Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix Flexes

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 177 posts

Re: Netflix Flexes

#141

Post by V-2 »

mavhc wrote: post #66
dasil003 wrote: post #52

Having dedicated nearly a decade of my life to a startup competing in this space, the OA is right about Netflix's superior strategy when it comes to user experience and content production. Netflix surged ahead of the pack because they focused relentlessly on the quality of the streaming experience while all the legacy players were focused on deal-making. In other words, while Netflix was building a solid video delive…

The OA is also a good Netflix show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_OA

Uncompelling ending has by now become sort of a trademark of the (otherwise original and highly captivating) productions involving Brit Marling.

Re: Netflix Flexes

#142

Post by V-2 »

DanBC wrote: post #72
ericmcer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was almost amazing how popular and terrible that movie was. What’s gonna be next, a monster where if you smell it you die? It was just another blatant example of how you can get people to mainline the kool-aid with social media, marketing, and Fear of missing the current big thing.

It wasn't a terrible movie. It was reasonably well constructed and hit most of the right beats. But for middle-brow entertainment it's a perfectly good example of a monster movie. You may be getting bored of this trope (DON'T USE THIS SENSE OR YOU DIE) but that doesn't make the individual films terrible.

It was mediocre and ridden with plot-holes, even by the (very forgiving) genre standards.

Re: Netflix Flexes

#143

Post by bopbop »

mayoff wrote: post #135
nojvek wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any good Anime you recommend ? I loved Violet Evergreen. It was very well done as an animation. The others are “your lie in April”. That legit made me sob. I usually don’t get that emotional. (Although not a Netflix original).

Death Note was fantastic. Much better than I expected after reading a synopsis of the premise.

Death note is almost a reverse bird box.

Bird box has an excellent premise, which turns out to just be a hook on which to hang some character development (I did quite enjoy it though).

Death note has a really derivative premise, and then goes nuts drilling down in to the exact mechanics of how such a thing would work - there's no deus ex machina (apart from the literal god of the plot), instead it plays within it's own rules very exactly and never cheats the audience, instead introducing very clever "hacks" to its own system.

Re: Netflix Flexes

#144

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #113
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately what everyone wants is a super easy interface to pay for precise a la carte content, never bundled, never subscription-based. I 100% do not want this. I want to pay for one subscription to get all the media I want (music, tv shows, movies, books, etc). And I don’t care at all about ownership. I’d pay $50-100/month for this subscription, and we’re getting close if you don’t mind cobbling together a half doz…

You start by saying you don’t want a unified interface where you can get exactly the content you want, then your very next sentence is that you want a single unified interface to get exactly the content you want. It sounds like you specifically do want a single interface for a la carte content (note: this has nothing to do with ownership vs restricted access), and you currently achieve something like this with a comb…

You’ve misread my comment. The unified interface part is not what I objected to.

I explicitly do NOT want to pay a la carte. I understand what you’re saying about only paying for what I consume and not paying for any irrelevant content.

And yet, I prefer a subscription, even if the total cost is higher. I don’t want the cognitive overhead of constantly trying to decide if it’s worth a little bit of money to purchase or rent a specific piece of content. I’d much rather pay a flat fee once per month for all-you-can-consume access. If we were talking about something very expensive, then my position might differ, but in the grand scheme of things, this is relatively trivial, so I’m happy to pay a few extra bucks to not think about it as much.

Re: Netflix Flexes

#145

Post by lorenzhs »

Semaphor wrote: post #140
lh7777 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their worst decision of late is to include auto-playing "trailers" (with sound!) when you pause for more than a second on a title. Between that and the lack of a decent "browse by category" interface you mentioned, I rarely bother using the TV UI to discover content. Googling "what's good on netflix" works much better for me. At least you can still disable the auto-play next episode "feature".

> auto-playing "trailers" (with sound!) I've read about this a few times. If you disable it once, does it get disabled permanently? Because Netflix (unlike the Amazon Prime Video ads) never plays trailers with sound for me. > auto-play next episode "feature" I'd certainly call it a feature. I'd hate having to manually click every time I want to see a new episode.

My TV's Netflix app doesn't have an option to disable the auto-playing trailers, or even just their sound (short of muting the TV). It's quite annoying.

Re: Netflix Flexes

#146

Post by Semaphor »

lorenzhs wrote: post #145
Semaphor wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> auto-playing "trailers" (with sound!) I've read about this a few times. If you disable it once, does it get disabled permanently? Because Netflix (unlike the Amazon Prime Video ads) never plays trailers with sound for me. > auto-play next episode "feature" I'd certainly call it a feature. I'd hate having to manually click every time I want to see a new episode.

My TV's Netflix app doesn't have an option to disable the auto-playing trailers, or even just their sound (short of muting the TV). It's quite annoying.

ah, okay, that makes sense. Though to be fair, that sounds like a shitty app (one of many reasons I have a dumb TV).

Re: Netflix Flexes

#148

Post by kazagistar »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #101
happybuy wrote: post #98

All the signs indicate that Netflix has become a user hostile company that is prioritising ongoing user engagement and stickiness over their users needs. It's starting to remind me of another company which at one point in their evolution prioritised user engagement over everything else – Facebook. Once this occurs, it is a long slippery slope which leads to a series of user hostile internal decisions which ultimately…

> Removing the ability to easily see the complete catalogue via comprehensive categories, which enhances the reliance users have on algorithmic suggestions To me, this one seems counterproductive to both Netflix's and the consumer's shared goal of engaging in interesting, new content. I've had occasions where I've signed in to my "guest" profile and seen media that never appeared at all under my main profile, and hav…

Its prefiltering or even conditioning users. If you are like me and generally have a very specific idea of what to watch from a preestablished curation funnel, you will find Netflix provides very little value. But if you just wanna sit down and watch whatever Netflix offers up to you, you will end up being a much simpler user to cater to. All they need then is a large volume of things that are vaguely good and vaguely similar to what you like. But you might not end up wathing what's actually the best.

Re: Netflix Flexes

#149

Post by kazagistar »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #80
dasil003 wrote: post #52

Having dedicated nearly a decade of my life to a startup competing in this space, the OA is right about Netflix's superior strategy when it comes to user experience and content production. Netflix surged ahead of the pack because they focused relentlessly on the quality of the streaming experience while all the legacy players were focused on deal-making. In other words, while Netflix was building a solid video delive…

I agree Netflix is trending towards failure, but I couldn’t disagree more about why and the path leading them there. Netflix is and has been the least attractive of these services for a long time, specifically because other platforms have far expanded inventory and integrate the ability to instantly rent or buy additional content not directly included. Ultimately what everyone wants is a super easy interface to pay f…

> Ultimately what everyone wants is a super easy interface to pay for precise a la carte content

The success of Netflix, Spotify, and even TV itself seems to show that a large number of people don't want to self curate, and would prefer to consume content curated by a third party; even if the quality suffers, the lower effort expended might make up for it.

Post reply on HN