I hate to spoil the celebration, but I've wanted a basic text interface to Netflix for years. Can I just get a list of movies and shows available? Click a link, see a page with a description, use the back button and I'm back exactly where I was?
The technical implementation really doesn't need to be this complex. Also, the interface itself has gotten worse and worse too. As a customer, just offering HTML links, a search box and then using HTML5 to stream the video would be great.
Agreed. I am not a fan of carousels in general. Combined with the awful jawbone shrink+expand+flyin thing, I find the new interface to be quite awful. I really dislike using it.
I would vastly prefer a simple paginated grid of videos with a "click to show info in a little overlay box", and then a close link to simply dismiss the overlay and go back to the grid.
I completely agree. In the meantime if you aren't using it already then I recommend checking out instantwatcher.com for a better Netflix interface. I'm not affiliated with it in any way, but I do use it anytime I want to search Netflix content.
They used to have exactly that. You could list everything available as basic text and sort by whatever criteria you wanted, click the link for a description, and use the back button to return to the text list.
Their star system isn't always perfect, but it was great to be able to sort by what they thought I would like most and scan through the list for something good. Worked nearly perfectly, and I found a lot of great material that way. Then they removed the option to use the rating system they spent so much time and money they spent developing in favor of a visual carousel. It is a lot more visually appealing and a lot less efficient.
I know Javascript/HTML/CSS makes it very easy to develop something, however it is really sad to see people are struggling to get 60fps to show 20 boxes with images scrolling, where games can show thousands of polygons smoothly.
Game engines and browsers have radically different architectures and performance/productivity requirements. Computing polygons is basically applying one function to an array of values and is delegated to the GPU, so its no wonder they easily reach 60 FPS with hundred of thousands of polygons per frame.
A better comparison would be against the performance of game logic, which in a game engine can easily become the bottleneck from all the conditionals, random memory accesses and sequential dependencies. And even there they don't sit on nearly as many layers of abstractions as a web page does.
This comes at the cost of productivity; building a web site is a few orders of magnitude more productive than using the latest game engines. Of course, sitting on the DOM and its many quirks as well as its reflow/redraw cycles can make it harder to reach 60FPS in the browser.
But at least you're saving yourself from a world of low-level pain.
Are you getting code which any john developer can pick up and develop on, or is it something which requires knowing a special purpose programming language and corresponding frameworks?
From my point of view, I want to see a big company build a Canvas or WebGL UI that goes to thousands of people. We can speculate, but someone actually trying what you mention is the only way to find out if it works in the industry.
Funny how much things change in a couple years.. about 4-5 years ago, I built a gallery view, that had scrolling areas, that worked the same as the video mentions (only loading the next block)... what's funny is the css transitions were working poorly on some devices at that time, so it was disabled completely. :-(
I wish they would fix Netflix on the Nexus Player and PS3.
I only have 2 set to boxes and both of them have broken Netflix on them.
The PS3 doesn't output audio properly to my receiver. I need to use stereo to get any sound at all.
The Nexus Player logs you out if your program ends and tries to play the next episode. This happens all the time when my 2 year old watches Curious George.
These aren't obscure platforms and it seems I'm not the only one with these problems. No known solution either.
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I forgot... also when watching 4:3 content on my Nexus player it uses some stupid gray background which is distracting. What is so wrong with black?
On the other hand, the Nexus player can run Kodi which you can install a plugin called "Genesis" on and stream anything you can imagine without any of those issues.
I wish they would fix Netflix on (desktop) Linux. Most content is limited to ~2Mbps 720x480 resolution (approx DVD quality), for no apparent technical reason. A Roku streaming box gets the same content on the same internet connection at ~6Mbit 1080P. This is easily verified with the Netflix secret menus (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S and Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D) -- quality above 1750kbps 480P just generally isn't available to Linux web browsers, except on Netflix originals and a small handful of other stuff.
Sadly, another area where paranoid content owners have made legally available, paid for content inferior to illegal pirate copies.
React is insanely fun. It's so stress free to code up the frontend of your web app with React because everything is viewed as a component. My friend and I have adopted React and we are still glossing over how great it is.
[+] [-] BuckRogers|10 years ago|reply
The technical implementation really doesn't need to be this complex. Also, the interface itself has gotten worse and worse too. As a customer, just offering HTML links, a search box and then using HTML5 to stream the video would be great.
[+] [-] Ollinson|10 years ago|reply
Their "custom tailored" selection screen gives the impression that they have 300 films available at most.
[+] [-] stock_toaster|10 years ago|reply
I would vastly prefer a simple paginated grid of videos with a "click to show info in a little overlay box", and then a close link to simply dismiss the overlay and go back to the grid.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] molloy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intopieces|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ewzimm|10 years ago|reply
Their star system isn't always perfect, but it was great to be able to sort by what they thought I would like most and scan through the list for something good. Worked nearly perfectly, and I found a lot of great material that way. Then they removed the option to use the rating system they spent so much time and money they spent developing in favor of a visual carousel. It is a lot more visually appealing and a lot less efficient.
[+] [-] mzs|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mamerhst|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CSDude|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeremiep|10 years ago|reply
A better comparison would be against the performance of game logic, which in a game engine can easily become the bottleneck from all the conditionals, random memory accesses and sequential dependencies. And even there they don't sit on nearly as many layers of abstractions as a web page does.
This comes at the cost of productivity; building a web site is a few orders of magnitude more productive than using the latest game engines. Of course, sitting on the DOM and its many quirks as well as its reflow/redraw cycles can make it harder to reach 60FPS in the browser.
But at least you're saving yourself from a world of low-level pain.
[+] [-] scott_karana|10 years ago|reply
A unified-ish platform might be a benefit to their developers, but this has also been a net loss for Netflix's end-users. :/
[+] [-] hayksaakian|10 years ago|reply
Are you getting code which any john developer can pick up and develop on, or is it something which requires knowing a special purpose programming language and corresponding frameworks?
From my point of view, I want to see a big company build a Canvas or WebGL UI that goes to thousands of people. We can speculate, but someone actually trying what you mention is the only way to find out if it works in the industry.
[+] [-] guiomie|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h1fra|10 years ago|reply
Like simcity (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5359143)
[+] [-] thejosh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kozukumi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comex|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericfrederich|10 years ago|reply
The PS3 doesn't output audio properly to my receiver. I need to use stereo to get any sound at all.
The Nexus Player logs you out if your program ends and tries to play the next episode. This happens all the time when my 2 year old watches Curious George.
These aren't obscure platforms and it seems I'm not the only one with these problems. No known solution either.
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I forgot... also when watching 4:3 content on my Nexus player it uses some stupid gray background which is distracting. What is so wrong with black?
On the other hand, the Nexus player can run Kodi which you can install a plugin called "Genesis" on and stream anything you can imagine without any of those issues.
[+] [-] ac29|10 years ago|reply
Sadly, another area where paranoid content owners have made legally available, paid for content inferior to illegal pirate copies.
[+] [-] tracker1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NeutronBoy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] spearo77|10 years ago|reply
I've always interpreted it as Service Level Agreement, which typically has a minimum response time, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-level_agreement
[+] [-] krizan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelmcmillan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]