7 ms·

Raspberry Pi OS Gets Official Widevine Support

58 points by logix 6y ago

LeoPanthera 6y ago
tl;dr Install libwidevinecdm0 and Chromium receives Widevine support. It seems to be only in the armhf repo - not available for aarch64.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  AFAIK there are no aarch64 widevine binaries out there since chromeOS doesn't have an aarch64 variant.
  - ac29 6y ago
    The kernel ABI for recent ARM devices is aarch64 according to this: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f... I suppose they could still be running armhf userland, but that'd be a little odd.
    - my123 6y ago
      They still run an armhf userland for Chrome OS, yes. See the User ABI column.
readflaggedcomm 6y ago
That makes a rpi more useful as a set-top box. I use an old laptop and a Roku now, and this might work better if performance is any good. My old Roku can barely keep up with the new versions of Amazon's channel. For Firefox, Mozilla published two months ago: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/01/porting-firefox-to-apple-silicon/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/01/porting-firefox-to-apple-s... which involves some Apple-specific tricks, which makes me not hopeful Firefox on Arm on Linux will support DRM soon.
gruez 6y ago
Is this level 1 or level 3? If it's level 3 you'd only get 720p on netflix.
- coolspot 6y ago
  AFAIK level 3 doesn’t need hardware support. It is always available in a compatible software player (e.g. official Chrome build).
- logix 6y ago
  It has to be level 3, since Google Chrome on Linux desktops (not sure about other platforms) only supports level 3. Edit: see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60833060/why-desktop-chrome-only-supports-widevine-cdm-security-level-l3 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60833060/why-desktop-chr...
sxp 6y ago
Is there any info on the level of DRM support? Widevine has multiple levels which means watching Netflix, Hulu, etc on a PC with Chrome will limit your video to 480p or 720p. In some cases, Edge will increase the video resolution to 1080p. I haven't found a way to legally access 4k video on a PC. I'm guessing the same limits apply on the RPi. You can test this by going to a video page like https://www.netflix.com/watch/80018585 https://www.netflix.com/watch/80018585 and typing `document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].videoHeight` to see the size of the actual video stream.
- joshstrange 6y ago
  This is reminiscent, for me, of the days of unskippable DVD ads and generally terrible DVD/Blu-ray experiences. Downloading a movie would give you a clean file with no ads and you could seek wherever without limits but purchasing a legal copy would give you a terrible experience. This kind of DRM and limitations feels so incredibly stupid when you can find high quality 1080p/4K rips of content from every major streaming platforms. So as it stands right now you can bend over backwards to get some support for Widevine to stream low quality OR you can download the full 4K with zero restrictions. I'm not interested in a discussion on the morality of downloading content, just pointing out how backwards the experience is even when you pay. I'd gladly pay $100+/mo for the experience you can achieve via piracy but it doesn't exist and that's a pretty sad state of things. Spotify(/Amazon/Apple/etc), largely, "solved" piracy by providing a great experience for an affordable price, making it so that it was actually more expensive and more work to pirate music. TV/Movies still doesn't have a spotify-equivalent which sucks. Even things like Apple TV (The app, not the service or the product, <insert eyeroll emoji>) and Amazon Channels, that both attempt to tackle this problem by unifying multiple "feeds" into 1 app/experience, both fall short and don't have nearly the breadth of content I'd want.
- booi 6y ago
  Is this true? It seems insane that you cannot watch 4k video on arguably the most powerful platform there is..
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
sdfhbdf 6y ago
Do you have to hand over your whole privacy to google and agree to them collecting data from your grandchildren when installing? On a serious note I thought Widevine was closed sourced and only licensed in some way, how has it made its way to Raspberry Pi OS without any consents and such? Is it libre? Or is this the new direction of the raspberry foundation to cooperate with big corps? Like when they included the Microsoft apt repository so that people can install vscode in 1 command instead of 4. [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26035441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26035441
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- logix 6y ago
  It's not installed by default, users need to install it (sudo apt install libwidevinecdm0). Previously it wasn't available at all though, at least not in an official way. These are some unofficial ways of getting Widevine on a Pi (no longer needed now): https://gist.github.com/ruario/19a28d98d29d34ec9b184c42e5f8bf29 https://gist.github.com/ruario/19a28d98d29d34ec9b184c42e5f8b... https://blog.vpetkov.net/2020/03/30/raspberry-pi-netflix-one-line-easy-install-along-with-hulu-amazon-prime-disney-plus-hbo-spotify-pandora-and-many-others/ https://blog.vpetkov.net/2020/03/30/raspberry-pi-netflix-one...
- lxgr 6y ago
  There‘s all kinds of uses for a Raspberry Pi. Not everyone is in it for ideological reasons, and I‘d argue just watching Netflix on it is a valid use case too.
  - imode 6y ago
    I'd think privacy concerns over data collection aren't ideological, more ethical.
    - lxgr 6y ago
      No data is being collected by the possibility of installing a DRM plug-in, which I understood the grandparent comment to be in objection to. Preinstalling the plug-in would be an entirely different matter for me, and I'd see the ethical concerns there.
nimbius 6y ago
>Widevine is not installed / enabled by default on Raspberry Pi OS though it looks like the raspbian team got it right this time as opposed to secretly loading a GPG key and repository into everyone's OS to deliver a feature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS#Microsoft_Repository_Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS#Microsoft_Repo...
sitzkrieg 6y ago
no 4k but that's ok because the rpi4 would overheat and throttle itself if it even hardware accelerated it anyway
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  The numbers in google say that 1080p decoding is a quarter watt so 4k would probably be fine.
  - sitzkrieg 6y ago
    i reckon it is fine if there is proper hw decoding. i gave up trying and got a different sbc that works flawlessly hw decoding 4k with no heatsinks so far (vim3L)
lights0123 6y ago
It looks like this has been available unofficially for a while: https://gist.github.com/teacupx/9393507ad6250429707f0318b04f1a3b https://gist.github.com/teacupx/9393507ad6250429707f0318b04f...
ryankrage77 6y ago
Fantastic, now I can watch 4K movies and shows at 720p in a frame-dropping stuttering mess. Thanks Google!

