Can't play DRM protected videos on my pc

Question

Can't play DRM protected videos on my pc

nilesh parmar 6

I m facing this issue from the last one month. I m not able to play any drm protected videos on any of my web browsers i.e chrome, brave, firefox, edge.
Before this everything was working fine. I was able to play DRM protected videos.

I first started getting this issue on udemy site. There the course videos which are encrypted by DRM Widevine were not playing. Then I contacted the support staff of udemy, Did all the troubleshooting methods they suggested but nothing worked. They asked me to check if the problem is only with their site or other sites as well which uses DRM encryption i.e ott platforms like netflix, prime, voot, etc. I checked voot.com , there too I got the same problem , Whenever I tried to play any video on voot , it just shows blackscreen and error message.

All the browser settings are exact and also the browsers are up-to-date. My windows is also up-to-date.
Currently I m on windows 10 pro version 22H2

I even did a windows repair as well as windows rollback to previous version , but that too didn't helped.

Here's my Bitmowin DRM test :

I m not able to figure out whats wrong here. Is it because of some hardware issue or something?? Can anyone please help me out with this. I m badly stuck in this problem. Can't continue with my udemy courses now.

4 answers

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Answer 1

I did found a way to deal with this. As after 3 months of headscrapping in this issue , I tried installing Ubuntu OS in a virtualbox on my pc. In the Ubuntu OS, I can play these videos without any issue but not in windows on the same pc. This shows that there is something wrong with my windows os and not with my pc. But a thing to note is that since I started getting this issue , I first did a windows repair using windows media creation tool , that didn't helped . In this span of 3 months my windows 10 has been updated 3-4 times and is currently up-to-date, still I cannot play DRM protected videos on windows 10.

So, if anyone is facing the same problem ..... I recommend to try seeing those videos on another OS like Ubuntu or Kali Linux on the same pc using oracle vm virtualbox and streaming those videos in that OS. This will work if there is no issue of your pc's hardware.

Answer 2

Michael Taylor 60,346

You can google for the error and FireFox and Widevine are broken. Bitmovin also has some notes around changes (back in 2021) related to this error.

This article mentions that non-default profiles in Firefox break it as well. One recommendation is to create a new profile (perhaps incognito or private) and see if the problem goes away.

Chrome is also reporting issues.

nilesh parmar 6 Reputation points

2022-12-22T06:00:41.94+00:00

I did tried to play DRM protected videos using new profile as well as a new windows user on the same device but that too didn't worked ...... Something is blocking my pc from playing the DRM protected videos.
Michael Taylor 60,346 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:05:29.233+00:00
In the Bitmovin link I posted they gave some debugging steps. Please try these and let us know the results.

In the browser console window run the command player.getSupportedDRM().then(console.log)

Then run this command console.log(player.getVideoElement().webkitKeys)

Finally run the command console.log(player.getVideoElement().mediaKeys)
nilesh parmar 6 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:16:02.967+00:00

I did run those commands in the console but it shows the error message of player is not defined.
Michael Taylor 60,346 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:21:56.64+00:00

If you look in the HTML then it should show you the name of the player (it might not be player). Find that and then use that in lieu of player. If you can post the results it might help.
nilesh parmar 6 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:34:34.59+00:00

This is the HTML of udmey site. I m not able to figure out what is the name of the video player from this HTML.
Can you please find and tell me what it is??
Michael Taylor 60,346 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:44:32.89+00:00

What does the link to their system checker page tell you?

I don't see the player listed in the udemy site. Try going back to the bitmovin site you posted in your original question and see what it tells you. Udemy mentions you may need a codec but they don't say which one.
nilesh parmar 6 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:47:26.827+00:00

It just shows that error message and media support extensons (MSE) supported by my browser thats it.
This is what I m not able to figure it out.
Michael Taylor 60,346 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:52:19.55+00:00

Can you provide a screenshot? ON the bitmovin page it shows the MSEs and EMEs supported. widevine should be shown here and it looks like Udemy might be using it.
nilesh parmar 6 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:54:09.683+00:00

You can go the https://www.udemy.com/support/system-check/[][2]

and see that on your device both the videos will play but on my side only Adaptive Bitrate Streaming test video plays and Encrypted test video: doesn't plays . It gives the same error message as usual.
nilesh parmar 6 Reputation points

2022-12-22T15:57:14.99+00:00

Widvine is checked , but the MSEs are two of them not checked , I guess theres the problem.

Here's the screen shot of them :
Michael Taylor 60,346 Reputation points

2022-12-22T16:32:22.58+00:00

I don't know what one's Udemy needs. You should probably contact their support for that information.

Answer 3

Clemens 0

I am very happy to see that other users also face this issue, I am not alone. It is sad though that some Windwos update 2 or 3 months ago introduced something to the system that broke DRM. It's fine on Linux and I have everything updated. Windows, browsers, AMD driver.
Sometimes I have this feeling that a reboot of my machine helps, but then it suddenly doesn't work any more a few days later. Doesn't matter which browser I am using.
Would be really happy if Microsoft have a look into this issue. DRM is everywhere now.

nilesh parmar 6 Reputation points

2023-08-11T12:52:55.14+00:00

Exactly ..... i too have my DRM broke in my windows os. You wont believe i literally spent 3 months of finding solution to this problem. Then finally tried to switch between linux (ubuntu) os to see the DRM content on a virtual machine in the same pc . The microsoft team should really take a look into this issue.

Answer 4

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Can't play DRM protected videos on my pc

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