1762507 - No Playback in HBO Max

Status: NEW

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P3)

Description

[CPuckett.Dynetics]

Attachment: 2022-03-31 (1).png

Steps to reproduce:

Goto play.hbomax.com and try to play a DRM protected movie.
It works on FireFox 89 but not on FireFox 93 and newer.
Tried turning off all the tracker blocking and allowing the site.
Also tested with the latest FireFox 99 and still not working.

Actual results:

Got the "Can't play title" error.

It looks like the WideVine plugin isn't able to get a license in the newer versions of FireFox. It's the latest plugin version and the same plugin is used for both FireFox versions. The network console shows a failed POST to get the license on the newer versions. That post works on FF 89.

Expected results:

Video should have played.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Audio/Video: Playback' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Hi, bryce, could you help me check this bug?
Thank you.

Comment 3

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

This works in Nightly, but fails in Release so it doesn't appear to be related to Firefox version. I am using two different profiles here with different settings in each.

For the POST that fails, the two requests appear to be the same.

Nightly -
https://comet.api.hbo.com/drm/license/widevine?keygen=playready&drmKeyVersion=2&auth=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR...

[HTTP/2 2000 Ok]

Release -
https://comet.api.hbo.com/drm/license/widevine?keygen=playready&drmKeyVersion=2&auth=eyJhbGciOiJIUz...

[HTTP/2 400 Bad Request 127ms]

Comment 4

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Using a synced profile between the two releases Nightly works, Release does not. So this doesn't appear to be related to profile settings.

Comment 5

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Ok, so when I first fired up Release, it failed. BUT, I hadn't used DRM in that install before, and according to about:addons, the widevine CDM was updating the first time I launched so in that first session playback failed. In a second test, after a restart and confirming I had the latest CDM installed, playback works.

Can you confirm you're running the latest cdm - about:addons / plugins section and make sure you restart the browser before attempting again.

Plugin version should be 4.10.2391.0

Comment 6

[CPuckett.Dynetics]

It's fixed, but not how you think.

I had not tried a fresh profile AND restarting a few times. So I created a new profile then restarted a few times and that did NOT fix it. It was using the latest (4.10.2391.0) CDM. The CDM seems to be installed in my profile. I even tried pulling an older CDM from a profile backup and nadda.

After reading your attempts, I decided to try running the Nightly build and it worked. I decided to just run it for a few days and moved the Nightly build into my FireFox install directory and it stopped working. What I finally tracked it to was that I had FireFox installed under a NTFS junction. It seems that somewhere between FireFox v89 and v93, something minor changed in FF that breaks the CDM when it's on a NTFS junction. FF itself is still perfectly happy on the junction. It just seems to wreck the CDM.

Comment 7

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

Thanks for tracking down the source of the issue. This sounds like a class of issue that would be fixed by bug 1370772 (loading Widevine for a reliable location).