I think Netflix has a very high prio on the "customer wants to see a video, so we shall play that video". It's on every platform and your mom's IoT hairdryer, even with an atrocious connection speed, you still get a (blocky low quality) video stream with audio. This is invaluable, especially with kids you need to keep occupied on a train ride with 3G coverage.

Apple on the other hand, seems to think: "we have a glorious 4K 60 fps 30 Mbit Dolby Atmos 7.1 extended edition of <movie name> on our server. What's the point in experiencing anything less than the perfect experience? You either get the full shebang, or a spinning loading indicator."

Interestingly I have found the various Prime Video apps to consistently be the worst in terms of UI and performance. I imagine Amazon as a company also takes engineering and infrastructure seriously, but the results don't show it.

HBO, Disney, Hulu, Apple etc. are all somewhere in the middle, and yes Netflix is FAR ahead of the pack.

I think Amazon take it less seriously than some of the others. For Netflix, streaming is their entire business. For Disney, HBO and Hulu, it’s the future - they’d probably rather stick with the old school cable TV, movie theatres, etc. model, but they can see the writing on the wall, and they aren’t going to let streaming take them down. But for Amazon ... it’s more just a perk to package with Prime shipping. They want it to be solid, but it’s always going to be very small for them compared to e-commerce, AWS and their platform for 3rd party sellers, fulfilment, etc. Prime Video revenue is similar for them to their co-branded credit cards, I think?

I actually think they have some great content, and a pretty decent app. Their “originals” especially are pretty great - Fleabag, the Boys, the Expanse, all excellent. But yeah, the quality of the app is a bit lower than some of the others, and they have a lot less content than Netflix, because Prime is really not a main focus of their company, more of a nice add-on.

Funny you mention this - my "smart" TV (Vizio) had a recent software that made it so opening Prime Video crashes the whole smart-OS (no home menu and no apps)... with the exception of Netflix's app, which works flawlessly.

I assume Netflix ships a much lower level integration that doesn't rely on nearly as many of the TV OS's api's and therefore can launch even when Prime has decided to bork the whole system.

I agree with this (Haven't tried HBO though).

Disney streaming is pretty good, but the UI isn't as good as Netflix for use across the room. Why do they make the title cards have second level text that is so small it can't be read, and then not have the continually updated preview that Netflix does?

I agree Amazon is pretty disappointing. It seems more like a dodgy pirate video player than a major competitor.

I can't even use the Prime Video apps, because they all ignore all language settings (both those of my devices and my Amazon account) and pick which language to use based on IP Geolocation.

There's a setting for language on the web, but it only affects web.

In my case I'm a foreigner who is still learning the local language, but it must be a real nuisance for people in multilingual countries like Belgium or Switzerland where I guess it would just go "oh, Swiss IP, I guess you want German then".

My experience with Disney has been as good or better than Netflix. Hulu, OTOH, is a disaster. I have a grandfathered Spotify/Hulu plan that basically makes Hulu free so I keep it around but it's my option of last resort.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but Prime Video's Chromecast integration is just terrible.

Still better than actually using a fire stick directly. At least the UI latency on the phone is bearable. My, admitedly old, fire sticks have input latency measurable in seconds.

The firestick remote replacement app (because I can't ever find the actual remote) is also a joke: it disconnects all the time, fails to reconnect and it is generally not very usable.

Because it is rare that they go above 1080p. In mac's chrome, they just go to 720p max, which is way below industry standard. And the worst thing is there is no option to set the quality even if I am ready to handle some pauses in the video if my network speed can't catch up(which it can, just that they err on the safer side)

> 720p max, which is way below industry standard

maybe low for western standards, but the majority of devices worldwide cannot display higher resolutions.

hek, even new budget phones today rarely exceed 720p.

anecdote: worked at a cinema and we cast 720p onto the big canvas (10meters wide) because people would not notice a difference to anything higher. overall bitrate and quality of encoding are mostly the deciding factors.

My favorite unpopular opinion to share (I work in video) is that 99% of viewers don't care about resolution above 720p. Other encoding and playback characteristics are just way more important if you aren't building for videophiles.

Netflix limiting mac chrome playback to 720p is case in point if true (though I've never heard this). What % of their "high-end" users is this? My macbook has more than five times as many pixels than 720p... I've never noticed this, and Netflix surely recognizes that they don't stand to gain much by streaming higher resolution to most users.

Netflix, of course, does build for videophiles, but I still hold my conviction to the extent that I constantly question the priority of work to make something 1080p or 4K.

I will certainly concede that VR use cases need higher than 720p resolution.

That's a seperate DRM issue with WideVine. Use Safari if you want 1080p (or 4k if you have a T2 chip inside).

IMO content is far more important than UX and Netflix has gotten pretty bad. I don't care about all the crappy Netflix originals.