After having sampled Disney+, HBOMax, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime a fair bit in the past year, my take is that Netflix has the UX nailed. I can, for instance, "thumbs down" a recommendation. Some offerings I never want to see. Their catalog tends to the darker themes, and I'm not fond of that.

Hulu and Amazon Prime are mostly irrelevant to me. I'll probably axe the Hulu sub.

HBO has a few things I like. Disney+ targets the kids/family/lighter theme demographic tightly.

I think that the general provider landscape is a bit overdone; some consolidation would be welcomed by consumers, and any competitor that falls behind in offerings will crash exponentially.

UX is a night and day difference between Netflix and its competitors. It's mind-boggling that the giants like Disney and HBO can't even get close. It's especially more noticeable on slow devices like Smart TV's.

With respect, I hate, loathe, and despise the auto-play part of the Netflix UI. I hate that more than anything else I could possibly love about Netflix. Far too fucking distracting while you’re trying to focus on something else that you might actually want to watch.

And yes, I’ve gone into the settings to turn that feature off, and it doesn’t entirely work. It does reduce the auto-play somewhat, but not entirely.

I’ll fucking delete my Netflix account and the Netflix app from our AppleTV device, if that shit gets any worse.

> And yes, I’ve gone into the settings to turn that feature off, and it doesn’t entirely work. It does reduce the auto-play somewhat, but not entirely.

Not sure what you mean by not entirely? I've got both 'autoplay next episode' and 'autoplay previews' turned off and don't think I see it anywhere anymore, which dramatically improved the experience.

I’ve turned off both, and it has improved things, but I still find cases where it decides to fucking auto play anyway. Really fucking annoying, when I’ve supposedly turned off all the goddamn autopsy shit.

You're absolutely right, I don't like it either, and I hated it at the beginning. But, now I got accustomed to it so much that now other apps feel eerily quiet to me. It's been very interesting to observe that change of perspective on myself. I consider myself successfully brainwashed with it. Now, I feel like I'm browsing shelves in a store with noises, and the other apps feel like empty stores, if that makes sense?

You're right, even with the "autoplay" settings turned off when you drop into a TV show's subsection it will automatically start playing the next episode. Incredibly frustrating when you just want to check episode length of number of episodes per season.

It's the minor things that jump out to me.

Peacock uses a white glow around the preview picture as their selection indicator. No border. Just a faint glow.

HBO Max has no way of navigating to a show page from your most recently viewed carousel. You have to find or search the show separately.

It's death by a thousand cuts, but jesus... use your competitor's app. See what UX works and what doesn't. I can't imagine any of the little stuff is actually patented.

Paramount+ has subtitles that are almost impossible to read with some videos. And you're forced to watch an unskippable ad for their other content when you start your first show of the day, even if you have the commercial free plan.

Amazon Prime awkwardly splits their shows into individual seasons ('series' in UK) in such a way that it's difficult to ascertain how much of the show you'll actually be able to watch on Prime. Other seasons may be available to rent, purchase, watch on one of their partner subscription services, and/or watch for free on their IMDb TV ad-supported service, all of which is haphazardly jumbled together in their main window in no particular order.

The thing I hate most about Amazon Prime is that I added shows to my watchlist that were free at the time, then when I went to watch them later, they cost. IMO, Amazon makes things free until they see if they're successful, then switch them to paid. This pissed me off so bad that I no longer spend any effort looking for shows to watch. If I don't find something in 10 minutes, I turn off the TV. Which is most of the time.

I split my Amazon Prime with my neighbor so she can get free shipping. She doesn't care about the TV part, and to me, it's not worth much either.

I spent 30 minutes once trying to get out of the credits for a Disney+ show and go to the episodes..back took me to the main page, and clicking the show took me right back into the episode exactly where I left off in the credits... I guess it was the last ep but I wasn't sure, and even tried fast forwarding to the end ...cause it was really long Marvel credits.

It should always take you to a show page, from there you should have options to continue or see info or go to episodes, etc...

Disney+ is similar to HBO Max. "Continue Watching" often takes me to the episode I just watched, and there's no way to get to the episode list from there. I usually access shows I'm in the middle of by going to my Watchlist, which always takes me to season 1, episode 1.

Meanwhile on Hulu, I recently watched episode 1 of Over the Garden Wall and instead of continuing on the the next episode, it autoplayed the episode of a completely different series.

