I'm about to go out on a service call that's been pending for a couple of weeks, and at the last moment, guess what? We have a new report of a problem that has existed for a few months.

Client's got a 2017 Sony XBR7A1E with a wired data connection. They use it to stream Netflix. It works fine on other streaming services that the Sony can get. There's no other network connection out there, that is, they're not for instance connecting to a switch and plugging in other devices at that node.

Netflix works fine for a few days and then the TV "gets stuck in never land." At that point, when they turn the TV on, they click "an account icon [and] the screen just has a small square in the middle and they can't go any further." They unplug the power, reconnect it, and Netflix works for a few days.

I get this info from their PA, who has been trying to figure this out for a while but never talked with me about it, even when we were planning other exploits. Oh, well. He's pretty technically astute otherwise. He also points out that when Netflix can't be got, other services work, so it's not the whole TV that's locking up.

Of course he hasn't looked for firmware updates!

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

We just saw this exact same issue on a client's Tivo. Every other streaming service worked fine. Netflix would let you choose something to play. The Netflix splash logo would play then it would lock up. The fix was to pull power on the Tivo. It's been running fine for a few weeks now. It seems to me like some sort of memory leak that's causing the issue.

Aha! They caught you streaming to 27 different family members in different households all at the same time!!

Try rebooting the OS. With the TV powered on, press and hold the power button on the Sony remote until the TV turns off (about 8-10 seconds). The TV will power back on and in most cases the apps will good to go.

This usually happens because the software updates between the TV firmware, the Android TV operating system and the Netflix client are out of sync.


They need to register the TV and Android TV OS with some kind of email account so that all parts of the software receive updates. It's likely that Android as deprecated some software libraries and updated others and Netflix has updated their client client to use these new libraries. If the TV OS hasn't been updated but the Netflix client has Netflix is looking for libraries that are either out of date or missing in the OS.

Exactly what Lowhz said

Netflix app was locking up my Xfinity X1 box. The only fix i could find was a reboot. I remember that there was a specific series of steps that caused it...but i cant remember what those steps were.