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[Austin Stereo]

I have Media Center 23 installed on a machine at work, it does great for media and video, but Youtube is virtually unusable.  I tried the latest download of MC 25, hoping that this would have been improved.  Virtually all videos return a "something went wrong" "failed to open file" error.  Perhaps there's some additional configuration needed? 

[JimH]

Some YouTube videos are encrypted and can't be played.

[TheShoe]

Jim,

What would it take to incorporate Youtube and Netflix into MC?  I assume there are licenses involved and therefore cost to you (and cost to us).  What is that cost?

If MC had at least those two (and I suspect those would be the tip o' the iceberg), it would go a great way to making MC the center of my families' home theater experience.  Right now, we switch between MC for stuff I own and steam to various STBs (set top boxes).  Would be great if MC incorporated and we would be closer to all-in-one (though that is a cat-n-mouse game I guess).

Anyway - curious if you've looked at that.  I'd pay more for MC if it meant I could have more "services" integrated.  I'll not ever give up MC however because for my personal owned media, it does it all, and exceptionally well.

[Hendrik]

We have some long-term plans to improve YouTube support (not sure when I'll finally get to it, so much to do!), but something entirely commercial like Netflix is very hard. They have rather strict DRM requirements, which makes them extremely wary of PC-based solutions entirely, requiring modern hardware DRM support for their highest quality in browsers, which for us would mean that even if we could somehow cooperate with them, we would ultimately be building an entirely new Netflix client inside MC, and it would still be rather "external" and not feel like MC itself.

Considering that 2019/2020 are the years where Netflix really has to fight for its space more then ever now with other big streaming services starting up and pulling their content out of Netflix (eg. Disney+), it seems unlikely they would want to risk such a thing.

Unfortunately this really applies to all commercial video streaming. They would all be happier if they didn't have to deal with the PC at all, and could all run on closed-down set-top-boxes.

[Antoine.]

There should be a relatively painless way to incorporate YouTube into MC, especially into the Theater mode :

- Use the youtube.com/tv url (which is now restricted to smart TV and other such devices), easy.

- Modify Chromium's engine's to make it look like a TV, should be easy for you *apparently*, it has something to do with user string agent...

- allow for Chromium to run full screen in Theater View (which it apprently does not now), doesn't sound like the world's most ambitious undertaking but I have no idea how Chromium and MC work together.

Am I missing something?

If not, let me convey how frustrating it is for this to ne be implemented into MC, considering how important and central YouTube has become to some of your audience!

Hope this helps!

Antoine

[S. Pupp]

This was accomplished in the past by the use of TVAppLauncher.exe by Don W (see
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=111645.0)

Until recently, I used TVAppLauncher.exe for YouTube and Netflix with great results, but recently had to stop using it due to freezes.  Perhaps Don W's work could be built upon.

[Castius]

Yes keep it simple. Just get the built in browser to have drm turned on. So this content will play. And allow it to go full screen. This would be a great start.

[Awesome Donkey]

The problem is, the embedded Chromium browser (CEF or Chromium Embedded Framework) doesn't include by default the Widevine CDM plugin used for DRM anymore, so it won't work for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.

[Hendrik]

For the internal browser, there is some potential good news - as many might know, Microsoft is replacing Edge with a Chromium-based Edge rather soon, its currently scheduled to release in January.
For the old Edge, they never offered a way for applications like Media Center to use it as a built-in browser, however for the new Edge, they are actually offering such an API (called WebView2, WebView1 is what drives the IE internal browser). There is some hope that such an embedded Edge-Chromium version might support DRM, but we won't know until we try, sometime early next year.

[Awesome Donkey]

Interesting, if Edge supports the PlayReady DRM through the embedded browser, that could work.

[Antoine.]

The problem is, the embedded Chromium browser (CEF or Chromium Embedded Framework) doesn't include by default the Widevine CDM plugin used for DRM anymore, so it won't work for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.

Do you need this for YouTube though (which is easily the #1 request for JRiver to support, I can only imagine)?

[Awesome Donkey]

Could, it depends I guess on if YouTube uses any of the DRM stuff for some videos (I've never really checked or heard that before).