Now, there’s no chance of missing any subtitle while streaming the final season of “La Casa De Papel.”
The new people watch feature, which the company first experimented back at the end of 2019, has started looming in some android devices.
With this feature, users can actually control the speed of what they’re watching, either stream up to 0.5 times slower or 1.5 times faster.
While Android users are only benefitting with this speed control feature, Netflix plans to test the functionality for official release on all the devices of its application.
In a blog post update, the streaming giant highlights that the action to introduce controllable speed settings was made through careful planning. Referring to previous add-on features like ‘Skip Intro’ and ‘Play Next Episode’, their statement recognizes that such features “can be sensitive within the creative community.”
It’s quite understandable that the creative community would want to exhibit their work according to the way they want their viewers to see. Directors like Christopher Nolan always opt theatres to premiere his movies rather than any streaming site. However, the change in distribution methods has already disrupted the creative industry. DVD. VHS and Blu-ray players have now taken a more viewer-centric approach; hence, they have more control over what and how they want to consume content.
On the other hand, having the ability to slow streaming can be super accessible for different viewers. The decision of moving forward with such a feature has been taken with close examination, involving various factors. Keela Robison, Netflix’s vice president of product innovation, explains why the company has decided to introduce this after a brief testing phase.
The feature has always been the users’ choice and demand. Most importantly, we love the way it provides flexibility to users no matter if they are rewatching the best scene or just want to slow down the speed as they are reading subtitles or maybe having hearing issues.
The National Association of the Deaf and the National Federation of the Blind praised Netflix on introducing the playback features. Since captions can be slowed down (and sped up), it will be easier for viewers to catch with the visuals on-screen. Not only for blind and deaf, but it will be easier for us too as we juggle with time and visuals while streaming foreign-language shows.
To address the concerns of the directors, Netflix has kept a playback option to be optimized on the per-watch basis. The company is also rolling out the feature to web and iOS devices shortly after a brief test.