Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React • Hacker News Board

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#81

Post by joverholt » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:31 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #34

makecheck wrote: post #26

Interface performance is one of the strangest problems to have in this age of crazy processing power but it is extremely common. Some of the delay is just plain silly and avoidable, like having long and synchronous opening animations in response to an action, which only serve to waste the user’s time. (Oh how I love being on a web site like AT&T and watching their JavaScript poorly zoom open a blank box from the cent…

Especially the lag that you see on some brand new cars, only BMW and Audi seem to have lag free interface, but anything else that involves touch interface is just horrid! I've recently sat in my friend's brand new Honda SUV and the interface lag is just plain silly, for a car that costs $30,000+. Why is that?

Our 2013 Honda Accord needed several updates just for the radio to work reliably. You would go to change a channel, the screen would blank out and come back on with all presets set to 97.3. Of course, if you "rebooted" the car, they came back correctly.

And the lag when hitting a tough screen button, incredibly frustrating. I want my buttons!

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#82

Post by JonRB » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

nodamage wrote: post #70

usaphp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially the lag that you see on some brand new cars, only BMW and Audi seem to have lag free interface, but anything else that involves touch interface is just horrid! I've recently sat in my friend's brand new Honda SUV and the interface lag is just plain silly, for a car that costs $30,000+. Why is that?

Same with in-flight entertainment systems on planes. They always have terrible, slow interfaces.

I recently took a flight with Virgin Atlantic and was actually pleasantly surprised. It still wasn't perfect, but it was by far the best I've seen from in-flight entertainment.

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#83

Post by Gravityloss » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #34

makecheck wrote: post #26

Interface performance is one of the strangest problems to have in this age of crazy processing power but it is extremely common. Some of the delay is just plain silly and avoidable, like having long and synchronous opening animations in response to an action, which only serve to waste the user’s time. (Oh how I love being on a web site like AT&T and watching their JavaScript poorly zoom open a blank box from the cent…

Especially the lag that you see on some brand new cars, only BMW and Audi seem to have lag free interface, but anything else that involves touch interface is just horrid! I've recently sat in my friend's brand new Honda SUV and the interface lag is just plain silly, for a car that costs $30,000+. Why is that?

I think it will get worse with time as younger generations have never experienced lag-free appliance technology.

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#84

Post by jordache » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #34

makecheck wrote: post #26

Interface performance is one of the strangest problems to have in this age of crazy processing power but it is extremely common. Some of the delay is just plain silly and avoidable, like having long and synchronous opening animations in response to an action, which only serve to waste the user’s time. (Oh how I love being on a web site like AT&T and watching their JavaScript poorly zoom open a blank box from the cent…

Especially the lag that you see on some brand new cars, only BMW and Audi seem to have lag free interface, but anything else that involves touch interface is just horrid! I've recently sat in my friend's brand new Honda SUV and the interface lag is just plain silly, for a car that costs $30,000+. Why is that?

are these non-Android/Apple infotainment systems running a high-level language runtime?

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#85

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

frakr wrote: post #79

city41 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can opt out of A/B testing. Head to netflix.com, go to your account settings > Test Participation > Include me in tests and previews, and switch it off.

I had to do that after I got put in a group where there was no way to view the description or episode list without also starting to play the selection (in browser). On a console app the other day it would start playing an audio preview of anything selected making scrolling through my options extremely annoying. I quit the app almost immediately. I don't mind being in the testing group but I would definitely like the…

> Wouldn't that feedback be valuable to them?

The feedback is generally implicit in that if it causes problems for a lot of people then the test fails because you stop watching Netflix with that device.

That being said, if you call in to customer service they can remove you from the test if it turns out that's actually the problem (sometimes the problem is that you are in two conflicting tests for example) and they do mark that down as feedback. But they want you to call in so they can better understand and record the failure mode.

You don't even have to call, you can do it via chat, if you're not the kind of person who like to talk on a phone. :)

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#86

Post by rojoca » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #34

makecheck wrote: post #26

Interface performance is one of the strangest problems to have in this age of crazy processing power but it is extremely common. Some of the delay is just plain silly and avoidable, like having long and synchronous opening animations in response to an action, which only serve to waste the user’s time. (Oh how I love being on a web site like AT&T and watching their JavaScript poorly zoom open a blank box from the cent…

Especially the lag that you see on some brand new cars, only BMW and Audi seem to have lag free interface, but anything else that involves touch interface is just horrid! I've recently sat in my friend's brand new Honda SUV and the interface lag is just plain silly, for a car that costs $30,000+. Why is that?

I found this advertisement from Mercedes interesting: https://i.redd.it/wwxk8nqh88ex.gif

I can't speak for the quality of Mercedes interface (and this is obviously marketing for non-programmers) but LOC seems like an odd thing to be emphasising.

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#87

Post by Sanddancer » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

Why is it so hard to just say, "precompile your code?" Just in time means having to take the same code, and do the same transformations to it, parse and reparse the code, every time you start the app. Yes, React may be a nice templating engine, but why make everyone go through the same process over and over again when you can copy once and not have to worry about it anymore?

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#88

Post by usaphp » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:52 PM UTC

smnscu wrote: post #71

usaphp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially the lag that you see on some brand new cars, only BMW and Audi seem to have lag free interface, but anything else that involves touch interface is just horrid! I've recently sat in my friend's brand new Honda SUV and the interface lag is just plain silly, for a car that costs $30,000+. Why is that?

Have you seen BMW's Display Key or however it's called? Ridiculous.

I've used it, the lag on it is abysmal, whoever approved it should be fired right away.

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#89

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:53 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #26

Interface performance is one of the strangest problems to have in this age of crazy processing power but it is extremely common. Some of the delay is just plain silly and avoidable, like having long and synchronous opening animations in response to an action, which only serve to waste the user’s time. (Oh how I love being on a web site like AT&T and watching their JavaScript poorly zoom open a blank box from the cent…

> Why should that ever be the case?

You can solve any problem by adding more software and layers of abstraction, except the problem of too much software. That's the state we're in now.

The BBC micro could have a word processor in ROM that would boot almost instantly and responded to keypresses immediately. This was because the software was written in assembler and had to fit in a small ROM. The choice of using a TV system running (say) Android and a web browser means that, although the software is slightly easier to write and the processor is 100 times faster, it has to execute 10,000 times more machine instructions in order to render the UI.

This is partly why people like Maciej campaign against multi-megabyte text pages. Another way is possible.

Re: Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React

#90

Post by yaur » Thu, Jan 12, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #67

dlbucci wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Roku apps are written in JavaScript/HTML. I believe they use BrightScript (at least on the older models), so I don't think React would help.

It is possible to work directly with C++ though, which I think Netflix must be doing with their Gibbon framework because their interface is very different from those obviously using the Roku tools (and looks exactly like their interface everywhere else). As the article states, Netflix aren't necessarily working with HTML when they make these React views - it sounds very much like how React Native works.

Do you have a cite for that? If there is a c++ sdk it isn't easy to find, though I can easily believe that companies on the scale of Netflix have access to better tools.