10 ms·

Netflix is not the future of TV

39 points by dmarlow 7y ago

tiernano 7y ago
At the price of both of these services, am I the only one thinking "why not both"? It a LOT cheaper for both than standard cable or satellite (here in Europe anyway) and both would have stuff the other does not. Title sounds very click-baity to me...
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Also, I feel like in the (actual) Netflix originals, they also put a lot more effort into it. If you compare CW's 'Arrow' fight scenes vs something like Daredevil or Punisher. Arrow's fight scenes are boring. But Disney is also very PG so I don't expect Disney to have the same level of Marvel TV series on their service. So for me, I would subscribe to both. But I have no reason to subscribe to Hulu (and its TERRIBLE interface), HBO, or any of the other services available.
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    Disney+ will include Hulu apparently which means all the adult shows and movies, along with kid specific context. HBO is being gutted by AT&T. I enjoyed some Netflix originals but they really cut back on the shows I liked and had virtually no movies of note. Now they'll have less. If you watch primarily television Netflix might be a good option. If you want movies Disney is probably going to be the way to go. Unfortunately Disney should be broken up as a monopoly, but that would never happen nowadays.
- IloveHN84 7y ago
  Both is useless and expensive (over 240€/year for both).
  - askafriend 7y ago
    For a household of 4, that's really cheap for a year of entertainment!
  - tiernano 7y ago
    I'm paying 70+ per month to sky alone. 240 a year is peanuts!
    - 72deluxe 7y ago
      Out of interest, did you not consider this expensive when you started paying that amount? I used to work with people who thought it was a "good deal" to be paying £110 a month to Sky for their phone, broadband and TV. I couldn't work out why. It's a lot of money. Mind you, they might have been watching TV all day long - nothing better to do, I suppose.
      - Jaruzel 7y ago
        For a lot of long term Sky subscribers (myself included) that £70 per month is a result of many years of small price hikes. It's easy to say 'just ditch Sky', but when the hard disk inside your sky receiver is full of downloaded/recorded content that isn't available for free anywhere else (so you'd have to pay for it again), it's hard to actually break away from the service. For those that aren't aware, the content that is stored on your Sky receiver is encrypted to the boxes serial number AND your viewing card. According to Sky, it's impossible to copy the content to another box (even as part of a Sky Q upgrade), let alone extract it for viewing on another platform. Sky use this tactic to lock the customers in.
        mprev 7y ago
        Ring Sky, tell them you're leaving. They'll give you an offer. If you don't like it, go through with leaving. They'll make you serve a 30 day notice period. Before that ends you'll get a better offer. If you don't like that offer, actually leave. They'll send you an even better offer. There's no need to pay full price for Sky once you're out of your first year's contract.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  If only one of the streaming giants would sign some kind of deal with some of the TV networks (or some of the distributors) so that I could get my fix of news and sports from them. If they had e.g. the big BBC/CNN news casts live I'd happily pay Netflix a lot extra for that.
  - boveg 7y ago
    $50/month is a lot extra, but if you are willing to pay it, YouTube TV (https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/) offers exactly what you are asking. Also, its youtube, which means the streaming quality is superb.
- bjt 7y ago
  Exactly my thought.
- tastroder 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, what do you mean with "cheaper than satellite"? Initial costs of the dish and receiver aside that's free around here.
  - denvrede 7y ago
    Could you define "around here"? I'm from Germany and for premium satellite content (Sky) you pay 25-30 euros upwards for the movie and entertainment (shows and documentaries) packages.
    - tastroder 7y ago
      Oh, Germany as well. Honestly didn't realize these premium satellite things are still widely used over purely IP based content delivery options so they slipped my mind there.
  - tiernano 7y ago
    Ireland, non free satellite, sky: €72 per month for the pack I'm on.
burlesona 7y ago
Seems like crazy click-bait to me. Yes, the competition in streaming is heating up, but in reality most people are likely to pick and choose a few services, not just one. Cable packages have been running $50+ per month for a while now, with millions of customers. Cord-cutting down to Netflix + Prime + Disney is still cheaper, and it’s getting closer to the system I think most people wanted all along, which was the ability to pick and choose your own bundle of just the channels you want. What has really changed is linear TV (aka traditional channels) is going away in favor of on-demand. People care about live sports, and to some extent live news. Other than that, on-demand is better. So instead of the future being what we might have imagined 10 years ago, building a bundle of just the channels you want, instead will be building a bundle of just the distributors you want — ie. Disney originals vs Netflix vs Prime etc. I expect we will see more and more content signing exclusive deals with these aggregators as a result, and we probably also see a few more big brands throw their hat in the ring.
- TAForObvReasons 7y ago
  The problem as articulated in the original article is that Disney's service is an existential threat to Netflix both because Disney will offer currently-unavailable content and because the Disney IPs are slated to be removed from Netflix. Netflix's problem is best captured in this sentence: > Netflix users are spending more time streaming “The Office” than any other show on the streaming platform. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/the-office-netflix-most-streamed-series-friends-1202127682/ https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/the-office-netflix-most-st... Would a Disney streaming service cause people to switch or pay for both? That remains unclear, but I'd bet on a future of subscription fatigue where people pay for one video streaming service.
  - ymolodtsov 7y ago
