Making Netflix.com Faster

[brianstorms]

The code may be faster but the user experience continues to get slower, i.e., it takes more time than ever to find something worth watching. The recent UI changes simply disguise the fact that there are less titles available. Especially movies. Lots of filler, straight-to-video content that never got theatrical exhibition because the content sucked. No way to filter it out. No way to tell Netflix I really do NOT want to see this, I will never watch it, I really am not interested. Netflix will continue showing these unwanted titles to you. This is not speeding up a user experience. This is not making Netflix faster. And the user experience is really the only thing that matters.

[onewaystreet]

The lack of titles is the fault of the studios. Not much netflix can do about it. Which is why they are increasing production of their own content. From a UI/business perspective many people have argued that it's always better to show a user something than nothing. "We don't have the movie you are looking for but here are some you might like" is better than "We don't have the movie you are looking for."

[ickwabe]

If you log into your netflix account and then go here: https://www.netflix.com/TastePreferences you can boost the algo accuracy.

I see the lack of titles complaint all the time but personally I just don't find this to be true. There are tons of titles of all quality levels and genres coming and going all the time on netflix. I've made great discoveries there for new content, foreign films and tv shows, independent titles, etc. It just takes a little digging. And there are a great many sites on the internet that will tell you what is coming and leaving netflix in any given month along with making recommendations.

The main thing that affects the titles you are shown by default are your ratings. You don't even have to watch a movie to rate it. But the rating will still be used to determine what they list by default. If you watch and never rate, the algo will make worse choices. I pretty quickly eliminated straight to tv shlock by giving 1 star ratings to that type of content.

[pacomerh]

Basically UX doesn't have anything to do with the site's performance. Netflix have been solving great problems in development lately but they're due a good user experience uplift. No wonder people enjoy browsing their content more from other devices.

[nej]

I agree with your points but at the same time their UI is now so easy to navigate that my not so tech savvy 70 year old dad can use Netflix without ever calling me and asking me any questions. So my guess is, Netflix is trying to be more like a preprogrammed TiVo with lots of content than trying to appeal to the super users that may want those features.

[teh_klev]

I agree. UK Netflix is pretty barren, to the point where I've only watched a couple of things on it in the past two months. There's a severe drought of new/interesting stuff. I'm now considering ditching my sub.

I have a NowTV subscription which costs roughly the same and there's loads more things to choose from. I also have Amazon Prime (which I accidentally ended up with because I forgot to cancel the trial). It's problem is that I find the UI a complete disaster (and how I wish they'd release a Roku version in the UK)

[icelancer]

> The recent UI changes simply disguise the fact that there are less titles available

This is exactly the entire point of the UI changes. They just don't want to admit it (obviously).

[teej]

The more you watch, the less there is for you to watch.

[jshelly]

There is an app for iOS (not sure about Android) called upflix that does a great job of filtering based on reviews from several sources.

[simplexion]

For starters.. your comment is irrelevant to the conversation, eve with your attempt to make it so. Second, you aren't locked into any contracts and can cancel your subscription at any time. Pay for another streaming service with a better UI.

[ericfrederich]

They need to make Netflix work first otherwise it'll just fail faster. Netflix has been broken on the Nexus Player for a long time. Let any show run to the end and it logs you out.

[andrewguenther]

Another Google platform with little to no support only a year after its release? I am shocked, shocked. This has never happened before! /s

In all seriousness though, have you contacted Netflix support? They have seemed really responsive in the past.

[owyn]

Yes, that's a seriously annoying bug. Turn off auto-play in your settings and it will fix it. Not in the player, but on the actual netflix web site, log in and check out the "Playback settings", and you can turn off auto-play. Voila!

[odiroot]

Just try out the Wii U version, it can be worse.

[jebblue]

I don't know what that is but when Netflix got movies working in the browser on Ubuntu I was amazed and very pleased.

[wereHamster]

Kudos for not using the word 'isomorphic'. Most people use it (in the context of JavaScript) without understanding what it really means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphism.

[arianvanp]

It really grind my gears because it's not even grammatically correct to say that "Isomorphic architecture". Isomorphic to what?. An isomorphism is a binary relationship... "A is isomorphic to B".

It's like saying "We run an equals to architecture".

[glenjamin]

I see this argument a lot and I really don't get it.

In the context of JavaScript, Isomorphic means "runs on the client and server".

Here's an article from 2011 that uses the word in this way, and includes a definition: http://blog.nodejitsu.com/scaling-isomorphic-javascript-code...

The fact that isomorphic means something else in a different context seems irrelevant to me.

