7 ms·

Netflix on Ubuntu Is Here

169 points by cleverjake 14y ago

pdenya 14y ago
It's so great that this is available now. Reading the title I was hoping Netflix had stepped up and made this work, but no. It's frustrating that it needs to work this way, running through wine with multiple patches but at least it works.
stenius 14y ago
for about 10 seconds I was thinking about restarting my Netflix sub. Then I read part of the article and found it wasn't a native solution or Netflix who was stepping up.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Their loss. There's certainly no dearth of torrent clients for Linux.
- javert 14y ago
  I'm in the exact same situation.
faucet 14y ago
Next stop - Lovefilm (amazon) as they use silverlight based solution too.
jlgreco 14y ago
I thought the idea behind Netflix using Silverlight (instead of flash, which would presumably allow Netflix to normally work in Linux, like youtube or amazon instant video) was that Silverlight had super-duper DRM stuff that did nonsense with TPM. If it works with WINE, I am guessing the situation is not quite that simple?
- pudquick 14y ago
  Considering Netflix works in Windows on machines without a TPM (it is a hardware device), not sure where you got that idea.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I wasn't aware that it did. My only personal experience with Netflix on windows was Netflix being very very strict about my windows installation being up to date and verified (or whatever the terminology was). This was 2007/2008 or abouts though. Is there a reason then that they use Silverlight instead of flash?
- zanny 14y ago
  Netflix didn't use Silverlight because it had extremely good DRM, but because nobody used it nobody had taken the time to reverse engineer it so getting the raw video files out of Netflix would be harder. Most computers don't have TPMs but Netflix runs on any Windows OS that has Silverlight. In the end, it is still software using the Win32 API, it just required implementing some Microsoft-specific functionality they had going on. I do wonder how the Netflix apps not on Microsoft platforms work though. The Android, iOS, and game console versions mainly.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Ah, interesting. I suppose they probably haven't re-evaluated that decision because they don't really have a compelling reason to care. When the Netflix android application came out I had high hopes for Netflix on desktop GNU-ish/Linux, particularly when I learned that the Netflix application would work on rooted/otherwise open android phones. That hasn't happened though, so I guess either nobody has bothered to see that through, they got hit with law stuff, or for some reason it isn't technically feasible.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > software using the Win32 API Which is all Wine provides, hence the name: Wine Is Not an Emulator. (Alternately, I guess you could insist that glibc is a POSIX emulator on top of the OS kernel.) (My point? All of a sudden I need a point? When did that happen?)
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      WINE is not an emulator... and GNU is not Unix ;) For most intents and purposes they both smell the same, but the devil is in the details.
    - laumars 14y ago
      Technically WINE provides more than just Win32 APIs, but essentially you're right. WINE is more a compatibility layer / wrapper for PEs than an emulator. In fact, I often make the container distinction: you have containers (Zones / Jails / OpenVZ) and you have virtual machines (VMWare / Vbox / Qemu / etc). WINE falls more into the containers category because it runs Windows PE natively on the host but in a sandboxed environment (and in an approximate sense of the term, chrooted) but with hooks that go between the host and client. But, like with WINE, many lump containers into the virtualisation pigeon-hole as the full hardware emulation suites even though you're not actually emulating any hardware with containers.
- slig 14y ago
  Why would anyone rip old shows/movies from netflix when mostly likely they were already ripped couple of years ago from HD sources?
  - engtech 14y ago
    Ripped from a source you have legal access is undetectable in most cases. Downloading a copy over the net that someone else ripped can be detectable. That being said, I agree that piracy is just piracy. In my mind grabbing something from bittorrent/usenet is the same as using a VPN provider to stream from a different country, is the same as watching an illegal streamed copy on some website, is the same as ripping a copy from a friend/public library. Did you pay to access it? Does the copyright holder make it freely available? No? Then it's piracy.
- chuppo 14y ago
  Silverlight uses PlayDRM which can exist standalone. Samsung SmartTVs have PlayDRM. Its a microsoft thing.
Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
No! Silverlight & WINE? Horrible! I would have preferred pure HTML5 solution. Btw. I just cancelled my Netflix account a few months ago and told them to have fun with their MS Silverlight.
- zanny 14y ago
  In Netflixes defence, they are dealing with an intrenched, politically influential, and absurdly powerful media sector that is used to monopolistic business and bleeding customers dry on their terms. Any ground netflix takes is given hesitantly, and their use of Silverlight was probably a mandate by some suits who thought Flash was too vulnerable to people taking their precious ones and zeros and saving them outside the app.
  - shitlord 14y ago
    It's kind of funny how dedicated they are to securely rendering the video when you can just screen capture and record whatever you are watching. It would be incredibly inefficient to do so, but I could see ways to improve and replicate this approach (like doing this on multiple computers, etc.). You will just end up with the same result.
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      Or just download the end result that someone else has already prepared. Content providers are complete idiots.
  - kokey 14y ago
    Yup, Lovefilm was also forced to switch to Silverlight. The content providers haven't learned anything from the mistakes of the music industry. This is going to end badly for them.
    - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
      Amazon Video (who coincidentally owns Lovefilm) uses Flash and continues to do so; so I'm not entirely convinced that the studios were the major role in Loveflim's switch.
derleth 14y ago
Here's how you build Wine on a 64-bit system: http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOn64bit http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOn64bit On Ubuntu it involves chroot, because Wine is apparently fundamentally dependent on a 32-bit architecture. Probably related to it implementing the Win32 API.
- donniezazen 14y ago
  I have decided to hold on for them to create PPA.
gengstrand 14y ago
You can stream video on Ubuntu on Hulu right now without having to set up some custom wine/silverlight anything. Just point your web browser to Hulu and start watching.
goggles99 14y ago
I am surprised that there is no Netflix for Boxee/Android reverse engineering taking place. Both Linux devices with fully working Netflix clients and no WINE.
- ajasmin 14y ago
  It may not be legal to copy the code from these devices onto your Ubuntu PC or redistribute it on the Internet. Both Firefox and Silverlight are available for download.
  - goggles99 14y ago
    I did not suggest copying code (the code that I am referring to is not open source anyway), I suggested reverse engineering.
wazoox 14y ago
> ./configure && make && make install Don't do that. Particularly don't do that on Ubuntu, this is a pretty sure way to break something. Build a Debian package, it's not that hard. For example, use "checkinstall", it'll build automatically one for you.
- bradly 14y ago
  For the casual Linux user, can you explain why './configure && make && make install' is a bad idea? Thanks.
  - josephlord 14y ago
    Someone else can probably explain more issues but how are you going to remove it or update it later?
  - derleth 14y ago
    > For the casual Linux user, can you explain why './configure && make && make install' is a bad idea? Thanks. It isn't necessarily, given that the Autotools configure installs to /usr/local by default, which is a directory tree explicitly reserved for installation of software outside the package system. Installing shared libraries can cause problems, but that's rare because shared libraries are versioned in Linux, as opposed to Windows, which greatly reduces the incidence of DLL Hell. In short, a program might find a shared library that isn't the one it wants, but it very likely won't. Similarly, installing your own executable files might cause problems for scripts. This could be more serious, but, in practice, I've installed a newer version of Perl outside the package system and everything works fine. The biggest hassle of doing things outside the package system is the simple fact you don't have the package managers doing the scutwork for you. You have to do your own dependency tracking, your own configuration, and your own update management. There is no really easy way to uninstall anything. You quickly come to realize why we have package management in the first place, if you really go nuts with this stuff. ;) So. The easy advice here is "Wait for the PPA", which the post itself mentions a few times. That will give you a nice little package, albeit not one from the official repos. I do that with VLC and couldn't be happier. But doing this little dance with Wine, building it yourself, is unlikely to cause problems if you follow the instructions.
