Netflix fights password sharing by deleting convenience
Netflix, the company that once begged you to chill, now wants you to suffer. It’s quietly disabled casting to most TVs unless you’re rich, nostalgic, or own a TV older than most pop stars.
The company’s support site (spotted by Android Authority) now clarifies that casting is only supported in a narrow set of circumstances. First, you need to be paying for one of the ad-free service tiers, which start at $18 per month. Those on the $8 ad-supported plan won’t have casting support.
Even then, Casting only appears for devices without a remote, like the earlier generations of Google Chromecasts, as well as some older TVs with Cast built in. For example, anyone still rocking Google’s 3rd Gen Chromecast from 2018 can cast video in Netflix, but those with the 2020 Chromecast dongle (which has a remote and a full Android OS) will have to use the TV app. Essentially, anything running Android/Google TV or a smart TV with a full Netflix app will force you to log in before you can watch anything.
The move is pure Netflix 2025: punish convenience, cloak it in silence, and upsell the fix. Frequent travelers and casual sharers are out of luck unless they feel like typing a 20-character password into a stranger’s laggy smart TV remote. Nothing could be better than having to remember to log out and erase your account from that Airbnb TV. If that’s not an immersive user experience, what is?
If only there was a snappy word coined to describe the process of big tech making everything worse for users...
The point about hotel rooms and AirBNB is one that companies like Netflix ignore at their peril. It may not seem like much, but it will mean a drop in viewing as it's no longer convenient on the road.
The same thing with GM, as dropping CarPlay makes their cars suddenly unwanted as rentals.