Update: Since this article was written, Netflix has increased membership prices.
Netflix recently announced the biggest Instant Watch layout change for all Instant Watchers. This change has caused the 2nd biggest anger and uproar among Netflix fans in Netflix’s history, more of which I’ll share below. Over 2000 Netflix blog readers have protested against the change.
The new Netflix interface is in my view very beautiful. It also, however, changes a lot of navigation features that seem to have every Netflix user talking about it. While you can make up your own mind as to whether or not you like it, it is very important to understand why Netflix made these changes. When you realize the reason behind these changes, you can get kind of a good glimpse of where Netflix is headed or where it wants to go.
Here are 3 main reasons, of the many other reasons, why Netflix changed its previous Instant Watch layout into a bold new one.
3 Main Reasons Netflix Changed Instant Watch Layout
- This is the future of Netflix. Netflix wants to be the premiere online movie streaming company. In order to move away from the DVD mailing business, it has to slowly phase out any extra attention it gives to DVD queues from its site. This means giving extra attention to the streaming part. That is why every big movie icon on the site, when clicked on, will instantly play the movie instead of the previous behavior of showing you the movie details page with reviews. This was first evident in January when Netflix removed the “Add to DVD Queue” button from streaming devices like PlayStation or the Wii. The faster and more easily you can watch a movie online and enjoy the experience, the less likely you’ll be to wait for that DVD to come in the red envelope. Netflix is betting on this big change to move toward total DVD elimination.
- The aim is to make Netflix more attractive and more of a media center for the new social age. Netflix wants you to go to the site and start watching movies. By making the actual movie watching as easy as clicking only once after you arrive at the Netflix website, Netflix wants to decrease the number of steps between users and instant watches. This builds satisfaction in the long run because of the lesser number of clicks required to play a movie. The simpler the Netflix interface, the more powerful brand loyalty it can build to compete with Amazon Instant Video and other competitors.
- Netflix priority is movie streaming instead of community interaction. There is nothing wrong with that philosophy because of the very nature of the business. With the new layout, you have to spend less time playing a movie. It comes at the expense of community – you now have to hold your mouse over a movie to be able to rate it or click its title to see member reviews and other details. Netflix infamously removed the Friends feature from Netflix to the surprise of thousands of crying Netflix users who to this day continue to leave comments on Netflix website asking for its return [which Netflix has started to reconsider due to the immense popularity of Twitter and Facebook]. This is another step to focus on streaming and keep the community aspect around in a different format when it comes to streaming.
Hundreds of Netflix users still complain about the deceased Friends feature by changing their reviews. Check out the bigger version. This example is from the Aces Netflix user.
Not everyone is hating the new Netflix Layout
Many people actually like the layout. Katie loves it, while I like it minus the slow scrolling. In addition to users hating the design, here are 2 other types of Netflix users [among the many more on Twitter] who like the design or are still debating.
JoCoWash likes the new Netflix design
Angela is still deciding if she hates or likes the new Netflix design.
What do you think of the changes?
What do you think of the new Netflix layout? Do you like or hate it? Does it bother you in any manner? Do the above reasons, in your view, justify the changes?
I now have to go back to continue watching my Netflix movie. Can you guess what it is? [hint: it's in the first picture].
Share what you think about the new layout and the reasons [or what movie I'm watching] in the comments below, thanks!
Update: Since this article was written, Netflix has increased membership prices.
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I mainly use Instant Watch and I HAAAATE this new layout!!!!!
The new netflix layout looks nice and easy to navigate.
Very Very good information about the new layout – now i browse more movies easily. Thanks for such post I really appreciate that.
I, for one like the new layout. It seems more intuitive and easier to use.
I can’t believe anyone who uses Netflix on a regular basis can be happy with this. I mainly watch instantly, but I like to be able to browse through and find a movie I want to watch. Here are the problems I see.
1. No plain print title. Sometimes the cover art (even in larger images) makes the title hard to read.
2. No rating displayed for scanning at a glance. I don’t want to be bogged down with movies that they believe I will rate one star.
3. The top frame and larger images reduce the number of movies visible on the screen at one time.
4. Not sortable by date/rating/genre/whatever. It’s a website, interaction is the whole point of the web.
Basically, they took away valuable functions and made it more difficult to navigate through at the users comfortable pace (choosing to be fast or slow). They have made it more difficult to scan the pages (which any designer will tell you that is what users do).
