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Netflix ditches Webkit to roll out new UI for smart TVs, Roku boxes, consoles
- cupofjoakim 13y agoI'm still amazed how much effort is laid on the UX for consoles, while the browser version needs some urgent attention.
- onion2k 13y agoWhy? Most people watch Netflix content on a television through a console or a set-top box. It makes complete sense to concentrate resources developing the experience for those markets rather than the browser. On tablets and phones people will use the app. I'd guess that the number of people looking at Netflix content in a browser is probably in the low single digit percentile range.
- alex_doom 13y agoYou'd be forgetting about the college kid with a laptop segment.
- chii 13y agowhich i don't believe is a very high value segment - college and money don't mix very well imho.
- onion2k 13y agoNo I'm not. Netflix has about 40 million subscribers. 5% of them ('low single digit percentile') would still be 2 million - easily enough to account for college students, people who travel a lot, children, etc once you discount those who have tablets. There are 21 million college students in the US. 10% having Netflix accounts isn't completely out of the question, but it'd be a very impressive level of market penetration.
- saryant 13y agoAnecdotally, when I was in college, no one paid for their own account, they just used their parent's.
- flipside 13y agoAmong Netflix users, 48% watch on a computer screen (up from 44% last year); 23% watch on a smartphone (up from 11%); 15% watch on their iPad, way up from 5% last year. But the percentage of users who reported using Roku or Nintendo's Wii game console dropped this year. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2013/09/18/netflix-hulu-amazon-nielsen-viewership-data/2831535/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2013/09/18/netflix-hul...
- CmonDev 13y agoWith Silverlight and Flash dying there is no longer a good platform on the web for their kind of experience. They might just wait 5 years until HTML5 is finally good enough.
- lucian1900 13y agoIt's good enough now. They just have to give up on DRM.
- Kiro 13y agoNo, proper DRM support is what will make it good.
- lucian1900 13y agoHow exactly do users benefit from DRM?
- stonemetal 13y agoIt allows them to access content that they otherwise couldn't.
- kra3 13y agoIsn't it the bad effect of DRM rather than a benefit!
- jayrox 13y agoDRM is only a hinderance to legit users. Pirates are pirates and DRM isn't something they deal with.
- Karunamon 13y agoUh, no. That's some impressive exec-level doublethink. Content is open by default. DRM is a method by which you prevent people from accessing content.
- yskchu 13y agoThat article doesn't have much details on what the new UI is based on... does anyone know?
- codenapper 13y agoWill the Apple TV App be updated, too, or is it completely separate from the other implementations?
- accatyyc 13y agoIt will likely stay the same. I can't see what in the Apple TV app would use WebKit since it uses the exact same controls as the rest of the Apple TV. And honestly, I hope it stays the same because I think the ATV app is so much better than the Xbox/PS3/iPad apps... It's simple, doesn't bother me by autoplaying the next episode etc.
- smackfu 13y ago> It's simple, doesn't bother me by autoplaying the next episode etc. Amusing since that's generally the biggest complaint about the AppleTV version vs. the others.
- freehunter 13y agoThat's my complaint on Roku as well. When I'm doing housework, I like to have the TV on in the background. Having to stop every 22 minutes to play the next episode breaks my flow.
- rsynnott 13y agoThe AppleTV app doesn't use webkit; it's the standard, very limited AppleTV UI kit. This is why it's less terrible than most Netflix clients; less rope to hang themselves. They did manage to make it slightly awful within the constraints of the model, though; see the mechanism used for moving between seasons of a TV show.
- MaxGabriel 13y agoHere's am article on the Apple TV UI framework. It's called Back Row
- eliot_sykes 13y agoOk, so web browsers that use Webkit will still be supported. "Ditches Webkit" means Netflix no longer bundles Webkit in their non-browser clients.
- talmand 13y agoIsn't that what the title says? Or did it change?
- eliot_sykes 13y agoI don't believe the title has changed, its just the way I interpreted it upon first reading lead me to make that (hopefully) clarifying comment. It read to me that Netflix is stopping Webkit support entirely, which I realise is nonsense.
- recycledair 13y agoThe title has changed, it used to read: "Netflix ditches Webkit and HTML5 to roll out new UI" Which seems to imply they ditched it entirely.
- thatthatis 13y agoI initially took this as a condemnation of HTML5 as a common runtime, but it looks to be more a condemnation of "shipping webkit yourself to get an HTML5 common runtime" I'd love to know more about what they're doing on platforms that have webviews.
- wambotron 13y agoThis is interesting to me personally as Netflix had contacted me to potentially work there specifically on the WebKit engine and apps roughly 18 months ago. That is, at the same time they were already making it obsolete. I wonder if it was secret even within the organization.
- programminggeek 13y agoI think the same pattern is repeating over and over again, a company uses something like HTML 5 to get traction cheaply on multiple platforms, then when they want to provide a better user experience, they go some kind of native to provide more/better features on specific platforms. It seems like an entirely pragmatic approach.
- wnevets 13y agoI doubt my two year plasma will get the update
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoThere was something minimalist and efficient about the old design - lots of information in front of the viewer, easy to pan across 100 movies quickly. Now, two rows, lots of bandwidth used to update the ad frame dominating half the screen. Its slick and showy and ... less useful for browsing movie titles?
- ams6110 13y agoThey should forget about all that and spend the money on MORE CONTENT. I don't give a shit about the UI, I want something worth watching. I don't go to Netflix to ooh and ahh over the pretty UI.
- therobot24 13y agospending money making current customers happy with a better experience is never wasted if their current UI sucked you'd be complaining about having trouble finding a movie -- which you kind of are doing already. IMO one of Netflix's major problems is the UI, when i'm on my PS3 and looking for something to watch, there are 75 movies from different subsets (most of which are unrated by me - promoting me to watch something i haven't seen) - the problem with this is i often like to watch things i have already seen (hence the reason i buy a dvd). That content isn't readily available or easy to search unless i remember or already know what i want.
- swernoxidation 13y agoI thought that Netflix required Microsoft Silverlight to play?
- chestnut-tree 13y agoOn a related note, the BBC has an open source library for building HTML apps on TV called the TV Application Layer (TAL) which looks very promising: http://fmtvp.github.io/tal/ http://fmtvp.github.io/tal/
- pasbesoin 13y agoAlthough the older Roku's are not initial targets for deployment, the timing nonetheless seems to roughly correspond with when my Roku XD started rebooting every hour or two while playing Netflix. If there's some correspondence on the back end, I hope Netflix will sort it out, as the reboot takes a good couple of minutes; additionally, the glitch strikes suddenly and hard enough that the current location in the playing stream is not saved.