I did 5 mins of googling and found the following mathematical terms also have different meanings when used in a software engineering or computing context:

  * integration
  * kernel
  * product
  * scalar
  * module
  * function

[timdorr]

"Universal" is the new "isomorphic": https://medium.com/@mjackson/universal-javascript-4761051b7a...

[omarforgotpwd]

Great example for why you might actually want to use node.js: being able to ensure your rendering code runs identically on the client and the server. That's something no other language can offer as cleanly or natively for the next few years.

[brianwawok]

scala + scalaJS IMHO does it better right now (with a lot more type safety and a lot more performance on the server)

[dikaiosune]

I'd be interested in seeing some actual numbers for their "time to interactive" metric. As far as I can tell, this article just says that they're monitoring it, not what x% improvement they've seen.

EDIT: Forgot about this at the top:

"The impact of this effort netted a 70% reduction in startup time" -- So is this the same metric?

[travjones]

Eh... I think they're different. The startup time is probably the most-improved metric that's why they dropped the 70% figure. Maybe they hint at the "time to interactive" measure as a concern for the future for practical reasons. For example, startup time is probably way before the page is ready for user interaction (video playing, buttons clickable, etc.), yet the "time to interactive" is probably the most important metric to the everyday user.

[JupiterMoon]

I love Netflix but hate using their website. It's a constant experience in annoyance. It's slow, buggy and gets in the way of discovering new content. (Chrome on Linux on an older Atom processor -- yes I know that this is a rubbish spec but other non-webapp media consuming methods work just fine.)

What about a cross platform libnetflix and let us build our own native apps? (Like spotify do.) Or even allow integration into e.g. Kodi media centre.

[swah]

Even with a gaming PC, anything graphical on Linux doesn't feel as snappy as a Windows PC, with a fresh install. (OTOH on Linux, every filesystem operation feels 10x as fast..)

[erichmond]

For all the people complaining about the UI on netflix, there is a great alternative interface @ www.instantwatcher.com . Site is written in Haskell, and is quite snappy.

[darkmarmot]

And yet they still fail to address the most irritating aspect of their video UI -- all too often the video timeline controls remain visible while movies are playing and don't go away. This has been going on for _years_. They seem incapable of combining the mousemove event and a timer to automatically hide the controls...

[mattkrea]

Across various browsers and operating systems I have never encountered this... As long as my mouse isn't hovering over the controls they work perfectly for me.

[davnicwil]

I've noticed a similar bug in Chrome on a Mac where the cursor doesn't disappear when you're watching a series, have finished one episode and continue to the next episode(s).

On the first episode in the 'chain' the cursor disappears after a few seconds of inactivity, but for all subsequent episodes it does not- very odd. You have to refresh the page to reload everything to make it start disappearing again!

[eclipxe]

Never had this happen

[ohitsdom]

Probably not the place to bring this up, but I am having so many issues with Netflix app on xbox 360 lately. I'll hit play on a title, it'll load to about 15%, then stop and take me to the "choose profile" screen. Anyone else seeing this?

[justwannasing]

You're right. This is not the place to bring this up.

EDIT: OK. I guess this is the right place so, my son's XBox hangs when switching between game playing and watching Netflix. Does anyone know how to fix that?

[jebblue]

So node.js can replace Java/Tomcat? I guess I'll have to pinch my nose and somehow start liking JavaScript. Typescript looks good, that might make it palatable.

[eklavya]

I read the article and don't think they meant this. They wanted server side (selective) rendering and didn't want the hassle of two languages so they went with node.js.

quote"Without shared rendering logic we couldn't have realized the potential of rendering only what was necessary on startup and everything else as data became available."

[Wintamute]

I imagine a common architecture for universal apps will be to just use some sort of thin Node.js app to perform the actual app rendering, and have it communicate with a separate API app written in whatever language is most appropriate. Static files could either be served by the Node.js app, or even a different source.

And these days ES6/ES7 makes Javascript very palatable indeed. Check it out :-)

[tylermauthe]

Beautiful use of modern JS development techniques: client-side rendering, isomorphic JavaScript and smaller more-efficient libraries.

Even better to see these techniques applied appropriately, instead of slathered on to the point of being detrimental.

Also, +1 for using jQuery and being proud of it! :)

[code_sterling]

> Also, +1 for using jQuery and being proud of it! :)

That wasn't the takeaway some of us read here, and honestly, that's just foolish. Take pride in your craftsmanship, never take pride in your tools. I love my hammer, but when I need a screwdriver, it's a stupid choice.

[dikaiosune]

It reads like jQuery was part of the server-rendered Java stack, and there's no mention of it in their Node/React stack.

I use jQuery and am proud of it, but it looks like that may no longer be the case at Netflix?