Netflix All But Kills Casting - DTNS 5155

0:03This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, December 1st, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, we give you the important context, and we try to help each other understand. Today, Netflix all but kills casting from mobile devices. Oh, and people are not happy, including one Rob Dunwood. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Rob Dunwood. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. So back in April 2019, Netflix pulled support for Apple's AirPlay, and now it's coming for Google Cast. back in 2019 it explained that and i quote with airplay support rolling out to third-party devices there isn't a way for us to distinguish between devices what is an apple tv versus what isn't or certify these experiences therefore we have decided to discontinue netflix airplay support to ensure our standard of quality for viewing is being met now oddly they didn't seem to mind that you could cast to pretty much anything using Chromecast, which was a lot of people's workaround.

1:03Oh, I can't use AirPlay? Fine. The TV has Chromecast built in. I'll use that. But Chromecast, aka Google Cast or just Cast, is now in a different situation. In the latest update to Netflix's mobile apps, you can no longer cast to Chromecast with Google TV or Google TV streamer devices. Roughly, and this is something a Netflix customer support agent supposedly told someone, If a device has its own remote, you can't cast to it anymore. So they are still supporting cast on older devices and older TVs. You can only cast from the Netflix mobile app. If you have one of those old Chromecast devices, we don't know exactly where the borderline is, except for that one anecdote about having a remote or not.

1:46And any TVs that support Google cast natively, basically ones that don't use Google's operating system or have a native app. That part's still a little confusing since Netflix hasn't commented and we're going on user reports. But you can't cast it all if you're on Netflix with ads. That's simple. You got Netflix with ads. That one only worked with the newer Chromecast and Google TV models as of earlier this year. And of course, now they don't support cast on those. So if you have Netflix with ads, you can't cast it all. Netflix's help page has been updated to read the following. Netflix no longer supports casting shows from a mobile device to most TVs and TV streaming devices.

2:27You'll need to use the remote that came with your TV or TV streaming device to navigate Netflix. And that last is maybe like to navigate. Some people like to use the Netflix mobile app and casting because they could use their phone as the remote. And you can't do that anymore either. Now, Rob, you have a specific situation that this impacts. I do. So, Tom, I know this is a podcast, but I am holding up a Google TV streamer that I kid you not came in the mail today. I just got this thing this morning. And the reason for it is because over the holidays, I have a house, you know, near my relatives that, you know, I'm at regularly enough that we keep internet on.

3:09But I don't have like just subscriptions set up for that house because I can't take my Netflix from where I live to that house when I want to watch it there. So what I would do is just go and just stream stuff from my phone, you know, having all the apps on my phone. The reason that I have this brand new Google TV streamer is that there are some apps. The Peacock is probably the biggest one that I can think of. This Chromecast on this TV is so old, it just doesn't work. So I'm like, oh, let me just go buy a new one. Let me TV streamer. That's the highest in one. I'll get it. But if I can't stream from my phone things that I watch regularly, this is this device is essentially useless to me.

3:47So I'm probably going to send it back, get an older Chromecast so I will still be able to stream Netflix and other stuff to that television that I use without having to go through a remote. So I am not happy about this at all. I remember when Netflix removed the ability to airplay from a device. I didn't really think anything of it because I wasn't an Apple user. I didn't know how big of a deal that was. But now that this is hitting me personally, it's like, man, I am not happy about this at all. Yeah, I imagine a lot of people aren't happy. Your case is you could dismiss as like, well, that's a niche case.

4:24How many people have like a second location like that? But these kinds of niche cases are going to mount up. They definitely will. I'm thinking of my child who is in college, who cast everything. So the thing for her is that because she is hours and hours away from me, she can't use the Netflix subscription. She can't use the Hulu subscription and these other subscriptions on her device, but she still can use them on her phone. So she is able to cast from her phone with a with a Chromecast to her television. That probably is going to go away for her as well. So we'll have to think around that.

5:01Now, I know that there have been some things that they've been able to get around that by using like really old Chromecast. But if if Netflix is taking this ability away, I'm wondering why they say it's for user experience. but it seems to me like there's enough people who are using it and their numbers should show that there are a lot of people who use this. Why are they really taking it away? Yeah. On the one hand, I can take a cable and I can plug my phone into a TV with an HDMI adapter and I can output its screen. I could also probably screen mirror, although sometimes apps can block that.

