1280138 - Hoopla Video Streaming Doesn't Recognize Firefox 47+ Widevine Support

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P2)

Description

[Jenn Scott]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0
Build ID: 20160614004007

Steps to reproduce:

The library system I work for is going to be using Hoopla (hoopladigital.com) for electronic media checkouts.  When I was evaluating some of Hoopla's collection, I noticed that Hoopla normally uses Widevine for streaming checked out videos, except in Firefox, where Silverlight is used instead.  They do note this on their FAQ page at https://www.hoopladigital.com/support - the pertinent sections to look at are Movie/TV Help and the ones on Silverlight and Widevine.  Since Firefox 47+ now has Widevine included if DRM support is turned on, I decided to see if Hoopla would let me use Widevine instead, and disabled Silverlight.  If the user agent was the default Firefox one, Hoopla still asked for Silverlight when I attempted to view a video.  If I tried spoofing Chrome's user agent, since I was able to view the video in Chrome, the video wouldn't load correctly.  I tried this in 47 and 49.0a2 (6/14/16 build), and in completely new profiles with the only setting change being disabling Silverlight.

Steps to reproduce:
1. If Silverlight is installed, disable the Silverlight plugin.
2. Make sure that Widevine is enabled.
3. Log in to Hoopla, and check out a video.


Actual results:

When not spoofing Chrome's user agent:

1. A request to install Silverlight is displayed.

When spoofing Chrome's user agent, either with User Agent Switcher in my usual profile, or by bringing up Developer Tools and Responsive Design Mode and entering the Chrome user agent there:

1. Hoopla attempts to load a video, but instead returns an error page saying the video couldn't be loaded, and asks the user to reload the video if necessary.
2. The Javascript console returns the following errors:

"Media resource mediasource:https://www.hoopladigital.com/f6cf24a4-accd-4e03-8bb9-9981abd26c84 could not be decoded.1 11110407


VIDEOJS: ERROR: (CODE:3 MEDIA_ERR_DECODE) The video playback was aborted due to a corruption problem or because the video used features your browser did not support. Object { code: 3, message: "The video playback was aborted due …" }1 video.js:23:203
D() video.js:23
t.log.error() video.js:23
s.error() video.js:78
s.Fd() video.js:115
e() video.js:14
t.c/e.X() video.js:7

TypeError: J.srcElement is undefined
MediaPlayer.dependencies.PlaybackController/f1() cldasheverywhere.min.js:1
bound () self-hosted:752
1 cldasheverywhere.min.js:1:379482"

I assume the part of the URL after hoopladigital.com is for the specific video I chose.


Expected results:

The video should have played.

I did pass this on to staff members who handle our electronic content to pass on to Hoopla, but I figured that filing a tech evangelism bug on the Mozilla side would help.  That way, both sides can figure out what Hoopla needs to fix to get this to work.

Comment 1

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Thanks for reporting this site, Jenn. We can try to reach out to Hoopa. Do you know if there any Hoopla videos that don't require a user account?

We're particularly interested in Widevine video sites like this that don't work when spoofing Chrome's User Agent in Firefox. This suggests there is some incompatibility in Firefox we should fix.

Comment 2

[Jenn Scott]

(In reply to Chris Peterson [:cpeterson] from comment #1)
> Thanks for reporting this site, Jenn. We can try to reach out to Hoopa. Do
> you know if there any Hoopla videos that don't require a user account?
> 
> We're particularly interested in Widevine video sites like this that don't
> work when spoofing Chrome's User Agent in Firefox. This suggests there is
> some incompatibility in Firefox we should fix.

Unfortunately, I don't see any videos that don't require a login to view - if I try to borrow a video without signing in, I get taken to a login page which explicitly says only registered users can borrow titles.  I was using one of the test accounts that Hoopla set up for my library system so that we could evaluate their service, so Hoopla might be able to set up a test account for Mozilla to troubleshoot this.  I can try to see if I can get a specific contact person on the Hoopla end from our electronic resources team if needed, although the people I need to talk to are off today.  I did pass on this bug number to my branch's member of the electronic resources team so that we could pass it on to Hoopla, so they should have it.

Comment 3

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

That's OK. I think we can find a contact at Hoopla. If there was a free or trial video available for us to test before contacting them, then we can tell them more specifically what they need to fix for Firefox. But it's not a big deal. :)

Comment 4

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Switching to needsdiagnosis to understand the core issue. 
And I guess on Chris Peterson plate to do the forensics. :)

Comment 5

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Jenn, can you please test Hoolpa video again? We've fixed a lot of Widevine bugs since you first reported the errors. I don't have access to a Hoopla video account.

Comment 6

[Jenn Scott]

(In reply to Chris Peterson [:cpeterson] from comment #5)
> Jenn, can you please test Hoolpa video again? We've fixed a lot of Widevine
> bugs since you first reported the errors. I don't have access to a Hoopla
> video account.

I apologize for not getting a chance to retest this sooner.  Hoopla did update their site shorly after you asked me to retry it as well.  I'm not sure whose changes fixed it, but it is working now as expected (with Widevine being detected and used instead of prompting for Silverlight) in Firefox 49 and in the 9/19 50.0a2 build.  Setting this to Resolved and WorksForMe, and many thanks!