I have to question how less choice on the internet is ever better. Really? There are people who like it?
Hate the new layout for all the reason listed by everyone else. A huge, disappointing pain the butt. I put my account on hold for a couple months and come back to this clusterflop. I, too, like to sort through the titles, see what’s being offered. Why did they remove the sortable and list options? I hate the bigger photos because it takes forever to scroll through them. Seriously, seriously annoying. Defend them all you want, Bes, but they made “shopping”,if not selecting an instant watch, much more difficult.
Agree 100%. The new instant layout is huge leap backward for computer users. Many people used their computer to search for titles to add to their instant queue. That is much harder to do now. You will never even find half the content and the ability to organize it appears to be lost. Sooooooo stupid and frustrating!!!!!!!!!!!
No this new Netflix layout is horrible!
Amazingly bad!
I think the new layout absolutely sucks! What were they thinking?
It sucks. It’s flat out harder to use and has less features than before.
The people who like it are probably the same types you can entertain for hours by jingling your car keys in front of them.
The new layout is really bad. I get what they’re going for with making instant viewing easier, but I don’t see how the new design facilitates it at all.
There’s a reason that sites center their content and have navigation or even dead space on the sides: your eyes can only look at so much at once. I don’t have a very large monitor, and even so, scanning through the titles is significantly less convenient when you have to look across the entire screen, particularly since there’s no longer uniform text titles underneath the images. And the images themselves are now ridiculously large unless you manually resize them, and I strongly recommend you do so (Ctrl +/- or Ctrl scroll wheel). Browsing through titles is much harder, too. Can I sort instant views by rating anymore?
The whole redesign is reminiscent of the Digg.com revamp (which completely alienated the most active user base), but I doubt this change will drive away subscribers, since Netflix still offers an amazing service.
One of the best features of Netflix is the predicted ratings. Now they’re hidden and takes too much time to display. I could live with all of the other changes if they’d display the star ratings beneath each title. Thankfully I’ve started using the InstantWatcher iPhone app to find movies for my instant queue, and the Flixter app to add movies in the theater to my DVD queue. Otherwise the site change would really upset me.
I am an advanced Netflix user. I have over 15,000 movies rated. The biggest thing that I liked about Netflix was its rating system with the 1 to 5 star choices.
Now the stars are gone!
I was also HUGE on the sortable option. I would go onto Netflix and sort threw the movies I wanted and now I can’t do this. Netflix has 1month from now to edit this new layout or I will move my membership to “hulu plus” in spite of hating this new layout/templet.
Give us an option to go back to the old way, at the least add the stars below the movies!
If a compromise isn’t meet then my 15,000 plus rated movies was for nothing!
Chris
Terribly frustrating. In catering to the pop viewer Netflix has managed to alienate everyone who cares what they watch. The best thing Netflix had going for itself, as new competition emerges, was its customers’ undying love. But now they’ve killed that. It’s only a matter of time until they are no longer #1. UNLESS they provide options for those of us who are upset.
Netflix, if you can hear me, I’m hurt. This hurts me. At the least bring back my carefully sorted list and ratings, and allow me to watch the movies I will like. Immediacy in viewing is good, but so is immediacy in finding and establishing interest. I can’t judge movies by their covers.
I think it’s absolutely terrible.
1. It’s ugly. It doesn’t look nice on my 23″ monitor at 1080×1920 and if they can’t even manage that then why are they even trying? It looks like an utter mess that some teenager created after researching HTML on Google. Having a bunch of boxes just splayed out on the page and going off the page looks terrible. There are no lines, no organization, it’s a mess.
2. How lazy do you have to be to need this one-click layout? It saves you exactly 1 click. There’s a difference between saving time and perpetuating the utter ridiculous of this generation’s “Right Now!” attitude. Aside from not actually saving you very much time, having to hover over areas and waiting for slow scrolling or information bubbles to pop-up actually takes more time so whatever minuscule amount of time they saved with the interface is also lost in the interface. And what about the vertical scrolling? The amount of vertical scrolling is just insane; aside from being hideous, it wastes a noticeable amount of time.
