HAL no longer works for watching protected flash content in 13.04

[Christopher Rogers]

Amazon Prime videos and Hulu videos will no longer play. Flash on other sites works fine, so I'm assuming this is an issue with hal. On my system both flash and hal are installed and up-to-date. Tested in Firefox and Chromium.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: hal 0.5.14-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-17.27-generic 3.8.6
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-17-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Apr 12 19:03:48 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-03-26 (17 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha amd64 (20130325)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: hal
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Christopher Rogers (christopherrogers1991)]

Installed updates for HAL today, and things appear to be working again.

[Jason Gipson-Nahman (jgip-dr)]

I encountered this same error after upgrading from 12.10 to 13.04 this morning. I've uninstalled/reinstalled hal a number of times, but I still can't view videos from Google Play or Amazon Instant Vids. All other non-protected flash videos seem to be fine. Am I doing something wrong?

[Christopher Rogers (christopherrogers1991)]

Jason,

I didn't do the upgrade from 12.10 to 13.04, I just did a fresh install of the Beta a while back (I always had issues with upgrades and like to start with a clean slate anyway) so I can't speak for whether or not there are issues with doing the upgrade, but as of my last post, everything has been fine (just installed all updates and played a video on Hulu to confirm it's still working). You might try making a live usb, installing hal, and then trying to watch a video. If that works, it could be an issue specific to your system, at which point I would recommend heading to the forums, or just doing a fresh install.

-Chris

[Jason Gipson-Nahman (jgip-dr)]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried the live usb with 13.04 (64 bit), and I still had the same issues. Still not sure what the problem is. Went ahead and did a clean reinstall and things are back to normal. Will stick with 12.10 for a while and keep checking the forums to see if this issue pops up again.

[Sean Fitzpatrick (sean-fitzpatrick)]

No luck here either, and I'm really puzzled as to what the problem is. The version of hal I was running in 12.10 before upgrading is the same as the one that installed with 13.04, and my flash version is the same, too. (There was an earlier problem with a security update for flash breaking things - it wasn't being recognized as the lated version, so I downgraded.)
I really don't see where the difference lies - same hal, same flash, same firefox.

[Christopher Rogers (christopherrogers1991)]

Did a fresh install of 13.04 and the bug is back - there must be a difference from the packages that were installed through updates in the beta and those that are installed with the full release.

[Christopher Rogers (christopherrogers1991)]

For all those still having issues, please see this askubuntu question: http://askubuntu.com/questions/286297/is-there-a-work-around-to-get-amazon-prime-instant-videos-working

The accepted answer appears to work.

[dino99 (9d9)]

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/hal/