Troubleshooting: Projector Won’t Play Netflix


Introduction

If you’re new to this site then welcome! This blog is all about creating the ultimate home theater, gaming set up, or man cave set up. In order for you to have this set up you’ve always wanted, you don’t want to have to be dealing with issues in media playing.

It’s annoying when even the simplest of apps aren’t working with your media devices. Luckily, the most common problems all have solutions which have been noted by people all across the web. I’ve had some issues in playing Netflix from my media devices on my projector from time to time.

This article is a collection of all the solutions that I have gathered and verified. If for some reason you need me to provide any more insight or additional resources, feel free to reach out at the email I listed in my previous articles. I’ll do my best to respond, but be sure to take a look at all the solutions below to see if any of these apply to you. You’ll find that a lot of these technical issues are a matter of adjusting your media settings or changing the way in which you view Netflix on a browser, screen mirroring, and other means.

 

The most common problems, and their solutions

*For all issues concerning speaker output, check out my article on A Guide To Connecting Home Theater Speakers to a Media Device

If you want an immediate spoiler alert, many of these solutions won’t surprise you. At the surface level, just do a hard reset of your iPhone or laptop. Also reset your network settings on your handheld devices, or clear your browsing history on Google Chrome. For some reason, this will do the trick more often than not. See below for more details and more elaborate explanation on these issues.

Problem 1:  Error in Netflix display from using app on computer.

Netflix can be weird about their viewing settings sometimes. This problem usually occurs if you are  Wirelessly using screen mirror from your computer. Apparently, Netflix knows when you are setting up their app on more than one display simultaneously. This is weird because they’re okay with having up to three people using the same account at once, but not dual displaying on a home theater set up from one device.

Solution

Avoid using airplay if you have this issue. Get an HDMI adapter and play media from your laptop on an open source browser such as Google Chrome. Another good, permanent solution is to purchase the Amazon fire stick or Roku equivalent. These our little flash drives that plug into the back of your projector and serve as a multimedia player. They can easily stream Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and many other apps. Fire Sticks use a Wi-Fi connection, and they do a really good job with high quality streaming. See the section below for more details on this specifically.

Problem 2: Netflix 30103 error “cannot play title please try again later”

You might get this error if you log on to the Netflix app and are unable to click on your account profile or perform any further action. This isn’t specific to any Wi-Fi connection issues, nor does it have to do with the multimedia device you are playing Netflix on. It has more to do with the app or browsers’ ability to function as normal. I am not completely sure what the technical reasons for these errors are. Just know that if you get one that says “cannot play title “ in combination with any errors and number sequence, it is the same issue. It will also have the same solution.

Solution

I included a video of the most helpful solution to this problem. If you don’t have time or can’t view it for some reason, I left an outline of the notes below the video. This should fix the issue entirely, and some of the other error messages are similar and will have the same fix.

Notes from the video:

iPhone, iPad or handheld device:

Navigate to settings: General: reset network settings.

This will basically reset all of the network configurations on your device. You won’t lose any data by doing this. The only thing you’ll need to do is log back in to the Wi-Fi you’re currently on. Make sure you know the password to the network you are using before you do this.

PC or MacBook computer: Computer –> reset browser history

I would also restart your computer because that actually is 90% of the reason a solution works. This also gives your computer a chance to reconnect to the Wi-Fi. After you do this, log to the open-source browser such as Google Chrome or Microsoft edge.

Reset your browser history. I’m not totally sure why this is necessary, but this was the fix that worked for everyone.

Problem 3: Playing Netflix from a phone goes black on both screens.

You might notice this happening on the projector and the screen simultaneously. There isn’t a totally clear explanation of why this happens. Usually, this will have to do with the pre-display settings that are already on your iPhone or on the projector. The settings are implemented behind the scenes and are not adjustable, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution.

Solution

The most common solution that works is to do a hard reset of your iPhone, iPad, computer. For an iPhone or iPad, press and hold the power button and the home button until you see it shut off and re-display the white Apple logo. If this doesn’t work, then you’re also going to need to update the Netflix app or your iPhone if there is an update available.

Problem 4: Netflix is playing sound but there is no image.

In every single case I found online and drawing from my own experience, this is a matter of updating both of your devices and applications. Even Roku and Amazon FireStick will have updates they need to go through from time to time. I know some people are against updating their iPhone devices. I am one of those people, but every time you miss an update on any device, there’s a higher probability that you will eventually reach a point where the updates are so dramatic, your devices are no longer able to function correctly using the original app.

I finally did an update on my phone after two years, and now I am able to play Netflix on screen mirroring on my projector.

