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Comment by rajacombinator | Hacker News Reader

Finding Netflix fairly frustrating these days. Despite their runaway success they haven’t really done anything to change the Hollywood model. 99.9% crap with a sprinkle of watchable content. And despite the hoards of engineers and machine learning wizards they employ, discovery and interface has regressed in their product. Only reason I haven’t canceled yet is avoiding the hassle of going full torrent/YouTube.

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It is amazing to me that they offered a superior interface by any measure back in the DVD days. The AppleTV interface for Netflix is a disgrace. I don’t understand how they have all of these brilliant engineers, yet make an interface worse than what Spectrum provides.

What exactly are you looking for?

A better layout. Those ribbons are difficult to use, and the app uses a different design language than most.

I also find the discovery experience to be lousy... I often don’t hear about new shows for months, although I use the app every day.

What interface do you want?

I, for one, want a Tinder-like interface. Photo, title, synopsis, production budget, main cast, etc on each page. Swipe right to add to favorites, swipe left to reject. Choices presented best first as determined by machine learning model. It would be nice to be able to train multiple models, and to mix model predictions with those of friends and family. Separate favorite lists for things already watched and things not watched yet.

Second interface: "continue watching" list, most recently viewed at the top.

I personally find the Apple TV UI fine, not great but easy enough. However, discoverability is still horrible. It constantly shows the same recommendations over and over, including things I've just watched. You need to know what you want and then hope they have it online.

Not sure what you mean about the Hollywood model. Just about everything I've watched developed by Netflix has been above average. Maybe their junk is for things I'm not interested...

That's because they don't have many good things to discover so they have to obfuscate it.

This. Most movies I want to watch are still not in there. I still pay my monthly membership and refuse to subscribe to anything else by principle. They were the first to move and they could become what we've always wanted, but that's if we support them.

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