After facing criticism from creators across the industry, Netflix has decided to go ahead and roll out their new playback speed altering option for Android users.
Netflix will allow Droid users to slow videos by 0.5x or 0.75x, and also give them the capability to speed up videos by 1.25x or 1.5x. When Netflix first floated this idea, director Judd Apatow lashed out online. "No @Netflix no," he wrote in a Twitter response. "Don’t make me have to call every director and show creator on Earth to fight you on this. Save me the time. I will win but it will take a ton of time. Don’t fuck with our timing. We give you nice things. Leave them as they were intended to be seen." Many other creators believe that slowing or speeding the time up will alter their finished vision.
"We’ve also been mindful of the concerns of some creators," Netflix seemingly responded in a post. "It’s why we have capped the range of playback speeds and require members to vary the speed each time they watch something new — versus fixing their settings based on the last speed they used."
Netflix's new decision is backed by The National Association of the Deaf and the National Federation of the Blind. "The National Association of the Deaf and the National Federation of the Blind have both welcomed this feature," Netflix reported. "People who are deaf and have difficulty reading appreciate the option of slowing down the captioning, and people who are hard of hearing value the ability to listen at slower speeds - while many individuals who are vision impaired are used to listening to digital audio much faster (for example with screen readers)." Will you be utilizing this new feature?