Firefox 49 To Offer Linux Widevine Support, Firefox Also Working On WebP Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Firefox 49 To Offer Linux Widevine Support, Firefox Also Working On WebP Support

There are two exciting bits of Mozilla Firefox news to pass along today: Winevine support on Linux out-of-the-box to handle Netflix and friends. Separately, WebP image support is being worked on...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Firefox-49-Widevine-Linux

[starshipeleven]

Good, a necessary evil, but having one less reason to use chromium is always good.

[Ehvis]

Unfortunately this will probably be the same as Chrome and Netflix won't serve HD to it. Which still makes it useless for watching Netflix or HTPC purposes.

[gQuigs]

Anyone got Netflix to actually work with it yet?

I'm running Firefox Nightly with Widevine installed.

[gQuigs]

It does work with DRM content on YouTube though...

[dh04000]

Anyone got Netflix to actually work with it yet?

I'm running Firefox Nightly with Widevine installed.

Try spoofing your user agent to windows running firefox. If that works, kindly report back.

[starshipeleven]

Unfortunately this will probably be the same as Chrome and Netflix won't serve HD to it. Which still makes it useless for watching Netflix or HTPC purposes.

AFAIK netflix is just checking user agent for that, change user agent with an addon to show you are on a Windows PC, and it should let you stream HD.

Also, I thought they removed that restriction for Chrome on linux.

[Chewi]

I take it this is still a binary blob. I can (sadly) live with that but I guess it still rules ARM out?

[89c51]

Props to mozilla. Linux doesn't have video acceleration and has drm. While i am all for convenience (netflix etc) having the batteries emptying is something i would prefer not to have while watching vids.

[jf33]

This brings up some questions:
- Who really wants to have DRM crap on linux?
- How exactly does this Widevine stuff work and what is it able to do?
- How can you disable it?