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Netflix Overhauls Video Player

On the heels of revitalized subscriber numbers, Netflix has overhauled its video player for browser-based watching, adding in a host of new features and options, including single TV episode and whole season previews. “Besides beefing up the playback with added options, information, and video accessibility, the video service also redesigned the control bar to be more user-friendly,” CNet notes.

“With the exception of tweaks for new features like HD video and closed captioning, Netflix's Silverlight-based Web player has been largely unchanged for years,” Engadget notes.

“The new player is gorgeous,” VentureBeat gushes. “The design better matches the user interface on Netflix’s main navigation pages.”

Yep, “it’s pretty slick,” GigaOm admits. “The only downside of the new player seems to be that there can be some issues with Chrome on Mac OS … However, a quick test showed that basic playback was working just fine via OS X Chrome.

Speaking at a conference this week, Netflix CFO David Wells said that approximately a third of new subscribers are "re-joins," or people who dropped Netflix but decided to return.

“All those Netflix customers who jumped ship after last year's price hike/Qwikster debacle?”PCMag asks. “It appears that a good number of them have returned to the service.”

“After earning a spot on 24/7 Wall Street's top 10 most-hated companies of 2011, Netflix appears to be winning back some of the consumers that cancelled their subscription last year,” writes Digital Trends.

Netflix keeps customer data for about a year, so that number could be higher, but "but to the extent that we can match the address and credit card information," re-joins are one-third of new customers, Wells said this week -- which he called "encouraging."

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