Hey everyone, I’ve figured out how to get tv.xfinity.com working on Arch Linux today. Here’s what I did in case anyone else needs help:
First install pipelight:
yaourt -S pipelight
Next, if you don’t already have it install firefox:
sudo pacman -S firefox
Next, update and configure pipelight:
sudo mkdir /root/.gnupg
sudo pipelight-plugin ––update
Next, enable the flash plugin:
sudo pipelight-plugin ––enable flash
Next, add the plugins to firefox:
sudo pipelight-plugin ––create-mozilla-plugins
Lastely, make sure you have hal installed:
yaourt -S hal-flash-git
yaourt -S hal-info
Once you’ve completed the steps above, completely kill of firefox (Super+Q), then restart and browse to tv.xinfinity.com, you should be able to watch it with no problems.
22 Comments
J Nason · October 14, 2016 at 12:06 pm
Thank you!! I found your link in the Comcast forums, and I had everything except I hadn’t added the plugins to firefox. Finally it works!
It’s almost the same for Fedora 22, except using dnf for packages.
godlikemouse · October 17, 2016 at 6:39 pm
Awesome! Glad it worked 🙂
Sean · November 13, 2016 at 1:41 pm
Thanks for the information. With some adjustments I was able to get this working in Ubuntu 16.10, however I can’t get the video controls to show up. No play/pause/seek/full screen ext. Just was wondering if anyone else has run into this.
FWIW, this is how I went about installing everything:
# Install Pipelight
# NOTE: Pipelight isn’t in the Ubuntu yakkety (16.10) repository yet, so I had to point ‘/etc/apt/sources.list.d/pipelight-ubuntu-stable-yakkety.list’ to the xenial (16.04) repo
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipelight/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install –install-recommends pipelight-multi
sudo pipelight-plugin –update
sudo pipelight-plugin –enable flash
sudo pipelight-plugin –create-mozilla-plugins
# Install HAL Flash
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/hal-flash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libhal1-flash
# Open Firefox
godlikemouse · November 21, 2016 at 11:32 am
Hi Sean,
I’m seeing the exact same thing. I’m currently working on a solution but I don’t have anything just yet. For now it’s just play and close, reopen to resume.
Mike · November 20, 2016 at 4:26 pm
So then will pipelight replace adobe flash across the system?
godlikemouse · November 21, 2016 at 11:33 am
Hi Mike,
It shouldn’t replace it. Either way you should be able to turn it on or off depending on what you want to use by enabling/disabling plugins under plugins://.
Shane · December 29, 2016 at 11:07 am
Wondering if anyone can suggest any assistance. Ubuntu 16.04. Installed as suggested. didn’t work. Added “sudo pipelight-plugin –enable silverlight” and now I see the plugin in FF, but … still no love from xfinity. After the “please wait” screen, I get “Flash compatibility issue”.
When i look in FF plugins, I see:
Shockwave Flash 24.0 r0libflashplayer.soapplication/x-shockwave-flash (Shockwave Flash: swf),
application/futuresplash (FutureSplash Player: spl)
and
Silverlight Plug-In5.1.41212.0libpipelight-silverlight5.1.soapplication/x-silverlight (npctrl: scr),
application/x-silverlight-2
both are set to “always activate”
any other tips or things to check?
godlikemouse · December 30, 2016 at 9:14 am
The only thing I can think of is to make sure you’re up to date with the latest Firefox version as well as the plugins. I just pulled the latest on my Arch machine and it worked so I’m thinking there may possibly be a version issue. Sorry I can’t provide more info but I don’t run Ubuntu on any of my machines.
Corvatic · January 31, 2017 at 9:25 pm
For the commands involving ‘pipelight-plugin’, you may need a double hyphen for the commands to work. For example:
sudo pipelight-plugin –-update
That’s what I had to do on my Arch install.
godlikemouse · January 31, 2017 at 9:49 pm
Sorry about that, sometimes WordPress likes to change my double hyphens to single hyphens. I’ve fixed it in the post. Thanks for the heads up.
Al · February 16, 2017 at 1:33 pm
I followed this and it was working for me very well on arch/firefox.
However, now I get a screen that says my OS is not supported, and that I should use MS or IOS.
Does it still work for you? This change occurred in the last week.
godlikemouse · February 16, 2017 at 2:13 pm
Hi Al,
Yeah, I just checked and it looks like they’re doing a user agent check here. All you need to do is go into your Firefox about:config and add a new key called:
general.useragent.override
Set its value to something like (Chrome for Windows):
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36
Restart your browser and you should be good to go.
Sandstone · December 1, 2020 at 5:55 pm
I got the following when trying to open my streaming after putting the override in:
Your system isn’t compatible with Xfinity Stream
For optimal performance, the following is required:
Supported Operating Systems
Windows 7+,iOS 11+, Android 7+
Mac OS X 10.14.4+ for Safari
Mac OS X 10.7+ for Chrome and Firefox
Supported Browsers
Chrome 75+, Firefox 68+, Microsoft Edge 80+, Safari 12+
godlikemouse · December 2, 2020 at 12:17 am
Hi Sandstone. Unfortunately Xfinity has been trying their best to stop Linux users from being able to access their platform. The only other thing I can suggest (as I am no longer an Xfinity customer) would be to try and modify your user agent string to impersonate a working client. For example, if you use Chrome to try and access Xfinity then capture the user agent passed down the line, you should be able to use that same user agent string to spoof the request from Linux. Best of luck.
J Nason · February 16, 2017 at 2:15 pm
I’m now explicitly blocked too. For about two weeks. I’m too tired of trying to get around their blockages. I’m a paying customer, it’s ridiculous.
godlikemouse · February 17, 2017 at 8:57 am
Yeah, their development team doesn’t appear to be doing that great of a job. You can get around it by changing the agent string though.
Carlo · May 3, 2017 at 4:46 pm
Is there any way to make this work using the regular ‘flashplugin’ since pipelight has been discontinued?
I get stuck on the page that says “Adding Device” (it loads forever)
godlikemouse · May 3, 2017 at 7:27 pm
Hi Carlo,
So far I’ve been unsuccessful in doing it without it. If I can find another way to get it work, I’ll roll it into a single install application so we no longer have to do all this whack customization just to use Xfinity. They need upgrade and get away from flash like Netflix has.
Carlo · May 3, 2017 at 7:46 pm
After contacting xfinity I do believe they are rolling out HTML5 video streaming and (hopefully) ditching flash at the start of next year. Unfortunately no word on Linux support (probably a no). Strange though that even now that Linux has the same version NPAPI flash as everyone else it still does not work.
godlikemouse · May 4, 2017 at 3:43 pm
Yeah, they’re specifically checking the agent string. Once they roll out an HTML5 version, I’ll build and app and add it to AUR. Then we won’t have to worry about it anymore. Thanks for the good news.
Jim H · September 3, 2020 at 3:00 am
Hi, I’ve been searching to get Xfinity streaming to work with Kubuntu and nothing works. Can you tell me if pipeline works and how to configure it?
godlikemouse · September 4, 2020 at 8:07 pm
Hi there, unfortunately I no longer use Xfinity. They did everything they could to try and block Linux users from their platform. I’m not sure if this approach works any longer or if there’s something better out there. Sorry I couldn’t help more, good luck.