Good points, but I have to say that even with all that, Netflix app/site is by far the best of the streaming services that I've used. HBO Nordic, Viaplay and YouTube movies have pretty bad UI/UX problems and their streams become borderline unwatchable with subpar internet connections, whereas Netflix has in my experience still been able to push through video in those conditions with good enough quality that I can still enjoy it.
Re:The Case of the Extra 40ms
by throwaway2245 on Tuesday December 15, 2020 @01:06PM
(#25432994)
> Unacceptably high latency for any sort of seek operation - even if it's just going back a few seconds to what you just watched and ought to still be somewhere in a local buffer.
Unacceptable for what use-case? I had assumed this was somewhat intentional on Netflix's part, or at least not a priority for them.
For the use case of watching a movie?
You seek back a scene or two while watching something when your mind has wandered away and you missed what was going on a few seconds ago. For some non-neurotypical people it's a really common thing to do while watching a longer movie as it may be hard to follow what's going on otherwise.
Some examples:
- Unacceptably high latency for any sort of seek operation - even if it's just going back a few seconds to what you just watched and ought to still be somewhere in a local buffer.
- Trying to seek multiple times sometimes forces you to wait for the previous operation to finish instead of "accumulating" your taps to determine a new time target
- Grabbing the playback marker and dragging it left and right is very imprecise, it should converge into "logarithmic" behaviour for fine movements
- Flakey Chromecast button. More than half the time I have to kill the app and relaunch it to get the cast button to show up.
- Occasionally flakey UI layout (random bugs which present when moving between screens or searching, or flickering due to layout engine doing multiple repaints over the same controls)
- Likes to plaster up things I don't want. They seem to prioritize "discovery" over "user intent", which would work if only they surfaced articles I'm interested in (which is rare). When I just want to find a "comedy" or get to the series I'm watching, it sometimes feels like I'm fighting against the UI
- Constantly moving my cheese - it's like the UI designers have ADD and can't commit
Amazon Prime is just as bad (maybe worse). I wish these companies didn't control the vertical - i.e. just provide content, and let other vendors make the client software.
/rant