Tech Help Needed - Netflix Movie Player

[Hijinks]

Hi all

I have a Netflix subscription and I wanted to be able to do the “Watch it now” feature. You have to download the Netflix Movie Player which is a plug-in for Windows Media Player. I did that and it was fine.

But every time I try to watch a movie online, it gives me MediaError(1400). I called Netflix tech support and they said it’s a firewall issue. I disabled my Windows firewall, it didn’t help. I disabled my Panda antivirus, it didn’t help. I tried renaming the DRS folder and forcing Media Player to download new signatures. Didn't help.

I googled the error message and found a lot of references to proxy caches. Everyone says to disable them. So I checked my Internet Explorer options and I am using a LAN so I’m not even using proxies. One of the results of my google search said to turn off all of the proxies between my computer and Netflix and that it was a lengthy process. How do I do that?

I looked for other firewall programs on my computer and couldn’t find any. I called our network guy and he says there aren’t any firewalls on the network.

Does anyone have any ideas of anything else I could try?

Thanks!

 

[Wystan]

Personal or at work?

My job makes it specifically so that the Netflix player does not work...

Oh, and a lot of Corporate and school LANs might use proxy servers as their connection to the Internet after you hit them....

 

[Lorgrom]

It could also be your internet provider. Many internet providers anti-pirating filters. Can't tell the diffrence between Netflix's downloads and programs such as Limewire.

 

[Hijinks]

It's a corporate network but we are in a sort of unique situation. Our parent company doesn't have any access to our laptops; they used to, but we were all laid off. Then another company bought our bankrupt company. Before we were offered our jobs back, we all disabled PC Anywhere and Big Fix and any VPN's that were on our computers, because the bankruptcy court was logging into people's laptops remotely and disabling them (even though our new company technically owned our laptops as assets).

So, long story short (too late!), the new company set up a satellite office here with only a few employees. I was responsible for setting up the office, including our network. The network isn't administered by my company; it's a 3rd party provider and I handle all communications with them. I asked the network admin today and he said there's isn't a firewall.

How do I find out if they use proxies, is there some way to access them and disable them if they exist, on my computer? And would doing that mess up our network access in some way?

If I can't use the movie player, c'est la vie.

 

[XCorvis]

Wow, messed up situation.

It's a laptop - try it somewhere else. If it works, the problem is with the company network. If it doesn't (and the other internet connection doesn't have a proxy or block) then you know it's a software problem with your computer.

I have firewalls running on my home computer and on my home router and netflix's player works fine. I suspect that your company network has some proxy type stuff going on. It might be configured at your router so it's transparent to you most of the time.

 

[Generico]

Umm...yeah, probably not a good idea to disable your company's network proxy so you can watch netflix movies. It definitely has the potential to cause problems.

 

[ssampier]

It doesn't sound like a proxy to me. That error message sounds like a generic, "I don't want to work so I'm going to give a random error message."

Have you tried updating your Windows Media player and then downloading and installing the NMP plugin again?

 

[jdrakeh]

But every time I try to watch a movie online, it gives me MediaError(1400).

Well, it's not a Media Player error code, so I suspect that it is native to the NetFlix player. Are you using Media Player 11 and running XP Service Pack 2? I'd go into why that's not a stupid question, though my employer's SLA prevents me from doing so.