5:37But I should not be prevented from using my legally obtained, legally acquired service on my legally acquired device to output to a screen because they think it's a better experience for me to use the app on the TV. I get why they think that. There are things you can do when you're creating an app on a television to make sure that it looks right on the TV and it takes a lot more maintenance and maybe there are some things with with cast that you can't do from a phone uh but i should be able to plug it in and you know say look i just want to watch this video over there so the only things i can think of are there are services they want to provide to you that are tv centric um that that they don't you know they they aren't going to be able to support off mobile and they don't want you to be left out of those that would be a legitimate concern uh but the other one would be that they want to make sure that their data is clean.

6:36And when you're watching it on a TV, that it's watched on the TV and they collect all the data there instead of you casting and maybe that data doesn't get captured as well. That's probably part of it. The other part of it is that I think Netflix really wants to lock you into if you're using this place away from your primary address, we want more money from you. Nothing has come out that they're saying that, but it seems like this well this supports that if that were the reason so I don't know that to be the reason but it just seems like it could be because I can think of many many cases where streaming from my device is easier than having to use a remote like if I go to my parents I don't have to log into their account and then start changing you know you know I guess I could set up an account for myself on them but it's not going to have all of my preferences all the things that I watch is not going to pick up shows where I left off.

7:28It's just easier if I just, if I just cast it from my phone, I do this all the time. I even cast stuff to my television that has the remote in my house. Why? Because it's something I'm looking at on my phone and I want to see it on the TV right then. I don't have to try to find it again by, by moving to a different interface. So this is, I guess Netflix didn't call me up and say, Hey Rob, what do you think? But if they would, if I would have given them my mind and told them, this is probably not the move to make. I don't know that this helps them on the multiple account thing. In fact, it kind of hurts them on the multiple account thing, because what they're saying is we would rather you log into a Netflix app on a TV in a remote location than use your mobile app.

8:15Using your mobile app kind of shows them like, oh, that's an app we see normally at this location. It is temporarily at this other location. We can clearly say that's not a person trying to share an account. But if you're requiring you to use the TV app, well, now you have to log in. It's a worse user experience. And it's the same thing where they're like, oh, that account is now in a different location. They could tell you're in a different location with the mobile app. So what's the difference there? If anything, it makes it harder for people to use their Netflix subscription. It reduces the user experience, maybe not for that many people, but it reduces the user experience for a lot of people.

8:58And one of the ways Netflix grew was being everywhere. I remember back in the day, if there was a device that could stream video, it had Netflix on it, open source devices, anything. The first thing that you could do on anything was use Netflix because Netflix wanted to make sure they were everywhere. And it's unfortunate to see that they've gotten big enough to not care about that. Yeah, I'm struggling to see that this is a we want to give you the best experience because you are degrading the experience from my gut would tell me. Millions of people who use this feature, I use it all the time.

9:37I would rather cast from my phone to a TV in a hotel than have to log into the TV in a hotel to actually do it. Because now you're limited to just the apps that are on the television as compared to whatever is on my phone I can cast. And here's the other part of this. This is, for people like me, a very get-aroundable thing to do. I can easily get around this. Now, do I have to jump through hoops to do so? Yes, I've got to jump through a hoop. I'm probably going to use like Smartcast on Samsung TVs, which is what I have. So I can get around it. But it's like this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

10:12Why are you getting rid of a feature that I know that a lot of people use? It's like this is not just a few folks on fringe cases. This is something that a lot of people still use. The hotel was a really good example where if I have to log into the Netflix app on the hotel TV, I'm going to feel a little uncomfortable. I'm going to try to make sure that I remember to log out, even though the hotel says it will log me out. Whereas if I can cast, I'm not worried about it, right? And it is a more stress-free experience. Again, it's reducing the user experience. It's not a great move and not well explained.

10:47Well, DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Chris Benetow, Jeffrey Zilks, Alo, aka Adam L, and our new patrons, Reinhard, Colin, Sherpati, and Pamela. Hey, one for each day of the long U.S. weekend. Thank you, new patrons. Good to have you.

11:08All right, there's more to talk about. Let's get to the briefs. Many companies must keep all official corporate communications for purposes of compliance. They may be subject to freedom of information requests or need to prepare for lawsuits. In the past, companies could rely on the carrier to provide SMS records. But in the world of end-to-end encrypted RCS messages, the carrier can't help you. So Google is providing a tool that can archive Google messages on managed Pixel and other compatible Android devices. The archiving is maintained on the device to preserve end-to-end encryption. The system integrates with existing third-party archiving apps, including CellTrust, Marsh, and ThirdEye.

