Just to add another voice to this, I noticed this today as well.
Number 3 is especially harsh. It means you can no longer watch the second (or anything but the first episode) of a series? It used to work by pressing the double right arrow button, but now the audio just plays but no video. I was trying to watch Lost: Season 4 this afternoon and could only watch the first episode because of this.
Must have been some changes on the Netflix side of things. Hopefully someone is looking into this.