Adobe Flash Player use on NHK TV News

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Solon

Adobe Flash Player use on NHK TV News

Unread post by Solon » 2017-01-20, 16:12

Hi!
I have a recent issue that I cannot seem to either fix or explain. I use the NHK Japanese TV website for a sign-on page in English < https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/ >, and in the last couple weeks it will no longer play video. I asked them, and they say they use Adobe Flash Player. I then went to Adobe and made sure that I have the latest version of their Player. Finally, I reloaded Pale Moon in the current version (27.0.3), and then I went ahead and reset it to original specifications.

I have a four-year old Toshiba laptop with plenty of computing power, and am running Windows 7 Home Premium.
First, let me say that there are two different types of video on this website, short 'News' segments (couple of minutes), and longer program 'Shows' (about half an hour). This website used to play video clips of all kinds with no problem in Pale Moon... for years.

Now, however, the short News video segments will not play,they show a black window with the word "Buffering...", which stays up indefinitely. It never changes. However the longer Shows video will play, and play just fine. This is very strange.

One thing I have noticed is that the control bar that appears underneath the short News segments when you cursor over the window look completely different from the control bar that appears underneath the Shows videos. According to an answer about this from NHK which I received, they are using Adobe Flash Player for their programs on the Internet.

I have no idea what is causing this problem, and since I am not a developer, I have no way of contacting Adobe directly to see if it is their problem.
I am wondering if this is a problem with Pale Moon interacting with Adobe on this particular website.
Or is it in the settings within my Pale Moon browser?

I would appreciate any guidance on this that you all could provide.

Thanks,

Solon

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Moonchild
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Re: Adobe Flash Player use on NHK TV News

Unread post by Moonchild » 2017-01-20, 16:34

Actually, it looks like they are using Adobe PrimeTime (not Adobe Flash) which is a DRM module. PrimeTime won't work because we do not allow in-browser DRM modules.

It also makes no sense for them to use PrimeTime for short news videos that aren't in need of DRM protection to begin with. They will be cutting out many users from their news this way, not just Pale Moon users.

definitely HTML5 video, in any case, and not flash:

Code: Select all

  <div id="videoplayer">
    <div id="html5_player">
      <video id="html5_video" playsinline></video>
    </div>
  </div>
EDIT: looking a bit further, their primetime module assumes it can use the DRM module if it finds MSE. Bad assumption.
You can play the videos with flash fallback if you disable MSE in Options -> Content, but you should most certainly file a bug report to the website about this.
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JustOff

Re: Adobe Flash Player use on NHK TV News

Unread post by JustOff » 2017-01-20, 16:44

Moonchild wrote:definitely HTML5 video, in any case, and not flash:
And it plays fine for me with MSE disabled (27.0.3 & 27.1.0b2).

JustOff

Re: Adobe Flash Player use on NHK TV News

Unread post by JustOff » 2017-01-23, 07:08

Actually when MSE is disabled, player on this site switches to flash. You can use HTML5 Video Tuner to set such a preference.

Solon

Re: Adobe Flash Player use on NHK TV News

Unread post by Solon » 2017-01-26, 18:24

I went out to the Internet and tried the various methods under the video instructions for Firefox concerning changing the < about:config > instructions under < mp4 > and <webm >, but to no avail. I then also changed the <plugins > option in addition to the others also per yet another instruction video, but again to no avail.

In both cases I went to the Youtube analysis page, and I had 4 out of 6 options de-selected, but this did not seem to matter when I went to NHK TV.

I then downloaded the instructions as mentioned by JustOff, but while I can read them, the file does not open, and there seems to be no way to apply it.

I mentioned above that I am running Win 7 Home Premium, not Win 10 (although I did flirt with Win 10 over a year ago before un-loading it and going back to Win 7... I sincerely regret loading Win 10, since the brief excursion to Win 10 has hosed a lot of features of my Toshiba Laptop!). What I am getting to is that if the program by JustOff is an App, then I cannot apply it in Win 7.

Anyway, thanks for the info, and I will send a report to NHK with this page on the Internet as a reference, so that their computer guys can take a look and hopefully arrange for a workaround later.

Thanks again.

Solon

Re: Adobe Flash Player use on NHK TV News

Unread post by Solon » 2017-01-27, 19:18

I re-read these postings and noticed the one on changing MSE in the "Options" section of Pale Moon.

So I changed it and now NHK works well for all formats.

I will now have to read up on MSE in General on the Internet to see if there are times when I want to have it 'Enabled'?

Thanks for the information,

Solon

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