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Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

help.netflix.com

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Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#211
post #206
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually hate that "feature" even more than autoplay. It's completely disrespectful to both the viewer and to the content that you're watching. This option is to turn off autoplay when browsing. It would be great if it also disabled the auto play on trailers at the end of a show.

That bugged me enough the first time it happened that I immediately stopped what I was doing and worked on disabling it. If you use greasemonkey/tampermonkey then the script below will disable the post-episode playback (along with a couple other UI changes) https://github.com/bbbbbr/netflix-disable-auto-play-and-more

I was hoping to find your comment in this thread, thank you so much for this. It makes me mad someone else is controlling these very basic things, treating their userbase like mindless monkeys. All these things could be hidden somewhere in the UI, and everybody would be happy.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because some people don't look titles one at a time. If I have in front of me a list of 30 movies, the fact that I have the cursor over one doesn't mean I'm considering that one. I might be thinking about the name of the movie that my coworker mentioned yesterday, deciding whether I want a comedy or an action flick, or discussing with my girlfriend what to see; or simply reading diagonally the list of 30 movies,…

It sounds like you are watching on a computer? I watch on my Roku tv, where there is only a few titles on screen and it makes sense to scroll threw them one by one. Maybe that's the difference?

Nope, smart tv (using the playstation app).

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#213
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you sometimes can't even rent movies that you saw on Netflix as recently as a couple of years ago. "Page Eight" was a great little spy movie with Bill Nighy and Rachel Weisz on Netflix. Now you can't rent from anywhere, for any price afaict. How does this optimize revenues for the studios?

The only thing I can think of is a mind share argument: they want you to watch the latest blockbuster instead. The Disney Vault is the cynical endpoint of this line of thinking.

Howso?

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but I don't trust myself to remember how I calibrated myself to the rating system in the past. If I'm more stingy with the 5-star ratings now than I was 2 years ago, then I'm going to skew things in a way that the system probably can't understand. In other words, it not only expects me to define my own scale, it also expects me to stay consistent with it over time. I don't think that's realistic. I hon…

Relative individual consistency is not a necessary component in these systems, except perhaps in the most simplistic. It’s not exactly difficult to introduce temporal normalization / regularization into these models. I don’t have any specific knowledge of Netflix per se, but I suspect the granularity of a 5 point rating system just proved to be superfluous. Even a +1 / -1 rating is probably sufficiently proxied by a…

> Even a +1 / -1 rating is probably sufficiently proxied by a simple measure of completion percentage (appropriately normalized).

I'm just hoping they're not making the same mistake here that they're making in the UI: showing movies I watched to the end as "continue watching", because I closed them on the end credits roll.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#215

Earlier 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?

That’s still the way the star ratings appear when I watch Netflix using my 2013 Samsung Blu-ray player. For the first few years of watching Netflix, I would religiously rate films and TV show (even those I’ve already seen in the cinema) to help its recommendation engine but it didn’t really help much.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#216
Finally. Every time a preview plays i cringe. Most of the problem is that it just starts abruptly at max volume. The logic is failed. The procedure should be, if the item is hovered, wait 2 seconds. Then fade in preview video and audio for 2 seconds. Don't know if the behavior is the same for all platforms though.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#217

It'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?

Agreed... an attempt to make users consume more, so annoying.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix now has much better sources of information than the self-reported star ratings. Self-reported ratings fail in a lot of ways. Users can upvote what they think they're supposed to upvote. They'll downvote something, then go watch the sequel, because "It's terrible but I love it". And since they're seeking out stuff that they suspect they're going to like, they either compress all of the ratings into the top tie…

So why did their recommendations get so much worse?

I believe it's mostly because their content got worse. It's hard to recommend good things when there are fewer good things there, and you've already seen all of the things you like.

They used to be alone in the space. Now they're competing with a lot of other services. Not in the DVD space, but I think they don't care about that space, and there are fewer people using it.

A lot of people suggest that there's another factor, that for streaming they pay different amounts for different content, and may not aim you at a movie that's expensive for them to show you. I have no idea if that's true.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#219

It'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?

Same here, caused anxiety. We must be a minority bc I started avoiding Netflix completely unless I saw a show in the news that I wanted to check out.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#220
post #169
post #8

FINALLY I honestly stopped watching most netflix due to this feature. I would go there to watch something specific but I would not browse around because of that annoying auto-play crap

BOOOOOO it seems the setting has no impact on the Roku App I am still getting AutoPlay on Roku

have you tried switching profiles then switching back? I think some settings get cached on device until you do a profile change.
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