What about removing those two features, and implementing one new feature that achieves the same on your end, but which minimises the annoyance on our end, namely:
“Starts in 2 minutes” and “Press to skip”.
And I invite all UX-passionate HNers who think this is a terrible idea to please elucidate us.
This is the reason I stopped using Netflix. The Roku app is slow as molasses, often the description and preview images for a movie will load just at the same time the autoplay starts.
I literally cancelled my account over this feature because there is no way to disable it and it ruins the browsing experience.
None of the other streaming providers do this. Who was asking for autoplay by default? Who would want it?
1. pick a metric
2. run A/B test
3. if metric moves significantly, implement change
They don't really care if anyone finds it more useful or convenient.
They can crowdsource UX testing in the process.
How might it work? Perhaps they could give us an API to tinker with, in exchange for a higher subscription fee?