Netflix Second Screen and OpenWrt

I have a Samsung Smart TV and separate Chromecast connected to the Samsung TV via HDMI. YouTube works fine on both with the Android mobile able to control both devices.

Netflix also works fine on both but the Android mobile is only able to control the Chromecast and not the TV directly. When I click on the cast icon on the Netflix app the Samsung TV switches to the NetFlix app on the TV but doesn't start playing. I've logged into NetFlix on both the Samsung TV and Android mobile. So there is some communication between the Android Mobile and NetFlix on the Samsung TV.

According to Troubleshoot Netflix 2nd Screen for TVs multicast needs to be enabled which according to a SSH shell using ifconfig there is MULTICAST next to all interfaces.

When I call Netflix first level support they direct me to my ISP but if YouTube works fine in all instances I can't see why NetFlix shouldn't as well.

Is there anything I can check?

Im not sure what that flag actually refers to , but for multicast to work in any environment you need igmp. Igmp is not enabled by default in openwrt

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wan/udp_multicast

IGMP snooping is not enabled by default. What this means is that multicast packets are delivered to all bridge ports as if they were broadcast. So I don't think this is the issue.

These casting protocols are not really standardized, I suspect this is entirely down to some incompatibility in the various softwares, upgrading the Samsung TV and the Android devices to the latest available software may or may not help but is worth a try, particularly the TV. Also reading support pages specifically for the TV can help. I've heard that Samsung TVs only screencast with Samsung phones and not other Android phones but I'm not sure if that's really true.

Hmm, maybe a tcpdump capture will help to see the multicast packets and other stuff's!

Aha, thanks for the clarification there @dlakelan . :+1:

When I click on the cast icon on the Netflix app the Samsung TV switches to the NetFlix app on the TV but doesn't start playing.

I had this exact behavior between my iPhone and the Netflix Roku app a year or so ago, somewhere along the way it was fixed so i suspect @dlakelan is right and one of the parties involved will fix with an update .