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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

Because now there is no technical reason to not have it as an option instead of forced upon us.

No technical reason, but all of the praise and success of Apple's lack of options certainly makes the case for business reasons.

Lack of options regarding hardware and lack of options regarding media files are different kettles of fish.

Apple has also made the decision to forego the Bandcamp/Beatport feature of multiple media download types, making everything AAC for simplicity. A fisherman using the same strategy for different kettles of fish, so to speak. And it seems to have worked out pretty well for them so far.

That's nonsense. Apple is not praised because of the lack of option!

it's praised by some despite the lack of option!

it's a price they paid to have somethings, because you can't have it all. it's not the feature per se.

Lack of options is 'elegant' and 'just works' and 'for people who aren't nerds'.

No, lack of options is the consequence of "just works in 95% of the cases, the others you are royally screwed"

See rob pike's "thank you Apple" for source on my opinion about the 5% since i never bought from Apple. (i don't give money to companies that profit from format lockin etc)

No, Apple is praised because of the lack of option! Trust me.

Why would I "trust you" when you have made no substantiative argument and are

I use the Mac not because "it has no options", but because there are no other options on other platforms that are better for my needs.

They are prized for their simplicity.

Show me simplicity which doesn't also mean a lack of options...

In N Out. The secret menu has combinatorics upon itself of options possible. All from the simple ingredients of a Hamburger.

Simple != restrictive options.

That's kind of like saying "I can adjust the volume knob and the panning knob independently. The combinations are limitless!"

Even including the "secret menu" (extra sauce? no bun? extra patty?), the options are resetrictive. You're not going to end up with chicken nuggets or a salad or beef wellington.

And that's okay. They have a restrictive menu, and they're very good at what they choose to focus on. I'd wager that no other popular restaurant chain is more like Apple in that regard.

I don't say you have to like Apple because of the lack of options, but for many, the lack of options is a feature.

The last thing I want is an iPhone - Android flame war, but something I don't like about Android, is that I constantly have to be searching for the ideal well... everything, since basically everything is changeable, I've gone through 4 music players, and have been disappointed several times, I did found a great one eventually, but in this case, I (and I said I god damn it) would rather have it Apple's way even if it's not perfect, it works if you do it their way.

So i take it that you use Apple maps solely and never looked at Google maps or the several fee offline turn by turn ones?

Also I'm pretty sure the default,music,player in Android is similar to the default one in ios... But i don't even have mp3s in my phone so i may be wrong on some exotic feature...

I don't know why you got defensive, I'm far from saying apple is perfect, no system is, you just need to know what YOU want, I'm all for variety.

In this case it sounds like it's the quality of Apple's default music player that you appreciate.

Imagine if their default music player was disappointing, and you couldn't change it... the lack of options would be a detriment, not a feature.

People don't like that Apple doesn't let you change things, they like that you don't need to because the default setting is good enough.

But you could go one step further, and ask "Why is their default considered so good by a broad audience?"

This could be attributed to how they identify (what they consider) the most important options, focus entirely on those, and implement them well.

The complexity of a system can go up exponentially with the number of features. If development resources were infinite, this wouldn't be a problem. But it is finite, and more complexity can lead to more bugs, more confusing interfaces, less maintainable code, and a host of other pitfalls.

In that case, if a lack of options is allowing Apple to a product that's better overall for most of its users, that's a definite feature.

I did found a great one eventually, but in this case, I (and I said I god damn it) would rather have it Apple's way even if it's not perfect, it works if you do it their way.

It would work, but not be perfect, if you just did it the way of any of those other apps you tried.

In this context, apple forced open pandora's box. There's no going back now. Businesses can present no choice, and only a minority of people (not enough to affect business) end up caring.

I can say without a doubt I prefer buying a laptop from Apple to anyone else I've tried due solely to the lack of options.

Over the last couple of years I've tried a few times at different vendors to find a different laptop, and every time I've given up because of all the options.

My problem is that when I'm presented with so many options, I spend hours trying to optimize them, and being unable, I give up.

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More... has something to say about this.

Netflix offers a number of other options when viewing movies - languages, closed-captions, etc. Seems like this is another reasonable one to give consumers. Their DVD delivery service gave you a choice between pan-and-scan and letterboxed IIRC.