11:43Employees see a notification on the device when the archival feature is active. This is an enterprise story, really, and a good news story for people who manage devices for enterprises because Google has made it easier to do this. but you could already do this. In fact, you don't have this easy way to do it on iPhones. You just have to install your third-party stuff on your managed device and do some workarounds to make this work. So I've seen a lot of headlines out there today of like, Google makes it easier for your company to spy on you. I'm like, the company was already spying on you. That part isn't new.

12:18As I was reading through a lot of the comments, and you can get into a whirlwind when you start going down the rabbit hole of comments on the internet. That's exactly what people are saying. It's like, oh, this is really, really a bad thing. It's like, no, if you're using a company provision device, just assume that that company is looking at every single thing that you do on that device. All this is doing is making it easier for those people who are already looking at everything you do on your device easier so that they can look at everything you do on your device. The way you can get around that is that you have your own phone that is not company provisioned.

12:53That's how you keep your company from looking at these things. So coming from the corporate world, I used to have employees that would say, I don't like the fact that my cell phone can be tracked by my job. And it's like, well, only the one that the job provided for you, if you use your own cell phone and don't put all these other apps on there, then you are not subject to any of that information that they collect. Yeah, and we could have a conversation about whether compliance is really necessary whether the laws are written over broadly. But that's a whole different conversation than like Google's making it easier for the company to spy on you.

13:28The company is, again, like you explained, the company has to spy on you on the stuff it gives you. So Rob just gave you a workaround to that that you could take advantage of. And I know it's costly because you have to get your own device, but yeah, that's the trade-off, right? Yeah, I have had many a conversation to where it's just, folks, if you don't want your company to have company ties into a phone that they pay for, then just only use that phone for work and then use your personal phone for personal. Where people get into, you know, getting into a little bit of gray areas that when you actually get a phone, you know, on your own plan and then your company subsidizes it, they may give you 30, 50, 60, 70 bucks a month.

14:17But in doing so, they're saying, but in order to do this, we need you to have these apps on here. And then you're giving them the ability to put these device management features on your own phone. The way to get around that is that don't take the money from them for a phone, just take the phone from them. The other alternative is they'll give you a phone that isn't necessarily the specific iPhone you want or the specific Android phone you wanted. they'll just give you what they provision in the same way that they give you the laptops that they provision in the same way they give you other office equipment that they position that they provision they make the decisions on that so this is this is uh you know it's a story because it's in the news and people are talking about it but it really is like it's a nothing burger if anything it's like these companies are already looking at everything you everything you know that you can possibly do on company provisioned equipment yeah and i know we have people who do the device management for companies out there.

15:11They're like, this is a good story. It's going to make it easier for me to do the thing I already have to do. And there's profiles and there are ways to like wall off your corporate section and use it separately from your personal stuff. You might want to talk to your IT department and see if they're willing to support that sort of system if they don't already. But yeah, but mostly this is just Google made it easier on your sys admin. So, you know, that's a good thing because you want a happy sys admin. A study led by the scientists at University of Pennsylvania analyzed data from the U.S. National Institute of Health's Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, that's an ongoing study, to assess mental health effects among preteens who used smartphones.

15:53The study looked at data collected between 2016 and 2022 from 10 ,588 children. Now, Axios pointed this out, and I thought this was important to keep in mind. In this data set, children with smartphones were more likely to be female, black or Hispanic, and from lower income households. So either that's just normal for people who have smartphones, which is interesting, or there's a bias in the data set, which could be possible. but it definitely is correlative to what else they found. Of those aged 12, 31 % appeared at higher odds for depression, 40 % for obesity, and 62 % for insufficient sleep compared to peers without phones.

16:36But as we said, there's a difference in the people who had the phones than the people who did not. One thing they were able to control for, those same results were not seen for children who only had tablets or smartwatches. They did not see a change in these effects. It was simply for smartphones, which is another interesting thing here. I would like to see how they accounted for correlations where other things both cause the predisposition for depression and the need for the child to have a smartphone, but the full findings will not be published until later in the journal Pediatrics. This is very interesting.

17:14Here's a thing that I have come to understand about the use of cell phones in children. I haven't really seen much data yet that says, you know what, giving phones to kids at very young ages is an awesome thing. We should just continue to do this with unabashed, you know, just give them to them whenever they ask for them. I have not seen those studies yet. Every study I've seen tends to talk about the ill effects. Now, there's, you know, there's causation and there's correlation that we can get into in a deeper conversation, but it does not appear to be a good thing for younger children to have just complete unfettered access to smartphones.

