🖕🏾 🌒 🎞️ CBS allowed Linux users to watch Star Trek, thanks to her for that 🎥 😚 👨🏻‍🏫

In January, science fiction fans rejoiced at continuing the cult series Star Trek . The new season is called Star Trek: Picard (IMDB rating rolls over: 8.70 ). But the joy was short-lived. First, to view, you need a subscription to the CBS All Access online service (this is in addition to subscriptions to Netflix, Disney, Google Play Movies, Hulu, Apple TV + and other online movie theaters you watch). But even if you subscribe, it is not a fact that the movies will be shown.

Linux users were indignant that in the video broadcast on the CBS All Access website they were shown only adsbut not a movie. After advertising, the broadcast ends, and the movie itself cannot be viewed in the browser. Blocking is done through the cryptographic module CDM Widevine, which must be embedded in the browser in order to play content under the cryptographic DRM provided by copyright holders. Not all browsers are allowed to install such a module, for this it is necessary to conclude a license agreement with the copyright holder, and sometimes pay a round sum. For more information, see the article "Independent browsers are no longer competitive . "

When trying to play a video from the CBS All Access website, the Linux browser only displays a black screen:

Unlike Chrome, the Firefox browser for Linux initially comes without DRM functionality, because the proprietary module violates the Open Source license. Users can manually activate this functionality if necessary. However, CBS All Access content was not played under Linux in any browser: neither in Firefox, nor in Chrome, nor even in Edgium, the new Microsoft browser on the Chromium engine.

The web console shows that when accessing the CBS Widevine backend, an HTTP 400 (Bad Request) error is returned.

Historically, some sites and services have intentionally blocked user agent access for Linux. But here is another case, because changing the user agent in Chrome or Firefox has no effect. When you try to play the content, the same errors are returned.

A DRM system is installed on the CBS website called Widevine, a fully cross-platform DRM protocol created by Google. But somehow he broke.

Further investigation revealed that CBS All Access also does not work in the Chrome browser on Android and the Safari browser on iOS, although native CBS applications are available on both platforms, and there are no problems.

At the same time, Linux users have a workaround - CBS All Access is available as an optional subscription to Amazon Prime. So if you need to access encrypted content from a Linux computer, you can log in to Prime and subscribe there. In this case, the content normally plays through the Amazon system instead of CBS Interactive.

On January 31, 2020, one of Ars Technica 's readers put forward a version that the problem with playing content in Linux browsers could be due to the VMP (Verified Media Path) setting being enabled on the server. This UEFI Secure Boot style setting allows content to be sent only to browsers with a verified "authentic" framework.

Journalists of the publication contacted CBS and asked to transfer information about VMP to the technical department. Two hours later, the problem was resolved - and the movie Star Trek: Picard successfully loaded in the Chrome browser on Linux. The Firefox browser still crashes with an error.

January 30, CBS posted the first episode on YouTube , it was available for free for several days, but now access is closed.

On Russian torrent trackers, the first two episodes are distributed from pirated torrents in professional voice acting SDI Media.

Meanwhile, CBS All Access reportsthat the first episode of the series set an absolute record for the number of streams on the service, surpassing by 115% the previous record, which also belonged to the series from the Star Trek series, it was "Star Trek: Discovery" (Star Trek: Discovery).

Thanks to the broadcast of football matches and the Grammy Award, CBS in January 2020 set an absolute record for the number of new subscribers, but the total size of the audience is not reported. Market leaders are Netflix and Hulu with 61 million and 29 million US subscribers. The audience of Disney + and Apple TV + is estimated at 23.2 million and 25 million, respectively, the last of them is available for free for a year to all buyers of new Apple devices.

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CBS allowed Linux users to watch Star Trek, thanks to her for that

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