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Comment by jeffwass | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone felt that Netflix’s UI has deteriorated massively?

I’ve had it on appleTV for several years. It used to be really easy to browse and find content.

But they’ve completely changed the app and now I feel you either need to know what to specifically look for, or happen to find something in the random “suggestions since you’ve watched X” on the main menu which are a fairly random set of X’s.

They even (as far as I can tell) got rid of the helpful list of alternate suggestions when you select a specific movie.

I don’t understand the need for insane UI’s, do companies feel they must make major UI changes so it looks like they’re not stagnating?

Another theory someone said about their complicated UI is that they perhaps massively reduced the size of the available library, and a convoluted UI hides this fact.

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Yep. I was actually thinking several times over the last month that I should discontinue Netflix as I don't use it as often as I wish due to the user experience.

I think about putting on a film but then I think about the constant barrage of trailers and the difficulty of finding something good (recommendations are useless), so usually I end up dropping the idea.

Just need to finish Altered Carbon and I'll be dropping it.

'(recommendations are useless)'

You've watched 12 horror movies so, guess what, we're recommending this crock of ___ because it is also a horror movie...

Seems to be the sophistication of it?

So first off, thumbs up and thumbs down is dumb.

There are movies which are really great, there are movies that aren't but are still worth watching, there are movies that aren't great and aren't really worth watching, and then there's the movies with Adam Sandler or Amy Schumer in them...

And reasons for liking a film could be that I liked the cinematography, or the script, or maybe just one actor, and not just that it was a horror movie.

Take for example Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010). It's weird, the story wasn't all that for me, the ending is weak. But I loved the way the director shoot it as an 80's sci-fi film, really capturing the look and feel of those films. And well, I love slightly weird movies. So overall it's a movie I really enjoyed watching, and will likely watch again a few times. So just how would Netflix interpret my thumbs up for this movie?

I've rated literally hundreds of movies in Netflix. I still get 90+% match recommendations that I can tell just from the poster and blurb that I'll hate (and my control for this are the movies I've watched elsewhere and hated). I've found some of the sub-50% match movies to be great, and really enjoyed watching them.

I know Netflix had this machine learning contest a few years back, looking for winners who made better recommendations than their own algorithm. But IMO it's just gotten worse and worse.

The struggle to find something to watch might be just what keeps me there. Can't find it easy enough to be able to say "I've seen everything worth watching on Netflix". Now I know there's some good stuff there just waiting to be discovered, so I watch this half crappy stuff until I do.

Yes.

They're also deteriorating in terms of product quality.

Tried to watch Bandersnatch last night, and it says "your device is not compatible. Try using a smartphone or a newer laptop"

But I was on a brand new laptop (Windows 10, 7700HQ, Radeon RX480). Netflix is telling people to use laptops, but they forgot to update their own laptop app to support their own movies.

I work in multimedia and interactive video, we have teams of just three or four people who support everything themselves (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web, etc). I don't understand how Netflix, with it's millions of dollars, can't do the same. Netflix's marketing claims they "only hire the best of the best" (and they probably do), but their actual product just feels so lazy, it's hard to reconcile the two. Why do you need the best people, if you don't want to build a good product?

> I don't understand how Netflix, with it's millions of dollars...

And I can't understand what's all the fuss about Netflix's hundreds of microservices. I mean, not that I know it that well, but basically on Netflix you pay a subscription and then stream whatever you want, right? What are those services doing, exactly? There's illegal streaming websites that don't look much different, aside from the payments.

>What are those services doing, exactly?

Probably generating logs about themselves.

What browser were you using?

I think some browsers don't play nice with the Bandersnatch script (browsers with SilverLight being one example)

> What browser were you using?

I wasn't. I was in Netflix's own official app. (I think they shell out to EDGE or Chromium underneath, but I don't know for sure.)

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/netflixs-interactive-bande...

Edit: Your first point stands, how haven't they updated their official app for one of their premier releases?

Ooh, same thing happened to me actually on my new(ish) Apple TV, wan’t compliant for the interactive Bandersnatch.

I had the option to watch without interactivity, is that worth it or does that miss 90% of the experience?

Don't bother. Movie is pretty bland by itself, only novelty of interactivity saves it. But if you ever player Detroit Become Human before, even interactivity is pretty weak here.

You didn't miss much. (subjective)

> Windows 10

There's your problem.

Yes it's gotten worse, but all the video services' interfaces are really terrible in various ways. What really drives me nuts about the current AppleTV app are the autoplay previews of every show you linger on for more than a second so you literally cannot get a moment's peace while flipping through the cruddy guide. And many of the previews are obviously computer-generated and are downright terrible.

