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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 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...
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
And yes, we have the highest level of Hulu+ that is supposed to avoid most ads.
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!
As a bonus this actually encourages them to work hard for your views.
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 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.
$13.99 for Disney+, Hulu (with ads), and ESPN+. $19.99 if you want the Hulu with no ads.
Too bad Netflix doesn't have a sports deal for live content.
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.
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.