Discuss how a Netflix feature works

[abescalamis 84]

I was wondering how Netflix can accomplish such an amazing feature, when you are looking for movies to watch, a trailer starts to play for the movie in the right upper corner.

 

I'm not suggesting or asking for this feature, I would just like to discuss it.

 

For such feature, I guess that the coding for that is massive.

[Luke 42079]

Can you give an example?

[abescalamis 84]

I found this small video that shows it, look at the upper right corner of the TV for a few seconds it display the poster then it start to play a preview.

 

I found out that the call it "movie preview".

 

[Luke 42079]

Yea it's definitely possible.

[Deathsquirrel 745]

I lack the words to describe how much I loathe this &@^$-ing feature.  Certainly I lack polite words to describe it.

[paulsalter 84]

One of the most annoying features of Netflix

Although skipping opening credits and reducing closing credits to postage size would come a close second

 

If any of these Netflix features come to Emby, there needs to be a way to fully turn them off

[Waldonnis 148]

I was wondering how Netflix can accomplish such an amazing feature, when you are looking for movies to watch, a trailer starts to play for the movie in the right upper corner.

 

I'm not suggesting or asking for this feature, I would just like to discuss it.

 

For such feature, I guess that the coding for that is massive.

 

It's not that hard to do.  In fact, it's easier now for most of the popular streaming devices because Netflix has lobbied so hard to include features in the devices' OSes to make it easier.

 

All they really do is create a trailer in advance and start a preloading process on the client end (starts loading the trailer stream into the buffer immediately upon highlighting/hover).  Then they just start playback after a certain time threshold has been reached (e.g. if you hover over it or have it selected/highlighted for 5secs, start playing at that point).  In fact, they do the same thing for feature playback, which is why a movie/show starts playing automatically when you go to the detail screen on some devices....and the preloading is why things seem to start playing faster on Netflix (not as much apparent buffering, since it starts preloading when you enter a detail screen).

 

Honestly, preloading makes for a nice user experience if the user is decisive and wants to watch everything they select.  If they're more "browsers than players", it's frustrating since it adds delays to everything you do and wastes bandwidth unnecessarily.  Even if you preload their lowest bitrate stream by default, you still transfer at least 2-3 segments' of data...only to dump that data and do the same thing every time someone hovers/selects a new title for a second or so.  It would be like your web browser preloading web pages in the background every time your mouse cursor got close to a link...if you click on the link, it'll appear to load faster, but if the page was filled with links, it's just wasteful since you won't be clicking on everything you get close to.

 

I'm with the others here, though.  I despise their preview and feature autoplay.  It slows down navigation on most devices and the royalty-free music is almost always terrible and annoying.  Their "trailers" also usually don't give you any idea of what you'd be watching...more a montage of random scenes in many cases as opposed to a cohesive trailer, so they're often effectively worthless when you're not sure what the feature is about (won't even get into how useless their one-line descriptions are too).  It also wouldn't hurt if they normalised the audio tracks across their catalog so that you don't go from muted piano to brass-heavy/loud orchestral pieces, forcing you to ride the volume while browsing.

[ebr 16184]

In the apps that support video backdrops, we actually already have this feature...

[Pelon 203]

In the apps that support video backdrops, we actually already have this feature...

ebr,

 

Can you tell us which apps used on TVs allow video backgrounds?

 

I know that Emby Theater allows this feature. So far as I know non of the TV devices support this feature.

 

Actually let me ask more bluntly, Which TV device so you consider that flagship application to showcase Emby?

[Deathsquirrel 745]

ebr,

 

Can you tell us which apps used on TVs allow video backgrounds?

 

I know that Emby Theater allows this feature. So far as I know non of the TV devices support this feature.

 

Actually let me ask more bluntly, Which TV device so you consider that flagship application to showcase Emby?

 

ET has the broadest feature support in an Emby app.  Kodi has even more options I suppose but as I loathe the UI, isn't generally part of my consideration.

 

Of course whether you consider freaking obnoxious options like theme music and auto-playing preview a showcase or not is a personal call

[ebr 16184]

Theater and EMC are the only TV apps that have this at the moment.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

To paraphrase  a line from a pretty popular movie, "Just because you could does not mean you should."

 

I turn off all auto play and theme music and all other such intrusive actions that I can and NetFilx drove me away with all the crap they throw up while I am simply looking for something to watch. If (I want to hear or watch something I will explicitly chose it.

 

There are many many other things that Emby needs to work on and wasting time implementing such an invasive feature is a bad idea. Even if it can be turned off it would be a mistake to try to make it work as there are many unpredictable side effects that code like this would/could introduce for no more than marginal gain.

 

My vote is for Emby to work on important changes and fixes and ignore the intrusive features like this.

[speechles 2055]

If you need royalty free music for these website you can download free my songs from  <snipped url not gonna spam it again>

 

Haw.. dude it is an advertisement in the form of a post. How not clever.. lol. And it brought up a year old thread just to throw that nonsensical URL in there.

 

@@Happy2Play can you smite that fellows URL from view and that signature the guy uses has a URL too can you smite that as well. Thanks. It is just a way to charge people and no third party services are allowed to sell their services here without permission. Thanks again.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

Haw.. dude it is an advertisement in the form of a post. How not clever.. lol. And it brought up a year old thread just to throw that nonsensical URL in there.

 

@@Happy2Play can you smite that fellows URL from view and that signature the guy uses has a URL too can you smite that as well. Thanks. It is just a way to charge people and no third party services are allowed to sell their services here without permission. Thanks again.

 

Even those of us that are usually quite attentive to things like that can sometimes miss spam attempts. If i had noticed the age I would not have even posted or if I though it was a spam posting I would not have posted. I plead age and a senior moment. Sorry.

[speechles 2055]

Even those of us that are usually quite attentive to things like that can sometimes miss spam attempts. If i had noticed the age I would not have even posted or if I though it was a spam posting I would not have posted. I plead age and a senior moment. Sorry.

 

You did nothing wrong sir. Casualty of war you are. It is war with these types of spammers/scammers and they are trying to blend in with the locals. This was a horrible attempt to look like a new casual users just throwing out helpful advice. But look deeper because in reality on dudes website he has an "ask for a quote" button. Click that and he then charges you for pirated material. The website looks built to purposely attract web spiders and index bots. Lots of repeated text and made for machine reading bots. It reeks of a clumsy and lazy cash grab. The guy runs that site is grab that cash until the site gets reported then he uploads a clone of the same thing to some other host. Rinse + repeat then he makes another post like this to another forum. This is their life. To scam you and get your money.

Edited June 26, 2019 by speechles

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

You did nothing wrong sir. Casualty of war you are. It is war with these types of spammers/scammers and they are trying to blend in with the locals. This was a horrible attempt to look like a new casual users just throwing out helpful advice. But look deeper because in reality on dudes website he has an "ask for a quote" button. Click that and he then charges you for pirated material. The website looks built to purposely attract web spiders and index bots. Lots of repeated text and made for machine reading bots. It reeks of a clumsy and lazy cash grab. The guy runs that site is grab that cash until the site gets reported then he uploads a clone of the same thing to some other host. Rinse + repeat then he makes another post like this to another forum. This is their life. To scam you and get your money.

 

At least I was smart? enough to not even click on the link. Of course I have some pretty strong security built into my web browsing and computers but it always safer to not test the security. I hate it when thugs and crooks do things that spoil unfettered surfing.