The technical reason is that Netflix is "cutting corners" for cash. I'm sure someone in the media licensing industry can elaborate on the true price of what you crave.

> what you crave

Electrolytes?

But in all seriousness: are there any numbers we can refer to for the economics of this? It sounds like it could be similar to the issues around royalties paid by music streaming services.

What, you're a plant?

I was going to say that this looks a lot more like expedience ("hey, we've got this version of Some Terrible Straight To DVD Movie stored in 4:3 SD 8Mb/s MPEG-2, let's send 'em that!") but both examples are a) relatively high profile and b) not 4:3 pan/scan crops. They look to be cropped to 16:9, which is weird, and makes me think that it's happening inside Netflix's video pipeline.

Hmm.

Watch and your questions shall be answered.

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Idiocracy/70028899?locale=...

How are they cutting corners? The wider aspect ratio would actually use fewer pixel data since about 80-240 vertical pixels (assuming 1920 width) would not be encoded. If anything, those versions would result is slightly lower bandwidth charges than the 16:9 versions.

That's not how it works. They'll set a bandwidth target and regardless of the number of macroblocks going in, their encoder will attempt to hit that target; having less picture data per frame is largely immaterial, at least at the sizes being discussed.

Parent is right, it's how it "should" work. Encode for a quality target not a bandwidth target, but with a bandwidth cap (of sorts, generally a virtual buffer average bitrate target to simulate refilling bit buffer at targeted line speeds when depleted by high motion or latency).

Source: Built and operate a commercial transcoding cloud for studios.

EDIT: Added "should". As jfb noted elsewhere in this thread, often poorly encoded content is shoved down aggregators throats by content owners or third parties in the workflow.

I built the iTunes Store's video ingestion system. We may have crossed paths IRL.

Small world. Could you drop me a note to my handle at gmail so I can reply?

I think a Netflix tech sounded off on reddit about this and said that it's not up to them, its up to the distributor they license the content from. They request the 16:9 format, but in the end they have to go with what the distributor gives them and they aren't allowed to alter it. This is a licensing thing, not Netflix interfering. As pointed out, Starz Play was the worse offender, which means Starz gave it to them preformatted. Possibly to make it so if it's pirated, it's not the full format version.

If you're such a cinephile, why watch it on Netflix anyway? Just go buy the Bluray and get the full resolution and director's cut. How many of you even cared before reading this article?

I should have said, for maximum compatibility at the lowest possible cost. They could get several versions of the movie for you to choose from, but it would make things more complicated for the user (who wants to click once and watch) and very likely more expensive as well. The option is available, just not on Netflix, a budget service infamous for poor selection and (although I understand it's improving) picture quality.

Complication is not an issue. It would be pretty easy to have a one-per-profile option to specify "I'd like original aspect ratio whenever possible".

There's already a video quality preference; it could even piggy-back off that.

It would be just two versions (original vs cut), not several, and an option like that would be hidden in the in-program options menu along with subtitles and audio. Technically you could only store metadata for the latter and do the resampling on the playback device, but there probably isn't a workflow that makes that possible.

I find picture quality excellent when using the AppleTV. The PS3 client is a bit less stable, but almost the same after some buffering.

I'm amazed by all of the answers in this thread, it's amazing how many people are just guessing or making stuff up. Netflix "cheaped out", wants it for "maximum compatibility" (what?), is doing it to be "simpler", or hand-wringing about whether or not it's technically feasible to automatically zoom in on the faces in that way.

It's really easy to explain why they are doing this: the studio is giving them this version of the movie and Netflix is uploading it.

There are plenty of 2.40:1 movies on the service, mostly newer ones. House of Cards is a nonstandard 2:1 aspect ratio. If they cared about cropping the movies they'd do it to all of them. They don't.

The studios just already have these HD transfers of movies that were probably made years ago for television broadcast and that's what they give to Netflix. Case closed.

That said, every movie should be available only in its original aspect ratio, and anything else is bogus. Film aesthetics rely on someone not cropping the shot. For example, in Super 8 the movie begins with a shot of a metal sign at a factory. That sign is 2:40:1, just like the movie's aspect ratio. It's almost certain that JJ Abrams had them build that sign at that aspect ratio on purpose so it would fill the frame. The version on Netflix, it's cropped off and you can't read part of it. Bad.

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