Netflix has revealed some of the innovations created as part of its autumn Hack Day event.
Among the ideas is Nostalgiflix, a Chrome extension that turns the Netflix web browser into an “interactive time machine” covering three decades (’80s, ’90s and ’00s) of television.
The viewer can drag the UI slider around and view titles originally released within the selected year (based on their historic box office and episode air dates).
They can also adjust video filters in real time to downgrade the viewing experience.
Another innovation created during Hack Day was ‘Bird Box’, described as automatic audio description.
It enables visually impaired or blind viewers to watch Netflix shows. In a post on Netflix’s technology blog, the company said its developers had used recent research to automatically generate descriptions, and then used its own internal authoring tools to refine the output. “We then used synthetic audio and automated mixing techniques to deliver a final audio description track,” said the blog.
