Help for HBOGo viewing in 16.04 LTS

Recently, I caught a virus on an old HTPC running windows 7. So, I decided to expand my horizons and try Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as I've started to learn some coding recently and thought it could be interesting. So far, it works great for Youtube and most other videos. However, you try to watch Hulu/HBOGo, and it's a no go. It just sits there at a black screen. I tried various solutions, like these:

1.) https://www.maketecheasier.com/watch-hbo-now-ubuntu/ - gives a nice write-up and how to in order to get Firefox working using pipeline and a Flash version for windows (I think).

2) http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/09/h...ubuntu-1404-up - talks about updating HAL and some other digital rights stuff (DRM), very similar to this one: http://www.howtogeek.com/239682/how-...distributions/

Follwing #1, I was actually able to get the video/audio to work! However, the video works only when I force the image to occupy the whole screen, but even then the image only occupies approximately 60% of the screen and the image is cutoff, like it's trying to occupy the whole screen, but the normal playback buttons that are at the bottom occupy the other 40% of the screen, which is black (see attached image). The playback buttons are also not functional. I have to press the 'windows' button to bring up the application bar so I can right click on Firefox to close the whole screen down.

Screenshot from 2016-08-20 13-04-12.jpg

Apparently I'm not the only one having this issue though: http://www.howtogeek.com/239682/how-...distributions/ . I read in a comment somewhere that this issue could be an issue with some of the fonts in pipeline and that causes all the playback button issues, or something to that affect, but I don't know.

Should I downgrade 16.04 LTS to the 14 LTS where some of the workarounds were designed for? Or have places like HBO updated their system and downgrading to use existing solutions won't work? Just wondering! I'd like to get it up and running and maybe help some other people out with similar issues. I'm a long time windows user with very little coding ability and have only built computers, done nothing on the software side except install windows/etc.