3. What about an option to view it both ways? Most companies that make major changes like this appreciate their customers and let them try out new styles. Yahoo! Mail has gone so far as to make all of their UI Changes from the past few years optional, I’m still using Yahoo! Mail Classic from 2005 right now! If you want to experiment with a new style I think that’s great, but don’t take away people’s options, especially when they PAY For them.
4. Netflix is right that Streaming is the future but their execution is terrible. Social Networking is the present and the future so toning down that feature was their first mistake. I’d bet my next paycheck that Netflix has absolutely ZERO user input on their decisions. I think they just have some idiot board of directors making terrible decisions (probably from a soon-to-be-fired consultant who is from an entirely different industry) based on what they think is right and not what customers want.
Netflix is convenient and had a good selection of older titles but Hulu Plus is looking better and better everytime Netflix makes a change. It’s not just the UI change that bothers me, it’s utter lack of response by Netflix and the fact that it’s nearly impossible to e-mail them from their own website (conveniently). Obviously they don’t care what their own clients think, which is a terrible business decision.
I agree 100%
I hate the new layout with a passion!!!! the poster of this article MUST be employed by Netfilx. The excuses given for the change are an extremely lame attempt at justification.
I HATE THE NEW LAYOUT!!!!
I currently just have my laptop hooked up to my TV so I can use Netflix so for some reason I barely care what the interface is like. I think I treat it just like another website and I’ve been to so many poorly designed websites that the Netflix site works fine for me. If I were running it from a console, on the other hand, I would probably be more angry about a poor design. For example, I do not like it so much on the xbox because it requires a lot of scrolling rather than a nice tiled layout.
The new website is horrible. If it’s not fixed soon, I’ll be cancelling my subscription!!!
I can live with most of the changes, but why on earth did they remove the option to display a sorted list? If it’s still possible in the streaming section, they’ve managed to bury it very well.
You’re right, it looks nice…but that’s about it. I use Netflix exclusively to watch streaming content, and I have to say that from a usability standpoint, the new layout just doesn’t cut it. It isn’t impossible to use, just more difficult.
I truly miss the sortable list feature–I used it often and with much success when browsing. And being able to see titles and star ratings right away made browsing SO much easier…now it takes twice as long and is consequently frustrating. And the bigger icons look pretty, but the result is that not as many movies fit on the page…you have to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll–horizontally as well as vertically.
I agree that Netflix is justified in emphasizing their instant watch function. But making the site less functional in the process is just short-sighted.
The new layout is garbage. I’d write a complaint email if they had an address to send it to. It’s intuitive, if your IQ tops off at around 65. I do not want to watch a movie by clicking on the icon! I want to read the plot synopsis, see the actors, read reviews, and then decide to watch it… or to add it to my queue. And I can’t move the ‘row’ of suggestions with a single click anymore; I have to watch them scroll across until I’m nauseous.
These reasons are garbage. I think they did it to mask the shrinking volume of instant viewables. I watch several movies a day and now I spend hours searching for things I havents seen that were filmed in 2000 or greater. All I can find are one star d movies all about things that were straight to DVD or things I have seen a million times. I keep seeing screen shots of the new front page…any one else notice we all have the same suggestions? It’s not even based on my taste in movies! Only search is now exact title and even then it doesn’t pull up all of the options but a small limited number of movies. Go ahead type half a word in and count the titles fuse you surely won’t get a full listing. Movies I seen recently as instant are gone. I didn’t add them to my queue as I took for granted that I could find them easy. Now I spend hours instead of seconds digging for movies. I hadn’t watched a DVD in 2years (sorry to those waiting for me to return them) but now I am back DVD as there selection took a bigger dive then the site. I think it has to do with saving money paid for viewing rights and deals being made. They probably are directing us to movies cheaper for then to pay for us viewing them.
Is it polite to say the author is a “shill” for NetFlix?
Yes it is Bob, though I’m not a “shill” for NetFlix lol. What makes you think that?
Probably the fact that every change occurring with this update has decimated the usability of their site on every single platform? I’m not exaggerating my terminology when I say “fact” and “every,” either.
