Netflix streaming on Linux?!

[davidryder]

I got past the version check, and have Moonlight (open source silverlight alternative) but I get a message saying Silverlight is not installed

Does anyone have any ideas?

By the way, I used a Firefox plug-in called Modify Headers to get past the OS check at Netflix.

Type: Modify
Name: User-Agent
Value: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)

I feel I am soooo close!

[directhex]

Netflix needs SL2 support, your Moonlight package only supports SL1 at the moment.

[davidryder]

Ahhh! Thanks for the reply Hopefully SL2 comes to Moonlight soon...

EDIT: http://www.mono-project.com/Other_Downloads

According to that page the version # is > 2; does that correspond to the SL version also? I enabled the badgerports repo and it installed 1.9xx...

[directhex]

Ahhh! Thanks for the reply Hopefully SL2 comes to Moonlight soon...

http://www.mono-project.com/Roadmap#Upcoming_Releases

September for beta support for SL2

Which means a big fat MAYBE for Karmic - depending on how much love I get from the release managers

[davidryder]

Thanks for the info

Do you think MS/Netflix is concerned about this?

[directhex]

Thanks for the info

Do you think MS/Netflix is concerned about this?

Define "concerned".

Microsoft want to push as many people onto Silverlight as possible, as it allows them to sell Windows Server for hosting, Expression for design, and Media Server for encoding tasks.

To achieve this, and to have ANY hope of supplanting Flash as the "rich media" framework of choice, they need to target as many systems as possible - and in the netbook age, that means they can't ignore non-Windows platforms. Even when it literally costs them money.

They've been actively helping Novell to achieve feature parity - supplying all the official test cases, answering any technical queries, and so on - but the important (symbolic) step is the codec thing.

Codecs, by and large, are covered by big nasty patents held by big nasty men. That's why most distributions don't, say, support MP3 playback out of the box ($0.75 per decoder app license fee on the codec, if you're being legit). Ever noticed the box in Totem to buy codecs? See http://www.fluendo.com/shop/category/end-user-products/ or http://shop.canonical.com/product_in...roducts_id=242 for an idea of what "licensed" codecs cost.

When Moonlight encounters some media it can't play, it'll offer to download some licensed codecs (codecs offering the same support as the Canonical link above), free of charge. Those codecs aren't free for the distributor (patents are held by many people, so many people need to get paid), so every person downloading those codecs via Moonlight is getting something free of charge which (in a world of patent licensing) has value. And the people paying those fees are Microsoft.

Microsoft are literally paying people to use Moonlight in a "legit" manner.

So are they "concerned"? I'd say so - they're concerned about proving how cross-platform Silverlight is, and how every content creator should buy lots of expensive Microsoft products to produce SL content. Netflix will be a headline item to show off, the way the Obama inauguration streams were for Moon's SL1 support

[JPorter]

http://www.mono-project.com/Roadmap#Upcoming_Releases

September for beta support for SL2

Which means a big fat MAYBE for Karmic - depending on how much love I get from the release managers

According to the Moonlight Roadmap, there should be beta support for SL2 in mid-May.

http://www.mono-project.com/MoonlightRoadmap

[directhex]

According to the Moonlight Roadmap, there should be beta support for SL2 in mid-May.

http://www.mono-project.com/MoonlightRoadmap

Their alpha is late... But if I get my hands on a tarball, I'll have a first look at packaging challenges

[Thomas Garman]

I just use Virtualbox with Karmic 9.10... and in my little virtual machine I have the crummiest little version of windows XP of all time and that little OS is used for nothing other than running Internet Explorer 8 with the Silverlight Plug-in with which I stream instant watcher video from Netflix while in Ubuntu. It works just fine for me.

[Gallahhad]

This is what I got:

Using Novell Moonlight 2.99.0.2 and Firefox User Agent Switcher got me that far.