Amazon Prime Instant Video Does Not Work

Bug #1296705 reported by TrombaMarina
30
This bug affects 6 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
adobe-flashplugin (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Expected experience: Click on the big "A" for Amazon icon, log into my Amazon account, and watch Prime Instant Videos.

Actual experience: Click on the big "A" for Amazon icon, log into my Amazon account, try to watch a Prime Instant Video and get a "you must upgrade your player" warning with a broken link. The broken link is Amazon's fault. The broken player is the issue I'm reporting.

Background and work-arounds (that have changed over time):
Every year it's harder to make Amazon Prime instant videos work. First they just worked in Chrome and Firefox. Then they only worked in Firefox (I think). In 12.04 you had to install hal[1]. In 12.10 or 13.04, hal was removed from the repositories and you had to add the ubuntu raring main universe repository[2]. Now, in 13.10 that doesn't work and you have to add ppa:mjblenner/ppa-hal [3]. I think this is just one guy maintaining some otherwise completely outdated software, just so that the rest of us can watch Amazon Instant Video.

On 13.10, all dash searches include Amazon by default. There's a big "A" for Amazon icon in the launcher. Yet, Prime videos don't work without fiddling at the command line based on following an ever-more-difficult set of steps outlined in forum comments. I'd love to see this fixed in 14.04.

I have 2 ubuntu systems that I've been upgrading over the years and just verified this with two separate clean installs on another system. It's not a bug in any one piece of software. I think it's more of a missed dependency and some code that needs to be added to one package (unknown) that used to be in hal. I'm guessing that's a more appropriate fix than including hal back in the primary Ubuntu repositories.

  [1]: http://askubuntu.com/questions/286297/is-there-a-work-around-to-get-protected-hulu-or-amazon-prime-instant-videos-work
  [2]: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2144347&p=12811464#post12811464
  [3]: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2144347&page=2&p=12874114#post12874114

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: firefox 28.0+build2-0ubuntu0.13.10.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-18.32-generic 3.11.10.4
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-18-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
AddonCompatCheckDisabled: False
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC2: gpeterso 2437 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC1: gpeterso 2437 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: gpeterso 2437 F.... pulseaudio
BuildID: 20140317233501
Channel: Unavailable
Date: Mon Mar 24 08:33:42 2014
ForcedLayersAccel: False
IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IncompatibleExtensions:
 English (GB) Language Pack - <email address hidden>
 English (South Africa) Language Pack - <email address hidden>
 Default - {972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-05-08 (685 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
IpRoute:
 default via 172.16.0.1 dev eth0 proto static
 72.32.210.89 via 172.16.0.1 dev eth0 src 172.16.0.101
 172.16.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 172.16.0.101 metric 1
 192.168.1.0/24 dev tun0 scope link
IwConfig:
 tun0 no wireless extensions.

 eth0 no wireless extensions.

 lo no wireless extensions.
MarkForUpload: True
PrefSources: prefs.js
Profiles: Profile0 (Default) - LastVersion=28.0/20140317233501 (In use)
RelatedPackageVersions:
 google-talkplugin 5.2.4.0-1
 icedtea-7-plugin 1.4-3ubuntu2.1
 totem-mozilla 3.8.2-0ubuntu1
RfKill:

RunningIncompatibleAddons: True
SourcePackage: firefox
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-11-30 (114 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 03/11/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.0c
dmi.board.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: C2SEA
dmi.board.vendor: Supermicro
dmi.board.version: 1234567890
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Supermicro
dmi.chassis.version: 1234567890
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr1.0c:bd03/11/2009:svnSupermicro:pnC2SEA:pvr1234567890:rvnSupermicro:rnC2SEA:rvr1234567890:cvnSupermicro:ct3:cvr1234567890:
dmi.product.name: C2SEA
dmi.product.version: 1234567890
dmi.sys.vendor: Supermicro

Revision history for this message
TrombaMarina (glen-organicdesign) wrote :
Revision history for this message
TrombaMarina (glen-organicdesign) wrote :

Here is a screen shot of the actual error. I didn't take the screen shot, but re-purposed it from here:
http://radio.mcdougallshome.net/software/amazon-instant-video-and-flash-update-fix/

That site uses the 12.04 instructions for working around the problem.

Revision history for this message
TrombaMarina (glen-organicdesign) wrote :

This may be helpful for figuring out the root cause of the issue. It's taken from my link #2 in this bug report. It is a way to test flash with this particular type of protected content. You can click a box on this page to open debugging information on the right-hand side of the screen, which I thought would be useful to someone who had the necessary knowledge of video encoding/flash/whatever to know what this debugging info meant and what to do about it:

test via:
http://drmtest2.adobe.com:8080/SVP/SampleVideoPlayer_FP.html

paste in this video url:
http://drmtest2.adobe.com:8080/Content/anonymous.f4v

When the test video of the train going through the tree-lined countryside works, then Amazon Instant movies work.

