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Comment by Splendor | Hacker News Reader

I cancelled my subscription, not because of the price increase, but because the auto-play interface made me stop using the app.

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For everyone telling them you can turn that feature off, for the Xbox app at least, I assure you that you cannot.

I might be wrong, but I think those replies are confusing "autoplay next episode" with "autoplay show from the main menu". Above comment seems to be complaining about the latter, only the former can be turned off.

Unless the Roku app changed, it can't be disabled either. Every time I open Netflix it feels like a battle with the autoplay "feature" and I just close it off. I think I might cancel it in favor of Prime.

Depends on the Roku app. I have a roku and it never autoplays for Netflix but does autoplay for prime.

Roku will autoplay for most shows but they increased the delay before it begins. It's a nice preview now without having to navigate into the show's page.

No option to disable auto-playing trailers was also my primary reason for cancelling.

There is just enough content to make it worth the basic subscription, but such user-hostile design choices are like nails on a chalkboard.

But metrics show that autoplay engages the average Netflix subscriber to leverage the service more and watch more Netflix-branded content.

Autoplay enRages me, to the point I re-evaluated my long-standing aversion to Hulu and switched. I went to Netflix years ago for the simple reason that it only played what I asked it to play. Ads are only one of the annoyances I was avoiding, and Netflix has been advertising its own shows at me for a while anyway, so they have really completely abandoned that one massive feature of the experience.

Same. With such a focus on UX, you'd think they wouldn't force that kind of crap as a default.

But then engineer X can't claim the watchtime gains and get promoted.

I think you mean PM X

I had a subscription early on but cancelled. Mostly a matter of taste. I like older movies so the criterion channel is useful. I can't stand series. I use that time/money towards audible instead.

FWIW, you can turn off auto play in the settings.

Unless this has changed recently you may be confusing turning off autoplay (Of the next episode) with autoplay of the trailers for shows as you move around the home screen.

The second is the annoying one without an off switch that I could find within the xbox app

Ah ok, yeah I thought the parent post was referring to autoplay the next episode.

Maybe he means like autoplaying trailers when hovering over a title on the Apple TV? It's impossible to turn off and will autoplay if you don't actively move to a new title pithing seconds. If I can't find something to watch right off the bat then I leave the app and try something else because I can't stand it.

I also only use the Apple TV remote, which doesn't have a mute button and adds to the frustration. If I really want to watch something on Netflix, I'll turn the volume all the way down before going to browse for stuff.

Where? I can only find auto-play next episode (which is usually what I want).

I think this is a splendid demonstration of what follows when a service goes from good defaults to bad defaults, and leaves you the user to check the box to change it back. FWIW.

With the focus on series and binge-watching, I don't think it's a bad feature.

Previews that auto play on hover (with SOUND!) = rage inducing

Auto playing the next episode = Good

Yep - the ONLY feature I want in a streaming service, beyond decent content, is for it to not play things I didn’t ask it to play. Netflix used to be that, but it no longer is.

I absolutely hate this feature. Can I not even browse quietly in the middle of the night while everyone asleep.

Is there a way to do that for the Netflix app on the fire stick? I can't seem to find it.

EDIT: disregard.

Where is that setting?

If you canceled because a feature that can easily be disabled, they never had you anyway.

EDIT: If you disagree, care to elaborate?

Auto playing trailers can’t be disabled on the Android TV Netflix app

There are straws that overly encumber camels.

Ever consider you are being downvoted because you are wrong?

Because that's what has happened here. Come equipped with sources and references before making claims.

Would you please stop posting comments with personal swipes in them? We've had to ask you this multiple times in the past, and you've continued to do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Citation needed you mean? First hit for "netfix disable autoplay" on Google: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102

It's even worse when you bring incorrect material to the table.

- Most apps / platforms / and others listed through this thread do not support disabling the UI preview while browsing through.

- You're missing the point, the compliant is the auto play in the UI

I'm not touching this any further.

Sure, downvote based on emotions.

You are literally factually wrong here. “Autoplay” in Netflix’s settings (and help page you linked) refers to playing the next episode when one ends.

The “autoplay” that people are angry about is when you are hovering over a show in the browser and it starts playing the show’s trailer automatically. This “autoplay” cannot be turned off, except by DOM-manipulation in browsers. In particular, I don’t know of any set-top box app that allows you to turn it off.

I'm about to cancel my subscription because their content selection is weak overall. They have a few native shows that are worth watching. Beyond that, their movie selection is horrible (they've obviously navigated away from that for many years now).

The perpetual price increases are getting annoying. They're trying to relatively gouge the large US market to offset the fact that they're bleeding to death (on a cash generation basis they're losing extreme amounts of money, with no end in sight).

Their balance sheet - net tangible assets specifically - tells the future: -$2b 2015, -$4.5b 2016, -$6.7b 2017, -$9.7b 2018, -$15b as of 1Q19

Quarterly debt interest costs have soared from ~$35m in 2016, to $135m+ now. Meanwhile they bury themselves persistently under ever greater debt to fund production that they can't actually afford. It's going to end badly, if they could generate a real profit they would have done so by now (and competition is going to get worse, rather than lighter).

Serious questions:

Could Netflix actually go out of business? If so, who buys their IP?

Who will be the major players in the streaming entertainment space in 5 years? How will this impact film and tv production/distribution? (Less variety in theaters?)

Is consolidation in the media industry something lawmakers would take interest in breaking up? Can we lobby to decrease copyright duration?

Can an aggregation service charge a flat fee and provide a single interface to all of the various streaming platforms? Can we fight this somehow? The situation is becoming worse (and more expensive) than cable.

Anyone can go out of business. Netflix going out of business right now is highly unlikely. Your comment is asking this in response to some specific stats with no comparison to how competition is doing. If those stats and numbers are making you question Netflix then you should be questioning most if not all media companies much more.

Apple will bail them out

I cancelled but I sign up like once a quarter now, if that, to catch things I want to see like Stranger Things. But the quality of 90% of the content is pretty weak and seems to be getting worse. For that same price I’d rather rent two movies per month from iTunes (and they often have 99 cent rental deals).

Netflix is focusing too much on television series that are 10x too long to trick people into feeling they received value. I’d like to see more original movies.

The UX decisions are also very anti-user. No user reviews, just a worthless “percentage match” that seems to be randomly generated. Auto playing videos, changing movie covers randomly to trick you into thinking more new content is there than it actually is, etc.

As an understatement of epic proportions, those figures don't look sustainable to someone un-trained in large-scale financial accounting. The fact that it's been allowed to increase to those levels, year-on-year, would indicate that there's some likelihood of being able to either pay-back loans or show some amount of return-on-investment at some point in the relatively near future.

Where is the money coming from? Why does it keep coming if their balance sheet looks that scary?

Compare that debt to the debt of Disney or Comcast or AT&T. It’s nothing.

What about the debt loads of their three Main competitors? Disney, Comcast, AT&T? Their debts are insane. Of course they all are much more diverse companies, but their debts are also many multiples higher than Netflix. It’ll be some time before Netflix debt reaches Disney’s. At that point, the point could be much stronger. But at that point the status of Disney’s streaming service figures and Netflix’s figures would matter just as much.

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