Hello everyone 
I’ve been experimenting with a few video streaming services but most of them IME reduces the resolution and bitrate of the stream simply because Linux.
I’ve been thinking not to patronize such 
businesses.
My experience so far:
Curious to know which ones you have had good experience with so far! 
You can lie and say you are windows with user-agent switcher .
You can say window 11 mozilla and it works.
Easily override the browser’s User-Agent string
Easily pose as another browser by changing the User-Agent header.*
Pretending to be a different browser can be useful in a number of different situations:
Some web pages require you to log in or buy a subscription to view their content, but give full read access to search engines.
Some web pages determine whether you’re using a mobile or desktop browser based on your user-agent.
Some web pages require you to use a specific browser to access their site.
And potentially more…
Note that your browser will not magically morph into a different piece of software just because it’s pretending to be some other software. If a web site locks you out because your browser does not support a feature they require then changing the User-Agent will not make any difference.
Thanks, I will try this
Doesn’t work on Prime Video unfortunately!
The play button shows a spinner 
Are you missing a plugin that is there in windows?
Or it might be a Windows DRM program trying to execute. Do you have wine installed to allow windows programs to run?
Install Windows Firefox in wine and see if that fixes it.
Thanks Larry, I will have to see how this works inside bottles, don’t want wine on my host machine 
You don’t want to patronize any businesses that treat Linux this way, but you’re ok just pretending you’re on Windows to get around the problem? I feel like doing stuff like that potentially hides the true number of Linux users from these companies.
YouTube (where you can also rent and “buy” movies) doesn’t reduce quality, as far as I know. I can do 4k 60fps in Firefox. Or at least, my computer says it’s happening - I don’t have a 4k monitor.
Canceled my Netflix subscription, it’s just Disney and Spotify now.
Can’t cancel Prime yet, Amazon’s got me with their convenience 
The economics of “buying” digital content that the streaming service can take away any time or renting for a short period never appealed to me though.
Have to try AppleTV next, not holding out much hope there but at least I have a backup in the form of a fire tv stick.
I have a lot of “expertise” here about the situation. The root cause is the servers/software at their side is unhappy about the “DRM level” of Linux. They assume every pirate will just install Linux and rip their HD content while pirates are traditionally using Windows to rip their content anyway.
It isn’t just the user agent. It is the result of the check results of this Encrypted Media Extensions - Wikipedia .
Even if you tailor a hugely restricted Linux using experimental tools etc, it is up to them whether to support it or not. E.g. Netflix will happily give 720P without hacks but Amazon Prime will cap itself to SD on the same configuration. That is why you don’t see people struggling to get it supported under Linux. It will create a huge fight to begin with.
I was just trying to figure whether if I can use “GPU sharing” (using virt-manager/intel g-vt etc) to get HD video via real Windows 11, but the virtual Windows managed to break itself 
PS: A practical solution could be simply plugging HDMI to a cheap tablet/phone/whatever and watch it.
Thanks, I don’t know much about this part of the web at all even though I’ve done basic CRUD app development for the web.
I know i wasnt crazy! any updates in this topic? really crappy companys that trate linux like this 
anyway, unless you’re in germany, streamio its a good but sketchy one.
Didn’t yet have the time to test more services, I will update the ticket as I test more. 
If you’re curious to test a site, open a console, and try this:
document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].videoHeight
You might need to change the 0 to other numbers to find the actual content.
OK I can hate on them all day, but credit where due, they will send video to me in whatever resolution I request: youtube.com
Not sure how that works with a paid youtube movies subscription.
For the aussies: Shout out to Kayo (that’s ESPN/Fox/Sky Sports, for upside-down folk). They go all the way up to 4K if the stream does. Almost everything is 1080p. Bit expensive but… you get what you pay for. Nice if you enjoy watching other people touch grass
I was about to mention stan , but it’s a good thing I checked, because they’ve joined prime at 480p and netflix at 720p to deliver you “HD” movies at 540p. That was 1080p when I checked just weeks ago. <Vader gif>
Apple are also sucky. IIRC it was 480p. It’s an offence to the movie Greyhound.
Good thread, OP. I am interested if anyone has advice on this… You know, aside from the usual advice lately: 
Remember when everyone stopped pirating movies because they could be had for a reasonable price? It was going so well…
Don’t even get me started on bitrate. Or a similar prejudice against firefox, or toward edge. 
Kinda surprised to see Disney on the good side! I’ll be checking them out first thing tomorrow, thanks OP!!
Yeh amazon are down to 480p for movies I paid to purchase in 4K, and could once watch in 1080p at least. Now, I own it and I can’t even watch it, and it wasn’t always this bad, they keep making the browser experience worse over time.
Literally amazon:
Wow, awesome stuff. Thanks!