Streaming services that don't reduce quality simply because you're on Linux 🥲

Hello everyone :wave:

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 :poop: businesses.

My experience so far:

  • Netflix :x:
  • Prime video :x:
  • Disney :white_check_mark:
  • Spotify (of course!) :white_check_mark:

Curious to know which ones you have had good experience with so far! :thinking:

1 Like

You can lie and say you are windows with user-agent switcher .
You can say window 11 mozilla and it works.

User-Agent Switcher

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.

  • Also changes navigator.userAgent, as well generating convincing values for several of the other navigator.* properties.
1 Like

Thanks, I will try this :white_check_mark:

Doesn’t work on Prime Video unfortunately!
The play button shows a spinner :smiling_face_with_tear:

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.

1 Like

Thanks Larry, I will have to see how this works inside bottles, don’t want wine on my host machine :dizzy:

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 :face_with_peeking_eye:

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 :slight_smile:
PS: A practical solution could be simply plugging HDMI to a cheap tablet/phone/whatever and watch it.

1 Like

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 :frowning: 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. :sweat_smile: