[Liverpool] Playing 4oD/Demand Five on Linux - solved

[Sebastian Arcus]

This is something that has been bugging me for a while - since a year or 
so ago, I could only play Channel 4/5 (4oD / Demand Five) on one single 
Linux machine I have - which also happens to be the slowest I have :-) 
None of the others could do it. I seem to recall that some others 
mentioned during meetings having problems with this on their machines.

Well, today I donned my google-fu cap, and, fortunately, it turns out 
that there is a cure for this. For some obscure (to me) reason, Channel 
4 and 5 (and some other online video providers) have converted to using 
HAL (through Flash) on Linux a while ago. Since that moment, machines 
which don't have HAL can't get past the "buffering" screen. The laptop 
which still worked for me happened to have the last version of Slackware 
which included HAL.

As HAL is obsolete by current standards and has been dropped by most 
distros (yes - even Slackware :-) )  - less and less Linux machines 
could play Channel 4 and 5. But HAL can be re-installed even on top of 
recent versions of Linux - and it seems there are no ill side-effects. 
I've installed HAL on the latest Slackware and now 4oD works a treat. 
Please find below instructions for re-installing HAL on Ubuntu (and 
derivatives):

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/10/fixing-amazon-prime-streaming-drm-protected-flash-13-10

Hoping the above helps some