A little while ago I wrote about watching Netflix on Fedora 20. Also works on the latest Kubuntu with the latest updates installed. Also, at least with Kubuntu, I didn’t need to modify the user agent. It just automatically worked with Google Chrome. I didn’t try with Chromium, but I’d read that didn’t work.

A little past the end of February I started having problems with my internet connected devices.  In the basement we have a Roku box that the wife uses to watch Netflix.  She reported that it was no longer connecting to Netflix.  We’d had issues before with it needing to be re-registered with Netflix, but that did not seem to be the case.  I’d click on the Netflix channel and it would say “retrieving movies” for a while and then pop back to the main menu.  At first I thought something was wrong with the Roku box, so I tried the Amazon channel, but that worked and I was able to watch my content.  I figured it’d resolve itself.  So she just popped in the latest DVD from Netflix into our DVD player.  Later that night she was in the bedroom and learned that our Samsung BluRay player was no longer connecting to Netflix.  I thought that was weird, but figured maybe it was a Netflix problem.  I checked on my computer and I couldn’t log into the Netflix site.  Neither could Danielle on her computer.  These were Linux boxes (Fedora and Ubuntu respectively) so I tried on my Windows computer.  Strangely, that one could log in.  That’s weird.  I tried on both Firefox and Chrome with no difference.  So then I tried the guest computer - that computer hadn’t been used since December and I knew it was working for Netflix back then.  That would help me eliminate the possibility that I’d installed a distro update that had killed it for me.  (I knew that didn’t totally make sense because of the BluRay Player and Roku) That one could reach it either.  What was going on here?  Was Netflix blocking Linux?  Well, I figured it might go away so I waited until the next day.

I’ve had the Roku Box for a few months now.  It costs $99 and I bought it for one simple reason:  my wife and I object to having to use Windows and Internet Explorer to watch Netflix’s Instant Programs.  As a secondary reason, we’re not in college anymore and we object to having to watch on our computers.  We want to be able to watch these on the TV just as if we had rented little silver discs.  The Roku box is tiny.  Here’s a shot of the front: