Death to Autoplay

This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

Adam Engst, writing at TidBits:

The auto-play offense that has pushed me over the edge is Netflix’s Apple TV app, which auto-plays previews for movies and TV shows as you browse through Netflix’s library. Within 3 seconds of when you navigate to a show’s icon, it starts playing a preview for the show, complete with audio. It’s difficult even to read the show’s description in that amount of time, much less reflect on whether you might want to watch the show. As soon as the audio starts, it interrupts whatever thoughts might be going through your head (Josh Centers made this example video; it shows what he hears as his 5-year-old browses).
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Is there anyone that likes this “feature?” Anyone?

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Also this: I’ve been actively avoiding trailers online for most movies for the last year, due to the fact that studios can’t help themselves from showing the best bits in the previews. Netflix’s ‘show a trailer in three seconds’ thing makes that incredibly difficult.

Case in point: ‘Polar,’ a Netflix original action movie, is outstanding. And the trailer shows parts from literally every action scene, including the climactic ones at the end. You basically don’t need to watch the film if you watch the trailer. It’s a legitimately great action movie (in my opinion, anyway), and Netflix (who wants you to watch it, as it’s their film) is actively harming the experience of watching it.

There has to be a better way than this to promote/advertise/convince browsing people to watch.

 

I mainly enjoy it when the UI bugs out and plays a trailer from a totally different (and often tonally dissonant) program.

 

Haha glad I'm not the only Apple TV user being driven batty with this super fast Netflix preview as I browse for content! It's really ADD overload and completely unnecessary to add in the audio from the show as well.

Here's to hoping for a quick fix in the near future...

 

This feature makes me think of cancelling my Netflix subscription at least once a day

 

hmm, the Netflix autoplay is the only one i don't mind. the majority of the time looking at a 2x2 picture of the title and reading a brief, usually generic sentence about a film / show doesn't work for me. because of the autoplay feature on Netflix it got me to watch a number of things i probably would have passed over and missed - including The Good Place and Velvet Buzzsaw.

all other kinds of autoplay can kindly and quickly go away though

 

This happens on my Samsung tv app too and its so annoying.

 

It's a terrible feature and in the rare instances I do want to watch a trailer for something then that's when there won't be one available

 

It’s the worst. I hate that YouTube is starting to do this type of thing on their iOS app as well.

 

Not sure why he is specifying it to Netflix’s ¨Apple TV app.¨ It´s Netflix in generally that does this. People have been really pissed off and complaining about it for a while now, at least over a year, and Netflix doesn´t care. I ended up downloading an extension to stop the autoplay, and it really helped calm me down from how irrationally mad I would get any time a preview would start.

 

Until this fall, I used a Roku and it never autoplayed. Then I switched to Apple TV and it did it. So I assumed it was an Apple thing.

 

Yes I do hate that, very annoying. I also do not like that I only get 5 seconds to click on watch credits after every episode of a tv series I’ll be watching. Sometimes I just need a minute to process what I just saw or I’ll be vibing to the end credits song and I’ll forget to look for the watch credits button and suddenly I’ll be very rudely interrupted by the beginning of the next ep.

 

Over the holidays I fell asleep watching Daredevil at my parents' house and woke up some time later to the trailer for Netflix's Sex Education auto-playing at full blast. Woman's voice: "I'VE NOTICED YOU'RE PRETENDING TO MASTURBATE AND I WAS WONDERING IF YOU WANTED TO TALK ABOUT IT."

So I also don't like autoplay.

 

That’s the price you pay being a Hot Couch Guy.

 

Yeah, I mute my TV when browsing Netflix

 

I don't have the energy to learn a new reference tonight, so I will chuckle for now and bookmark this under "Obscure White People Shit."

 

Completely agree. Trailers have gotten bad at this over the past several years, and Netflix in particular is really guilty with their movies. My wife and I always stop the trailer partway through if we're already sold on the film, because it'll inevitably give too much away.