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I don't know about other people, but finding something to watch on Netflix is frustrating, there's so much poor quality shows. The recommendations are not good

I don't know about other people, but finding something to watch on Netflix is frustrating, there's so much poor quality shows. The recommendations are not good (tbf that's most streaming services) and there's no option for granular filtering. For example, I hate dubs, I would like to pick shows where the original audio is some particular language, I don't get why that isn't there? In contrast, on HBO Max / Disney+, usually there's far less content but since the quality is better you can easily pick something to watch.

autoexec 4y ago
I agree, netflix might be too embarrassed by their catalogue to show people a simple A-Z listing of everything they have, but I'd absolutely watch netflix more often if they did. Scrolling through the same shows I'm not interested in over and over across their multiple random/useless categories takes up way too much time. Every so often I'll go to search and enter random 2-3 letter combinations because I usually find a bunch of stuff I'd like to see but Netflix has been hiding from me.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  I have to wonder how much of this is to favor cache hits for streams over picking the bytes up out of storage. That is, if a bunch of people are streaming a show, it's easier to add a few more and reuse the edge cache. Most viewers won't go beyond the recommendations, so the back-catalog pulls are less frequent, and less pressure on the infrastructure. Total speculation, though.
  - vitus 4y ago
    > how much of this is to favor cache hits for streams over picking the bytes up out of storage. Netflix's catalog historically has been small enough that it can fit within a single rack. With 8Mbps [0] bitrates for 4k (okay, add 50% for transcoding to lower resolutions, so let's call it 12Mbps), we get about 5.4GB per hour of video. At 360TB for a single 2U Open Connect storage device [1], that translates to 67k hours of 4k video. This article from 2020 [2] indicated that US Netflix's catalog was about 36k hours. Even at 50% growth since then it would still comfortably fit on a single machine. [0] "The highest 4K bitrate on average is 8 Mbps which is also a 50% reduction compared to 16 Mbps of the fixed-bitrate ladder." https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for-4k-now-streaming-47b516b10bbb https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for... [1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/#the-hardware https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/#the-hardware [2] https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/how-long-would-it-take-to-watch-all-of-netflix/ https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/how-long-would-it-take...
- tedsanders 4y ago
  They already have simple A-Z listings. All TV shows A-Z: https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?so=az https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?so=az All movies A-Z: https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?so=az https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?so=az You can find it in the web UI by clicking a TV or movie page, and then choosing Sort A-Z. The reason it's so buried is that it's pretty useless. Most people don't want to scroll through a hundred mostly bad shows starting with punctuation symbols and numbers. Agree with you that it would be lovely if Netflix had more fine-grained controls.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Doesn't seem to work if you aren't logged in, but I'll give it a try once I'm in my account. Thanks!
- CraigRood 4y ago
  The UI/UX is the crux of the problem for me, and infact, the same problem with Amazon Prime. They both have fantastic shows and films, I know because i've seen some of them, but they NEVER seem to show up in app. Instead, I get endless scrolling of the same shows I skip over every time. The algo doesn't seem to learn (Not to say it doesn't but the perception). The UI doesn't have enough unique elements to drive the algo. What I mean is if I tend to watch 20min comedy shows between 9-11pm. Create me some blocks of shows that meet this criteria. So a rewatch, continue and a new show. They need to allow the customer to feed in more data. Integrate IMDB, Trakt etc and farm this data to improve recommendations, even if they are shows/films outside of their catalogue. I have a feeling that the lack of "I've seen this before outside of Netflix" button and the simple thumbs up or down doesn't provide the depth in the data. I get why they moved to the current rating system, the thread on here discussing it at the time was actually really insightful for someone who was learning algos at the time.
  - prawn 4y ago
    We subscribe to Netflix, Disney, Binge, Prime and previously Stan. They all have annoyingly poor interfaces in one way or another. It's quite amazing that not one of them has excelled at allowing you to find something you might want to watch.
o_1 4y ago
It used to be even better, they had user ratings in early versions. Hiding content or forcing users to watch things is extremely bad. they got away with all this because they had such a huge headstart on 90% of online streaming. There were no other options. Now... those things are starting to sour out. I remember finding great b movies and content with user reviews.
wbsss4412 4y ago
> I would like to pick shows where the original audio is some particular language, I don't get why that isn't there? I’m somewhat confused by your sentiments here, if you search “French”/”Spanish”/etc Netflix will bring up a list of movies and shows in those languages, it’s one of my main uses of Netflix these days.
- verve_rat 4y ago
  I never knew this. Is it taught to users anywhere? How did you find this feature? Netflix's UX is fucking terrible. Even when they do something right, they do it wrong.
  - wbsss4412 4y ago
    Oh you’re totally right, the feature isn’t advertised at all. I just found it one day searching. I can’t blame you for not knowing about it.
    - Jcowell 4y ago
      This is probably a very unpopular opinion but at a certain point I blame the user (i feel like blame is the wrong word here) . At a certain point a UI can’t cater to everything and a user needs to experiment. I feel like that’s something that’s been lost this past decade. User experimentation. “I hate autoplaying videos!” If you hate it so much why not going it he settings and turn it off. A quick Google search will help you. “I want an A-Z list for Netflix” Again a quick Google search will show you a way.
      - verve_rat 4y ago
        They only added the option to turn off auto play quite recently.
somat 4y ago
Netflix was doing fine as a dvd rental platform, hell netflix was doing great, they then made a jump to a streaming platform and did well there. The movie production studios saw how well netflix was doing and so started making their own streaming platforms preventing netflix from streaming their movies. so netflix in a desperation move said "fine" then we will make our own movies. And so here we are, despite living in the post movie scarcity future you can never watch the movie you want to because it is on a different streaming service.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Well, mostly the answer for films is that you buy a la carte. (Or pirate I guess.)

