UX is a night and day difference between Netflix and its competitors. It's mind-boggling that the giants like Disney and HBO can't even get close. It's especially more noticeable on slow devices like Smart TV's.
With respect, I hate, loathe, and despise the auto-play part of the Netflix UI. I hate that more than anything else I could possibly love about Netflix. Far too fucking distracting while you’re trying to focus on something else that you might actually want to watch.
And yes, I’ve gone into the settings to turn that feature off, and it doesn’t entirely work. It does reduce the auto-play somewhat, but not entirely.
I’ll fucking delete my Netflix account and the Netflix app from our AppleTV device, if that shit gets any worse.
> And yes, I’ve gone into the settings to turn that feature off, and it doesn’t entirely work. It does reduce the auto-play somewhat, but not entirely.
Not sure what you mean by not entirely? I've got both 'autoplay next episode' and 'autoplay previews' turned off and don't think I see it anywhere anymore, which dramatically improved the experience.
I’ve turned off both, and it has improved things, but I still find cases where it decides to fucking auto play anyway. Really fucking annoying, when I’ve supposedly turned off all the goddamn autopsy shit.
You're absolutely right, I don't like it either, and I hated it at the beginning. But, now I got accustomed to it so much that now other apps feel eerily quiet to me. It's been very interesting to observe that change of perspective on myself. I consider myself successfully brainwashed with it. Now, I feel like I'm browsing shelves in a store with noises, and the other apps feel like empty stores, if that makes sense?
You're right, even with the "autoplay" settings turned off when you drop into a TV show's subsection it will automatically start playing the next episode. Incredibly frustrating when you just want to check episode length of number of episodes per season.
Peacock uses a white glow around the preview picture as their selection indicator. No border. Just a faint glow.
HBO Max has no way of navigating to a show page from your most recently viewed carousel. You have to find or search the show separately.
It's death by a thousand cuts, but jesus... use your competitor's app. See what UX works and what doesn't. I can't imagine any of the little stuff is actually patented.
Paramount+ has subtitles that are almost impossible to read with some videos. And you're forced to watch an unskippable ad for their other content when you start your first show of the day, even if you have the commercial free plan.
Amazon Prime awkwardly splits their shows into individual seasons ('series' in UK) in such a way that it's difficult to ascertain how much of the show you'll actually be able to watch on Prime. Other seasons may be available to rent, purchase, watch on one of their partner subscription services, and/or watch for free on their IMDb TV ad-supported service, all of which is haphazardly jumbled together in their main window in no particular order.
The thing I hate most about Amazon Prime is that I added shows to my watchlist that were free at the time, then when I went to watch them later, they cost. IMO, Amazon makes things free until they see if they're successful, then switch them to paid. This pissed me off so bad that I no longer spend any effort looking for shows to watch. If I don't find something in 10 minutes, I turn off the TV. Which is most of the time.
I split my Amazon Prime with my neighbor so she can get free shipping. She doesn't care about the TV part, and to me, it's not worth much either.
I spent 30 minutes once trying to get out of the credits for a Disney+ show and go to the episodes..back took me to the main page, and clicking the show took me right back into the episode exactly where I left off in the credits... I guess it was the last ep but I wasn't sure, and even tried fast forwarding to the end ...cause it was really long Marvel credits.
It should always take you to a show page, from there you should have options to continue or see info or go to episodes, etc...
Disney+ is similar to HBO Max. "Continue Watching" often takes me to the episode I just watched, and there's no way to get to the episode list from there. I usually access shows I'm in the middle of by going to my Watchlist, which always takes me to season 1, episode 1.
Meanwhile on Hulu, I recently watched episode 1 of Over the Garden Wall and instead of continuing on the the next episode, it autoplayed the episode of a completely different series.
> HBO Max has no way of navigating to a show page from your most recently viewed carousel. You have to find or search the show separately.
Hit play then as soon as it starts hit back, you’ll be at the show.
My guess is most remotes or TVs don’t support long press or other alt-clicks so they just implement the main thing people would want in that carousel. Even on AppleTV or other platforms that have long press.
