Sony has been the victim of multiple hacker attacks that took the PlayStation Network down, and with it Netflix streaming for more than a month. Sony is offering customers a "Welcome Back" package that will include free games, a weekend of movies, a free month of PlayStation Plus, and more.
I was finally able to get back on the PlayStation Network by attempting to log on to PSN on the PS3, which sent a password change e-mail. Despite getting the error message below, I was able to change my password and then log onto PSN on the PS3. After a quick Netflix app update, I was again streaming Netflix movies & TV shows on the PS3.
Are you able to stream Netflix movies on your PS3 again?
I was never NOT able to. All you had to do was try and log in, wait for the error message and then quit out of the login screen. Voilà! Netflix.
Posted by: Digisplicer | June 04, 2011 at 03:01 AM
Yep same with me, was able to get access to Nextflix on the ps3 100% of the time the PSN was out.
I'm not sure if people just didn't try quitting the log in screen, or they genuinely had issues but mine was fine.
Posted by: Jonathan Trillo | June 04, 2011 at 04:32 AM
The Netflix trick actually didn't work for everyone. It worked just like you said for me for about the first couple of weeks. Then one day I woke up, and the trick no longer worked. I heard that happened to some other people too.
Posted by: Scott Howell | June 04, 2011 at 09:44 AM
I was able to get my two free games but I didn't want to watch the movies they offered. Maybe next week they'll offer different ones. If not, no big deal.
As for Netflix, it always worked. It was more problematic at times though. Sometimes I got stuck and had to cancel the log in 5 or 6 times. Eventually however it always worked. I think if people were more persistent then they would have had better results.
Posted by: Marshall | June 04, 2011 at 04:12 PM
The workaround stopped working for me, and others I heard from, after a couple weeks. It was really annoying hearing people who were not having the problem saying "just press the buttons more" or "faster" when the facts were that the connection was gone for many.
That said, it is old news that the PSN is back up and running Netflix.
What may be more important is that the Netflix app should be rewritten so it does not require the PSN login. I'm sure Sony likes having statistics about how many people are using the Netflix app, by way of having its use ping the PSN first, but it is not needed. For future outages (and given the hysterical hatred of Sony by some nerds, there will be future outages), this should be addressed.
Posted by: William | June 06, 2011 at 01:12 AM
Scott and William are absolutely correct. I experienced the same issues. The workaround suddenly stopped working. And it is indeed very annoying reading from people saying that the people that couldn't get it to work just weren't doing it right, not to mention the things I've read where people go so far as to question the intelligence of those who couldn't log into Netflix during the fiasco. Please, get off of your high horse and stop insulting those who were locked out of Netflix on their PS3s...
As for the actual topic, the first day PSN was back up a few weeks ago, I immediately logged in to PSN, changed my password, and had Netflix up and running immediately.
Posted by: Jonathan | June 06, 2011 at 10:04 AM
The workaround, or whatever, always let me after a couple of tries. That is until Sony required a new Playstation Network password. Now with my setup of auto sign-ins, the Netflix App is just one click and works just fine. I wasn't aware the App was down again, but had it not worked, I do have at least one other Netflix device on every TV.
Posted by: CJ | June 06, 2011 at 01:58 PM
Interestingly, last night a new version of the Netflix app downloaded to my PS3! About 16MB. I don't know what the changes were, but hopefully it was exactly what we were hoping for -- the ability to work even if the PSN goes down again.
Posted by: William | June 06, 2011 at 04:28 PM