How to grep netcat output

I'm trying to grep live text stream from netcat, but it doesn't work for me:

netcat localhost 9090 | grep sender

returns nothing, but I'm sure that it should.

If I redirect the netcat output to a file and add some delays (simulate real environment) - then it works:

$ (sleep 5; cat netcat_output; sleep 5) | grep sender

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"GUI.OnScreensaverDeactivated","params":{"data": "shuttingdown":false},"sender":"xbmc"}}

I also tried to add --line-buffered but w/o success.

What I do wrong?

Edit:

I noticed the same issue with sed, the output is empty.

But, for instance, hexdump converts text to hex live:

$ netcat localhost 9090 | hexdump -C
00000000  7b 22 6a 73 6f 6e 72 70  63 22 3a 22 32 2e 30 22  |{"jsonrpc":"2.0"|
00000010  2c 22 6d 65 74 68 6f 64  22 3a 22 50 6c 61 79 65  |,"method":"Playe|
00000020  72 2e 4f 6e 50 6c 61 79  22 2c 22 70 61 72 61 6d  |r.OnPlay","param|
00000030  73 22 3a 7b 22 64 61 74  61 22 3a 7b 22 69 74 65  |s":{"data":{"ite|
00000040  6d 22 3a 7b 22 69 64 22  3a 36 2c 22 74 79 70 65  |m":{"id":6,"type|
00000050  22 3a 22 6d 6f 76 69 65  22 7d 2c 22 70 6c 61 79  |":"movie"},"play|
00000060  65 72 22 3a 7b 22 70 6c  61 79 65 72 69 64 22 3a  |er":{"playerid":|
00000070  31 2c 22 73 70 65 65 64  22 3a 31 7d 7d 2c 22 73  |1,"speed":1}},"s|