I don't see that those disadvantages are inherent to using an HTML 5 based application at all. After all, the browsers on my desktop use native scrolling, widge

I don't see that those disadvantages are inherent to using an HTML 5 based application at all. After all, the browsers on my desktop use native scrolling, widgets, etc. There's no reason Netflix couldn't spruce up the browser side of things to make it more "native", and continue to enjoy the benefits of having most of the application logic server-side.