The only people that think anything about this UI change is remotely good falls into one of four categories:
1. Someone employeed by Netflix.
2. Someone being paid by Netflix.
3. A Netflix fanboy.
4. Someone who has no desire to select a movie to watch based on any criteria, will watch movies based on the box art, enjoys scrolling through items at a fixed speed, enjoys sifting through movies with no discernable sort order (ie: not alphabetical, not ratings based, not date of release, not date available on streaming, not date available on dvd, etc.), does not enjoy to look for items based on their own sorting preferences (because they prefer the random order Netflix employs), believes that each image on a webpage should take up 7-8% (depending on whether margin/padding is included) of their screen, believes that all of the aforementioned that were all capable on the previous UI were terrible, and also believes that all of the aforementioned that were previously available should be rendered unavailable to everyone.
I suppose, of course, that you could fall into category four, which, basically, classifies you as being in the extreme minority of the population not falling under categories one through three.
Also, you are entirely wrong about this being a “media center” change, that these changes in any way result in a “faster” streaming experience, or even that this is a “step” towards streaming or a community aspect (unless you can provide a single example of how this change promotes streaming or the community and prove the previous UI did not). In fact, every single “point” you’ve made is not only incorrect, but also illogical.
Feel free to prove me wrong by offering a single positive change that isn’t a wholly incorrect and illogical shiller’s/apologist’s rationale. Anything not rooted in complete and utter fallacy would suffice.
loool. Both of you need to take a chill pill. Are you two on my blog for the first time? Feels like you two don’t know who I am, which is fine. Chillaaax. You’re taking your frustration of Netflix out on me just because I wrote this article. That’s fine, though it’s changing the topic completely.
Read my Tweet # 1, Tweet # 2 and Tweet # 3 posted on June 9th right when Netflix rolled out the changes. See what I said in them and whether I supported Netflix or criticized them.
Re-read my article. This article talks about why Netflix made the changes. This article doesn’t talk about whether or not the changes were good.
If in the end my article looks like I got paid by Netflix to write it, even though they didn’t, it’s awesome! Gives me more publicity and comments and more ways to meet more people!
Again, Chillax. And enjoy the next movie.
The layout might be OK if you want to watch movies on your computer screen, but I simply use the website to find movies to watch on other devices. Who cares how it looks, I want it to work.
These are valid points, but if I may, let me make an analogy. The UI change deployed by Netflix is equivalent to a restaurant replacing detailed menus with large pictures of food. You might get to eat sooner, but you’ll be hard pressed to know what you’re eating or whether you’ll like it.
I used a similar analogy on my blog regarding food service and choice vs “ease”.
“While I admit this is convenient, it is so in the same way walking into a burger place and the guy handing you a burger from behind the counter without waiting for you to tell him you don’t like onions is convenient.”
They’ve changed the WI section at the website to match the new PS3 interface. Another change that is not an improvement over how it was before…here’s why.
There has been an overwhelming negative response to the PS3 change-going back to February when it was first introduced. Please know that those who are not happy are not people afraid or resistant to change. It’s just that the changes that have been made DO NOT IMPROVE on what was there before. They in fact, make the Netflix experience worse.
I support any change that actually makes using NF better, easier, or faster. The new PS3 UI does none of those.
It has reduced functionality, made it more difficult to navigate your queue, and restricts exploring for new content not already selected. Since they have the capability of having different UIs for consoles at least, the ideal situation would be to offer the subscribers the ability to choose the UI that works best for them. There, everybody’s happy.
Yes, the new interface is really that bad…I’ve tried dealing with it, but I just can’t stand the loss of flexibility and control my previous interface allowed.
I think my most recent blog post about covers my feelings on it. It seems Netflix has mistaken ease of use and taking away user control It can be a fine line, or sometimes it is an obvious leap over that line with disregard for the consumer.
I hate it, they took out viewer reviews( I like read them sonetimes) and the way the movie description is now stinks.
It’s absolutely horrible! I could hold my nose and live with it all if they did not have that side scroll that makes me feel like I need glasses. At least have a scroll bar below each row or drop the extra movies to the next row (preferred). They do not accept e-mail feedback so I will be cancelling my subscription by the next bill date if this is not fixed.
There are so many problems with the new layout, and so many other websites that list them, that I will spare you.
It is amazing that you attempted to actually find people that liked the netflix layout and all you could find was someone that said, 1: “I KIND OF like it,” and 2: “I won’t know if I like it until…”
You have no basis for claiming more people like this than youself. And whoever likes the new layout is as crazy is the dumbass who implemented it in the first place.
Yes, the new layout is much, much easier for fucking idiots.
Go to
http://www.netflix.com/WiHome?fcld=true
will be able to view the old site!!
