On Saturday 11 Feb 2012 19:59:14 Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Richard Cox <conardcox@gmail.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> 
> >> I've just tried a number of videos I've never watched before. I don't
> >> receive any messages about "Updating Player" and they all played just
> >> fine. However I then tried your Wonder Years stuff and that failed as
> >> described.
> >> 
> >> Unless this was caused by an update specifically done last night then
> >> my machine is completely up to date as of yesterday afternoon and much
> >> stuff that I've never watched before does work but some certainly does
> >> fail.
> >> 
> >> - Mark
> > 
> > My guess is...you still have hal installed.
> 
> No, hal isn't installed and hasn't been for quite a long time.
> 
> mark@c2stable ~ $ eix -Ic hal
> [I] kde-base/kephal (4.7.4(4)@01/21/2012): Allows handling of
> multihead systems via the XRandR extension
> mark@c2stable ~ $
> 
> 
> I think the more likely scenario is that for newer videos Amazon is
> required by the owners of the video content to use newer versions of
> DRM and it's really these newer versions of DRM that's causing the
> problems. Older content that's been on their site for a while is
> likely using older versions of DRM that still work because Amazon
> isn't goign to change what's already there.
> 
> I could play any Lost episode whether I've played it before or not. As
> best I can tell anything that's been added more recently is failing
> under Linux. I'm having no problems playing Grant's 'The Wonder Years'
> episodes from Amazon inside an NT VM on my Gentoo box, but it fails in
> Linux proper. There's nothing inherently wrong about that. If Windows
> has the DRM stuff and Linux doesn't, primarily because Open Source DRM
> is inherently _NOT_ DRM, then that's the way it is. I don't see this
> as an Amazon problem, or a Flash problem, but rather a problem with
> the owners of the source material.
> 
> I do recognize my willingness to live with DRM is quite different than
> many of my Linux friends. For that I apologize. I guess I should be
> more militant...

Nah!  No need to apologise.  Respecting the wishes of the content creators 
when you don't *have* to makes you more militant - but in reverse!  Ha, ha, 
ha! :-))

Have you tried using the rtmpdump and friends to sniff the stream address and 
then download it directly to your machine?

I don't know if it works with Amazon, because I do not have an account with 
them.

-- 
Regards,
Mick