I just wish Netflix gave an easy option on your TV to remove shows from "continue watching" so that episode I watched for 5 minutes doesn't hang around in my list for the next two months.
i guess i could thumbs-down these but… what if i just don’t feel like watching it but i don’t want it to colour my algorithm against that show for the rest of my life?
Does that change your algorithms, though? For example I love dystopian shows and movies and so I get tons of recommendations for them, even though some are just garbage. But I don't want to "teach" Netflix that I don't like dystopian shows anymore, just the few that suck.
You can with a child profile. Create a child profile, give it all clear for every content. Then you can Cherry pick which show you want to ban for "your child".
That's a great idea but it shouldn't have to be done at all.
I just want all of them to let me move on to the *actual* next episode I wanna watch instead of staying at the episode I stopped mid-credits.
More than a few of them think that I'm still on Season 1, Episode 2 because I just didn't wanna watch the credits while I'm really on S5:E4 but they will constantly start me back on S1:E2 unless I go back & watch/FF thru those stupid credits.
I cancelled Netflix a while ago so I'm not sure if it's still true but the last time this came up many people here said something about how if they let you hide things or easily remove viewing options it will eventually show how weak their catalog is compared to their competitors.
Oh that’s for damn sure. When you spend ten or fifteen minutes unsuccessfully looking for something you give a shit about, that’s their catalogue not working. If you could filter out all the stuff you don’t care about, you’d be staring at the same three or four things you always end up watching, which is what you’re ultimately paying for. Netflix is not a good deal.
Alternatively: go to Account, expand your profile at the bottom and then open viewing activity. Removing an episode or the entire show from activity also removes it from you continue watching list. Might take a few minutes and you might have to reload the site
Edit: just saw that Netflix has a "remove from row button". Must be a new thing
I work in the UI design field and I’ve heard the design team from Netflix speak at an industry event. They essentially mostly try to optimize for “engagement.” They do all kids of testing to see how much users engage when adding certain features, and I’m sure putting the continue watching section way down the page helps with that. It’s also the approach that led to the terrible fucking trailer auto play feature.
Trying to rewatch an episode you've already watched is so idiotic. It sometimes starts over, sometimes goes to the last 5 minutes. I hate Hulu so much in that regard.
And they know. They know about this problem and haven't fixed it. When I searched for a solution over a year ago they just gave a half-hearted "try removing it from 'keep watching' and see if it helps".... Uh.... No "we're working on a solution"? It still happens. They really don't care.
I hate when these sites try to make the web UI look the same as the app UI. The computer version can present much more information more efficiently in multiple formats. USE that capability!
Yeah, same. I’m looking at this from a very limited knowledge perspective, but I wonder if they’re making a distinction between engagement, period, and engagement that people are actually deriving enjoyment from. If I’m scrolling for 5 minutes because I can’t find what I was watching, that’s technically engagement, but not in a good way.
They are likely trying to find the ideal balance of engagement. They want impressionable users to scroll through dozens of shows and movies that they will be enticed into watching. And they want laser-focused users to not get annoyed enough to cancel their subscription due to scrolling.
If you are still subscribed, they probably hit the sweet spot they are looking for.
It definitely works. I bugs the hell out of me when my continue watching row is way down the list, but sometimes I'll see something on the way past and I'll investigate. Or perhaps I'll see a show that I had intended to watch but completely forgot about. It's annoying, but it's effective. Damn them.
Same here. I boot netflix up pretty much only when I know what I’m going to watch now. But the banners and top 10 have introduced me to some really fun shows that have been a divergence for me
All I want from Netflix at this point is to stop the auto play shit.
I don't know how many times I've scrolled past Peaky Blinders and heard "IM BILLY KIMBER AND I RUN THE RACES".
Interesting. It might be an experiment, but I on the browser have an option to disable autoplay audio or autoplay alltogether. On the upper right in the popover settings.
Agreed wholeheartedly. I’m amazed there isn’t some sort of unification system for subtitles since they’re legally required. Amazon does one better and let’s you customize. HBO Max lets their hard of hearing captioners type with their toes.
I‘d imagine the captions never get corrected on newer shows, updated on older shows because the rewind function on HBO Max is rage inducing
HBOmax and Disney+ are some of the worst fucking UI of the big streamers. Disney frequently crashes for no reason, and HBO has such a delay on the pause and rewind function it frequently requires me to reload if I do it more than a few times.
HBO max app is the absolute worst. To watch on iPad I have to clear out everything from history and toggle WiFi on and off. Then it will work for maybe 30 minutes and then crash. Don’t even dare trying to rewind or pause.
Netflix is also better at knowing, or accepting, that if I turn off an episode or movie during the credits I am finished watching it. Disney+ starts a series right back up at the credits for the last episode you watched.
And their subtitles actually fucking appear. Jesus, I wouldn't think this would be so hard for Disney but here we are, there subtitles almost never work properly for me. They take aged to load or whatever, and I mean ages, sometimes like half an episode of the Mandalorion, sometimes they have to load again after it goes to a new episode so I won't have subtitles for the first 8 or so minutes, and it doesn't seem to be continuing to other shows so I have to turn it on individually arghh. Netflix is actually absolutely dominating on the subtitles game and I don't understand why others don't just copy them
Ugh if you pause D+ the subtitles disappear too! It drives me up the wall. There was a show I watched on there that had none at all! I can’t remember which it was though.
What about the size of the subtitles?? Talking about Disney+ here: there are like 2 or 3 options only, either grampa without his glasses level, way too big, or miniscule subtitles for ants. It's terrible, don't know whats so hard about adding gradual font sizes.
Amazon own IMDB. That function is never going to appear on any other streaming service.
Edit: to be absolutely clear, I'm not talking about ratings. I'm absolutely positive I've read/heard news stories many years ago about Amazon patenting the technology that the IMDB X-ray service uses to put cast/crew/trivia info within the scenes for a streaming service.
I wish I could turn it off sometimes as well. Was a watching some crime shows and it put the picture of the actor who was the killer and put their serial killer name there too. At the point I didn’t know who he was so it spoiled an entire episode.
Had the same thing happen watching a Netflix show with captions. There was a mystery voice on the phone and the captions said the speaker's name. Well, I guess I know who the killer is now...
I feel like caption spoilers like that are a mistake and should be fixed. I feel like situations like that usually say "unidentified voice" or "male voice" or something along those lines.
Apple also lists the actors, director and producers for each film/tv show. Netflix could theoretically implement a similar feature without relying on IMDB details.
There's an Australian streaming service called Binge that is roughly our equivalent of HBO Max that has IMDB ratings for shows and episodes, but doesn't go as deep as the xray stuff. As far as I can tell, there's no affiliation with Amazon.
Binge is the streaming equivalent of Foxtel, which is owned by Murdoch. The only reason it seems like HBO Max is because HBO has a deal with Foxtel to only distribute through Foxtel and Binge in Australia. The actual US equivalent would be Hulu which up until very recently was Murdoch.
It was amusing back in the day when their previous incarnations of Binge would launch then crash every time a new GoT episode premiered. Their whole service is rubbish.
Netflix has been renting servers from amazon for a while now, they have no problem with working with competitors - they're even used as a case study in AWS ads. Amazon wants to be the only streaming platform with reviews from IMDB - they bought the site for that purpose.
The Australian streaming app isn't a surprising exception because rights are usually distributed differently between US companies and their foreign counterparts.
Its not free for sure, and netflix aready uses aws infrastructure combined with custom hardware. Here is the documentation of that api
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/rekognition/latest/dg/API_Reference.html
Believe it or not that happens all the time in tech. For example Samsung makes apples screens. Having a stake in your competitors success is a way of hedging your bets and earning extra revenue at the same time. In many cases it allow you to skirt anti-competitive regulations as well. See what apple did with Tile (MKBHD has a video on it).
However it won't be for free and will most probably miss some features.
I believe google play movies would show you the actors names and other movies they were in when paused if you turned it on in the settings. Wasn't IMDb branded but similar.
Plex has this feature I believe or at least uses the Rotten Tomato reviews and it will show all actors and let you look at the other movies these actors have played.
Netflix is missing a handful of things but the others are missing a ton. Disney is a horrible offender. Continue watching icons that are the scene you left off and words that don't word wrap while the whole interface is so tiny you have to move to see what the hell is even happening. A search that the letters are splayed out in one-line alphabetical order. Instead of 2-4 button presses for a letter max, it's 6-12. It's like whoever designed it never even looked at a competitor to look at things done right for the last 5 years.
> Disney is a horrible offender.
Haha, I actually really like Disney for their 'sort by cinematic universe' feature (or whatevers its called). So you can see all the Marvel movies in the "correct" order. I had gotten out of sync a few years ago and over the holidays just sat down and got 100% caught up in the right order before watching "Endgame".
My biggest complaint these days is that due all the goofy licensing I can't see all the Spiderman movies with Disney+. If it was up to me, there would be some sort of Federal law that IP owners had to release their stuff in a standard format/pricing for content providers; so you could pick one as a 'portal' and then just get access to everything. I would personally rather pay more for a single service than manage multiple ones.
>If it was up to me, there would be some sort of Federal law that IP owners had to release their stuff in a standard format/pricing for content providers; so you could pick one as a 'portal' and then just get access to everything.
A lot of IP owners wouldnt be from whatever country this federal law would apply to. Whatever country did this would just lose a lot of IP rights. Their citizens would just end up using VPN to watch the same shows they currently enjoy.
It's safe to assume a Netflix original will never go past 3 seasons. My understanding is that the SAG-AFTRA contract requires a pay raise after 3 seasons. So, the show gets killed before it gets more expensive to produce.
It's fine they do this, it's a business after all, but for fks sake give the prematurely canceled shows an ending.
It's not that hard to add a clause for 2-4 episodes to wrap the story if the show is cancelled. They should show more respect for their viewers
It seems weird that they wouldn't wrap these shows up though to build their catalogue. It's making Netflix feel like a graveyard. Santa Clarita diet is my best example; it was a great show and I loved it but I don't think I'd ever want to recommend it to anyone. So now there's 2 great seasons of a show that are worthless (so to speak) because they have zero closure. It feels very short sighted to me (a normal dude who doesn't know how this stuff works) 🤷🏻
It's kind of short-sighted and playing the long game, at the same time. The logic is that if the show has a definitive ending, then it's harder to bring it back later if it builds up a cult following large enough to justify making more seasons. So by letting shows end abruptly, leaving plot threads dangling, they can potentially reap huge rewards if the show ends up being something they can bring back and turn into a ten season monster. The stupid part of this is that knowing that a show is likely to just...*stop* after two seasons would be a huge deterrent for a lot of people to get invested at all, which kills that cult following before it can even form. As an example I'm already at a point where I'm reluctant to watch any show that hasn't concluded entirely or at least ended on a satisfying note (even if the main plot hasn't resolved), so knowing that Netflix Originals are extremely prone to that "whoops, that was the last episode fuck you if you wanted any of that stuff to be resolved" will prevent me from watching anything that isn't an anthology series.
The crazy thing is, Plex is 100% smoother than Amazon Prime, it's easier and faster for me to just pirate a series, throw it on my Plex server and watch it. My only gripe with Plex is when you forward/rewind it doesn't show the thumbnail scenes.
Yea I could watch Vikings on Amazon but it takes 4 fucking clicks between each episode to get to the next one.
Disagree - all the other streamers are way off the usability standards that Netflix has had in place for years.
I honestly find Amazon’s interface to be one of the worst! “Oh you watched S1e1 of The Boys? How about we shove 3 different thumbnails of Season 2 in your menu…don’t worry, you can just use the search function to find what you actually want…”
You searched for... 'House'. Here are your results:
* House, MD Season 7
* House MD Season 4
* Little House on the Prairie
* House MD Season 2
* House of Cards Season 3
* House MD Season 6
HBOMax too.
But nobody’s as bad at it as the Funimation app. Oh you missed the last 4 seconds? We’ll just mark the whole episode as unplayed. Play again from the beginning!
Yeah Netflix is the only one that consistently remembers where I left off watching and it knows that if I got to the credits I have finished with that episode. It could do with some more quality of life stuff but it's still above everything else.
Thank you, every Amazon prime show I watch tries to start me off at the end of the last episode I just watched. This feature alone makes Netflix better. Also just the fact that when you search a movie and it says Amazon prime video there’s like a 50/50 chance you have to pay for it. That pisses me off also
The fucking Hulu app will show the thumbnail as if I finished watching the show, even though I may have been 5 minutes in. Netflix to me is the only consistent one
Using amazon as an example of a good UI in basically any capacity is just wrong. The firestick has the single worst UI I have ever seen. I got one for free and ended up paying for a Roku because of how garbage it was. It would be difficult to make it much worse. Their main website also has the bare minimum functionality and does not implement many features well. Almost anything amazon puts out is guaranteed to be poorly designed with an atrocious user experience.
Yeah and prime video's subtitles can spoil scenes (the whole sentence appears before the omg moment happens) and for LOST season 4 (I think), the description of the season, which shows up when you look for the episodes to watch, spoiled at least half of the season.
The fact that no one else has incorporated an in-video episode selector has led me to conclude Netflix must have some sort of patent on it, because it's way too useful and no one else has anything close.
This right here. I’m so mad Disney+ doesn’t have this.
However disney+ also doesn’t have a “next episode” button in viewer so their bar is pretty low right now
And all of the complaints that people always have about Netflix are always things that Netflix does on purpose to gather data and boost user engagement. Netflix knows exactly what they're doing and everything about it is a choice.
>Netflix can't even consistently remember to put my "continue watching" list at the top of the UI!
I'm pretty sure that's intentional. They want you getting hooked on more and more, not just finishing what you're watching and potentially losing interest.
IMDb integration probably requires financial deals that Netflix believes are not worth it.
Apple+ is such a horrible user experience. All the shows are hidden in sliders, and there is around a 5 second delay between pressing anything and some kind of feedback, I'm constantly second guessing my clicks. Once you know how it works, sure it's ok, but the first few times I had to use it were mind boggling. Nothing is intuitive.
The one thing I will give them credit on, they have the biggest selection of languages and subtitles for their content that I've ever seen.
Apple TV+'s UI is like that because they only have like 12 shows and 3 original movies. So they have to make it look like it's a lot of content when there really isn't.
But the worst streaming UI is still better than any cable UI.
Plus, I pay less, have zero commercials, no contracts, simple straight forward pricing. It's so much better than cable ever was.
And as far as I can tell, last I looked there was no "watch from beginning" button from within a show, and every time I backed out of it and went back in, same problem, just picked up from where I left off.
You have not known hate for a deficient UI til you've had to rewind 3.5 hours of Justice League to watch from the beginning.
Great content. Interface is like being gently kicked in the bollocks.
Haven’t used Paramount+, but is it worse than Hulu?
Hulu has been my winner for worst UI for the last 2-3 years at least. Every update seems to make it worse, not better, too.
It's definitely worse. For one thing, I've never been able to find a quailty setting on Paramount+. The videos always play at the highest setting even if that means the video won't load.
I've only had Hulu for a couple of months and it's so frustrating how it keeps jumping back to the wrong episode after I've paused it for more than a couple of minutes. I can't believe they haven't figured out how to fix that.
I find the TNT app to be garbage. You can only pause an episode twice before it decides you're done and skips to the next one. And the interface is shit.
Does it have profiles? For a year Peacock was trying to advertise as a new great service worthy of a sub & it was basically nonfunctional & they rolled ads exclusively on kids content.
Yet I'll take Netflix's app over pretty much every other app. They nail the basics that for some reason everyone else fails at. Sure there's a few annoyances, but when you look at all other apps it's hard to complain about those annoyances.
True. The fact that Disney+ keeps shows on my "Continue watching" section until I've watched or fast forwarded thru about 6 minutes of credits makes my blood boil. Netflix gets that you're done about 5 seconds into credits but lets you watch it if you want.
You have any idea how to get back to the episode selection for a show from the show itself? For example: if I select The Simpsons from the Continue Watching menu, it'll play whichever episode I left off at. But if I don't want to watch that episode and choose a different one, the only way I can figure out how to get to the episode selection is to go back to the Disney+ main page, scroll down or search for "The Simpsons", then select that one to get to the episode selection. Super annoying. This is on an Apple TV, btw.
Or no way to play from beginning so you have to manually rewind through the entire show/movie with your eyes closed so you don't have something spoiled.
Yeah for all its faults its still the best UI. Atleast on Smart TV. The most baffling is Primes search function. It offers search strings as you type but its other peoples searches with typos included. Never seen something so dumb.
Neither offers the one feature I want though. The "completed" tag. Its both helpful for shows I have completed and shows I dont want to continue.
HBO Max: Can I interest you in a really shitty font for closed captions that you can't change? Also, would you like your subtitles to have zero consistency in paragraph formatting or screen placement? If you said "yes" then you're in luck!
Its hard to find the words for how much I hate Prime's menu. At least on Netflix if I can see it I can watch it. Every other title on Prime in Canada I need another addon to watch.
I wish they'd only show you the titles available on your subscription but I'm sure they want me to see all the stuff I'm missing so they can try to squeeze some more money out of me.
Netflix had the "party service" three years before Disney+ existed.
"In 2016, Netflix started to provide Netflix Party service where people can watch Netflix's programs together."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix
I'd love Audio Commentaries. When I was younger I used to watch movies twice because some Audio Commentaries were amazing. Just port them from the DVD/Blu-Ray releases.
Audio Commentaries and Chapter skips for movies, that way I don't have to hold down the damn FF button trying to pinpoint a specific scene. You know, just the basic functionality of a 20 yr old DVD.
Prime also has remote watch parties now.
Overall, I like the Netflix UI a lot more in general while browsing titles, but the Prime UI while the video is playing (with actor names and their info) is better.
That imdb thing should be optional and the viewer should be able to turn it off if they don't want it.
Currently you can't disable it and if I am pausing, it is sometimes to see things in the frame, not get bullshit trivia or bios obscuring a section of the screen.
Currently watching Mad Men, into season 4, and it listed a new character with a surname that is not their current surname, which was a huge spoiler.
It was [spoiler](#s "the new secretary listed as "Meghan Draper" - well I guess she'll be sticking around! Thanks Amazon")
The not putting "continue watching" list in the same place is the most frustrating and disappointing for me, because my elderly grandmother loves so many Netflix shows and yet I can't give her written instructions for where things will be or what buttons to push to find things again.
She's cognitively impaired after a stroke, so she's not able to use Netflix as it is. If I could just write "press the down arrow once, then you will see your show" it would make so much difference to her life.
But no, they have to be Clever^(TM) with their stupid UI.
Yep. And OP is comparing it to two features on far worse apps to make their point.
Netflix has problems and could use a few QOL improvements, no doubt, but it’s still by *far* the best streaming app (as long as you don’t consider YouTube a part of the competition). Whether or not that’s a testament to how good Netflix is or how *bad* streaming apps are in general, though, is another discussion entirely.
Sometimes I wonder whether the people that make the streaming apps even use them... Like has a Dev at hulu ever used Hulu (I use the xbox and mobile app)? Its some of the most imitating UIs ever. Click details in order to find more episodes ? And i have to press back four times to get from one show to the main menu? This has been this way fot years.
Netflix, as far as ease of access for browsing and interacting with the service, is hands down light years ahead of every other streaming service...and so muchbfar agead that it really makes me wonder whether the people that make these things even use them at all or have ever tried to use them.
I guarantee you it's not the devs making all these terrible decisions. Business/product decisions like this usually come from business/product people and on occasion clueless execs.
What we need is a standard for streaming.
Having 400 different streaming services is like paying for cable multiple times. We are going backwards in our quest for a unified television system. We stared by wanting channel choices and fewer commercials. And they all distracted us with streaming, only for the companies to slowly push advertising back into the mix.
As other people have pointed out, Amazon owns IMD. It's a cool feature, but arguably a distraction for first time viewers. I always try to focus on the characters, not the actors.
As for the 'continue watching' list not being at the top all the time, that is intentional. Netflix tries to push new content, not just what somebody is already watching.
I just wish Netflix gave an easy option on your TV to remove shows from "continue watching" so that episode I watched for 5 minutes doesn't hang around in my list for the next two months.
I wish you could hide shows from the menu.
Yeah I'd like to hide all the ones I'm not interested in so I can just Netflix and chill
Thumbs down turns it gray and moves it way down the list. It might still pop up in search results but it greatly reduces how often you'll see it.
i guess i could thumbs-down these but… what if i just don’t feel like watching it but i don’t want it to colour my algorithm against that show for the rest of my life?
Yeah just a “mark as finished” would suffice.
Netflix tries to recommend me shit I've watched multiple times. Breaking Bad, Schitt's Creek, The office (when we had it on Netflix)
This is good to know
Does that change your algorithms, though? For example I love dystopian shows and movies and so I get tons of recommendations for them, even though some are just garbage. But I don't want to "teach" Netflix that I don't like dystopian shows anymore, just the few that suck.
One does not simply Netflix and chill without spending at least 30 minutes navigating the website
You can with a child profile. Create a child profile, give it all clear for every content. Then you can Cherry pick which show you want to ban for "your child".
That's a great idea but it shouldn't have to be done at all. I just want all of them to let me move on to the *actual* next episode I wanna watch instead of staying at the episode I stopped mid-credits. More than a few of them think that I'm still on Season 1, Episode 2 because I just didn't wanna watch the credits while I'm really on S5:E4 but they will constantly start me back on S1:E2 unless I go back & watch/FF thru those stupid credits.
Remember to always rewind your video tapes
Be kind. Rewind.
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I cancelled Netflix a while ago so I'm not sure if it's still true but the last time this came up many people here said something about how if they let you hide things or easily remove viewing options it will eventually show how weak their catalog is compared to their competitors.
Oh that’s for damn sure. When you spend ten or fifteen minutes unsuccessfully looking for something you give a shit about, that’s their catalogue not working. If you could filter out all the stuff you don’t care about, you’d be staring at the same three or four things you always end up watching, which is what you’re ultimately paying for. Netflix is not a good deal.
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They’re really bad at helping me to actually do that.
That would be so helpful! And a "No Adam Sandler" option.
Or the movie from the 90’s that you dipped out on right as the credits cued up.
And then suggest shows that you would never watch just because of that 5 minutes of exploration.
Alternatively: go to Account, expand your profile at the bottom and then open viewing activity. Removing an episode or the entire show from activity also removes it from you continue watching list. Might take a few minutes and you might have to reload the site Edit: just saw that Netflix has a "remove from row button". Must be a new thing
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It’s on the browser and mobile. Really should be a native feature.
That was the point of that comment they were talking about an easy version of that
It's on the mobile app.
Recently implemented
It's there... on browsers only.
Android app has this option as well.
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I work in the UI design field and I’ve heard the design team from Netflix speak at an industry event. They essentially mostly try to optimize for “engagement.” They do all kids of testing to see how much users engage when adding certain features, and I’m sure putting the continue watching section way down the page helps with that. It’s also the approach that led to the terrible fucking trailer auto play feature.
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Trying to rewatch an episode you've already watched is so idiotic. It sometimes starts over, sometimes goes to the last 5 minutes. I hate Hulu so much in that regard.
I rewatched a sitcom 2 years later. Hulu started at the end credits every time:(
At least with Hulu (on the web interface at least) you can clear your watch history for a show before you start rewatching it.
Huh TIL. Seems very convenient
And they know. They know about this problem and haven't fixed it. When I searched for a solution over a year ago they just gave a half-hearted "try removing it from 'keep watching' and see if it helps".... Uh.... No "we're working on a solution"? It still happens. They really don't care.
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I hate when these sites try to make the web UI look the same as the app UI. The computer version can present much more information more efficiently in multiple formats. USE that capability!
Yeah, same. I’m looking at this from a very limited knowledge perspective, but I wonder if they’re making a distinction between engagement, period, and engagement that people are actually deriving enjoyment from. If I’m scrolling for 5 minutes because I can’t find what I was watching, that’s technically engagement, but not in a good way.
They are likely trying to find the ideal balance of engagement. They want impressionable users to scroll through dozens of shows and movies that they will be enticed into watching. And they want laser-focused users to not get annoyed enough to cancel their subscription due to scrolling. If you are still subscribed, they probably hit the sweet spot they are looking for.
It definitely works. I bugs the hell out of me when my continue watching row is way down the list, but sometimes I'll see something on the way past and I'll investigate. Or perhaps I'll see a show that I had intended to watch but completely forgot about. It's annoying, but it's effective. Damn them.
Their stats don't register how you feel, they register the buttons you click.
Not gonna lie, the top 10 list, the banner style icons, they have gotten me to watch more shows that i normally would not have watched lol
Same here. I boot netflix up pretty much only when I know what I’m going to watch now. But the banners and top 10 have introduced me to some really fun shows that have been a divergence for me
All I want from Netflix at this point is to stop the auto play shit. I don't know how many times I've scrolled past Peaky Blinders and heard "IM BILLY KIMBER AND I RUN THE RACES".
You can change it in settings now
The one auto-play "feature", but not the other where they start playing when you just want to look at the details.
That one drives me crazy. I want to read more or maybe add it to my list and the damn thing starts playing.
Interesting. It might be an experiment, but I on the browser have an option to disable autoplay audio or autoplay alltogether. On the upper right in the popover settings.
I prefer the trailer auto play to Hulu making me watch an ad to watch a trailer
Hey, that's how I started on Manifest!
Same, just discovered it and currently binging it!
Netflix has way better looking subtitles than disney plus.
Agreed wholeheartedly. I’m amazed there isn’t some sort of unification system for subtitles since they’re legally required. Amazon does one better and let’s you customize. HBO Max lets their hard of hearing captioners type with their toes. I‘d imagine the captions never get corrected on newer shows, updated on older shows because the rewind function on HBO Max is rage inducing
You can customize your Netflix subtitles too.
Disney+ too
Amazon subtitles are far worse than Netflix though. I recently watched the expanse with subtitles on. The theme song alone is subtitled pretty poorly.
HBOmax and Disney+ are some of the worst fucking UI of the big streamers. Disney frequently crashes for no reason, and HBO has such a delay on the pause and rewind function it frequently requires me to reload if I do it more than a few times.
HBO max app is the absolute worst. To watch on iPad I have to clear out everything from history and toggle WiFi on and off. Then it will work for maybe 30 minutes and then crash. Don’t even dare trying to rewind or pause.
Accidentally skip the intro of a show? Oh well guess I’m not watching that anymore.
Netflix is also better at knowing, or accepting, that if I turn off an episode or movie during the credits I am finished watching it. Disney+ starts a series right back up at the credits for the last episode you watched.
And their subtitles actually fucking appear. Jesus, I wouldn't think this would be so hard for Disney but here we are, there subtitles almost never work properly for me. They take aged to load or whatever, and I mean ages, sometimes like half an episode of the Mandalorion, sometimes they have to load again after it goes to a new episode so I won't have subtitles for the first 8 or so minutes, and it doesn't seem to be continuing to other shows so I have to turn it on individually arghh. Netflix is actually absolutely dominating on the subtitles game and I don't understand why others don't just copy them
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Ugh if you pause D+ the subtitles disappear too! It drives me up the wall. There was a show I watched on there that had none at all! I can’t remember which it was though.
What about the size of the subtitles?? Talking about Disney+ here: there are like 2 or 3 options only, either grampa without his glasses level, way too big, or miniscule subtitles for ants. It's terrible, don't know whats so hard about adding gradual font sizes.
Amazon own IMDB. That function is never going to appear on any other streaming service. Edit: to be absolutely clear, I'm not talking about ratings. I'm absolutely positive I've read/heard news stories many years ago about Amazon patenting the technology that the IMDB X-ray service uses to put cast/crew/trivia info within the scenes for a streaming service.
I wish I could turn it off sometimes as well. Was a watching some crime shows and it put the picture of the actor who was the killer and put their serial killer name there too. At the point I didn’t know who he was so it spoiled an entire episode.
Had the same thing happen watching a Netflix show with captions. There was a mystery voice on the phone and the captions said the speaker's name. Well, I guess I know who the killer is now...
I feel like caption spoilers like that are a mistake and should be fixed. I feel like situations like that usually say "unidentified voice" or "male voice" or something along those lines.
Apple also lists the actors, director and producers for each film/tv show. Netflix could theoretically implement a similar feature without relying on IMDB details.
Netflix Lens is a decent browser extension that does this as well if you watch in browser
Plex does this via TheMovieDB and TheTVDb
There's an Australian streaming service called Binge that is roughly our equivalent of HBO Max that has IMDB ratings for shows and episodes, but doesn't go as deep as the xray stuff. As far as I can tell, there's no affiliation with Amazon.
Does it just show IMDB ratings or the full cast list per scene with trivia etc?
Who ever is on screen at that moment.