17:51It's just not a good thing. Yeah. If you look, you can find studies that say there are benefits, you know, to education and that sort of thing. But again, you'd have to dig in and be like, do you see those same benefits with a laptop? And specific to this study, do you see it with a tablet? Maybe not with a smart watch for education and stuff, but maybe the tablet is the way to go. But like you say, if you're concerned, maybe don't give your kid that's younger than 12 a smartphone. But I would like to see, I am curious to see when these full findings are published, what they found out about that.

18:29Because it may be, you don't want to deprive children of a tool that could help them just because people aren't studying it. I think a big part of it is if you're giving them these tools, are you also giving them education around how to use the tools? Are you having these regular conversations with them? Are you in a situation to where you know more about how to use your phone than your 12 year old does? I would say for in many cases, that is not the case. The child knows way more about using these devices than you do. So I think that, you know, if you know, there are definitely benefits to having access to the internet, literally wherever you are.

19:09But I think that those benefits, you know, are outweighed by the negative, you know, detriment, so to speak. If you are giving these children phones and you're not, you know, setting rules for how they use them, if you're not actually understanding what they're doing, looking at the apps that they're on, setting parental controls, if you're not doing all of those things, the benefits are outweighed by the detriment. And report after report after report shows that. The interesting thing I noticed about this because of the tablet exemption here is, okay, so it's not the apps. It's not the internet.

19:47It's the phone. It's either the ability to carry it around with you or the communication, maybe the text messaging part of it or the ease and convenience of it, whereas tablets are a little harder to pull out. I'm curious about that because clearly they didn't find that just having the internet and having social media apps was the problem was the usage. And that goes back to your point about guidance and all of that. But I also wonder if children who are in situations where they need to have a phone for safety or communication are the ones that are also showing predisposition for obesity and insufficient sleep and depression.

20:24And if that's the case, saying don't let your kid have a phone isn't going to work because the parents are not giving them the phone for some trivial reason. The parents are giving them the phone for a different reason. And so we need to address that if we really want to have a comprehensive solution. And that's why I said you have to look at correlation and causation. Those two things aren't linear. You have to understand why both things are happening. But the overall gist of this is that phone for young kids without any parental controls on them, as far as your parent, you know, the parent understanding how often this child is using the phone.

21:03I think if you think about the difference between a tablet and a phone, they have those phones on them literally for all of their conscious hours of the day. The tablet is something that they physically have to go pick up in the same way that, you know, the laptop is something they physically have to go pick up. They may have had them all the time if they didn't have a phone, but they would not have them as often as they have a phone because the phone can go in your pocket very comfortably. Yeah. Pull it out, put it away real quick. Right. A few details to tell you about today worth knowing about if you want to understand the ever-changing tech landscape.

21:37NVIDIA will invest$2 billion in Synopsys, which makes software and components for chip design, strengthening partnerships between the two companies. OpenAI will take a stake in Thrive Holdings, which owns and operates companies for Thrive Ventures, a major investor in OpenAI. OpenAI will embed engineers in Thrive Holdings companies and the OpenAI stake may grow if those companies do well. OpenAI signed a deal to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to Accenture employees and bank HSBC signed a deal with Mistral to develop models for use by HSBC employees. Yeah, that last one was the one that stood out to me.

22:11You don't see Mistral making the headlines as often as you do OpenAI and NVIDIA. And, you know, HSBC operating in Europe as well, just like Mistral, which is a French company. So seeing a little of the European French industry taking a headline was interesting to me. And HSBC, I mean, it's a massive bank. It's one of the biggest ones. So it's a huge deal. Big deal for Mistral, yeah. We also have a few product announcements all coming out on this first Monday in December. ByteDance launching a voice assistant that will come first to ZTE's Nubia M153 phone. That's kind of a experimental phone anyway, so that makes sense.

22:49But they hope to bring it to other phones as well. It will be powered by ByteDance's DoBow model. DeepSeek unveiled DeepSeek V3.2, which it says benchmarks comparable to OpenAI's GPT-5 and Alibaba's Kimi K2 Thinking. Also released DeepSeek V3.2 Special, which focuses on math and long thinking and benchmarks comparable to Gemini 3 Pro. So, and Runway announced its Gen 4.5 video generation model, which passed VO3 and Sora 2 to take the top spot on Video Arena's leaderboard. Runway says it's improved at understanding physics, human motion, camera moves, and cause and effect. It is a horse race out there for these models, is what this all tells me.