    Disney is just $7. It seems reasonable that cost-conscious people would choose only it, while others can still pay for it on top of their existing Netflix subscription.
    - Phillipharryt 7y ago
alanfranz 7y ago
What if consumers get bored by such "exclusive content" deals, where they need 7 subscriptions to watch the 7 things they like, and they go back to DVDs and bittorrent?
- sdwisely 7y ago
  I feel like that's starting to happen in Australia, we got streaming services a decade after most other places so it's not as ingrained and piracy is starting to look like a superior service again.
- elicash 7y ago
  There's zero commitment to these apps. Just choose one for a couple months and watch everything new in the library and rewatch some old stuff you missed or want to watch again, then cancel it and go on to the next subscription for another two months or so. I don't understand why people think it's a problem to need 6 different subscriptions -- there's literally no reason to have all 6 at the EXACT SAME MOMENT.
  - dominicr 7y ago
    People are forgetful & passive, so they tend to subscribe and forget. There are lots of people paying for things they don't need or could save money by switching subscriptions on & off as needed. This is one of the reasons why the subscription model is so popular with companies, not consumers.
    - lsc 7y ago
      relevant experience: So I've started to subscribe/unsubscribe to channels through prime. It's really easy to subscribe/unsub. I unsubscribed from HBO when game of thrones finished. But... lots of things? lots of things unsubscribing is horribly painful. A lot of things you have to call someone, listen to the sales pitch, look up a bunch of customer data you might not have anymore, and then listen to another sales pitch and then cancel. I have started dealing with this by just canceling the credit card. (I've got one of those cards that lets me generate throw away numbers, so I don't have to cancel everything) way easier. So, uh, my guess? my guess is that the 'subscribe to movie through amazon' is a lot less sticky than 'subscribe to channel through cable' just 'cause it's three clicks. And then another three clicks if you want to re-subscribe.
js2 7y ago
There is no way Disney+ is going to hand out the entire Disney catalog including putting movies on streaming the same day as theater release for $7/mo. This is either a teaser rate or it doesn’t buy you everything. And the theaters will freak out if they have to compete with same day streaming release.
- dkrich 7y ago
  Don’t think same day streaming release is a remote possibility because Disney would be canabalizing it’s theater revenue. I do think it’s likely the only place you will be able to watch it after it leaves the theater.
kristianp 7y ago
Sounds like Netflix needs to produce Blockbuster films, or buy Universal Corp(the maker of Jurassic World, the only non-disney top film of the last 5 years). Universal's market cap is only 1.28B, about 10% of the amount Netflix spent on content last year.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Where did you get that number from? Universal is owned by Comcast.
  - kristianp 7y ago
    I looked up Universal corp. Whoops, it seems Universal Corp isn't in the movie business : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Corporation
Benjamin_Dobell 7y ago
The author seems to be unaware Netflix started preparing for this years ago[1]: > the streaming-video giant put out nearly 90,000 minutes—close to 1,500 hours—of original series, movies, and other productions this year. Maybe there is some concern about the quality of the content... > In 2018, Netflix also became the first network in 17 years to dethrone HBO in Emmy nominations, and matched the premium-TV network in wins. Netflix isn't going anywhere. [1] https://qz.com/1505030/keeping-up-with-netflix-originals-is-basically-a-part-time-job-now/ https://qz.com/1505030/keeping-up-with-netflix-originals-is-...
- stesch 7y ago
  Most Netflix productions aren't really for me. After many disappointments I now see Netflix originals as something to avoid.
  - philliphaydon 7y ago
    Complete opposite for me. I prefer Netflix originals to most mainstream channel shows.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Everyone knows they prepared for it. But they also getting in tons of debt to create content with only one stream of income - subscriptions. Disney+ and Hulu are just an additional income stream for Disney. They have so many ways to make money off of content and don’t need to get in debt to do it. - broadcast TV - cable TV - physical sells of media -National/international theatric releases. - Rental/purchase video on demand Sure Disney+ may “lose money” for the first five years, but how much of that “loss” is paying other units of Disney for content?
  - Benjamin_Dobell 7y ago
    > with only one stream of income - subscriptions That's not accurate. Netflix can and do license their Netflix Originals just the same as any other production studio. They just don't do so as frequently as streaming is a superior delivery platform (from their perspective) in terms of user lock-in & profitability (no middle men). Those latter two reasons are a strong driving force for why Disney (and prior to that Fox) have been moving into the space. > getting in tons of debt Do you have a source for this being a concern? Everything I've ever read indicates their profits are soaring e.g. - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross... - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-is-growing-even-faster-and-streaming-to-record-profit-totals-2018-04-16 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-is-growing-even-fa... Granted, I can see there are articles regarding them being in debt: - https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/is-netflix-in-debt-what-that-20-billion-really-means/news-story/1e5878306f458237230f62eea5d4b94b https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/is-netflix-in-debt-... However, even that article ends with: > SO IS NETFLIX’S DEBT EVEN THAT BIG OF A DEAL? > Nope! Every company has debt. Apple boasts some $US100 billion in debt, Disney around $50 billion, and Amazon about $8 billion.
treelovinhippie 7y ago
Torrents. Either the dumb rentier platform wars end in an open streaming protocol standard, or we just stick with piracy. Capitalism is absurdly inefficient.
- rntksi 7y ago
  Exactly my thoughts as well. This is similar to Steam vs other platforms.
- realityking 7y ago
  Assuming we had an open streaming protocol standard and standard clients, how would that solve the issue of competing streaming services all wanting their own monthly fee and offering different content? No one cares about the protocol and the client - people want their content.
  - treelovinhippie 7y ago
    The idea is to decouple the content from the platform. So one way you could do it is have the content deployed to an open distributed file storage and streaming protocol (IPFS or Holochain perhaps, blockchain will never scale). Content creators upload it to this network and the content becomes a standalone entity. Platforms then have full open access to the content. The platforms compete on the UX/UI and recommendation algorithm layers. Every platform will have access to all content. But if Netflix provides the best viewing experience then people will pay a monthly fee to use it. Each time the content is streamed, the user (or platform) pays a microfee per minute watched which goes directly back to the content creator. Omitting quite a few technical details but you get the gist.
- ap3 7y ago
  6.99 ? Why even torrent?
  - treelovinhippie 7y ago
    Because it's not $6.99. It's $6.99 multiplied by every platform silo in which the content you want to view is held captive.
xrd 7y ago
I feel exactly the opposite about signing up for Disney. I will not. The reason is stated in Fast Food Nation, paraphrased as: "Disney was the first company to direct market to children." They are still the company I most fear. As an example, I hate going to the super market with my kids. We don't watch a ton of Disney movies, but even so, they are bombarded with Frozen shit six years after that movie came out. There are all kinds of things to buy marketed with Frozen that my kids would have begged for, IF we had been watching Frozen incessantly, if we had Disney+. I will NOT be signing up for this. I would much rather watch the shows on Netflix that I know will never have plastic junky replicas occupying on shelf space in the supermarket. Frozen was an amazing story, and Disney has fantastic writers, directors, and animators, but I don't want them hypnotizing my kids and then trying to sell them shit for years. I'm probably in the minority in that I have never seen one of the Avengers movies, and could care less about those blockbusters the author listed. But, I really do think we are entering a new phase in media consumption where I as a parent can choose my own streaming needs (HBO, for example, with little that my kids watch) AND I can find the right combination for my kids (Netflix and YouTube) that fits my need to avoid marketing to my children. I'm sure someone in those channels will find a way to sell crap to my kids, but it'll take some time. I think there will still be people who want to watch the Avengers sixteen times on their five different screen sizes, and will sign up for Disney+. But, it might not be as many parents as they would hope for, and I have alternatives and won't be one of them.
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  I have two girls. Netflix seems to have the most girl-positive shows that aren’t cheesy or cheap. I generally have a pretty negative view of Disney and wouldn’t sign up for it for the same reasons as you.
  - jkmcf 7y ago
    I agree. My daughter loves Spirit. OTOH, she also loves Disney's Elena of Avalor, which I think is exceptionally well done. The Disney stuff targeted at older kids seems pretty horrible to me.
xbmcuser 7y ago
Netflix has been targeting niche areas for the last few years. With most of the larger markets now having local shows in their own language or foreign shows with subs that have been appreciated a lot. I personally have watched French, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Brazil content and probably use it more for these language shows than I do for English shows. The advances in machine translation text to audio and video morphing makes me wonder if we 5-10 years down the line we will get content modified automatically so that translated dialog audio matches morphed video lip movement.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  Ugh, that sounds horrible. Instead of getting to enjoy regional differences and different languages (subtitled if desired), every show would end up the same for your locale, down to the local brands shown as product placements. And why stop there? The actor drinks soda from a green can, and if you watch the show now it will mostly be a can of Pepsi cola. But watch the show between January and April 2020 from Canada, and you will see the new maple syrup flavoured Dr Pepper instead.
  - Jaruzel 7y ago
    This has already been happening for years: https://www.engadget.com/2014/10/22/technology-changed-product-placement/ https://www.engadget.com/2014/10/22/technology-changed-produ...
  - xbmcuser 7y ago
    I didn't say I wanted it to happen. I personally got into movies as 10-11 year old watching Jackie Chan and other Asian kungfu movies with subs. So watching movies with subs is natural for me for many others it is not so and trying to read subs while watching might not be fun. As long as I have the choice to watch in the original language with subs I really don't care.
londons_explore 7y ago
I don't believe Disney has the technical skill to make a decent cross platform streaming app work right away. There will be months of buffering and bugs, and that will mean they won't get many customers. After 6 months of that, the IP will be forgotten by regular punters. If content isn't watched and talked about in schools/offices/at home/in memes, people forget fast. Disney's whole catalogue will get devalued.
- YokoZar 7y ago
  Didn't they buy a company with an already working platform?
- iambateman 7y ago
  ESPN seems to work pretty well ;)
- scarface74 7y ago
  Disney owns BAMTech the same company that rescued HBO’s streaming service and that’s used by MLB@Bat. They also have a controlling interest in Hulu.
  - basch 7y ago
    Right? They literally went out and bought one of the best streaming tech companies, years ago, to prepare for this. People are acting like Disney is just starting this project today.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Dynamicd 7y ago
>Disney’s ownership of iconic franchises like Star Wars gives it something no money can buy. Didn't Disney buy Star Wars?
- mruniverse 7y ago