Revision history for this message
TrombaMarina (glen-organicdesign) wrote :

I have verified this issue on 3 systems. 2 32-bit systems, and one 64-bit system (where I reported this error from). One 32-bit system is a Lenovo laptop, I think with an ATI video card, the other two are desktops with nVidia cards. I can't remember now which version of hal I installed on the 64-bit system. Sorry.

affects: firefox (Ubuntu) → adobe-flashplugin (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in adobe-flashplugin (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
T_W (walshtc) wrote :

I seem to have gotten this working in 14.04

I followed the standard workarounds from http://askubuntu.com/questions/362259/how-to-watch-videos-in-amazon-prime-instant-video

Then I noticed that apparmor was DENYING firefox some access. From syslog:

Jun 3 22:54:17 xxxxx kernel: [194199.783739] type=1400 audit(1401850457.516:7270): apparmor="DENIED" operation="file_mmap" profile="/usr/lib/firefox/firefox{,*[^s][^h]}" name="/home/xxxx/.adobe/Flash_Player/NativeCache/xxxxxx/xxxxx/libadobecp-301806-1.so" pid=9145 comm="plugin-containe" requested_mask="m" denied_mask="m" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000

So I added the following to my /etc/apparmor.d/local/usr.bin.firefox

@{HOME}/.adobe/** lrwkm,

And it started working. Looks like the 14.04 firefox apparmor profile disrupts Flash DRM.

Revision history for this message
Jeff Trull (jetrull) wrote :

Thanks T_W for that helpful observation. I am now able to watching Amazon Instant on Ubuntu (though not through Chrome as I used to). Hopefully the AppArmor settings can be updated.

Revision history for this message
T_W (walshtc) wrote :

Your welcome. It looks like the Firefox apparmor profile is provided by the firefox package. Can anyone advise on launchpad etiquette; should this bug be tagged against the firefox package? Or should I enter a new bug against firefox for the apparmor profile problem?

Revision history for this message
TrombaMarina (glen-organicdesign) wrote :
Download full text (3.6 KiB)

Short version:
===========
Chrome and Firefox take different approaches to playing flash video with DRM and it fails to work in one or the other for different reasons. Therefore, this should be filed as separate bugs:

1. Apparmor sounds like a Firefox specific issue. I never had the problem, so I wouldn't know.

2. Firefox, SRWare Iron, and other browsers that use the Adobe Flash Plugin need hal installed to play DRM flash, which in turn is required for Amazon Instant video to work.

3. Google Chrome changed its plugin architecture in such a way that there is currently no known way to play DRM flash content on Linux. This issue affects the version of Chromium shipped with 14.04, though the version of Chromium in 13.10 falls under #2 above. As of 2 days ago (2014-06-17), this issue was still present in the google-chrome-beta repository. Chromium with the pepper flash installer just unpacks the version of pepper-flash that comes from Google Chrome, so until Google Chrome fixes this issue, Chromium isn't going to work. I got sick of my browser crashing though so I switched from google-chrome-beta to -stable.

I think this bug report is about #2, so new bugs should probably be opened for #1 and #3, though I'm not sure anyone but Google can do anything about #3, unless someone can implement a DRM flash plugin using the pepper API from scratch.

Long version with additional data from my own experiments and several other sources:
========================================
Google Chrome is changing its plug-in architecture to something
called, "pepper" which the old Adobe Flash plug-in won't work with.
Google is making their own flash plug-in, but it doesn't support DRM
on Linux. "Viewing Adobe Access (DRM) content is not supported, since
Adobe does not support it on Linux."
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/108086?hl=en

The quote is correct that Flash DRM no longer works in Chrome-based
browsers, but it also contains two lies: 1. Adobe's flash plug-in
supports DRM on Linux. 2. Chrome is not using the Adobe plug-in any
more.

SRWare Iron, apparently still uses the older plug-in architecture and
plays Flash with DRM just fine. My friend sent me steps (below) to
make that work.

On the theory that Google Chrome Beta will have this issue fixed
first, I've been using that, though it crashes occasionally. Is there
evidence that Google Chrome is even working to fix this issue?

Anyone have suggestions, updates, a sense of where and how this issue
will get fixed or what I can do to encourage someone to fix it? Using
Firefox for Amazon Instant is not a good long-term work-around for me,
though I may have to make the best of it.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter
Date: Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:53 AM
Subject: Steps I took to play Flash DRM content on Firefox and Chrome
To: Glen

1) Deleted all versions of Chrome except SRWare Iron

2) Deleted Pepper Flash and any other Flash plugins on Ubuntu.

3) From this link:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2144347&page=2&p=12874114#post12874114

I did this:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mjblenner/ppa-hal
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hal

And then this:
sudo mkdir /etc...

Read more...

Revision history for this message
Jennifer Lester (texaskindle) wrote :

After hours and hours of searching, I just found the EASIEST solution to get PRIME to work with 14.04. First, forget about the AMAZON icon. Go to "Ubuntu Software Center". Click the option, "Allows usage of Silverlight through WINE" Restart browser. Presto done. I am viewing in Firefox. I have not yet tested in other browsers.

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