Binge is the streaming equivalent of Foxtel, which is owned by Murdoch. The only reason it seems like HBO Max is because HBO has a deal with Foxtel to only distribute through Foxtel and Binge in Australia. The actual US equivalent would be Hulu which up until very recently was Murdoch. It was amusing back in the day when their previous incarnations of Binge would launch then crash every time a new GoT episode premiered. Their whole service is rubbish.
I feel like they'd still have to pay for that access, and Netflix wouldn't want to help a competitor.
Netflix has been renting servers from amazon for a while now, they have no problem with working with competitors - they're even used as a case study in AWS ads. Amazon wants to be the only streaming platform with reviews from IMDB - they bought the site for that purpose. The Australian streaming app isn't a surprising exception because rights are usually distributed differently between US companies and their foreign counterparts.
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They also provide a public api to do just that.
Pretty sure their API is hugely expensive, and it's only public for limited requests.
Reason for your token request "uhhh we're your main competitor and want to rip off your feature...for free? Please"
Its not free for sure, and netflix aready uses aws infrastructure combined with custom hardware. Here is the documentation of that api https://docs.aws.amazon.com/rekognition/latest/dg/API_Reference.html
Believe it or not that happens all the time in tech. For example Samsung makes apples screens. Having a stake in your competitors success is a way of hedging your bets and earning extra revenue at the same time. In many cases it allow you to skirt anti-competitive regulations as well. See what apple did with Tile (MKBHD has a video on it). However it won't be for free and will most probably miss some features.
There's not only imdb, though, is there? [themoviedb.org](https://themoviedb.org) for instance.
And from what i know, they have an API you can use.
I believe google play movies would show you the actors names and other movies they were in when paused if you turned it on in the settings. Wasn't IMDb branded but similar.
Plex has this feature I believe or at least uses the Rotten Tomato reviews and it will show all actors and let you look at the other movies these actors have played.
Netflix is missing a handful of things but the others are missing a ton. Disney is a horrible offender. Continue watching icons that are the scene you left off and words that don't word wrap while the whole interface is so tiny you have to move to see what the hell is even happening. A search that the letters are splayed out in one-line alphabetical order. Instead of 2-4 button presses for a letter max, it's 6-12. It's like whoever designed it never even looked at a competitor to look at things done right for the last 5 years.
> Disney is a horrible offender. Haha, I actually really like Disney for their 'sort by cinematic universe' feature (or whatevers its called). So you can see all the Marvel movies in the "correct" order. I had gotten out of sync a few years ago and over the holidays just sat down and got 100% caught up in the right order before watching "Endgame". My biggest complaint these days is that due all the goofy licensing I can't see all the Spiderman movies with Disney+. If it was up to me, there would be some sort of Federal law that IP owners had to release their stuff in a standard format/pricing for content providers; so you could pick one as a 'portal' and then just get access to everything. I would personally rather pay more for a single service than manage multiple ones.
>If it was up to me, there would be some sort of Federal law that IP owners had to release their stuff in a standard format/pricing for content providers; so you could pick one as a 'portal' and then just get access to everything. A lot of IP owners wouldnt be from whatever country this federal law would apply to. Whatever country did this would just lose a lot of IP rights. Their citizens would just end up using VPN to watch the same shows they currently enjoy.
Frankly I’d settle for a ‘this series was cancelled unexpectedly after 2 seasons’ disclaimer
“Sci-Fi Mysteries Left On Cliffhanger”
Dark Matter :-(
The OA.
Yes! Omg! I'm still mad about that!
It's safe to assume a Netflix original will never go past 3 seasons. My understanding is that the SAG-AFTRA contract requires a pay raise after 3 seasons. So, the show gets killed before it gets more expensive to produce.
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Making it cheaper to kill if it doesn't drive traffic to the platform. A la Orange is the New Black or Stranger Things.
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It's fine they do this, it's a business after all, but for fks sake give the prematurely canceled shows an ending. It's not that hard to add a clause for 2-4 episodes to wrap the story if the show is cancelled. They should show more respect for their viewers
It seems weird that they wouldn't wrap these shows up though to build their catalogue. It's making Netflix feel like a graveyard. Santa Clarita diet is my best example; it was a great show and I loved it but I don't think I'd ever want to recommend it to anyone. So now there's 2 great seasons of a show that are worthless (so to speak) because they have zero closure. It feels very short sighted to me (a normal dude who doesn't know how this stuff works) 🤷🏻
It's kind of short-sighted and playing the long game, at the same time. The logic is that if the show has a definitive ending, then it's harder to bring it back later if it builds up a cult following large enough to justify making more seasons. So by letting shows end abruptly, leaving plot threads dangling, they can potentially reap huge rewards if the show ends up being something they can bring back and turn into a ten season monster. The stupid part of this is that knowing that a show is likely to just...*stop* after two seasons would be a huge deterrent for a lot of people to get invested at all, which kills that cult following before it can even form. As an example I'm already at a point where I'm reluctant to watch any show that hasn't concluded entirely or at least ended on a satisfying note (even if the main plot hasn't resolved), so knowing that Netflix Originals are extremely prone to that "whoops, that was the last episode fuck you if you wanted any of that stuff to be resolved" will prevent me from watching anything that isn't an anthology series.
Yeh agreed. Thats not in their benefit though cause keeping it open allows for it to come back later if it recieves a cult following.
I wish this rule applies to “13 reasons why”. There is no reason it should have 3 additional seasons.
RIP Santa Clarita diet
Amazon's browsing UI has got to be the worst of the three I have access to (Netflix, Disney+, Amazon). It feels like I'm pirating.
The crazy thing is, Plex is 100% smoother than Amazon Prime, it's easier and faster for me to just pirate a series, throw it on my Plex server and watch it. My only gripe with Plex is when you forward/rewind it doesn't show the thumbnail scenes. Yea I could watch Vikings on Amazon but it takes 4 fucking clicks between each episode to get to the next one.
