I have had the Raspberry Pi 4 for a few weeks and I have been able to verify a couple of things: for its price, we can have great devices, but it is somewhat limited. It is for another couple, in this case of reasons: its architecture means that we cannot install any application and the operating systems available ... I will only say that they are not my favorites. But if we get down to it, we can do anything, like play DRM content.
From what I have tested, I think the best operating system that we can use on the Raspberry is Raspbian, the distro from the Raspberry company that offers the best support for its small boards and recently has been updated to improve support for the fourth version. On the other hand, it is an operating system with few customization options and some settings are different, like the one in the related article below these lines. Playing DRM content is not a setting, but more like a trick or advice whose steps we detail below.
DRM content in Chromium, so you can enjoy it
- It is assumed that, if we have had the board for some time, we will already have the Raspberry Pi configured. If not, we write the usual commands (sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade) and configure the video.
- Next, we are going to install the necessary libraries (widevine). These are Chrome OS libraries that we are going to install on Raspbian, but don't worry, it's simple. We go to the project page from this link and download the script (right click on "Raw" and "Save as"). In the example of this tutorial we have left it in the Downloads folder.
- In this third step, do not make as many mistakes as I do, it confuses me using the keyboard / controller that I have and you can see what can happen. We write "cd Downloads" or we move to the path where we have downloaded the script.
- We write the following command:
sh widevine-flash_armhf.sh
- We wait a few minutes for it to download Chrome OS and extract the necessary libraries.
- Finally, we write the command that appears at the end, in my case "sudo tar -C / -xf widevine-flash-20191014_armf.tgz". Be careful with this because the command changes depending on the download date of the script.
- And hey, the real final step is to restart the computer. If not, we will get the same error that we have been getting every time we have tried to play DRM content on our Raspberry.
As we have indicated previously, this will work on Chromium, but it doesn't work in other browsers like Firefox. Personally, I think it is not a tragedy, because although it is true that I prefer Mozilla's proposal on normal computers, the ESR version available for the Raspberry is much heavier than the Chromium version.
And now yes, to enjoy services that offer their protected content, such as Apple Music or Netflix