piokoch 14y ago
This post is an excellent explanation why Linux on desktops is as rare as unicorns. Imagine average computer user (consumer?), who see such post. Breaking news! Yada, Yada. And then ./configure && make && sudo make install From the PR point of view it would be better if such Netflix port was never done, such news would never be written. Someone potentially interested in installing Ubuntu would come accross such news and I bet this person would never look again at Ubuntu or any other Linux.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  To be fair this isn't the usual way to install things on Ubuntu. It's a dirty hack for running a program intended for Windows. I've installed stuff on Windows in the past that was clearly developed with a Unix in mind and it's just as painful.
- reidrac 14y ago
  "Get Firefox and Microsoft Silverlight working in WINE." IMHO that's the stinky part of it. Saying "Netflix on Ubuntu is Here" is misleading when you're actually using a special version of a compatibility layer* to run the Windows version. That's far from Netflix supporting Linux. * that's what the compiling part is about, if you read the post there's a notice about packages being released soon. EDIT: WINE is not an emulator.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    I think it's because the person publishing this is excited for being able to finally watch the Netflix they pay a subscription for on their preferred OS.
- ksikka 14y ago
  This shows an excellent reason for why a consumer might want to run linux: you can drive your computer in stick-shift. It's not for most consumers, but for the few who use it, it works well for them.
- vidarh 14y ago
  And we all know cars are as rare as unicorns too because you can pop the hood and make changes.
y4m4 14y ago
This is awesome!
ecubed 14y ago
No, no its not. Netflix works with WINE. When you install Ubuntu, and Netflix works out of the box, then Netflix on Ubuntu will be here.
sspiff 14y ago
I wouldn't call building a patched version of WINE to run the Windows version "working on Ubuntu", sadly.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  I would - as someone who owns zero Windows machines, this means that I can actually use Netflix as opposed to - well, not. Amusingly, this was literally the last thing that I still wasn't able to do on Linux that I wanted to - GNU/Linux is a fully capable OS, but DRM is quite a nuisance.
  - sspiff 14y ago
    There are two things I miss on Linux: my collection of games and half of my battery life. I do virtually everything on Linux, but when on the road or in the mood for a game, well, there's not much of a choice.
linpythio 14y ago
Multimedia and game are linux's weakness.
ksikka 14y ago
I'm sure linux users are going to pay 8$ a month to watch old videos when they can just... Netflix is more for the Windows and Mac kind anyway. I can see why they are not too concerned about the market of linux users their missing out on.
- imglorp 14y ago
  I pay for Netflix because I feel it's an okay value to get a few things I like to watch. I don't mind paying a reasonable price for media, but in exchange I want it when I want, on the device I want. I don't blame NF here, I blame the content holders. In addition to restricting what I watch, the content holders are also only selling half to NF. Most series they'll sell a few seasons and reserve the rest locked up, hoping you'll buy a disk from them. Suck.
edtechdev 14y ago
Netflix: ‘No Change in our plans for Linux’ http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-plans-for-linux http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-...
- imglorp 14y ago
  That's just Bollocks. And by bollocks I mean: another anti-consumer business deal. There are NF clients for PC, Android, ChromeOS, Xbox, PS3, Wii, AppleTV, iPhone, and iPad, at least. They're using webkit and HTML5 under the client covers[1,2]. They're a heavily invested open source company and they use and publish tons of source code and open API's for developers [3,4]. Conclusion? They will lose some media deals if they offer a Linux port. Sucks to be us. 1. http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/netflix-platforms-apps-webkit-testing.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/netflix-platforms-apps-webk... 2. http://techblog.netflix.com/search?q=webkit http://techblog.netflix.com/search?q=webkit 3. http://techblog.netflix.com/search/label/api http://techblog.netflix.com/search/label/api 4. https://github.com/Netflix https://github.com/Netflix
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > They will lose some media deals if they offer a Linux port. To be honest, no, they won't. In fact, they'll likely lose some if they do. They've been able to sell some media execs on the (false) premise that Silverlight == DRM == security == anti-piracy, so as long as Silverlight's DRM remains unavailable on Linux (ie, until the end of time), they won't offer official support on Linux. The alternatives for them would be to a) use Silverlight, but without DRM so that Linux users can use Moonlight. b) use Flash c) use some other technology (A) will never happen because they'll lose all their deals. (B) will never happen for the same reason. (C) will never happen because it would take too much time to roll something from scratch, and even then you have the same problem of DRM. So, at the end of the day, DRM once again gives users every incentive to pirate rather than pay!
    - tomrod 14y ago
      Yep[0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_unintended_consequences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_unintended_consequences
dmritard96 14y ago
My understanding is that netflix uses silverlight for DRM reasons. What I don't understand though is how this drm is effective or why there aren't popular tools (I am guess there actually are tools though) that circumvent this DRM. Fundamentally, there is a buffer for your screen where the content is being written with a 4 bytes or so per pixel right? Presumably there is something similar with audio? To me it seems like the best way to avoid all of this DRM garbage is to make effective ripping programs. If you did it right you could even use it as a dvr and then watch your media offline locally.
- byuu 14y ago
  Even if you could rip at the raw 24bpp RGB output and streaming audio, you are talking 356MByte/s (20GByte/m) of data for 1080p. People want the original streams because they have already been nicely compressed. Now sure, you can then recompress this stream, if your CPU is able to compress it in real time as Netflix sends it to you. You'll double your compression artifacts, and any dropped frames compensating for your CPU speed or bandwidth will be lost forever. The end result will probably be between VHS and camrip in terms of quality. If someone really wants a rip, it's easier to get the decrypted form from a DVD or Bluray. Plenty of people have already done the work packaging most stuff like this anyway.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > What I don't understand though is how this drm is effective or why there aren't popular tools (I am guess there actually are tools though) that circumvent this DRM Because there's no point - Netflix's selection is limited enough that it's still easier and faster (and less work) to pirate the content from DVD rips (available on Bittorrent, etc.), in which case you get the added benefit of much higher quality. In other words, the only reason that Netflix isn't used for piracy is because the platform is still "inferior" to the existing piracy options already available!
jlarocco 14y ago
Or you can sign up for Amazon Prime and use their streaming service, which works on Linux without jumping through hoops. If you're willing to pay for individual movies/shows (in addition to the $79 a year), Prime even has a much better selection than Netflix.
- paulgb 14y ago
  Only if you're American. Netflix works in a number of other countries.
  - smackfu 14y ago
    With varying amounts of content.
- therobot24 14y ago
  not sure i agree with you - Prime has a decent selection, but is organized in a very frustrating way compared with Netflix. While netflix bundles tv-show seasons, you find yourself adding season after season to your 'watch list' on prime (which they only recently implemented - before that you didn't even have a queue). Also, their Roku/PS3 apps are much more painful to navigate with repeated movies (the standard def version and HD version), fewer categories, and i've often had problems where the movie/show will cut out consistently. More or less if i can't find the show/movie on netflix i'll search prime, but other than that, prime is best for the 2-day shipping.
- timskinner 14y ago
  Unfortunately Amazon's DRM requires HAL, which is deprecated and has been removed from most modern distributions.
QuarkSpark 14y ago
It's a pity it doesn't work for 64-bit systems
bgilroy26 14y ago
Is it possible to run the netflix app in an android emulator on an average machine?

