8 ms·

I find it very obnoxious how the Netflix app for Apple TV autoplays previews of titles when you’re browsing and doesn’t let you disable that behaviour. As a res

by Tycho 8y ago

I find it very obnoxious how the Netflix app for Apple TV autoplays previews of titles when you’re browsing and doesn’t let you disable that behaviour. As a result I rarely open Netflix except when I already know what I want to watch.

saagarjha 8y ago
Not only that, the previews make noise. So if you leave it alone for a second it will start blasting sound at you.
- dylan604 8y ago
  Yes, the autoplay preview is very annoying, but I also find annoying the little information provided in the thumbnail gallery. To see more info about a title, you have to select the thumb to go to a full screen view of the title. Except now the actual video starts to play even though there is clearly a play button that was not clicked. At this point, all the play button does is hide the overlay. The buttons have no real meaning/purpose.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    And I don't understand the economics of this at all. Don't they pay for bandwidth? Shoving out crap that no one asked for costs Netflix money, doesn't it? So why do they do it? What's the business case? I know they aren't idiots over there. What do they know that the rest of us don't? Are the content producers actually paying them to force-feed those previews?
    - fingerlocks 8y ago
      This is the heart of the net neutrality debate, is it not? ISPs claim that Netflix doesn’t pay for all the infrastructure required to carry their bandwidth.
      - CamperBob2 8y ago
        They don't pay for preferential treatment at the expense of other users -- and they shouldn't -- but they pay for the bandwidth they consume just like you and I have to. Otherwise we'd all have OC3840 connections running to our basements.
    - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
      The argument I heard, at least from Netflix, was that it basically forced users to discover content they wouldn’t otherwise. They are probably right and have data to back it up but I find that “feature” to be extremely anti-user. It shows utter contempt for user preference.
      - CamperBob2 8y ago
        I doubt they're right, and/or I doubt they told you the truth. This feature actively impairs discoverability by putting the user in a Skinner box where they have to push a button, repeatedly, to make the negative conditioning stop. In my household, it mainly serves to make us "discover" what's on Amazon Prime Video instead. Of course, many of Netflix's UI features have historically been engineered to make it hard to tell just how limited their selection really is, so autoplay does fit that pattern, at least.
B-Con 8y ago
Autoplay is a cancer that spread across the popular media platforms. Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix seem to have all abandoned the idea that the app shouldn't play distracting video and sound without prompting. (I haven't checked Hulu in years, I don't know what they're up to.) Remember when it was annoying pop-ups that auto-played video and sound? Now it's a feature to extract as many watch-time minutes from users as possible. I guarantee it's all A/B testing looking for a few points of uptick in watch time.
- jchw 8y ago
  Just yesterday, I found that YouTube on my TV reenabled auto-play on it's own even though I disabled it long ago. Even though I doubt it was intentional, I found this incredibly frustrating.
  - colordrops 8y ago
    How could it be unintentional? At best it was a deliberate ignorance of the consequences of a settings schema upgrade. Just like how bank errors always are in favor of the bank.
    - jchw 8y ago
      Realistically... Very easily? The default is to have auto-play on, I can imagine many scenarios where settings get lost. I've not heard general outcry about this so my best guess is that it's an edge case.
      - LeftTurnSignal 8y ago
        I know a few other cases regarding auto-play and youtube too. I've had it re-enable itself a few times. I'm sure it's due to the extra add-ons and such I use that's messing with it. A few of my friends don't use the same add-ons I use, or they don't use any and have had it happen enough times for them to complain to me about it. My friend first found out his auto-play was re-enabled after youtube ate up most of his monthly bandwidth cap in one night. So we're definitely in the minority, but it does seem to happen to different people with very different configurations.
drivers99 8y ago
Same with Netflix app on Roku. I keep keep using up/down/left/right to keep stuff from playing, which is pretty silly that I have to do that to keep stuff from playing. I'm trying to use my own attention to read title and try to make a decision and it's trying to blast unwanted information at me.
- dylan604 8y ago
  Maybe trying up/up/down/down/left/right/left/right will do the trick?
  - matt_the_bass 8y ago
    Where are the A B and Start buttons on the Roku remote?
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      The original remote was intended to serve as a gamepad which is why it had a D-pad instead of a five-way.
      - jonathankoren 8y ago
        What’s a five-way?
        dylan604 8y ago
        up/down/left/right/push
  - robohoe 8y ago
    Sounds like that will unlock some cheat code feature!
    - dylan604 8y ago
      Exactly. It levels you up so you no longer have to deal with the autoplay bosses.
gurumeditations 8y ago
I just put it on mute before I open the app.
- jcurbo 8y ago
  This right here. Doesn’t completely solve the problem, but at least gets rid of the obnoxious sound.
eyeball 8y ago
Horrible anti-user bullshit. Tempts one to hoist the black flag.
zipperhead 8y ago
This behavior is not confined to Apple TV. Isn't it the same on every client? Roku and the web interface are both guilty as well. It's so obnoxious that I would consider paying extra to 1) shut this off, and 2) have a sane implementation of some sort of helpful/powerful search filter.
cityzen 8y ago
We have decided to cancel a few streaming services and Netflix is the first to go. It literally gives me anxiety to open it as I feel like I have to flip through it so fast to avoid the previews.
- swozey 8y ago
  I don't like opening it because of the startup sound. That DUN DUN bass punch.
  - cityzen 8y ago
    My “smart” TV is really a dumb, laggy POS and that DUN DUN is completely unpredictable. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it is lagged, sometimes it doesn’t, if we have the sonos bar turned up, wooo buddy it will make your heart skip a beat.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mikepurvis 8y ago
My wife hates this behaviour because you never know when it's going to show previews for intense thriller or even horror content. It's bizarre that they would show this to an account which has literally only ever been used to watch Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls, and similar shows.
- rhizome 8y ago
  Gives you an idea of well recommendation engines work in the general case.
  - mikepurvis 8y ago