I've been using Kodi (formerly xbmc) for years to watch my contraband content and I've got accounts to both Amazon Prime Video and Netflix for a few months already. It's pretty crazy how much better Kodi UI is compared to those services. At first I thought that it was just because I didn't know how to use these applications but no, they're just lacking basic features while at the same time being completely cluttered with what's effectively visual noise.

I'm actually still, uh, using alternative sources for some Netflix shows just because it means that I don't have to deal with their interfaces.

I hope that eventually we get a "Spotify for TV" but we're not there yet. What a mess.

The auto starting sound whenever you stop scrolling is utter garbage.

And if you look at a movies details, buckle up, you're committed, the movie is starting whether you wanted to wait until your wife gets in the room or not.

But I love the low-key anxiety of making sure I never stop on something too long! /s Actually, is there some evil psychology they've applied to make you scroll through more content in hopes you keep finding things to watch and pay for? "This doesn't sound perfect, but at least if I choose it I'll stop getting harrassed by the menu."

>I don’t understand the need for insane UI’s, do companies feel they must make major UI changes so it looks like they’re not stagnating?

I've noticed this on more than Netflix. The entire lifecycle of the Xbox 360 I think they made maybe two major UI overhauls. In the year since I've bought my Xbox One the UI has had major changes at least four times. Every couple of months I have to relearn how to find things and it's aggravating.

> Has anyone felt that Netflix’s UI has deteriorated massively?

That's inevitable when you have resident designers who must make things different to justify their tenure. Once you have reached a local optimum, they can make only things worse.

Honestly, I really have started missing the experience of going to a movie rental place with some friends and walking the isles to find a movie. When you don't know what to watch, that was the best way to pick things out.

Their library has increasingly sucked. They've changed their UI to be correspondingly undifferentiating, making this change less apparent without actually viewing the content. There's a good reason -- besides "touchscreen/TV interfaces" -- why user comments are gone, and their star ratings.

Speaking of interfaces, it seems the "tile" interface changes are oriented towards those touchscreen/TV formats.

Basically, I think they're enticing people with (some of) their "Netflix Originals". And they have a (now, very) few new or new-to-them A-list films circulating through.

For the rest, they just hope you'll click on something that sounds or looks (from the tile) like it could be good, and then be satisfied -- or at least put up with -- what you get.

That said, other people still seem pretty positive about their streaming offer. When they offer details from their viewing, I just don't agree.

It's pretty bad and convoluted. I see the same content in 80% of the first ten rows. I don't need "popular" and "trending" next to each other. Just get rid of one. I would love a way to reduce this to a simple grid of 50 items showing the box cover art with no previews unless I click to see them.

I second this. It also doesn’t help that they auto play trailers for whatever show you’re hovering over so you get distracted and can’t focus whilst trying to remember what show you were searching for. It really isn’t as user friendly as it used to be.

Yes. I find it irritating that the "Continue watching" section is not near the top, and you have to scroll to it.

What I find annoying about that, is that it's not even in the same place all the time. This is on a PC using the web interface, mind you, not some app. But I find that the "Continue Watching" section floats around in a range from "top of the page" to "about midway down the page, below 7 or 8 other blocks of entries". It's annoying as fuck, because the ONE thing I almost always want to see first is exactly the "Continue watching" section.

This is the one thing about Netflix that I do find flat-out infuriating.

> ...because the ONE thing I almost always want to see first is exactly the "Continue watching" section.

And that's precisely why you occasionally have to work for it, scrolling through other new content in between.

Apparently shoving other content beats the relatively small amount of criticism they get for those few extra user interactions.

But that's not actually helping them. I've already got a whole pile of stuff queued up that I'm watching, and as long as I'm watching that stuff, I'm not going to cancel my membership. And when I finish a series, I tend to go browsing for another one then (I guess I like to have approximately the same number "in flight" at any given time).

Then again, my patterns are probably not normal...

It has, but the UIs of Hulu and Prime are much worse.

This is what I don't get. Prime was pretty good a few years ago and then they really messed it up with the update. It has hints of dark patterns where it seems like they intentionally try to hide prime videos in hopes you'll pay for the rental. Even the playback options are bad if you need to ff or rewind. It reminds me of VHS days of guessing how far you need to go only to get it wrong.

Sometimes they also have multiple listings for the same content at different resolutions.

It has.

I've contemplated canceling only because the Apple TV interface and the auto play is frustrating. The web interface isn't any better and is worse then it was 5 or more years ago even. Not even their content is making up for it.

But then I remember, I'm not paying for it since another person in the household is paying for it. I only turn it on to either have something on in the background when I'm home alone or for background noise anyway.

>> Has anyone felt that Netflix’s UI has deteriorated massively?

I feel like this is related to the amount of content they have now. When I signed up, I was hunting for stuff to watch, and today, I can't keep up with all the stuff I'm interested in watching. There's too much coming too fast, and the UI just can't handle the volume.

