Watch Netflix Natively in VSIDO

[jedi]

I've been waiting for this since Netflix started.  I've been a sullen paying customer for about 7 years now.  Tonight, I'm a happy subscriber!  Forget doing this in a VM, (laggy, unwatchable, and you need to install a compatible OS besides) and for that matter Wine as well!  No more Wine!!!  If I was a hog, I'd be rolling in the mud squealing!!!
So, first thing you have to have is either the beta version or the dev version of Google Chrome.
These are the links for whichever version you go with.  I chose the 'beta' version;

Google Chrome Beta

Google Chrome Dev

If you already use this browser, please be aware that by installing either of the two above versions will overwrite you current install.  Once you have it installed, you'll need to open it and follow these steps using whichever browser you chose above, obviously! 

Once you have installed the browser, you'll need the User Agent Switcher Extension

Once you have that installed, you'll see a new icon at the top right of the browser window.  Right click on it and choose 'Options'.  Your browser window will change and you'll need some information to fill in the appropriate blanks.


   

• Name: Netflix Linux
• String: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2114.2 Safari/537.36
• Group: (is filled in automatically)
• Append?: Select 'Replace'
• Flag: IE

The above is the info you need to fill in the blanks.  When your done you should see something like this if it all went right; (the Group box should be filled automagically after you enter the string, just click in the 'Group' box for it to autofill.)



Click the 'Add' button at the far end to save your UA.
Now, load 'netflix.com' in a new tab, and click the User-Agent Switcher toolbar icon, click 'Chrome' and select the 'Netflix Linux' entry. This will reload the page.
BUT, this is even better, you can fix it so it does all this automatigically so you don't have to manually click the button everytime you want to watch Netflix.
You can set a permanent spoof rule to force this user-agent to take effect when loading Netflix:



Same deal, right click the button at the top right in the browser, click on 'Options', and select 'Permanent Spoof List'.  Fill in the domain box with "netflix.com" (no quotes) and in the drop down box select the 'Netflix Linux' rule you created at the beginning.  Voila!  This will work on 32bit and 64bit versions of VSIDO.

Enjoy TV on your most awesome distro, VSIDO!  OK, I'm off to watch an episode of "Caprica"!



Please note that Netflix could at any time stop this "Spoof" from working.  As it is only one line of text, that seems unlikely to me, but stranger things have happened
I also believe special thanks are in order to Mat Enders for these steps.  Also thanks to, wait for it, never thought I'd be saying this, OMG! Ubuntu.   

[VastOne]

Brilliant! Nice work Jedi!

[airtime]

Works like a charm. Finally we have a way to watch Netflix on Linux

[lwfitz]

Beautiful work Jedi!

I was about to post about this same thing when  found you beat me to it!


Purely out of laziness I found that all I needed to do was install chrome beta and streaming worked like a charm.
Also this may break in the future but things are going in the right direction with html5 streaming support

[superwow]

Thanks to all who have posted various fixes or semi-hacks to do this. Netflix announced about a month or so ago that linux support would be native. And today, without having installed any webapps, extensions, changed any user-agent strings, or anything like that, I went to Netflix and played a movie. Boom. Native. As of today I reckon.

Superhappy!

[VastOne]

^ Do you mean native as in using a Chrome browser or native as in using VSIDO and the default Firefox/Iceweasel?

[superwow]

V-ger, I mean, native in Chrome. It runs without any changes to the user-agent string, or any additional extensions or Chrome "apps." As I understand it, the HTML5 method will only work in Chrome, not Chromium/Firefox/Iceweasel/etc. I will verify that I am too lazy to have tried any other method than Chrome, so cannot validate my own statement.

Still, yay.

[jedi]

Still Chrome only for now...   

[VastOne]

Which version of Chrome? Standard sid version of Chrome segfaults for me.

[VastOne]

I have avoided both chrome/chromium and netflix forever it seems and today all of that changes

I refused to even think about a netflix account unless I could get it on whatever flavor of Linux I wanted... After an IRC discussion with jedi, I installed chrome-beta and am now watching netflix on my own version of Linux VSIDO

The chrome/chromium issue that has always bugged the shit out me is how it has never accurately maintained font sizing of each individual web site on a reboot. There are add ons for these in the Firefox/Iceweasel world but I have never found anything to resolve it in chrome/chromium. I may be calling on some advice from you all on that one

[superwow]

-VO-
My Chrome is Version 38.0.2125.101 (64-bit).

[jedi]

I also have confirmed that the latest version of Chrome, 38.0.2125.101 (64-bit) makes my How To obsolete.     Chrome Stable is working fine with Netflix.  No need to follow the above How To, just grab the latest Chrome .deb file and install it to watch Netflix. 
Due to DRM constraints, it is not possible at present to watch Netflix in any other browser that I'm aware of besides Chrome.  While almost all browsers today support HTML5 video streaming, the DRM contraints Netflix imposes, and Chrome embraces, go against everything FOSS.  If anyone can get this to work in another browser, please let us know.  I for one, HATE Chrome.   

[jedi]

One other thing of note.  VastOne and I both have experienced what I'm going to call "The Chrome White Screen Of Death" whilst watching Netflix.  We both have installed the 'beta' version and used my How To above to watch Netflix.

In the last hour or so, I have installed the latest 'stable' version of Chrome as stated in the above post.  It continues to have the same behavior exhibited in the 'beta' version.  Pause or just minimize your Chrome browser, and the white screen issue strikes.  Was just wondering if anyone else was seeing this behavior?

Thanks

[VastOne]

^ My experience is not just limited to it happening whilst watching Netflix... it happens no matter what is up on Chrome

[jedi]

Wow, I knew Chrome sucked!