Netflix - Why We Choose HTML5 for User Experiences on Devices | Hacker News Reader

Netflix - Why We Choose HTML5 for User Experiences on Devices

techblog.netflix.com

64 pointstomeast24 comments

Except that Netflix's iPad app is so slow and clunky it's almost unusable.

I agree that it's less than ideal, but I wouldn't say unusable. The part that bothers me the most is the interrupted playback issues, which probably has nothing to do with html5.

That's why I used the qualifier "almost" ;)

That's the only iPad app my 2-year-old needs help navigating. He likes to watch Thomas and Friends on it, but by the time he's asking for help he's added about 50 things to my DVD queue. This happens almost every day, so whenever I drop a DVD to return in the mail I can't be sure what comes next.

Netflix's app is the opposite of how Gruber describes a great app: "...it should seem, when you’re using it, that the entire device was meant for it. E.g., a good chess game for the iPhone should make the iPhone itself feel like a chess playing device." [1]

The Netflix app feels painfully like using a computer, not a movie-finding-and-watching device. IMO, that's why HTML is the wrong choice, at least for iOS.

[1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/12/03/tablets

Is the iPad app the same code as the PS3 or a completely different code base?

Probably different. The iPad app is basically just a WebView pointing to a touch optimized site that looks basically the same as the desktop site.

Wait, so why can't I run Netflix on Ubuntu, then? If they're using HTML5, then shouldn't they have solved the problems with DRM preventing support for Linux?

But streaming video to a console allows them to not really have to worry abuot the DRM issues. They probably stick with a Silverlight solution on PCs until they can do DRM on HTML5.

BTW: there are many people waiting for W3C to add DRM to HTML5 video, but:

• <video> supports DRM already in shipping browsers — Safari on Mac plays FairPlay-restricted files.

• DRM by definition is in opposition of being open and interoperable, so it's impossible for HTML spec to do anything about it.

So its a custom webkit build, and I'm guessing the custom part is to either add a DRM'd media player to webkit. Or make use of an underlying PS3 media player which supports DRM.

My Roku box runs Netflix and I believe Roku is Linux.

Roku provides a secured media player which supports the necessary DRM.

Right now none of the major browsers (AFAIK) are supporting a DRM'd streaming media format for the HTML5 video tag. Note that on the PS3 Netflix isn't just providing a webpage, they're providing the whole damn browser, so they can either add DRM'd support in the browser or can extend the browser to allow the ability to call a native PS3 media player which support DRM. Neither of these two paths are feasible on your own Linux system.

Note its not Linux which is the problem, its the lack of necessary support built into the media players which run on Linux which cause the problem.

It does make you wonder how hard it would be for NF to offer the same browser to people on linux that they could use just for NF steaming?

Well, since it’s DRM, I assume it would have to be a closed-source plugin. How well would the linux community support this, especially if it’s only targeted to a single webkit browser?

I'm not even talking about a plugin, but just distribute the whole browser as a NF app for linux. Some of the OSS purist are still against any closed source apps, but that doesn't stop closed source game binaries or other enterprise software like Oracle from releasing app that run on linux.

Microsoft will not lease it's DRM Silverlight components to the Moonlight project. It's that simple. Complain to Microsoft. Or beg Netflix to change their streaming support.

Netflix has been running on Linux for a while:

http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html

It makes it easier to embrace HTML5 when you have complete control over the browser used.

I agree, although I'm contemplating providing 2 UIs, an HTML5 version and an IE-friendly version for my own projects.

The balance between native and web-browser controls is interesting. The author indicates a preference for native, but chose web so they can change things more quickly:

This capacity for testing is so critical to how we innovate, we’re willing to forego having a native UI experience to accommodate it.

They ported WebKit to the PS3? Goodness gracious. That's a hack and a half right there.

Not really, considering they had millions of dollars behind them, while quake 3 was ported to android in people's spare time.

I'm thinking more the inherent programmer hostility of the underlying platform.

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