Why is watchoptik.telus.com intentionally broken on Linux?

[kevhawk]

I've observed this over the last little while trying to use the Optik TV website to watch shows on my Linux machines in Chrome. The reason why I think this seems intentional is there is no dependency reason for it to not work. This idea is proven when you use a User-Agent switcher to switch the platform reported by your browser to Windows instead of Linux then everything works as normal.

So why is Telus almost seemlying intending to block the ability to watch Optik TV on Linux?

[WestCoasterBC]

Telus isn’t blocking anything. The video streams are authorized with flash player. Even if the plugin is enabled it won’t work, on the many distros available.

This is strictly a flash player and Linux issue. User agent is just a trick to get it to work. If they switch to HTML5 someday it will never be an issue on any browser/platform.

[kevhawk]

Well that's what I meant before by it wasn't a dependency issue with Google Chrome instead of Chromium on Linux a built-in flash player version is supplied one that is more updated and secure. The User-Agent trick doesn't effect the OS reported by flash player and that's clear by the way Shaw blocks Linux platform users from their Free Range TV platform. The User-Agent will get you in the door but if you try and play anything you get hit with yet another error from Flash detecting the platform.

It's very clearly not a flash player issue.

[WestCoasterBC]

Essentially flash player is already EOL, it’s 11 months countdown is on. Many video sites that require sign/authorization won’t play protected content no matter what browser or Linux version is your flavour. It’s well documented of its ability with flash protected content. An the end user messing around to make a stream play.

Besides Ericsson Media First is the platform that provides the watch.(insert provider).

[xray]

It's whitelisting the tested platforms based on the user agent string. Conceptually this is different than blacklisting the other platforms.