Netflix is experimenting with a new feature that allows you to speed up or slow down the playback of TV series or movies: how it works
Netflix doesn’t stop. The online streaming platform, after having innovated and changed forever the way we enjoy multimedia content, continues to experiment. After all, whoever stops is lost and the competition, more and more fierce, pushes the streaming giant to try new ways, testing new features, which, at first glance may seem unnecessary and trivial, but in fact could be very useful
The latest innovation in order of time concerns the ability to speed up or slow down video playback on Android smartphones. Users can decide to make the playback of an episode of a TV series or a movie faster or slower. The feature would meet the demands of users who have asked Netflix for a tool to quickly watch the most boring episodes, or to study a language more thoroughly in case you decide to watch content in the original language. When the news came out, however, there was no shortage of controversy, especially from the film industry (Hollywood) opposed to this type of tool.
Netflix: the new feature
According to a report published by online magazine Android Police, Netflix is experimenting on its Android app with an option that would allow users to speed up episodes of TV series or movies up to 1.5 times or slow them down to 0.5 times. The experiment was confirmed by the U.S. company with a post published on its blog that makes known the start of the experiment, only on mobile devices.
The experiment offers people the possibility to vary the speed at which they watch Netflix content on phones or tablets by choosing slower (0.5X or 0.75X) or faster (1.25X and 1.5X) playback. As pointed out in the release, the new feature is the same feature that has long been available on DVD players and has often been clamored for by users of the online streaming platform.
Netflix: a necessary feature?
The new feature seems to follow a popular and fairly common behavior among podcast lovers of speeding up playback speed to consume more content. At first glance it would seem a superfluous tool, but speeding up the episodes of a series can be very useful in a binge watching session. Maybe to make a quick summary, to review on the fly a scene crucial to the development of the plot, or why not, to speed up the boring scenes of a movie or a series, as well as entire episodes. A new feature definitely not for everyone and not strictly necessary that could, however, make the happiness of some “fanatics” of the episodes to the bitter end. It could, yes, because for now Netflix has no intention of releasing it in the stable version.