Kodi Community Forum

On a recent discussion we were discussing various Server Software that works within Kodi.
Mezzmo, Playon, Servio has the ability to play almost any media available on a website.

They do this by incorporating a Browser. The content still requires user to login and have access to this content but once set up the user can stream the content anywhere on their network to non pc platforms.

Kodi works with these browser servers as playon has its own plugin and you can access the live streams also through UPNP without any type of plugin.

This in effect is the user personal media stored on a 3rd party server under their terms.

This doesn't seem to be outside of pythons grasp as USTV now Addon requires you to enter in a login and provides access to the content your are authorized to on the website.

Kodi already has in a built in webinterface. . someone made a web browser addon. ( though I don't believe its working too well.

it doesn't seem to far fetched that one of the new Kodi version have a built in Browser allowing site specific addons requiring logins (Netflix, Hulu, AMC. Showtime, FX, Syfy.)

As people begin using services like playston vue and SlingTV and these channels provide those services webcontent access it ould be nice to be able to access those channels within Kodi .

Another option I think would be to allow Lua scripting plugins but I don't think either is feasible without an internal base browser that add on developers can utilize to add subscription channels with drm language and protocol support.

I didn't list this as a feature request because I am sure there are reasons why this has not already been done and is more intended for discussion

Someone is working on this. There's a thread somewhere with some info, but I don't have a link handy.

(2016-03-30, 00:48)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]Someone is working on this. There's a thread somewhere with some info, but I don't have a link handy.

This one?
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...ht=browser

This ended up being tied into emby didn't it?

Nope, I'm thinking of the one that is a full-on complete web browser based on Chromium: http://esmasol.de/open-source/kodi-add-o...b-browser/

:D

As it's been mentioned in the past, a browser in Kodi by itself won't add Netflix etc support, as open source browsers miss the required EME decryption module for HTML5 video playback that all these sites need (or silverlight for that matter). These decryption modules need to be provided by others and have to be available for the platforms Kodi is running on.

According tot he license agreement on this open source HTML EME https://github.com/fraunhoferfokus/open-...um/LICENSE

wouldn't this beThis be included in the Chromium project ?

So, why the REAL problem on netflix on Kodi?

DRM.

da-anda, would work if you had widevine and possibly an agent-switcher though right? Not sure if that breaks any terms of services though.

(2016-03-30, 15:52)sagrath Wrote: [ -> ]So, why the REAL problem on netflix on Kodi?

I'm wondering if this is a regional issue

(2016-03-30, 12:22)tornicade Wrote: [ -> ]According tot he license agreement on this open source HTML EME https://github.com/fraunhoferfokus/open-...um/LICENSE

wouldn't this beThis be included in the Chromium project ?

read this from their github readme

Quote:As EME is modelling only the license retrieval and management, there is a second component that needs to talk to the DRM platform. In many cases, mainly in embedded environments, the media engine is separate from the browser and used by the browser as external renderer. In this case the media engine probably needs to authenticate itself at the DRM platform for handling and decoding of protected media data.

even though the EME connector is OpenSource, you still need the CDM (content decryption module) which will be some binary blob that will likely only work on certified hardware. Also, with an intact DRM chain up to the display (which you can't guarantee on Linux in any way, so no proper DRM chain on anything Linux), Kodi will be out of business of any audio/video processing, so likely AV sync issues, no refreshrate switch, no HQ upscalers, no picture post processing etc unless the DRM chain somehow offers settings for that.

The only real solution to user freedom is getting rid of DRM, like the music industry did, and look how popular streaming services became now. DRM won't prevent piracy, ever! It'll only put stones in the way of paying customers. So as long as it's way harder to watch movies you payed for than pirating a movie (which these days is really just a single click), nothing will change. The more protection they put on, the more customers they likely loose.

Hell, you even have to break the law to watch a Bluray or DVD with OpenSource players.

Summary: browser support in Kodi won't help. You will always have to either break the law or TOSs if you want to watch DRM protected content you are paying for in a cross platform open source environement. And even if you get it to work meeting all legal aspects, then you still won't have user freedom as you'll miss all the nice video and audio processing/playback features available that Kodi offers, as Kodi/ffmpeg won't process any of that data.
What PlayOn does is very likely not wanted by the movie industry, as they are broadcasting decrypted data in your local network which you could easily save on disk and share with others.


@nooryani84 - yes, widevine would work, but it'll still violate either some law or the TOS of the content providers, because you break the DRM chain inside Kodi. You'd get Amazon, Netflix etc, but it'll not please the content providers in any way and maybe even have some legal issues (circumventing/breaking DRM chain), but I'm no lawyer

Actually, it seems the DRM module works on a lot of things. Someone pulled an ARMv7 module out of ChromeOS and got Netflix to work on Raspberrry Pi 2 in a browser (software decoding only). Someone else even made a new Amazon add-on for Kodi using some of the new Kodi v17 stuff (something called input stream, IIRC). It's still a closed binary part that is needed, but Netflix in Kodi might one day happen.

(2016-03-31, 04:57)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]Actually, it seems the DRM module works on a lot of things. Someone pulled an ARMv7 module out of ChromeOS and got Netflix to work on Raspberrry Pi 2 in a browser (software decoding only). Someone else even made a new Amazon add-on for Kodi using some of the new Kodi v17 stuff (something called input stream, IIRC). It's still a closed binary part that is needed, but Netflix in Kodi might one day happen.

Wait.....what.....where can I test out this amazon prime add-on with a Kyrpton alpha??

Adding a browser has been looked into and discussed at length a few years back. it was determined that the impact on the build side was huge and fraught with twitchyness™. So it was dropped as a possible feature addition. Note, this is a non-trivial task, you just don't add it and go, it's worse than python and that can get pretty crazy to build right.

(2016-03-31, 04:57)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]Actually, it seems the DRM module works on a lot of things. Someone pulled an ARMv7 module out of ChromeOS and got Netflix to work on Raspberrry Pi 2 in a browser (software decoding only). Someone else even made a new Amazon add-on for Kodi using some of the new Kodi v17 stuff (something called input stream, IIRC). It's still a closed binary part that is needed, but Netflix in Kodi might one day happen.

I know of this (and tested it on my PI), but that is breaking the DRM chain (well, just like PlayOn for that matter) and thus will likely never be accepted by content providers, or they limit it to 720p (just like Netflix does on uncertified Android boxes).