In the last day or so, I've encountered an odd problem running Netflix on my Fire TV. After I exit Netflix and try to go back in, the Netflix progress circle keeps spinning and spinning and won't go in.
I thought it might have been a problem with my Netflix account. I tried uninstalling Netflix and reinstalling. After reinstalling, I can get into Netflix, but I have to log in with my account data.
I tried restarting the Fire TV. I can get into Netflix, but it locks again after I exit and re-enter.
I tried restoring the Fire TV to default. Same thing. I can get into Netflix initially, but after exiting and trying to go back in, it locks.
Netflix doesn't do this on any of my other devices. I tried it on my iPad and my Fire tablet and my Roku Stick and even on my Fire Stick.
Initially I had an error on Netflix on the Roku Stick with error code ui-800-3, but I reset Netflix to its original state (it was an option on the error code window) and it worked after that.
Sometimes after Netflix locks up trying to get back in, I also get errors on Hulu, youtube, and even on Amazon video (the other three main apps that I use). If I get the error on Amazon video, there's a message saying a restart might clear it up.
So after experimenting some more, it appears restarting the Fire TV is the simplest way to allow me to get back into Netflix.
So now my procedure for running Netflix on the Fire TV (after the first time) is to first restart the Fire TV from the system menu. It's not that bad as it takes less than a minute for the Fire TV to restart and another 20 seconds or so to get back into Netflix.
I'm thinking that running Netflix either corrupts the Fire TV memory or leaves in an unstable state. I suspect it could be the Fire TV hardware starting to fail. Since the warranty has long been expired (this is the original Fire TV that I bought from Best Buy in May 2014), I guess I'll do it this way for now.
I've been switching back and forth lately from the Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV.
I like the Fire TV because it can run Netflix, Hulu, youtube, and Amazon video. The Roku can do that too, but I like the captions on Hulu better on the Fire TV. One drawback is that it doesn't have certain apps, like NatGeoTV for one.
Actually I like the captions the best on the Apple TV, but it doesn't play Amazon video (though I can Airplay it from the iPad). Apple TV also doesn't have certain apps, like HGTV for example.
Roku supports the most apps, but I like its Hulu captions the least.
***
Fooling around some more... After reading this thread, I tried clearing cache, force stop, and run application. That worked. And actually I'm finding that you don't even need to clear cache. Just do a force stop and run application. So that's even faster than the system reset.
This solution (clear data from Amazon video) from Brad Lee seems to be popular too. (Didn't work for me though.)
***
And a few hours later... Netflix doesn't appear to be locking up any more. Well, wait 'til next time..
*** [8/3/16]
The next day... Stopped working again. It even seemed to affect a youtube video that couldn't play. Tried clearing cache and force stop on both Netflix and Youtube, but it didn't work. However a restart of the Fire TV cleared up the problem.
*** [8/3/16 aftenoon/evening]
OK Netflix is now behaving more responsively. Sometime when I exit Netflix and immediately try to re-enter, it immediates goes back to where I exited. It appears it's leaving the status in memory someplace and when I go back it's able to access the status and resume what it was doing. I think before when it hung up, it was accessing the previous status but then got stuck trying to resume the previous state. That's because I would sometimes notice a quick flash of a previous screen and then Netflix would get stuck.
But it doesn't always immediately resume the previous state. In this case it would take about 10 to 15 second of the circle spinning going to the Netflix profile screen (where you chose what profile you want to use). Too early to tell whether the stuck Netflix problem has been solved, but it looks like there's progress.
I'm guessing they're tweaking the Netflix app as the problem reports come in.
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