  No money can buy anymore... unless of course they license or sell it outright.
dkrich 7y ago
What’s interesting to me about this debate is that everyone seems to view it as a Disney is coming for Netflix story and not the other way around. But what prevents Netflix from creating its own animation studio and producing its own blockbuster films and distributing them in theaters? What about licensing merchandise from its movies or television shows? It’s not all that clear to me that consumers will pay a monthly fee to stream movies they’ve already seen. In any case Netflix is so different than what Disney announced with Disney + that the case put forth in the article seems very simplistic and lazy.
- mprev 7y ago
  That sounds a bit like a "why does company X need 4,000 staff, I could build it in a weekend" type of question. Netflix has produced some really great TV (and quite a bit that's not so great), so they have track record here. But, whatever else you think of the company, Disney has decades of institutional experience in creating and monetising child-targeted animation. Growing the organisation that can do that isn't trivial. You can make great TV by outsourcing to production companies who then deliver so many hours of content. I suspect it's much more complex to build an organisation that turns IP into multiple streams of recurring revenue, in the way that Disney does.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Netflix is already getting in enough debt trying to keep up with competitors with the only income being subscription revenue. How much debt do you think they can take on? Besides “creating blockbusters” isn’t easy. See all of the other studios who are trying to create “shared universes”.
  - dkrich 7y ago
    Because capital is cheap right now so you have lots of investors around the world with cash they are looking to get return on willing to lend it at relatively low rates. Netflix is able to borrow at low rates while ratcheting up the subscription price and adding millions of new paying customers every quarter which is how they are fueling hypergrowth. The idea that they should be cutting spending is completely antithetical to their long-term strategy. There is going to be a critical mass, I don't know where it is but I suspect its not far off, where enough subs around the world are paying a high enough rate while the need to produce new shows will be capped to keep people on the platform. Then you have a wheel where enormous amounts of cash is coming in every month and a fixed amount of content is being output. That's the path to profitability. Then if the sub base and price point continues to rise, they have enough cash to do other things like build theaters or produce blockbuster films. And that's not even counting if they come up with additional ways to generate revenue such as licensing.
senthilnayagam 7y ago
in India sports too is moving to streaming, hotstar gave a full page add today bragging 18.6 million viewers simultaneously watched IPL cricket finals. if Disney was this serious they should have launched their services when Netflix announced original productions.
golergka 7y ago
> In a world where you can watch practically anything whenever you want, dominance in distribution is very fragile. That sounds exactly like the arguments against Uber to me: that these companies indeed have changed our day-to-day lives, but their innovations are in no way exclusive and users will easily switch between providers, quickly reacting to changes in quality of service (ride cost for Uber and Office and Friends being on Netflix).
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
I, too, look forward to the day that 100% of our entertainment is controlled by this American mega-corporation.
- berbec 7y ago
  You mean today and every day for the last X years?
azdacha 7y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that Netflix is not the new TV. However I clearly see them in a position alike to a big TV channel. Disney would just be another player as it's content would simply be different. Still, I hope Netflix keeps Disney off their ground as I would prefer them competing against one another rather than seeing it replaced or bought up. Netflix has been doing grandiose work be it in their shows or even their open-source work.
Jaruzel 7y ago
Personally I don't see the problem with having my content on physical media, such as Blu-Ray or UHD discs. Once I've bought it, it's mine, and no-one can take it away from me. I'll still be watching my favourite movies over and over again for years to come for a one time cost, and I don't have to worry about the streaming provider removing it from their platform. I know I'm in a minority though, and at some point in the next decade, streaming services will be the ONLY place content is released, and the concept of owning physical media will be considered archaic.
fmajid 7y ago
Netflix is not the future of TV. It's the present.
Phillipharryt 7y ago
There's a saying in investing, "Don't bet against the mouse". And to anyone doubting Disney being able to take over streaming, I challenge you to bet against him.
petraeus 7y ago
Not many people are going to subscribe to a service to watch the same movies over and over again. DIS+ is dead int he water unless it somehow creates exclusive novel new content, which it wont just for its service, ergo DOA
- basch 7y ago
  all the new Marvel and Star Wars shows alone...
- tmottabr 7y ago
  you clearly do not have kids.. My 5 year old boy will watch the same film again and again for days until he get bored and move to watching the next same movie for days, rinse and repeat. my brother is 29 now but did the same thing when he was at that age, i still know most lines from lion king by hearth because of that. i have a friend that watch braveheart at least once a year. i myself, there are many movies that i would rewatch every once in a while, many from disney. so it is not even a new or uncommon behavior that people watch the same movies again and again. also, disney already announced several series just for this service from marvel (wanda and vision, winter soldier and falcon, loki) and star wars (mandalorian, a new clone war season), so yes they will have exclusive novel new content made just for it in there. also, once it goes live all new movies from disney, marvel and star wars will only be available there. so it is definitely not dead in the water.
ap3 7y ago
$6.99 ? I’ll sign up for both

