Netflix kills casting from phones
Unless you’re an ad-free user with legacy casting tech.
Netflix has removed the ability to cast shows and movies from phones to TVs, unless subscribers are using older casting devices.
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Huh? Why?
It forces people to log in from the TV instead of carrying around a subscription in your pocket.
Which is to say, it's a ploy to force more subscriptions for use-cases that previously didn't need them.
Example: you go over your friend's place once a week for movie night. They don't have Netflix, but no problem - you can take your Netflix with you!
Well, now you can't. The hope from Netflix being that this will force said friend to cave and buy a subscription so you can continue doing movie night at theirs.
Just your standard corpo greed.
Well, now you can’t.
You can. You just need to de-select your old device and set the account up on the new device. I add Netflix to new devices all the time. It's just a pain to juggle between them with log-in codes.
For folks who aren't as tech sophisticated, this is a royal pain in the ass. But then so is phone streaming.
Just your standard corpo greed.
I'm willing to bet the dropped feature stems more from the need to invest company resources in support for casting from the phone to begin with. Why bother doing that when modern TVs are all "Smart" anyway? Just throw the QR Code on the screen and let the single device to all the work.
Casting was a well defined and supported protocol. I don’t even think it required any licensing fees. It takes away all the problems with device authorization, password sharing, etc. because as soon as you turn it off, it’s done. You need the casting controller (I.e. your phone) in order to initiate additional content.
Messing about with QR codes, device authorization etc is a great way to log in somewhere, forget to deauthorize it, and oopsie now you have to pay the password sharing price! Teehee gotcha!
IDGAF if you always remember to log it back out, IDGAF if you look down your nose at those filthy plebs who don’t know enough to de-authorize their home TV first so they don’t get charged for multiple locations; both of those things are so much extra work, and were already solved problems. You aren’t the main character so please don’t lourde your autism over us all - this is a trap designed to extract money from users who don’t understand/can’t be bothered/simply forgot. It’s theft, IMHO, and “people are so dumb lee-maow I just jump through all these hoops it’s so SIMPLE” dude you sound like people making excuses for Windows 11 by describing how easy it is to just do these 12 steps in regedit to stop Copilot from emailing your medical records to Redmond so they can target ads at you and sell Palintir profiling data.
Stop being an enabler for enshittification. The world is crumbling around you and your response is “mm herm herm im a clever power user, M’akshully”
Stop being an enabler for enshittification
Things will get worse and it'll be my fault and you can't stop me
The casting changes announced on Netflix’s support page do not explain why the feature has been removed. It follows a similar move in 2019 when Netflix removed AirPlay support, citing a desire to “ensure our standard of quality for viewing is being met.” We have reached out to Netflix for comment.
Three likely reasons:
