Is there a work around to get protected Hulu or Amazon Prime instant videos working?

When I went to watch some only episodes of star trek on Amazon Prime, the player would get stuck on updating. I followed the instructions here and doing so actually worked for 3 seconds. It was the oddest thing. Clearly the video was playing and I saw 3 seconds of the episode, but a message came up saying I needed to update my flash player. I tried loading videos over and over again, but no success, not even the 3 seconds. Here is the error message:

Sorry we were unable to stream this video. This is likely because your Flash Player needs to be updated.

I am running Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail, Firefox 20, and adobe flash-player 11,2,202,280. Apparently Adobe isn't going to make newer versions of flash available for Linux, only security updates.

So has anyone been able to play prime instant videos, and if so, under what circumstances? Is there perhaps an alternative implementation of the flash plugin I can use? Or is the cause of my problem something different altogether?

Problem probably has to do with the version of flash being used. If anyone has gotten Prime to work with an my current version of flash or an open-source/free implementation of it, please do tell. Or if anyone can get videos on amazon to play with any other parameters aside from changing my browser to chrome, please tell me.

This also affects protected content in Hulu and other services that employ DRM through Flash.

What hasn't worked:

• Using Chrome which has the newest version of flash via ppapi. Amazon Prime strictly prohibits it.
• Using Chromium has the same issue as using firefox
• Trying to install Adobe Flash 11,2,202,275. Is not compatible with raring libraries(?).

Solution 1:

I did the following on 13.04 64bit:

sudo apt-get install hal

sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi/preprobe

sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi/information

/usr/sbin/hald --daemon=yes --verbose=yes

rm -rf ~/.adobe

That got things up and going in Chromium....

Commenters also confirmed that the same instructions work for 12.04 64bit.

Solution 2:

The other solutions here haven't worked for me in 13.10 64bit. The only thing that does is adding a ppa :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mjblenner/ppa-hal
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hal

That worked in Chrome.

Thanks Michael Blennerhassett for the ppa

Thanks omgubuntu for providing the instructions I got the answer from: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/10/fixing-amazon-prime-streaming-drm-protected-flash-13-10

Solution 3:

Code the Following:

sudo apt-get install hal

hald

(This works for version 12.10 I apologized. I forgot I have not upgrade my laptop yet)

For version 13.04 ( I am running Xunbuntu on my Desktop)

In my case I did have to download hal and run hald

then I made the same changes from the answer above

sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi/preprobe

sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi/information

/usr/sbin/hald --daemon=yes --verbose=yes

rm -rf ~/.adobe

I got an error the first time I copy and paste this line

/usr/sbin/hald --daemon=yes --verbose=yes

But once I installed hal and run hald it worked.

I can watch amazon prime video using Firefox.