They're in a really sorry state UX-wise.

> HBO Max has no way of navigating to a show page from your most recently viewed carousel. You have to find or search the show separately.

Hit play then as soon as it starts hit back, you’ll be at the show.

My guess is most remotes or TVs don’t support long press or other alt-clicks so they just implement the main thing people would want in that carousel. Even on AppleTV or other platforms that have long press.

I agree with you that the Netflix UI is superb for browsing, however I have one major gripe - on Android TV they broke the back button.

I had to hardcode a kill app shortcut just for them.

For all other android tv apps that I have been using so far, the back button works normally, exiting the app at the topmost layer. However, repeated clicks of the back button in netflix UI just re-triggers the menu - part of their dark patterns to make it harder to quit the app...

I think back button suddenly closing the app is more hostile. When you do it accidentally, the recovery steps are painful (app switch, find app, focus to it etc). I totally understand why Netflix would prevent it from happening. I think iPhone solved it better than Android with the "super back" link or the app hopping gesture. Android could improve the back button with a long-press requirement in order to navigate away from the app too. In this current situation, Netflix is completely in the right to disable the behavior.

Sorry, I totally disagree that is is "completely in the right", I use 3 other video apps, they all give exit prompts instead, here is an example:

Netflix could have done what Prime video does

Prime Video: "Do you want to exit the app? (Yes/No)", then done

Netflix: scroll all the way down the menu options: Home, Play something, New & Popular, TV Shows, Movies, My List, Get Help, Exit Netflix (click), 8 clicks in total before you can exit.

So it takes orders of magnitude more clicks, and more time out of my life, every time I try to exit the Netflix app. Considering that exiting an app is something I do all the time, it is not great

I think the existence of exit prompts is sole admission of how painful this experience is for the users. The prompt itself can be a hindrance for the user too. I still think that it's an Android UX problem, not Netflix.

I feel like there are two minutes of ads for every ten minutes of content on Hulu. It's ridiculous that you have to pay even more for an experience that is similar to the flat rate on Netflix and Disney+.

I refuse to watch anything on Hulu. Every time my wife insists and makes me watch something she really, really wants to see on Hulu, I am reminded of why I refuse to watch it.

And yes, we have the highest level of Hulu+ that is supposed to avoid most ads.

I'm the same.... though we did watch Catherine the Great and that Murder Podcast one w/ Martin Short /Steve Martin...

The thing that irks me w/ Hulu -- we have kids sleeping and it'll be soft for the actual show, then the ad comes in and it's like 5 decibals louder. and we have to physically just mute the commercials... it's the most annoying thing ever!

Subtitles on Hulu on my Roku TV have been broken for months now, despite regular app updates. They work in every other streaming app. I’m this close to just investing in a seedbox…

I've been saying for a long time they need to team up, or a 3rd party and create bundles... that's basically $40/month and you get HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Disney+, Apple -- and the $40 is split $5 to the 3rd party company, and then based on 'hours watched' by users... so you can watch whatever and whoever you watch the most of gets the majority stake in your monthly fees.

As a bonus this actually encourages them to work hard for your views.

A problem is that voting and getting recommendations is a tiny market compared to Disney basically pumping out what people are wanting to watch.

Yes, you can say they just focus on family content. But that is kind of the point. They identified their market and cater to them really well. Who is the market for Netflix?

Their curse is that they can find untapped markets, but then the content owners can invest surprisingly well into clawing back that market.

I don't actually like 99% of the Disney+ catalog and don't watch it. I like watching the MCU aaaand that's about it. Its great that D+ hitting a niche and hitting it hard, but I don't want it. A pal of mine has basically seen all of it with his family though. Niches, right?

I would estimate the Netflix target market is basically the non-family under-35s. It's actually closer to my tastes in general. Netflix also has a better real international selection IMO.

There's no clear differentiator between any of the above outside of (1) UX and (2) content. They all are a means of schlepping video to my screen. They are all almost perfectly commodity in my opinion.

IF you want Disney+ but are on the fence about Hulu and you're in the US, there's a bundle. I'm not sure about elsewhere.

$13.99 for Disney+, Hulu (with ads), and ESPN+. $19.99 if you want the Hulu with no ads.

https://www.disneyplus.com/welcome/disney-hulu-espn-bundle

I've found on my streaming device that Netflix is seriously fast at buffering and playing once you press play compared to D+ and Prime. Like 2 seconds vs 10+ seconds. Of course could just be my device but seems like they have really optimised the UX.

