8 ms·

I'm sure now that Amazon Prime Video won't ever get a decent UI, instead the current will remain horrible, but resilient at least.

tyingq 6y ago
I'm willing to accept a mediocre UI that doesn't start auto playing every video I hover over for more than a second.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  Indeed. It’s also better than another UI which requires an esoteric feature of a remote control that I don’t even use and offers no way of switching that stupid choice off, preventing me from ever getting more information about the shows it is presenting beyond the title and banner. It’s also better than one that always says I’m logged out when I start it, and then magically logs me in a minute or two later... while I’m in the process of trying to log in. (Or any of the several other ones that require me to log in nearly every time.) Of course calling any of these a “User Interface” is almost laughable. SLOM is a better term. That’s “Small Library Obfuscatory Method” for the uninitiated. Or maybe they’re just trying to save bandwidth by making viewers spend viewing time searching pointlessly through their offerings that are ordered seemingly according to the pattern of pigeon droppings outside their office.
- what_ever 6y ago
  Netflix now provides an option to disable that.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Muting your sound makes that dark pattern somewhat less annoying.
- sabana 6y ago
  You must love Netflix then (you can turn autoplay off, but I'm sure you know that, right?)
  - tyingq 6y ago
    No, I didn't. Last I looked you couldn't at all. Apparently I can now, but not via my Roku. I have to figure out how to get to Netflix from a PC apparently.
    - foepys 6y ago
      Yeah, it's quite bad UX. The subtitles can also only be configured via the website, which is something not many people seem to know. On my TV the default subtitle settings result in blooming so I configured them to be yellow with a black border and transparent background.
    - SCNP 6y ago
      Also note that you're usually limited to a certain video quality when watching on a PC. Unless thing have changed since I last checked, you can't go past 1080p on a computer; you have to be on a streaming device (Roku, AppleTV, etc.) This is why I usually watch streaming services through my Playstation even though I have the PC hooked up to my big TV.
      - what_ever 6y ago
        You only need to go to the PC to access that setting. Then you can resume watching Netflix from anywhere you want.
PeterStuer 6y ago
It truly baffles me how one could devise an interface so bad as the PrimeVideo UI. I have yet to discover the algorithm behind the near random search results trows up, and autocomplete for 90% of the cases trows up something 'that is not available in your region'. It's 2020. How hard can it be to serve a small catalogue of available titles and allow some decent parameterized querying?
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  I also always wonder how companies can simultaneously offer to sell their highly advanced AI-bla search, yet utterly fail at searching themselves. I still remember the time when Google tried to license their search servers to enterprises. It appears that market has now been completely eaten by Algolia. And my hunch is that it's because Google's search results are completely irrelevant for professional users. I search for a Windows API function name, and I get pages of SEO spam trying to sell me an unrelated Udemy beginner's course.
  - 1DRACOSEA8 6y ago
    You sound like an idiot. I’m sure you were not intending to Communicate so naively a point, if that, lazily delegated to the tongue not the cortex at hand; an expression without closure. No company is looking to serve you, for one, you hang out at HN. Hackers are terrible customers. You can toil away in darkness for all I care, little paper work, little trail. Some of the best projects were done with secrecy in mind, resulted in seemingly failure, but they ended being successful by not listening to the naysayers: MONODEVELOP, KUBERNETES, ETC
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  Do you know of any articles on what is wrong with Prime UI? I am writing up a proposal to fix a similar service that also has really bad UI - I would like to see if there are intersections between them.
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    No article I know of, but I'm happy to start a chain of complaints here: - When you search for a title, even if that title is in their library, odds are the exact match won't be the first result - The differentiation between what is rentable, purchasable and freely streamable (with gradations based on different subscriptions) is incomprehensible from the listings pages.
danmaz74 6y ago
Among the crazy UX failures, fast forward is so crazy fast that it's completely unusable for me.
- abhgh 6y ago
  I am seeing a new UI for the past few weeks, where the FF is 10s at a time, with frames displayed over the progress bar: much like Netflix. The newer experience is much better.
  - danmaz74 6y ago
    Really looking forward to that being deployed to my TV.
what_ever 6y ago
I recently got a new UI on my LG TV app which is much better than the old one.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
You'd think that after 15 years or so of streaming video (probably more) they'd get making a UI for it right. What I'm instead seeing is an attempt at copying Netflix' interface. This is actually far too common - competing services that just copy their competitor's homework when it comes to UI. I mean it makes sense in a way if you're targeting that service's current members, they're familiar enough with the UI etc.
maeln 6y ago
I am always astonished at how bad the UI of Amazon products are. I know that there is some dark pattern used on purpose, but even the "normal UI" is a disaster. It lacks clarity, it doesn't convey the information needed, it is often confusing ... How can the e-shopping leader can have a worse UI that a small business ? It keep boggling my mind.
cam_l 6y ago
I almost don't think any service will ever get a decent ui. It seems to be against the business model to be able to search easily and keep lists of what you have watched and what you want to watch. But TBH I would just like to watch one video on prime without it being stretched out of shape. It is probably some weird edge case with my particular STB, but every other streaming service seems to manage it properly.
mchusma 6y ago
The UI on prime was so much better than the Hulu UI from about 2018-june 2020. Someone clearly wanted to do something "different and more beautiful than Netflix". The result was basically scrolling through shows one at a time. search was bad. Horrible. My wife and I tried to re-watch some episodes of Brooklyn 99, and every time we would watch them they would start 20s from the end of the show. Like they stored that we had last watched ending at the end (-0s) and now when coming back months or years later, we might want to resume watching the last 0s with a buffer before (a bad resume behavior). It seems they finally dropped that UI I'm the last few months to something sane, maybe the same as before I don't remember.