    I think the issue is that the autoplaying background promotions have nothing to do with the recommendations— it's mostly just Netflix pushing their exclusive content.
clubm8 8y ago
>I find it very obnoxious how the Netflix app for Apple TV autoplays previews of titles when you’re browsing and doesn’t let you disable that behaviour. As a result I rarely open Netflix except when I already know what I want to watch. I suspect it's a result of poorly done UX research. If you frame the question as "How can we increase engagement with the homescreen", adding noise does increase engagement. Basically the % of people interacting with the home screen increases, but the number of people viewing the home screen decreases. Ironically this means less time spent exploring... Netflix often generates some interesting micro-genres and I used to scroll through a bit looking for things to add to my list - now if I don't have a specific title in mind I don't open Netflix at all. Though I'm not sure I should complain - less mindless watching has lead to me reading more research papers and news. Being more productive.
- jm4 8y ago
  The whole point is for users to spend less time exploring so they don't realize the selection of decent content is actually quite limited. Netflix doesn't care if people don't like it as long as they keep paying for a subscription. People will complain about this but not cancel the subscription. People will cancel the subscription if there's no content.
  - clubm8 8y ago
    >The whole point is for users to spend less time exploring so they don't realize the selection of decent content is actually quite limited. I actually disagree. I think Netflix has several massive troves. For example I recently worked my way through Frasier, then Cheers. There's a lot of hit shows like Star Trek, Friends, Buffy etc. I agree the selection is not perfect, but for me, there's a lot of stuff that I wanted to check out in the 90s but was too lazy to monitor a VCR for. There's also a decent enough amount of original content - Black Miror, Bojack for example, that make me feel I get my money's worth. Maybe it's a generational thing... Netflix has so much more than any Blockbuster. If not Netflix, what service? Who has better selection? Who is their rival. IMHO Netflix is getting better at creating great content - Bojack Horseman for example is superb. They have the name brand recognition. And at the end of the day, the price is right - people can justify 12 bucks a month. IMHO Netflix's rival is not Hulu or Prime Video - it's the local library. Many library systems nowadays offer DVDs and BluRays. Why pay a monthly fee when you can get the same titles from the library as fast as you could. Basically, people may be willing to trade cost for speed. (Heck sometimes I can get things faster from the library than I can from my DVD plan)
autokad 8y ago
i end up waving my mouse around like a spaz to find a place where something isn't auto-previewing. I like the idea of a mouse over preview, but it needs work
- gnicholas 8y ago
  Put the cursor at the far right edge of the screen, where it will still scroll the movies but won’t trigger the hover auto play.
trevor-e 8y ago
This is my favorite feature, though I agree it should be a setting.
ProfessorLayton 8y ago
I can’t agree more with you, worse, due to audible auto play, I can’t stand browsing through their TV app at all. The best Netflix interface is the one Apple designed for them on the Apple TV 1-3. I’m considering dusting it up just for Netflix.
- rixrax 8y ago
  Adding to wishlist: rotten tomatoes and IMDb score of each movie clearly visible when browsing in addition to Netflix rating. Maybe with a link back to IMDb/rt/... It’s infuriating that I need to have laptop or phone with me when browsing movies to see how they are rated. Ps. Agree with everything you and parent said!
  - Ibethewalrus 8y ago
    Firefox has a plugin that shows ratings inside Netflix: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/film-scores-for-netflix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/film-scores-f...
  - ajmurmann 8y ago
    The IMDB scores are one of the biggest benefits of the Amazon UI. The ratings are actually meaningful unlike the totally useless Netflix ratings. Netflix ratings typically range from baffling to insulting.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    Netflix knows that a huge chunk of their television shows are low quality garbage. They will never expose an outside review system.
- hinkley 8y ago
  God, the new Netflix plays that godawful loud noise on startup and there are no settings to tell it to shut the fuck up. But somehow Hulu is worse so there’s no impetus to clean up.
ClassyJacket 8y ago
I have given up and just not used Netflix before because of that awful obnoxious feature. There's nowhere you can navigate to in that app that doesn't play video, with sound - except presumably settings, but that doesn't help me choose a show. Awful, anti-user design. I hope the trend of people consciously fighting back against deliberately addictive apps continues. Personally I'm putting my smartphone in a safe next week and getting a crappy Nokia and seek g how long I can go.
cabalamat 8y ago
> As a result I rarely open Netflix except when I already know what I want to watch You'd be better off getting rid of Netflix altogether. The acceleration of addictiveness[1] caused by tech companies making their platforms ever more sticky is anti-human. If there is a film/series you really need to watch, there's always Bit Torrent. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
nemild 8y ago
One thing I'm always reminded of when I hear about an HN reader bemoaning a feature/policy: Behind every feature change (like auto plays), there's a product manager who's tested changes to show that it maximizes some short-term metric. Users get the products they "want", not what they need — or deserve: Make Something People Need > We are surrounded by well engineered — and increasingly addictive — technology that shapes what we do and how we think. Especially when you work at a large tech company, how do you trade giving users what they want and your own business’s profitability, with the negative effects that this leads to? https://www.nemil.com/musings/make-something-people-need.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/make-something-people-need.htm...
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  >Behind every feature change (like auto plays), there's a product manager who's tested changes to show that it maximizes some short-term metric. Or some director/executive who insists a pet personal preference be added to the product despite protestations from the entire team.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    Hello, Snapchat UI redesign.
robohoe 8y ago
Netflix app on the Roku does the same. Quite annoying when you’re paused on the interface for a little bit and then all of a sudden something plays/roars at high volume.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
That decision alone makes me want to cancel Netflix. I’m close. I hate that feature. Zero reason they can’t let you toggle that off, they just have no respect for users. At the very least, it shouldn’t auto-play the audio, only the video.

