Netflix Thinks You can Speed-Read a Movie — Filmmakers Do Not Agree

Podcast listeners sometimes use the option to speed up the audio to get the information more quickly. Now Netflix is trying the same thing with video. Entertainment Weekly reports:

What if you could watch every episode of Breaking Bad and Stranger Things 50 percent faster?

That’s a feature that Netflix is quietly testing, and it’s quickly drawn a big backlash from Hollywood creatives.
First noted by Android Police, savvy mobile users of the streaming service spotted a new feature on the Netflix Android app that allowed subscribers to speed up (or slow down) playback without muting the volume (to playback speeds 0.5x, 0.75x, 1.0x, 1.25x or 1.5x, respectively). The feature is not unlike what most podcast and audiobook apps already have and is used by some listeners to consume content more quickly (or, in some cases, to slow it down if they have a difficult time understanding it).

The first-blush response from industry creatives, however, was not good. Turns out filmmakers don’t like the idea of viewers watching their painstakingly crafted work on Chimpmunks mode.