Is a shorter solution possible?<p>Is decompiling SWF and&#x2F;or de-obfuscating Javascript really necessary?<p>Years ago, I approached these sites like the author in the blog post.  I spent hours reading about Flash and figuring out the schemes websites used.  I decompiled swf.  I also tried rtmpdump, livestreamer and other all-in-one solutions.  I used early youtube downloaders (clive, etc) and later quvi. I also used &#x2F;dev&#x2F;bpf to capture HTTP requests.  I tried it all.<p>I can relate to what the author is trying to do.  I never settle for &quot;streaming&quot;.  Download only.<p>However I found over the years either the websites have made things easier or I was simply trying too hard.  Or maybe I just am not interested in the type of video that is served in this way.  For some reason it takes much less effort now.<p>To make sure I am not imagining this, I decided to try one of the author&#x27;s examples.<p>I chose projectfreetv.so<p>1. I followed a link on the main page for some TV show I have never seen.<p>2. I read the HTML.<p>3. I noticed &#x2F;watch&#x2F;?aff_id= URL&#x27;s.<p>4. I chose the first one, 493165, and followed it.<p>5. I read the HTML.<p>6. I noticed a URL pointing to a website that serves TV shows and followed it.<p>7. I read the HTML.<p>8. I noticed a URL pointing to an MP4 file.<p>9. I downloaded the file.<p>I assume I got the TV episode on offer.  The screen size is a little small but the file was about 89MB and appeared to be the full episode.<p>Total time: less than 10min<p>What did I use?  sed, netcat, less and ftp for the download.  The entire process is a one-liner.<p>If anyone has some more examples to try, please list them.  I would welcome the challenge.