ESPN+ Cannot Run Full Screen

[agoldhammer]

With the update to Version 64.0, ESPN+ streaming service will not run full screen. The top half of the screen is black except for the ESPN logo and the video is pushed down so only the top half of it is visible. All other streaming sources that I routinely use (YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime) work fine. I have have a workstation PC with Win8.1 and a television PC with Win7 (I need this one to stay on Win7 to run Microsoft Media Center for cable TV). I rolled back to version 63.5 on the TV PC so that ESPN+ runs full screen. I have tried Chrome on both computers and see the same problem. However, updated Internet Explorer 11 runs ESPN+ just fine on the work station (it cannot run on Win7 as ESPN+ is not supported with that browser). I have a support ticket into ESPN about this but it looks like it's a Firefox problem. I'm unsure whether ESPN+ requires Flash to run as I can't find documentation.

[DanRaisch]

Moving to Firefox Support as version 64 is the current release version..

No such problem here. Have you tried starting Firefox in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
If no improvement using Safe Mode, do you have the same problem if you create a new profile and test it with no extensions or non-default themes installed?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager
and
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_ne ... on_Windows

[agoldhammer]

I tried both of your suggestions and neither one works. I still get the same half screen. When I installed the new Firefox profile and tried to do the full screen I got a yellow banner notice that reads, "Firefox is installing components needed to play the video or audio on this page. Please try again later." I don't quite know what this means since the audio and video both play in both the web page view and full screen view. I just cannot view the video in full screen. I did hear back from ESPN on my ticket and they were very unhelpful, saying just use IE or Safari both of which are not options on my Win7 TV computer.

Something broke between version 63 and 64 to cause this problem.

EDIT: One more data point - Opera browser works just fine with ESPN+ and Win8.1. I have not tried my Win7 machine yet.

[agoldhammer]

I guess that there are so few of us who use ESPN+ to watch sports streams that this may not be a priority for the Firefox crew to fix since now that it is a problem with version 64. Some others who watch Euro soccer on ESPN+ are having the same issue using Firefox. I have confirmed that Opera works just fine under both Win7 and Win8.1 so I will be using this browser going forward. I'll continue to check as Firefox updates are rolled out to see if anything changes. Certainly if either Netflix, YouTube or Amazon Prime streams had been broken, this issue would have been promptly addressed.

[DanRaisch]

Certainly if either Netflix, YouTube or Amazon Prime streams had been broken, this issue would have been promptly addressed.

You did note my post that I was not seeing that problem here using Firefox 64 under Win10, correct? I doubt that it matters which streaming source is involved as I'm not sure that it's actually an issue with the browser itself. Are all of the user having problems running Windows 8.1?

[agoldhammer]

Certainly if either Netflix, YouTube or Amazon Prime streams had been broken, this issue would have been promptly addressed.

You did note my post that I was not seeing that problem here using Firefox 64 under Win10, correct? I doubt that it matters which streaming source is involved as I'm not sure that it's actually an issue with the browser itself. Are all of the user having problems running Windows 8.1?

Yes, I did see your post. I cannot use Win10 on my Television PC because it has to run Windows Media Center for cable television and that only runs under Win7 these days. My workstation runs Win8.1 because I don't want forced updates that Win10 requires and I have not seen any reason to update the OS since everything runs fine. I understand that the Firefox developers may not be testing things for backwards compatibility and that's fine if it makes their job easier. I can only report that something was broken in the update to Version 64 of Firefox for this particular streaming app. ESPN+ will run full screen under Win8.1 with either Opera or IE11. It will run under Win7 with Opera. It won't run full screen under Chrome or Firefox. Whether there is an OS issue involved I don't know; the two other users that reported the same problem on the soccer forum I'm on didn't specify their OS. There could also be a peculiarity with ESPN+.

Here are the published ESPN+ PC requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7+
Recommended Browsers:OS 8.1 and 10 ( IE 11, Edge, Firefox, Chrome) OS 7 ( Firefox and Chrome) most current version
Flash Player: Adobe Flash Player 10.2 or above

As long as Opera continues to work on my Win7 machine I'm a happy camper. I continue to use Firefox on my workstation for all my Internet work other than watching ESPN+ I'm not badmouthing Firefox as I have been using it since it was first launched.

EDIT: Well things are working fine today with Firefox on both Win7 and Win8.1. I know some of us notified ESPN of the problem and perhaps it was on their end; these kinds of things are difficult to troubleshoot.