Agree. Apple has a horrible UX for the reason that it doesn't support profiles alone.

It supports profiles on an Apple TV using the system-wide profile switcher. Don’t know about other platforms, I won’t connect any other set top box to the internet to find out lest they start spewing ads forever.

I wish all the apps integrated with the system-wide profiles.

I offed my Hulu sub a long time ago. Prime is free with my account so I'm largely indifferent (their UX is pretty painful).

Too bad Netflix doesn't have a sports deal for live content.

Whereas I hate, loathe, and despise pretty much all sports.

I’d be really happy if I could delete all sports from all video sources I have available to me, or at least just hide them so that I don’t have to look at any of that crap.

I'm about in your boat, except with HBO Max instead of Apple TV+ (their shows aren't as appealing to me). And as those numbers climb and I look at one to cut, Netflix is the easiest. That's the whole point, though: Netflix is going to be the service on the chopping block before these others.

Why aren't Apple's shows (and movies?) appealing to you? If you dropped them on HBO I wouldn't know the difference. There are lots of different genres, great actors, and compelling stories.

We have Netflix (via T-Mobile), Hulu, Prime, HBO, Disney+ and Apple TV. Some of these (Disney/Hulu) are from family or friends. WE only pay for Prime (probably the lowest quality of all of these) and Apple TV (because of Apple One subscription).

HBO and Apple TV and Disney+ have the best quality content IMO. Netflix is kind of around there sometimes but a lot of just pure garbage (Looking at you Cowboy Bebop). Hulu isn't bad. Comparable to Netflix but less content. Prime is just bad for the most part. If Wal-Mart had launched it instead it's about what I'd expect it to be.

> Why aren't Apple's shows (and movies?) appealing to you?

What actual content do they have?

I've seen a Beastie boys doc, Ted Lasso and The morning show * edited from Newsroom when my error was pointed out.

That's a month's worth of content. What else do they have to justify continuing a subscription?

Disney has more content with just the Simpson's episodes alone. Add on top of that the entire Marvel catalog, the entire Starwars Catalog and the entire Pixar catalog.

I enjoyed "For All Mankind", "See", and "The Invasion". I get it for free due to a laptop purchase. I'm not sure if I'll pay for it once that runs out..

Those are all good as well, but I'm sure the person you're replying to was unaware that they could watch them.

The UX of Apple TV+(which is a terrible name) is nothing but bait and switch. After my first week of using my free subscription I completely gave up on trying to browse on the app.

90% of the content I would click on would then ask me for 5 to twenty dollars to pay for it, which is ultimately just a rental until Apple decides they aren't interested in running a streaming service anymore. There's no indication it's pay until you're already excited to watch a show and click on it.

There are good shows on there now, but I only ever bother to open the app when I see an article listing best shows on streaming services and happen to see an Apple one. Sitting down to relax and just opening the app brings about nothing but frustration.

I agree, the app is horrifically bad. Its hard to find the included content, it takes a long time for it to bring up the description of the video, the play delay is terrible, and it has smooth fast forward/rewind which I personally despise.

The only thing that makes it worth dealing with is the excellent content. Oh, and the fact that I can generally download something quickly to watch on a plane after boarding but before takeoff, since T-Mobile throttles Netflix, but apparently not AppleTV.

Do you mean The Morning Show? The Newsroom was an HBO series that ran for 3 seasons from 2012-2014.

Do they have extra features? The kind of stuff that used to come on DVDs?

Not OP but the only show I've enjoyed on ATV+ was Ted Lasso. They have no back catalog either. Not enough content to even get me to browse around. Only had it because they bundled it with student subs of Apple Music, otherwise never would have subbed.

> Why aren't Apple's shows (and movies?) appealing to you?

Isn't this basically just asking why doesn't Ted Lasso appeal to you? I think the biggest problem is Apple doesn't have much of a catalog.

Ted Lasso is the best thing there, but far from the only thing. The catalog is pretty solid. I personally loved Mythic Quest and Schmigadoon. I have mixed feelings about Foundation as an adaptation, but I like it pretty well as a stand-alone thing.

Looking forward to trying out For All Mankind, See, Macbeth, and Invasion; the first two seem especially well liked by friends.

Bounced off Physical and Dickinson, but that had nothing to do with the quality of the shows; they're well made and have excellent acting.

