How to get channel 4 working

Support & Help Requests
#21

When did I refer to you? - Do you have two usernames on this forum? - Are you in fact @stevecook172001 - I was replying to the OP, not to you.

I have no interest in your “opinion”, and you have no idea what my opinion on this is… I pointed the OP to a link detailing someone else’s opinion/fix.

(Apologies if English isn’t your native language, but: I would politely advise you to read your posts before actually clicking the post button - the tone could easily be misconstrued as aggressive, which of course cannot be the case. I will not post any further replies in this thread)

#22

My apologies; Discourse didn’t show you were responding to Steve directly. That or I am stupid and should plainly be schooled about how to use Discourse.

I am trying to be helpful with figuring out a native browser solution, because it’s not just him who would be interested in this.

#23

Apology accepted :wink:

Actually, it appears that either the forum software, or myself has failed to show that I replied to the OP… not sure why - I clicked the “reply” button on the post, as I’ve just done with your post, so I may well have contributed to your confusion about who I was replying to (I’d much rather blame the forum software though :wink: )

Chris

#24

Since the topic is discussing different solutions to the problem:

  • Natively
  • Media player alternates (e.g. Kodi)
  • Pipelight / Adobe Flash
  • Running under Wine

I suggest creating separate topics using the “Reply as linked topics” on the right.

Discourse doesn’t show the “in reply to” arrow if you’re directly replying after the last post, I have noticed.

1 Like
#26

ChrisK

You link to the Linux Mint solution works like a charm! Much better than the Playonlinux version I used. So, I am applying the “solution” tick to your method as it is by far the best I have used. I cannot be certain, but I think it works better because Flash is installed separately rather than as part of the Firefox installation, as with the Playonlinux version. Indeed, the Mint site seems to suggest it works better by installing it separately. It certainly seems to have done the trick for me. I am now unproblematically running both live Channel 4 streams as well as catchup videos from 4od

Thanks again.

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#27

Okay…slight problem with Chrisk’s solution…but now fixed!..:slight_smile:

The problem:

After installing wine, installing the Win7 version of Firefox and installing Windows Flash and then opening Wine’s Firefox and navigating to Channel 4 and trying out the various Channel 4 streams, all is working well and as it should. So far so good.

However, after closing Wine’s Firefox and then re-opening it, Flash is no longer working. The only solution is to close Wine’s Firefox and re-install Windows Flash. Then re-opening Wine’s Firefox. At which point, Channel 4 streams work again. so, somehow, after using once, flash somehow became corrupted. Obviously reinstalling flash works as a “solution” each time I want to watch channel 4, it is a bit messy and I wanted a fully automatic and invisible solution. This is the one I came up with:

Installed Windows Flash to be sure that that Wine had a fully working version of it.

Took a copy of the “.wine” folder and placed it a folder called “backupwine” in my “home” folder

Wrote the following script:

sudo rm -rf /home/stephen/.wine
cd /home/stephen/Documents/backupwine
sudo cp -R .wine /home/stephen/.wine
sudo chown -R stephen /home/stephen/.wine
env WINEPREFIX="/home/stephen/.wine" wine C:\\windows\\command\\start.exe /Unix /home/stephen/.wine/dosdevices/c:/users/Public/Desktop/Mozilla\ Firefox.lnk http://www.channel4.com/now/c4

The first line delete the “.wine” folder.
The second line goes to where I have the working backup “.wine” folder stored.
The third line copies the backup “.wine” folder to its proper location for Wine to operate.
The fourth line set the correct permissions for the replaced “.wine” folder
The fifth line Starts Wine’s Firefox and the Channel 4 homepage.

At which point Channel 4 streams work as they should. furthermore, this script can be used a second and subsequent times and, every time it is used, it re-copies over the good working version of Firefox and flash. So, no need to re-install flash every time.

The time it adds to the loading of the webpage is abut 10 seconds, so no big deal.

Ypou may notice at the end of the last line of the script is the channel 4 web address. Obviously, if this web address is changed to 4oD or E4 etc, the script can be re-used for these other webpages. Which is precisely what I have done.

finally, to finish all off neatly, I have made launchers in my usual Streaming video folder for channel 4 and all of it’s sub sites, using these scripts as the underlying commands in the launchers.

So, form a user’s perspective, all they need to do is double click the Firefox channel 4 launcher and it loads, every time. No mess no hassle.

Where there is a will there is a way.

Or, rather, where there is a shell, there is a way…:slight_smile:

1 Like