Categories: Firefox

Mozilla To Test Widevine CDM in Firefox Nightly To Facilitate Video Watching Online

Update, June 7, 2016: Support for Widevine video CDM is now available in the general Firefox browser release.

Update, April 27, 2016: Today, we will expand support of Widevine to our general release channel beginning in Firefox 47.

As we previously announced, Mozilla has been working to enable playback of HTML5 video content that requires DRM. Last year, we launched with Adobe’s Primetime CDM and now we will soon be testing Firefox support for Google’s Widevine CDM on Windows and Mac OS X. Firefox will download the CDM shortly after users first run Firefox after installing or upgrading. The CDM will be activated when users first interact with a site that uses Widevine.

Widevine support is an alternative solution for streaming services that currently rely on Silverlight for playback of DRM-protected video content. It will allow websites to show DRM-protected video content in Firefox without the use of NPAPI plugins. This is an important step on Mozilla’s roadmap to remove NPAPI plugin support.

The Widevine CDM runs in an open-source CDM sandbox in Firefox, providing better user security than NPAPI plugins.

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