Netflix has updated its service so that it will no longer support casting a streaming video to a TV from a mobile device.
If you’re watching a show on your phone, you’ll no longer be able to easily cast it onto your TV and keep watching. Instead, Netflix is prioritizing its TV app, which means you’ll need to grab your TV remote and use the app to play content, or even pause or rewind the show. Volume controls, playback buttons, closed captioning controls, or any other settings won’t be able to be controlled by your mobile device anymore if you’re streaming on the TV.
The change was first spotted and reported on by Android Authority, and the news has garnered lots of scorn from users in places like Reddit. The change eliminates a workaround that a lot of people use for either convenience—they can browse Netflix on their phone, then send something to the TV once they’ve chosen what to watch—or because the only account they have access to is authenticated on their phone, and they may not be able to log into the TV app.
“Why would they take away features that are incredibly useful? Why would they make the experience worse?” reads the top Reddit comment on the post sharing the Android Authority article.
A Netflix representative, answering questions from WIRED via email, says Netflix is ending support for mobile device playback control because it was not a feature that enough members use.
The representative says that Netflix sometimes has to retire features that are no longer widely used so that it can invest in those that provide more value. Netflix wouldn’t share any information about how many people used the casting feature, or what resources the feature was taking up compared to anything else the platform offers.
Casting to a TV will still work in a few cases. It doesn’t work at all on the cheaper ad-supported tiers that Netflix offers. But even if you pay for the more expensive streaming tier, casting from your phone will only work if you are casting to an older device, like a pre-2020 Google Chromecast, which worked without a remote control. But Google has all but killed off its Chromecast, and the latest smart TVs usually come with apps like Netflix preinstalled.
Users are riled up about this, pointing out that Netflix has shifted its priorities over the years from getting as many users on its platform as possible to maximizing subscription revenue by raising prices, cracking down on password sharing, and imposing limits on how the service can be accessed.
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