Horrible. Cannot sort by year or rating.
Not all posters have titles
they can accomplish this goal by keeping the new main page but when clicking see all in this category giving you the option of lists and sort
Very difficult to find content. The 75 titles for only the major categories makes Netflix useless for anyone who doesn’t know exactly what title they are searching for. No discovery awesome new shows or movies through browsing may be a deal-breaker for me. The 75 title lists aren’t even the good titles Netflix has. My wife turned it on and thought Netflix was going under because there was hardly anything available to watch on the main screen (and since it no longer has the “MORE” button). This is fine if you need to be spoon-fed titles but actually finding things to watch just got a lot harder and more inconvenient.
“the more powerful brand loyalty it can build”….does it sound like they are building loyalty?
Why a company would blatantly ignore the insane amount of complaints it has received is beyond me.
I have suspended my account for now..and will be canceling it soon if this monstrosity of a ui remains.
Wow, I was really hoping for some good reasons when you said good reasons. I was thinking that there was a gun involved, kidnapped children, order from the secret government that controls everything that needed to knock the happy Netflix users down a peg, but the reasons you provided are really not acceptable. I understand that it is a business, but Netflix was one of those special businesses for a while. They were like Valve or other good companies that don’t come to mind right now. They cared about their product, and believed in it. The knew it was innovative and they wanted to maximize the experience for the user. I did not get Netflix only to watch movies and tv shows at my computer. There are plenty of outlets that do that, and some free. What I loved about Netflix was the fact that you have reviews, and that their large library, of dvds and online streaming, allowed for them to surprise you with movies you would have never even heard about, and then you’d watch them and tell your friends to watch them. I was never a customer with the friends features, so I never had to deal with that loss, but it’s a real shame that they are going in a direction that is overly aggressive for money. I feel like a prime example of a successful company that goes for money without forgetting customer happiness is Apple. Anyone with a Mac knows exactly how easy it is to use, how easy it is to update, and how easy it is to get support online or in person for any problem you come across. While I laughed at the iPad for seeming useless to me, they were able to make something that was useful for some customers who swear they love the iPad.
Then there are companies like Facebook, and apparently, Netflix. They know their time is ticking on their time to get money, so they are constantly changing, just little enough that most customers won’t leave, but be displeased. By making it all about streaming, they can really make their business more profitable, and that will be very exciting for them, at the expense of the customer. I am truly disappointed by this whole change. If I ever wanted to watch a movie before, I could do that. I never had a problem watching a movie online through Netflix before the change. This does not help with watching movies, this just hurts people from having the ability to browse the collection of movies available.
Ugh, I really don’t believe you when you say you like the change, and besides the two hardly convincing tweets you showed, I think the majority of users still, 3 weeks later, do not like this layout.
the look and feel of the new layout are good, the features and execution however are terrible. it is faster to watch instantly only if you watch what netflix has chosen to be in front. However if you decide to look for something good you have the choices of either slowly scrolling for half an hour stopping over every movie to find out what their titles are and there ratings, or searching by genre and being unable to organize them by rating / release date, and still having to mouse over every movie to find out there title / rating. After trying to use the new layout 4 times and spending over half an hour each time trying to find something to watch when it took an average of 3-5 minutes to find something over the past 5 years of netflix use, I gave up and was going to cancel my account. But then I found instantwatcher.com and now I am happy with never having to look at the new annoying netflix again.
to sum up, new layout is good.
Deleting search features / organize features / fast clicking changed to slow scrolling are all bad, and unbearable to use.
The new “watch Instantly” format is unwieldy! Why not at least give us the old search options on another tab under browse dvd? Is Netflix trying to open the door for a real competitor? I want to watch instantly but not on my dam computer! I want to search by rank or rating..cant do that anymore. They dont want customers anymore unless they fit into the Netflix box?
“By making the actual movie watching as easy as clicking only once after you arrive at the Netflix website, Netflix wants to decrease the number of steps between users and instant watches. This builds satisfaction in the long run because of the lesser number of clicks required to play a movie.”
So society is so impatient now a few extra clicks with a mouse is deemed a time consuming task? FFS.
I personally hate the new UI, and I miss the member reviews. Reading a few reviews can save more time than a few mouse clicks, due to it determining if I may or may not watch a 90 minute movie.
