I recently bought a new Panasonic Viera TV that was advertised as an “IPTV”. One such application was Netflix. So I was a little surprised that Panasonic does not support Netflix in Canada. Even more so when I found a way to make it work.
The steps below worked on my TC-P50S30, but may not work for all models.
You need will need a regular Canadian Netflix account.
- Go through your initial TV setup, setting the region to Canada.
- Connect the TV to your network.
- Download the latest software update. Currently, it is 1.300.
- You’ll notice on the Viera Tools menu, there is no Netflix application.
- Go back through the Initial Setup, and choose the U.S. region.
- After this setup is done, you’ll notice the Viera Tools menu has a Netflix application.
- When you open Netflix, it gives you some generic error about Netflix not being available in your region.
- *The Trick * Visit http://unblock-us.com/, and sign up for the free trial.
- Go into your TVs network settings, and point the DNS server to the DNS server for unblock-us. Namely 208.122.23.22.
- From the Viera Tools menu, open up Netflix.
- At this point, it should allow you to active the device on Netflix. It will give you a code that needs to be entered on the Netflix website, which will identify and activate your TV.
- Once activated, you can change your DNS settings back to their defaults, and should continue to be able to access your Netflix content.
The Catch
The Netflix interface on this device is…limited. There is no search menu. Instead, you are limited to the Top 10 selections in a few categories. So if there is content you want to watch, you can start watching it on your computer, and then it will show up in your Recently Watched category. So, this trick works well for TV shows, where they will stick around for a while in your Recently Watched. But, it is a little painful for movies. Oh well.
It should be noted that Netflix has approached Panasonic about officially supporting Netflix Canada on Panasonic TVs, and Panasonic has declined.
If your vehicle is wired for use with an iPod, you may experience trouble charging your newer iPod touch or iPhone.
That’s because most vehicle systems are designed to pump out 12V, but newer iPod and iPhone models only charge at 5v.
Thankfully, you can buy an adapter that will allow you to charge your new device in this setup.
CableJive offers this Car Charge Kit that will fix this issue.
It is tough to imagine a day when the war against spam will be won. But there are ways to make spam less of a nuisance for yourself. In this post, I explain a mistake that I and many others have made when configuring email for their personal domains. That mistake is enabling “catch-all” email alias.
What is a “catch-all” email address?
Let’s say you owned a personal domain example.com. Your name is bob, and you wanted to accept email to bob@example.com. But if you own the domain, why not simply accept ALL mail to the domain? Then you can have virtually any number of email addresses. You can use bob@example.com, bob-newsletters@example.com to receive all your newletters, bob-ebay@example.com for all your eBay messages, and so on. A “catch-all” email address configuration allows you to specify an email address (such as your personal Gmail account) to forward ALL mail received at your domain. Sounds pretty handy.
Three reasons why catch-all email addresses are a bad idea
- It allows spammers to send YOU spam to ANY email address at your domain. Mail to commonly spammed addresses such as “sales”, “billing”, “marketing”, “admin” and “webmaster” will all be delivered to your inbox. Also, randomly generated addresses will be valid as well. So, mail to xrz456qiop@example.com will find it’s way to your inbox.
- Spam sent to OTHERS from a spoofed address at your domain will bounce back to you. It is trivial for spammers to spoof the “From” address in their emails, and this is frequently (or always) done by spammers. A spammer may choose your domain “example.com” to send others spam from. If these spam messages fail, they will be bounced back to YOU. So not only do you receive spam addressed to you, you may receive spam addressed to others, that is spoofed to look like it came from you.
- Once you start using a catch-all email address, it is hard to stop. Reading through the above points, one might think that a catch-all email address can simply be disabled if it becomes a problem. But you may find (as I did) that they can not be turned off that easily. If you have unlimited aliases at your disposal, you may forget what aliases you have in use. So if you simply turn off the catch-all address, and do not configure a forwarder for each of your aliases in use, you may be blocking valid email.
Instead of using a catch-all email alias, I suggest maintaining a list of aliases you have in use. It may require a tiny bit of administration to set up forwarders, but I think it is worth it. Then, if one alias starts to receive a large amount of spam, you can simply delete the alias.
A final note about bouncing messages and auto-replies
It is NEVER a good idea to specifically enable “bouncing” on an email alias from your email client. Your email server should have a list of valid aliases at your domain, and reject any mail that is not to those addresses. This cuts down on spam by blocking it directly from the source. The mail does not have a chance to be received, and the spammer will move on to the next target. If you receive an email, then bounce it, it will be returned to the person whose email address was spoofed. Instead of blocking the message at its source, you are acting as a relay for the spammer.
Auto-replies also have the effect of relaying spam email to legitimate users. Again, the senders address may be spoofed. So, when you send an auto-reply, someone else may be bombarded with the original spam message, and your auto-reply. If you must use an auto-reply, try to configure it to only send auto-replies to messages not marked as spam by your mail scanning software.