169 points by cleverjake 14y ago

It's so great that this is available now. Reading the title I was hoping Netflix had stepped up and made this work, but no. It's frustrating that it needs to work this way, running through wine with multiple patches but at least it works.

stenius 14y ago

for about 10 seconds I was thinking about restarting my Netflix sub. Then I read part of the article and found it wasn't a native solution or Netflix who was stepping up.

w1ntermute 14y ago
Their loss. There's certainly no dearth of torrent clients for Linux.
javert 14y ago
I'm in the exact same situation.

faucet 14y ago

Next stop - Lovefilm (amazon) as they use silverlight based solution too.

jlgreco 14y ago

I thought the idea behind Netflix using Silverlight (instead of flash, which would presumably allow Netflix to normally work in Linux, like youtube or amazon instant video) was that Silverlight had super-duper DRM stuff that did nonsense with TPM. If it works with WINE, I am guessing the situation is not quite that simple?

pudquick 14y ago
Considering Netflix works in Windows on machines without a TPM (it is a hardware device), not sure where you got that idea.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I wasn't aware that it did. My only personal experience with Netflix on windows was Netflix being very very strict about my windows installation being up to date and verified (or whatever the terminology was). This was 2007/2008 or abouts though. Is there a reason then that they use Silverlight instead of flash?
zanny 14y ago
Netflix didn't use Silverlight because it had extremely good DRM, but because nobody used it nobody had taken the time to reverse engineer it so getting the raw video files out of Netflix would be harder. Most computers don't have TPMs but Netflix runs on any Windows OS that has Silverlight. In the end, it is still software using the Win32 API, it just required implementing some Microsoft-specific functionality they had going on. I do wonder how the Netflix apps not on Microsoft platforms work though. The Android, iOS, and game console versions mainly.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Ah, interesting. I suppose they probably haven't re-evaluated that decision because they don't really have a compelling reason to care. When the Netflix android application came out I had high hopes for Netflix on desktop GNU-ish/Linux, particularly when I learned that the Netflix application would work on rooted/otherwise open android phones. That hasn't happened though, so I guess either nobody has bothered to see that through, they got hit with law stuff, or for some reason it isn't technically feasible.
- derleth 14y ago
  > software using the Win32 API Which is all Wine provides, hence the name: Wine Is Not an Emulator. (Alternately, I guess you could insist that glibc is a POSIX emulator on top of the OS kernel.) (My point? All of a sudden I need a point? When did that happen?)
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    WINE is not an emulator... and GNU is not Unix ;) For most intents and purposes they both smell the same, but the devil is in the details.
  - laumars 14y ago
    Technically WINE provides more than just Win32 APIs, but essentially you're right. WINE is more a compatibility layer / wrapper for PEs than an emulator. In fact, I often make the container distinction: you have containers (Zones / Jails / OpenVZ) and you have virtual machines (VMWare / Vbox / Qemu / etc). WINE falls more into the containers category because it runs Windows PE natively on the host but in a sandboxed environment (and in an approximate sense of the term, chrooted) but with hooks that go between the host and client. But, like with WINE, many lump containers into the virtualisation pigeon-hole as the full hardware emulation suites even though you're not actually emulating any hardware with containers.
slig 14y ago
Why would anyone rip old shows/movies from netflix when mostly likely they were already ripped couple of years ago from HD sources?
- engtech 14y ago
  Ripped from a source you have legal access is undetectable in most cases. Downloading a copy over the net that someone else ripped can be detectable. That being said, I agree that piracy is just piracy. In my mind grabbing something from bittorrent/usenet is the same as using a VPN provider to stream from a different country, is the same as watching an illegal streamed copy on some website, is the same as ripping a copy from a friend/public library. Did you pay to access it? Does the copyright holder make it freely available? No? Then it's piracy.
chuppo 14y ago
Silverlight uses PlayDRM which can exist standalone. Samsung SmartTVs have PlayDRM. Its a microsoft thing.

Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago

No! Silverlight & WINE? Horrible! I would have preferred pure HTML5 solution. Btw. I just cancelled my Netflix account a few months ago and told them to have fun with their MS Silverlight.

zanny 14y ago
In Netflixes defence, they are dealing with an intrenched, politically influential, and absurdly powerful media sector that is used to monopolistic business and bleeding customers dry on their terms. Any ground netflix takes is given hesitantly, and their use of Silverlight was probably a mandate by some suits who thought Flash was too vulnerable to people taking their precious ones and zeros and saving them outside the app.
- shitlord 14y ago
  It's kind of funny how dedicated they are to securely rendering the video when you can just screen capture and record whatever you are watching. It would be incredibly inefficient to do so, but I could see ways to improve and replicate this approach (like doing this on multiple computers, etc.). You will just end up with the same result.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    Or just download the end result that someone else has already prepared. Content providers are complete idiots.
- kokey 14y ago
  Yup, Lovefilm was also forced to switch to Silverlight. The content providers haven't learned anything from the mistakes of the music industry. This is going to end badly for them.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    Amazon Video (who coincidentally owns Lovefilm) uses Flash and continues to do so; so I'm not entirely convinced that the studios were the major role in Loveflim's switch.

derleth 14y ago

Here's how you build Wine on a 64-bit system: http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOn64bit http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOn64bit On Ubuntu it involves chroot, because Wine is apparently fundamentally dependent on a 32-bit architecture. Probably related to it implementing the Win32 API.

donniezazen 14y ago
I have decided to hold on for them to create PPA.

gengstrand 14y ago

You can stream video on Ubuntu on Hulu right now without having to set up some custom wine/silverlight anything. Just point your web browser to Hulu and start watching.

goggles99 14y ago

I am surprised that there is no Netflix for Boxee/Android reverse engineering taking place. Both Linux devices with fully working Netflix clients and no WINE.

ajasmin 14y ago
It may not be legal to copy the code from these devices onto your Ubuntu PC or redistribute it on the Internet. Both Firefox and Silverlight are available for download.
- goggles99 14y ago
  I did not suggest copying code (the code that I am referring to is not open source anyway), I suggested reverse engineering.

wazoox 14y ago

> ./configure && make && make install Don't do that. Particularly don't do that on Ubuntu, this is a pretty sure way to break something. Build a Debian package, it's not that hard. For example, use "checkinstall", it'll build automatically one for you.

