Old UK BT and EE Pay TV Boxes Set to Lose Support for Netflix Streaming App
Broadband and phone provider BT (inc. EE) has revealed that customers still using some of their older pay TV set-top-boxes, including both the TV Recordable Box (G4) and TV Box (Z4), will lose support for the popular Netflix video streaming app after 4th March 2026. The change is happening because of changes by the streaming giant, which will break compatibility with older hardware.
In a brief statement on the BT Community Forum, a representative for the provider said: “This is happening because Netflix is updating its app to create the best experience, and it will no longer be compatible with these boxes. The rest of our EE TV Boxes, including the 4K Recordable Box (G5) will continue to be supported.”
Further information can be found on EE’s related information page, which states that customers will need to upgrade to a newer TV box to continue watching Netflix on their TV (an option for this is being offered). “Your Netflix subscription won’t be affected, and you can continue to watch on supported devices,” said EE.
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The main catch with upgrading to one of BT / EE’s more modern TV boxes is that any shows or movies saved on your current box won’t be available on your new one. Credits to CordBusters for spotting this development.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Still got 2 of these boxes from the Plusnet TV days as was part of the TV trial.
I’m surprised the Netflix app still worked as hardly any of the other apps do.
They only get used for recording as the app functionality is either slow or non existent now.
I only use mine as a Freeview Recorder these days.
These days the majority of apps on these smart boxes are web apps.. so just a web page in a wrapper with a bit of extra configuration.
The problem is that the manufacturers of these boxes don’t provide long term support its built in web browser which is almost always a fork of Chromium.
So after say 5 years time it might have a version of Chromium that’s 5 years old and understandably ths streaming services don’t want to support that or takes too much effor to do so as their underlying platform changes over time.
There really should be something put in place to force manufacturers to provide long term updates, even if just for the browser.