Prepare for changes to your binging habits. Netflix could soon look a lot different on your TV.
The streaming giant is testing a homepage redesign for its TV app, The Verge reported. The changes are pretty substantial. Basically, if you select the tile for show or movie, it immediately expands. Then, if you hover over it long enough, the tile begins to play a preview of the title and display info about it, such as genre and number of episodes. This is a big change the current static tiles with a preview that displays at the top of the screen. The idea is to make it simpler to bop around the streaming service as you look for something to watch.
“We often see members doing gymnastics with their eyes as they’re scanning the home experience,” Pat Flemming, Netflix’s senior director of product, told The Verge. “We really wanted members to have an easier time figuring out if a title is right for them.”
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What happens now?
The new-look TV app rolled out to a limited subset of customers starting Thursday, Reuters reported, noting the company planned to take feedback and potentially make changes before rolling it out more broadly.
“Think of this as a first effort, our best initial swing, at what we think is a great new TV experience,” Flemming told The Verge.
The homepage redesign comes at an interesting time for the company. It’s starting to dip its toes into live TV with offerings like John Mulaney’s six-episode Everybody’s in LA and David Chang’s Dinner Time Live. And there’s the massive news that Netflix purchased the rights to stream the NFL’s Christmas games. It makes sense you’d want a user-friendly and well-tested homepage before airing the most popular TV product in the country.
