[Discuss] Netflix and/or other streaming services on Linux?

[Darren Duncan]

On 2017-11-02 4:18 PM, John Blomfield wrote:
> I sometimes watch Netflix on my Computer or Laptop using my browser but I just
> use Google-Chrome browser.
>
> I have just tried to use Firefox browser but it did not work. Something about
> installing DRM. Needs investigating.
>
> Don't normally use Firefox so its not a problem for me. Chrome is fine. Sorry.

Services like Netflix always use DRM, that's part of their business model.

However in modern HTML 5 versions they do this using very specialized browser 
plugins such as Widevine where handling the DRM is all they do, rather than the 
old solutions using Silverlight/Flash which was a do-everything foundation with 
a large API surface to attack.

Allowing your web browser to use this plug-in only installs it locally to the 
browser and it doesn't affect anything on the system other than that browser.

Its possible that your Firefox had a default configuration to refuse DRM by 
default and you needed to explicitly say you would allow it, in order to use 
Netflix.

-- Darren Duncan