Widevine plugin will not install, toggling DRM and other troubleshooting steps not working
Ok, so I installed Firefox today, and tried to watch Discovery+, it kept saying it was installing components to play the audio and video and never seemed to actually install them. I finally figured out it's the widevine plugin sitting there with a yellow bar saying it's going to install soon but never does.
I went through nearly an hour of troubleshooting, and nothing has worked. I tried toggling the DRM option on and off, restarting the browser and PC, reinstalling Firefox, restarting my modem, disabling and enabling the plugin itself, going to all the streaming sites I use, attempting to manually install the plugin, etc.
As far as I know, I'm not using an antivirus, I don't have my VPN on, any other extensions or plugins, pihole, or anything else I saw in other support queries. I'm just going crazy trying to fix this since it seems nothing works.
All Replies (5)
Just to add I found another support thread that said to remove everything in the windows host file temporarily. That did nothing as well.
Dropa said
I have Firefox widevine plugin AFAIK in my extensions. So do you not see that there in the extension Addon? Maybe contact Disney support asking about their support on their DRM video. And usually when that message your getting seem to indicate something else is interfering with the plugin working is also a possibility here. DRM can be a nasty software when they are protecting to make sure your not giving your account to other family to use without paying for it -that's what DRM is also there to prevent from happening.
the plugin is there, it's a plugin not an addon or extension, it's something that is supposed to come with Firefox, I even included a screenshot for you. And it's not just Disney, it's every streaming service, you cannot watch any streaming without widevine enabled, and it cannot be enabled if it isn't installed.
I'm not sure what you're trying to accuse me of, but I pay for like ten different streaming services. I'm not doing anything illicit here, just going to netflix.com and trying to watch a show, but it doesn't work.
You can toggle DRM off/on to see if that makes Firefox (re)load DRM components.
- Settings -> General: Play DRM
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm
You can check the XHR requests in the Browser Console if this doesn't work.
cor-el said
You can toggle DRM off/on to see if that makes Firefox (re)load DRM components.You can check the XHR requests in the Browser Console if this doesn't work.
- Settings -> General: Play DRM
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm
What is checking the XHR requests? Like I went to the link and opened the console, then what?
You can see XHR and Requests as the last two choices on the filter bar in the first screenshot in the Browser Console article. The XHR and Requests filter choices aren't enabled by default, and you need at least XHR in this case.
If DRM is enabled and you toggle DRM off/on then this should initiate some background XHR requests to the GMP server (it involves some redirects) to check for updates and all these redirect requests must succeed to make it possible to download the Widevine plugin.