By Kai-Arne Zimny

Whether it’s the mo(u)rning rou­tine of hav­ing to leave your beloved bed, or the devi­ous­ly bril­liant book that won’t let you stop turn­ing pages while the dig­its relent­less­ly move towards 3 a.m. – there are quite a few occa­sions where hav­ing more time would come in handy.

I’ll spare you any more time-con­sum­ing pas­sages of intro­duc­tion and cut right to the chase:

Net­flix is test­ing a fea­ture that lets users accel­er­ate play­back speed up to 1.5 times the nor­mal speed. Ever since the news went viral, Net­flix was hit hard with back­lash­es from a num­ber of moviemak­ers and actors. Net­flix defend­ed the choice by stat­ing it’s been a “heav­i­ly request­ed fea­ture from subscribers.”

It’s impos­si­ble for me to val­i­date whether that’s true or not; what we do know is that as of now, Net­flix is only test­ing the fea­ture on a small frac­tion of their cus­tomers and only on Android devices. And even if this were to become a reg­u­lar fea­ture, as long as Net­flix doesn’t force cus­tomers to indulge in stream­ing-quick­ies, it’s all fine, isn’t it?

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