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Comment by pnathan | Hacker News Reader

After having sampled Disney+, HBOMax, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime a fair bit in the past year, my take is that Netflix has the UX nailed. I can, for instance, "thumbs down" a recommendation. Some offerings I never want to see. Their catalog tends to the darker themes, and I'm not fond of that.

Hulu and Amazon Prime are mostly irrelevant to me. I'll probably axe the Hulu sub.

HBO has a few things I like. Disney+ targets the kids/family/lighter theme demographic tightly.

I think that the general provider landscape is a bit overdone; some consolidation would be welcomed by consumers, and any competitor that falls behind in offerings will crash exponentially.

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UX is a night and day difference between Netflix and its competitors. It's mind-boggling that the giants like Disney and HBO can't even get close. It's especially more noticeable on slow devices like Smart TV's.

It's the minor things that jump out to me.

Peacock uses a white glow around the preview picture as their selection indicator. No border. Just a faint glow.

HBO Max has no way of navigating to a show page from your most recently viewed carousel. You have to find or search the show separately.

It's death by a thousand cuts, but jesus... use your competitor's app. See what UX works and what doesn't. I can't imagine any of the little stuff is actually patented.

Paramount+ has subtitles that are almost impossible to read with some videos. And you're forced to watch an unskippable ad for their other content when you start your first show of the day, even if you have the commercial free plan.

Amazon Prime awkwardly splits their shows into individual seasons ('series' in UK) in such a way that it's difficult to ascertain how much of the show you'll actually be able to watch on Prime. Other seasons may be available to rent, purchase, watch on one of their partner subscription services, and/or watch for free on their IMDb TV ad-supported service, all of which is haphazardly jumbled together in their main window in no particular order.

The thing I hate most about Amazon Prime is that I added shows to my watchlist that were free at the time, then when I went to watch them later, they cost. IMO, Amazon makes things free until they see if they're successful, then switch them to paid. This pissed me off so bad that I no longer spend any effort looking for shows to watch. If I don't find something in 10 minutes, I turn off the TV. Which is most of the time.

I split my Amazon Prime with my neighbor so she can get free shipping. She doesn't care about the TV part, and to me, it's not worth much either.

Disney+ is similar to HBO Max. "Continue Watching" often takes me to the episode I just watched, and there's no way to get to the episode list from there. I usually access shows I'm in the middle of by going to my Watchlist, which always takes me to season 1, episode 1.

Meanwhile on Hulu, I recently watched episode 1 of Over the Garden Wall and instead of continuing on the the next episode, it autoplayed the episode of a completely different series.

They're in a really sorry state UX-wise.

I spent 30 minutes once trying to get out of the credits for a Disney+ show and go to the episodes..back took me to the main page, and clicking the show took me right back into the episode exactly where I left off in the credits... I guess it was the last ep but I wasn't sure, and even tried fast forwarding to the end ...cause it was really long Marvel credits.

It should always take you to a show page, from there you should have options to continue or see info or go to episodes, etc...

> HBO Max has no way of navigating to a show page from your most recently viewed carousel. You have to find or search the show separately.

Hit play then as soon as it starts hit back, you’ll be at the show.

My guess is most remotes or TVs don’t support long press or other alt-clicks so they just implement the main thing people would want in that carousel. Even on AppleTV or other platforms that have long press.

With respect, I hate, loathe, and despise the auto-play part of the Netflix UI. I hate that more than anything else I could possibly love about Netflix. Far too fucking distracting while you’re trying to focus on something else that you might actually want to watch.

And yes, I’ve gone into the settings to turn that feature off, and it doesn’t entirely work. It does reduce the auto-play somewhat, but not entirely.

I’ll fucking delete my Netflix account and the Netflix app from our AppleTV device, if that shit gets any worse.

> And yes, I’ve gone into the settings to turn that feature off, and it doesn’t entirely work. It does reduce the auto-play somewhat, but not entirely.

Not sure what you mean by not entirely? I've got both 'autoplay next episode' and 'autoplay previews' turned off and don't think I see it anywhere anymore, which dramatically improved the experience.

I’ve turned off both, and it has improved things, but I still find cases where it decides to fucking auto play anyway. Really fucking annoying, when I’ve supposedly turned off all the goddamn autopsy shit.

You're right, even with the "autoplay" settings turned off when you drop into a TV show's subsection it will automatically start playing the next episode. Incredibly frustrating when you just want to check episode length of number of episodes per season.

You're absolutely right, I don't like it either, and I hated it at the beginning. But, now I got accustomed to it so much that now other apps feel eerily quiet to me. It's been very interesting to observe that change of perspective on myself. I consider myself successfully brainwashed with it. Now, I feel like I'm browsing shelves in a store with noises, and the other apps feel like empty stores, if that makes sense?

