Live data from Hacker News

Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

help.netflix.com

21–30 of 243 posts

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#21

Didn't ever expect to see this capability. A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this? And then one day completely gutted the star rating system, replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving up their "so g…

Yes, I remember those days of the content. But, I don't really agree that the thumbs up/down system is giving me bad recommendations. I still find the 'percentage' that it thinks I'd like is probably really accurate. I have to assume that the recommendations work with more data than just the thumbs up/down interaction, since they probably don't fully trust the user input. And I imagine all the stuff I watched for 10 minutes but stopped is more valuable in determining usefulness than me going out of my way to rate it.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#22

Didn't ever expect to see this capability. A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this? And then one day completely gutted the star rating system, replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving up their "so g…

A lot more people use the thumb system than were using the star system.

They used the equivalent of the thumb system. Many people give 5 stars, or 1 star. There are some that give in between. Many places consider anything less than 5 star to mean there was a problem (Uber, Amazon, reviews for phone support).

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#23
This is fantastic news! More times than I can count I have decided that it wasn't worth the effort to peruse through the app before my ears get assaulted if I forgot to mute my TV beforehand. It is anxiety-inducing and unpleasant to have to keep the selection moving just so audio doesn't blast from my TV when I just want to browse.

Perhaps we can thank the fact that streaming services now have competition, and the quality of their UX matters quite a bit.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#24

Didn't ever expect to see this capability. A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this? And then one day completely gutted the star rating system, replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving up their "so g…

It was right around the time their first "Originals" came out. I guess accurate recommendations is less important than shows with cheaper licensing costs or home-grown originals.

They coulda just made their originals part of the simpler rating system instead. As jacked up as it is, it would be nice to find shows that I'd more than likely actually like.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#25
> Changes to these settings are specific to a profile and will take affect across all devices.

> Note: There may be a delay before the setting takes affect.

> Note: There may be a delay before the setting takes affect.

"Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#26

Didn't ever expect to see this capability. A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this? And then one day completely gutted the star rating system, replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving up their "so g…

[deleted]

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#27

Didn't ever expect to see this capability. A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this? And then one day completely gutted the star rating system, replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving up their "so g…

Netflix still does a ton of statistical experiments. A good one is video thumbnail selection.

2016 blog post: https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-v...

2018 presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjQMEjkrUGo

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#28

Interesting. I phoned and complained about this as soon as Netflix started doing it - I think it was about two years ago! What really got me (and I pointed this out to the cutomer service rep) was that the first preview that showed included several swear words. I thought that that argument alone would be enough, let alone how annoying it is to have a stupid light and sound show while I am browsing. So all I can say i…

> was that the first preview that showed included several swear words

From feedback like this, they might have just made a policy to not allow cursing in the preview whether that was by choosing different scenes or bleeping them.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#30

Didn't ever expect to see this capability. A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this? And then one day completely gutted the star rating system, replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving up their "so g…

what causes you to say much despised? I personally enjoy thumbs up v thumbs down - I find with 5 star ratings systems people resort to extremes and usually use it like a thumbs up/down anyway (1 star or 5 star)
Post reply on HN