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Xfinity Stream on Linux: A Tale of Widevine, ChromeOS, and a patched Glibc
- trelane 4y agoYeah, good to know. No Xfinity (Stream or otherwise) for me, thanks. I thought this was 2023. Apparently Comcast didn't get the memo.
- judge2020 4y agoEspecially odd given the entire point of Widevine is to set a content protection minimum that works cross-platform, which his machine obviously meets given it's playing video (while I had suspected xFinity would require Widevine L1/a full hardware chain for any playback, it looks like they offer a lower resolution like 720p(?) for L3 devices).
- selectodude 4y agoMy cable box still outputs upresed 720p so I’m not too sure what they’re protecting.
- judge2020 4y agoI'm not sure if that's actually the case here, but it's hard to tell if the image in the article is just a sharp 480p image or 720p. It's up to the streaming service to decide the quality levels provided to L3 streams.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zamalek 4y agoAnother option is to cablecut. If Comcast don't want you using their service, then don't. YouTube TV (which is distinct from YouTube, to avoid confusion) works on basically everything.
- chevman 4y agoAnd generally costs more per month than Xfinity!
- judge2020 4y agoxfinity TV over docsis in my area costs $111/mo ($70 TV, $28.35 Broadcast TV Fee, $13.40 Regional Sports Fee) for 125 channels (no Disney Channel) - quite a bit over the cost of YTTV at $65/mo if you can live without channels like Bloomberg Television and Gem Shopping Network. But you do get both Cartoon Network and the Disney network of channels on YTTV, when it's $20 extra on Xfinity.
- syzarian 4y agoPeople rarely factor in those fees or the HD technology fee or fee for equipment rental that most people get conned into getting.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- duped 4y agoIt will be years before I have the same experience watching sports on a streaming service as on digital cable. And for no technical reason, it's just monopolized broadcast rights to the games I want to watch.
- zamalek 4y agoYou should really check if YouTube TV includes the channels you care about. My FIL loves sports and gets everything he wants. I'm honestly not shilling, just... Fuck Comcast.
- duped 4y agoYouTube TV is more expensive once factoring in the premium sports and cable networks I subscribe to. And they don't even bundle internet access with it /s
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hpcjoe 4y agoI seem to recall one of Netflix or Amazon Prime also claims to not be able to play UHD content on my linux machines. I've never really dug into it, as the SDR I can watch it in is fine for me. That said, it seems odd that silliness like this still exists.
- judge2020 4y agoTo my understanding, Widevine has two modes: L1 and L3. L3 is software protection where the browser protects against most simple reverse-engineering, but sends an unencrypted video stream to the OS' window compositor, so you can still screen record the content if you'd like. L1, on the other hand, requires a full chain of trust, meaning the encrypted video stream is sent to your GPU unit (or TV SOC), and the GPU has safeguards to prevent the OS from being able to capture that part of the screen, and most importantly has a HDCP handshake with the output device. When a service is selecting which streams your client is granted a license to, if you claim L1 protection, the license request includes a signature from the GPU/chip doing the decryption, so the service will know whether your device only supports L3 software protection, or has a full chain of trust for the content and thus can protects against things like the user screen recording video content. Chances are the contracts rightsholders have with Netflix et al. require L1 for HD or UHD streams, and only allow L3 420p streaming (note that Netflix Originals seem to stream at 720p on L3, at least from what I've heard).
- fbdab103 4y agoIf you are really interested in scraping a copy, the HDCP keys were leaked at some point and you can buy "HDMI splitters <wink>" for ~$30 which will remove the encryption. Now trivially bypassed, and a pain in the butt for everyone else.
- bubblethink 4y agoThat was for an old version of HDCP up to 1080p, right ? Not to mention, capping and transcoding is tedious and will alter the quality. I doubt if anyone still does it as there seem to be better exploits for the determined.
- jeroenhd 4y agoI've had similar issues with HD not being available on Amazon Prime when I watch (certain) shows on Linux. My "fix" was rather crude: install Chrome inside wine. A silly fix for a problem designed to get in the way of their customers. And then these companies dare to get mad at piracy.
- fbdab103 4y agoBah, this is genius! Any obvious gotchas? Did you try it with Netflix?
- captn3m0 4y agoNetflix doesn’t block HD on Linux
- fbdab103 4y agoI guess that depends on what "HD" means. As far as I know, unless you are running a dedicated streaming device (Chromecast, Roku, etc), Windows in IE, or the Windows Netflix app, you can only watch in 720p.
- captn3m0 4y agoYou're correct, but Netflix seems to block it on the client-side. Lots of extensions fix this, and I seem to have had those installed for quite a while, so never had to think about it. Prime on the other hand, blocks it server-side, so no way to upgrade. I'm hoping that with SteamDeck these issues get sorted, as more people use it as a docked media player. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/netflix-1080p-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/netflix-1080p...