58 points by logix 6y ago

tl;dr Install libwidevinecdm0 and Chromium receives Widevine support. It seems to be only in the armhf repo - not available for aarch64.

aidenn0 6y ago
AFAIK there are no aarch64 widevine binaries out there since chromeOS doesn't have an aarch64 variant.
- ac29 6y ago
  The kernel ABI for recent ARM devices is aarch64 according to this: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f... I suppose they could still be running armhf userland, but that'd be a little odd.
  - my123 6y ago
    They still run an armhf userland for Chrome OS, yes. See the User ABI column.

readflaggedcomm 6y ago

That makes a rpi more useful as a set-top box. I use an old laptop and a Roku now, and this might work better if performance is any good. My old Roku can barely keep up with the new versions of Amazon's channel. For Firefox, Mozilla published two months ago: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/01/porting-firefox-to-apple-silicon/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/01/porting-firefox-to-apple-s... which involves some Apple-specific tricks, which makes me not hopeful Firefox on Arm on Linux will support DRM soon.

gruez 6y ago

Is this level 1 or level 3? If it's level 3 you'd only get 720p on netflix.

coolspot 6y ago
AFAIK level 3 doesn’t need hardware support. It is always available in a compatible software player (e.g. official Chrome build).
logix 6y ago
It has to be level 3, since Google Chrome on Linux desktops (not sure about other platforms) only supports level 3. Edit: see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60833060/why-desktop-chrome-only-supports-widevine-cdm-security-level-l3 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60833060/why-desktop-chr...

sxp 6y ago

Is there any info on the level of DRM support? Widevine has multiple levels which means watching Netflix, Hulu, etc on a PC with Chrome will limit your video to 480p or 720p. In some cases, Edge will increase the video resolution to 1080p. I haven't found a way to legally access 4k video on a PC. I'm guessing the same limits apply on the RPi. You can test this by going to a video page like https://www.netflix.com/watch/80018585 https://www.netflix.com/watch/80018585 and typing `document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].videoHeight` to see the size of the actual video stream.

