Running Netflix on Raspberry Pi 3

Download and install Raspbian onto the SD card

• Download zip file for Raspbian Stretch Lite from: https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite_latest
• Check the SHA256 hash of the downloaded zip file to make sure it has not been tampered with: sha256sum 2018-04-18-raspbian-stretch-lite.zip
• Expected value for SHA256 hash can be found here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
• Unzip image file: unzip 2018-04-18-raspbian-stretch-lite.zip && rm -f 2018-04-18-raspbian-stretch-lite.zip
• Write image file to SD card: sudo dd bs=1M if=2018-04-18-raspbian-stretch-lite.img of=/dev/mmcblk0
• Insert the SD card in the Raspberry Pi and boot
• Once the Pi is booted, open a terminal and execute the following commands:
  • sudo systemctl enable ssh
  • sudo systemctl start ssh
  • From now on, you should be able to log in using SSH. Username: pi, password: raspberry. The IP address should be shown while booting. Please note I am using wired ethernet.
  • Chaning the password for user pi is highly recommended! This can be done using raspi-config
  • sudo systemctl disable avahi-daemon.service bluetooth.service bthelper.service console-setup.service rpi-display-backlight.service rsync.service hciuart.service
  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get upgrade
  • sudo systemctl disable avahi-daemon.service bluetooth.service bthelper.service rpi-display-backlight.service rsync.service hciuart.service
  • sudo update-rc.d -f console-setup remove
  • sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg xinit xserver-xorg-video-fbdev lightdm unclutter ratpoison upower xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable lxterminal dbus-x11
  • Run the command alsamixer and set the volume for PCM to 100%
• In a terminal, run "sudo raspi-config" and:
  • 3 Boot Options -> B1 Desktop / CLI -> B4 Desktop Autologin
  • 4 Localisation Options -> I1 Change Locale, enable:
    • en_US ISO-8859-1
    • en_US.ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-15
    • en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
    • your country locales
    • Select the default locale you want to use, I use en_US.UTF-8
  • 4 Localisation Options -> I2 Change Timezone
  • 4 Localisation Options -> I3 Change Keyboard Layout. I use Generic 104-key PC, English (US), English (US), The default for the keyboard layout, No compose key
  • 5 Interfacing Options -> P6 Serial -> Would you like a login shell to be accessible over serial?: No, Would you like the serial port hardware to be enabled?: No
  • 7 Advanced Options -> A1 Expand Filesystem (This should have been done at first boot)
  • 7 Advanced Options -> A3 Memory Split -> How much memory (MB) should the GPU have? 256
• Edit /boot/config and change (or add) the following lines:
  • hdmi_force_hotplug=1
  • hdmi_group=1
  • hdmi_mode=4 (720p, 60Hz)
  • hdmi_ignore_cec_init=1
• reboot the Pi

Install and configure Chromium

• Download and install a version of chromium with Widevine decryption support:
  • wget https://github.com/kusti8/chromium-build/releases/download/netflix-1.0.0/chromium-browser_56.0.2924.84-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1011.deb
  • sudo apt-get install gconf-service libgconf-2-4 libnspr4 libnss3 libxss1 libxcb-image0 libnss3 xdg-utils libdbus-glib-1-2 gconf2-common libxcb-util0
  • sudo dpkg -i $(pwd)/chromium-browser_56.0.2924.84-0ubuntu0.14.04.1.1011.deb
• Edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and add the following lines:
  • [Seat:*]
  • xserver-command=X -s 0 dpms
• Create the file /home/pi/.xsession containing:
  • ratpoison &
  • sleep 1
  • while true; do
  • chromium-browser
  • done
• In Chromium, go to More Tools -> Extensions, go the Chrome Web Store to install the User-Agent Switcher for Chrome (by google.com)
• Right click on the User-Agent Switcher icon and click Options to add a new User Agent:
  • Name: Netflix
  • User Agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 6946.63.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/47.0.2526.106 Safari/537.36
  • Group: Chrome
  • Append?: Replace
  • Indicator Flag: IE
  • Click Add
• Once configured, click on the User-Agent Switcher icon and select Chrome -> Netflix
• Sign in to Netflix to see if it now works. Make sure to save the Netflix username and password in Chromium
• Once it does, edit /home/pi/.xsession and change the chromium-browser command to
  • chromium-browser --no-startup-window --disable-sync-preferences --kiosk -disk-cache-dir=/dev/shm --disable-reading-from-canvas --start-maximized --app=https://www.netflix.com/

-- Ivo van Geel - 16 Jun 2018