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There's something I don't understand, but I'd like to. Most of the criticisms of Netflix I see fall into two buckets: One common criticism is that Netflix is w

There's something I don't understand, but I'd like to. Most of the criticisms of Netflix I see fall into two buckets: One common criticism is that Netflix is worse than regular TV, because having to actively choose a Netflix show is more stressful than regular TV, where you can just turn it on, sit back, and relax. The second common criticism I read is that Netflix is annoying, because as soon as you turn it on, it starts autoplaying videos at you in obnoxious attempt to grab your interest and attention. Like, aren't these two criticisms completely opposite? Regular TV always autoplays at full volume. What nuance would help me understand why autoplaying is annoying on Netflix but not annoying on regular TV? (Disclosure: I work at Netflix, am speaking purely in a personal capacity, but would love to make things better for people to the extent that I can.)

ryanthemadone 7y ago
Trying to find something to watch on Netflix is definitely a chore, having stuff autoplay isn't facilitating that search - the feature often 'gets in the way' painfully and makes me mute my TV. I don't have a regular TV service anymore, but I suspect it's quite easy to flip it on, jump to the guide (which probably isn't blaring loud stuff at you) and scan the currently airing shows for something you're familiar with and you like. So no contradiction as far as I can tell. My Netflix experience is one where I often have 2-3 shows that I'm currently watching. I want those shows front and center when I log in, perhaps with recommendations for similar shows alongside. It would be even cooler if two shows I was watching had recommendations that crossed over both of them. I should also be able to "close" a series I've started watching, but decided I don't want to watch anymore. When I don't have active shows that I'm watching I kind of want Netflix to help me find stuff based on my viewing history, right now I have IMDb and other apps open on my phone so that I can check community scores and reviews of content I don't know about, whatever dumb business strategy decision prohibited that data being in the Netflix app should be rescinded immediately. Heck I should be able to pull up all sci-fi, filter for stuff I haven't seen, filter for TV series, movie or whatever, order by rotten tomatoes score and then filter for stuff that isn't space based or something. You get the gist, there's so much Netflix could be doing to enable discoverability.
mplanchard 7y ago
That’s an interesting comparison that I hadn’t thought of. To me, the difference is in the degree to which the browsing experience is distracting and aggravating. Neither myself nor, I think, most people are going to “turn it on, sit back, and relax” with broadcast TV. Instead, you generally go to the menu and scroll around looking for something to watch. I will often mute the TV while doing this, but even if you don’t, it generally doesn’t start playing video and audio from a channel as soon as you hover over it. Instead it continues playing the channel you’re currently on until you’ve chosen to switch. That is a fine browsing experience. I think the other difference is that if you’re flipping channels, you’re tuning into what the channel is actually playing, not an endlessly repeating ad for the channel. It’s getting you to the experience you care about as quickly as possible. Netflix, on the other hand, the minute you stop scrolling, starts loading a preview. This makes the UI less responsive if you want to start scrolling again, which you often do, but oops, you let it sit on a title for just a millisecond too long. If you stick around, you immediately start in on the preview, at full volume. This combination makes the browsing experience super distracting and frustrating. Sometimes I want to discuss with my wife whether to watch a show, but I can’t, because there’s a full volume trailer playing. So I have to mute the TV. It’s so frustrating to not be able to go into a “thinking” state when the experience of browsing is fundamentally a thoughtful one. And 99% of the time if I stop for a second on something, I don’t want to watch a preview. I want to read the description, maybe, and then move on. Anyway, I appreciate that interesting analogy you gave, and I could see how the two things seem similar. I don’t think they are, but even if they were, most of us preferred Netflix because it was not like broadcast TV!
indziektor 7y ago
It's a difference in expectations for me. When I was browsing the Netflix catalogue, I wanted to be in control and find something myself that's interesting. When some video starts auto-playing, then it feels like some kind of obnoxious banner ad for some show I may or may not even remotely care about, and it's distracting me from my task. Then again, I'm not currently a customer, but that's my recollection of it. For regular TV, I couldn't especially say, since I mostly only ever get a chance to watch it in hotels nowadays, but I don't ever recall something distracting you from channel surfing or using the guide channel and breaking you out of your zone. As far as regular TV being more relaxing, I suppose there's maybe something meditative about going through all the channels, but I wouldn't say it was a better experience. It's just easier to settle with something mediocre when you're sure you've seen all your choices (assuming no commercials were playing at the time).