joshstrange 6y ago
This is reminiscent, for me, of the days of unskippable DVD ads and generally terrible DVD/Blu-ray experiences. Downloading a movie would give you a clean file with no ads and you could seek wherever without limits but purchasing a legal copy would give you a terrible experience. This kind of DRM and limitations feels so incredibly stupid when you can find high quality 1080p/4K rips of content from every major streaming platforms. So as it stands right now you can bend over backwards to get some support for Widevine to stream low quality OR you can download the full 4K with zero restrictions. I'm not interested in a discussion on the morality of downloading content, just pointing out how backwards the experience is even when you pay. I'd gladly pay $100+/mo for the experience you can achieve via piracy but it doesn't exist and that's a pretty sad state of things. Spotify(/Amazon/Apple/etc), largely, "solved" piracy by providing a great experience for an affordable price, making it so that it was actually more expensive and more work to pirate music. TV/Movies still doesn't have a spotify-equivalent which sucks. Even things like Apple TV (The app, not the service or the product, <insert eyeroll emoji>) and Amazon Channels, that both attempt to tackle this problem by unifying multiple "feeds" into 1 app/experience, both fall short and don't have nearly the breadth of content I'd want.
booi 6y ago
Is this true? It seems insane that you cannot watch 4k video on arguably the most powerful platform there is..
- Mindwipe 6y ago

sdfhbdf 6y ago

Do you have to hand over your whole privacy to google and agree to them collecting data from your grandchildren when installing? On a serious note I thought Widevine was closed sourced and only licensed in some way, how has it made its way to Raspberry Pi OS without any consents and such? Is it libre? Or is this the new direction of the raspberry foundation to cooperate with big corps? Like when they included the Microsoft apt repository so that people can install vscode in 1 command instead of 4. [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26035441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26035441

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
logix 6y ago
It's not installed by default, users need to install it (sudo apt install libwidevinecdm0). Previously it wasn't available at all though, at least not in an official way. These are some unofficial ways of getting Widevine on a Pi (no longer needed now): https://gist.github.com/ruario/19a28d98d29d34ec9b184c42e5f8bf29 https://gist.github.com/ruario/19a28d98d29d34ec9b184c42e5f8b... https://blog.vpetkov.net/2020/03/30/raspberry-pi-netflix-one-line-easy-install-along-with-hulu-amazon-prime-disney-plus-hbo-spotify-pandora-and-many-others/ https://blog.vpetkov.net/2020/03/30/raspberry-pi-netflix-one...
lxgr 6y ago
There‘s all kinds of uses for a Raspberry Pi. Not everyone is in it for ideological reasons, and I‘d argue just watching Netflix on it is a valid use case too.
- imode 6y ago
  I'd think privacy concerns over data collection aren't ideological, more ethical.
  - lxgr 6y ago
    No data is being collected by the possibility of installing a DRM plug-in, which I understood the grandparent comment to be in objection to. Preinstalling the plug-in would be an entirely different matter for me, and I'd see the ethical concerns there.

nimbius 6y ago

>Widevine is not installed / enabled by default on Raspberry Pi OS though it looks like the raspbian team got it right this time as opposed to secretly loading a GPG key and repository into everyone's OS to deliver a feature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS#Microsoft_Repository_Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS#Microsoft_Repo...

sitzkrieg 6y ago

no 4k but that's ok because the rpi4 would overheat and throttle itself if it even hardware accelerated it anyway

Dylan16807 6y ago
The numbers in google say that 1080p decoding is a quarter watt so 4k would probably be fine.
- sitzkrieg 6y ago
  i reckon it is fine if there is proper hw decoding. i gave up trying and got a different sbc that works flawlessly hw decoding 4k with no heatsinks so far (vim3L)

lights0123 6y ago

It looks like this has been available unofficially for a while: https://gist.github.com/teacupx/9393507ad6250429707f0318b04f1a3b https://gist.github.com/teacupx/9393507ad6250429707f0318b04f...

ryankrage77 6y ago

Fantastic, now I can watch 4K movies and shows at 720p in a frame-dropping stuttering mess. Thanks Google!