- bubblethink 4y ago>I'm hoping that with SteamDeck these issues get sorted, as more people use it as a docked media player. Why won't it be the same deal as ChromeOS or Android ? It'll work with some blessed config of widewine L1, and not if you do your own thing on the device.
- shmerl 4y agoI guess Comcast likes to instill the idea that pirating is a better option than dealing with borked DRM mess.
- sli 4y agoI don't pirate games anymore but I still routinely pirate TV content because dealing with this nonsense is just not worth the time and effort. I'm willing to buy media. I'm not willing to be told when and where I can watch it. I buy my movies and TV on physical media, then pirate a copy to actually watch on my various devices. Far more convenient for me than bending over backwards for DRM schemes. My Steam games, meanwhile, largely all work on Windows and Linux with no silly barriers stopping me. Just one reasonable one: login to Steam once in a while. It's made game piracy the hassle by comparison, which is the opposite direction than that taken by current media streaming. Gabe was right when he said piracy is caused by service issues.
- ilyt 4y agoPretty much. Just put a fucking mp4 file with the show or a movie on my harddrive and fuck off, then I will pay for the service
- shmerl 4y agoYeah, DRM-free stores like GOG demonstrate that you don't need DRM to sell digital media. But movie industry is still stuck in this stupid dinosaur mentality.
- ddtaylor 4y agoGOG gets a lot of credit and it's deserved, but it's worth mentioning that the vast majority of Steam games are mostly DRM free and when they do include DRM it's at the behest of the studios. You would probably be surprised at the amount of games where you can simply right click them in your library and go to "Local files" and just see raw media laying around - JPGs, PNGS, etc.
- 4y ago
- bubblethink 4y agoI skimmed the article, but one thing I didn't get is whether this is just a version difference (i.e., ChromeOS is on a different version of glibc), or is ChromeOS on a hard fork that will never reconcile with upstream ? If it's the former, it should resolve in due course; not so much for the latter.
- TheBrokenRail 4y agoFrom my understanding, neither. It's the same code (presumably) but Chrome OS's version was compiled with metadata that said it was running on Chrome OS and Linux's version was compiled with metadata that said it was running on Linux. And that metadata is later embedded into the license request which Xfinity's servers check. Of course, that's just my assumption from what I understand. I can't verify anything due to how obfuscated Widevine is. But due to how long-lived this problem has been, the two Widevine versions having the exact same version number (4.10.2557.0), and that everything else Widevine-wise works, I'm inclined to believe that this is intentional.
- bubblethink 4y agoI understood that part; I meant whether running the ChromeOS widewine library on regular distributions is just a version difference in glibc, which would go away with time making the article's hack unnecessary in the future.
- TheBrokenRail 4y agoI see what you mean! I guess it depends on when Google updates to glibc v2.36, presumably they then would just include the DT_RELR version dependency on their binaries rather than unnecessarily patching glibc. Who knows how long that will take though since glibc v2.36 just came out a few months ago.
- yellow_lead 4y agoHaven't widevine keys been discovered by pirate groups but not leaked? I assumed that was how so many webrips have been released.
- bmurphy1976 4y agoGoogle updates the Widevine CDM regularly and has an aggressive deprecation schedule. I imagine those keys have long since been replaced as a result of this. Each piece of content is encrypted with a unique key and the CDM is only used for key exchange. The leaked keys would be useless for decrypting any stored content.
- arsome 4y agoWidevine L1 keys have leaked fairly regularly though and many piracy groups have private L1 keys to allow them to get clean webrips from streaming services. These keys get dumped from a vulnerable device and then don't need to be updated unless that device gets breached publically down the line.
- kotaKat 4y agoAll it takes is another vulnerable device's keybox being yanked and abused for a while until the keybox leaks further causing revocation of those Widevine keys. They have quite a supply of keyboxes available to keep decrypting for a while.
- SSLy 4y agoWidevine L3 gets broken fairly often, I'd assume that's what xfinity stream on ChromeOS is using.
- znpy 4y ago> All in all, this whole situation is ridiculous. It should not be this much harder to access media legally than it is to pirate. And this is why people pirate stuff. It's just easier and more effective.
- azalemeth 4y agoI've never, ever used anything with a Widevine CDM in it and deliberately tell FF to not play it (and delete the binary in Chrome, or use Chromium). Stop supporting DRM. It's normalised. It shouldn't be. I've never knowingly bought DRM'd media.
- ubercow13 4y agoWhat non-DRM video have you bought, if any?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoI have Firefox configured to not play DRM content unless explicitly allowed, which means it shows a permission infobar each time a site tries to use it. The number of sites that do it without having a good reason to, likely for fingerprinting purposes, are astonishing.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoI cancelled my Netflix subscription during the trial period because I'd have to install a different OS just to be actually able to watch more than 720p. If my options are paying for 1080p and getting 720p because the company I'm paying decided to be hostile, or using an "unofficial" streaming site with a wider selection, which limits me to 720p to get me to pay for a premium version, but lets me watch the 720p for free and without hassle... I might put up with 720p but I sure as hell won't pay for it.