Google has been fiddling with the way lockscreen media controls should work since Ice Cream Sandwich, and they've gotten yet another makeover in KitKat. When a supported app like Google Play Music, Netflix, or Play Movies is running in the background (Chromecast-only in the last two instances) you get a full screen display of the artwork associated with the content on the lockscreen. It offers some new functionality too.
You can still navigate around to other lockscreen widgets and the album art will still be there – it essentially takes the place of your background. If the image is high-resolution that's great. However, I've noticed some Netflix titles look rather blurry. You can expand the playback control widget to take up the full length of the panel, but it doesn't add anything, oddly.
Most of the functions are right there for controlling playback, but Google mentioned seeking and there is no progress bar to be found. What gives? It turns out you can simply long-press on the skip forward or back button and the title is replaced by a progress bar. Then you can scrub through the track from the lockscreen. This appears to be for music only right now. It's really cool, but incredibly unintuitive. Check below for the old style lockscreen controls to compare.