This was the primary reason I cancelled my account. Secondary reason was the poor search / filtering options - they have continually gimped these features in favor of their own recommendation engine and homepage. Their recommendation engine has a recency bias and a popularity bias. As someone who liked to watch obscure world cinema Netflix makes it way too hard to find such things and to be honest their catalog doesnt even have a lot of such content anymore. I suspect one of the reasons they dont have any grids/lists and filtering in their UI is that it will reveal just how small their catalog is in most genres now.
Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
91–100 of 243 posts
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember when you didn't have to wade through that awful carousel view to find what you wanted to watch? Or when they didn't try to hide your "continue watching" list in a steaming heap of inaccurate recommendations? Except for a couple of shows, I've almost completely switched to Prime.
"continue watching" being deep down is my biggest pet peeve. Nothing gets me angrier than having to scroll and search just to continue watching the same show every single day. Statistically, if each show is 8 episodes, then 88% of the time when I come to the homepage, I want to "continue watching" not "find a new show". Why the hell is continue watching not always the very first row.
They deliberately switch around the placement of the homepage queues. The goal is to keep you engaging with the product and discovering new things. They don't want you holding a Netflix subscription just for Friends, or whatever.
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#93Interesting. 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.
They actually for a while have disabled previews for content not labeled "family friendly" if you setup a parental-controls PIN.
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#94It's amazing it took this long. I can understand how some people might be okay with this feature but it causes me actual anxiety to use the Netflix app on my AppleTV. Before autoplay I could mindlessly browse looking for content. Now I hurry through to check if there is anything new and get out as fast as possible. They must know that people use the app less since this change... right?
I believe I read somewhere that it did result in an overall increase in viewership. There's no way they don't have those metrics. My guess is that for some majority of users who weren't super bothered by it it genuinely caused them to watch more things. Even though a vocal minority was extremely upset about it, the numbers still worked out overall. Of course adding a preference is easy, and people who aren't upset wo…
How did they define viewership? Because viewership of previews definitely increased.
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#95Thanks Netflix! Next feature request: AUTO-SKIP-ALL-INTROS-AND-RECAPS-WHILE-BINGING
I like to watch intros and recaps sometimes. I like the current design where I can choose to skip if I want to.
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe I read somewhere that it did result in an overall increase in viewership. There's no way they don't have those metrics. My guess is that for some majority of users who weren't super bothered by it it genuinely caused them to watch more things. Even though a vocal minority was extremely upset about it, the numbers still worked out overall. Of course adding a preference is easy, and people who aren't upset wo…
How did they define viewership? Because viewership of previews definitely increased.
Presumably they can tell the difference between viewership of previews and resulting viewership of the actual shows :P
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really like star systems because I spend way too much time deciding if something is 3 or 4 stars, or 4 or 5 stars. I much prefer textual descriptions; for example "Terrible", "Don't like", "Okay", "Like", "Favourite", which has the same options as a 5-star rating system, but choosing between 3/4 and 4/5 is much easier IMHO. I don't really know of any system that uses this, except this one music player I wrote…
Netflix used to define the ratings as "Hated It", "Didn't Like It", "Liked It", "Really Liked It", and "Loved It". I didn't find it difficult to memorize. What's to stop you from applying whatever textual descriptions you want to the numbers?
Because I might apply different ones, making them useless in aggregate if I assume anything I like has to be a 4 or 5, but you assume that you'll rate anything you like as low as a 2, and reserve just 1 for "don't watch it"
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure the new recommendation algorithm is basically just "recommend Netflix originals in a random order". Edit: I feel like I should add something besides a snarky comment: I was searching for a mid-2000s Best Picture Nominee a few days ago (something like Munich or Capote, but don't remember). Results 1 & 2 were The Irishman and Marriage Story. None of the other non-Netflix best picture nominees were anywh…
There's a law of conservation of advertisement. It's not like you were going to get away from ads forever when switching from real TV. I prefer the purely interstitial (untargeted) commercials from real TV. With a DVR I can fast forward them, or always at least mute. Having Amazon/Netflix "recommend" things to me through what should be a functional unbiased system is more insidious.
lol, the sheer stupidity in the mental gymnastics people will employ to back their outrageous behaviors in avoiding the "targeted ads" bogeyman
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#99DAE know if this would prevent previews for other shows from playing during the credits of a filn or series finale? It might seem petty but not being able to watch the credits and reflect in peace (without a frantic run to disable the auto-trailers) was my tipping point and I promised not to go back until it was possible disable it.
Have only just turned it off so don't know yet, but my bet is on no. I'm right there with you on reflecting in peace though. Sometimes you want to just take a breath and think about what you saw. That same "feature" was one of the things that drove me away from flow TV, as they increasingly pushed the next program more and more aggressively, until it would actually start the trailer/speaker BEFORE the current program was finished. Drives me insane. Who watches a 2.5 hours movie, and as soon as the credits start rolling, goes "alright next movie, play play play!"
Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
#100Thank the Almighty Bob. About time they did this.