Troubleshooting

Playing Widevine DRM content

Starting from Kodi Leia (v18) playback of DRM protected streams is supported using the add-on InputStream Adaptive, which is automatically installed when you install Retrospect.

In order to play Widevine DRM files you will also need to have the Google Widevine libraries installed. Android based devices have this as a native component, for Windows and Linux you will need to install them:

The Easy way:

1. Open the Retrospect add-on settings.
2. Under the General tab, make sure Use Kodi InputStream Adaptive add-on when possible is enabled.
3. Select Install Widevine using InputStream Helper add-on.
4. Agree to the three following input boxes and let Widevine install.

The Manual way:

1. Determine the latest version of the Widevine libraries: https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/versions.txt
2. Download the appropriate version for your OS/Kodi combination (replace the {version} with the most recent version):
   • 32-bit kodi on Windows: https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/{version}-win-ia32.zip
   • 64-bit kodi on Windows: https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/{version}-win-x64.zip
   • 32-bit kodi on Linux: https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/{version}-linux-ia32.zip
   • 32-bit kodi on Linux: https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/{version}-linux-x64.zip
3. For Windows, copy these files into your <kodi-profile>\cdm folder. Linux users need to install them manually (or they can use this gist (Fork) to install it automatically).

Example:

If the most recent version obtained via https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/versions.txt is 4.10.1440.19, then the download URL for 64-bit windows is https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/4.10.1440.19-win-x64.zip.

The kodi.log will tell you if you did not put them in the correct place or if you have copied the wrong version.

NOTE: for Kodi Krypton it seems that version 1.4.8.1008 is the last version that is compatible.

For ARM Devices (such as Raspberry Pi) things might be a bit different. If you are running Android, you probably don't need to do anything at all as Widevine is natively supported. However, if you are running Linux on ARM and the above method does not work, there is a different approach:

1. Determine the latest version of the libraries for ARM using this URL: https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chromeos/recovery/recovery.conf
2. From that configuration file, find the image for an ARM device that resembles your device.
   • The Acer Chromebook R13 image has been reported as working for many devices.
   • The device configuration section in the config file has a URL field that contains a link to a recovery image.
3. From that recovery image, you will need the Widevine files located in /opt/google/chrome/libwidevinecdm*.so.
4. These files need to be copied to the <kodi-profile>/cdm folder.

NOTE: Keep in mind that you might need to try multiple recovery images before you find a working one.