1265336 - [Widevine] After page refresh the user is instructed to install Microsoft Silverlight plug-in in order to play videos from Amazon Video

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P2)

Description

[Vlad Bacia-Mociran [:VladB]]

[Affected versions]:
- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:48.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/48.0
- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:48.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/48.0
- Build ID: 20160417030601

[Affected Platforms]:
- All Windows
- All Mac OS

[Prerequisites]:
- Widevine latest version is installed.
- Only Widevine CDM plugin is active.
- User-Agent Switcher add-on is installed (https://goo.gl/FKb70f) and it is set to fake Chrome User Agent.

[Steps to reproduce]:
1. Start Firefox browser and go to Amazon Movies (http://goo.gl/lnFkXP).
2. Move the mouse cursor over a movie.
3. Right-clik on "Watch Trailer" button and open the trailer in a new tab.
4. Refresh the page in which the trailer is played.

[Expected results]:
- The page is refreshed and the video starts to play.

[Actual results]:
- The video doesn't play and the user is instructed to install Microsoft Silverlight plug-in.

[Note]:
- Sometimes, even if the only plug-in active is Widevine, the user is instructed to install Microsoft Silverlight plug-in in order to play the video.

Comment 1

[Vlad Bacia-Mociran [:VladB]]

The video containing the details of the issue was too large to be attached to the issue. The video is available here: https://goo.gl/ujpPzI

Thank you.

Comment 2

[Vlad Bacia-Mociran [:VladB]]

I have investigated further this issue and found the following scenario that seems to be related to the behaviour from description.

[Steps to reproduce]:
1. Start Firefox browser and go to Amazon Movies (http://goo.gl/jQr5qo).
2. Move the mouse cursor over a movie/TV series.
3. Click on "Watch Now" button.

[Expected results]:
- The video is loaded in the same tab and starts to play.

[Actual results]:
- The video doesn't play and the user is instructed to install Microsoft Silverlight plug-in.

[Note]:
- If the same video is opened in a new tab (as displayed here https://goo.gl/RaXnfN) it will be played through WidevineCdm.
- At the beginning of the demo video I have cleared the cookies and cache because it seems to interfere with the tests.

Thank you.

Comment 3

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Let's track this Amazon Video bug as a potential uplift candidate until we know otherwise.

Comment 4

[Chris Pearce [:cpearce (Not reading bugmail)]]

I can reproduce this problem reliably by installing Network Link Conditioner on my Mac, and using "very bad network" profile to limit my bandwidth. When I do this, I get prompted to use Silverlight pretty much every time I try to play the first episode of "Man in the high castle", even though Widevine is installed and works fine in Firefox under non-limited network conditions.

Comment 5

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Amazon thinks this is a network timeout when their JavaScript tries to ask the server if it should use Silverlight or HTML5 video. If that is the case, they're confident this problem would not affect their production environment.

Comment 6

[Vlad Bacia-Mociran [:VladB]]

The scenarios provided in description and comment 2 were verified, on the following browser versions:
- Nightly 49.0a1 (Build ID: 20160502152141)
- Dev Edition 48.0a2 (Build ID: 20160504004015)
- Beta 47.0b2 (Build ID: 20160502152141)

Testing was performed without using a bandwidth limiter and the issue cannot be reproduced.

Comment 7

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Vlad: can you please retest this with the Firefox 47 release version? Amazon thinks this Silverlight issue will only happen with beta users.

Comment 8

[Vlad Bacia-Mociran [:VladB]]

The scenarios provided in comment 0 and comment 2 were verified on Windows 8.1 x64 and Mac OS X 10.11 with Firefox 47 release version using Widevine v1.4.8.866. The issue is no longer reproducible.

Comment 9

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Awesome. Thanks, Vlad! I will close this bug as WORKSFORME.