I want to watch Cox Contour on my linux computers (running Debian currently).

https://www.cox.com/residential/tv/watch-tv-online.html

This works on my Windows 10 laptop, with Chrome. The Cox Contour app also works on my Android phones/tablet.

But in linux (Debian Stable, Chrome version 62.0.3202.62), it says it's not supported. It says Windows 7+ and MacOS are supported (Edge, IE11, Chrome, Firefox, Safari).

I tried using "User Agent Switcher for Chrome" to spoof the user agent:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...ahfmg?hl=en-US

Based on whatsmyip.org, I spoofed from the default Debian 9/Chrome user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/62.0.3202.62 Safari/537.36

to my laptop's Windows 10/Chrome user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Safari/537.36

But this did not fool Cox's web site. It still said unsupported.

So what are my options? My main TV's computer currently only has 2GB of RAM, so I hope to do something that does NOT require a VM. So, I'm thinking:

A) Maybe a different user agent switcher would work? Or a different spoof string? I really hope this would be the solution, but I have little idea what I'm doing.

B) WINE plus web browser - I haven't used WINE in over a decade, and I've never tried to get any web browser working in WINE. Looking at WINEHQ, it seems that various browsers are rated "Garbage", which does not make me optimistic. It looks like maybe Firefox is partially functional?

C) Some sort of streaming from Windows 10 laptop (only 100Mbit fast ethernet) or Mac Mini (gigabit ethernet). I know VNC doesn't handle full motion video nearly efficiently enough. The Mac Mini's i5-2415M CPU is fast enough to encode mpeg-4 in realtime, though (I don't know what software would be suitable on MacOS...I currently only use the Mac Mini running Debian). I don't know what sort of streaming software would be suitable on the Win10 laptop either.

Honestly, I'm just not that familiar with non-business Windows software, and I'm not familiar with Mac software at all.

D) Windows 10 VM - I have via MSDN some licences for Windows 10 Pro and Home. The Mac Mini (running Debian) has enough CPU and RAM (8GB) to spare for this. I've not ever done a Windows VM before, but I imagine it should be pretty straightforward to screen record from a Windows VM window (perhaps 800x600) to an mpeg-2 or mpeg-4 file on an nfs share in realtime.

E) Android VM - It has been a while since I've used Genymotion to run an Android VM, and it was always a pain to try and get anything working. I feel like this option may be too flakey and too sluggish compared to a Windows 10 VM.

F) Install Windows 10 on a laptop with S-Video out; attach this to a Hauppage video capture card. Currently, I can already record/stream stuff that outputs S-Video or Composite.

The latter options are more clumsy and complex, so I'm hoping not to have to do them.

Anyone with any ideas, or any success getting Cox Contour working?

Oh, another option might be to ditch Cox entirely and go with something like DirecTV Now. I think folks have figured out how to get DirecTV Now working with Chrome in Linux.

I have Cox. I've made myself a note to test this sometime this week, but I can't predict exactly when.

i tried with surf, useragent android browser.
it asks me to install an app :-(

if you go down the android route, i wouldn't use genymotion. just try android x86 in a vm.

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for trying!

I tried a different user agent switcher in Chrome, but the results were the same:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...jgkhfcgf?hl=en

In both cases, trying to spoof as Android tablet or phone does NOT result in it telling me to install an app.

When I try in Chrome (with either switcher), the only thing that makes it look different is when I set it to IE10,9,8,7,6 - it goes to a different looking page saying I need to upgrade my browser.

I must apologize. I spoke too soon when I promised to test. I was guessing it was an included option and I was wrong.

I didn't realize that I would have to subscribe to Contour in order to test it until I found some time to look at it today, and I can't do that.

I do think one thing has been established--it's likely not the browser user agent string that's the issue here. I suspect that Contour needs some library or function that won't run on Linux.

I'm VERY close to being able to watch on Debian 9 using firefox 57 + flashplugin-nonfree 27 w/ a Windows 10 user agent.

I'm able to log in, doesn't complain about my OS, and goes through the motions of adding my computer, but it never completes that step no longer how long I let it go. Not sure what else is needed to get that last step to work, but that's the only thing I'd need to figure out to use it on Linux here. Been trying for a long time, never had any better luck than you with Chrome/Chromium, but since Firefox has started to get usable again, it's been close.

1 members found this post helpful.

Sounds like you've made great progress. Have you tried starting Firefox from the CLI? That way you will be able to see any error messages, if there are any.

Gotta admit, never even occurred to me to try...

edit - Just went and tried, doesn't ever throw any errors, just acts like something isn't loading for eternity (or as long as I let it set and think, but I've let it set longer before and it never finishes.

Drat.

Okay, I'm going to experiment with Firefox also!