by Tycho 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago

Not only that, the previews make noise. So if you leave it alone for a second it will start blasting sound at you.

dylan604 8y ago
Yes, the autoplay preview is very annoying, but I also find annoying the little information provided in the thumbnail gallery. To see more info about a title, you have to select the thumb to go to a full screen view of the title. Except now the actual video starts to play even though there is clearly a play button that was not clicked. At this point, all the play button does is hide the overlay. The buttons have no real meaning/purpose.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  And I don't understand the economics of this at all. Don't they pay for bandwidth? Shoving out crap that no one asked for costs Netflix money, doesn't it? So why do they do it? What's the business case? I know they aren't idiots over there. What do they know that the rest of us don't? Are the content producers actually paying them to force-feed those previews?
  - fingerlocks 8y ago
    This is the heart of the net neutrality debate, is it not? ISPs claim that Netflix doesn’t pay for all the infrastructure required to carry their bandwidth.
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      They don't pay for preferential treatment at the expense of other users -- and they shouldn't -- but they pay for the bandwidth they consume just like you and I have to. Otherwise we'd all have OC3840 connections running to our basements.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    The argument I heard, at least from Netflix, was that it basically forced users to discover content they wouldn’t otherwise. They are probably right and have data to back it up but I find that “feature” to be extremely anti-user. It shows utter contempt for user preference.
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      I doubt they're right, and/or I doubt they told you the truth. This feature actively impairs discoverability by putting the user in a Skinner box where they have to push a button, repeatedly, to make the negative conditioning stop. In my household, it mainly serves to make us "discover" what's on Amazon Prime Video instead. Of course, many of Netflix's UI features have historically been engineered to make it hard to tell just how limited their selection really is, so autoplay does fit that pattern, at least.