39 points by dmarlow 7y ago

At the price of both of these services, am I the only one thinking "why not both"? It a LOT cheaper for both than standard cable or satellite (here in Europe anyway) and both would have stuff the other does not. Title sounds very click-baity to me...

philliphaydon 7y ago
My thoughts exactly. Also, I feel like in the (actual) Netflix originals, they also put a lot more effort into it. If you compare CW's 'Arrow' fight scenes vs something like Daredevil or Punisher. Arrow's fight scenes are boring. But Disney is also very PG so I don't expect Disney to have the same level of Marvel TV series on their service. So for me, I would subscribe to both. But I have no reason to subscribe to Hulu (and its TERRIBLE interface), HBO, or any of the other services available.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  Disney+ will include Hulu apparently which means all the adult shows and movies, along with kid specific context. HBO is being gutted by AT&T. I enjoyed some Netflix originals but they really cut back on the shows I liked and had virtually no movies of note. Now they'll have less. If you watch primarily television Netflix might be a good option. If you want movies Disney is probably going to be the way to go. Unfortunately Disney should be broken up as a monopoly, but that would never happen nowadays.
IloveHN84 7y ago
Both is useless and expensive (over 240€/year for both).
- askafriend 7y ago
  For a household of 4, that's really cheap for a year of entertainment!
- tiernano 7y ago
  I'm paying 70+ per month to sky alone. 240 a year is peanuts!
  - 72deluxe 7y ago
    Out of interest, did you not consider this expensive when you started paying that amount? I used to work with people who thought it was a "good deal" to be paying £110 a month to Sky for their phone, broadband and TV. I couldn't work out why. It's a lot of money. Mind you, they might have been watching TV all day long - nothing better to do, I suppose.
    - Jaruzel 7y ago
      For a lot of long term Sky subscribers (myself included) that £70 per month is a result of many years of small price hikes. It's easy to say 'just ditch Sky', but when the hard disk inside your sky receiver is full of downloaded/recorded content that isn't available for free anywhere else (so you'd have to pay for it again), it's hard to actually break away from the service. For those that aren't aware, the content that is stored on your Sky receiver is encrypted to the boxes serial number AND your viewing card. According to Sky, it's impossible to copy the content to another box (even as part of a Sky Q upgrade), let alone extract it for viewing on another platform. Sky use this tactic to lock the customers in.
      - mprev 7y ago
        Ring Sky, tell them you're leaving. They'll give you an offer. If you don't like it, go through with leaving. They'll make you serve a 30 day notice period. Before that ends you'll get a better offer. If you don't like that offer, actually leave. They'll send you an even better offer. There's no need to pay full price for Sky once you're out of your first year's contract.
alkonaut 7y ago
If only one of the streaming giants would sign some kind of deal with some of the TV networks (or some of the distributors) so that I could get my fix of news and sports from them. If they had e.g. the big BBC/CNN news casts live I'd happily pay Netflix a lot extra for that.
- boveg 7y ago
  $50/month is a lot extra, but if you are willing to pay it, YouTube TV (https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/) offers exactly what you are asking. Also, its youtube, which means the streaming quality is superb.
bjt 7y ago
Exactly my thought.
tastroder 7y ago
Out of curiosity, what do you mean with "cheaper than satellite"? Initial costs of the dish and receiver aside that's free around here.
- denvrede 7y ago
  Could you define "around here"? I'm from Germany and for premium satellite content (Sky) you pay 25-30 euros upwards for the movie and entertainment (shows and documentaries) packages.
  - tastroder 7y ago
    Oh, Germany as well. Honestly didn't realize these premium satellite things are still widely used over purely IP based content delivery options so they slipped my mind there.
- tiernano 7y ago
  Ireland, non free satellite, sky: €72 per month for the pack I'm on.

burlesona 7y ago

Seems like crazy click-bait to me. Yes, the competition in streaming is heating up, but in reality most people are likely to pick and choose a few services, not just one. Cable packages have been running $50+ per month for a while now, with millions of customers. Cord-cutting down to Netflix + Prime + Disney is still cheaper, and it’s getting closer to the system I think most people wanted all along, which was the ability to pick and choose your own bundle of just the channels you want. What has really changed is linear TV (aka traditional channels) is going away in favor of on-demand. People care about live sports, and to some extent live news. Other than that, on-demand is better. So instead of the future being what we might have imagined 10 years ago, building a bundle of just the channels you want, instead will be building a bundle of just the distributors you want — ie. Disney originals vs Netflix vs Prime etc. I expect we will see more and more content signing exclusive deals with these aggregators as a result, and we probably also see a few more big brands throw their hat in the ring.