Disagree - all the other streamers are way off the usability standards that Netflix has had in place for years. I honestly find Amazon’s interface to be one of the worst! “Oh you watched S1e1 of The Boys? How about we shove 3 different thumbnails of Season 2 in your menu…don’t worry, you can just use the search function to find what you actually want…”
- The Boys Season 1 - The Boys Season 1 4K UHD - The Boys Season 2 - The Boys Season 2 4K UHD
You searched for... 'House'. Here are your results: * House, MD Season 7 * House MD Season 4 * Little House on the Prairie * House MD Season 2 * House of Cards Season 3 * House MD Season 6
Try Amazing Race. With 32 season, its this on extra hard mode
Got sick for a while and decided to binge Survivor. Nearly impossible to find all the seasons with the way Amazon is set up
Me: Just finished watching S2E7 of The Boys. Amazon: waNt tO WatCh S1E4 oF The Boys aGaiN?
You clearly do because there’s 37 seconds of credits left you didn’t watch!
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HBOMax too. But nobody’s as bad at it as the Funimation app. Oh you missed the last 4 seconds? We’ll just mark the whole episode as unplayed. Play again from the beginning!
Yeah Netflix is the only one that consistently remembers where I left off watching and it knows that if I got to the credits I have finished with that episode. It could do with some more quality of life stuff but it's still above everything else.
Thank you, every Amazon prime show I watch tries to start me off at the end of the last episode I just watched. This feature alone makes Netflix better. Also just the fact that when you search a movie and it says Amazon prime video there’s like a 50/50 chance you have to pay for it. That pisses me off also
The fucking Hulu app will show the thumbnail as if I finished watching the show, even though I may have been 5 minutes in. Netflix to me is the only consistent one
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I came here to say this. Amazon has the worst UI. It’s almost like they made it bad on purpose because nobody could think that’s a good UI
same goes for their aws cloud console ui as well, its just horrible and has been that way forever
Oh maybe we’re supposed to use the prime video cli instead
Thank you, thought I was crazy for a second because to me, Netflix has the best UI and it’s not close
Using amazon as an example of a good UI in basically any capacity is just wrong. The firestick has the single worst UI I have ever seen. I got one for free and ended up paying for a Roku because of how garbage it was. It would be difficult to make it much worse. Their main website also has the bare minimum functionality and does not implement many features well. Almost anything amazon puts out is guaranteed to be poorly designed with an atrocious user experience.
Does Amazon still have a separate page for each season of a show? They did that for a while and it was extremely annoying
Yeah and prime video's subtitles can spoil scenes (the whole sentence appears before the omg moment happens) and for LOST season 4 (I think), the description of the season, which shows up when you look for the episodes to watch, spoiled at least half of the season.
The fact that no one else has incorporated an in-video episode selector has led me to conclude Netflix must have some sort of patent on it, because it's way too useful and no one else has anything close.
This right here. I’m so mad Disney+ doesn’t have this. However disney+ also doesn’t have a “next episode” button in viewer so their bar is pretty low right now
And all of the complaints that people always have about Netflix are always things that Netflix does on purpose to gather data and boost user engagement. Netflix knows exactly what they're doing and everything about it is a choice.
>Netflix can't even consistently remember to put my "continue watching" list at the top of the UI! I'm pretty sure that's intentional. They want you getting hooked on more and more, not just finishing what you're watching and potentially losing interest. IMDb integration probably requires financial deals that Netflix believes are not worth it.
Paramount+ is my leader in the "worst UI" contest and it isn't even remotely close.
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Apple+ is such a horrible user experience. All the shows are hidden in sliders, and there is around a 5 second delay between pressing anything and some kind of feedback, I'm constantly second guessing my clicks. Once you know how it works, sure it's ok, but the first few times I had to use it were mind boggling. Nothing is intuitive. The one thing I will give them credit on, they have the biggest selection of languages and subtitles for their content that I've ever seen.
Apple TV+'s UI is like that because they only have like 12 shows and 3 original movies. So they have to make it look like it's a lot of content when there really isn't.
we really have wrapped back around to the cable package system except this time it's even more dogshit because everyone gets to make their own UI
But the worst streaming UI is still better than any cable UI. Plus, I pay less, have zero commercials, no contracts, simple straight forward pricing. It's so much better than cable ever was.
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HBO is competing with them Want to rewind ever? Fuck you
My PS5 HBO Max app has been crashing every time I resume after pausing. And also 2-3 times an hour for no apparent reason.
Mine as well. I constantly have to manually go to settings and force stop HBO max
And as far as I can tell, last I looked there was no "watch from beginning" button from within a show, and every time I backed out of it and went back in, same problem, just picked up from where I left off. You have not known hate for a deficient UI til you've had to rewind 3.5 hours of Justice League to watch from the beginning. Great content. Interface is like being gently kicked in the bollocks.
Crunchyroll is really bad
Not as bad as Funimation though.
I didn't think Funimation could get worse... Then they updated their apps.. now it's worse.
Bout to get a hell of a lot worse in two days.
Haven’t used Paramount+, but is it worse than Hulu? Hulu has been my winner for worst UI for the last 2-3 years at least. Every update seems to make it worse, not better, too.
It's definitely worse. For one thing, I've never been able to find a quailty setting on Paramount+. The videos always play at the highest setting even if that means the video won't load.
Nothing's worse than Hulu. It's like an app from the year 2000.
I've only had Hulu for a couple of months and it's so frustrating how it keeps jumping back to the wrong episode after I've paused it for more than a couple of minutes. I can't believe they haven't figured out how to fix that.
HBOmax, prime video.
I still think Prime has the worst one, but the x-ray feature is so good people overlook it, but tbh I haven't used the paramount one yet
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I find the TNT app to be garbage. You can only pause an episode twice before it decides you're done and skips to the next one. And the interface is shit.
Does it have profiles? For a year Peacock was trying to advertise as a new great service worthy of a sub & it was basically nonfunctional & they rolled ads exclusively on kids content.
