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Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

thewaltdisneycompany.com

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

#71

Post by neogodless »

“This acquisition and the launch of our direct-to-consumer services mark an entirely new growth strategy for the Company, one that takes advantage of the incredible opportunity that changing technology provides us to leverage the strength of our great brands.”

Any guess who the audience is? Ah yes - shareholders. "We can make money hand over fist by taking our content away from Netflix users, and giving them the choice to pay us on our service, or do without content."

Who wins? Only shareholders. Certainly not consumers.

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

#72

Post by kbutler »

ianai wrote: post #67
rwc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the concept behind the "TV" app on Apple TV/iOS.

Also Roku.

Except every channel on Roku is a different app with a different experience - Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, ... all provide similar functionality, bit with differences in UI.

Just give me a best-of-breed UI that lets me watch all the things.

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

#73

Post by ashark »

revelation wrote: post #13

Wow it's 2017 and they still haven't understood this. Nobody will pay for a Disney service, a HBO service, a Netflix Originals service, an Amazon Originals service, .. Not because people can't afford it, Americans happily paid $120 for cable, but simply because the balkanization throws convenience out of the window and nobody wants to deal with that .

My thoughts on best strategies given this ongoing fragmentation:

1) Subscribe to only one or two services at a time. Binge the stuff you missed while you weren't subscribed, then drop it and switch. Works if you don't care about discussing stuff with people as it airs. Less good if many of the services penalize short-term subscriptions.

2) Abandon digital-delivery TV/Movies. Use the friggin' library, and spend what you would have on streaming buying discs instead. Downside: storing stuff sucks, library less convenient than streaming but honestly we're talking about giant wasteful time sinks to begin with so oh well.

3) Just pirate. If there's stuff not commercially available that you want you'll be doing this anyway, and it's barely more effort/expense to maintain the hard drives, backups, and playback infra for a handful of your shows/movies than it is to do so for all your shows/movies.

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

#74

Post by AnotXOR »

timfrietas wrote: post #26
revelation wrote: post #13

Wow it's 2017 and they still haven't understood this. Nobody will pay for a Disney service, a HBO service, a Netflix Originals service, an Amazon Originals service, .. Not because people can't afford it, Americans happily paid $120 for cable, but simply because the balkanization throws convenience out of the window and nobody wants to deal with that .

People said the same thing about HBO and Hulu and Amazon. Add Netflix and ESPN/Disney and we are still talking less than the average cable bill. Addendum: I think you updated your comment as I replied with the note on balkanization, but subscriptions are "set it and forget it"--it's why paper magazines still exist.

There are so many subscription providers now on Amazon it's ridiculous, although it seems we're moving much closer to true ala carte options than with traditional cable.

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

#75

Post by bradly »

fullshark wrote: post #46
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…

I would pay $20 a month if it had every disney movie ever, and every new release after a certain time period. I imagine there are a lot of parents that would as well.

Yes. I think a lot of people commenting here are mid-20s adults without children who devour Disney content. I'd gladly pay a monthly subscription for access to all Disney content. Currently Netflix is already missing so many Disney titles that you already need to use something besides Netflix to watch Disney content, so this isn't actually adding a new service for core Disney viewers.

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

#76

Post by kbutler »

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.

Or pay for a channel for a month or two, then drop it.

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

#77

Post by faragon »

Fej wrote: post #31
faragon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Prime Video is even cheaper. If Amazon manages to increase content while leveraging costs because of their scale and vertical integration, it could be huge.

Prime Video is a value-add to get people to sign up for Prime and spend money at their shop.

... and for many people a reason for not paying for Netflix.

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

#78

Post by norea-armozel »

ashark wrote: post #73
revelation wrote: post #13

Wow it's 2017 and they still haven't understood this. Nobody will pay for a Disney service, a HBO service, a Netflix Originals service, an Amazon Originals service, .. Not because people can't afford it, Americans happily paid $120 for cable, but simply because the balkanization throws convenience out of the window and nobody wants to deal with that .

My thoughts on best strategies given this ongoing fragmentation: 1) Subscribe to only one or two services at a time. Binge the stuff you missed while you weren't subscribed, then drop it and switch. Works if you don't care about discussing stuff with people as it airs. Less good if many of the services penalize short-term subscriptions. 2) Abandon digital-delivery TV/Movies. Use the friggin' library, and spend what y…

I wonder how long until the big media companies start squeezing libraries for more pennies than they already lack.

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

#79

Post by dublinben »

kbutler wrote: post #72
ianai wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Roku.

Except every channel on Roku is a different app with a different experience - Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, ... all provide similar functionality, bit with differences in UI. Just give me a best-of-breed UI that lets me watch all the things.

It's called fully-loaded Kodi.

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

#80

Post by px1999 »

Piracy shifted power towards consumers. If content creators were going to see any money, they needed to offer consumer-friendly services that were better than piracy. The orgs that did this (Steam, Spotify, Netflix) dominated their markets.

As the web becomes more controlled, regulated and tracked, this power shifts back to the hands of the content creators. If there's no (legal or illegal) alternative people will go back to paying $120/mo for tv+movies. Mass media is how people bond, relate to others and fit in; and that's worth a lot. The studios know how valuable the culture they generate is, but over the past few years have been unable to successfully control their consumers.

I think that we'll see more studios shifting over to their own platforms. We'll also probably start to see renewed anti-piracy enforcement.

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