Why does my screen black out when using netflix desktop
 

i recently installed through synaptic package manager the netflix desktop. when i click on the movie (the wild thornberry movie) the screen goes black, i can see the mouse icon..and it moves back and forth, but nothing else happens. What other steps do i need to do to see the movie?

I have found that I can only get that application to work correctly using the Nvidia driver. The opensource version just did not cut it.

Your problem sounds similar to mine. When running Netflix through Wine, I would get perfect audio but no video -- just a black screen.

In my case the problem was with my proprietary video driver (radeon fglrx). When I reverted to the open-source or "free" driver, Netflix began working beautifully and has done so ever since. :)

@VooDooDali....how would i go about checking my proprietary video driver, and how would i revert it? would you be willing to walk me through it step by step?

@jv2112...thanks for the advice...i will try all suggestions. Could you be a little more specific? How do i check to see if i have a nvidia driver?

We could answer that question more easily if we knew what version of Linux you were using. I'm using Mageia so I might do it differently from you. :)

Ubuntu 12.10

Okay -- using Ubuntu, I never could be quite sure which driver I was using -- can anyone else help out with this? :/

See if there is an "Additional Drivers" item in your "System" menu. That should bring up the proprietary drivers in use by (or available for) your system.