Vivaldi no longer playing vids on Xfinity
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@Pathduck Unfortunately the player launches in a seperate window so that is not possible on this site. not sure what else to do at this point. I liked vivaldi due to privacy I really do not want to have to keep using chrome and firefox never works on there for me.. They have phased out IE. They are supposed to be chrome friendly and since this is a chrome core with privacy upgrades i figured it was a good bet. IT has worked fine for several months. it is a shame if I can't get this going I really like the browser.
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Yeah that is what I am using also -- the xfinity stream via desktop. I dont know what happened unless Comcast decided to change something at their end. Calling them is pointless as they are clueless and read off a script.. I've had other issues with them that they never resolve but they have no issue charging me an exorbitant monthly fee. If you figure it out please post.
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@CyberDragon said in Vivaldi no longer playing vids on Xfinity:
Unfortunately the player launches in a seperate window so that is not possible on this site.
I don't really understand what you mean here. How is the player launching in a separate window stopping you from right-clicking the player?
Did you, including @SterlingPaul99, try to first check Flash by going to the Adobe Flash site as posted above? Or any other Flash-playing site? This will at least confirm if Flash is working correctly or not.
Did you try this in a Guest Profile to exclude any setting in your profile?
Did you check your cookie settings for the site?
Did you try with disabling all extensions first and trying again?
Problem solving is mostly a process of elimination. And since few other users are able to verify your problems, you need to do this process yourself. There is no silver bullet for this.
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@GraveDigger said in Vivaldi no longer playing vids on Xfinity:
please don't tell people to except third party cookies when they don't need to. this actually has nothing to do with why xfinity streaming is working.
This is part of a process of elimination - often not accepting 3rd party cookies causes embedded media to not play, especially is said media is hosted on another domain/CDN. Users need to at least be aware there is such a setting and check if they might have set it (default is to accept). They can then verify if this is a cause or if it can be ignored.
If you have any idea why the site is not working, as it seems you have - please do tell
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@Pathduck
I too have the same issue which started at the same time. The first thing I did was to search for a Vivaldi update and install it - no change. What happens is while on the xfinity channel streaming window, I click to watch a video, and essentially nothing happens, but I have noticed that if I click more than once, the page kind of locks up and I will also lose the scroll bar on the right of the page. At this point I cannot scroll down my list of 1800 xfinity channels unless I reload the page.
One thing that always happens after a Vivaldi update, is that I have to redirect the browser to accept flash. This time the browser did not indicate I needed to enable flash.
I have been watching my xfinity sports through the Edge browser, which also requires flash to stream xfinity, and obviously still works.
All this did happen around the time of the most recent MS Windows 10 update, so I guess it is conceivable there is some kind of conflict going on here between Vivaldi, Windows 10 and xfinity, which is why I mention the scroll bar disappearing on my streaming page.
I have not tried disabling all extensions and uninstalling Vivaldi, but the update I did is essentially a reinstall. This problem occurred with my making no changes to Vivaldi at all. One day I was streaming xfinity, and the next I was not. I do not allow Vivaldi to automatically update. The only change was this occurred shortly after I believe I received the latest Windows 10 update, but now I do not remember exactly how closely. Possibly xfinity did change their technical requirements, but it seems this would be strange to do without notifying their customers. I did receive an xfinity email on 10/19 saying I would not be able to access my email on the 20th, but other than that, I do not believe there was any change out of the ordinary, and this issue did not arise on the 20th - it arose this week.I do know I do not like the current state of affairs as I generally much prefer using the Vivaldi browser over Edge, and right now running both uses much more resources on my computer, which is not any high end computer, and the limited resources is noticeable.
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@Pathduck When you you click play it launches a separate tab (I mispoke on window)
Flash has been tested and reinstalled and tested again according to adobe it works
Cookies are enabled
I have no extensions enabled other than flash and defaultHave not done guest profile.