bradly 14y ago
For the casual Linux user, can you explain why './configure && make && make install' is a bad idea? Thanks.
- josephlord 14y ago
  Someone else can probably explain more issues but how are you going to remove it or update it later?
- derleth 14y ago
  > For the casual Linux user, can you explain why './configure && make && make install' is a bad idea? Thanks. It isn't necessarily, given that the Autotools configure installs to /usr/local by default, which is a directory tree explicitly reserved for installation of software outside the package system. Installing shared libraries can cause problems, but that's rare because shared libraries are versioned in Linux, as opposed to Windows, which greatly reduces the incidence of DLL Hell. In short, a program might find a shared library that isn't the one it wants, but it very likely won't. Similarly, installing your own executable files might cause problems for scripts. This could be more serious, but, in practice, I've installed a newer version of Perl outside the package system and everything works fine. The biggest hassle of doing things outside the package system is the simple fact you don't have the package managers doing the scutwork for you. You have to do your own dependency tracking, your own configuration, and your own update management. There is no really easy way to uninstall anything. You quickly come to realize why we have package management in the first place, if you really go nuts with this stuff. ;) So. The easy advice here is "Wait for the PPA", which the post itself mentions a few times. That will give you a nice little package, albeit not one from the official repos. I do that with VLC and couldn't be happier. But doing this little dance with Wine, building it yourself, is unlikely to cause problems if you follow the instructions.

piokoch 14y ago

This post is an excellent explanation why Linux on desktops is as rare as unicorns. Imagine average computer user (consumer?), who see such post. Breaking news! Yada, Yada. And then ./configure && make && sudo make install From the PR point of view it would be better if such Netflix port was never done, such news would never be written. Someone potentially interested in installing Ubuntu would come accross such news and I bet this person would never look again at Ubuntu or any other Linux.

jiggy2011 14y ago
To be fair this isn't the usual way to install things on Ubuntu. It's a dirty hack for running a program intended for Windows. I've installed stuff on Windows in the past that was clearly developed with a Unix in mind and it's just as painful.
reidrac 14y ago
"Get Firefox and Microsoft Silverlight working in WINE." IMHO that's the stinky part of it. Saying "Netflix on Ubuntu is Here" is misleading when you're actually using a special version of a compatibility layer* to run the Windows version. That's far from Netflix supporting Linux. * that's what the compiling part is about, if you read the post there's a notice about packages being released soon. EDIT: WINE is not an emulator.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  I think it's because the person publishing this is excited for being able to finally watch the Netflix they pay a subscription for on their preferred OS.
ksikka 14y ago
This shows an excellent reason for why a consumer might want to run linux: you can drive your computer in stick-shift. It's not for most consumers, but for the few who use it, it works well for them.
vidarh 14y ago
And we all know cars are as rare as unicorns too because you can pop the hood and make changes.

y4m4 14y ago

This is awesome!

ecubed 14y ago

No, no its not. Netflix works with WINE. When you install Ubuntu, and Netflix works out of the box, then Netflix on Ubuntu will be here.

sspiff 14y ago

I wouldn't call building a patched version of WINE to run the Windows version "working on Ubuntu", sadly.

chimeracoder 14y ago
I would - as someone who owns zero Windows machines, this means that I can actually use Netflix as opposed to - well, not. Amusingly, this was literally the last thing that I still wasn't able to do on Linux that I wanted to - GNU/Linux is a fully capable OS, but DRM is quite a nuisance.
- sspiff 14y ago
  There are two things I miss on Linux: my collection of games and half of my battery life. I do virtually everything on Linux, but when on the road or in the mood for a game, well, there's not much of a choice.

linpythio 14y ago

Multimedia and game are linux's weakness.

ksikka 14y ago

I'm sure linux users are going to pay 8$ a month to watch old videos when they can just... Netflix is more for the Windows and Mac kind anyway. I can see why they are not too concerned about the market of linux users their missing out on.

imglorp 14y ago
I pay for Netflix because I feel it's an okay value to get a few things I like to watch. I don't mind paying a reasonable price for media, but in exchange I want it when I want, on the device I want. I don't blame NF here, I blame the content holders. In addition to restricting what I watch, the content holders are also only selling half to NF. Most series they'll sell a few seasons and reserve the rest locked up, hoping you'll buy a disk from them. Suck.

edtechdev 14y ago

Netflix: ‘No Change in our plans for Linux’ http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-plans-for-linux http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-...

