Posts Tagged ‘Netflix’

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Two Annoyances In My Life

Monday, June 13th, 2011

So as with everyone I have a multitude of annoyances in my life but there are two things, currently, that above everything are really really getting on my nerves. And they both deal with companies not listening to their main customers and income source. Here are they are:

  • Netflix User Interface Change
  • Syfy Channel cancelling Stargate Universe and Caprica

I can’t understand it. Netflix’s old user interface was beautiful. It allowed me to quickly find a movie that I was looking for, while also allowing me to wander around looking for movies that I wanted. The new layout as I mentioned in a previous entry is just a load of crap that looks like it belongs on a mobile device. But that’s neither here nor there.

The cancellation of SGU and Caprica are the REALLY annoying things. Both of these shows were perfect. Every time I watched either of these shows, at the end I spent a moment in silent reflection absorbing what I saw and thinking about what it meant. The shows were visual, psychological, theatrical, and storytelling masterpieces the likes of which we may never see again. OK I’m lying, we will definitely see masterpieces like them every year and then we will also see them cancelled every year. That seems to be the way of the world.

But you know? at least there is still Eureka. Eureka is probably in no danger of getting cancelled because it doesn’t require people to think on a higher level. Basically you watch the Sheriff’s antics for an hour and have lots of fun doing it. These types of shows with low emotional investment always last for years. But then again this is also a show that is in Syfy’s summer lineup.

I am convinced that, had Stargate Universe been a summer show as it was intended it would be starting its third season right now. Also they way that the Syfy channel airs shows is just horribly stupid. Season 1, season 1.5, season 2, season 2.5, with 6 months in between its just stupid! I am a hardcore Science Fiction geek and I couldn’t keep up with all the breaks and schedule changes that Stargate Universe went through. Friday, Monday, Tuesday and every day competing with some highly rated broadcast show. It was just stupid. It seems as though Syfy was out to destroy SGU from the beginning so that they could create an excuse to trash the entire Stargate Franchise.

Why would they want to end the Stargate Franchise you ask? well this brings me to another amazingly annoying fact about the world we live in. EVERYTHING comes down to money. Stargate and space based science fiction shows are expensive to produce. Reality TV and wrestling shows are cheap to produce. So of course Syfy is taking the lower risk option, and decreasing their capital investment in TV shows. So they are almost guaranteed to make a profit. But this means that for me, and others like me (http://www.facebook.com/SaveSGU), there will, in the near future, be no television channels dedicated to the genre that we love, science fiction.

Oh well, at least I can watch them on Netflix. Oh wait!!! arrg the new Netflix User Interface is making me feel nauseous as the titles scroll by at a snails pace. gah, I just can’t catch a break!

hah! at least for now the old layout works with this chrome extension!

 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngacmlmclfopgbnmefcffgbcjiafbfpo?hl=en-US#

Thank you Mr. CheeseGoat you are the Man! Now if only someone could make a Chrome extension to save Stargate Universe (http://www.facebook.com/SGUUK). That link is for save SGU UK You should join that one too!

Edit 6/16/2011

May as well turn this thing into three major annoyances. four days ago some hacker hacked the Save Stargate Universe page. so now that’s gone… Now people have started un-liking the page and Facebook has not done anything about it at all. Really makes you wonder, if facebook isn’t quick to fix a group page with 55,000 users then what happens when your single account gets hacked? 

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Posted in Gripes, just wrong, Tech, Television, web stuff | 4 Comments »

Thank God Someone Made a Hack for Netflix

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngacmlmclfopgbnmefcffgbcjiafbfpo?hl=en-US#

The link at the top goes to a Google Chrome extension that forces Netflix’s old layout. It will work as long as Netflix leaves the old layout accessible. I have used it and it seems to work great for the most part. Once you drill down into sub Genre’s it doesn’t work.  This has been fixed!

Oh and yeah you have to be using Google Chrome to install it.

But whatever it’s better than having to deal with the new Netflix layout. I can’t stand this new layout.

Stupid Netflix, the only reason why I haven’t switched to Hulu Plus is because Flash is much slower than Silverlight (Netflix uses Silverlight for its online streaming). I wonder if Blockbuster uses Silverlight…

Edit 6/12/2011

Last night I left a movie paused and went to sleep. When I came back it said to press refresh to reload the video because my session had timed out. usually I press refresh and pick up where I left off. This plugin stops that feature from working working. upon pressing refresh the page will continually refresh and keep adding “fcld=true” to the end of the URL. Something about the actual movie watching page causes this plugin to enter into an infinite loop of some sort.

But this is a minor annoyance since I shouldn’t be leaving the thing on overnight anyways.

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Posted in Gripes, Tech, web stuff | 8 Comments »

Netflix New Layout is a Nightmare

Friday, June 10th, 2011

For those of you who have not signed into your Netflix account recently there has been a change made to the Netflix layout. Below you can see both of the layouts

Old Layout:

netflixold

New Layout:

netflixnew

I seriously HATE the new layout with a passion. And a basic search on the internets has shown that I am not alone. Here are some links with lots of sympathizers.

All of the previous links are full of people expressing their absolute hate for the new layout. On the Netflix blog there are over 2000 comments! most of them proclaiming hate for the new layout. So what do I dislike specifically about the new layout? here is my personal list.

  1. it is ugly. I like the nice fixed width page on a red background
  2. while it does show more movies the ratings are missing. you are required to mouse over each image and wait for the information to show up.
  3. the method of getting to the page where all of the reviews are located is not obvious
  4. the way that the scrolling is set up it gives me the feeling that my browser window is not fully expanded and there is not enough room on the page. Look at the last image in the top row of the New layout example image
  5. the scrolling is SUPER slow and annoying. My girlfriend says it makes her feel nauseous.
  6. I think the design uses an iframe or something so the navigation bar follows you as you scroll down. This means no matter how far I scroll it is still taking up real estate on the screen. (But I guess it also means that you don’t have to scroll up to get to the navigation bar, eh I dunno)
  7. When I first saw it, it made me feel like my web browser had failed to load the style sheets for the page. It just feels like a mistake.
  8. The new layout is just not intuitive at all.

So those are 8 reasons why I hate this new layout. I don’t know why the Netflix UI/UX guys would let this thing go live. On the huffington post link it seems that almost 40 percent of users hate the layout while the 35% or something are neutral. Any sort of focus group could have told them that the layout was junk. While it does put more emphasis on the movies this layout is not good for the PC version of the Netflix site. When you are on a PC and have more than a stupid PS3 or Wii controller to work with users want to have all of the information on their screen and at their fingertips.

If you agree with me, join the two facebook groups that I linked to previously. here are the links again:

Thanks and peace out!

 

Oh! I forgot to mention! for now the old UI still works if you use this link

http://www.netflix.com/WiHome?fcld=true

I don’t know how much longer it will work but at least for now it is something to fall back on.

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Posted in Gripes, just wrong, Movies, Tech, web stuff | 4 Comments »

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