The wide variety of stories and genres are lacking, but I think the quality of the average Apple TV+ show is quite a bit higher than the average Netflix show, on par with most of HBO.

HBO is known for hugely popular shows with critical acclaim. Just last year, HBO had Succession, Mare of Easttown, and The White Lotus in several top-10 lists. It's hard to compare the mostly-okay offerings from Apple TV to either the current HBO shows or its back catalog full of hits.

> I think the quality of the average Apple TV+ show is quite a bit higher than the average Netflix show

Netflix has a ton of content so 'average' is going to differ based on your algorithm. But in the last year I can think of... The Crown, You, Cobra Kai, The Queen's Gambit, Bridgerton, Squid Games, Arcane all being massive successes. There are probably more I'm forgetting because they pump them out month after month.

> on par with most of HBO.

Maybe on par with HBO Max Originals...

No, I just thought that as someone who is highly critical of TV shows and movies that even I found a few shows to be good. I was just surprised given the number of different genres that there was nothing whatsoever that was appealing to the person I was replying to.

I agree they don’t have much of a catalog, but they also don’t charge much and give the service away bundled with new devices. It’ll take some time to build up content. No big deal.

There isn't a lot but For All Mankind is great and The Morning Show is pretty good. Foundation is OK.

I agree. If I had to pick 2, it would be HBO and Apple TV+.

If I had to pick 1...probably HBO because their movie rotation generally has great classics.

I like some Apple TV shows a lot, but there's not a lot. RN I think I'm "finished" with what I really wanted to watch: Ted Lasso, Central Park, Dickinson. I started Acapulco and it's nice, but things in other platforms seems more appealing.

That being said, I think as they expand, it's going to get pretty good.

I have enjoyed Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, and Foundation. That’s all I can recall at the moment for AppleTV+. Still enough to make it worthwhile as part of my AppleOne account.

I'm surprised YouTube isn't on your list. We having streaming services, but my kids mostly watch YouTube.

Youtube is pretty magical. It has everything, even in the "kid zone". Which also means I can't leave them unsupervised for 30 minutes and come back.

If I do, my kids will've gone from educational video about the rain forest to sponsored video to toy videos to slime to fart jokes to music videos of bikini-clad bimbos to steamy romance videos to ...

Anyway it's just too much work to curate youtube for a child, IMO.

For example, my kiddo found a bunch of inappropriately steamy fan fiction for her favorite cartoons narrated on youtube... and she demonstrated that she knew it was inappropriate because she started hiding her screen from us.

The other thing we find with our 3 year old is that he can have his tablet and watch movies or shows on Netflix/VLC, etc. and it's pretty much all positive.

But he always prefers YouTube and when he's using YouTube, he mostly watches 3-5 minutes of something before getting enticed by another thumbnail.

At times when he's had free reign to YT, it really seems to drastically affect his general attention, patience, temperament and even ability to sleep (he wakes up super early asking for his tablet).

Once we cut it off hard, he goes back to normal.

We don't really believe in complete abstinence of those sorts of things (I think it will just make him even more sensitive to those algorithms in the future) but being aware of the effect, reducing YT and prioritizing actual movies/series has made a noticeable difference.

As they get older, you’ll also find YouTube Kids serves as the primary gateway for consumerism / corporations to begin influencing your child. Between Netflix / Disney+, the traditional 30s television commercial has effectively disappeared for kids. Corporations have pivoted to sponsored content on YouTube kids.

YT Kids most popular channels are streamed play sessions and toy reviews with superhuman production values and unrealistic depictions of what the toys can do. Once a child has watched an episode of LOL doll play along (for example), YouTube algorithm will recommend LOL doll collection videos, which associate completist collecting with peer group social acceptance. Free to play video game spots were even worse, directly focusing on alluring introduction of the game’s addiction economy.

I gave my children access to YouTube kids for some of the excellent educational content reasoning that it would be a relatively safe experience. Within a month their homepage and all recommendations (and I do mean 100%) were sponsored 5-15 minute long toy commercials. Their interest in animals, nature, science, and dinosaur programming remained strong but disappeared entirely from view outside of keyword search.

All YT and Google apps are now removed from the devices they use. I allow unsupervised use of PBS Kids, PBS in general, Nat Geo, Disney Plus and Netflix Kids (with time limits) but YouTube is filtered from my kids devices at the router. They are not allowed Google accounts; all YouTube content access is done via keyword search with a parent selecting the material and remaining in the room during viewing.