imglorp 14y ago
That's just Bollocks. And by bollocks I mean: another anti-consumer business deal. There are NF clients for PC, Android, ChromeOS, Xbox, PS3, Wii, AppleTV, iPhone, and iPad, at least. They're using webkit and HTML5 under the client covers[1,2]. They're a heavily invested open source company and they use and publish tons of source code and open API's for developers [3,4]. Conclusion? They will lose some media deals if they offer a Linux port. Sucks to be us. 1. http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/netflix-platforms-apps-webkit-testing.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/netflix-platforms-apps-webk... 2. http://techblog.netflix.com/search?q=webkit http://techblog.netflix.com/search?q=webkit 3. http://techblog.netflix.com/search/label/api http://techblog.netflix.com/search/label/api 4. https://github.com/Netflix https://github.com/Netflix
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > They will lose some media deals if they offer a Linux port. To be honest, no, they won't. In fact, they'll likely lose some if they do. They've been able to sell some media execs on the (false) premise that Silverlight == DRM == security == anti-piracy, so as long as Silverlight's DRM remains unavailable on Linux (ie, until the end of time), they won't offer official support on Linux. The alternatives for them would be to a) use Silverlight, but without DRM so that Linux users can use Moonlight. b) use Flash c) use some other technology (A) will never happen because they'll lose all their deals. (B) will never happen for the same reason. (C) will never happen because it would take too much time to roll something from scratch, and even then you have the same problem of DRM. So, at the end of the day, DRM once again gives users every incentive to pirate rather than pay!
  - tomrod 14y ago
    Yep[0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_unintended_consequences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_unintended_consequences

dmritard96 14y ago

My understanding is that netflix uses silverlight for DRM reasons. What I don't understand though is how this drm is effective or why there aren't popular tools (I am guess there actually are tools though) that circumvent this DRM. Fundamentally, there is a buffer for your screen where the content is being written with a 4 bytes or so per pixel right? Presumably there is something similar with audio? To me it seems like the best way to avoid all of this DRM garbage is to make effective ripping programs. If you did it right you could even use it as a dvr and then watch your media offline locally.

byuu 14y ago
Even if you could rip at the raw 24bpp RGB output and streaming audio, you are talking 356MByte/s (20GByte/m) of data for 1080p. People want the original streams because they have already been nicely compressed. Now sure, you can then recompress this stream, if your CPU is able to compress it in real time as Netflix sends it to you. You'll double your compression artifacts, and any dropped frames compensating for your CPU speed or bandwidth will be lost forever. The end result will probably be between VHS and camrip in terms of quality. If someone really wants a rip, it's easier to get the decrypted form from a DVD or Bluray. Plenty of people have already done the work packaging most stuff like this anyway.
chimeracoder 14y ago
> What I don't understand though is how this drm is effective or why there aren't popular tools (I am guess there actually are tools though) that circumvent this DRM Because there's no point - Netflix's selection is limited enough that it's still easier and faster (and less work) to pirate the content from DVD rips (available on Bittorrent, etc.), in which case you get the added benefit of much higher quality. In other words, the only reason that Netflix isn't used for piracy is because the platform is still "inferior" to the existing piracy options already available!

jlarocco 14y ago

Or you can sign up for Amazon Prime and use their streaming service, which works on Linux without jumping through hoops. If you're willing to pay for individual movies/shows (in addition to the $79 a year), Prime even has a much better selection than Netflix.

paulgb 14y ago
Only if you're American. Netflix works in a number of other countries.
- smackfu 14y ago
  With varying amounts of content.
therobot24 14y ago
not sure i agree with you - Prime has a decent selection, but is organized in a very frustrating way compared with Netflix. While netflix bundles tv-show seasons, you find yourself adding season after season to your 'watch list' on prime (which they only recently implemented - before that you didn't even have a queue). Also, their Roku/PS3 apps are much more painful to navigate with repeated movies (the standard def version and HD version), fewer categories, and i've often had problems where the movie/show will cut out consistently. More or less if i can't find the show/movie on netflix i'll search prime, but other than that, prime is best for the 2-day shipping.
timskinner 14y ago
Unfortunately Amazon's DRM requires HAL, which is deprecated and has been removed from most modern distributions.

QuarkSpark 14y ago

It's a pity it doesn't work for 64-bit systems

bgilroy26 14y ago

Is it possible to run the netflix app in an android emulator on an average machine?