Hulu did the same thing (with their Xbox app at least) recently and it really got me thinking.

After a while I started to think maybe they aren't optimizing for what we might expect.

By providing a UI that makes it slightly harder to find shows, displays as few shows at a time as possible and one that lures you into watching whatever is on the screen at the moment (even if just for a minute) they are effectively increasing the value of each piece of content and increasing the odds that you will watch whatever is on the screen while at the same time decreasing the odds that you will fall into choice paralysis.

This also might make it seem like they have more new/relevant content than they really do.

I'm not really well versed in this area, but I'd love to see an analysis of this hypothesis by someone who is more competent in this kind of design.