The update went out in the last 24 hours, and if you are running an official version of Android you have nothing to worry about. It’s anyone who decided to root their devices that may be having issues.
If you have a rooted unofficial version of Android, you may find the Netflix app being listed as not compatible with your device. This seems to have hit the so called “Kodi Boxes” hard, because many of them—but not all—run a rooted version of Android. Now not all rooted versions of Android seem to be effected but most we have tested have been blocked.
Cord Cutters News reached out to Netflix to find out what was happening and received the following reply:
With our latest 5.0 release, we now fully rely on multimedia enablers provided by Google services; therefore, many devices that are not Google-certified or have been altered will no longer work with our latest app and those users will no longer see the Netflix app in the Play Store.
The question now is will other services also be making this jump. If so how will the loss of access to Netflix and maybe other apps on unlocked devices effect the sale of some Android-powered so-called “Kodi Boxes.” For now we will have to wait and see.
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