Apr 18

How to get 4od to work on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty

Channel4’s video on demand service requires Adobe Flash Player but doesn’t work on Ubuntu 14.04 by default.

4oD relies on Adobe DRM that only works on Linux if the HAL service is running.

HAL is deprecated technology and has been stripped out since 13.10.

Luckily for us there is a PPA maintained by Michael Blennerhassett that works for both Saucy and Trusty, to enable it do as follow.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mjblenner/ppa-hal

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hal

Once you restart your browser, 4oD should work, enjoy!

EDIT: If hald doesn’t start automatically at boot. start it with /usr/sbin/hald (sudo not required)

fmo

8 comments

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    • Omi on 24/04/2014 at 14:00

    This doesn’t work for me. So frustrating. Any ideas? Thanks

      • fmo
      • fmo on 28/04/2014 at 08:02
        Author

      after restarting, do you have a hal process when you start a flash video?

    • Anonymous on 28/04/2014 at 11:57

    I don’t think so, all I get is the spinning arrow loading symbol, and nothing loads.

      • fmo
      • fmo on 28/04/2014 at 13:19
        Author

      I will try to check tonight on a clean install

        • Omi on 28/04/2014 at 14:41

        Thanks so much, that’s very kind!

          • fmo
          • fmo on 28/04/2014 at 21:40
            Author

          For some reason hald doesn’t start automatically on a fresh install.

          if you start /usr/sbin/hald from the command line before starting your browser it should work, no need to start it with sudo.

    • Daniel d'Andrada on 20/07/2014 at 21:52

    Also works with Ubuntu 14.04. Solved my problems with Google Play rented movies there. Thanks!

    • Angelika Trumpp on 26/09/2014 at 23:16

    thank you works fine with channel 4 and 5 on ubuntu 14.04

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