Streaming from iPhone to TV no longer working

[IanDitchfield]

I'm a BT Sport subscriber. I like to watch BT sport on my television, a somewhat ancient LG widescreen with no Wifi. I have a physical cable that connects my iPhone8 to an HDMI port in the TV. This works well for, for example, BBC iPlayer.
For years, it worked well for BT Sport too. I used to run the BT Sport app on the phone, and get live football on the TV.
A few months ago, this was deliberately broken by BT, producing instead the message "to strengthen our efforts against content piracy, screen mirroring is no longer permitted .... if your subscription permits large screen access, you will continue to be able to watch through Chromecast or any of our large screen platforms (VC586)."

I don't know anything about Chromecast, but as far as I can discover, it's some extra piece of hardware that I would have to buy. Naturally since I am paying a lot of money already for BT Sport, I have no intention of paying any more.

However, I found that running by opening BT Sport webpage in a browser on the phone rather than using the app, I could continue to watch on the TV. This has worked fine for around a year, but now comes up with "VC086 our player requires you to make some changes to your cookie settings. Click help below and search for VC086". And the said help basically says that I must "allow all cookies". I have tried with a variety of browsers, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and have clicked "allow all cookies" on all of them. The VC086 message remains.

So is there a way around it? Or, given that I am not going to buy any more hardware, should I now cancel my BT Sport subscription?

[DarrenDev]

The changes that were introduced were to prevent content piracy - i.e. users taking BT Sport streams and sharing them with others.
The very nature of content protection is that it blocks the video from being shared - this means that even if you did manage to fix the cookie issue, the content protection would result in you just seeing a black rectangle on your TV where the video should be.
I'm afraid that if you're not willing to purchase hardware to connect to your TV (available from as little as £25) then I can only suggest that you cancel your subscription.

[IanDitchfield]

Thanks for giving me the straight answer that I can’t get out of BT themselves.

I do feel that if the company want to change the way in which a subscriber accesses a paid-for service, it is incumbent on them to contact the customer and provide any further hardware required. Not just break the service and hide behind error codes for which the “help” doesn’t help.

Nevertheless, someone can explain exactly what I need and it’s only £25 I may be persuaded to buy some extra hardware. Can you be specific and guarantee it would work?

[DarrenDev]

Whilst I understand your frustration @IanDitchfield , screen mirroring was never an advertised or supported feature - it just worked before, when the content wasn't protected.

Sorry - just checked , and the current cheapest option is £30 for a Fire TV Stick Lite from Amazon.  I'm sure this will drop again in the Black Friday sale in November, though that's obviously not convenient right now.

With a Fire TV Stick Lite, and a standard BT Sport subscription (i.e. not one that comes free with a BT Mobile or EE Mobile account), you will be able to watch BT Sport on your LG TV (as long as it has an HDMI port available).