Comment by solutionyogi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solutionyogi | Hacker News Reader

Winning moments of truth

We strive to win more of our members’ “moments of truth”.

Those decision points are, say, at 7:15 pm when a member wants to relax, enjoy a shared experience with friends and family, or is bored.

They could play a video game, surf the web, read a magazine, channel surf their MVPD/DVR system, buy a pay-per-view movie, put on a DVD, use a piracy service, turn on Hulu, or launch Netflix.

We want our members to choose Netflix in these moments of truth.

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This nails it. When I get home (especially if I had a long day at work), I first go to Netflix and see what's on my list. This is because Netflix app is beautiful, it always works and they have my list of things to watch. As someone who loves to watch documentaries, I am happy with the selection that Netflix offers.

If I don't like anything on the list, I just watch an old Friends or Breaking Bad episode.

I think Netflix has absolutely nailed the user experience and depending on your taste/location, their selection is great as well.

Although I use Netflix all the time, it's in spite of their app. Outside of the "my list" I've curated myself, 98% of the things the Netflix app shows me, I'm not really interested in. I feel like that ratio could easily be made better if they allowed me to mark things I'm not interested in and never show me those things again + apply machine learning to display a better personalized catalog.

Whenever I use Netflix I always feel like there is a lot of content locked away and I have to dig past the same stuff it always shows to find stuff I'm interested in.

Try using instantwatcher.com. I can't believe Netflix hasn't bought them yet.

> ... if they allowed me to mark things I'm not interested in and never show me those things again

You can literally do exactly that. If you hover over a title there should be a button that says "Not Interested". It should appear just below the stars as if you were going to provide a rating.

I primarily interact with Netflix through my game console. 'Not Interested' is not an option in that UI.

Many of Netflix's recommendations are films I've already seen. I asked Netflix's Twitter account about this and they replied (!!) saying it was a "feature". I guess they don't want to show an empty list.

> their selection is great as well

Hulu gets more of my bitching when related to selection, but Netflix gets it's share.

Partial seasons, only a few seasons of shows that have long since ended, so many movies not offered.

But basically when it comes down to I want to watch something, we have both a Hulu subscription and Netflix for a reason and I still have to torrent things.

Also, their app sucks for finding things.

I had Hulu, but a paid service showing the same unskippable commercials over and over again was just too much.

Well until the most recent update, I didn't see ads on Hulu. I haven't looked into making that happen again yet.

Hulu's commercials are the absolute worst. I'm not paying a monthly fee so I can watch that stupid Jack in the Box add about the bacon cheeseburger a thousand times. Even if there were more different ads it wouldn't be so bad, but the repeating commercials are absolutely what keep me from ever signing up for Hulu+ (again)

I hear you re: the commercials. It cost the networks less to show content on Hulu so the commercial time should be less. Also, as you say, they should not show the same commercials over and over again. I recently re-subscribed to Hulu+, and I will probably stick with them for a few more months, but really, they could make the service better and still generate good profits for the networks who collectively own Hulu+.

Hah! Countless times I open up Netflix, scroll through endless lists of garbage, that even Netflix suggests I will rate 2 stars, then give up. On the Android app, "My List" doesn't appear to work. I used to pay for Netflix literally for recommendations (had a DVD-only sub, never queued DVDs). A good recommendation engine is easily worth $10/month for me.

Oh, then I finally pick something. And it starts, playing with subtitles in Portuguese because I'm visiting Central America, and Netflix apparently took language lessons from Feynman. Audio's in English, but screw my hearing, I've gotta go read another language. Even on titles with the "Netflix" brand on them, same crap. Or the subs are crappy.

So I give up, load up put.io, and in a few seconds I'm streaming HD on my big screen, Chromecast, or phone. (Unlike Netflix, which streams low quality for several minutes before popping into HD hopefully.)

Their subtitle and language selection is really rather poor.

This nails it, but I think they're failing. I can't mention how many times it's 10:00 and I start looking for something interesting, and by 10:15 give up and go to bed. (Or pay for something on Amazon)

The netflix app is great - on a tablet. Unfortunately their PS3/4 apps kind of suck, because they took their design cues from tablet. It became much less usable after they did away with simple browsing and lists, and only various 'popular genre X' top-few selections are shown by default.

If you know what you're looking for, it's easy to search (though chances are you won't find it these days...). If you want to explore and discover, it's much harder.

I also wish they'd implement rentals. When we decide to watch a specific movie, these days we will as often as not skip Netflix entirely and go directly to Amazon Prime- because they, typically, will have it available as a rental if not for free.

(Also, firefox says "movie" isn't a word... how odd...)

It's the Windows 8 problem -- trying to make one UI that works equally well on the entire spectrum of form factors.

In Netflix's case their UI is designed for tablets, and it really really shows anywhere else. On a phone, the big cover images take up so much real estate that paging through lots of results is slow. On a TV or computer monitor, it feels weird because it's designed around touchscreen interactions like flicking, which you can't do elegantly with a remote control or XBox controller.

Microsoft seems to have finally figured out that "one UI to rule them all" is a pipe dream; maybe Netflix eventually will too.

There are other touchscreen interactions that are terrible on PC. My favourite example to hate (and lots of other websites, etc. do this too) is the carousel with arrows at either end which you hover over to scroll, at a slow, frustrating rate. Clicking does nothing, so you have no control over how quickly you move through content. You just place your cursor and sit, and wait, and wait, and wait. It's surprisingly irritating.

Their roku app does not support trailers. I don't know if their other apps suffer the same problem. Browse > hunt for trailer on youtube > cast to TV > if thumbs down, launch netflix app again > find where I left off > goto step 1.

They have nailed the experience when it comes to UI not still have a ways to go in terms of discovery. Netflix makes it easy to continue where I've left off, play something I've saved, and fully takes advantage of every piece of context that I have actively provided. However if over time I have gotten lazy or no longer give Netflix this valuable information, then what I am presented with gets stale and my routine of going to Netflix becomes compromised.

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