TAForObvReasons 7y ago
The problem as articulated in the original article is that Disney's service is an existential threat to Netflix both because Disney will offer currently-unavailable content and because the Disney IPs are slated to be removed from Netflix. Netflix's problem is best captured in this sentence: > Netflix users are spending more time streaming “The Office” than any other show on the streaming platform. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/the-office-netflix-most-streamed-series-friends-1202127682/ https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/the-office-netflix-most-st... Would a Disney streaming service cause people to switch or pay for both? That remains unclear, but I'd bet on a future of subscription fatigue where people pay for one video streaming service.
- ymolodtsov 7y ago
  Disney is just $7. It seems reasonable that cost-conscious people would choose only it, while others can still pay for it on top of their existing Netflix subscription.
  - Phillipharryt 7y ago

alanfranz 7y ago

What if consumers get bored by such "exclusive content" deals, where they need 7 subscriptions to watch the 7 things they like, and they go back to DVDs and bittorrent?

sdwisely 7y ago
I feel like that's starting to happen in Australia, we got streaming services a decade after most other places so it's not as ingrained and piracy is starting to look like a superior service again.
elicash 7y ago
There's zero commitment to these apps. Just choose one for a couple months and watch everything new in the library and rewatch some old stuff you missed or want to watch again, then cancel it and go on to the next subscription for another two months or so. I don't understand why people think it's a problem to need 6 different subscriptions -- there's literally no reason to have all 6 at the EXACT SAME MOMENT.
- dominicr 7y ago
  People are forgetful & passive, so they tend to subscribe and forget. There are lots of people paying for things they don't need or could save money by switching subscriptions on & off as needed. This is one of the reasons why the subscription model is so popular with companies, not consumers.
  - lsc 7y ago
    relevant experience: So I've started to subscribe/unsubscribe to channels through prime. It's really easy to subscribe/unsub. I unsubscribed from HBO when game of thrones finished. But... lots of things? lots of things unsubscribing is horribly painful. A lot of things you have to call someone, listen to the sales pitch, look up a bunch of customer data you might not have anymore, and then listen to another sales pitch and then cancel. I have started dealing with this by just canceling the credit card. (I've got one of those cards that lets me generate throw away numbers, so I don't have to cancel everything) way easier. So, uh, my guess? my guess is that the 'subscribe to movie through amazon' is a lot less sticky than 'subscribe to channel through cable' just 'cause it's three clicks. And then another three clicks if you want to re-subscribe.

js2 7y ago

There is no way Disney+ is going to hand out the entire Disney catalog including putting movies on streaming the same day as theater release for $7/mo. This is either a teaser rate or it doesn’t buy you everything. And the theaters will freak out if they have to compete with same day streaming release.

dkrich 7y ago
Don’t think same day streaming release is a remote possibility because Disney would be canabalizing it’s theater revenue. I do think it’s likely the only place you will be able to watch it after it leaves the theater.

kristianp 7y ago

Sounds like Netflix needs to produce Blockbuster films, or buy Universal Corp(the maker of Jurassic World, the only non-disney top film of the last 5 years). Universal's market cap is only 1.28B, about 10% of the amount Netflix spent on content last year.

scarface74 7y ago
Where did you get that number from? Universal is owned by Comcast.
- kristianp 7y ago
  I looked up Universal corp. Whoops, it seems Universal Corp isn't in the movie business : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Corporation

Benjamin_Dobell 7y ago

The author seems to be unaware Netflix started preparing for this years ago[1]: > the streaming-video giant put out nearly 90,000 minutes—close to 1,500 hours—of original series, movies, and other productions this year. Maybe there is some concern about the quality of the content... > In 2018, Netflix also became the first network in 17 years to dethrone HBO in Emmy nominations, and matched the premium-TV network in wins. Netflix isn't going anywhere. [1] https://qz.com/1505030/keeping-up-with-netflix-originals-is-basically-a-part-time-job-now/ https://qz.com/1505030/keeping-up-with-netflix-originals-is-...

stesch 7y ago
Most Netflix productions aren't really for me. After many disappointments I now see Netflix originals as something to avoid.
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  Complete opposite for me. I prefer Netflix originals to most mainstream channel shows.
scarface74 7y ago
Everyone knows they prepared for it. But they also getting in tons of debt to create content with only one stream of income - subscriptions. Disney+ and Hulu are just an additional income stream for Disney. They have so many ways to make money off of content and don’t need to get in debt to do it. - broadcast TV - cable TV - physical sells of media -National/international theatric releases. - Rental/purchase video on demand Sure Disney+ may “lose money” for the first five years, but how much of that “loss” is paying other units of Disney for content?
- Benjamin_Dobell 7y ago
  > with only one stream of income - subscriptions That's not accurate. Netflix can and do license their Netflix Originals just the same as any other production studio. They just don't do so as frequently as streaming is a superior delivery platform (from their perspective) in terms of user lock-in & profitability (no middle men). Those latter two reasons are a strong driving force for why Disney (and prior to that Fox) have been moving into the space. > getting in tons of debt Do you have a source for this being a concern? Everything I've ever read indicates their profits are soaring e.g. - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross... - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-is-growing-even-faster-and-streaming-to-record-profit-totals-2018-04-16 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-is-growing-even-fa... Granted, I can see there are articles regarding them being in debt: - https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/is-netflix-in-debt-what-that-20-billion-really-means/news-story/1e5878306f458237230f62eea5d4b94b https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/is-netflix-in-debt-... However, even that article ends with: > SO IS NETFLIX’S DEBT EVEN THAT BIG OF A DEAL? > Nope! Every company has debt. Apple boasts some $US100 billion in debt, Disney around $50 billion, and Amazon about $8 billion.

