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Disclaimer, I worked at Netflix for 5 years. There are some interesting challenges in the clients. The TV client needs to run on devices with very little memory
by city41 5y ago
Disclaimer, I worked at Netflix for 5 years. There are some interesting challenges in the clients. The TV client needs to run on devices with very little memory, and processors roughly as powerful as a Pentium 2. The JavaScript must be interpreted too, no JITing allowed. Getting smooth experiences everywhere in the world where internet quality and device power varies drastically, all in one code base that about 100 people work on, is a pretty good challenge. For example an entire proprietary "browser" was created with the goal of being low memory and high performance. So for TV devices, the entire dev stack from top to bottom had to be created mostly from scratch. This included forking React to create a version that would run on this platform.
It's also interesting on the other end, what cool stuff can be done on the PS5 for example? Shaders and animation techniques are also pretty interesting to explore.
- emilfihlman 5y agoNetflix is regularly slow or laggy with its ui even on perfectly normal hardware so you kind of failed with your task.
- gmadsen 5y agothats pretty rude to be honest. Netflix has done a better job than anyone else at creating a video platform
- herbst 5y agoHow so? The local streaming services from German TV channels work just as well without needing so much RAM for just the interface.
- gmadsen 5y agolet me know when German TV serves over 200 million people on as many devices as Netflix
- herbst 5y agoYou think the amount of users or devices has something to do with how performant and we'll designed their interface is? These channels to have support for browser, phones, android, and smart TVs. They prolly just ain't trying to make one Interface work for them all.
- fouc 5y agoThe context of this sub-thread is about the client-side performance though
- handrous 5y agoIt used to be remarkably good. Agree that over half the other services I use have much better UX, now. Actually the only one I can think of that I don't like way better is Amazon. Back when it was more catalog-like it was far more pleasant to use and performed much better, but I'm sure that wasn't making whatever metrics they're optimizing for do what they wanted, plus that's way too boring-looking in screenshots for their designers' portfolios, I'm sure.
- ben-gy 5y agoI can’t remember ever having experienced a slow or laggy Netflix experience, on any device…
- tedunangst 5y agoIt's pretty janky on the older Roku boxes. Mostly due to trying to auto play videos I believe.
- jonathanlydall 5y agoOn my AppleTV (the first one supporting Apps) for at least a year it could get horribly laggy when browsing, seemed to get worse and worse until you restarted the app, then it was fine again for a while. Thankfully it's been fixed for many months now.
- jeroenhd 5y agoOn my TV (Sony Bravia, from before the Android TV ones), Netflix is terribly slow and occasionally crashes. It used to be smooth and stable, but I don't know who to blame here; the problems could've been caused by Sony, but they could have just as easily been caused by Netflix. I've learned my lesson, though, and now I just pirate Netflix content I want to see on my TV so I can watch it on Kodi. I'm not planning on replacing my TV any time soon and getting Netflix integration into Kodi is too much of a bother. Unless Netflix comes out with an official Kodi addon, I'll just stick to this setup.
- boring_twenties 5y agoI use a PS3 (yes, from 2008) to watch Netflix and it works fine.
- hakube 5y agoKind of rude. But I have no problems with Netflix on my Smart TV, PS4 and a low-end Android phone
- herbst 5y agoI have to agree, it's heavy as website, way more than any other streaming service I've used. There are visible lags and freezes between episodes. On all of my devices. Personally I never thought this to be one of their strengths
- emilfihlman 5y agoExactly, it's good looking, but it's absolutely not performant.
- herbst 5y agoThat's subjective ;) but it works. It also has better discovery than many others do (mainly due to not having a lot of content tho)
- handrous 5y agoYeah, compared to some other providers they've clearly tuned the dial farther toward "looks exactly how we want, everywhere" versus "performs well everywhere". Though they're far from the worst offenders. But yes, the challenge with building the UI for a product like this is that it has to run on everything. Android from 2014? Yep. Some weird vendor Android that was installed on TVs the same year? Yep. Apple TV? Yep. Roku? Yep. Every video game console and some handhelds? Yep. And so on. Your build target list is insane. Luckily for them, they can get access to SDKs or dev kits that Mere Mortals cannot—for instance, IIRC there's a "big-boy shops only" SDK for Roku that lets you link in C/C++ libs and have much lower-level access to drawing routines, since otherwise it'd be impossible to make things like Netflix look as similar on there as it does elsewhere. As a user, I wish they didn't have that access, because it'd perform better if they had to use the same very-efficient UI the small players do (plus it'd make it harder for them to have the damn auto-playing videos everywhere).
- scarface74 5y agoThat might have something to do with the fact that Netflix originally created the first Roku and spun it off as not to compete with third party vendors…..
- ricardo81 5y agoCan't say I've had much of an issue with Netflix, other than on Edge with paging forwards and backwards causing lag/voice sync issues - but then that could easily be an Edge thing.
- scarface74 5y agoJust to confirm. My son still uses my first generation iPad from 2010 - an a4 processor running at 400Mhz with 256MB of RAM to watch Netflix.
- meibo 5y agoMeanwhile, I can't install Netflix on my 2016 iPad Mini because it's stuck on iOS 12 and the Netflix app requires iOS 13. So much for Apple "lifetime support", half of the store apps you want to use can't be installed anymore. If you don't have an iTunes backup, you're SoL.
- skhr0680 5y agoI’m not sure what Apple and Netflix are doing there. I have a 2012 iPad that has the Netflix app already installed and it works fine.
- larkost 5y agoMy Kids' iPad is on iOS 9, and I was able to download Netflix for it. I remember there was a "older version" button I needed to press when I downloaded it, so you might still be able to get at least Netflix on that one.
- meibo 5y agoThis only works if you are on an Apple ID that has had the old version of the app installed at any point in time, sadly. I don't have access to my old Apple IDs anymore, so I can't install any old apps.
- scarface74 5y agoIf you have a newer device, you can use your current ID to download the latest version and use your same login on your older device.
- scarface74 5y agoYes you can. Apple has supported installing the “last compatible version” since 2013. I can reset my original iPad, install Netflix and it will ask do I want to install the last compatible version. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250476703 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250476703 The same works for Plex. If you have ever installed it anywhere you can reinstall it. BTW, Apple never promised “lifetime support”.