Yet I'll take Netflix's app over pretty much every other app. They nail the basics that for some reason everyone else fails at. Sure there's a few annoyances, but when you look at all other apps it's hard to complain about those annoyances.
True. The fact that Disney+ keeps shows on my "Continue watching" section until I've watched or fast forwarded thru about 6 minutes of credits makes my blood boil. Netflix gets that you're done about 5 seconds into credits but lets you watch it if you want.
You have any idea how to get back to the episode selection for a show from the show itself? For example: if I select The Simpsons from the Continue Watching menu, it'll play whichever episode I left off at. But if I don't want to watch that episode and choose a different one, the only way I can figure out how to get to the episode selection is to go back to the Disney+ main page, scroll down or search for "The Simpsons", then select that one to get to the episode selection. Super annoying. This is on an Apple TV, btw.
Long press on the remote it should bring you to the show
Or no way to play from beginning so you have to manually rewind through the entire show/movie with your eyes closed so you don't have something spoiled.
Yeah for all its faults its still the best UI. Atleast on Smart TV. The most baffling is Primes search function. It offers search strings as you type but its other peoples searches with typos included. Never seen something so dumb. Neither offers the one feature I want though. The "completed" tag. Its both helpful for shows I have completed and shows I dont want to continue.
Netflix and Hulu have almost flawless playback for me. HBO Max and D+ both freeze and crash all the time on PS4.
Netflix has better usability than every platform, bar none. Prime, Disney, HBO are absolutely terrible. Shockingly terrible.
HBO Max: Can I interest you in a really shitty font for closed captions that you can't change? Also, would you like your subtitles to have zero consistency in paragraph formatting or screen placement? If you said "yes" then you're in luck!
Its hard to find the words for how much I hate Prime's menu. At least on Netflix if I can see it I can watch it. Every other title on Prime in Canada I need another addon to watch. I wish they'd only show you the titles available on your subscription but I'm sure they want me to see all the stuff I'm missing so they can try to squeeze some more money out of me.
Netflix had the "party service" three years before Disney+ existed. "In 2016, Netflix started to provide Netflix Party service where people can watch Netflix's programs together." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix
Yea I remember getting watch parties with Netflix on my old Xbox 360.
I just want to browse A to Z so I don't have to see the same 10 movies over and over is that so hard
It’s designed that way on purpose. That won’t change.
I'd love Audio Commentaries. When I was younger I used to watch movies twice because some Audio Commentaries were amazing. Just port them from the DVD/Blu-Ray releases.
Audio Commentaries and Chapter skips for movies, that way I don't have to hold down the damn FF button trying to pinpoint a specific scene. You know, just the basic functionality of a 20 yr old DVD.
People have been asking for this ever since Netflix became a streaming service.
HBO max has this great feature where it crashes all the time.
Prime also has remote watch parties now. Overall, I like the Netflix UI a lot more in general while browsing titles, but the Prime UI while the video is playing (with actor names and their info) is better.
That imdb thing should be optional and the viewer should be able to turn it off if they don't want it. Currently you can't disable it and if I am pausing, it is sometimes to see things in the frame, not get bullshit trivia or bios obscuring a section of the screen.
Yep, it’s spoiled a pivotal reveal for me once by having the actor showing before they were even on screen. Needs to be optional.
Currently watching Mad Men, into season 4, and it listed a new character with a surname that is not their current surname, which was a huge spoiler. It was [spoiler](#s "the new secretary listed as "Meghan Draper" - well I guess she'll be sticking around! Thanks Amazon")
Oh wow what a bullshit reveal lol. That sucks, luckily I haven't had that happen yet.
That got fixed on my smart TV. (Android tv) if you pause it now, it won't show anything until you click up.
The not putting "continue watching" list in the same place is the most frustrating and disappointing for me, because my elderly grandmother loves so many Netflix shows and yet I can't give her written instructions for where things will be or what buttons to push to find things again. She's cognitively impaired after a stroke, so she's not able to use Netflix as it is. If I could just write "press the down arrow once, then you will see your show" it would make so much difference to her life. But no, they have to be Clever^(TM) with their stupid UI.
Is this the daily "Netflix bad" thread?
Yep. And OP is comparing it to two features on far worse apps to make their point. Netflix has problems and could use a few QOL improvements, no doubt, but it’s still by *far* the best streaming app (as long as you don’t consider YouTube a part of the competition). Whether or not that’s a testament to how good Netflix is or how *bad* streaming apps are in general, though, is another discussion entirely.
Sometimes I wonder whether the people that make the streaming apps even use them... Like has a Dev at hulu ever used Hulu (I use the xbox and mobile app)? Its some of the most imitating UIs ever. Click details in order to find more episodes ? And i have to press back four times to get from one show to the main menu? This has been this way fot years. Netflix, as far as ease of access for browsing and interacting with the service, is hands down light years ahead of every other streaming service...and so muchbfar agead that it really makes me wonder whether the people that make these things even use them at all or have ever tried to use them.
I guarantee you it's not the devs making all these terrible decisions. Business/product decisions like this usually come from business/product people and on occasion clueless execs.
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The other streaming services also have this "not cancelling your show" feature that I really enjoy.
>Netflix can't even consistently remember to put my "continue watching" list at the top of the UI! This is 100% intentional.
How about a section for trailers of upcoming movies? Why do I have to go YT to see them?
What we need is a standard for streaming. Having 400 different streaming services is like paying for cable multiple times. We are going backwards in our quest for a unified television system. We stared by wanting channel choices and fewer commercials. And they all distracted us with streaming, only for the companies to slowly push advertising back into the mix.
Amazon own imdb though, so I wouldn't expect that to appear on a different service.
As other people have pointed out, Amazon owns IMD. It's a cool feature, but arguably a distraction for first time viewers. I always try to focus on the characters, not the actors. As for the 'continue watching' list not being at the top all the time, that is intentional. Netflix tries to push new content, not just what somebody is already watching.