acjohnson55 7y ago
When I'm searching for something to watch on TV, I like having something in not invested in as a backdrop. Like random sports or sports news. Trailers are tooaattention-grabbing for this. On Netflix, I can't browse with unrelated background content on. Speaking of browsing, on my TV provider, I know exactly where to find all the sorts of content I'm interested in. With Netflix, it's constantly being shuffled.
nabilhat 7y ago
To the first criticism - Internet TV is somewhat like using a tivo or similar. It removes the time constraints attached to broadcast and cable TV. Internet TV has the additional advantage of being pre-loaded with content, no planning ahead is necessary. To the second criticism - Broadcast and cable TV used to be accompanied by programming schedules published in local newspapers. Additionally, TV Guide was a real magazine with programming schedules that people paid real money for. People made effort and spent money to be able to quietly peruse and discover what to watch. These two responses are entirely correlated. The ability to quietly browse and discover content is the best thing internet TV has going for it. Netflix's abandonment of this concept has driven me back to the TV Guide model. I make my viewing choices off of Netflix, and never open Netflix until I know exactly where I'm going, and only when I know that there are no other less intrusive options. Look at it this way - Think about movie theater previews, and how much people complain about them. Effectiveness of those previews aside, imagine what that would look like if the preview was for the movie they actually went to see.
jm4 7y ago
The autoplay nonsense doesn't solve the first complaint and it's hostile to what I would guess is a significant segment of viewers which is why you hear the second complaint. The UI has written descriptions of content. I could be in the middle of reading that and then it's replaced by some autoplay trailer with audio that doesn't even match up with the video. Assuming I even want the autoplay interface, which I don't, the implementation of it is horrible. What's up with that music? It's like the musical equivalent of stock photos. And if it's a show with episodes it's virtually guaranteed that you will have to click a back button or something to stop the trailer so you can get to the right episode. It basically guesses wrong every single time. I went from watching Netflix almost exclusively to hardly watching at all. I may put it on if I already know exactly what I want to watch and can navigate to it quickly enough that the bullshit autoplay won't make me think differently before my show starts. It causes anxiety trying to browse through content fast enough to see what it is before the trailer starts. If I pause for just a second or two due to some distraction or whatever then I lose the opportunity to read the description and I'm bombarded with a trailer. When that happens I can't click away fast enough. If my wife starts talking to me while I'm browsing I often find myself exiting Netflix so I don't have that garbage in the background. I would have canceled a long time ago if my wife didn't binge watch those Asian novela shows. I feel like the people making decisions about these things at Netflix are making them based on bad data. I keep paying every month so I must be happy. I'm not. I give more money to your competitors now than I give to you. I wouldn't give you any at all if my wife didn't want to keep Netflix and that's not a debate I'm going to have for $10/mo or whatever it costs. So I keep paying and some data geek gets to look good for the subscription numbers or engagement even though I went from loving your product to loathing it. I would go back to loving it and cancel the other streaming subscriptions if there was an option for me to switch back to the old interface. Edit: Someone else who replied to you said something I thought was interesting about the autoplay. I think the other difference is that if you’re flipping channels, you’re tuning into what the channel is actually playing, not an endlessly repeating ad for the channel. It’s getting you to the experience you care about as quickly as possible. This. I read this and it clicked. Browsing Netflix with the autoplay trailers is a lot like if you were flipping through the channels on broadcast TV and every single channel was showing a commercial. I experience a similar kind of frustration when I use Netflix.
jrnichols 7y ago
> it starts autoplaying videos at you in obnoxious attempt to grab your interest and attention. at LEAST make this something that the users can disable. I'm not always using Netflix for loud action movies. Sometimes I want something quiet and chill. the obnoxious previews are too much. sensory overload. they're almost startling sometimes.
eutropia 7y ago
I hate the autotrailers. Please let me disable them. I used to really enjoy taking my time exploring the catalog, even if I saw many choices I wasn't in the mood for at that moment, I would go ' oh cool I didn't know they had that' and would sometimes go looking for them later, but now I avoid browsing at all costs because I feel like one of Skinner's rats being shocked into taking action, which is an especially poignant feeling whenever see black mirror in the list and think of 'million merits'. Please make it optional. Please.

