dison4linux
Young grasshopper
That may be true of all of the E7S variants, but that's not the case for the G5 (I91BM AKA Annke C800) that I have.All of them require a plugin regardless of firmware to view the livestream from the web interface. I find it better to use a standalone program for that though. Blue-iris is a popular one. You can also use vlc but it takes a little bit to get it all setup and can only view one stream per windows so you have to run several instance of vlc if you want to view more than one camera at a time.
That was the very reason that I upgraded to HikVision firmware in the first place. When the units arrive with Annke firmware V5.5.102 build 200925 the plugin was required. One of the earlier HikVision firmwares updated the Live View component to not require the plugin anymore. I'm on V5.5.801 build 210727 now but it was one of the earlier 5.5.X versions that made the change.
I suspect it was one of the other "Web" or "Encoding" versions that got updated as well that changed the requirement as the original versions were:
Encoding: V7.3 build 200921
Web: V4.0.1 build 200814
whereas now the versions read:
Encoding: V7.3 build 210721
Web: V4.0.1 build 210329
Also, note the "©2021 Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved." on the ones that don't require the plugin and "©2020 Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved." on the ones that still do.