And as for removing DVD rentals…. not everyone has an Internet service fast enough to stream a movie available where they live. I only until recently was able to get a connection fast enough to play a movie without it looking like a 8bit video game. And quit often, I get movies for my kids to watch in their rooms (no means to stream movies there), or for long car trips.
Netflix is messing up big time.
Let me ask you a question. HOW do I browse through the 170,000 movies that netflix has for instant streaming? If you click on a genre, there are about 100 movies in each sub-genre and there are about 8 sub-genres. How do I get a list of ALL Action and Adventure movies (I am assuming there are MANY) so that I CAN CHOOSE which movies to watch and not Netflix choosing a limited amount of movies to display for me? Short answer: you can’t.
Good God, what an awful article. The author seems to be favoring the dumbing down of humanity by supporting the dumbing down of Netflix, and yes, that’s what it is. Lazy idiots don’t want to have to learn about a movie, reading reviews by other users or by professionals. They want to push a button and be spoon-fed. Netflix, whom I have previously respected for their UI, has decided to pander to the babies.
I canceled my Netflix subscription when Netflix made the website change. I didn’t think it would be wise to pay for something I didn’t like.
I HATE the new layout, I cant see what other have rated something or view thier comments.Change it or I’m switching to Blockbuster!!!!
Let’s be honest, the new layout is pro-tablet and anti-PC. The gaming console layout is perfectly fine for what it is. All they needed to do was have a toggle switch at the bottom for “PC layout” and “tablet layout” and take stats on how many people using traditional keyboard & mouse use the “tablet layout”. Very, very few I’d wager. It’s pure crap, for reasons listed above. There’s *NO* need to add slower scrolling, to force us to mouse-over for 1.5 seconds in order to rate or, HOLY COW, see the friggin title. It’s pure, utter crap.
And, since there’s nothing similar or better, we can’t vote with our wallets, so Netflix will assume it’s okay. And, to my knowledge, there’s absolutely nowhere to offiicially complain, or 90% of the people who took the time to respond would be there this instant!
I think you were paid by Netflix to write about the change.
lol I wish.
It’s super annoying and hard to browse. I thought there was something wrong with my browser. Roll Back!
I absolutely hate this new layout. Each movie’s icon is much larger than it actually has to be, and the gray background makes everything look cramped. When I’m on the site, I actually find myself becoming very tense as I browse for which show I want to watch. I’m counting down the days until they make their next change.
The new layout is garbage. I’m honestly getting more movies on DVD (because that layout stayed the same), than watching instantly. I can’t browse right, nothing is ordered properly… and titles and ratings don’t even show up unless I hover over the image.
Let me just throw my entire dvd collection on the floor and sort them by picking one movie, then putting others near it that are “sort of like it”. Nice organizational strategy.
Try alphabetical by title, director or producer. Try the dates each movie came out. Try “New releases”. I mean, walk into your local video store and find something you like… not hard right?
I’m honestly.. honestly thinking of going to Family Video and getting 2 DVDs for 2 nights for $1. I can to freely browse, in a nice order. It’s cheap. I get interaction with the company employee as they go out of their way to make me satisfied. Netflix.. psh, doesn’t even respond to a 5000 (maxed out) outrage of comments on their initial blog post. They can’t even get relevant comments to new announcements without this layout coming up in discussion.
Funny you say that. It’s still the case. I’m always complaining and always see others bombarding their posts with complaints. They tried to change to the timeline on FB to help hide more of the comments but they are easy to find. Not blaiming the author of this article, but the new UI is still crap. We stream on our Xbox and its even gotten worse:
1: Too hard to look at options. It keeps enlarging to a random scene from the tv or movie. So can’t read each title, which is only on the ‘cover’.
2:The information on the show can’t be seen unless you click in it, it’s starts playing and then you have to hit 3 buttons to get to info. Hows that easier?
3: browsing is virtually impossible. It keeps changing the recommendations and taking away really good categories for me. Only to replace them with nothing or horrible suggestions. Browsing all of a genre is impossible. The display of the shows is so difficult to browse, hard to find all that there even is for a genre. Types of genres are greatly reduced and unhelpful most of the time.
4: customer service is pointless. A bunch of college students, if even that, reading from a script with two instructions when there issues watching on Xbox: delete the ‘app’ (hate that Microsoft called it that), reinstall or do an update. No actual help what so ever. Contacting anyone else, you can’t.
