It should be the simplest bloody thing for someone with their resources to offer keyboard shortcuts yet they've fouled the UX up in a major way. The main thing I've got against Netflix is that you have to full size the screen to hide the start menu every single time you start playback; the app simply doesn't let you stay full screen in the movie selection screen. And... please don't get me started on the experience of using Netflix on my 21:9 monitor on my primary PC. (The mind boggles.)
Fwiw my HTPC setup is an old yet capable Win10 PC on a new 4k 65", 2500k CPU, 8gb memory (will upgrade this soon), Nvidia 960 4GB GPU, Asus XONAR HDAV 1.3 Deluxe with a 20 year old Rotel / Infinity 5.1 hifi-ish system, using a Logitech TK820 from my couch. It is a very nice setup. I will sometimes run Visual Studio on it for some code war puzzles etc.