B-Con 8y ago

Autoplay is a cancer that spread across the popular media platforms. Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix seem to have all abandoned the idea that the app shouldn't play distracting video and sound without prompting. (I haven't checked Hulu in years, I don't know what they're up to.) Remember when it was annoying pop-ups that auto-played video and sound? Now it's a feature to extract as many watch-time minutes from users as possible. I guarantee it's all A/B testing looking for a few points of uptick in watch time.

jchw 8y ago
Just yesterday, I found that YouTube on my TV reenabled auto-play on it's own even though I disabled it long ago. Even though I doubt it was intentional, I found this incredibly frustrating.
- colordrops 8y ago
  How could it be unintentional? At best it was a deliberate ignorance of the consequences of a settings schema upgrade. Just like how bank errors always are in favor of the bank.
  - jchw 8y ago
    Realistically... Very easily? The default is to have auto-play on, I can imagine many scenarios where settings get lost. I've not heard general outcry about this so my best guess is that it's an edge case.
    - LeftTurnSignal 8y ago
      I know a few other cases regarding auto-play and youtube too. I've had it re-enable itself a few times. I'm sure it's due to the extra add-ons and such I use that's messing with it. A few of my friends don't use the same add-ons I use, or they don't use any and have had it happen enough times for them to complain to me about it. My friend first found out his auto-play was re-enabled after youtube ate up most of his monthly bandwidth cap in one night. So we're definitely in the minority, but it does seem to happen to different people with very different configurations.

drivers99 8y ago

Same with Netflix app on Roku. I keep keep using up/down/left/right to keep stuff from playing, which is pretty silly that I have to do that to keep stuff from playing. I'm trying to use my own attention to read title and try to make a decision and it's trying to blast unwanted information at me.

dylan604 8y ago
Maybe trying up/up/down/down/left/right/left/right will do the trick?
- matt_the_bass 8y ago
  Where are the A B and Start buttons on the Roku remote?
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    The original remote was intended to serve as a gamepad which is why it had a D-pad instead of a five-way.
    - jonathankoren 8y ago
      What’s a five-way?
      - dylan604 8y ago
        up/down/left/right/push
- robohoe 8y ago
  Sounds like that will unlock some cheat code feature!
  - dylan604 8y ago
    Exactly. It levels you up so you no longer have to deal with the autoplay bosses.

gurumeditations 8y ago

I just put it on mute before I open the app.

jcurbo 8y ago
This right here. Doesn’t completely solve the problem, but at least gets rid of the obnoxious sound.

eyeball 8y ago

Horrible anti-user bullshit. Tempts one to hoist the black flag.

zipperhead 8y ago

This behavior is not confined to Apple TV. Isn't it the same on every client? Roku and the web interface are both guilty as well. It's so obnoxious that I would consider paying extra to 1) shut this off, and 2) have a sane implementation of some sort of helpful/powerful search filter.

cityzen 8y ago

We have decided to cancel a few streaming services and Netflix is the first to go. It literally gives me anxiety to open it as I feel like I have to flip through it so fast to avoid the previews.

swozey 8y ago
I don't like opening it because of the startup sound. That DUN DUN bass punch.
- cityzen 8y ago
  My “smart” TV is really a dumb, laggy POS and that DUN DUN is completely unpredictable. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it is lagged, sometimes it doesn’t, if we have the sonos bar turned up, wooo buddy it will make your heart skip a beat.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mikepurvis 8y ago

My wife hates this behaviour because you never know when it's going to show previews for intense thriller or even horror content. It's bizarre that they would show this to an account which has literally only ever been used to watch Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls, and similar shows.

rhizome 8y ago
Gives you an idea of well recommendation engines work in the general case.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  I think the issue is that the autoplaying background promotions have nothing to do with the recommendations— it's mostly just Netflix pushing their exclusive content.

clubm8 8y ago

>I find it very obnoxious how the Netflix app for Apple TV autoplays previews of titles when you’re browsing and doesn’t let you disable that behaviour. As a result I rarely open Netflix except when I already know what I want to watch. I suspect it's a result of poorly done UX research. If you frame the question as "How can we increase engagement with the homescreen", adding noise does increase engagement. Basically the % of people interacting with the home screen increases, but the number of people viewing the home screen decreases. Ironically this means less time spent exploring... Netflix often generates some interesting micro-genres and I used to scroll through a bit looking for things to add to my list - now if I don't have a specific title in mind I don't open Netflix at all. Though I'm not sure I should complain - less mindless watching has lead to me reading more research papers and news. Being more productive.

