodating Netflix is often cited as a reason for pushing DRM into HTML5, but this is a fallacy. Leaving aside one's opinion of Netflix, or even the general existence of DRM, it's perfectly possible to have the big DRM companies to solve their problems by using a privately negotiated addition to the HTML5 standard. There's no reason to put it into HTML5.

Many lovers of free software have been pushing for open standards for years, but now we're headed to a situation where someone can request a HTML5-compliant DRM implementation. When we say "use open standards!", they'll reply they're using HTML5. And free software is frozen out completely.

What can one do? Well, the least one can do is sign FSF's petition:

https://www.defectivebydesign.... ...and spread the word that we don't want DRM in W3C stanardards.

WTF is 14.02???

[aglider]

Ditto!

NSS?

[pahles]

What does the National Speleological Society have to do with Netflix?

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

It still feels weird to call it "HTML5", when the thing it really needs is a proprietary DRM module that isn't part of the HTML5 specs (nope, EME does not specific that part).

This is also why it doesn't actually work in Firefox. Adobe was developing a DRM module for it, but they're not done yet. The actual HTML5 video stuff (MSE) that is required got added a while ago.

Re:Finally!

[DoofusOfDeath]

Netflix is slowly gaining trust again.

Yes. Unfortunately, as my trust in them goes up, their useful library continues to shrink.

Single thread

[tepples]

Firefox runs faster than Chrome

Firefox also lags when opening a bunch of tabs on sites like Cracked.com on an Atom CPU because it uses only one thread for JS and CSS across all open tabs.

and it uses less processes

Once the single thread problem gets fixed as part of the Electrolysis project, Firefox will probably use just as many processes.

XBMC support soon?

[MMC Monster]

Hopefully this will allow a good XBMC client. Would love to be able to watch netflix seemlessly within XBMC.

Re:XBMC support soon?

[jones_supa]

As a sidenote, today I came across an interesting XBMC plugin called xbmctorrent which allows you to directly watch movies behind magnet links. So I guess it's like the Popcorn Hour thingy.

The nun thinks she solved the problem too ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever the family wants to watch Netflix, I explain the implications that closed software has on a society and the problem is solved.

Yeah, and when the nun explains to the catholic schoolgirl the personal and societal implications that extramarital sex has she thinks the problem is solved too. Once your kids go to college, prepare yourself for their overcompensation for their restrictive childhood. You can visit them while they camp out in front of an Apple Store waiting for the launch of the next incarnation of an iPhone or iPad.

Re: Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand what "walled garden" means. Just because getting things from the distro is more convenient, don't mean you are forced to.

Re: Finally!

[UnknowingFool]

I don't understand the fascination with entertainment.

I don't understand people who are dismissive of other people's choices of entertainment. Some people play video games. Some people play sports. Some people like having the ability to watch Doctor Who on demand whenever they want.

Re:Finally!

[houstonbofh]

Lol! I was thinking the same thing. Last time I was at a friend's who has it we spent 10 minutes not finding anything to watch.

Re: Finally!

[houstonbofh]

Yes, "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:" is hard...

Re:Finally!

[NotInHere]

Its also a general issue of browser plugins dying out. Silverlight and Flash had a reason when they were created. The web didn't support the things people wanted to use it for. Browsers were immature, and every browser and every version of a browser rendered different results. In the past decade, the browser vendors and w3c have worked hard to create an unified standardized platform to work on. With this platform, plugins are just obsolete. Even today they are a major cause for browser crashes. With IE11, even microsoft has added a serious contribution.

Happy to extract dollars from linux market ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Drat, now I can't complain about how all the big businesses hate linux desktop users.

Big business doesn't hate Linux desktop users. Linux user dollars are just as useful as Microsoft user dollars. Its just that there are so few Linux dollars available that its not worth big businesses time. If Linux offered a viable market they would be happy to extract dollars from it. Don't confuse a rational economic choice with hate just because you are bitter over a perceived slight.

Big business in fact loves Linux. It has relieved them of the need to implement their own Unix incarnations, or license expensive Unix incarnations from others. Big business basically funds Linux development these days, and directs it through such support. Long gone are the days that Linux was hobbyist developed and directed. Linus is far down the list of top kernel contributors these days, not even in the top 100.

Re: Finally!

[Kalium70]

The fun never stops at your house. (Probably because it never starts.)