I like the five-star rating system just fine, thank you

Netflix developed a virtual assistant, Max, to make recommendations for the content that you watch. So far, it has been tested on PS3. VentureBeat's article doesn't mention any plans for Max to be part of browser-based Netflix, and I hope it stays that way.

For starters, I don't want a trying-too-hard artificial personality hovering around. Take a look at this video that explains how Max works. It's annoying and unnecessary. Genre-specific recommendations and choosing movies based on the leading actors are already parts of Netflix. Besides pre-recorded quips, the only new thing that Max offers is a randomly-selected title. Netflix can do that with a Random button.

Besides all of that, I'm having bad flashbacks of Clippy.

Except Max is worse, because he makes you play mini games before you choose something to watch.

I like the five-star system that Netflix has—simple, easy to use, and its predictions work really well for me. I like that the rating system is always there, but I can easily ignore it too. It seems like Max is an optional feature, but I wish Netflix would put its efforts toward something more useful, like separate user profiles on one account.


Image is remixed with graphics by Mike Licht (flickr) and Nemo (pixabay).