treelovinhippie 7y ago

Torrents. Either the dumb rentier platform wars end in an open streaming protocol standard, or we just stick with piracy. Capitalism is absurdly inefficient.

rntksi 7y ago
Exactly my thoughts as well. This is similar to Steam vs other platforms.
realityking 7y ago
Assuming we had an open streaming protocol standard and standard clients, how would that solve the issue of competing streaming services all wanting their own monthly fee and offering different content? No one cares about the protocol and the client - people want their content.
- treelovinhippie 7y ago
  The idea is to decouple the content from the platform. So one way you could do it is have the content deployed to an open distributed file storage and streaming protocol (IPFS or Holochain perhaps, blockchain will never scale). Content creators upload it to this network and the content becomes a standalone entity. Platforms then have full open access to the content. The platforms compete on the UX/UI and recommendation algorithm layers. Every platform will have access to all content. But if Netflix provides the best viewing experience then people will pay a monthly fee to use it. Each time the content is streamed, the user (or platform) pays a microfee per minute watched which goes directly back to the content creator. Omitting quite a few technical details but you get the gist.
ap3 7y ago
6.99 ? Why even torrent?
- treelovinhippie 7y ago
  Because it's not $6.99. It's $6.99 multiplied by every platform silo in which the content you want to view is held captive.

xrd 7y ago

I feel exactly the opposite about signing up for Disney. I will not. The reason is stated in Fast Food Nation, paraphrased as: "Disney was the first company to direct market to children." They are still the company I most fear. As an example, I hate going to the super market with my kids. We don't watch a ton of Disney movies, but even so, they are bombarded with Frozen shit six years after that movie came out. There are all kinds of things to buy marketed with Frozen that my kids would have begged for, IF we had been watching Frozen incessantly, if we had Disney+. I will NOT be signing up for this. I would much rather watch the shows on Netflix that I know will never have plastic junky replicas occupying on shelf space in the supermarket. Frozen was an amazing story, and Disney has fantastic writers, directors, and animators, but I don't want them hypnotizing my kids and then trying to sell them shit for years. I'm probably in the minority in that I have never seen one of the Avengers movies, and could care less about those blockbusters the author listed. But, I really do think we are entering a new phase in media consumption where I as a parent can choose my own streaming needs (HBO, for example, with little that my kids watch) AND I can find the right combination for my kids (Netflix and YouTube) that fits my need to avoid marketing to my children. I'm sure someone in those channels will find a way to sell crap to my kids, but it'll take some time. I think there will still be people who want to watch the Avengers sixteen times on their five different screen sizes, and will sign up for Disney+. But, it might not be as many parents as they would hope for, and I have alternatives and won't be one of them.

IgorPartola 7y ago
I have two girls. Netflix seems to have the most girl-positive shows that aren’t cheesy or cheap. I generally have a pretty negative view of Disney and wouldn’t sign up for it for the same reasons as you.
- jkmcf 7y ago
  I agree. My daughter loves Spirit. OTOH, she also loves Disney's Elena of Avalor, which I think is exceptionally well done. The Disney stuff targeted at older kids seems pretty horrible to me.

xbmcuser 7y ago

Netflix has been targeting niche areas for the last few years. With most of the larger markets now having local shows in their own language or foreign shows with subs that have been appreciated a lot. I personally have watched French, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Brazil content and probably use it more for these language shows than I do for English shows. The advances in machine translation text to audio and video morphing makes me wonder if we 5-10 years down the line we will get content modified automatically so that translated dialog audio matches morphed video lip movement.

Freak_NL 7y ago
Ugh, that sounds horrible. Instead of getting to enjoy regional differences and different languages (subtitled if desired), every show would end up the same for your locale, down to the local brands shown as product placements. And why stop there? The actor drinks soda from a green can, and if you watch the show now it will mostly be a can of Pepsi cola. But watch the show between January and April 2020 from Canada, and you will see the new maple syrup flavoured Dr Pepper instead.
- Jaruzel 7y ago
  This has already been happening for years: https://www.engadget.com/2014/10/22/technology-changed-product-placement/ https://www.engadget.com/2014/10/22/technology-changed-produ...
- xbmcuser 7y ago
  I didn't say I wanted it to happen. I personally got into movies as 10-11 year old watching Jackie Chan and other Asian kungfu movies with subs. So watching movies with subs is natural for me for many others it is not so and trying to read subs while watching might not be fun. As long as I have the choice to watch in the original language with subs I really don't care.

londons_explore 7y ago

I don't believe Disney has the technical skill to make a decent cross platform streaming app work right away. There will be months of buffering and bugs, and that will mean they won't get many customers. After 6 months of that, the IP will be forgotten by regular punters. If content isn't watched and talked about in schools/offices/at home/in memes, people forget fast. Disney's whole catalogue will get devalued.

