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Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

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

#341

Post by chalupa-man »

heygrady wrote: post #329
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…

Most people pay north of $100/mo for cable TV [1]. Depending on your bundle you may pay as high as $150 (anecdotal from friends who have Comcast). If you pay $50/mo for your internet connection you could afford 5 or so $10/mo services on the same budget. Arguably, right now Comcast Xfinity has the most/best streamable content if you pay for HBO. This will likely change soon; this has been a long time coming. Cord-cut…

It is worth noting though that those figures are American, but Netflix and the Disney decision are global. The US is a bit of an outlier in terms of both the cost and popularity of cable TV. For example in Australia, a country very similar to the US in terms of pop culture and entertainment, only around 25% of homes have cable TV and the most popular package is US$39. In the US the cost can be looked at as '5 services to replace cable TV' but in most countries it does instead look like broadcast-TV content being moved behind new paywalls, with increasing costs to watch the same shows.

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

#342

Post by freehunter »

ehsankia wrote: post #324
bendauphinee wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's about paying that high a cost, I think it's about having to chase it all over the place. I'd pay double or maybe triple for Netflix, as long as it meant I could get most or all of the streaming content I wanted in one place. This is one reason why Steam is so popular.

So then your issue isn't the cost, and if someone came with an app that would "merge" all service into a single app where you can stream for all of them from a single place, you'd be happy? I don't think that's what others are complaining about though. Price was definitely the issue of the top commenter as they mention 10$/month and 30$/year. But it makes no sense because back in the cable days, people paid 50-100$ i…

>10$ a month is nothing. It's literally two coffee.

This is, has been, and always will be a ridiculous argument. $10/mo is nothing, it's the price of two coffees. But I need four services, so it's $40/mo, which is eight coffees. So now to afford the same content that was 1/4 of the price last month, I need to give up drinking coffee on Monday and Tuesday, every week.

"It's the price of a cup of coffee" is a terrible argument because I don't want to give up drinking coffee just to watch Disney movies. I want to drink my coffee and watch my movies like I did last month before Disney decided they needed to make more money.

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

#343

Post by int_19h »

duckingtest wrote: post #230
komali2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why all these people behind these decisions don't just look at Gabe Newell and his simple statement - "Piracy is a service problem." Steam is a rampant success. You'd think people would catch on. Have the content, make it easy to access, make it easy to pay, and people will give you money hand over fist.

That's only partly true. There are countries where average wage is $300/month. They are NOT going to buy legal software and media for $40/thing no matter how easy it is.

In general, this is usually solved by pricing things differently in different markets.

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

#344

Post by freehunter »

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.

Define "children". Do 10 year olds like Pirate of the Caribbean? Yes. Do 12 year olds like Hook? Also yes.

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

#345

Post by int_19h »

ehsankia wrote: post #324
bendauphinee wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's about paying that high a cost, I think it's about having to chase it all over the place. I'd pay double or maybe triple for Netflix, as long as it meant I could get most or all of the streaming content I wanted in one place. This is one reason why Steam is so popular.

So then your issue isn't the cost, and if someone came with an app that would "merge" all service into a single app where you can stream for all of them from a single place, you'd be happy? I don't think that's what others are complaining about though. Price was definitely the issue of the top commenter as they mention 10$/month and 30$/year. But it makes no sense because back in the cable days, people paid 50-100$ i…

The issue is that it's still a damn bundle. Except now it's several.

What I want is to pay for access to the things that I want, which happen to be spread across more and more bundles the way things are going.

What they want is for me to only consume things from their bundle, to ensure that I'm a permanent customer.

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

#346

Post by heygrady »

aidenn0 wrote: post #123
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…

If all major studios pull their content from Netflix, then it will not have the large library size anymore. Also Disney is currently in a strong position for this right now. They released ~10 movies in 2016 and had the 4 highest grossing films of 2016. This, of course, assumes that Marvel and Lucasfilm properties are put on the Disney streaming service (I would expect that Touchstone label will not be included in thi…

> The only competition with the streaming service would be piracy.

Piracy is the only thing that will lead to a consumer friendly streaming option. If it weren't for music piracy, a service like Spotify might not exist. For video, Bit Torrent was popular for years.

