[newbie] OpenH264 and Widevine

Add-ons Add-on Support
#1

I am struggling to view videos in Firefox 84 on Ubuntu 20.04.01 LTS. Various web sites (e.g. Peacock) tell me that they’re downloading extensions needed. The extension manager tells me that OpenH264 from Cisco and Widevine from Google are being installed, but neither ever completes its automatic installation (still stalled after several months). The auto-install process is otherwise opaque, so I have no idea why it is stuck. For all I know, my ISP is “protecting” me from whatever sites these downloads come from.

So I have come to Mozilla add-ons looking for these extensions so I can install them manually. I have been able to install other extensions from this site, so I more comfortable using it than debugging some stalled opaque automated process.

Unfortunately, the extension search function can’t find neither OpenH264 nor Widevine. Are they hidden under some other names? If they’re just not here, is it possible to upload them so those of us with auto-install failures have a work-around to pull them down and install them?

Thanks.

#2

This service is unavailable in your region.

#3

Not correct. Xfinity (i.e. Comcast) provides Peacock to me as part of my Internet + TV package (or so they claim on this month’s billing statement). Besides, I have a similar problem trying to view Netflix on the same computers, so I would still want to install OpenH264 and Widevine.

So let’s please move past speculation about what region I live in and what services I may subscribe to so we can answer the basic question of whether OpenH264 and Widevine can be made available at this Mozilla add-on site.

#4

If they are available for your Firefox distribution, they will be in the Add-on manager under “Plugins”. However, Firefox should offer you an install prompt if you are missing them. It is possible that the version of Firefox you have installed had these non-free components explicitly disabled. In which case support.mozilla.org is probably a better place to get help, since this is not about a specific third party extension, but a first party feature of Firefox.

#5

Yes, they are there. Each claims that it “will be installed shortly”. They’ve been stuck in that state since late summer, and there’s no button to click to get them to move. I need a manual work-around, which is why I came here to Mozilla add-ons looking for a manual download that I can install because the automatic process is broken.

So can we now address my original question: Can these add-ons be made available at this site as a manual work-around for those of us who get stuck in the opaque automatic installation? Looking online, I find thousands of other users have been ensnared in exactly this trap. Let’s create a solution. If at all possible, please make these add-ons available on this site for manual download and installation.

#6

These are not normal add-ons. As such the solution is to figure out why the installation doesn’t work, which as I pointed out, is more likely to happen via the support portal (or via bug reports when actual specific issues have been identified).