Media Streaming Application - Netflix

Netflix is a movie streaming service that offers its customer the opportunity to watch varieties of award winning movies, documentaries, amongst others on their devices which are connected to the internet.

On Netflix, you have the opportunity to watch without limit and you can be sure that you won’t find any commercial whatsoever either the friendly one or the annoying one.

Watching becomes easy when you don’t need to scroll up and down searching aimlessly for the next movie to watch. With the Netflix application, you can now see and watch movies easily without any stress.

The beauty of the Netflix application is that you don’t need a system to watch any movies. You can watch movies at your comfort with Netflix on your smartphone anytime. For this beautiful feature, you need not pay any extra charges, your normal Netflix subscription will cover that.

Whether you are using apple device, android or windows, you can be sure that Netflix application is compatible with it. As of the 2nd quarter of 2017, Netflix Application was listed as the leading application by Google and Apples store.

Another stat shows that over 7.5 billion minutes were spent watching movie on Netflix in 2017. It’s not surprising then that there have been over 100 million downloads worldwide.

Features – Netflix Mobile Application

Netflix application has some distinctive characteristics that differentiate it from all other movie streaming applications. it features include:

Supported in all Region

Most streaming application are only available for some selected countries or region, but that is not the case with Netflix application, it doesn’t matter where you are from, you can always use their application. With the help of internationalisation and localisation feature of iOS Swift, it is easy to scale to various culture & people.

Navigation

Another good feature of Netflix application is it easy navigation system. Using the search catalogue, you can easily search for your desired movie and it bookmarks the last paused video, and you can easily sort those movies for easy identification.

Sorting could be on the year of production, year of release, genre etc. While also streaming or watching a movie, you can choose to either fast forward or rewind the movie easily by just tapping the screen and following the prompt it brings.

Resolutions

Watching movies and not being able to enjoy the best view can be very disappointing. This is one thing that Netflix application developers also understands, and they did well in solving this problem. Their movies are all in high definition (HD), and you can be so sure none of their movie is less than 480p.

Subtitle

This is one feature that many enjoy. Those who are hearing impaired can also enjoy our movie streaming as they can read along each scene as they happen. There are times when you might not hear clearly what is been said in a movie, but with the subtitle you can be sure that no statement will escape your sight.

It is beneficial for those who watch movies on the go, you need not worry about surrounding noises, that will be taken care of by your subtitle.

Alternative Audio

If you love to hear clearly each statement said in a movie, Netflix application is a good stop for you. You can always get a better audio quality that will replace the original one.

Use your Phone as a Remote Control

This function might look extremely impossible to many, but with your device and the Netflix application installed on it, you need no other remote control as your phone is fit to function as a remote control.

Elimination of Buffering

Sometimes one just grow tired especially when streaming a live program and you keep seeing the “buffering pop up”, Netflix application has made moves to help solve this problem. Clicking the “screen manager” setting and selecting the “manual” function will help you to alter rate of streaming.

You can always reduce the rate to get a faster view and a less clear view. Trust me keeping up with the program is the best way to enjoy it.

Downloads

You may not always be able to watch a movie or stream it immediately after seeing it, especially when you find like 2 to 3 interesting movie at once. The download function will help you save those movies offline and when you are less busy, you can always jump back and watch it at your comfort.

Apple Swift Language & Why?

Swift is an object-oriented and protocol-oriented programming language used for iOS and OS X. Well, that may have given you an idea about what the term Swift in thin context means. We write and develop software’s both for phones and our computer daily, but the best way which is safe, fast and interactive as a means of writing the codes is through Swift.

Beauty of Swift

Code Readability

The first advantage of Swift is its ability to deliver in clean syntax. This will make it easy to read and write codes. When comparing the number of lines needed to be written in Objective-C to Swift, it became clear that Swift uses fewer lines because it drops some functions that are not useful like semicolons for ending line, parenthesis for conditional statements etc.

Bracket mess that results from method calls have also been corrected and now the method and function calls now uses comma separated list of parameters within its parenthesis. This makes our code cleaner and our syntax simplified. Swift can be compared to speaking in plain English and it saves developers time by limiting their search for various codes.

Movie Player

It is very easy to develop movie players like Netflix, thanks to Swift. They have powered so many third party movie player SDK companies and have recorded success with each trial.

Robustness of App

To help in robustness of applications, apple introduced the protocol oriented programming in Swift 4.x which helps to make app robust and more scalable with features like make use of multiple inheritance.

Less Learning Curve

Compared to Objective C and Java Swift has very less learning curve which lets your development team to manage resources in a long run. This gives benefit to development team for a long running project.

Backward Compatibility

Another advantage of using Swift is it backward compatibility. If an application is upgraded, most times it stops working with the previous versions, but with the development of backward compatibility an application created in Swift3.0 can work with one created in Swift 4.0

Future Language

Compared to Objective-C, apple is now throwing its full support behind Swift and this signal to the fact that soon the world will generally migrate from Objective-C to Swift. Your code will not prone to technology change as Swift is going to become a language of 21st Century. This is clear judging by the design of the Netflix application.

How Much Time and Cost Will It Take to Create Media Streaming App in Swift

One cannot be exactly accurate while predicting the amount of time it might take to create Netflix kind of app in Swift owing to the following facts:

Expertise will define how fast one will be. Time frame for delivering the job (deadline). The function or the use of the app to be created. Availability of the developer. The extra function to be introduced.

Why Not to Use Cross Platform to Make Netflix Kind of App?

A beautiful User Interface (UI) is Guaranteed

A nice look and feel is certain and this will make the application more usable. Remember your choice will affect the success of your application.

Performance

Being a media application, it is bound to be very heavy. Using native application will be efficient as the codes will be directed directly to the operating system to produce the best performance.

Cross Platform Issues

But for Cross platform, you are bound to have the following problems performance delay, extension of native components that will end up affecting application sooner or later.

Technology Stack - Not a Cake Walk!

Technology stack is not the discussion agenda of this article, but interested product stakeholders may just want to have an idea on some important parts of it.

Backend: Java & NodeJs

Database: PostgreSQL & Amazon DynamoDB

Web Front End: React

Mobile apps: Swift and Android Java

Containerization & Orchestration: Docker

Cloud: Amazon Web Services, Amazon Kinesis

Summary

If you want to have a great product quality just like Netflix then opt in iOS, you will need to have a good development partner as it will help save you cost and time. With the help of powerful Test frameworks of Apple & scalable backend architecture, we leverage it to guarantee your product quality at next level.

With a good application development partner, you will be able to come up with an application that will enable you approach the market scene competitively and stand out among competitive apps with same features.

If you want a development partner for your app project, you can contact Perception System as your partner. Do you want your movie app built in iOS Swift so it can outsmart those built in other model? Perception System can help you with that.