YokoZar 7y ago
Didn't they buy a company with an already working platform?
iambateman 7y ago
ESPN seems to work pretty well ;)
scarface74 7y ago
Disney owns BAMTech the same company that rescued HBO’s streaming service and that’s used by MLB@Bat. They also have a controlling interest in Hulu.
- basch 7y ago
  Right? They literally went out and bought one of the best streaming tech companies, years ago, to prepare for this. People are acting like Disney is just starting this project today.

deleted 7y ago

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Dynamicd 7y ago

>Disney’s ownership of iconic franchises like Star Wars gives it something no money can buy. Didn't Disney buy Star Wars?

mruniverse 7y ago
No money can buy anymore... unless of course they license or sell it outright.

dkrich 7y ago

What’s interesting to me about this debate is that everyone seems to view it as a Disney is coming for Netflix story and not the other way around. But what prevents Netflix from creating its own animation studio and producing its own blockbuster films and distributing them in theaters? What about licensing merchandise from its movies or television shows? It’s not all that clear to me that consumers will pay a monthly fee to stream movies they’ve already seen. In any case Netflix is so different than what Disney announced with Disney + that the case put forth in the article seems very simplistic and lazy.

mprev 7y ago
That sounds a bit like a "why does company X need 4,000 staff, I could build it in a weekend" type of question. Netflix has produced some really great TV (and quite a bit that's not so great), so they have track record here. But, whatever else you think of the company, Disney has decades of institutional experience in creating and monetising child-targeted animation. Growing the organisation that can do that isn't trivial. You can make great TV by outsourcing to production companies who then deliver so many hours of content. I suspect it's much more complex to build an organisation that turns IP into multiple streams of recurring revenue, in the way that Disney does.
scarface74 7y ago
Netflix is already getting in enough debt trying to keep up with competitors with the only income being subscription revenue. How much debt do you think they can take on? Besides “creating blockbusters” isn’t easy. See all of the other studios who are trying to create “shared universes”.
- dkrich 7y ago
  Because capital is cheap right now so you have lots of investors around the world with cash they are looking to get return on willing to lend it at relatively low rates. Netflix is able to borrow at low rates while ratcheting up the subscription price and adding millions of new paying customers every quarter which is how they are fueling hypergrowth. The idea that they should be cutting spending is completely antithetical to their long-term strategy. There is going to be a critical mass, I don't know where it is but I suspect its not far off, where enough subs around the world are paying a high enough rate while the need to produce new shows will be capped to keep people on the platform. Then you have a wheel where enormous amounts of cash is coming in every month and a fixed amount of content is being output. That's the path to profitability. Then if the sub base and price point continues to rise, they have enough cash to do other things like build theaters or produce blockbuster films. And that's not even counting if they come up with additional ways to generate revenue such as licensing.

senthilnayagam 7y ago

in India sports too is moving to streaming, hotstar gave a full page add today bragging 18.6 million viewers simultaneously watched IPL cricket finals. if Disney was this serious they should have launched their services when Netflix announced original productions.

golergka 7y ago

> In a world where you can watch practically anything whenever you want, dominance in distribution is very fragile. That sounds exactly like the arguments against Uber to me: that these companies indeed have changed our day-to-day lives, but their innovations are in no way exclusive and users will easily switch between providers, quickly reacting to changes in quality of service (ride cost for Uber and Office and Friends being on Netflix).

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago

I, too, look forward to the day that 100% of our entertainment is controlled by this American mega-corporation.

berbec 7y ago
You mean today and every day for the last X years?

azdacha 7y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that Netflix is not the new TV. However I clearly see them in a position alike to a big TV channel. Disney would just be another player as it's content would simply be different. Still, I hope Netflix keeps Disney off their ground as I would prefer them competing against one another rather than seeing it replaced or bought up. Netflix has been doing grandiose work be it in their shows or even their open-source work.

Jaruzel 7y ago

Personally I don't see the problem with having my content on physical media, such as Blu-Ray or UHD discs. Once I've bought it, it's mine, and no-one can take it away from me. I'll still be watching my favourite movies over and over again for years to come for a one time cost, and I don't have to worry about the streaming provider removing it from their platform. I know I'm in a minority though, and at some point in the next decade, streaming services will be the ONLY place content is released, and the concept of owning physical media will be considered archaic.

fmajid 7y ago

Netflix is not the future of TV. It's the present.

Phillipharryt 7y ago

There's a saying in investing, "Don't bet against the mouse". And to anyone doubting Disney being able to take over streaming, I challenge you to bet against him.

petraeus 7y ago

Not many people are going to subscribe to a service to watch the same movies over and over again. DIS+ is dead int he water unless it somehow creates exclusive novel new content, which it wont just for its service, ergo DOA

basch 7y ago
all the new Marvel and Star Wars shows alone...
tmottabr 7y ago
you clearly do not have kids.. My 5 year old boy will watch the same film again and again for days until he get bored and move to watching the next same movie for days, rinse and repeat. my brother is 29 now but did the same thing when he was at that age, i still know most lines from lion king by hearth because of that. i have a friend that watch braveheart at least once a year. i myself, there are many movies that i would rewatch every once in a while, many from disney. so it is not even a new or uncommon behavior that people watch the same movies again and again. also, disney already announced several series just for this service from marvel (wanda and vision, winter soldier and falcon, loki) and star wars (mandalorian, a new clone war season), so yes they will have exclusive novel new content made just for it in there. also, once it goes live all new movies from disney, marvel and star wars will only be available there. so it is definitely not dead in the water.

ap3 7y ago

$6.99 ? I’ll sign up for both