Greasemonkey / Violentmonkey userscript to stop Netflix from loading video in the hero area of the browse page.

Netflix.user.js

// ==UserScript==
// @name Netflix /browse hero video preventer
// @author Shaun
// @namespace Violentmonkey Scripts
// @match *://*.netflix.com/browse
// @grant none
// @run-at document-start
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
  let observers = [];
  const origXhrOpen = XMLHttpRequest.prototype.open;

  function init() {
    XMLHttpRequest.prototype.open = function() {
      this.addEventListener("progress", function() {
        if (this.responseURL.indexOf("range") !== -1) {
          console.log("Shaun's Netflix script aborted loading a video.");
          this.abort();
        }
      });
      origXhrOpen.apply(this, arguments);
    };

    watchForVideo();
  }

  function teardown() {
    observers.forEach(observer => observer.disconnect());
    observers = [];
    XMLHttpRequest.prototype.open = origXhrOpen;
  }

  history.onpushstate = function(state, title, url) {
    if (url.indexOf("browse") === -1) {
      teardown();
      console.log("Shaun's Netflix script destroyed itself.");
    } else {
      init();
      console.log("Shaun's Netflix script started running.");
    }
  };

  window.onpopstate = function() {
    if (document.location.href.indexOf("browse") !== -1) {
      init();
    }
  };

  init();

  /**
   * Waits for an element satisfying selector to exist, then resolves promise with the element.
   * Useful for resolving race conditions.
   *
   * @param selector
   * @returns {Promise}
   */
  function elementReady(selector) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      let el = document.querySelector(selector);
      if (el) {
        resolve(el);
      }
      const observer = new MutationObserver((mutationRecords, observer) => {
        // Query for elements matching the specified selector
        Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(selector)).forEach(element => {
          resolve(element);
          observer.disconnect();
        });
      });
      observers.push(observer);
      observer.observe(document.documentElement, {
        childList: true,
        subtree: true
      });
    });
  }

  function watchForVideo() {
    elementReady("video").then(video => {
      console.info("Shaun's Netflix script removed a video element.", video);
      video.remove();
      watchForVideo();
    });
  }

  (function(history) {
    var pushState = history.pushState;
    history.pushState = function() {
      if (typeof history.onpushstate === "function") {
        history.onpushstate.apply(this, arguments);
      }
      return pushState.apply(history, arguments);
    };
  })(window.history);
})();