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

651–660 of 788 posts

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

#651

Post by lostcolony »

Morgawr wrote: post #597
onion2k wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...a solution that has long been found in the music business. Perhaps you're fortunate that everything you want to listen to is on your preferred music streaming service, but what they offer is far from everything in the music industry's catalogue. Ask any classical music fan what they think of streaming services and you'll hear a tirade against the woeful offerings that streaming services make available.

This is why I love Google Play Music, you can basically upload any kind of personally-acquired (legally or not) music to the service and it will seamlessly and transparently integrate with the platform itself and let you stream them wherever and whenever like any other. They are stricter than Spotify with regional licenses unfortunately. I listen to a lot of Japanese artists that are on Spotify but not on GPM in Euro…

I use Google Play Books for exactly this same reason. Yeah, I can buy books from anyone, but there are plenty of things that are either out of copyright that I want to read (so, Project Gutenberg), or I own a physical copy and want digital (and don't want to pay again for simply the format change), or similar, and having everything in one place easily makes it so Google Play Books is the only place I will buy DRMed ebooks.

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

#652

Post by greedo »

bredren wrote: post #461
aidenn0 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content is hits+depth. You do the 30 day trial to watch star wars, then stay on because you find other stuff you like. Unless you're going to watch a different star wars movie every week[1], you can just rent or buy the star wars movies for cheap. 1: By 2019 there should be about a dozen feature-length star wars movies, counting the 3 2-hour television specials, so you're right that just star wars movies is not that…

Truly, I think you're underestimating what people will pay for to get exclusive content in their core interest. Star Wars film releases are rapidly becoming an annual, family tradition for movie goers. When you can drip out production updates and use electronic marketing channels to hype them or include fan AMA type stuff, there is big potential here to keep people around. But to your point, if you take Star Wars out…

Don't forget Pixar.

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

#653

Post by zo1 »

williamdclt wrote: post #589
rhaps0dy wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a solution to (1) you can use youtube-dl https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ It supports downloading only the audio.

I believe it downloads the whole video, then extract the sound. At least you're downloading only once, but one of the points of streaming music is not keeping the music on your disk at all. Plus, it's pretty illegal if I'm not mistaken! Plus, sound quality on youtube isn't very good

From what I understand, the audio and video are simply different streams that you can selectively download from the youtube servers. So it is entirely possible to only download the audio, I've done it many times with youtube-dl.

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

#654

Post by darkstar999 »

traviswingo wrote: post #321

I'm starting to get sick of everyone coming out with their own streaming service. I cancelled my $200/month cable because I could pay $10/month for Netflix. I now pay for Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, and Hulu...it's starting to add up again. At this rate we're going to be right back where we started. Just consolidate already and get over it. Sheesh.

...consolidate to a $200/mo service? You got exactly what you wished for when you cut the cord.

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

#655

Post by lostcolony »

coldtea wrote: post #615
tiku wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a 10 cents per movie pricing strategy would generate millions of dollars for older movies. I just don't get why they don't just try this strategy..

There was this idea that if you had all movies available the long tail (obscure, old etc movies) would still be watched by at least some people, but in practice most people just stick to what's new/mainstream/known, so that it's not worth the extra hassle to maintain a long tail library. Tons of tracks on online music stores for example are never streamed or only a handful of times. (Of course the limited stuff e.g.…

But even if so, can those few not sufficiently monetize things to warrant the storage and delivery costs? I mean, yeah, old movies once had their original film melted down, but for the past 80 years they've at least thrown it into a vault or similar. Physical storage is orders of magnitudes more expensive than digital; even just dropping these things into an S3 bucket and serving them as needed for .10 cents would cost less than what they used to do, -and- would allow them to actually make money from it (albeit very little).

If you don't want -any- of that, then why not release it for free and allow things like the internet archive to store it and deliver it for you? It's worth the money to store it -in case- you want to do something with it, but not worth the money to actually do something with it, even though that costs no more and has a return on investment?

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

#656

Post by lostcolony »

Mindwipe wrote: post #554
SN76477 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why cant I watch old TV shows? 3's company? Facts of Life? The Peoples Court? It doesnt make much sense to me.

Because there aren't enough people like you who would to pay for it to cover the costs of even a lawyer reviewing the contracts to see who owns the rights (and the answer will be not a single party, actors/music/artwork etc rights involved in all will be incredibly complex), never mind actually pay anyone involved. There are lots of things I would like someone to make at a reasonable price too (roll on my line of all…

If that's the case that stuff needs to enter the public domain.

We need better legislation around orphaned works; those whose ownership is too complex to resolve should be treated the same as those whose ownership is completely lost. In both cases, ownership can't be reasonably determined.

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

#657

Post by lostcolony »

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 they're smart they'll include their TV channel content. Obviously the Disney brands, but also ESPN. That would put them in a VERY strong position.

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

#658

Post by dkrich »

laumars wrote: post #506
dkrich wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that Disney is extremely savvy and knows how to produce content that sells with a nearly 100% success rate. They are simply a marketing and merchandising machine. They use the vault the way diamond miners do- to restrict supply of extremely coveted goods so that they can charge premium prices for them. It's good business and it keeps things that are decades old in constant demand so they can charge higher…

Because Disney aren't just competing with Netflix and co; they're also competing with usenet services, torrents, Kodi streams and other illegal services. And because Disney keep fucking their own consumers about it's left a void where the illegal services have not only been able to raise the bar in terms of user experience, but also in terms of available content and video quality. In any other industry market forces…

So the only alternative to paying for something you don't own is to steal it and pretend that you're somehow justified because you don't agree with the way the law is written?

In any other industry market forces would be in effect forcing business to either compete or go under.

Could you expound on this a bit? Disney owns the rights to distribute the products that it has spent billions of dollars to create and you take issue with that? What is the alternative- if you write a best-selling novel, or create a film or a song that people want, the government should force you to distribute it in such a way that guarantees that anybody who wants it can have it? We're talking about movies, not health care. I don't really see how you can make a cogent case that you have a right to access the content on your terms.

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

#659

Post by graphitezepp »

boyce wrote: post #617
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yes, these are all true statements and you should use correct descriptions of you want to be understood. - calling pirates thieves is a leap that will undermine your argument by assuming harm that's not shown - have any serious discussion about Frankenstein's morality while confusing him with his monster and no one will understand you - I write this from a Linux device, but because it is an Android/Linux device is…

What do you think my side is and of what argument It's a shorthand which I'm sure everyone else understood. Sorry if you were confused.

Speaking implicitly doesn't do well these days, it seems.
Post reply on HN