This is all in stark contrast to services like HBO Max and Disney+ which still stutter and crash multiple times a day. Amazon for some reason treats every season of a TV show and HD/SD versions of movies as independent items in their library. I still haven't been able to download a HBO Max video for offline viewing on iOS without the app crashing on me at 99%.
The problems you mention with Netflix are real, but they have more to do with the business side of things. Netflix recommendations seem crap because they don't have a lot of third party content to recommend in the first place. Their front page layout is optimized to maximize repetition and make their library seem larger. They steer viewers to their own shows because that's what the business team wants. None of these are problems you can fix by reassigning engineers.
Wait, what? Netflix is the absolute worst at this. Every time I log in the interface is different! Netflix could not care less about users having a consistent seamless experience.
But as far as performance goes, I totally agree with you. The performance is impressively good and noticeably better than the other streaming apps I use.
The UX is just so bad in so many ways (UI churn, autoplay, useless ratings, useless categories, recaps that can be watched exactly once, and so on...) it mostly ruins the app for me. The actual video quality is great though.
- by the time HBO Max finish loading, I've already lost interest
- Amazon Prime constantly gives me errors, and it's often hard to find what you paid for and what you have to pay for
- Paramount+ often restart episode from beginning instead of resuming.
- Many leave shit in your queue with a few seconds left for you to "Continue Watching". I still have shows in Paramount+ that I've finished months ago in the queue, and there is no way to delete them without watching end credits. - HBO Max only allows you FF in small fixed intervals
- Plex...used to be okay, now it's pushing its streaming services and works very bad offline
- Apple TV has awful offline experience compared to netflix in terms of UX
Nah, I will take netflix constantly changing rows over shit others do.
The issue is the business polices surrounding it. The UI itself is user-hostile.
Their recommendations used to be world class until they got rid of the user feedback mechanisms.
I don't know how it is in the US, but in Japan, it's even worse than that. Japanese dub and English with Japanese subs are different items (although the UI has a way to choose between audio and subtitle channels), and Japanese subtitles are burned into the video.
Very often, despite all the config being in Japanese, it will complain in Japanese, when starting a video, that there isn't an English dub for the show, as if I had asked for it, which I never have.
In related info for Anime that is definitely not an English dub, it shows the names of the US voice actors and their related works more often than the Japanese voice actors.
Multi-season shows in the Prime Video app might be either separate items or not, depending on the title. Through the Fire TV home, though, it's a huge mess. You may have Season 1, 2, 3 under an item for $Show, with Season 2 being the second half of season 1, but on netflix and season 3 really being season 2, on netflix as well. At the same time, the real season 2 is also a separate item which has 2 seasons, with season 1 being really season 2 on Prime and season 2 being... season 2 on another service. Confused?
It's often super hard to get those non-season 1 items as search results too...
Things are however a little better if only using the Prime video app.
Today I rarely use Netflix, and I wouldn’t pay for it. Periodically I open the app and add to my list those titles that are immediately visible which I know I want to watch, like comedy specials of comedians I’m familiar with, but I don’t inspect further, because if I haven’t already heard about a title from some external sources I trust, it’s not worth my time to check. That list just grows and grows, though titles are often removed as they become unavailable, but I never prune the list, because when I remove one title, I’m taken all the way back to the beginning of the list. Trying is just a wast of time.
It is baffling to me that anyone could interact with Netflix’s current UI and conclude that it was anything but a raging dumpster fire.
Jargon BS is invading people's heads and it has to stop.
Admitedly, it follows the same pattern as Netflix, but I like how it's more responsive and feels way simpler/lighter.
Hulu did that big redesign, and it's extremely pretty to look at, but even after a few years of trying to use it, I still struggle to do anything other than "resume episode". Finding the previous episode, list episodes, etc is always an exercise in randomly clicking, swiping, long pressing, waiting for loading bars, etc.
One thing Netflix really got right as well: the "Watch It Again" section. So many times I want to rewatch the episode I just "finished" (because either my wife finished a show when I leave the room, the kids fell off the table, I fell asleep or wasn't paying attention, etc), and every other platform makes this extremely difficult to find.
Back to Hulu--the only way I know how is the search feature, which is a PITA with a remote.
Which devices are you referring to? I’ve only used the PC and mobile interfaces both of which are quite pleasant.