Netflix

[hitest]

I'm a desktop user and Netflix is a must have in my day to day multi-media use. OpenBSD now renders Youtube very well with HTML5.
Is there any work being done to get Netflix working on OpenBSD? I'm not trolling or trying to start a flame war; I am genuinely curious about this.
I do realize that there are more pressing concerns for the developers than this issue.
Thanks for any and all replies.

[jggimi]

It's encrypted traffic, supported only by their closed-source extensions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryp...dia_Extensions

[hitest]

Originally Posted by jggimi

It's encrypted traffic, supported only by their closed-source extensions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryp...dia_Extensions

Thanks, mate. I appreciate the reply.

[scottro]

Yes, I wanted to find someone to write about it so got on their support chat and asked for an address--they said, give the feedback to us and we'll pass it along.
I said that I realized that content providers don't understand this Internet thing, but Netflix does. So, why don't they at least take the protection off their original content. I basically put what I would have put in an email or letter, pointing out that if, for example, there were 10,000 OpenBSD users--(going from something Theo said years ago) and they had some features that OpenBSD could easily watch, if even half of the OpenBSD users tried Netflix, that's 5,000 new subscribers.

I am sure it was completely ignored, but the thought was there. Nicer than what I wrote to Hulu when they did something or other so that it was no longer watchable in Linux with chrome, where I wrote something like walk around and find someone there who understands the Internet. Ask them if they believe this encryption has stopped 5 people from illegally watching content on your site.

It's one of those aggravating things and I apologize to all for venting here.

TL;DR
You can watch Netflix on most versions of Linux with google-chrome (not chromium) installed. Unfortunately, neither Free nor OpenBSD can run google-chrome, as far as I know.

Sooner or later, one hopes that content providers will realize that these protections just cause the kids who don't care about paying, or think it's cool, to pirate, while driving away those who wish to pay.

Sorry, I do have to add one line that cracked me up--one kid said that they pirate because they feel if they pay for content, the money eventually goes to bribe politicians so they were helping fight corruption. That I believe. Whenever I see a politician call for greater penalties for downloading, you know they've been bought.

[blackhole]

Originally Posted by scottro

You can watch Netflix on most versions of Linux with google-chrome (not chromium) installed. Unfortunately, neither Free nor OpenBSD can run google-chrome, as far as I know.

Chromium/Google Chrome uses a different plugin API to mozilla. Adobe made the decision to drop npapi support (netscape/mozilla) and only support Google's ppapi (pepper api). You can, or could last time I checked, install the flash plugin from Google Chrome in Chromium?

However, before you get your hopes up, the flash plugin is a Windows or Linux binary and simply won't run on OpenBSD without some kind of compatibility layer (as it's done on FreeBSD), but there is not much, if any, interest in doing this among OpenBSD developers and probably never will be.

[hitest]

Originally Posted by scottro

Yes, I wanted to find someone to write about it so got on their support chat and asked for an address--they said, give the feedback to us and we'll pass it along.
I said that I realized that content providers don't understand this Internet thing, but Netflix does. So, why don't they at least take the protection off their original content. I basically put what I would have put in an email or letter, pointing out that if, for example, there were 10,000 OpenBSD users--(going from something Theo said years ago) and they had some features that OpenBSD could easily watch, if even half of the OpenBSD users tried Netflix, that's 5,000 new subscribers.

I am sure it was completely ignored, but the thought was there. Nicer than what I wrote to Hulu when they did something or other so that it was no longer watchable in Linux with chrome, where I wrote something like walk around and find someone there who understands the Internet. Ask them if they believe this encryption has stopped 5 people from illegally watching content on your site.

It's one of those aggravating things and I apologize to all for venting here.

TL;DR
You can watch Netflix on most versions of Linux with google-chrome (not chromium) installed. Unfortunately, neither Free nor OpenBSD can run google-chrome, as far as I know.

Sooner or later, one hopes that content providers will realize that these protections just cause the kids who don't care about paying, or think it's cool, to pirate, while driving away those who wish to pay.

Sorry, I do have to add one line that cracked me up--one kid said that they pirate because they feel if they pay for content, the money eventually goes to bribe politicians so they were helping fight corruption. That I believe. Whenever I see a politician call for greater penalties for downloading, you know they've been bought.

I watch Netflix on Chromium with Slackware64-current. Our developer Eric provides the widevine plug-in for his Chromium package which does the trick.

[hitest]

Originally Posted by cynwulf

However, before you get your hopes up, the flash plugin is a Windows or Linux binary and simply won't run on OpenBSD without some kind of compatibility layer (as it's done on FreeBSD), but there is not much, if any, interest in doing this among OpenBSD developers and probably never will be.

I understand that, cynwulf. Thanks for the reply. I suspect that OpenBSD would attract more desktop users with the inclusion of Netflix functionality.

[jggimi]

Originally Posted by hitest

I watch Netflix on Chromium with Slackware64-current. Our developer Eric provides the widevine plug-in for his Chromium package which does the trick.

According to Google, their Widevine plugin is only available for select browsers on Windows and OS X. Perhaps your developer is using WINE?

Edited to add:
Apparently, it's only the "classic" Widevine which is not supported.

http://www.widevine.com/supported_platforms.html

[hitest]

jggimi,

Thanks for the reply, mate. I enjoyed this conversation today. I love and run OpenBSD.

[blackhole]

Originally Posted by hitest

I suspect that OpenBSD would attract more desktop users with the inclusion of Netflix functionality.

As you should be aware by now, that is not one of the aims of the project.

The widevine plugin is only for specific platforms - i.e. windows/linux/mac osx? The Slackware Linux build script you refer to, just extracts "libwidevinecdm.so" from the Linux Google Chrome and packages it for installation by a package manager. That shared object file is a Linux binary of some kind - and it's closed source DRM. So I'm just wondering what it is you're suggesting?

[hitest]

Originally Posted by cynwulf

That shared object file is a Linux binary of some kind - and it's closed source DRM. So I'm just wondering what it is you're suggesting?

Yes. I'm aware of OpenBSD's stance on closed source software. I'm hopeful that Netflix will at some point release their code in open source format(when pigs fly). I can dream.

[blackhole]

Originally Posted by hitest

Yes. I'm aware of OpenBSD's stance on closed source software.

It has nothing to do with this. It's a Linux binary.

[hitest]

Originally Posted by cynwulf

It has nothing to do with this. It's a Linux binary.

My mistake. Thanks for the explanation.