The frustrating thing is that we've had all the tech to make this possible for at least 10-20 years now. Yet "smart" homes are getting worse with every passing year. Why? Because consumer technology is monopolized by a handful of large corporations whose goal isn't to make people's lives easier but build walled gardens and restrictions to best extract every last cent.

Other services were aggressively throwing Black Friday sales in order to boost their subscriber counts. I picked up HBO for 70% off, and there were also Hulu and Apple TV discounts. And I didn't need any of them because there's plenty of ad-supported content on YouTube, Tubi, and other services.

I'd prefer video streaming apps be required to support Casting/AirPlay.

A year ago I went on vacation with my family, and the kids wanted to watch Netflix on VRBO‘s TV and so I logged in to my account on the tv. And of course I forgot to log it out when I left - so, predictably, the next people decided they hated my taste and went through and deleted all my likes and dislikes, and rated I swear 100 teen romances. I somehow got my account logged out of that TV, but the account was trashed and unrepairable so I lost about a decades worth of history and started a new one.

Afterwards, I thought I should’ve just cast from the kids iPad. And now that won’t be possible.

How can this improve the customer experience?

A hostile move, but understandable money grubbing.

This is less understandable.

This and refusing to work with the Apple TV app are the 2 big examples that come to mind but there are likely others.

I am not really sure what this solves though since you would still be using their app.

Them refusing to work with the Apple TV app was one of my biggest reasons for canceling. They really need to get knocked down a few pegs.

"... the decision was made to improve the customer experience." Of course that's a lie, but it is ironic, as the reason why chromecast was initially conceived was that TV UX is horrible.

2. Put file onto computer. Maybe the computer you already downloaded it onto.

3. Plug computer into TV or monitor.

4. Open file to consume content.

One of these days I'll get around to setting up something like this for my dad:

- laptop sits under the TV (maybe asleep), occasionally checking for commands

- dad sends command from his computer "I want to torrent"

- laptop sitting under the TV hosts remote web interface for qbittorrent or similar

- dad sends command from his phone "I want to watch movie now"

- movie starts playing on TV from laptop, and dad can control it with his phone

I loved the service but now its literaly unusable for me. whoever came up with these new policies should be "voluntarily" relocated to gaza.

I've resorted to piracy now. Its hard to imagine a company going through so much effort to not take my money.

I’m so glad we use plex, have thought of making the jump to jellyfin though. I tried to use my MacBook Air to watch their excellent Michelin Stars show, but couldn’t watch it on 2/3 of my monitors because they don’t have HDCP built in. Modern disk drives are so cheap you can just download everything in 4K HDR, paired with an OLED display it’s absolutely breathtaking how good modern media can look.

So anyway, with the Michelin show I just downloaded it off a torrent site instead, which is a hilariously easier user experience and it’s caused by the very HDCP that is supposed to prevent piracy.

If I were a subscriber this move wouldn't make me switch to a costlier plan, I'd rather unsubscribe entirely

Oh. And ads. There's another can of worms if you need to serve ads.

In this case it could be that Netflix is an asshole. Or could be that they really could not figure out proper device attribution and ad reporting to the leeches that are the content owners and ad networks.

but good damn is life nice when you just have files, a network and zero drm and limitations

> For consumers, DIAL removes the pain of having to launch the required app on the first-screen [eg: tv] before interacting with it from their second-screen [eg: phone].

https://www.dial-multiscreen.org/

Growing up in the 90's, I was obsessed with ubiquitous computing, with an idea that there would be computers everywhere & we were going to need "the network is the computer" type thinking to let us make use of ambient screens, speakers, cameras, lights, etc. with Casting being ascendant and ragingly excellent, and Matter finally bringing some reason to IoT (but computer to computer notably weak) it's amazing to see some of that world.

I cannot for the life of me imagine why Netflix would be trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle now. We're ina user I would be pissed. I almost never touch my TV remote, and turning back the

I also want to mention that there is an open standard at the w3c, Open Screen Protocol, that's built by the Second Screen Working Group, to handle these flows in an open specified way. Matter has a Cast spec as well, but seems to only work with native apps that are already installed on devices, where-as DIAL (in many cases), Chromecast, and Open Screen Protocol all have modes where the target TV or speaker or whatnot open a given URL, so they can work with any* app without the 1st screen/tv needing explicit support. https://github.com/w3c/openscreenprotocol

Netflix sees no more technological future or market opportunity for themselves that will increase profits, so reduction of features and up charging are the only strategies.

It’s a testiment to the blindness and stupidity of their workers and leadership that in the era of the most cutting edge breakthroughs in video, Netflix believes the future is in removing functionality.

When you pay an arm and a leg every month for Netflix, you're funding a studio that pumps out the equivalent of screeching goblin sounds. Makes no sense.