autoexec 4y ago

I agree, netflix might be too embarrassed by their catalogue to show people a simple A-Z listing of everything they have, but I'd absolutely watch netflix more often if they did. Scrolling through the same shows I'm not interested in over and over across their multiple random/useless categories takes up way too much time. Every so often I'll go to search and enter random 2-3 letter combinations because I usually find a bunch of stuff I'd like to see but Netflix has been hiding from me.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
I have to wonder how much of this is to favor cache hits for streams over picking the bytes up out of storage. That is, if a bunch of people are streaming a show, it's easier to add a few more and reuse the edge cache. Most viewers won't go beyond the recommendations, so the back-catalog pulls are less frequent, and less pressure on the infrastructure. Total speculation, though.
- vitus 4y ago
  > how much of this is to favor cache hits for streams over picking the bytes up out of storage. Netflix's catalog historically has been small enough that it can fit within a single rack. With 8Mbps [0] bitrates for 4k (okay, add 50% for transcoding to lower resolutions, so let's call it 12Mbps), we get about 5.4GB per hour of video. At 360TB for a single 2U Open Connect storage device [1], that translates to 67k hours of 4k video. This article from 2020 [2] indicated that US Netflix's catalog was about 36k hours. Even at 50% growth since then it would still comfortably fit on a single machine. [0] "The highest 4K bitrate on average is 8 Mbps which is also a 50% reduction compared to 16 Mbps of the fixed-bitrate ladder." https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for-4k-now-streaming-47b516b10bbb https://netflixtechblog.com/optimized-shot-based-encodes-for... [1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/#the-hardware https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/#the-hardware [2] https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/how-long-would-it-take-to-watch-all-of-netflix/ https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/how-long-would-it-take...
tedsanders 4y ago
They already have simple A-Z listings. All TV shows A-Z: https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?so=az https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/83?so=az All movies A-Z: https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?so=az https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?so=az You can find it in the web UI by clicking a TV or movie page, and then choosing Sort A-Z. The reason it's so buried is that it's pretty useless. Most people don't want to scroll through a hundred mostly bad shows starting with punctuation symbols and numbers. Agree with you that it would be lovely if Netflix had more fine-grained controls.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Doesn't seem to work if you aren't logged in, but I'll give it a try once I'm in my account. Thanks!
CraigRood 4y ago
The UI/UX is the crux of the problem for me, and infact, the same problem with Amazon Prime. They both have fantastic shows and films, I know because i've seen some of them, but they NEVER seem to show up in app. Instead, I get endless scrolling of the same shows I skip over every time. The algo doesn't seem to learn (Not to say it doesn't but the perception). The UI doesn't have enough unique elements to drive the algo. What I mean is if I tend to watch 20min comedy shows between 9-11pm. Create me some blocks of shows that meet this criteria. So a rewatch, continue and a new show. They need to allow the customer to feed in more data. Integrate IMDB, Trakt etc and farm this data to improve recommendations, even if they are shows/films outside of their catalogue. I have a feeling that the lack of "I've seen this before outside of Netflix" button and the simple thumbs up or down doesn't provide the depth in the data. I get why they moved to the current rating system, the thread on here discussing it at the time was actually really insightful for someone who was learning algos at the time.
- prawn 4y ago
  We subscribe to Netflix, Disney, Binge, Prime and previously Stan. They all have annoyingly poor interfaces in one way or another. It's quite amazing that not one of them has excelled at allowing you to find something you might want to watch.

o_1 4y ago

It used to be even better, they had user ratings in early versions. Hiding content or forcing users to watch things is extremely bad. they got away with all this because they had such a huge headstart on 90% of online streaming. There were no other options. Now... those things are starting to sour out. I remember finding great b movies and content with user reviews.

wbsss4412 4y ago

> I would like to pick shows where the original audio is some particular language, I don't get why that isn't there? I’m somewhat confused by your sentiments here, if you search “French”/”Spanish”/etc Netflix will bring up a list of movies and shows in those languages, it’s one of my main uses of Netflix these days.

verve_rat 4y ago
I never knew this. Is it taught to users anywhere? How did you find this feature? Netflix's UX is fucking terrible. Even when they do something right, they do it wrong.
- wbsss4412 4y ago
  Oh you’re totally right, the feature isn’t advertised at all. I just found it one day searching. I can’t blame you for not knowing about it.
  - Jcowell 4y ago
    This is probably a very unpopular opinion but at a certain point I blame the user (i feel like blame is the wrong word here) . At a certain point a UI can’t cater to everything and a user needs to experiment. I feel like that’s something that’s been lost this past decade. User experimentation. “I hate autoplaying videos!” If you hate it so much why not going it he settings and turn it off. A quick Google search will help you. “I want an A-Z list for Netflix” Again a quick Google search will show you a way.
    - verve_rat 4y ago
      They only added the option to turn off auto play quite recently.

somat 4y ago

Netflix was doing fine as a dvd rental platform, hell netflix was doing great, they then made a jump to a streaming platform and did well there. The movie production studios saw how well netflix was doing and so started making their own streaming platforms preventing netflix from streaming their movies. so netflix in a desperation move said "fine" then we will make our own movies. And so here we are, despite living in the post movie scarcity future you can never watch the movie you want to because it is on a different streaming service.

ghaff 4y ago
Well, mostly the answer for films is that you buy a la carte. (Or pirate I guess.)