Netflix DRM Woes (and a solution)
by liquidpooled on Jan.12, 2008, under DRM, Media Center, Netflix, Vista
Update: If you have a Vista Media Center PC, you can also try the MyNetflix plugin.
Netflix, ah how I hate your DRM. I recently upgraded my PC to Vista Ultimate to get at the new Media Center interface (which IS better than MCE 2005) and thus my saga with Netflix DRM began.
As a new Netflix customer, one of the primary reasons that I signed on was for the “Watch Now” feature. Realizing the quality might not be the best, I thought that it would at least satisfy my wife’s need for instant gratification (and my own). After the first go round, and after using the “ResetDRM” (resetdrm.exe) utility provided by Netflix, my Media Center was no longer able to play any content off of it’s internal tuners (or any previously recorded material). That was Round One of Netflix borking my PC.
Round Two involved a complete reinstall of Vista, and proceeding to do nothing else but install the Netflix player. Again, I was prompted to use the “ResetDRM” (resetdrm.exe) utility (which I was not in the mood to do). Deciding to instead call customer support this time, I was politely told that because I only have my Media Center connected to a television, that Netflix was kind of enough to think that I want to record all of their DRM’d media. The work around from Netflix? Hook a monitor up to my Media Center. Why would I want to do that when I have a perfectly good plasma TV to use as a monitor? This lead to Round Three.
Round Three is the convoluted work around. After receiving numerous errors related to C00D11B1 errors from Windows Media Player, a thought came to mind. I opened a remote desktop session on to my Media Center, navigated to the movie I wanted to watch, and proceeded to let it run. Not surprising, due to the different graphics output of a terminal services session, the movie was able to play. Now, all I had to do was go back to the TV, log in to the session, and click the play button. Success! Netflix “Watch Now” on a TV!
Now tell me that isn’t absolutely assinine…
July 28th, 2008 on 12:32 am
Regarding C00D11B1 (the DRM error), i resolved it simply by updating my drivers from ati.com (i have a Radeon X600 in a Dell XPS200) and then:
In Internet Explorer, click Tools - Internet Options - Advanced - Reset.
Presto. No more DRM problems. Obviously it’s an IE issue. So much for NetFlix tech support and 1000’s of forums with all these convoluted steps. I figured this out on my own in about 10 minutes. I called NetFlix tech support to let them know.
Note: Make sure you back up your settings, bookmarks, toolbars, etc. first just in case. However, the only things you really lose of value are your cached URL’s & cookies (i.e. saved password, forms data, etc). If you use a password manager like RoboForm anyway (which you should be using), then you won’t even notice. You can even re-enable your disabled IE add-ins and plugins after this resets them simply by going to Tools - Manage Add-ons - Enable or Disable Add-ons. No need to even reinstall the apps! How’s that for a 10 second fix to something people have been blogging about for a year?
July 29th, 2008 on 10:14 pm
For most (if not all), this is certainly a driver issue. In my case, this is due to my particular driver set (Nvidia GeForce 8600) reporting to my PC that my monitor is a television, and thus preventing the NetFlix Watch-It-Now movies from streaming. I have found that the plug-ins for Media Center (MyNetFlix, NetFlix VMC) that provide for streaming in the ten foot UI will allow the movies to play without the DRM prompts.