There are programs on YouTube that can’t be replicated anywhere else. But the recommendation engine is distilled corruption and dismay.

You could use a different YouTube client perhaps. I use newpipe. It doesn't really do those recommendations.

But in general I really hate video sites too so I don't use it much at all. Too many harebrained "influencers" now trying to sell stuff

My kids couldn’t handle youtube. They would watch algorithmically created garbage (5yo) or endless game streaming (9yo) and be impossible to handle afterwards. First we did youtube time-outs, but every time we added it back into the mix we saw their behavior get worse, so eventually we banned youtube outright. Give me a curated platform like disney or netflix any day.

Youtube is not for kids; TOS does not allow it.

They literally have Youtube for kids..

https://www.youtube.com/kids/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

And? Small percentage bothers to use, and it’s not foolproof on inappropriateness. They were caught surveilling kids also.

This is exactly our experience with Youtube.

I can sit with my kid and watch a couple episodes of a show I've never heard of (Like Bluey) and say, "Yep, this is a definite thumbs up. You can watch Bluey when you have screen time" And I trust that when an episode ends, another episode of Bluey is what will show up.

For a youtube channel, I have to watch the entire video and I can say, "Yep, you can watch this exact video. Make sure autoplay is off."

I have no clue what video would play next. I have no clue what product the youtuber will try to shill in the middle of the video, etc.

I see so many of these complaints about YT having lots of good family-friendly content but at the same time being terrible at curation even in the kids mode.

Seems like the problem can be solved with a crowdsourced list of family-friendly videos (on GitHub?) managed by trusted collaborators and then a simple page that embeds only these videos?

Over time I assume it should work given enough people contributing. It's not like the content needs to be kept continuously up to date either (unless old videos disappear faster than new ones are added).

The problem is that the business model of YT kids contact creators contains incentives similar to those of SEO farms operating in the Google keyword ecosystem. Good content is shouldered aside by low effort, low value, high profit messaging.

Youtube tries to "hook" you. Between autoplay and recommended thumbnails (that can't be disabled) it's easy to get "hijacked".

The worst part is that recommendations aren't in line with the content level of what you are viewing.

Don’t even try. You would basically have to rewrite the entire YouTube client to get rid of all the dark patterns.

It's already done though: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

Absolutely no YouTube for our kids, just don’t trust it, not even their kids app. Too many stories of bad content.

Here in the uk we have the joy that is CBeebies and CBBC, so have iPlayer (and all the other kids BBC apps) on iPads for the kids.

The only other one we let them have free reign on is Disney+, I’m sure this will change for the older one soon.

Wish there was a way to block everything and whitelist allowed channels. There are some really quality ones but there are also a bunch of really creepy content, even in the kids app.

Does the kids app show ads? Aside from the creepy content (which required in-person parental filtering) the advertising was the thing that drove us away from YouTube.

It's fine on a laptop or desktop where you can run an ad blocker. It's not fine when you're trying to let kiddo watch YouTube on an actual TV screen.

Yes, on certain channels. Some channels are ad-free, but this can change over time. A channel that’s ad-free on the YT Kids app today doesn’t have to be ad-free tomorrow.

There’s a paid version of YouTube that doesn’t have ads.

Things my son (2 and a half) likes to watch on YT:

- Lorry trucks (semis/big rigs) driving on the road/motorway

- The tube/trains/subways coming in and out of stations

- Large excavators digging in quarries and loading dump trucks

The videos are usually pretty slow paced and calm, and we're happy to let him watch in small blocks (5-10 mins max) from time to time. He's shown no interest in typical cartoons, kids shows, etc. I'd love to cut off YT completely, but are there other places to get this type of content for him?

I've seen DVDs of some of these.

Don't forget the heaping tablespoon of surveillance.

In previous threads I’ve asked about the same thing and some parents have very strong opinions about what’s available on YouTube.

I remember one thread in particular where someone told me that you could find some very strange stuff just by typing a period in the search box (autocomplete does the rest, NSFW if that’s not obvious), and that school age Kids tend to figure this out or share this “trick” amongst themselves. So to each their own, but I’m not a parent yet so I abstain from having any strong opinions for the moment.

Has everyone forgotten Elsagate already?

I wasn’t aware of it.

