Channel 5 On Demand - Flash issue

[DiBosco]

Folks,

I can no longer play Channel 5 On Demand stuff. It's saying:

"To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 15.0.0 or greater is installed."

It looks like we're on v11.2.202.481

I vaguely remember reading that Ad*be had stopped supporting Linux, but we do still get updates.

I've seen one site say we can use something called Pepper flash plugin, but that's not in our repositories.

Anyone know whether we just have to give up on being able to watch flash on Linux now?

Thanks.

[jkerr82508]

Adobe provide only security updates for linux. When a site uses a higher version of flashplayer than the version available for linux, then it is likely that flash media will not be playable in firefox.

To use the pepperflash version, which is at present at version 18, install google-chrome
viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2053#p15047
viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3101

Then install the Mageia freshplayerplugin package. That plugin enables firefox to use google-chrome's pepperflash.
You should probably first remove the Mageia flashplayer package.

Jim

[DiBosco]

Thanks, Jim. Is the freshplayerplugin available for M4 do you know or is it only M5? It's not in my repositories on Mageia 4, but a Google search shows some M5 versions

[jkerr82508]

It's only in the repo's for mga5.

Jim

[DiBosco]

Well, it almost works with Chromium and fresh. It no longer complains about not having Ad*be flash installed, but when it's trying to load a program it just has a rotating symbol to indicate it's trying to load the program. The sooner the world dumps flash the better!

[hankivy]

My system was recently upgraded to Mageia 5. The browser will not play any videos on youtube.com or military.com/video. The browser is Firefox ESR 38.1.0.

The error message is

This plugin is vulnerable and should be updated.
Activate Adobe Flash
Check for updates...

SOLUTION Make sure "plugincheck", shown below, says your flash player is up to date. Then click on "Activate Adobe Flash". A window pops up that has two buttons: "Allow Now", and "Allow and Remember". Click on "Allow and Remember". Shut down all browser windows, try again. (If that fails, log out, and reboot the system to guarantee a fresh start of the browser.)

plugincheck

Clicking on "Check for updates" takes the browser to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/ which shows the Adobe Flash Player as "Up to Date" with two different version identifiers: Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202, and 11.2.202.481.

Details

Further exploration takes me to a document at the Mozilla site https://blocklist.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/p796 explaining the "Flash Player Plugin on Linux 11.2.202.424 and lower (click-to-play) has been blocked for your protection." and "All users are strongly recommended to update their Flash plugin." But my plugin is already at 11.2.202.481. It should be good.

On the same document is a link to "View block request". Clicking on it will take the browser to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1109795 A part of that document says,

We have a problem on Linux, since we use regular expressions in the plugin description to check for version numbers, and the description strings look like this: "Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202". So, we don't have the 4th part of the version string. We use the description because of some problem that caused the version number field to be unreliable on Linux, but I don't remember the details, or know if it's still a problem. In the current state of things we could block up to either 11.2.201.* or 11.2.202.* on Linux.

[DiBosco]

I could do that on some sites. On Channel 5 it just refuses flat to play. You tube's not an issue at all. Isn't it HTML 5 now?

[doktor5000]

Then provide feedback to the admin or support guys at that channel 5 site.

You tube's not an issue at all. Isn't it HTML 5 now?

Better check on https://www.youtube.com/html5

[DiBosco]

Then provide feedback to the admin or support guys at that channel 5 site.

They don't give a foetid dingo's kidney about Linux, sadly.

https://help.channel5.com/hc/en-gb/arti ... -on-Linux-

I'd already done that you tube thing, quite some time ago. You tube works very nicely these days. Even full screen on multi-monitor set-ups.

[doktor5000]

Well, it almost works with Chromium and fresh. It no longer complains about not having Ad*be flash installed, but when it's trying to load a program it just has a rotating symbol to indicate it's trying to load the program.

Didn't understand that post fully. For one, chromium does not bring the pepperflash plugin. For two, chromium/chrome do not require nor support freshplayerplugin.
So what did you do actually? Are you able to play ANY flash content in firefox? Please see viewtopic.php?f=36&t=880 for links to check flash functionality.

And please provide some more context information what you actually installed and what you use currently.
If it would have the same grade of verbosity as your curses that would certainly help.

[doktor5000]

I did the fresh plugin thing as a direct recommendation of a post above or a link above (I forget which).

Firefox played most flash OK until I uninstalled Adobe flash, apart from Channel 5 On Demand. It kept telling me, on sites that did work, that there was a vulnerability with the current version and I should upgrade. Of course, I couldn't as I was already on the latest version. As I said in my original post I am/was on version v11.2.202.481 I'm still running flash on my laptop with Mageia 4 and had a go with pepper (fresh) on Mageia 5 following the install instructions on a link above.

As far as I can see Chrome plays flash content on everything but C5 where is looks like it's loading a video and never actually starts. Pepper in Firefox won't play full screen. It's a shame because Firefox is a gazillion times nicer than Chromium, I don't really want to have to start using that browser if possible.

eg

http://www.channel5.com/shows/cricket-o ... alec-day-4

On Firefox and Chromium with Adobe flash installed it just tells me to upgrade to the latest version of flash. Which I have.

And when did I curse? Apart from saying Adobe, which I must admit is pretty foul language.

[doktor5000]

Just tried under mga5 using chrome 43.0.2357.132 and pepperflash 18,0,0,204 , and none of the channel 5 videos plays, it seems to start loading but never begins to play.
Could be related to https://help.channel5.com/hc/en-gb/arti ... hromebook- or possibly https://help.channel5.com/hc/en-gb/articles/203580542

But firefox with the same flash version behaves exactly the same, nonsurprisingly.

Seems like you're out of luck. I'd simply play dumb, contact them and tell them you went through the checklist,
and using a recent chrome and flash version all videos do not actually start to play. Never mention a word about linux.
They only mention that they don't support it _officially_

[DiBosco]

Yeah, sounds like you're seeing exactly the same thing as me. The Chromebook page is encouraging in a way as it's seems to be saying they're finding alternative ways of playing it, which - I assume - means not flash!