jm4 8y ago
The whole point is for users to spend less time exploring so they don't realize the selection of decent content is actually quite limited. Netflix doesn't care if people don't like it as long as they keep paying for a subscription. People will complain about this but not cancel the subscription. People will cancel the subscription if there's no content.
- clubm8 8y ago
  >The whole point is for users to spend less time exploring so they don't realize the selection of decent content is actually quite limited. I actually disagree. I think Netflix has several massive troves. For example I recently worked my way through Frasier, then Cheers. There's a lot of hit shows like Star Trek, Friends, Buffy etc. I agree the selection is not perfect, but for me, there's a lot of stuff that I wanted to check out in the 90s but was too lazy to monitor a VCR for. There's also a decent enough amount of original content - Black Miror, Bojack for example, that make me feel I get my money's worth. Maybe it's a generational thing... Netflix has so much more than any Blockbuster. If not Netflix, what service? Who has better selection? Who is their rival. IMHO Netflix is getting better at creating great content - Bojack Horseman for example is superb. They have the name brand recognition. And at the end of the day, the price is right - people can justify 12 bucks a month. IMHO Netflix's rival is not Hulu or Prime Video - it's the local library. Many library systems nowadays offer DVDs and BluRays. Why pay a monthly fee when you can get the same titles from the library as fast as you could. Basically, people may be willing to trade cost for speed. (Heck sometimes I can get things faster from the library than I can from my DVD plan)

autokad 8y ago

i end up waving my mouse around like a spaz to find a place where something isn't auto-previewing. I like the idea of a mouse over preview, but it needs work

gnicholas 8y ago
Put the cursor at the far right edge of the screen, where it will still scroll the movies but won’t trigger the hover auto play.

trevor-e 8y ago

This is my favorite feature, though I agree it should be a setting.

ProfessorLayton 8y ago

I can’t agree more with you, worse, due to audible auto play, I can’t stand browsing through their TV app at all. The best Netflix interface is the one Apple designed for them on the Apple TV 1-3. I’m considering dusting it up just for Netflix.

rixrax 8y ago
Adding to wishlist: rotten tomatoes and IMDb score of each movie clearly visible when browsing in addition to Netflix rating. Maybe with a link back to IMDb/rt/... It’s infuriating that I need to have laptop or phone with me when browsing movies to see how they are rated. Ps. Agree with everything you and parent said!
- Ibethewalrus 8y ago
  Firefox has a plugin that shows ratings inside Netflix: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/film-scores-for-netflix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/film-scores-f...
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  The IMDB scores are one of the biggest benefits of the Amazon UI. The ratings are actually meaningful unlike the totally useless Netflix ratings. Netflix ratings typically range from baffling to insulting.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
  Netflix knows that a huge chunk of their television shows are low quality garbage. They will never expose an outside review system.
hinkley 8y ago
God, the new Netflix plays that godawful loud noise on startup and there are no settings to tell it to shut the fuck up. But somehow Hulu is worse so there’s no impetus to clean up.

ClassyJacket 8y ago

I have given up and just not used Netflix before because of that awful obnoxious feature. There's nowhere you can navigate to in that app that doesn't play video, with sound - except presumably settings, but that doesn't help me choose a show. Awful, anti-user design. I hope the trend of people consciously fighting back against deliberately addictive apps continues. Personally I'm putting my smartphone in a safe next week and getting a crappy Nokia and seek g how long I can go.

cabalamat 8y ago

> As a result I rarely open Netflix except when I already know what I want to watch You'd be better off getting rid of Netflix altogether. The acceleration of addictiveness[1] caused by tech companies making their platforms ever more sticky is anti-human. If there is a film/series you really need to watch, there's always Bit Torrent. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

nemild 8y ago

One thing I'm always reminded of when I hear about an HN reader bemoaning a feature/policy: Behind every feature change (like auto plays), there's a product manager who's tested changes to show that it maximizes some short-term metric. Users get the products they "want", not what they need — or deserve: Make Something People Need > We are surrounded by well engineered — and increasingly addictive — technology that shapes what we do and how we think. Especially when you work at a large tech company, how do you trade giving users what they want and your own business’s profitability, with the negative effects that this leads to? https://www.nemil.com/musings/make-something-people-need.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/make-something-people-need.htm...

joejerryronnie 8y ago
>Behind every feature change (like auto plays), there's a product manager who's tested changes to show that it maximizes some short-term metric. Or some director/executive who insists a pet personal preference be added to the product despite protestations from the entire team.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Hello, Snapchat UI redesign.

robohoe 8y ago

Netflix app on the Roku does the same. Quite annoying when you’re paused on the interface for a little bit and then all of a sudden something plays/roars at high volume.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

That decision alone makes me want to cancel Netflix. I’m close. I hate that feature. Zero reason they can’t let you toggle that off, they just have no respect for users. At the very least, it shouldn’t auto-play the audio, only the video.