NSS Updated On Ubuntu 12.04/14.04 To Allow Netflix Support

[RahulSundaram]

Do you need Chrome for this or is Chromium enough?

Chrome relies on proprietary DRM to do this. Chromium doesn't have that. Firefox has plans to download Adobe software on demand (after user's permission) to accomplish this.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-users/

[nanonyme]

Do you need Chrome for this or is Chromium enough?

[anda_skoa]

So... They use the browser's UA to "detect" what version of NSS is used, and once their reference distro updates to the correct version of NSS, they'll whitelist the useragent string ? This is completely broken, there's no relationship between the UA string and the version of NSS.

I am pretty sure Netflix engineers know that. The problem here was that Netflix decided it would be a a good idea to have a non-technical person, most likely from the PR department, post to the Ubuntu development list.
And that person, due to lack of understanding any of the involved technology, made it sound like the user agent check was related to the NSS update.

Cheers,
_

[RahulSundaram]

So... They use the browser's UA to "detect" what version of NSS is used, and once their reference distro updates to the correct version of NSS, they'll whitelist the useragent string ? This is completely broken, there's no relationship between the UA string and the version of NSS.

Pushing for for majors distros to ship the required version of NSS is a good thing, but using UA whitelisting like this is a big WTF.

You are confused. There is no relationship between NSS and UA string. NSS is needed for the latest support and UA string is because currently they don't consider Linux a supported platform. This is likely going to change as the HTML5 support gets more widespread but for now spoofing is needed.

[Calinou]

firefox does not support the needed DRM (HTML5 DRM thingy).
Untill firefox wakes up from its sleep netflix cant do nothing about it.
BTW i doubt firefox will support it anytime soon. it barely supports youtube video in html5, its missing so many codecs and stuff (even flash sucks on it... STILL FUCKING WAITING FOR SHUMWAY OR USE PEEPER!!!!) firefox is just... too slow...

PS: i used to love firefox thats why it makes me so angry to see it in this state.

Here, all the useful YouTube videos work. You could use youtube-dl if they don't.

[kaprikawn]

But...can you use Netflix with Firefox?? I can't! (Fedora 20)

I downloaded some Netflix thing from Arch's AUR which automatically installed Firefox in some sort of Wine wrapper to enable Netflix. Does that count? I didn't use it that much, but it worked when I tried it.

[marciocr]

But...can you use Netflix with Firefox?? I can't! (Fedora 20)

You can use the pipelight project.

[moltonel]

So... They use the browser's UA to "detect" what version of NSS is used, and once their reference distro updates to the correct version of NSS, they'll whitelist the useragent string ? This is completely broken, there's no relationship between the UA string and the version of NSS.

Pushing for for majors distros to ship the required version of NSS is a good thing, but using UA whitelisting like this is a big WTF.

[TheSoulz]

But...can you use Netflix with Firefox?? I can't! (Fedora 20)

firefox does not support the needed DRM (HTML5 DRM thingy).
Untill firefox wakes up from its sleep netflix cant do nothing about it.
BTW i doubt firefox will support it anytime soon. it barely supports youtube video in html5, its missing so many codecs and stuff (even flash sucks on it... STILL FUCKING WAITING FOR SHUMWAY OR USE PEEPER!!!!) firefox is just... too slow...

PS: i used to love firefox thats why it makes me so angry to see it in this state.

[AJenbo]

On Windows, I use Netflix as standard on Chrome, getting the UK version. And I've got an extension in Firefox that gives me the US Netflix, meaning I can swap between them at ease just by opening different browsers (Netflix is pretty much the only thing I open Firefox for).

Until I can replicate this behaviour on Linux, I'll stick with Windows. But I'm happy about the progress non-the-less. Now, if I could just find a music player on Linux with a GUI that I like (like Media Monkey!)....

Create a short cut for chrome and use the --user-data-dir= flag to point to a different profile, then you can run multiple instances of chrome with different settings/extensions et al.

But...can you use Netflix with Firefox?? I can't! (Fedora 20)

He is using Silverlight on Windows, so yes.