Just last week Netflix launched offline viewing for some of the shows in their catalog, and today they’ve unveiled another new feature that should make it easier to choose what to watch next. Video previews will be launching globally today and will roll out over the next few weeks to eligible devices like game consoles and Roku devices with smart TVs and other devices following suit down the road.
What’s a video preview? For starters, video previews aren’t teasers or traditional trailers. They are specially designed video synopses that help members make faster and more confident decisions by quickly highlighting the story, characters and tone of a title. In developing this experience, our testing showed that people watched more of a story, demonstrating these previews helped them browse less and watch more.
This is our latest effort to continually evolve the Internet TV experience to one that provides greater choice, richer imagery, better context, and a more consumer-friendly experience. When we launched streaming back in 2007, we were mostly trying to figure out what this new medium could be and how best to present it. Over the last decade, investments in how content is delivered globally, optimizing our streams for bandwidth-constrained environments, and the evolution of consumer tastes allows us to experiment with new ways to improve your experience.
With offline viewing and now video previews showing while you browse through the Netflix catalog, it will be interesting to see what Netflix comes up with next.
What do you think about Netflix video previews? Have they showed up on your console, smart TV, or other Netflix enabled device yet? What feature do you think Netflix should add next? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