Me experience is pretty much similar to @bcreighton7
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@bcreighton7
I downloaded the most recent Vivaldi 2.9 update, and Vivaldi still would not stream xfinity. It still does not ask me to enable flash either. -
@CyberDragon
I just got Xfinity working on Vivaldi by overriding the JavaScript on xfinity.com/stream
I don't know if it's appropriate for me to explain exactly how to do that here (let me know if you think it's okay), but I will say that it is a pretty simple fix and the reason it's not playing is because Xfinity is simply blocking browsers that are not on their lists. It's not flash and it's not DRM. They are blocking everything that is not Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox... maybe one or two others, I forget. It's actually being blocked before you even get to the page that renders the video. As some other people mentioned, you click on something and it doesn't appear to do anything at all. It does print errors in the console, though, which is how I figured out my solution You can also try the User Agent Switcher extension, but that didn't fix it for me. I had to override the JavaScript with an local copy, but it's possible that you need to have the User Agent Switcher set to a supported browser (mine is set to Firefox on Windows) in addition to the JavaScript tweak. -
@trippybicycle
I want to thank you for your response, however, I am somewhat technically challenged, and need some help overriding the javascript. I have been in contact with xFinity, and my conclusion is essentially that this is not going to change. They suggested using Chrome. I told them Vivaldi uses the Chromium engine, and that it used to stream fine, but that one day it did not, and that I had not updated Vivaldi, so the change seemed to be on their end. This did not phase the lady who called me. She is just giving me the corporate response to which I alluded that I did not appreciate simply getting locked out without any warning.I am unable to PM you with your current settings, but if you would be so kind feel free to PM me on how to override the javascript on xfinity.com, that would be awesome. Thanks.
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I am amending my comments to show that I have now gotten Xfinity to work on Vivaldi again! Finally! When the Xfinity lady called today she asked me to try the streaming again - with the same result - it did not work. But after posting above, I realized I could try turning on my user agent, which I did. I set the browser user agent to appear as the most recent rendition of Chrome for Windows 10, and voila! I now have Xfinity streaming again on Vivaldi without any javascript overrides. So other Vivaldi users can try this too. It just goes to show that Xfinity did block Vivaldi. If they think it is Chrome(which it essentially is), you should be able to stream just fine.
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@bcreighton7 I also changed user agent to chrome and xfinity started streaming. However, it does not stream like it used to do in vivaldi. It streams like in chrome. In chrome it takes about 1-2 minute when streaming turns to HD quality. In vivaldi it used to be instant. Not like others I do believe this issue is not with xfinity.com but rather with vivaldi. Streaming stopped after one vivaldi update and i believe that update had some changes in regards to the flash.
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@GrimmReaper We don't like it when users solicit others to contact them directly at a specific email address (this is typically used to collect email addresses to send spam or for other nefarious purposes) but if a user generously offers to help others via Chat to cut down on the "noise" in the Forum, that's okay [Edit] although any proposed solutions really should be posted publicly. (And it goes without saying that people should use common sense and caution when dealing with anyone who they do not know or trust.)
As for the topic being discussed here, a few users have reported bugs for Xfinity streaming breaking on Vivaldi, and this has been confirmed internally. Looks like Comcast made some changes recently on their side, but Vivaldi will still work if you change the User Agent string to spoof Chrome. Hopefully the Vivaldi devs can implement a workaround.
I'm also very curious to see what will happen when Comcast finally migrates away from Flash.
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@GrimmReaper I agree. Solutions should always be posted in the open so that they can be vetted and so that everybody can benefit. I'm also not sure what was really meant by "override the javascript" or what that solution really entailed; this could potentially be a very dangerous thing to do.
For those who are impacted by this issue and need to change the UA to get Xfinity streaming working again, please see: https://help.vivaldi.com/article/user-agent-spoofing/
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@my-b
It is not Vivaldi, because I do not let Vivaldi update itself. One day it streamed, and the next it wouldn't. I think Comcast tech put Vivaldi on an exclusion list. AFTER it wouldn't stream, I tried the Vivaldi update. It was only after turning on my user agent to mask the identity of Vivaldi to Comcast that I could stream again. The Xfinity lady I first talked to did say that it was an issue on their side, but there are apparently not enough Vivaldi users on Xfinity to really make them care.However, I am having an issue, somewhat like you perhaps. If I try to stream shows on demand, I get a horizontally split screen with green boxes flashing all over it - it is not like pixilation, but makes shows unwatchable. I can really only watch shows in progress. Does anyone know if a newer User Agent solves this issue? Or has anyone else seen this issue? Does anyone know what's wrong?
