In a weird anti-customer move, Netflix has quietly disabled the ability to cast its content from mobile devices to “most TVs and TV streaming devices” like the Google TV Streamer and the older Chromecast models with remotes.
You can, however, still cast to even older Chromecasts, the ones that don’t come with a remote. And that’s the key here – basically, if it has a remote, casting is disabled. If it doesn’t have a remote, casting to it still works.
Don’t get us wrong, navigating Netflix with a remote might be preferable for some people versus using casting, which is oftentimes incredibly unreliable, but this is still a rather strange and baffling move on Netflix’s part, and the company has issued absolutely no explanation for its move, other than to say it’s meant to “improve the customer experience”, which is outright funny.
By the way, this isn’t limited to the free plan or the cheapest one – it’s the same situation regardless of how much you’re paying Netflix per month.
