As if the Prime Video app couldn’t get any worse.
Jesus christ do these people not understand what “Pause” means? It means my roommate just walked in and wants to discuss something. It means we’re looking at the freeze frame to see some aspect of the shot. It means the same damned collection of events should happen any time a “Pause” control’s been triggered since the invention of playback.
Why are the UX people not fighting them on this? Why does design have to be about breaking everything these days?
UX designers present to Directors and VPs; VPs and Directors speak to their C-level; C-level and Board want more money; VPs and Directors tell UX/UI team; UX team complains; designers fired; UI outsourced at 2x rate; Ad driven website achieved; Consumer Satisfaction drops; Revenue increases; Board rich; People poor; Sad
That all sounds great.
Here’s more adsUX vet here.
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UX usually never ever has the final say on this stuff. Product management, finance, and marketing almost always win out in most companies. Heck, in just about every agile training that is given, people are thought that product management gets the final vote on whether or not a feature gets prioritized.
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Amazon is famous for being driven by bean counters and analysts. Many of their product development decisions are driven by measurable short term incremental tests. Amazon has never really known how to build physical or digital experiences that people love.
This is one of the reasons I went to Apple TV for my streaming box.
All the streaming services seem to be in a race to make the slowest, worst looking, least consistent application possible. And Apple at least has a bit of a hand in making them reign it in a bit, and keep the players consistent.
“ooh, we’re averaging only 75% cpu use, we can cram another shitty effect in here…”
Although this pause menu crap will 100% appear in the Apple TV too. Paramount+ and some others are already doing it.
Apple does allow video apps to use their own player, and not the default player. And many of the non-Apple players are total trash.
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The UX people did have that fight. It ultimately comes down to “take your check and do it, or we can find someone who will”
So why are they taking the checks? Why not fight?
Have you worked for a mega corp?
There is no fighting this head on…but there are options for you know… Some compliance friction :)
I have worked for a mega corp. I fought bad decisions by arguing with management about bad orders.
As a tech friend once told me, “It’s your job to make them understand”
Did you always win?
Because it would still get built with our without them. At least this way, they’re the ones getting the checks.
I hope they don’t call themselves “professionals” then
Ill just give the Amazon products that are advertised 1 star reviews. Enough people start doing that maybe we can do what helldiver did.
I actually get Prime TV series from the high seas even though I’m subscribed to Prime. It’s simply better UX this way.
I do the same with a bunch of content. It’s amazing how I’m able to run a streaming service from my basement that’s better than Disney or Amazon.
Same here. I have Prime but only for their Amazon Prime delivery services, not for their video or audio thing(Amazon refuses to unbundle their stuff in my country). To make it worse, Amazon Prime Video, Atleast last I tried didn’t go to full HD(or even 720p) on Firefox on Linux, so there is no point to it.
And there is hardly an ethical concern to it. I am paying for a service but getting my hands on the material; just via a different supply chain because Amazon sucks.
didn’t go to full HD(or even 720p) on Firefox on Linux
you will run into similar restrictions on other services that use drm.
Same. I ditched AZ once they added ads PV. After 2 20s back to back ads, I unfurled my Jolly Roger. Fuck ads.
I never used Prime Video, and I cancelled my Prime subscription in protest against this shit. Never going back.
It’s shocking how bad their ui is. I don’t get it.
The sad thing is, it’s much better than it was.
You’d see a movie, read the truncated blurb, click into it to see the full details, only to get the exact same text in a bigger font, so you’d actually see less of it.
I cancelled it the day they announced more ads.
And just about anything you try to do to actually read the description would start the movie, including doing nothing for 10 secs (because you are fucking reading the description). Till you hit the back button which just boots you back to the home screen, so you can start the selection process all over again.
Helpfully they do include IMDB scores when browsing for stuff, sadly all their stuff is total shite so all the scores are low. But hey, at least they include them.
The only way to watch anything on Prime is to make your selection in advance somewhere else and then search for it. If you type in the literal title of the movie, it will mostly be in the top 10 of the search results. This includes resuming watching something you were watching, like their hit series Fallout. You would expect the resume watching thing to be proudly the first item on the home page. OMG you actually watched something of ours, we are so happy. Nope it’s buried away on the 5th or 6th line and you need to scroll to get to it. It also happily resumes the previous episode at the credits, without the helpful next episode button. If you do manage to get to the next episode, you will need to watch the first 5 secs of same ad you’ve seen a million times (because they only seem to have the one ad on their platform) before you can skip to the content.
I don’t know what those guys are smoking, but their app is total garbage.
Usually big corps collect all you personal information and tell you it’s a good thing because they use it to make useful recommendations. That way you at least get something out of it. At Amazon they just take all your personal data and when it comes to recommendations it gives you a big middle finger. I don’t know here’s a romcom from 12 years ago, you like that stuff right? Whatever fuck off.
It is weird how theyb collect so much data yet know so little about what I want to watch.
I think Disney+ is actually somehow worse in that regard, since they have so much old content that I would doubtless watch when bored, but all they want to push is the latest reality TV shit that I have never once shown any interest in.
Yup 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Amazon also horrifically mangles and compresses their video for seemingly no reason all the time.
I think that’s dependent on a lot of factors. Most of the highest quality webrips are from Amazon. Pretty sure there was less audio compression on their streams as well.
But watching, you’d often see it lose all quality for seemingly no reason at all, and revert to something that wouldn’t have looked out of place on RealPlayer on a 56K modem. I had this several times, and only reinstalling their useless app would fix it.
Yeah that’s the thing is that it’s almost random. As a guy with a network engineering degree that there wasn’t an identifiable issue with my network or devices when this would happen. No idea what would trigger it. Never had the same issue with any other streaming service.
It’s not for no reason, it’s to lower bandwidth costs. It may not be a reason that benefits you but there is definitely a reason.
They don’t even want to spend the money to provide you the paying customer with HD engagement slop…
And yet peasants still using this shit service and pay for it too!
Hold on, I gotta watch a Charmin commercial before my toilet 🚽 will flush for me…you know, my toilet that I purchased for my restroom. …it’s coming, laugh now but you, know it! Cha-cha-cha! Charmin!
Did they make a deal with VLC player?
?
Will we? 🏴☠️
Wow, what happened to paying for things supporting the product and not needing ads?
You’re forgetting one important thing - Bezos needs more money! Line must go up. Always. At any cost.
yeah, companies gotta do what a companies gotta do. and we get NO say.
After almost 20 years as a Prime subscriber I unsubscribed about a week ago. It was the ads, I put up with a lot of nonsense over the years but the ads were the final insult.
I’m not paying full streaming service prices for a service with ads.
I was a long time subscriber as well, but canceled right before Christmas 2022. I missed it for about a week and then I realized most things I “needed immediately” from Amazon I could either 1) drive across town to purchase from brick and mortar or 2) actually just wait for it.
The end result has been me buying less things I don’t need, and buying the things I do need from local retailers (and of course big box stores), or ordering them from other online retailers since the shipping is comparable to Amazon.
2 years in and I don’t miss it at all, will never go back. I do want to watch the Fallout series though.
Just imagine. If you install Amazon video on an external streaming device and hook it up to a new Roku TV, you could get the pleasure of looking at multiple layers of Pause screen ads.
Not surprised at all lol I am tempted to just start using Jellyfin and shop from sites that don’t do this to their “premium” users.
Inb4 “the pirates are destroying the industry”
Yo ho, yo ho…
I’m one of the people that canceled when they announced they were going to be putting ads in prime. I’m doing just fine without it.
I’ve honestly just hit a point in life where I’m dine giving megacorps money. I stopped piracy like a decade ago because I had the means to pay for shit, but since then companies have just started treating customers with more and more disrespect, and I’m perfectly knowledgeable on how to access most of their shit fir free and with less restrictions and hassle. So Im back to piracy not fir money reasons, but FUCK YOU reasons
Yup. I’m looking for legal options to buy what I want so I can drop my last couple subscriptions (Disney+ and Netflix). I’m currently on the ad free versions of those, and if those go away or become too expensive, I’ll be more motivated to get rid of them.
I already cut out Amazon Prime, Disney+ is the next to go. I’m updating my NAS so it can hold more videos, and I’ll teach my kids how to use it instead of the smart TV. The next step is to replace my smart TV with a dumb TV…
100% relatable. Done with these abusive subscriptions.
Same mine just ended last week I think. Meh. Lately I’ve been noticing the quality issues and tricks of the junk sold on there where I am always cautious when I buy random stuff. Prime video was just a bonus, and I hardly used it anyways. This was the final nail in the coffin. I also do not want to endorse this sort of behavior so others do it.
On a completely unrelated note, the *arr suite is a pretty nice collection of services.
Same… And since I still have not replaced their firetv sticks, I know use all their advertising as a list of “here is what’s out, in case you want to sail for it”
Thank you Amazon hehehehe
Wait… I already now get annoying ads in the middle of watching a show. Now they want to add more ads to Prime Video? That’s absolutely ridiculous.