23:35It really is. And since you and I have last talked on this show, ChatGPT 3.5 is celebrated its three-year birthday. that that's when everything changed as far as how we talk about uh the these models and it's just like i mean it's been three years and we're talking about just so many different companies doing so many different things that are so beyond what they were doing three years ago it is it is pretty amazing deep seek didn't exist three years ago and you know we're talking about all these updates so it's it's pretty impressive just how fast ai is moving some of it reminds me of the early days of search engines when you would debate whether Excite or InfoSeek or AltaVista were the best because they were all racing to be the best at search.

24:19And I keep wondering if there's a Google out there that's going to jump in this. I keep wondering as well, will we get to a point to where there is Google OpenAI and then a handful of others that you just don't hear about nearly as much are kind of there, but it's just those two big companies that are kind of doing everything. I wonder if that's where we're headed. Right now, it doesn't look like that because you have this horse race going on. But if you've got enough cash, which Google does, and you've got enough weight in the marketplace, which OpenAI does, they can float to the top or they could just get undermined.

24:59It's too early to tell. We do have a bunch of quick headlines here. These are always good things to know if you want to understand the news in the future. Google Cloud and AWS introduced a new open spec for network interoperability, which lets companies easily create high-speed links between resources running on two cloud providers. And at the same time, Google withdrew its EU complaint against Microsoft that had alleged that the company used anti-competitive practices to lock people into Microsoft Azure. Airbus says fewer than 100 planes still need the software update to fix a flaw that impacted the plane's computers in some cases of intense solar radiation.

25:40That was quick. There were about 6 ,000 plus planes that needed that. Jeff Keighley's Game Awards take place Thursday, December 11th. And in advance, he posted the words Regal Inspire Thickness to social media, which were a what three words coordinate. People went to that coordinate and found a statue of something possibly Diablo related in Joshua Tree National Park in California. That's kind of cool. Yeah. Just a reminder that DJI will be prohibited from selling new products in the U.S. as of December 23rd, unless it can convince someone in the U.S. government that is not a threat to national security.

26:16This is a big one. They sell a lot of drones, and that's what people mostly know them for. They sell a lot of action cameras, a lot of gimbals. There's a lot of stuff that DJI does. Insta360 is out there lobbying. Don't give them an exemption. Don't give them an exemption. uh cnbc has a story about cat gets who has modified a typical landline telephone to have a bluetooth connection in it so she can use it as a phone without having to pick up her smartphone apparently she's sold a bunch of them new york's latest state budget requires businesses to disclose if they use your personal data to set different prices for different shoppers so uber which uses geography and demand change for prices now carries this disclosure all right Reuters reports that India's telecoms minister has given all phone makers in the country 90 days to begin preloading a government app on all new devices sold in the country.

27:06It's the state-owned Sanchar Sathi theft security app. It's meant to help you find your phone, but, you know. That sounds awesome. Yeah. It sounds awesome. China's National Development and Reform Commission expressed official concern that the country's humanoid robotics industry is at risk of forming a bubble. Yeah, we got two bubbles now. That's good. And finally, Geely's Zeker subsidiary will begin selling its premium and fleet EVs in Germany this week with plans to expand sales to Britain, France, Italy, and Spain in 2026. All right, folks, don't forget, if you need a holiday gift, the Daily Tech News Show store is at your service.

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28:14We end every episode of DTNest with some shared perspectives. Today, Wayne's has thoughts on the news from Friday that Apple is exploring using Intel to make some Apple Silicon. Yeah, Waynes wrote on our Patreon post for the Daily Tech Headlines episode, the best thing Apple has done recently has been to leave Intel. So hopefully this doesn't backfire. The story was, if you missed it, Apple looking at maybe using Intel's foundry to make Apple Silicon. So it wouldn't be them changing to x86 again, obviously. It would be using Intel as a place to make stuff, the way they use Foxconn now to make stuff or TSMC to make stuff.

28:51So it would be bringing Intel on board. It'd be a huge thing for Intel to be able to get that contract. Absolutely huge. And I'm thinking like there is a brand new foundry that is being built miles from my home that it would be cool if some Apple stuff was made out of there. We know that that will actually move the needle for Intel. Yeah, that would be big. So hopefully it doesn't backfire on Intel because there's some doubts about whether they're going to keep the foundry or not. There's some differences of opinion amongst the investors and the backers and the board and the CEO and all of that, which is why we've had a lot of different Intel CEOs over the past couple of years.

29:28Well, folks, we want to know what you're thinking about. So if you've got some insight into a story, share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big thanks to Wayne's for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business. And right now, if you're not a patron yet, you get a 12 % discount for new patrons by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.