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Netflix search not working in Windows Media Center (windows 7 pro or Home Premium)

     A couple of weeks ago there was an update to the Netflix application and ever since then all 3 of my media center Netflix applications no longer allow me to search.  First error says "APPLICATION ERROR There is a problem with the application at this time. Try again later."  and the second says "SERVICE UNAVAILABLE This web service is currently unavailable. Try again later.  I verified that the service IS available because it works fine in IE and I contacted Netflix to confirm status.  The update to the WMC Netflix application seems to be broken.  Does anyone out there know of a fix or are we at the mercy of having to wait for this to eventually get resolved by Microsoft.  (I run media center daily it is our primary source/interface for TV and Movies). 

I am a Network/Systems Admin... do NOT ask me if I have rebooted my computer or re-installed the application

Thanks for any help on this!

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Answer

Good news!  I have a fix!!!

After further investigation I discovered that the web service that is failing is not actually responsible for the search itself.  All it does is provide Media Center with a bit of meta information (the "search taxonomy") about what its Internet TV search providers are, and what sort of filters they support.  Most of those were for the old Internet TV channels that are all gone anyway.  All that really remains is Netflix.

It turns out you can override the search taxonomy URL with a registry entry.  So I created a simple Windows Service that acts as a local substitute for Microsoft's broken server, and serves up a dirt-simple SearchTaxonomy document with the minimum necessary information to allow Windows Media Center to initialize the Netflix search.

You can download it here.  Extract the files to a local directory (not on a network drive!), and run Install.bat with the "Run As Administrator" command.

Once installed, the netflix search should just work.

The code is hosted on GitHub, if you're curious about the technical details.

Enjoy!

Binaries: https://github.com/revengineering/MceNflx/releases/download/v1.0-beta/MceNflx.zip

Source: https://github.com/revengineering/MceNflx

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If you downloaded it from the github link, it should be safe.  False positive from 360.

But if it makes you uncomfortable, you can always download the source and build it for yourself. (You'll need to install the .NET 4 framework to build it, as the solution file (MCENFLX.sln) file is not compatible with the .NET 2.0 version of MSBuild.)


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Last updated June 15, 2019 Views 12,792 Applies to: