[HN Gopher] An unsolicited streaming app spec
___________________________________________________________________
An unsolicited streaming app spec
Author : jmsflknr
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-02-15 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hypercritical.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (hypercritical.co)
| [deleted]
| Jernik wrote:
| > TV shows have seasons. Seasons have episodes
|
| This isn't always true. Some shows release specials that aren't
| linked to any season, but go between seasons. Some shows (like
| web serials) release in one continuous stream. Sure there are
| workarounds/hacky solutions to these, but assuming all shows have
| the exact same hierarchy is a bad assumption to make.
| danShumway wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is a lack of competition around the
| apps themselves. I don't think people subscribe to Netflix or
| Disney+ primarily based on what the app experience is, I think
| that as long as the app isn't horribly broken they probably
| subscribe based on the exclusive content and they put up with
| some extra friction.
|
| With current DRM laws this is impossible to have as a market, but
| hypothetically if anyone could build a player for Netflix, I
| wonder if Netflix's official app might not start to improve. Even
| more impossible scenario, but hypothetically if both Netflix and
| the Disney+ catalog were available from both services, the only
| distinguishing feature between those services would be which one
| had a better app and user services and recommendations and
| features around that content.
|
| At least with Youtube I can use unofficial apps like NewPipe that
| have much better UI experiences than the official apps. Even that
| isn't perfect, it's hard to call NewPipe a "competitor" for
| Youtube's official client on Android. But the situation is still
| a lot better than being locked into an experience that is allowed
| to be bad because there's no reason for it to be good. I mean, if
| you're on Disney+ because your kids want to watch classic movies,
| how bad can the client get before you actually decide to switch?
| The bar to keep you on the service is probably not that high.
|
| Maybe I'm over-cynical, but I'm somewhat surprised occasionally
| that these kinds of apps are even as good as they are given that
| (as far as I can tell) the primary competition between services
| is mostly just content.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I like this spec, and I also like the concept of an unsolicited
| spec as a format. It's like a Considered Harmful but it actually
| tells you what to do instead!
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| > It's like a Considered Harmful but it actually tells you what
| to do instead!
|
| Or "Falsehoods programmers believe about streaming apps"
| lekevicius wrote:
| Another basic request I have: if you are building your own video
| player, make sure it's not MUCH worse than system's default. This
| is particularly glaring in Apple TV: system player has really
| decent UX, and almost all third-party implementations are
| terrible. Slow, laggy, jumpy or some mix of these. Scrubbing is
| commonly the worst aspect.
| mastercheif wrote:
| The YouTube app on Apple TV is a giant middle finger from
| Google to their users.
|
| I'm convinced that not a single person on that team dog foods
| on an Apple TV at home.
|
| I wouldn't trust myself the app on an Apple TV around children
| because I wouldn't be able to hold back my cursing when
| attempting to scroll a list, selecting an element, using the
| seekbar, or use basic functionality implemented on other
| platforms like "add to watch later".
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The Apple TV YouTube app also manages to break typing into
| its search field when using the iPhone remote, with letters
| frequently getting transposed. It's infuriating.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Contra the domain name, this "spec" strikes me as entirely
| reasonable. It's remarkable how poor the UX is on apps from some
| of the world's largest media companies and service providers.
| phillipseamore wrote:
| Keep selected user profile (don't ask my kid to select their
| profile every time they open the app [e.g. on a Roku only they
| use]), disable auto-play, disable video logos on app startup. The
| latter two should actually be OS level settings that any app
| _must_ respect.
| aaronharnly wrote:
| One mistake that makes me laugh/cry is how Netflix on iPhone asks
| me "who is watching?" nearly every time I open it. On a laptop or
| iPad, sure, but on the phone, it could be pretty sure it's still
| me, right?
| nsriv wrote:
| I thought this too, but parents hand their kids phones to watch
| something on all the time, and having a Kids profile is more
| elegant than hunting in a menu for a Kids Mode.
| cmg wrote:
| I like this a lot and agree with pretty much all of it.
|
| I'd add: Figure out a way to detect that I'm doing a re-watch of
| a series and do something with the progress bar on episode
| previews to reflect that. So if I've watched all of a
| series/season and then watch episodes 1, 2 and 3, maybe the
| progress bar on episodes 4+ reset themselves to an unwatched
| state or have some kind of greyed-out tint to show where I left
| off this time around.
| cdirkx wrote:
| I agree with almost everything, but was curious about
|
| > Skip to the beginning or the end of the video.
|
| What critical use does skipping to the end of a video have?
| barrowclift wrote:
| I've found the heuristics streaming apps use to determine
| whether or not to show "play next episode" or "continue
| watching" to be very hit or miss (sometimes due to a bad
| heuristic, other times due to a given episode having an unusual
| end point). Providing an accessible means for the user to
| quickly course correct when this heuristic inevitably breaks
| would be handy.
|
| As a concrete example, I frequently find Funimation's app
| recommends I "continue watching" an episode that I'd consider
| already completed, and unfortunately the quickest way to "fix"
| instead of backing back out and browsing around is to
| frantically scrub through to the end so it auto-plays to the
| next episode.
| kris-s wrote:
| These ideas extend well beyond the realm of streaming apps too -
| so much of the software I use day to day is shockingly bad. Far,
| far too much churn driven from ladder-climbing obsessed middle
| managers who want rewrites and redesigns and engagement to go up
| up up.
