Hey guys! I have a question regarding watching online videos. I've done a bit of research on this, so before responding please read the whole post.
I'm trying to keep up with a TV series I like to watch, but I don't have a TV so I'm watching online. I've had problems with third-party sites before, so I'd like to watch from a first-party provider if possible. Specifically, the show I am trying to watch is on the website ctv.ca (Canadian, region-blocked). However, while I can get ctv.ca to play its ads using Chrome, I am unable to get it to play actual video; the screen just turns black after the ads.
I've done some research into this and found that it's because of something called HAL which uses some kind of DRM which blocks the video. I'm not too keen on the details, but I have at least that much. I've tried a bunch of workarounds, such as installing the pipelight plugin (pipelight.net/cms/installation.html) and using Firefox rather than Chrome, but I'm stuck. After I installed Pipelight and used Firefox to try to watch the video, I was able to see the ads (which is at least a step forward; it wouldn't work at all with the default Flash plugin for Firefox), but again got the black screen; Pipelight says it's supposed to include the HAL workaround thing, but it still failed.
Subsequent to Firefox failing, I checked my Firefox plugins and it said that I had 2 Flash plugins, v11 and v17. I tried disabling one of them, but it appears they're linked somehow; they're either both always on or both always off, which seems to be an issue.
Compounding this issue is that I also have to use an x-header modifier to get the video, as I'm not located in Canada. It's possible I can get a VPN, but it might be difficult, short term, and I'm not even sure if it'll help due to this HAL thing.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make this work? Thanks.
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