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There are different blog posts and forum threads discussing this and the challenges encountered (Silverlight, DRM, etc.).

Also read about the XBMC Flicks addon.

But, did anyone succeed to stream Netflix content on the Raspberry Pi?
Even more, through Raspbmc?

Marius Butuc
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5 Answers5

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This essentially boils down to getting Netflix on Linux; which (except for Android) is intentionally not supported and difficult. I haven't seen any solution yet (for any Linux, RPi aside) that didn't involve serious and unstable hacks or some type of Windows emulation/re-implementation (which is not going to be a viable option with the ARM/x86 architecture difference).

Your best bet is probably to wait for Android Pi to become stable and hope Netflix runs on it successfully (or hope Netflix finally supports Linux besides Android).

Update Jan 2018:

It's been 5 years and much good news is to be had.

Netflix now supports HTML5-based playback, so Silverlight is no longer a blocker.

The appropriate DRM-decrypting/decoding libraries have been written for Linux and include Raspberry Pi 3 support.

You can probably use Firefox or Chrome at this point just fine, but even better for Kodi users: Kodi 18 (release date to-be-determined) includes a redesign of the video system which has opened up the ability to integrate DRM-ed content into Kodi playback. Presumably Raspbmc will have the changes integrated sometime after Kodi 18 is released.

The end result is that Netflix on RPi should be feasible by the average user of Raspbmc once Kodi 18 is released. One catch however; I think any Linux-based library is still artificially limited to 720p resolution by Netflix, but I'm not sure on that.

See https://github.com/asciidisco/plugin.video.netflix for details and updates.

Kyle
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Please note that Plex no longer supports a Netflix channel (thus the following only has historical interest).


You could also use the Plex Media Server (PMS) - unlike PlayOn, it's free. As far as I know, the server needs to be able to play Netflix though. I use Windows 7 as the Plex Media Server. I don't know if using the Netflix-on-Ubuntu workaround will get this done as well, but I doubt it. There are PMS builds for Linux.

You will need to install the Netflix Addon on the PMS and the Plexbmc Addon on the Raspberry Pi.

In the Plexbmc options, set "always transcode" to true.

This worked on my setup with OpenELEC on a B-model Raspberry Pi - it should work with any XBMC-on-Raspberry-Pi setup though.

Of course, this still means a second server running Windows 7 needs to be on for streaming and currently the Netflix Addon for PMS only works in the USA.

Peter Mortensen
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klauspeter
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I have been able to run Netflix on the Raspberry Pi using playon.tv. All you need is a PC running.

Have a look at the post Netflix on Raspbmc.

Peter Mortensen
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dancarmich
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No. Simply put, Moonlight (Silverlight Linux library) does not support DRM. So no Netflix under Linux at all.

Peter Mortensen
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James Bennet
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Netflix for Chrome is for Chromebooks and relies on hardware for DRM, therefore we cannot use it on "proper" Linux or ChromeOS running on anything other than a Chromebook...