Adding Netflix to PCLinux? HOW TO DO IT

[YouCanToo]

Yes, Nothing but sound and a black screen.  I also have tried it from the command line, it does run, but it is very jerky and is stopping all the time and then plays a bit and stops again.  I ran a speed test on my internet line and am getting 9.55Mbps.  That should well be fast enough to stream without always having to stop and buffer the video.

Looks like it may have a layer bug....  try maximizing and un maximizing the window... do it reload the vid so you can see it?

Didn't do a thing for it. I did notice that the plugin container maxes out my cpu.  I tried installing Netflix on another machine. I can start it and get as far as selecting a movie to see but when it starts to buffer it pops up and error about the plugin crashing.  Maybe I am just not suppose to watch movies over the net 

[newbi462]

What are your system specs?

[YouCanToo]

What are your system specs?

Mobile AMD  Processor 3400+  1.8 GB
Radeon Xpress 200M
Atheros Wireless Network Adapter [AR5005G(S) 802.11bg]
Memory 2GB DDR2 - upgradable to 4GB
Replaced 5400 rpm drive with a SSD

[newbi462]

Do you have 2GB or 4GB of ram? sounds like your saying 2 but you could have 4 if you wanted?

Is you SSD one that has the delete error, where as it is written to it eventually needed to take time to purge old files it never actually deindexed?

If you only have 2GB that may be the problem... this app seems to be a bit of a resource hog so my guess is you could not do much else and it run well with only 2GB more so if your having to use the SWAP on a Hard Drive that is involved with background stuff... But kind of guessing here...

[newbi462]

Is there some functionality made available by going through this procedure, that is not available using the plugin/extension   "Media Hint" ?

I don't have a Netflix account so have no experience of using Media Hint for Netflix, but others have reported it working ......  even from outside the USA.

The point of this package is to deal with the fact that the Netflix site uses SILVERLIGHT. While Moonlight helps with non DRM stuff Netflix uses the DRM, and MS stoped working with Moonlight so that is never going to work for that.

There is no ver of Silverlight for Linux.... while this app is basically a glorified WINE instance, it is one with all the pre-tweak done for you. You can get there other ways, though "Media Hint" is not one of them, just this is more one click solution.

[Just17]

Is there some functionality made available by going through this procedure, that is not available using the plugin/extension   "Media Hint" ?

I don't have a Netflix account so have no experience of using Media Hint for Netflix, but others have reported it working ......  even from outside the USA.

The point of this package is to deal with the fact that the Netflix site uses SILVERLIGHT. While Moonlight helps with non DRM stuff Netflix uses the DRM, and MS stoped working with Moonlight so that is never going to work for that.

There is no ver of Silverlight for Linux.... while this app is basically a glorified WINE instance, it is one with all the pre-tweak done for you. You can get there other ways, though "Media Hint" is not one of them, just this is more one click solution.

Thanks for the info 

When does the Silverlight requirement kick in?  When something is selected to watch?

The whole site does not require it apparently, as I can access the site ....  but as I said I don't have an account so cannot attempt to watch anything.

[YouCanToo]

Do you have 2GB or 4GB of ram? sounds like your saying 2 but you could have 4 if you wanted?

2GB

Is you SSD one that has the delete error, where as it is written to it eventually needed to take time to purge old files it never actually deindexed?

No

If you only have 2GB that may be the problem... this app seems to be a bit of a resource hog so my guess is you could not do much else and it run well with only 2GB more so if your having to use the SWAP on a Hard Drive that is involved with background stuff... But kind of guessing here...

Mem:   1942756k total,  1770808k used,   171948k free,   141372k buffers
Swap:  2136608k total,    15224k used,  2121384k free,   830416k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                  
12853 dwmoar    20   0 1848m 127m  17m S 63.2 6.7   0:47.11 plugin-container          
10038 dwmoar    20   0  438m 153m  31m S  8.6  8.1   1:55.21 firefox.exe                  
12706 dwmoar    20   0  7084 4444  720 R  7.3  0.2   0:08.08 wineserver

I guess that I could swap out the hard drive and put in the 7200rpm one, to see if that makes any difference.

UPDATE:

I swapped out the hard drives and installed Netflix on the old 7200rpm hard drive.  Now I am back to the black screen and have sound. The CPU is max out still at 99%.

Mem:   1934828k total,  1811228k used,   123600k free,    34944k buffers
Swap:  2096444k total,      120k used,  2096324k free,   958312k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                             
 6709 dwmoar     7   0 1846m 143m  17m R 84.8  7.6   1:04.52 plugin-container                                     
 6563 dwmoar     3   0  7556 4728  720 S  5.6  0.2   0:10.95 wineserver                                         
 4181 dwmoar     1   0 39396  11m 8720 S  2.6  0.6   0:54.45 gkrellm                                             
 1019 root       1   0 1163m  80m  20m S  1.3  4.2   0:52.76 X                                                   
 4072 dwmoar     1   0  291m  56m  28m S  1.3  3.0   0:23.83 plasma-desktop                                     
 6560 dwmoar     1   0 1763m  92m  10m S  0.7  4.9   0:17.35 firefox.exe

[newbi462]

Like I said I was guessing... but if those are your usage stats should not be the case.... so not sure then...

[muungwana]

When does the Silverlight requirement kick in?  When something is selected to watch?

The whole site does not require it apparently, as I can access the site ....  but as I said I don't have an account so cannot attempt to watch anything.

Videos are presented through a silverlight object.You can browse the website normally without silverlight installed,you just cant watch any videos.

When you click a video to watch a silverlight object shows up to display the video,then you will be prompted to accept microsoft DRM component and then the video will start to play. You need two things,silverlight and microsoft DRM in silverlight. I do not know if they are shipped together but the fact that the silverlight plugin starts and then you are prompted for the DRM later seem like silverlight does not ship with the DRM and it get installed on demand or it ships with it but its off by default.

You only need to accept the DRM once so its a one time thing.

Its plays here but its struggles too much to be watchable but i think my computer specs are mostly to blame.

My congrats to these guys.

[Just17]

When does the Silverlight requirement kick in?  When something is selected to watch?

The whole site does not require it apparently, as I can access the site ....  but as I said I don't have an account so cannot attempt to watch anything.

Videos are presented through a silverlight object.You can browse the website normally without silverlight installed,you just cant watch any videos.

When you click a video to watch a silverlight object shows up to display the video,then you will be prompted to accept microsoft DRM component and then the video will start to play. You need two things,silverlight and microsoft DRM in silverlight. I do not know if they are shipped together but the fact that the silverlight plugin starts and then you are prompted for the DRM later seem like silverlight does not ship with the DRM and it get installed on demand or it ships with it but its off by default.

You only need to accept the DRM once so its a one time thing.

Its plays here but its struggles too much to be watchable but i think my computer specs are mostly to blame.

My congrats to these guys.

Thanks for the full explanation     appreciated!

[jaydot]

ladles and jellyspoons, you are aware that by installing non-repo packages you render your install non-standard and therefore unsupportable here?

might i suggest a request in packages suggest?

[ThirdOfSix]

Hmmm, perhaps I spoke too soon. This morning I went to use it and all I get is a black screen with sound.

You are describing what happens when silverlight crashes.

I run NetFlix on a virtual XP install in virtualbox.

If I change the size of the display while a movie is running, it will frequently go black screen with no sound. The only way to get it working again is to restart Firefox which restarts silverlight.

Sometimes when it crashes, it comes up with a window after a bit that announces that silverlight has crashed and asks if I want to send in a report.


It seems like it happens less after applying the silverlight update yesterday.

I suspect that the version of silverlight bundled with that custom firefox instance used in the package you guys are running is now outdated.

But, what do I know, maybe it still updates with the setup you are using.

I am content to stick with running it in Virtual XP as I need it to run my Canon scanner anyway.

[YouCanToo]

Hmmm, perhaps I spoke too soon. This morning I went to use it and all I get is a black screen with sound.

You are describing what happens when silverlight crashes.

I run NetFlix on a virtual XP install in virtualbox.

If I change the size of the display while a movie is running, it will frequently go black screen with no sound. The only way to get it working again is to restart Firefox which restarts silverlight.

Sometimes when it crashes, it comes up with a window after a bit that announces that silverlight has crashed and asks if I want to send in a report.


It seems like it happens less after applying the silverlight update yesterday.

I suspect that the version of silverlight bundled with that custom firefox instance used in the package you guys are running is now outdated.

But, what do I know, maybe it still updates with the setup you are using.

I am content to stick with running it in Virtual XP as I need it to run my Canon scanner anyway.

I got the same thing running in VBox also. Sometime I will get a black screen and sound, sometimes just a black screen and sometime is it runs but very jittery. Too bad Netfilx can't figure out a way to have a native Linux Player,  maybe it just isn't possible..............

[Rudge]

ladles and jellyspoons, you are aware that by installing non-repo packages you render your install non-standard and therefore unsupportable here?

might i suggest a request in packages suggest?

Anyone new to PCLinuxOS should understand that the people who have tried this already know the consequences.

If you are new to PCLinuxOS or especially those new to LINUX in general should take jaydot's words to heart.

 

[bowmandm21]

Anyone new to PCLinuxOS should understand that the people who have tried this already know the consequences.
[/quote]

Excellent advice.

I am not new to PCLinuxOS. I keep bare metal restore images of my main Linux machine.

I followed the directions listed earlier. Netflix now works in Wine for me. I'm kind of excited about that.

Up to this point I have always run Netflix in VirtualBox, either in XP, Win7, or Win8 virtual machines. For some reason I always had a hard time getting the volume to go high enough in the Win7 virtual machine. In the Win8 virtual machine the volume is a lot higher when playing Netflix than in the Win7 virtual machine. Also, sometimes the video will get real choppy in either Win7 or XP. Rebooting the virtual machines will usually clear up the playback problems.

I have a fairly high end machine, with 16GB of DDR3 RAM, so I have a lot of overhead available 

Thanks for posting these Netflix instructions.