Vivaldi no longer playing vids on Xfinity
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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.
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@bcreighton7 Sorry for the delay. Are you still experiencing the same issue?
That kind of distortion is usually related to graphics card failure, settings, or drivers. That would explain why it was happening on multiple browsers. The support for hardware acceleration varies from browser to browser so that may be the reason it works on Edge. Of course, Chrome and Vivaldi are both built on Chromium so there are many other reasons why they would both have the same problem. I think you were suggesting that the problem with Chrome occurred after the problem with Vivaldi. While it may have appeared in Vivaldi before Chrome, it could still have been related to the same change at the same time. There are many reasons that it could have shown up on one browser before the other. Probably no need to go into that in any depth. Another reason to believe that it's hardware related is that no one has posted here with the same type of problem. BTW, when I say hardware-related, that doesn't necessarily mean your computer is damaged. You would probably be having other problems if that was the case.
The most common and simplest solution is to disable hardware acceleration. In Vivaldi you can go into settings -> webpages and uncheck "Use Hardware Acceleration When Available". Then you need to restart the browser and try Xfinity again. If it still doesn't work there are other things you can try. If that's the case, enter vivaldi://gpu into the address bar, click "Copy Report to Clipboard" and upload that to Google Docs as well. Might give me more info. I didn't see anything obvious in the logs. There were certainly errors that seemed a bit abnormal, but there are always errors in the log. I looked at some of the lines of code that were referenced in the log and didn't see anything obvious.
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