| drewg123 wrote:
| What drives me nuts these days is how the skip-back in Netflix on
| TVs /firesticks/ etc will sometimes skip back 10 seconds, and
| sometimes bring up a scrub bar of images. Selecting one image to
| the left often re-starts playback at exactly where you hit the
| button in the first place, and moving one farther to the left
| often leaves you 20 seconds back. Grrrrr
| The-Bus wrote:
| I'd also add that any search should be for metadata attached to
| that piece of content. If I search for Jackie Chan, I want to see
| Jackie Chan films (or appearances in TV episodes) vs. the only
| film with Jackie Chan in the title.
| pc86 wrote:
| On a similar vein, it seems like most streaming services don't
| let you browse actor catalogues. Thanks Prime, for showing me a
| list of unclick-able actor pictures. It seems pretty obvious
| that someone might want to select an actor in something they
| just watched and see all the other things that actor is in,
| especially on something like Prime where you can presumably
| purchase or rent most if not all of the other things they're
| in?
| neonnoodle wrote:
| Plex stays winning.
| mhdhn wrote:
| Why is Youtube both the most widely used video app and the worst
| video app?
| deergomoo wrote:
| There's no incentive to make it better. It's not like they're
| at risk of losing people to a competitor.
| pimlottc wrote:
| The same general principle applies to watch Netflix as shopping
| at Amazon: they do not really care what you watch, as you as you
| watch something. If that's continuing from before, that's fine.
| If it's something they're promoting, or a new show they can
| entice you with, that's great too. Maybe even better -- now
| there's two shows you'll want to finish.
|
| I mean, sure, they'd probably prefer you watch an original
| property they have more control over than something with a costly
| license, but overall the primary concern is keeping usage levels
| up and cancellations down.
| amccollum wrote:
| If you're interested in these challenges (and trust me, these
| things all seem simpler than they are in practice), consider
| coming and joining us at Philo (https://about.philo.com/jobs/)!
| We're hiring for basically all technical (and plenty of non-
| technical) roles/specialties/platforms, so if you're excited
| about dragging TV kicking and screaming into streaming age, drop
| me an email: andrew@philo.com
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Netflix used to support my Roku's "skip back 10 seconds" remote
| button, but years ago they stopped. I rarely watch Netflix
| anymore but just played something the other day and found they
| have now also dropped support for the system's subtitle
| framework, meaning I can no longer use the "show subtitles only
| when I rewind" feature, which I use _constantly_.
|
| I cannot conceive of any reason for dropping these features which
| they already implemented except a petulant desire to maintain
| _full control_ of the user experience rather than ceding anything
| to the platform conventions. Well, I bought a Roku because I
| _like_ the platform conventions. Since Netflix seems intent on
| pissing in my cheerios I 'll happily be pirating what little
| interesting content they put out in the future, so I can watch it
| in Plex where things work as they should.
| ilikepi wrote:
| I think the left-arrow of the directional pad on my Roku remote
| performs the "skip back 10 seconds" function...
| kingcharles wrote:
| Another: Please don't put the scrub (position) bar so near to the
| other icons that you end up clicking "Next Track" or "Captions
| On" every time you try to move position in the video.
|
| And: Don't make the scrub bar so small that you have to find a
| small child to click on it for you as your fat fingers can never
| select it.
| gryn wrote:
| If I had to add another thing, please for the love of god do not
| reinvent the video player for the sake of re-inventing and don't
| cripple it for fun.
|
| I'm looking at you Netflix, who until very recently didn't have
| playback speed settings but also use HTML5 videos so if you have
| an extension that allow you to change it but would work for a few
| seconds and then break the Netflix stream because they are doing
| something weird with it. It not a DRM Thing because it works just
| fine on prime video.
|
| Also like the post said prime video please regroup all of the
| seasons under a single jacket, telling me to continue watching TV
| show x at season 1 when I've already binged through to season 3
| without clicking on their jackets is a sucky UX.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| On Apple TV, this is by far my largest gripe with streaming
| apps. Consistently, the worst apps on the platform are those
| that decide they need a bespoke player UI. YouTube is one of
| the worst.
|
| The stock video player is perfectly fine, please don't screw
| with it excessively!
| WalterGR wrote:
| Clicking or tapping on the background 'behind' a modal dialog
| should close that dialog. Netflix and Hulu keep breaking and
| fixing and breaking and fixing this.
|
| Some clicking / tapping controls should be available in the video
| player without first clicking / tapping to make the controls
| appear. C/t in the center should play / pause. Generally on the
| left and right sides should go back / forward by n seconds.
|
| After a commercial break, seeking back to re-watch what happened
| before the break, or back to catch what you missed right after
| the break, should _not_ force re-watching of the commercials.
| Hulu is horrible about this.
|
| Edit: Also, allow seeking backwards in commercials!! Some
| commercials are interesting in some way. Why _on earth_ would you
| prevent customers from _watching more commercial time_?
| djleni wrote:
| I can't believe there isn't a white label streaming SaaS yet.
| sandinmyjoints wrote:
| This is a great list, and OP's frustrations with existing
| services match mine quite well.
|
| > On launch, it must be immediately obvious how to resume
| watching whatever the user was watching previously. This may be
| the most important feature outside the video player itself.
|
| > If the user was in the middle of watching an episode of a TV
| show, the most prominent thing on the screen should be a way to
| continue that episode. If the user just finished an episode, then
| "resuming" means watching the next episode, and so on.
|
| With my speculate hat on, I've hypothesized the lack of this
| screamingly obvious feature is a deliberate choice designed to
| encourage users to "discover" new shows, since I imagine that's a
| metric they want to increase.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-15 23:00 UTC)