For the purposes of this article, we used the latest version of Firefox on Ubuntu 14.04. These tricks will also work in other browsers, but not Chrome — Chrome users should use Firefox for this instead.
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However, the below trick doesn’t seem to work in Chrome or another browser that uses the Pepper-based Flash plug-in. You’ll just see a black screen when the video tries to play.
Frist, you’ll need to install the Adobe Flash browser plug-in if you haven’t already. Linux distributions don’t typically install this by default. On Ubuntu, click the Ubuntu Software Center icon on the dock, search for “Flash,” and install the Adobe Flash plug-in package.
What’s actually happening here is that the Flash player requires an old version of HAL — now deprecated in favor of the modern udev system — for DRM purposes.
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Ubuntu user Michael Blennerhassett hosts a “Zombie HAL” PPA that provides a version of HAL that will install cleanly on modern versions of Ubuntu for just this reason. If you’re using another Linux distribution, you’ll need to hunt down an appropriate version of HAL for your distribution of choice.
To install it, open a Terminal window — click the Ubuntu icon on the Dash, type Terminal, and press Enter — and run the following commands:
Unfortunately, this won’t make the videos work in Google Chrome or another browser with the Pepper-based Flash plug-in. The player will remain black.
Get Higher-Quality Videos With the Silverlight Player
This won’t work in Google Chrome either, as Google Chrome no longer supports NPAPI plug-ins.
Pipelight is fairly easy to install — it will even do the hard work of downloading SIlverlight and installing it in the background for you. All you need to do is open a Terminal and run the following commands in order:
The next time you open your browser, Pipelight will automatically download and install Silverlight in the background, allowing you to access Silverlight video content on the web.
Before you continue, visit the amazon.com/video/settings page and ensure your account is set to prefer Microsoft Silverlight instead of Flash.
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For now, these solution should also work with other websites that use old DRM-protected Flash players or Silverlight video players.