Widevine and Opera

[westra126]

westra126 last edited by

Opera for linux, does not come with widevine. Please mods, don't try to tell people it does.

[jimunderscorep]

jimunderscorep last edited by

Where does it say that opera comes with widevine support? It is even written in the relevant config file that it uses chrome's libs to get widevine support!

$ cat /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/resources/widevine_config.json[
   {
      "preload" : "/opt/google/chrome/libwidevinecdm.so",
      "plugin" : "/opt/google/chrome/libwidevinecdmadapter.so"
   },
   {
      "preload" : "/opt/google/chrome-beta/libwidevinecdm.so",
      "plugin" : "/opt/google/chrome-beta/libwidevinecdmadapter.so"
   },
   {
      "preload" : "/opt/google/chrome-unstable/libwidevinecdm.so",
      "plugin" : "/opt/google/chrome-unstable/libwidevinecdmadapter.so"
   }
]

[westra126]

westra126 last edited by westra126 @jimunderscorep

@jimunderscorep I know it takes the pluging from Chrome. I'm saying the mods tell the people that usually Opera comes with widevine and maybe is a problem with their computer.

@sgunhouse said in Opera & Netflix:

Opera includes widevine, you shouldn't need that.

@leocg said in Opera & Netflix:

@yaute It means that for some reason Widevine isn't being downloaded.

If you have Chrome or other Chromium based browser, try copying its Widevine directory to Opera's profile directory.

[jimunderscorep]

jimunderscorep last edited by jimunderscorep

I can download chrome's deb package, extract the libwidevine* libs and place it in opera's profile directory as suggested by leocg. But how will I know widevine support works? I do not have a netflix account for instance...

[jimunderscorep]

jimunderscorep last edited by

So, I did what I said earlier.
I downloaded chrome's deb, extracted libwidevinecdm from it (there is no libwidevinecdmadapter file in the package), copied it to ~/.config/opera, visited this site here

https://bitmovin.com/demos/drm

and it reports "no drm".

So it does not work, so we'd better ignore that advice from leocg.

Then I created the folder /opt/google/chrome, moved the file in there, reopened the page but still no luck.

Verdict? If you do want to watch drm content on linux, use another browser,

On the same page, firefox prompted me to download something, I allowed it to and a few moments later, the stream started playing, in all its 3 variations. It even says "widevine" instead on "no drm"!

Chromium, on the other hand, does play the streams despite mentioning "no drm". Now that is odd...

[leocg]

leocg Moderator last edited by @westra126

Mods are users like any other, they don't know everything and they may say something wrong sometimes.

In my case, since Opera comes with Widevine on Windows and, I guess,, on Mac too, I thought it was also the case with Linux.

[jimunderscorep]

jimunderscorep last edited by

I agree with you on that and I accept your apology

However, if you are not a linux user or an opera dev for the linux version, please do not generalize facts based on your experience on a different os. Windows or mac may have widevine support due to some system wide libs, linux doesn't

[s390g2]

s390g2 last edited by

As of chromium v67, libwidevinecdmadapter.so is obsolete.
But, when opera did work with widevine, it required a ua switch from command line startup switch (--user-agent) or an extension ua switcher. Nothing works as of late.

For Chromium, I added under /usr/lib/chromium: ln -s /opt/google/chrome/libwidevinecdm.so, just for good measure. No ua masking was needed. It worked fine with netflix.

So, they need to add the sites that use widevine to their ua masks, and fix the obsolete code.

[westra126]

westra126 last edited by @jimunderscorep

My biggest question is why do they ship it for windows and mac but not linux?.

[tiagolagef]

tiagolagef last edited by

Someone got some solution for this, I love the opera browser, but using it on Linux is being quite tiring.

[leocg]

leocg Moderator last edited by

See https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2018/10/opera-58-initial-developer-release/#comment-4141542740

[westra126]

westra126 last edited by @leocg

@leocg version 58 still doesn't work with widevine in linux for me.

[Moonowl]

Moonowl last edited by

I think the only long term solution to this problem is to actually compile from the sources and use the options that include Widevine and distribute that to Linux. I doubt Opera has any prioritised interests in this since it is a closed source browser
they are giving out no compensation.