Paramount Plus not working

[bferr02]

I have a paramount plus subscription, and ever since I installed the ad blocker it prevents the streaming service from working. Has anyone been able to get this to work yet? I have checked my alerts and tried to narrow down where the ads are coming from for the service, but it still states that I need to disable my ad blocker. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

[dennypage]

@bferr02 If you are using DNSBL, there are a significant number of domain names that need to be whitelisted to make Paramount work. You can look at the sites that get blocked in pfBlockerNG->Reports->Alerts. Filter DNSBL on the hostname in question to find the entries you need to whitelist, then add the pertinent entries to pfBlockerNG->DNSBL->DNSBL Whitelist.

For me, it started out pretty easy with 2 entries, but Paramount kept adding/changing tracking sites. I ended up with 6 or 7 DNS whitelist entries in order to get Paramount to work before I gave up. Complete pita.

The other approach is to add the TV or other device to the list of ip that bypass DNSBL in pfBlocker->DNSBL->Python Group Policy->Bypass IPs. Of course this means that all the little trackers get to do their thing...

For this and other reasons I ended up cancelling my Paramount subscription. It felt good.

[bferr02]

@dennypage I got it to work with one single fqdn add. It's for the streaming service that paramount uses called Fastly. Add rdap.arin.net to your DSNBL whitelist and it should work.

[dennypage]

@bferr02 There will be more to come…

[RandyWIlliams1]

I have a subscription to Paramount Plus, but I'm encountering issues with the streaming service after installing an ad blocker. Despite my efforts to identify the source of the ads and configure my ad blocker accordingly, I'm still receiving a message asking me to disable it in order to use the service. I would greatly appreciate any assistance from someone who has successfully resolved this issue.

[Gertjan]

@RandyWIlliams1

The best advise is already mentioned above !
The real issue is probably mentioned in the fine print, shown when you subscribed : they (paramount) give you content that you want ... but they give more then that : content that you don't want.
They said : you also paid for this non-wanted content (actually : you want it, as you accepted the fine print), and we (paramount) pay engineers that take care of the 'you will see what we send you, no matter what' (yep, you pay them to make your life ... let's say : less easy ?!)
So : the stop paying them - or upgrade from 'Plus' to 'Gold'.

If I was working for paramount, and they asked me - with a nice pay rise as a reward : make a system that blast adds all over our customers screen, I would make something like this :
Have the add pages loaded with some javascript build in.
When the browser finished showing this page, the javascript signals back with some sort of token.
This token frees up the 'right' to see some more content.
Now, when you block this add, .... you block everything.
(I'm just inventing this of course).

True, pfBlockerng can do a lot for you.
But it's not a activate-it-and-forget-it tool. You have to check it, and worse : understand what it does, why it does what it does, and what it can't do.

Sometimes the simplest solution is also the good solution ;)

edit : whitelisting the IP of the device you are using paramount is also 'a solution'.