Solution

Update all of your devices and do a hard reset on them if you haven’t already. This actually made all the difference for my iPhone being able to play media on my projector wirelessly. I’m not totally sure why updates do such a dramatic job improving the ability for devices to work with each other, but this is the most common fix to the problem mentioned above.

 

More Surefire Solutions  

If for some reason you’re still having issues with any of the problems listed above, then I do you have one solution that would work the matter what.

You’ve probably already heard of these products, but the Amazon fire stick and Roku equivalent will get rid of all of these compatibility issues. Any projector will have an HDMI or USB input port. The Roku or Amazon fire stick will be able to plug it directly into one of these. These essentially serve as their own media player and allow extremely easy access to all of the streaming apps. These apps including Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and many more.

My family first got the Amazon fire stick when we had our TV set up. Now we have the fire stick plugged into our projector since we need our other media device for the TV my parents just bought and replaced.

We actually haven’t had any issues with streaming Netflix from our projector. The remote that came with our projector serves as the remote we use for browsing on all the streaming apps. It’s also able to stream the highest quality videos even though it’s using the Internet directly.

These types of devices are my recommended solution simply because they will eliminate all compatibility issues. I’m not sure why, but again, Netflix has weird hangups about people using third-party devices to stream content onto a media player such as a projector. Amazon and Roku fire sticks are actually very inexpensive and will save you a lot of hours of frustration if none of the solutions worked for you. You can also unplug these and take them anywhere, and plug them on to any TV that has the right input port (such as a hotel TV).

 

Get HDMI dongle adapter for your computer

This is another one of those great, sure-fire solutions. An HDMI adapter dongle can be found at any electronics store, especially at Best Buy. Before you look into these or make a trip out there, take a look at your computer or smartphone device to see what type of adapter you need. you’ll be able to find HDMI adapters to your phone, iPad, Android, and computer model.

I’ve only broken one of them in the past, so I noticed that the surface book adapter dongle is a little more sensitive to being bent. I bought the same exact replacement as the original and I’ve gotten more use out of the second one because I’m more careful about the cord management.
My fiancé and I each have a cord for our individual computers. We’ve used these on hotel TVs, and specifically to play games (like Jackbox) and computer related videos on our projector.

I’ve never had any formatting issues and that’s the best part about this small investment. We purchased both a long and a short cord so we can always adjust and be flexible in our set up. We don’t actually stream Netflix on our projector using the Netflix app, instead we stream using the chrome browser on our computer. We either use that method or when we’re at my parent’s house, we can just use the Amazon fire stick.

The quality of streaming is just as good when using chrome or Microsoft edge to watch Netflix. Because it’s a web browser, Netflix won’t know that we’re streaming their media on a secondary media device such as our projector. Hopefully they’re not reading this article right now and changing their terms of use.

 

Related Issues

This section is just a few miscellaneous issues you might encounter. I don’t think most people will have to worry about the following three, but it is worth just doing a quick self check to make sure this is in it.

1. Trying to use a USBC on a video input and not a charge port: USBC ports are meant for charging devices and not actually transmitting any kind of video. The video ports look the same as the charging ports, so a quick a double check is all that is required. These types of inputs aren’t very common, but they can make all the difference if you’re still scratching your head after trying countless times to get a video to work.

2. Trying screen mirroring even though Netflix doesn’t support this feature: This isn’t the case for all devices, but sometimes Netflix denies screen mirroring requests when trying to view content on their dedicated app. If you tried any of them at home solutions, then I would highly recommend going with a cheap Amazon fire stick.

3. Projector not playing audio through an HDMI connection: Sometimes projectors can be a little inconsistent in how they calibrate with your speaker system. While HDMI cables are supposed to transmit audio to the speaker system on the media player, this isn’t always the case. Make sure that your projector and speaker system are properly rigged up. If you’re viewing Netflix through a laptop, then you might have to choose the speaker output in the settings on windows 10 or Mac. This should only be a one time fix if you plan to view content from the same media device every time.

 

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a couple of problems that can be associated with you and content on Netflix. These fixes can be super simple if you just take the time to look through these, and I doubt people will have further issues after implementing it. From all the research that I did, most of the errors all had the same fix: do a hard reset of your network settings on the media device and clear browsing history on the open source browser you are using.

If there are any errors in this article that either didn’t work for your situation, I would just do another Google search to see if there are any smaller issues. My guess is that these all work at some level. Netflix also has fairly reliable customer support if you’re having any further issues. Best Buy is also great if you think it might be a hardware issue of playing any media at all. I’ve called them multiple times and they’ve been extremely helpful with any technical issues that I had.

Thanks for reading! If you have any further comments, questions, or think that I missed something, feel free to reach out using the email I provided in previous articles. I am also taking article and topic suggestions if you have any so feel free to send those over as well.

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