Netflix Confirms It Killed AirPlay Support

Sean Hollister, reporting for The Verge:

Netflix confirmed to The Verge that it pulled the wireless casting feature this past week, due to what it’s calling a “technical limitation.” But it’s not the kind of technical limitation you’d think.

You see, Apple recently partnered with most of the major TV brands to allow AirPlay 2 to send shows directly to their 2019 TV sets with a firmware update later this year, but a Netflix spokesperson tells me AirPlay 2 doesn’t have digital identifiers to let Netflix tell those TVs apart — and so the company can’t certify its users are getting the best Netflix experience when casting to those new sets.

So now, it’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater and pulling the plug on AirPlay, period. “We can’t distinguish which device is which, we can’t actually certify the devices… so we’ve had to just shut down support for it,” a Netflix spokesperson says.

I don’t really blame them for calling it a “technical limitation”, but it’s a bit frustrating that they’re throwing out something that already works and has worked for years. And it makes it sound like it’s something they can’t do, rather than the truth, which is that they’ve chosen not to.

★ Saturday, 6 April 2019