Mageia forum

This post is for information only at this point.
Any thoughts and/or tips are warmly welcome.

AT&T

http://uverse.com/live

is the new On Line presentation of some ( about 200 ) of their "cable" TV
channels that are offered to their customer base. I being one of those.
This is their on-line solution and there are similar offerings from other
Cable TV services here in the States. After some tinkering with it I think
that they are using, at a minimum, Browser Java technology to make this
happen. So that brings into play:

icedtea-web-1.6.2-1.mga5.x86_64.rpm

at a minimum. Installing icedtea I get correct responses from:

https://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp
http://javatester.org/version.html
http://www.test-java.com/
https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek/Gen ... Tests.html
http://jgames.com/

So you would assume that installing icedtea would do the trick. Nope.
Now the site is asking for Microsoft Silverlight, a dead technology.
So either Silverlight is embedded in their system, or it's a fallback,
or maybe icedtea is not a 100% solution all the time.

This wouldn't be such a big deal but all the cable TV services over here
are switching to this kind of a delivery system so it may become problematic
for everyone, including us, in the future.

Bug: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18584
has been filed.

A deeper dive into this today. Understand the platforms under test here are two.
A Mageia Linux 5 x86-64 KDE and a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.
Both as a VirtualBox Client. Firefox 46.0.1 Browser. Initially neither have any
plugins installed in Firefox. Website under test is:

http://www.uverse.com/live

So using the site it will ask for various plugins to be install to make it operational.
First requested plug-in is Flash. Do remember that Flash anything these days is the devil.
Last update a few weeks ago fixed over 80 vulnerabilities. Even Adobe is getting away
from Flash because of all of this. Second plug-in requested is Microsoft Silverlight.
A now dead technology. So for me in order to view something on the above website requires
the installation of a horribly vulnerable plugin and top that off with a dead proprietary
technology. I'm sure things are different on an Android and iPhone but for me using
Uverse Live is unattainable because of the risks and the dead proprietary technology.
If someone can show a better light on this I'm more then open to listen.

wilcal wrote:Bug: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18584
has been filed.

You report a bug so that we add support for their DRM and proprietary vendor-lockin stuff?

This is not a Mageia bug, please take this up with AT&T. Ask them to add linux support, or refuse to pay for their crap - it's your choice that matters.

Regarding silverlight please take a look at pipelight: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11078
Although that still doesn't change the fact that silverlight old, vulnerable and unmaintained.

doktor5000 wrote:You report a bug so that we add support for their DRM and proprietary vendor-lockin stuff?

No not at all. I reported it only as a bookmark and will shortly change it's status to resolved
if no one else wants to comment. I think where this is all going is the major "cable" suppliers
are exiting the STB ( Set Top Box ) arena and heading for IP only solutions. AT&T has
certainly made this position public. AT&T's Uverse Live is effectively a substitution for a STB.