ryanthemadone 7y ago

Trying to find something to watch on Netflix is definitely a chore, having stuff autoplay isn't facilitating that search - the feature often 'gets in the way' painfully and makes me mute my TV. I don't have a regular TV service anymore, but I suspect it's quite easy to flip it on, jump to the guide (which probably isn't blaring loud stuff at you) and scan the currently airing shows for something you're familiar with and you like. So no contradiction as far as I can tell. My Netflix experience is one where I often have 2-3 shows that I'm currently watching. I want those shows front and center when I log in, perhaps with recommendations for similar shows alongside. It would be even cooler if two shows I was watching had recommendations that crossed over both of them. I should also be able to "close" a series I've started watching, but decided I don't want to watch anymore. When I don't have active shows that I'm watching I kind of want Netflix to help me find stuff based on my viewing history, right now I have IMDb and other apps open on my phone so that I can check community scores and reviews of content I don't know about, whatever dumb business strategy decision prohibited that data being in the Netflix app should be rescinded immediately. Heck I should be able to pull up all sci-fi, filter for stuff I haven't seen, filter for TV series, movie or whatever, order by rotten tomatoes score and then filter for stuff that isn't space based or something. You get the gist, there's so much Netflix could be doing to enable discoverability.

mplanchard 7y ago

That’s an interesting comparison that I hadn’t thought of. To me, the difference is in the degree to which the browsing experience is distracting and aggravating. Neither myself nor, I think, most people are going to “turn it on, sit back, and relax” with broadcast TV. Instead, you generally go to the menu and scroll around looking for something to watch. I will often mute the TV while doing this, but even if you don’t, it generally doesn’t start playing video and audio from a channel as soon as you hover over it. Instead it continues playing the channel you’re currently on until you’ve chosen to switch. That is a fine browsing experience. I think the other difference is that if you’re flipping channels, you’re tuning into what the channel is actually playing, not an endlessly repeating ad for the channel. It’s getting you to the experience you care about as quickly as possible. Netflix, on the other hand, the minute you stop scrolling, starts loading a preview. This makes the UI less responsive if you want to start scrolling again, which you often do, but oops, you let it sit on a title for just a millisecond too long. If you stick around, you immediately start in on the preview, at full volume. This combination makes the browsing experience super distracting and frustrating. Sometimes I want to discuss with my wife whether to watch a show, but I can’t, because there’s a full volume trailer playing. So I have to mute the TV. It’s so frustrating to not be able to go into a “thinking” state when the experience of browsing is fundamentally a thoughtful one. And 99% of the time if I stop for a second on something, I don’t want to watch a preview. I want to read the description, maybe, and then move on. Anyway, I appreciate that interesting analogy you gave, and I could see how the two things seem similar. I don’t think they are, but even if they were, most of us preferred Netflix because it was not like broadcast TV!

indziektor 7y ago

It's a difference in expectations for me. When I was browsing the Netflix catalogue, I wanted to be in control and find something myself that's interesting. When some video starts auto-playing, then it feels like some kind of obnoxious banner ad for some show I may or may not even remotely care about, and it's distracting me from my task. Then again, I'm not currently a customer, but that's my recollection of it. For regular TV, I couldn't especially say, since I mostly only ever get a chance to watch it in hotels nowadays, but I don't ever recall something distracting you from channel surfing or using the guide channel and breaking you out of your zone. As far as regular TV being more relaxing, I suppose there's maybe something meditative about going through all the channels, but I wouldn't say it was a better experience. It's just easier to settle with something mediocre when you're sure you've seen all your choices (assuming no commercials were playing at the time).

