It is a good title, but this post is just a rant and a collection. Today we get a new streaming platform every day. Once was only Netflix, now Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, RTL+, Sky, and I don’t know what.
The selection is usually a good thing; this post isn’t about that. It is about technical quality—the UX and UI. The thing I can see and I can judge as a developer and user.
I think Netflix is one of the best-engineered products regarding (web) applications. It works like a breeze on my $150 budget Xiaomi phone, which tells much.
These streaming platforms have the exact pricing, but in the technical part, I’m annoyed with how much less they ship (primarily compared to Netflix). So below, I started to write up what grinds my gear because I clearly have time to do so.
Disney+
- The captions/subtitles are stuck behind the control panels when you try to change the volume or alter it any other way (Chrome).
- You can click through the “Skip intro” button in Chrome.
- The skip intro link doesn’t skip the whole intro. SW: Andor, it just jumps over the generic Star Wars intro, but you still have to watch the “Andor” intro.
- For some reason, we have to watch a 5-8 minute outro to show the jump to the next episode button.
- Why can’t I navigate between the episodes when I am watching something?
- On Android: the back button (when you watch something) takes up the whole place horizontally, so it is pretty easy to tap on it accidentally.
HBOMAX
- It is amazingly slow on a budget android phone. I know fuck me, right.
- For some reason, I get black screens randomly. Reinstalling the application can solve this problem. 🎉
RTL+
- You can’t control the playback order. If you start a series, it (probably) will play the episodes randomly.