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Sony Televisions Netflix & VPN's

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Ian Holl

Occasional Visitor
I recently purchased an RT-86U and subscribed to Netlix. Although all my tablets, PC's and mobile phones are able to stream Netflix with my OpenVPN enabled, my crappy Sony TV won't allow my to stream Netflix unless I disable OpenVPN.

I'm like "WTF"? I know not to purchase Sony TV's but unfortunately I inhertitited this junk. Any solution? Is this VPN restriction embedded in the firmware?
 
I recently purchased an RT-86U and subscribed to Netlix. Although all my tablets, PC's and mobile phones are able to stream Netflix with my OpenVPN enabled, my crappy Sony TV won't allow my to stream Netflix unless I disable OpenVPN.

I'm like "WTF"? I know not to purchase Sony TV's but unfortunately I inhertitited this junk. Any solution? Is this VPN restriction embedded in the firmware?

Netflix blocks any IPs that it knows are associated with a VPN.

Have you tried streaming Netflix on any device besides your TV? My guess is the Netflix has you VPN IP blocked and you won't be able to Netflix on anything using a VPN.
 
I recently purchased an RT-86U and subscribed to Netlix. Although all my tablets, PC's and mobile phones are able to stream Netflix with my OpenVPN enabled, my crappy Sony TV won't allow my to stream Netflix unless I disable OpenVPN.

I'm like "WTF"? I know not to purchase Sony TV's but unfortunately I inhertitited this junk. Any solution? Is this VPN restriction embedded in the firmware?

Netflix blocks any IPs that it knows are associated with a VPN.

Have you tried streaming Netflix on any device besides your TV? My guess is the Netflix has you VPN IP blocked and you won't be able to Netflix on anything using a VPN.
Yes, that is my experience precisely with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube TV. My choice for now was to use Policy Rules (strict) in my AC86U and allow the TV and Chromecast to access via WAN and not VPN where all other devices are directed. I'm looking the script for Selective Netflix Routing by Xentrk to adapt to the other two.

No other devices want or need to access those streaming services. Interestingly, any device can cast from that device to the TV or Chromecast with no proxy alert from any streaming service.
Code:
WAN 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 WAN
Chromecast 192.168.x.xxx 0.0.0.0 WAN
Vizio 192.168.x.xxx 0.0.0.0 WAN
LAN 192.168.1.0/24 0.0.0.0 VPN
 
Netflix blocks any IPs that it knows are associated with a VPN.

Have you tried streaming Netflix on any device besides your TV? My guess is the Netflix has you VPN IP blocked and you won't be able to Netflix on anything using a VPN.

Netflix worked on every device except my Sony TV.



Okay guys for whatever reason I now have Netflix 'working' on my Sony TV. I don't know how or when but it's now working. I did a few things to no avail, but when I tried Netflix again this morning it was working. I can only assum my VPN supplier (NordVPN) is keeping on top of things. In a futile attempt to get Netflix working on my Sony TV I ensured my TV was using the latest firmware, I did a factory reset, I tried both Wireless and LAN connection and I configured both the AC86U and TV to use the DNS and custom settings supplied by NordVPN. That dramatically increased my TV's wireless connection speed from 12Mbsp to 25Mbps. I honestly have no idea why Netflix has suddenly started working. I think it was working before I even tweaked the settings when I tested it as I've only just got Netflix. At least now if it goes down again I'll know it's Netflix doing something and not my configuration. The wierd thing is even though I was getting the "we're having problems playing this title at the moment" error when performing Netflix's network test everything would be working as expected. And yes, when making changes I did all the restarts to ensure the new settings would validate, so yeah it seems to be a cat and mouse game with VPN companies and Netflix.

https://nordvpn.com/tutorials/asustwrt-merlin/openvpn/
 
I recently purchased an RT-86U and subscribed to Netlix. Although all my tablets, PC's and mobile phones are able to stream Netflix with my OpenVPN enabled, my crappy Sony TV won't allow my to stream Netflix unless I disable OpenVPN.

I'm like "WTF"? I know not to purchase Sony TV's but unfortunately I inhertitited this junk. Any solution? Is this VPN restriction embedded in the firmware?
Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and BBC in UK all block traffic from commercial VPN servers.

Two solutions are available. These include new VPN provider or using script to route Netflix traffic the WAN interface rather than the VPN interface. Please refer to:

https://github.com/Xentrk/netflix-vpn-bypass
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/selective-routing-for-netflix.42661/
 
Use a set-top box (Roku, AppleTV, Android, etc), and disable all connectivity to the SmartTV - sorts that problem...

Many of the new "Smart TVs" are 4K and only the newer set top streaming boxes will do 4K. Another issue to deal with is having an Ethernet connection. As far as I know most SmartTVs have a fast Ethernet port while no streaming sticks do and not all streaming boxes do.

For reliable streaming nothing beats an Ethernet connection and while 4K isn't a must, lots of Netflix and Amazon shows are avialable in 4k and it really does look nice on a large flat screen so giving up using the SmartTV to use an add on streamer solves a problem but it may not get you the same results..
 
The discussion jogged a memory.

I helped a friend setup their Apple TV so they could stream content from USA over a VPN connection on the AC86U router. Everything worked good for two months. I then get a call that things are borked and they can't watch content any longer. The issue was that someone in the household had reverted the region setting back to Asia on the Apple TV. I found this out by looking at dnsmasq.log file and seeing domain names with asia references in them.

In summary, one may need to set the region setting on their device to match the region location of the VPN end point.
 
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