Netflix angers film-makers with 'insulting' speed-up function

bbc.com

2 points·mathattack··3 comments

While I agree that watching a movie in the original intended speed will be a better experience in most cases I don't see how this feature justifies such an outrage.

The consumer should have the choice how they experience it, they may have valid reasons to modify that experience for their own preferences. People are free to read books however they like, listen to audiobooks in whatever speed they set the playback to, YouTube allows speeding up slow talk recordings and now Netflix lets you change the speed of movies as well. Sure, some elitists and purists will say it's not the "true way" of experiencing that content, but to put it simply: it's none of their business how someone else watches a movie.

Every decent video player has that feature and nobody complained, so why not. In the end it is an optional choice and not forced.

It might be a case where some paternalism is warranted. I would guess that timing contributes to the "magic" of film more than is obvious. If it's made too easy to speed up playback, people will do it, find their enjoyment of movies/shows diminished, and then probably misattribute their dissatisfaction to the quality of what they're watching rather than the fact that they haven't watched it "as designed."

If enough people do this, filmmakers are forced to counteract it by making works that are more amenable being watched sped up -- assuming that's possible -- but it's inevitable that that will reduce their quality when watched at a normal rate; the end result being that all media will become worse.

Podcasters don’t raise issues when you speed it up. I will say it messes up the music though.

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