Arch Linux

Tairosonloa

Member

From: Spain

Registered: 2016-10-15

Posts: 17

How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

Hi all,

I'm trying to play HBO Spain content on my Arch, from the web, using chrome or firefox. However, the player gets stuck on loading, and I read it is because DRM content.

After checking the wiki, I tried to install hal-flash, but it didn't work. I also tried whit hal, but the same. Next, I tried with flashplugin but I think it doesn't support DRM at all and it didn't help me.

So you guys, do you know how to play HBO from the web in Arch? I will love you if you can help me.

Regards

Last edited by Tairosonloa (2017-08-05 20:46:32)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,877

Re: How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

No idea about HBO (like if they use silverlight or support html5 drm), but did you see the warning on https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flash_DRM_content ?

It's btw. not "hal OR flashplugin" - the DRM routines in the flash plugin back then relied on a hardware abstraction layer that was dropped ~8 years [sic!!] ago, thus you needed a stub to "fake" HAL to the flashplugin before it dropped DRM support.

If you're lucky, you can use wine and the windows versions of firefox/chrome & flash - otherwise you'll have to use a virtual machine (while in theory that's detectable and I don't know whether HBO requires HDCP and signed drivers)

Since flash is now officially dead, HBO *might* switch to html5 based DRM in the *future* and you'll probably see the resp. binary plugins from the major browsers (at least chrome?)

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Scorpick

Member

Registered: 2016-02-16

Posts: 23

Re: How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

I am using chromium-widevine (AUR) plugin for playing DRM content in chromium.
Amazon Prime videos are up to 1080p, Netflix & HBO GO are up to 720p on widevine/linux.

Tairosonloa

Member

From: Spain

Registered: 2016-10-15

Posts: 17

Re: How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

Thanks Scorpick. I tried it too. Unfortunately, it is the same what chrome does, but with chromium (as I read). I downloaded and installed chromium, chromium-widevine and pepper-flash and configured it as the wiki tells. The player already gets stuck on loading the video from chromium.

It's possible that hbo Spain had a different way to work that hbo go (?)

Last edited by Tairosonloa (2017-08-06 08:54:07)

Scorpick

Member

Registered: 2016-02-16

Posts: 23

Re: How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

HBO doesn't have single web interface, it is probably different in every region. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBO_(international)
On my version HTML5/widevine/linux isn't even advertised, but works fine.
You can check what's going on using chrome://media-internals/ and chrome://net-internals/#events while trying to play a video.

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,734

Website

Re: How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

Does youtube-dl work in this case?

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Scorpick

Member

Registered: 2016-02-16

Posts: 23

Re: How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

youtube-dl has support only for hbo.com videos (trailers, previews)
HBO Go/Now/España/... is encrypted. No support there. https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/9786

ugjka

Member

From: Latvia

Registered: 2014-04-01

Posts: 1,962

Website

Re: How to play HBO web content on ArchLinux?

If you have widevine installed try changing the user agent to something Windows(-wy) TM