In fairness to Netflix, the iOS App store had the same problem once there was an explosion in the number of apps. It got to the point where I could only use the App store if I knew the name of the app I was looking for.

I don't know if there's an easy UI solution for finding and discovering the right content in rapidly growing libraries, but that seems to be the dilemma for companies like Netflix, Apple, etc.

With respect to pricing, I can live with the hike because I feel like I'm still getting value for my money, especially considering how much I was paying for cable before I cut the cord.

It may also be due to the fact that they get your money regardless of how much you watch per month. It may be an effort to reduce operating costs by having you watch less.

They should be incentivized to have a good UI. If people don't enjoy using the app, then those people are more likely to cancel the subscription. I don't think Netflix wants to discourage people from using the app.

I don't think they want you to watch less. They just want you to watch the stuff they own the rights to which seems kind of odd since they don't publicize the viewership numbers.

They don't open the numbers to the public, but surely they're reported to the IP holders. Now suppose Netflix is about to renew a deal to stream something. They go to the IP holder and say, hey this movie has been watched just 100 times this month. So we can only pay $X to renew it. What they don't say is that the suggestion algorithm deliberately avoided showing the movie to users and therefore the view numbers have been greatly reduced.

I think the main reason is so they can get rid of stuff they don't own without people noticing as much.

Didn't they once provided a list of movies/series that were going to disappear soon or I'm recalling wrong?

I'm keeping my subscription only for my parents, and they also don't use it much, maybe two/three times a week.

They probably pay less per stream for the stuff they own. Cost to create the content most likely comes out of a different budget.

Or their metrics say people who watch their content don't close their accounts.

From what I understand, they don’t pay per stream. They pay one sum no matter how many people watch it.

Absolutely in agreement (although I'm on Windows). Here is my list of woes (off the top of my head):

- the supposedly intelligent AI-powered thumbnail/preview generator seems to not understand me in the slightest, often turning me off completely until I look them up on IMDB.

- replacing the 5 star rating system with a thumbs up/down... what about mediocre? Their library (in Europe) contains a huge amount of mediocre stuff.

- some Original Netflix content is only available in the US.

- the selection in Europe is very disparaging.

- after watching some movies e.g. Bandersnatch, you have 5 seconds to full-screen again before it auto-plays some other completely unrelated movie (instead of letting me enjoy the credits and accompanying music). In general I find auto-play only useful with series... although even then some series e.g. Black Mirror I really just want to listen to the great music played during the credits, and I have to scramble to find my keyboard within 5 seconds after watching a sometimes very emotional experience.

- it seems like they are primarily focused on adding series (Recently Added section is 90% series)... they seem to be opting to just fill their library with series as it gets people to keep coming back, but I actually prefer movies most of the time instead of getting sucked into another series.

- no way to disable/pause autoplay of spoiler/trailers when you initially log in, first thing I do after logging in is scroll down until it stops playing.

- sometimes they show an unavoidable/unpausable spoiler/trailer/advertisement right in the middle of the lists as you scroll down.

- why can I only create 4 profiles (and 1 kids profile)?

- I have been vocal lately and clicking the "?" button while watching a movie to leave feedback. I have yet to receive even a notification that they have at least read it, or preferably, that they might be working on any of the bugs/issues I've complained about.

- if you pause a show/movie for > 15 minutes (eg to go make popcorn, etc) and come back to it, your HD (720p of course because it's Firefox) version is replaced with a 240p/360p version, requiring a page refresh.

- no option to change resolution, my LTE modem has bad latency so Netflix auto-selects 360p for me for the first 3-5 minutes... the only solution is to refresh a few times until Netflix detects that my connection is actually sufficient to stream 720p. I was using the ctrl+alt+shift+s to manually set the resolution but they seem to have removed this a few months ago.

- native Netflix app for Windows 10 is horrendously slow and completely unusable.

- 1080p on Edge browser is not much better.

- after watching something from "My List" (where I have about 50 things saved), I have to manually go back to "My List" and find it to remove it... a button to remove it after watching would save me some trouble

- removing an item from "My List" causes the entire page to refresh and the position of everything is apparently random every time

I could definitely go on... it's a mess and it seems to be getting worse. I wonder if I'm an edge case for a lot of these issues... perhaps the general populous isn't bothered by a lot of these things? Otherwise I can't explain how they have so many top-payed engineers and how half of this shit is acceptable.

On the other hand, at least it's not as bad as Amazon Prime Video, which is an utter joke...

The 3rd generation Apple TV couldn’t really run apps. All apps were basically simple web pages that used WebKit and Apple’s TVML. It limited the UI of apps and they were all much more consistent.

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