I agree with you that the Netflix UI is superb for browsing, however I have one major gripe - on Android TV they broke the back button.

I had to hardcode a kill app shortcut just for them.

For all other android tv apps that I have been using so far, the back button works normally, exiting the app at the topmost layer. However, repeated clicks of the back button in netflix UI just re-triggers the menu - part of their dark patterns to make it harder to quit the app...

I think back button suddenly closing the app is more hostile. When you do it accidentally, the recovery steps are painful (app switch, find app, focus to it etc). I totally understand why Netflix would prevent it from happening. I think iPhone solved it better than Android with the "super back" link or the app hopping gesture. Android could improve the back button with a long-press requirement in order to navigate away from the app too. In this current situation, Netflix is completely in the right to disable the behavior.

Sorry, I totally disagree that is is "completely in the right", I use 3 other video apps, they all give exit prompts instead, here is an example:

Netflix could have done what Prime video does

Prime Video: "Do you want to exit the app? (Yes/No)", then done

Netflix: scroll all the way down the menu options: Home, Play something, New & Popular, TV Shows, Movies, My List, Get Help, Exit Netflix (click), 8 clicks in total before you can exit.

So it takes orders of magnitude more clicks, and more time out of my life, every time I try to exit the Netflix app. Considering that exiting an app is something I do all the time, it is not great

I think the existence of exit prompts is sole admission of how painful this experience is for the users. The prompt itself can be a hindrance for the user too. I still think that it's an Android UX problem, not Netflix.

I feel like there are two minutes of ads for every ten minutes of content on Hulu. It's ridiculous that you have to pay even more for an experience that is similar to the flat rate on Netflix and Disney+.

I refuse to watch anything on Hulu. Every time my wife insists and makes me watch something she really, really wants to see on Hulu, I am reminded of why I refuse to watch it.

And yes, we have the highest level of Hulu+ that is supposed to avoid most ads.

Subtitles on Hulu on my Roku TV have been broken for months now, despite regular app updates. They work in every other streaming app. I’m this close to just investing in a seedbox…

I'm the same.... though we did watch Catherine the Great and that Murder Podcast one w/ Martin Short /Steve Martin...

The thing that irks me w/ Hulu -- we have kids sleeping and it'll be soft for the actual show, then the ad comes in and it's like 5 decibals louder. and we have to physically just mute the commercials... it's the most annoying thing ever!

I've been saying for a long time they need to team up, or a 3rd party and create bundles... that's basically $40/month and you get HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Disney+, Apple -- and the $40 is split $5 to the 3rd party company, and then based on 'hours watched' by users... so you can watch whatever and whoever you watch the most of gets the majority stake in your monthly fees.

As a bonus this actually encourages them to work hard for your views.

A problem is that voting and getting recommendations is a tiny market compared to Disney basically pumping out what people are wanting to watch.

Yes, you can say they just focus on family content. But that is kind of the point. They identified their market and cater to them really well. Who is the market for Netflix?

Their curse is that they can find untapped markets, but then the content owners can invest surprisingly well into clawing back that market.

I don't actually like 99% of the Disney+ catalog and don't watch it. I like watching the MCU aaaand that's about it. Its great that D+ hitting a niche and hitting it hard, but I don't want it. A pal of mine has basically seen all of it with his family though. Niches, right?

I would estimate the Netflix target market is basically the non-family under-35s. It's actually closer to my tastes in general. Netflix also has a better real international selection IMO.

There's no clear differentiator between any of the above outside of (1) UX and (2) content. They all are a means of schlepping video to my screen. They are all almost perfectly commodity in my opinion.

IF you want Disney+ but are on the fence about Hulu and you're in the US, there's a bundle. I'm not sure about elsewhere.

$13.99 for Disney+, Hulu (with ads), and ESPN+. $19.99 if you want the Hulu with no ads.

https://www.disneyplus.com/welcome/disney-hulu-espn-bundle

I've found on my streaming device that Netflix is seriously fast at buffering and playing once you press play compared to D+ and Prime. Like 2 seconds vs 10+ seconds. Of course could just be my device but seems like they have really optimised the UX.

Agree. Apple has a horrible UX for the reason that it doesn't support profiles alone.

It supports profiles on an Apple TV using the system-wide profile switcher. Don’t know about other platforms, I won’t connect any other set top box to the internet to find out lest they start spewing ads forever.

I wish all the apps integrated with the system-wide profiles.

I offed my Hulu sub a long time ago. Prime is free with my account so I'm largely indifferent (their UX is pretty painful).

Too bad Netflix doesn't have a sports deal for live content.

Whereas I hate, loathe, and despise pretty much all sports.

I’d be really happy if I could delete all sports from all video sources I have available to me, or at least just hide them so that I don’t have to look at any of that crap.

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