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Amazon Prime Video Widevine - Continuation from Archived of 4 Months ago

  • 3 uphendule
  • 1 inale nkinga
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  • Igcine ukuphendulwa ngu Linux Lover

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I can't watch Amazon Prime videos using Firefox 76.0 - 32 bit on Linux Mint 19.3 - 32bit. I do appreciate that this became a long standing battle, judging by the archived material but has the towel now been thrown in? Root cause seems to be that the Widevine plugin has been withdrawn from Firefox and that being so, there must be a good reason.

When the question was archived with a tick was placed on the best answer. That the Widevine plugin can no longer be added from within Firefox, suggests to me that it is now game over. Am I being too pessimistic?

I don't want work-arounds that never seem to last long in this area, ideally I am looking for a permanent fix on the lines that Google will co-operate and promise not to move the goal-posts without supplying the information needed to Mozilla in order to update Firefox first, so that the Widevine plugin can be made available once again and all be covered under Linux updates.

An outright refusal in the above assessment, if correct, would at least demonstrate that the matter was political and that the solution to it is necessarily political too. Something that could likely gain traction in Europe at least.

Any reply welcome, thanks.

I can't watch Amazon Prime videos using Firefox 76.0 - 32 bit on Linux Mint 19.3 - 32bit. I do appreciate that this became a long standing battle, judging by the archived material but has the towel now been thrown in? Root cause seems to be that the Widevine plugin has been withdrawn from Firefox and that being so, there must be a good reason. When the question was archived with a tick was placed on the best answer. That the Widevine plugin can no longer be added from within Firefox, suggests to me that it is now game over. Am I being too pessimistic? I don't want work-arounds that never seem to last long in this area, ideally I am looking for a permanent fix on the lines that Google will co-operate and promise not to move the goal-posts without supplying the information needed to Mozilla in order to update Firefox first, so that the Widevine plugin can be made available once again and all be covered under Linux updates. An outright refusal in the above assessment, if correct, would at least demonstrate that the matter was political and that the solution to it is necessarily political too. Something that could likely gain traction in Europe at least. Any reply welcome, thanks.

Isisombululo esikhethiwe

I don't know if there are issues with using Widevine from the Linux repositories in Firefox, so if you use that version then try Firefox from the Mozilla server to see if that makes a difference.

If you toggle DRM off/on then you should see a XHR request in the Browser Console to connect to the update server and possibly download the Widevine plugin.

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Please remove the word 'with' on the first sentence of the second paragraph for comprehension, with my apologies. At the time of the archiving, with a best answer ticked ...it looked like a permanent fix was in place but things have moved on again it seems, since the Widevine plugin has been removed from the Firefox plugin store. I hope that is fully clear now, thanks.

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Isisombululo Esikhethiwe

I don't know if there are issues with using Widevine from the Linux repositories in Firefox, so if you use that version then try Firefox from the Mozilla server to see if that makes a difference.

If you toggle DRM off/on then you should see a XHR request in the Browser Console to connect to the update server and possibly download the Widevine plugin.

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Thank you Cor-el, I did a 'toggle DRM' search on my browser and found that it was a tick box in Fiefox settings. When I looked in my Firefox it was not ticked and then tried Firefox Help/About update route ...nothing, then restarted Firefox, then 'LinuxUupdates'. After that I took up your idea of downloading Firefox direct from Mozilla. It was a version upgrade to 76.0.1 from 76.0 on 32 bit Linux. The settings were then done inscuding the tick (toggle) of Play DRM content and when I looked in my plugins it was there and alongside the usual two others.

I tried Amazon Prime Videos and it was working and best of all it looks like this will be a permanent solution. as I did not want to go down the road of a short lived work-around. I am sorted so I ticked your answer as a proper fix.

Can I suggest that Mozilla adds a 'Dummy-Widevine-Plugin' to the 'Searchable List of Firefox Plugins'(?) The fuction of the Dummy Plugin is simply to inform those seeking this plugin to first tick the Play DRM content box, otherwise known as toggling DRM, in settings and possibly restart the computer before doing the Linux Updates again. It fills a small information black hole and is a nice user-friendly touch!

Somewhere along the way Firefox 76.0 - 32 bit in Linux Mint 19.3 - 32 bit also acquired the Widevine plugin! I am running two versions of Firefox at the moment but when version 76.0.1 gets into the official Linux Update distribution, I will remove the one that I downloaded direct from Mozilla.