I kind of wanted to watch something on Amazon Video. It's free with my Prime subscription! There's a PLAY button! OK....
It doesn't like Firefox ESR 45.4.0 on Linux, and suggests Chrome. OK....
Under Chrome, I get an error involving "Widevine Content Decryption Module", which seems to be installed and enabled, but with no way to update it. Hm?
Well, this is an outdated version of Chrome. I try replacing it with the latest. It doesn't install, because I don't have the latest libstdc++ installed (and it's not available for this rather dated Linux installation). Well... dpkg says it didn't install correctly, but it seems to run, for a first approximation, and shows the latest version number... but Amazon still gives the same ferschlugginer Widevine error. Foo.
So! Fire up a virtual machine with a recent version of Linux Mint. Update everything (except that one of the configured Ubuntu archives isn't working). Install Chromium, from the repository, and Chrome, as downloaded. Neither of them works: a window comes up, but it shows random corruption and bleed-through from the host's display. Something strange with the VirtualBox support?
Maybe I'll try to sort this out later, perchance after the delayed dist-upgrade of this system. Meanwhile, launch the Win7 VM, Firefox under Windows, Amazon... it wants Silverlight. So I install that. I get a message that Firefox 47 or later would support HTML5 playback, and a Silverlight playback window that has no video and no sound. Grrr.
I seem to be running Firefox 35 or so. As I check, it's downloading an update. It asks permission to restart. OK. Gee, now it's version 38 or something, and updating. Rinse, repeat, how many times?
Download the Firefox installer. Run it. It upgrades my installation to the latest (49 or something). Now, at last, Amazon works, using the HTML5 playback.
This stuff is never as easy as one might expect.
Oh, and now it's past my bedtime, and much too late to start watching a movie.
Update: The HTML5 player, like so many others, occasionally receives a wedgie. It seems particularly sensitive to being put on pause for a while, being told to back up a minute, etc. The wedgie having happened, it's necessary to reload the page and relaunch the player.
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