What the actual fuuuck. Tried searching just a dot and I got a fish cutting video, an indian woman being slapped around, and some creepy horror doll shit.

Seems you got further than I did. I scrolled through and decided “there be dragons” and left it at that.

There’s an audience for everything but I am not the audience for everything.

Not even - those were my top results.

Yeah I noped tf out pretty quick too. This isn't even the first time I've seen crazy shit about YT - these parents are 100% right not to let their kids on unsupervised. Weird how it's not news more often tbh.

YouTube is a terrifying cascade of "wtf" for children.

IMO it's completely unsuitable for unsupervised children under, say, 13.

Interesting that their terms of service specifically prohibit children under 13, but a lot of people still insist it is good for them and ignore it.

Hulu (ad free) and HBO Max are easily the best services I have, these days. It's not even close. D+ is a bargain if you have kids and intend to let them watch any streaming at all. Apple TV only stays around because it's cheap and was free for quite a while initially. I've watched like two shows and a couple movies on it in the ~15 months I've had it. Probably ought to cancel, really. Netflix and Amazon (better catalog than Netflix but UI—on every platform—so bad that I rarely use it) are on my personal chopping block. I doubt I'll have either by next year.

Sadly no Hulu or HBO Max in the uk, but I think the better shows end up on other services here.

I think we get some Hulu shows on Disney Plus under the Star banner.

Stillwater and the new Snoopy show are quite good Apple TV+ shows for kids. But otherwise, Apple TV+ has been very meh. We only have it because we have the big bundle for the icloud storage.

Our kids love Snoopy.

To quote my wife though “I would pay for Apple TV+ just for Ted Lasso”. That says allot about how people look at these services.

Apple are treating their tv service the way they do their whole product range, small number of products but done very well.

Although, if you're interested in one offering on a service, you really only need to be actively subscribed for 1-2 months a year (to watch the newest season)?

I think that's a major challenge here and it will ultimately drive up the costs for everyone.

Subscribe for 6 months = 50% annual discount

Subscribe for 4 months = 67% annual discount

Subscribe for 2 months = 83% annual discount

etc. And that looks great!

But producing the content costs the same regardless. So as more people do this, a vicious cycle will set in. Prices must increase to cover production costs with shorter subscription periods. Rising prices cause more people to shift to cycling through shorter subscriptions. Which further drives prices higher.

Basically you end up with the a la carte cable nightmare where you pay the same amount to for access to only one channel at a time. The only real way to stop this is to switch to longer term discounts and early termination fees or bundles.

Or maybe the market will naturally transition to an a la carte model, and we will maybe pay more for that one show we have to watch, but pay less overall, and have fewer recurring bills to clean up?

That would be great actually to move to a purely commoditized model where producers are paid directly. I think there's actually something extremely messed up about pricing. For example you can purchase the entire season of a show for less than a subscription and have permanent access to it.

Netflix has by far the easiest to use download feature (for Amazon Fire). As long as that's the case I'll be a subscriber so my daughter has something to watch when flying.

Same here. We’ve cancelled everything except for Disney+. Well, we also have Amazon prime, but that is mainly for the shipping. We rarely watch anything on Amazon.

I cancelled Disney+ when they wanted to charge extra for a movie, on top of the subscription. I'll just buy the DVD cheaper than what they asked for on top of the sub.

Admittedly, I'm not automatically entitled to all the things they release but still feels wrong and wanted to vote with my wallet.

The Mandalorian was an amazing series though!

That is only temporary. Within a few weeks everything becomes free. If you can’t wait a few weeks, there is always the buccaneer bay.

I hadn't figured that out, thanks!

You know that Apple TV+ has an artificially low rate to get people on Platorm and will do the same thing as Netflix over time (that is escalate its pricing).

To restrict a kids profile you need to go to the website and reduce their rating ceiling, then put a passcode on the other profiles.

Probably needs a recent client as well. One of our tablets couldn’t upgrade, believe it was because it was on Android 4.x or something.

Is there any decent way of creating a custom kids profile, ideally one that cuts across multiple services? For example, I would like my child to be able to watch 5 shows on Disney+, 4 movies on Netflix, etc.

Download the content and put it on a device to watch offline. You'll have complete control of what content is available.

UK .. slightly off-topic but you (and I) are also paying £13.25 a month for the BBC...

if you are peaky I really recommend filmin: https://www.filmin.es/

all the movies/series are high quality and in VOS :)