tyingq 6y ago

I'm willing to accept a mediocre UI that doesn't start auto playing every video I hover over for more than a second.

cgriswald 6y ago
Indeed. It’s also better than another UI which requires an esoteric feature of a remote control that I don’t even use and offers no way of switching that stupid choice off, preventing me from ever getting more information about the shows it is presenting beyond the title and banner. It’s also better than one that always says I’m logged out when I start it, and then magically logs me in a minute or two later... while I’m in the process of trying to log in. (Or any of the several other ones that require me to log in nearly every time.) Of course calling any of these a “User Interface” is almost laughable. SLOM is a better term. That’s “Small Library Obfuscatory Method” for the uninitiated. Or maybe they’re just trying to save bandwidth by making viewers spend viewing time searching pointlessly through their offerings that are ordered seemingly according to the pattern of pigeon droppings outside their office.
what_ever 6y ago
Netflix now provides an option to disable that.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Muting your sound makes that dark pattern somewhat less annoying.
sabana 6y ago
You must love Netflix then (you can turn autoplay off, but I'm sure you know that, right?)
- tyingq 6y ago
  No, I didn't. Last I looked you couldn't at all. Apparently I can now, but not via my Roku. I have to figure out how to get to Netflix from a PC apparently.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Yeah, it's quite bad UX. The subtitles can also only be configured via the website, which is something not many people seem to know. On my TV the default subtitle settings result in blooming so I configured them to be yellow with a black border and transparent background.
  - SCNP 6y ago
    Also note that you're usually limited to a certain video quality when watching on a PC. Unless thing have changed since I last checked, you can't go past 1080p on a computer; you have to be on a streaming device (Roku, AppleTV, etc.) This is why I usually watch streaming services through my Playstation even though I have the PC hooked up to my big TV.
    - what_ever 6y ago
      You only need to go to the PC to access that setting. Then you can resume watching Netflix from anywhere you want.

PeterStuer 6y ago

It truly baffles me how one could devise an interface so bad as the PrimeVideo UI. I have yet to discover the algorithm behind the near random search results trows up, and autocomplete for 90% of the cases trows up something 'that is not available in your region'. It's 2020. How hard can it be to serve a small catalogue of available titles and allow some decent parameterized querying?

fxtentacle 6y ago
I also always wonder how companies can simultaneously offer to sell their highly advanced AI-bla search, yet utterly fail at searching themselves. I still remember the time when Google tried to license their search servers to enterprises. It appears that market has now been completely eaten by Algolia. And my hunch is that it's because Google's search results are completely irrelevant for professional users. I search for a Windows API function name, and I get pages of SEO spam trying to sell me an unrelated Udemy beginner's course.
- 1DRACOSEA8 6y ago
  You sound like an idiot. I’m sure you were not intending to Communicate so naively a point, if that, lazily delegated to the tongue not the cortex at hand; an expression without closure. No company is looking to serve you, for one, you hang out at HN. Hackers are terrible customers. You can toil away in darkness for all I care, little paper work, little trail. Some of the best projects were done with secrecy in mind, resulted in seemingly failure, but they ended being successful by not listening to the naysayers: MONODEVELOP, KUBERNETES, ETC
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
Do you know of any articles on what is wrong with Prime UI? I am writing up a proposal to fix a similar service that also has really bad UI - I would like to see if there are intersections between them.
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  No article I know of, but I'm happy to start a chain of complaints here: - When you search for a title, even if that title is in their library, odds are the exact match won't be the first result - The differentiation between what is rentable, purchasable and freely streamable (with gradations based on different subscriptions) is incomprehensible from the listings pages.

danmaz74 6y ago

Among the crazy UX failures, fast forward is so crazy fast that it's completely unusable for me.

abhgh 6y ago
I am seeing a new UI for the past few weeks, where the FF is 10s at a time, with frames displayed over the progress bar: much like Netflix. The newer experience is much better.
- danmaz74 6y ago
  Really looking forward to that being deployed to my TV.

what_ever 6y ago

I recently got a new UI on my LG TV app which is much better than the old one.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

You'd think that after 15 years or so of streaming video (probably more) they'd get making a UI for it right. What I'm instead seeing is an attempt at copying Netflix' interface. This is actually far too common - competing services that just copy their competitor's homework when it comes to UI. I mean it makes sense in a way if you're targeting that service's current members, they're familiar enough with the UI etc.

maeln 6y ago

I am always astonished at how bad the UI of Amazon products are. I know that there is some dark pattern used on purpose, but even the "normal UI" is a disaster. It lacks clarity, it doesn't convey the information needed, it is often confusing ... How can the e-shopping leader can have a worse UI that a small business ? It keep boggling my mind.

cam_l 6y ago

I almost don't think any service will ever get a decent ui. It seems to be against the business model to be able to search easily and keep lists of what you have watched and what you want to watch. But TBH I would just like to watch one video on prime without it being stretched out of shape. It is probably some weird edge case with my particular STB, but every other streaming service seems to manage it properly.

mchusma 6y ago

The UI on prime was so much better than the Hulu UI from about 2018-june 2020. Someone clearly wanted to do something "different and more beautiful than Netflix". The result was basically scrolling through shows one at a time. search was bad. Horrible. My wife and I tried to re-watch some episodes of Brooklyn 99, and every time we would watch them they would start 20s from the end of the show. Like they stored that we had last watched ending at the end (-0s) and now when coming back months or years later, we might want to resume watching the last 0s with a buffer before (a bad resume behavior). It seems they finally dropped that UI I'm the last few months to something sane, maybe the same as before I don't remember.