Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

thewaltdisneycompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 788 posts

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#271

Post by mahyarm »

wfunction wrote: post #184
Fezzik wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The size of Disney's catalogue may be underestimated by some. Having instant access to all their movies[1] and television shows[2] has quite a bit of value, and would consist of hundreds upon hundreds of blu-rays. I am not one who would sign up, but certainly if I had children I would much rather have streaming access to all of this than stacks of discs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Pictures_…

Are children into live-action Disney films? That seems to be the vast majority of their catalog, not animations.

Bambi is still a good movie for the 5 year olds of today too.

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#272

Post by fovc »

I think this is what every bear case since 2010 has been saying about Netflix: it was a phenomenal business while they got to exploit the quirky licensing of physical DVDs, but with streaming, content is king.

As many predicted back then (when Tilson wrote his famous letter), the cost of quality content has gone up so much that Netflix has had no choice but to let much of it go and instead produce their own to defend their margin. At some point their core business will simply be content production rather than distribution

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#273

Post by joezydeco »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #242
joezydeco wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all movies. Streaming services get traction from episodic series and live shows. If Disney streams only feature film content, it will go nowhere. No parent will pay $10-$20 month to access the same 50 to 100 films over and over.

If Disney streams only feature film content, it will go nowhere. No parent will pay $10-$20 month to access the same 50 to 100 films over and over. Translation: I'm not a parent... or at least, I'm not a typical one

Actually I am a parent of two tween kids, and they consume a lot of Disney sitcoms.

The point was that the movie library alone isn't compelling enough for me to subscribe. If the other shows are included like TFA mentioned (and not the grandparent comment) then that's different.

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#274

Post by pbhjpbhj »

flashman wrote: post #213
joezydeco wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all movies. Streaming services get traction from episodic series and live shows. If Disney streams only feature film content, it will go nowhere. No parent will pay $10-$20 month to access the same 50 to 100 films over and over.

> No parent will pay $10-$20 month That's literally what my family used to pay in VHS rentals. One new release and one weekly movie, three or four times a month.

There was a whole industry for production of the cassettes, warehousing, distribution, retail space, service personnel which all cost a pretty packet. The cost now of putting the post-edit file on a server with a web payment has gotta be virtually zero. Any schmuck can serve a torrent to the world for the price of an internet connection -- sure, that's the baseline, and it relies on others paying the (small) real costs, but still.

Without the need for Blockbuster retail stores, that's got to cut the price in half. Being able to keep your whole back catalog in a computer rack instead of buying warehouse space in 50 different countries has to halve the costs again, surely. Account for actual material costs, factories to make the cassettes, write them, produce the cases. What are we down to now ...

$1 a month for buying 6 new movies sounds more like it.

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#276

Post by waddlesworth »

TheGRS wrote: post #92

Some kind of surprising comments in this thread. I think many people (obviously not everyone here judging by what I'm reading) would happily pay for a Disney-only service, maybe upwards of $20-$30 per month. Why? Its the mecca for family entertainment. They have Pixar, Disney Animation, Star Wars and Marvel, plus all of their Disney television content from years past. Its a quality brand people trust. Much different…

Most apps are published to both iTunes and Google Play. Most songs to Goole Music, Spotify, Apple Music and probably a few others.

As long as it's within 10yrs old, even most games are available for purchase, anywhere in the world, from the different platforms. While the majority is exclusive to Steam, other providers have their own niche markets.

When I make an IP, I want to capture as much of the market as possible, anything else is throwing money away.

The anti-trust comes from the environment where three or four media companies own all of the production and redistribution and each one believes that they can become a monopoly and get all of the money.

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#277

Post by smogcutter »

jethro_tell wrote: post #49
shmerl wrote: post #22

Collusion of content ownership and distribution causes such mess. It should really be prevented by anti-trust, and if it doesn't prevent it, something is seriously broken and not working as it should.

actually, it's distribution decoupled from actual value creation that has given us things like 4 hour football games with 10 minutes of live play. I would prefer that content is sold without need for a middle man. Seems easy when spotify does it and there are no commercials but they aren't doing 4k streams. I think top quality spotify is 240 or 320kBPS. Netflix needs 4x that for their lowest, "wouldn't watch it on my…

I don't know about that, distribution decoupled from actual value creation sounds a lot like division of labor, ie the way we've been doing things since the industrial revolution to generally great success. What's the alternative besides inefficiency and duplicated effort?

Middlemen are great, they connect buyers and sellers at scale. Without the broadcasters the NFL wouldn't expect to get paid any less, they'd just squeeze the money out of you directly. Or show you ads. Or both!

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#278

Post by samclearman »

codazoda wrote: post #70
Anatidae wrote: post #30

If every studio thinks I'm going to pay them $10+ a month to stream their content, they are going to be very mistaken. I can't imagine that a lot of people want to spend the collective hundreds of dollars to sign up for all the streaming services. It's almost asking to drive people to torrents. Now, if Disney does something like $30/year or something really affordable - sure. I might do that on a whim. I guess it's a…

We asked for a la carte TV pricing. I think this is what it looks like. I'll probably pay for a few channels and forget the rest.

A la carte TV pricing was always a stupid idea. What people really wanted was cheaper pricing, which is of course not going to happen.

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#279

Post by monocasa »

timfrietas wrote: post #149
monocasa wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We assumed it wouldn't be ~$10 a channel.

It already was, though. HBO, Cinemak, Starz were all in that range.

But it wasn't because it was ~120 channels for ~$120/m.

Re: Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

#280

Post by busterarm »

mark-ruwt wrote: post #5

tl;dr Subscribing to a standalone ESPN service will be possible starting in 2018. This is an earth shaker for sports properties, cable companies, and subscription VODs. NFLX was quickly down 5%, but is rebounding.

ESPN content but not the main ESPN channels. You can stream those, but only if you pay for a cable subscription.

It's more like they opened up access to ESPN3 and added a streamable back catalog of programming. It stems the tide of their massive losses due to cord-cutting while also allowing them to charge sports fans even more money.

Nobody wins.

Post reply on HN