Google Chrome won't play protected content.

[rcranswick]

Hi All,

New to this forum having ditched Windows a few months ago in favour of Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon.

I use Google Chrome and all was fine until recently when I've suddenly become unable to play any content from streaming services such as BBC iPlayer, ITVX (ITV Hub), Netflix, Disney+ - pretty much all of them.

Allow protected content is enabled in Chrome but nothing will play. It has been fine all this time so I suspect it's possible a Chrome or Linux update that broke everything.

Chrome version is Version 113.0.5672.126.

Does anyone else have any recent experience of this?

Thanks.

[rcranswick]

Update on this.

I just reinstalled Firefox and everything plays fine there. Obviously a Chrome issue then. Hope it's fixed soon as I'm heavily invested in Google stuff.

Any helpful responses would be appreciated though.

[revrob]

Exactly the same problem here, again just in the last day or so, using Linux Mint xfc 64 and same version of Chrome.
Happened just after a recent Linux and Chrome Update (which also gave me the Chrome problem described in viewtopic.php?t=397380 where web pages aren't rendered properly - nor were NoScript popups - lots of white space ..

Chrome won't play ITVx content at all, even though DRM content is allowed in Chrome/settings/content.

Can't find any solutions.
I removed Chrome (including config files) and tried Chromium instead, which reports the same version number.
Chromium - Version 113.0.5672.126 (Official Build, ungoogled-chromium) (64-bit)
but got exactly the same problem.

The only thing I used Chrome for was streaming ITVx, because Firefox tended to buffer after about an hour of watching.

I can play streamed content from iBBC Player on Chrome and Chromium, but not streamed content from Channel 4 - same problem as with ITVx, serror message says Digital Rights Management (DRM) Not Enabled, but it is...

Have contacted ITVx but no solutions so far.

Thx in advance for any help - but I suspect this one is down to Chrome/Google to fix, so hope they hurry up.

[revrob]

this has been raised as an issue on chromium bug reports.
Issue 1449542 at bugsDOTchromiumDOTorg
"Chrome/Chromium refusing to play DRM content even if it is enabled in settings"
no joy yet, they haven't been able to reproduce the problem.

[rcranswick]

Thanks for the update. I can't say I have noticed any buffering issues in Firefox yet so I'm happy to use it until the Chrome issue is resolved.

[revrob]

While trying various fixes (including installing wine64) my Linux Mint installation got messed up and stalled halfway through the boot process. I had to do a fresh Linux Mint install (which I did on Wednesday 7th June) from an iso file on a bootable usb (21.1 Linux Mint xfce64). As the laptop is a Linux test/learning machine without any signficant data on it, this wasn't a big deal.
This complete format/reinstall seems to have solved the ITVX DRM streaming problem. I have installed chromium (not Chrome) and it runs ITVX just fine - Widevine is "up to date" (4.10.2652.1) and the chromium version is the same as when I had the problem 113.0.5672.126.
Since the reinstall, I can also watch a full 2hr stream using Firefox (now on 114.0.1) without any buffering.
I spent 2 weeks in contact with ITVXHelp - I have to say they were spectacularly unhelpful, and weren't even reading my emails, often asking for versions etc. that I had supplied in the very first report I sent them. Their final response was (having ignored everything I told them) that they didn't support Linux.
As far as I can see the only significant thing that has changed apart from the reinstall is a Linux kernel update.

[GnomeMax]

Just rebuilt my desktop machine (was playing with partitions and mistakenly deleted the EFI partition) and found the protected content error in both Firefox (bundled browser) and Chrome (from Software Manager). Both fail protected content. Chrome says it's permissions issues with Flatpak. However, remove that install and immediately install from the Google Chrome website and all protected content works right out of the box. Seems there is an issue with permissions that the "retail" installer doesn't have. I have used Linux with protected content for many years. Ideas?

[rcranswick]

I upgraded to Linux Mint 21.2 Victoria but that didn't seem to solve the streaming issue. However, Chrome just updated to version 115.0.5790.98 and my streaming now works again.