Such a disappointment as its a great concept. Just a majorly poor decision to change like that and it’s a year later and nothing has been updated.
Just want to add my points to a very long list. Really getting myself geared up to move on. No point in paying for something I don’t like.
Sorry, I misspoke. It does show the show title and stars Xbox but not the episode you’re on or being able to browse the episodes without it auto playing. That and the ‘booping’ sound when browsing on Xbox? That’s just silly but easily fixed with mute.
l hate it. Now it won’t let me search by best rated.
I think the layout should be shot dead, placed in a bag of puppies and drowned, then burned in a fire made of kittens.
Netflix is offering nothing for the nearly 40 percent price increase. Its just profiteering and price gouging now, and Im quitting entirely. I can get dvds from vuze, and I dont need to stream anyway since there are very limited choices on it and most of it junk
Netflix has announced new membership prices which go into effect for both existing and new customers.
What do you think?
HATE IT. the scrolling makes me nauseous, I can’t sort by rating, year, etc. I can’t see the ratings unless I hover. Also, since the new layout, all the films you’ve already rated are clogging up all the suggestions!? what’s up with that!? Takes me a half an hour to find something to watch most of the time now. maybe THAT was the reason for the lame design. Save bandwidth by keeping people busy searching rather than watching lol.
This is the most idiotic analysis I have ever read. First, if you want to phase out the DVD, simply upload all the movies to the web. First grade logic! The only god damn reason why people order DVDs is that the movie is not available on the web. Second point, “make it more … social age “? It has nothing to do with f**king layout. Third, also has nothing to do with f**king layout. This is reasonable?
I live the new features. I do think they should resolve their adding/removing title problems. Some titles will be removed from my instant queue. I think that when you add something it should have an removal date if they are planning on removing it. Otherwise, I am very happy with their service.
I have no problem with Netflix’s layout – I don’t use it anyway. I just search for a specific title. When I’ve found the title, I add it to my queue. End of story.
However, I don’t understand Netflix’s approach to making LESS and LESS content available for streaming if, as you said, “Netflix wants to be the premiere online movie-streaming company.” Shows and movies that USED to be offered by Netflix via Watch Instantly are now only available on DVD. I had items REMOVED from my Watch Instantly queue which are now only offered on DVD. It seems to me that Netflix is moving AWAY from being the “premiere online movie-streaming company” instead of moving toward such a goal.
Here’s a message for Netflix/MPAA: I am so over messing with DVDs through the mail. I have “other” options for getting movies online if you don’t want to make them available to me from a for-pay channel (in 1080p format, by the way). As you might guess, when I get movies or shows in “other” ways, neither Netflix NOR the MPAA is making a dime.
It’s like my father used to say: “you can shear a sheep seven times, but only slaughter him once.”
Nice try. I work in PR and this article is a PR ploy. People hate it. Period.
You and your PR experience caught me! Every night after midnight I get free coffee and a suitcase full of money from the Netflix marketing department as a token of appreciation for talking about Netflix’s new layout with full bias.
I researched this because I honestly have noticed many inconvenient changes lately. This new layout is simply not justifiable from the overall costumer perspective. It increases the time it takes to shop for the movie you want. Rarely do I go to Netflix knowing all about a specific title that I want to watch. I use it as I would a rental store, checking out what’s available, and reading about ones that interest me. So under the new lay out I have an annoying progression for getting what I want.
I hate the new layout. I used to come to the website to browse for new things to watch but since the change there is not much gained by coming to the website instead of just using the browsing options given to me by the PS3 or Xbox software.
Found a workaround! Hover over top left watch instantly, then click on a genre( I choose HD, as it seems to be the most expansive). Once a genre is clicked on you can choose to view as an unlimited sortable list. Voilla you can now view by ratings!
I just tried to switch from dvd mailing to instant and when I checked the instant viewing none of my dvd favorites were listed. Mostly tv shows and older items, can you move what you had in your dvd queue to the instant streaming? my dvd has netflix built in which I thought would make it easier but not if I can’t see the movies I wish to which were in my queue. Thank you in advance!!
I every time used to read paragraph in news papers but now as I am
a user of web therefore from now I am using net for content, thanks to web.
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I miss watching netflix. I had fun choosing movies.