acjohnson55 7y ago

When I'm searching for something to watch on TV, I like having something in not invested in as a backdrop. Like random sports or sports news. Trailers are tooaattention-grabbing for this. On Netflix, I can't browse with unrelated background content on. Speaking of browsing, on my TV provider, I know exactly where to find all the sorts of content I'm interested in. With Netflix, it's constantly being shuffled.

nabilhat 7y ago

To the first criticism - Internet TV is somewhat like using a tivo or similar. It removes the time constraints attached to broadcast and cable TV. Internet TV has the additional advantage of being pre-loaded with content, no planning ahead is necessary. To the second criticism - Broadcast and cable TV used to be accompanied by programming schedules published in local newspapers. Additionally, TV Guide was a real magazine with programming schedules that people paid real money for. People made effort and spent money to be able to quietly peruse and discover what to watch. These two responses are entirely correlated. The ability to quietly browse and discover content is the best thing internet TV has going for it. Netflix's abandonment of this concept has driven me back to the TV Guide model. I make my viewing choices off of Netflix, and never open Netflix until I know exactly where I'm going, and only when I know that there are no other less intrusive options. Look at it this way - Think about movie theater previews, and how much people complain about them. Effectiveness of those previews aside, imagine what that would look like if the preview was for the movie they actually went to see.

jm4 7y ago

The autoplay nonsense doesn't solve the first complaint and it's hostile to what I would guess is a significant segment of viewers which is why you hear the second complaint. The UI has written descriptions of content. I could be in the middle of reading that and then it's replaced by some autoplay trailer with audio that doesn't even match up with the video. Assuming I even want the autoplay interface, which I don't, the implementation of it is horrible. What's up with that music? It's like the musical equivalent of stock photos. And if it's a show with episodes it's virtually guaranteed that you will have to click a back button or something to stop the trailer so you can get to the right episode. It basically guesses wrong every single time. I went from watching Netflix almost exclusively to hardly watching at all. I may put it on if I already know exactly what I want to watch and can navigate to it quickly enough that the bullshit autoplay won't make me think differently before my show starts. It causes anxiety trying to browse through content fast enough to see what it is before the trailer starts. If I pause for just a second or two due to some distraction or whatever then I lose the opportunity to read the description and I'm bombarded with a trailer. When that happens I can't click away fast enough. If my wife starts talking to me while I'm browsing I often find myself exiting Netflix so I don't have that garbage in the background. I would have canceled a long time ago if my wife didn't binge watch those Asian novela shows. I feel like the people making decisions about these things at Netflix are making them based on bad data. I keep paying every month so I must be happy. I'm not. I give more money to your competitors now than I give to you. I wouldn't give you any at all if my wife didn't want to keep Netflix and that's not a debate I'm going to have for $10/mo or whatever it costs. So I keep paying and some data geek gets to look good for the subscription numbers or engagement even though I went from loving your product to loathing it. I would go back to loving it and cancel the other streaming subscriptions if there was an option for me to switch back to the old interface. Edit: Someone else who replied to you said something I thought was interesting about the autoplay. I think the other difference is that if you’re flipping channels, you’re tuning into what the channel is actually playing, not an endlessly repeating ad for the channel. It’s getting you to the experience you care about as quickly as possible. This. I read this and it clicked. Browsing Netflix with the autoplay trailers is a lot like if you were flipping through the channels on broadcast TV and every single channel was showing a commercial. I experience a similar kind of frustration when I use Netflix.

jrnichols 7y ago

> it starts autoplaying videos at you in obnoxious attempt to grab your interest and attention. at LEAST make this something that the users can disable. I'm not always using Netflix for loud action movies. Sometimes I want something quiet and chill. the obnoxious previews are too much. sensory overload. they're almost startling sometimes.

eutropia 7y ago

I hate the autotrailers. Please let me disable them. I used to really enjoy taking my time exploring the catalog, even if I saw many choices I wasn't in the mood for at that moment, I would go ' oh cool I didn't know they had that' and would sometimes go looking for them later, but now I avoid browsing at all costs because I feel like one of Skinner's rats being shocked into taking action, which is an especially poignant feeling whenever see black mirror in the list and think of 'million merits'. Please make it optional. Please.