Now people are flocking to things like Kodi, which can be installed on a Firestick [3] and, with add-ons, can stream anything for free [1]. In order to fight piracy, the studios will need to make it more convenient for consumers to pay [2].

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/liz-bales/online-piracy-netf...

[3] https://kodifiretvstick.com/best-kodi-addons/

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

#347

Post by dasil003 »

marssaxman wrote: post #122
codazoda wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is this "a la carte"? I don't care about channels; I'd be willing to pay a couple bucks to watch some specific movie or TV show, but "you have to sign up for a monthly subscription to some corporation's arbitrary bundle of media offerings in order to get access to the one or two things you actually want to see" is pretty much the opposite of "a la carte TV".

It's a la carte because for decades you had to buy bundles of schlock from your cable company to get the one thing you wanted (typically ESPN).

Presumably you want finer-grained a la carte, like individual shows and movies. You can get that today via iTunes but it is insanely expensive, and it doesn't really make economic sense because not enough consumers watch little enough TV for that to make sense, therefore the price remains high and companies offering it are not doing well.

Right now the market forces are pushing everyone to try to be either Netflix (streaming service become producer) or HBO (producer becoming streaming service). As the technologies commoditize this trend will continue, and consumers will just have to deal with the abominable UX that this balkanization of services creates. It'd be nice if someone could wrap a nice UX around this, whether it be a la carte or whatever, but I don't see that market forces would allow that, and least not until the balkanization gets a lot worse and rights holders get an incentive to play nice with aggregators.

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

#348

Post by mulmen »

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…

That only holds if the content providers decide to continue providing Netflix with an attractive catalog. Netflix is the streaming equivalent of Comcast, it's not an attractive model to me. I would much rather I subscribed to the content separately from the display of that content. My Fire TV or Apple TV or whatever device should just show any content that I subscribe to (with all the benefits of a unified library) and I will pay the creators directly for access.

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

#349

Post by freehunter »

majormajor wrote: post #193
Buttons840 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wanting to build a PC to host my home media, and I wonder if there would be a market for a device like this: I'd like to have a small computer where I can insert a DVD and press one button and walk away (and latter remove the disk), and then the movie is available to stream from my small media computer to my home network. It could look up the right metadata online, or you might pay a very small amount for a…

You could also just buy* seasons on Amazon/iTunes/Google/whatever of only the shows you want and stream them to the store app on whatever devices you have. If you're only interested in a few shows a year than that gets you potentially price-competitive with Netflix+whatever else, and you don't have to worry about when Netflix loses the rights. * the common complaint here is DRM, long-term-ownership compared to DVD, b…

My problem is where to buy them to ensure 1) that I can access them for a long time, and 2) that I can access them on any device I need to. If the iPhone starts sucking and I switch to Android, can I watch my iTunes purchases there or did I just lose all that money? Can I shop the Google Play video store and stream on my iPad? Will Microsoft pull another PlaysForSure and invalidate all of my purchases at some random point?

Right now I'm buying from Amazon because even though they have the worst UI, they're the most vendor-neutral.

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

#350

Post by kuschku »

true_religion wrote: post #196
notatoad wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix already doesn't have that big of a library, and it's been steadily shrinking. But if it comes down to it, i'm willing to pay for $10/mo to netflix purely for their original content. I'd also pay for HBO Now if they would let me (I'm in canada). I don't think there's any other company putting out enough quality first-party content that i'd be willing to pay a monthly fee for their service. maybe a couple bucks…

In 2004, my cable budget was $160/mo in a bundle. Now it is $100/mo for a half-gigabit internet connection. I'd have to sign up for 6 different services in order to add up to my previous budget. So far... its' not come to that point, but if it does I'll be happy to cut out some services. After all do I really need Netflix? I don't watch if for months at a time, and only keep it out of laziness. I'll happily cut it an…

In 2017, I paid for 100/40 VDSL 30€/month and for all TV channels I could ever need 5€/month (Satellite dish and HD+ decoder card).

I'm currently paying 2€/month for Amazon Prime for Students, and I'm not willing to pay more than 10€/month overall for access to streaming platforms (as long as I'm a student, after that maybe 20-30€ overall). That simple. In my family we have Amazon Prime and Netflix, if stuff isn't on there it gets pirated, no discussion.

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