I wish Netflix would force HBO Go and Amazon Prime Video into an UX war. It drives me crazy how bad the player and the general experience are on these 2 services. You can’t even pause with the space bar on HBO.
Amazon's search works so much better and feels less algorithmically personalized (something which I believe is a horrible anti-feature in all of these services). And because Amazon can support letting me buy or rent content that isn't stocked in the Prime Video service, the search results are _so_ much more useful to me. Often in Netflix, I just want to know _if_ they are carrying a certain title right now or not, and don't want to be presented with alternatives that are "similar in spirit" to whatever I was searching.
I also find that the "continue watching" section on Netflix frequently does not appear as the first row, and there are all sorts of "trending" or "critically acclaimed" rows that I have to scroll through to get back up to the "continue watching row" at the top. While on Amazon, this section is always at the top, and automatically updates with shows that have released a new episode since the last time I signed in.
Netflix already feels like an outdated brand to me, like it's the cheap way of doing a streaming platform. I get it that network-specific apps like NBCSN sports apps and HBO Go, etc., these probably will suck because it's a network that is probably utterly incompetent at investing in technology.
But Netflix really disappoints me. I think in the long run, Netflix will not be remembered as fondly as it is now, though we all benefit from the huge bidding war on talent creating great shows.
It's like not having the light in your fridge go on when you open the door. It's not important for the actual purpose of the thing but it is something one has come to expect.
Hi, I'm mindcrime. Now you know somebody who watches Netflix on a device with a spacebar.
The point was that someone replied originally by saying the need for space bar to pause a video trumped everything else, and my goal was to emphasize how there might be _utterly gigantic_ subpopulations of streaming service customers for whom such a feature would literally never be relevant. So that perhaps it's not a useful feature by which to judge the overall quality of different providers, even if you happen to be one of the rare people who really relies on it.
Same. I rarely if ever watch Netflix on anything other than my laptop.
- skip the intros in 1 click
- access any episode of the season you're watching from the player
- see which episodes I already watched from the player
- have a summary of the previous episodes from the player
- english subtitles outside of the US on every Netflix shows
- i also think the search algorithm is better
As far as the interfaces for selecting what to watch, in my opinion they are equally bad. I no longer use them to discover content. Instead I find something I want to watch elsewhere and search for it directly.
I know that scrolling up instead of down will get you to 'My List' very quickly, and I believe 'Continue Watching' is there too, but I cannot confirm while I'm at work. I almost never scroll down anymore (unless I do so subconsciously).
I'm nearing a year as a Netflix user, yet I still have no idea how that list is sorted. It's not sorted by last added, last updated, recently watched, alphabetic or any other method that I can make any sense of. There is no button to change the sorting method.
Of course, this list is also re-sorted very often, so I simply have to look around and find where they placed my favorite show today in a list of 50~ items, while trying to have a breakfast.
Prime is good while watching. For finding content Netflix is superior IMHO. The recommendation algorithm is better, plus the search is better. Amazon Prime treats seasons as distinct entities - so you need to manually add each available season of a show.
Their algorithms heavily favor their own original content, and they clearly have stopped giving a shit about movies in general, and focus almost entirely on whatever latest and greatest darling shows they produce.
Very sincerely, the information retrieval experience of Amazon is the main thing that makes Amazon significantly superior, instead of just being a little better on small touches.
I should also point out that I pretty much hate Amazon as a company, and frankly it pains me to admit all this, but very truly they are running circles around Netflix with their streaming service.
Talk about cheaply done streaming -- apparently sticking a retail UI meant for shopping for chairs and peanut butter on top of videos is premium to you?
I would say I have a very generic use case of these services:
- I want to rent / buy content when it’s not part of what’s already in the streaming service.
- I don’t want algorithmically personalized results. I want “exact search” to always work.
- I want the top panel area when I log in to always have the content I’ve been actively watching, so that the easiest thing to do is to resume.
The video player, connectivity, lack of bugs, subtitles, non-Western content, ability to directly integrate premium add ons, etc., are all just superior to Netflix.
Netflix literally has one advantage: some of its original shows are good enough that I still want to watch them despite the Netflix app environment being unpleasant to use. I wish I could do even that through Amazon.
I'm also very surprised that X-ray does not hi-lite items on the screen that you could click to buy on Amazon (I assume someone is working on this), not saying I want it, just surprised the feature doesn't exist.