Watching Netflix on your Raspberry Pi is easy!
Raspberry Pi is a highly compact and single-board computer which was developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the United Kingdom. Do you know that this small-sized PC is capable of running Netflix? Yes, it is true you can stream your favorite movies, series and much more in your Raspberry Pi computer. So that means your Raspberry Pi is an affordable alternative to Roku, Fire TV Stick and Android boxes. You can install applications such as Kodi and Plex on your device to make it a powerful media streaming device. Even without installing these programs, you can play Netflix in your Raspberry Pi.
In this tutorial, we will use the Chromium web browser to play Netflix on your device. Keep in mind that we need to install a specific version of Chromium that includes “Widevine Content Decryption Module” plug-in. So what’s the wait? Let’s get in.
How to Set Up and Use Netflix on Your Raspberry Pi?
Step 1: Setting Up Raspbian OS
In order to watch Netflix, first install and set up Raspbian operating system in your Raspberry Pi. So, first, you have to download the Raspbian installation file (disk image) from the web. Then you need to copy this disk image file onto a microSD card. After that, you have to install the Raspbian OS into your device using that SD card. If you are a beginner in these kinds of stuff, then you can get help from the web.
Step 2: Installing Widevine supported Chromium Browser
First, download a version of Chromium that contains the Widevine plug-in as a default component.
Second, you have to open the terminal (command line Interface) Window in your Raspbian installed Raspberry Pi. Now there you need to type below command and then hit the enter key:
sudo dpkg -i chromium-browser_56.0.2924.84-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1011.deb
By doing so, you will have the Chromium browser with Widevine plug-in enabled. This browser is capable of playing media streaming websites such as Netflix and AmazonPrime.
Step 3: Install “User-Agent Switcher for Chrome” extension
Your Chromium browser is not ready to play Netflix yet. You must install a Chrome extension called “User-Agent Switcher For Chrome” to your Chromium browser in order to watch Netflix.
Go to Chrome Web Store on your Raspberry Pi and then search for the above extension. Now install it to your browser.
After that, open the installed extension on your browser and then you have to make a new user agent string using the details given below:
- Type “Netflix” in the field located next to the “New User-agent name” option.
- In the front of “New user-agent string” option, copy and paste: “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 6946.63.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/47.0.2526.106 Safari/537.36”
- Type Chrome in the next to “Group” option.
- Now enter “Replace” next to “Append” option.
- In the field located next to the “Indicator flag” type “IE” and then hit the Add button.
- Now tap the extension’s icon located in the top-left corner.
- Then go to Chrome and then select Netflix.
Abigail Smith is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles on Printer Customer Support and many other related topics. He is a very knowledgeable person with lots of experience.
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