@GrimmReaper
I am not the OP, and I posted the solution I found openly. The person I was responding to said he couldn't really get the user agent to work right, and was the one who said he didn't know if he was allowed to post the javascript override solution. -
@bcreighton7 If something other than a UA spoof is required to get things working for you then please create a bug report and let the Vivaldi team know what your fix is. If the fix is too long to include (or to describe) in the bug report form, you can still create the bug report and then reply to the bug report confirmation email and attach details about your fix separately. Thanks!
I am not the OP, and I posted the solution I found openly. The person I was responding to said he couldn't really get the user agent to work right, and was the one who said he didn't know if he was allowed to post the javascript override solution.
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@xyzzy By "override the JavaScript", I meant using Vivaldi's developer tools to override one line of JavaScript on the page. That's how I got it to work. I had previously tried using the user agent switcher in dev tools and it failed. I just tried it again and it works fine now. I either made a mistake or Xfinity changed since I tried it last. It's probably my mistake since I was able to find my other workaround very quickly so I didn't mess with the User Agent stuff all that much.
As to your other point that "overriding the JavaScript" is potentially very dangerous, I completely agree. I am certain that my workaround code is safe because it was a very simple change and I am a web engineer. But I would never advise anyone to override JS based on a random person's suggestion on the internet if they didn't know what they were doing. That's why I wasn't comfortable sharing specifics here. Also figured I might get banned for it. My thought was that anyone who could figure it out on their own would be knowledgeable enough to do it safely so I was mostly just trying to make people aware that it was definitely a change made by Comcast because a tiny change in the JS running on the site fixed the problem. I wasn't suggesting that people PM me because I totally agree that solutions should be posted publicly. I have no credibility on this forum and I don't really know the rules so I was hoping to give specifics to a mod with tech skills so they could vet it and maybe give it to someone in the Vivaldi team. In hindsight, I should have created a bug report like you also suggested.
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@trippybicycle Does the streaming on demand work properly? I am still only able to properly stream shows in progress. If I try to stream a movie or show on demand, it looks a lot like I am trying to watch a scrambled cable channel that I need to pay for to get unscrambled.
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@bcreighton7 By "in progress" do you mean live TV? I rarely use Xfinity for live TV so everything I watch is what I consider to be "On Demand". I never watch the paid On Demand stuff, though, so if that's what you're talking about then I wouldn't really know. Basically everything works the same way I'm used to it working. If you want me to try a specific title (that doesn't cost money), I'd be happy to do it and report back. I'm still using the script that I wrote before instead of changing my user agent. That way if it stops working for people using the user agent trick or for me then I'll know right when it happened and have a better idea about what caused it. But I haven't encounter the problem you're describing with either method.
If you could post screenshots of the problem, I might be able to help you more. You could follow these instruction to download the console log so I can see if there are any obvious errors that could be causing your issue:
- Go to Xfinity.com/stream.
- Follow steps 1 & 2 in the link above. It's for chrome but its the same except you need to click the vivaldi menu.
- Don't click "Save As" yet. When you're in the "Console" tab, click the gear in the top right corner of the dev tools window. I believe the default in Vivaldi is to show the tools as a docked window at the bottom of the page, but I'm not sure. It might open as a new window. Check "Preserve Log".
- Keep DevTools open and click something On Demand on the website. You should see a whole bunch of text appear in DevTools. Once the new page fully loads and the problem is obvious, wait about 10 more seconds and then right click anywhere on the console and click "Save As" like it says in the instructions above. It might be too difficult for me to figure it out from the logs without access to your browser's live dev tools, but maybe it's something obvious and I'll be able to point you towards a quick fix.
Then upload it somewhere like Dropbox or Google Drive and share it as a link. Also, did you report the bug to Vivaldi Support?
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@trippybicycle Thank you so much for helping. The log created shows all kinds of errors. Here is an example of what the screen looks like, but it flashes from anywhere from clear to solidly green:
Here is the link to the log I created: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZcYE2hZ5lVCQm_zSA6wXbCad59Ot__C2f-h05Qasmbk/edit
Let me know if you have any issues accessing it.
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Well it is not just Vivaldi. It does the same thing in Chrome. However, Edge displays it just fine. Maybe Xfinity did something on their end to cause this, when I called to complain.