7 ms·

Disney is the main culprit here. They are making a few significant missteps with their otherwise very well executed streaming offering. Initially they offered

by jmacd 5y ago

Disney is the main culprit here. They are making a few significant missteps with their otherwise very well executed streaming offering. Initially they offered their streaming service at a very competitive price, but I think they have gotten some of the sequencing wrong after that. Initially early subscribers were hit with these up charges for new films. I think Mulan might have been the first one? It was mid pandemic and they didn't get a chance to release it in theatres, so I think it felt like it made sense at the time and I am guessing they saw it as pretty successful. They quickly started doing it with far less interesting films, and ones that I could see at release time in the theatre. At home streaming just isn't a "special occasion" like going to the theatre is, and while I was happy to make it a special occasion during the depths of stay-at-home lockdowns, there are a lot of competitive forces now. An extra $20 or $30 might seem to Disney like an amount people will happily pay for every new release, but I think the appetite for that will be pretty low going forward. Disney also offered an attractive discount for a 1-year subscription initially, so it was pretty easy to do. I've been happy with it, but I notice my kids are on Netflix much much more. That really surprised me. Now, my subscription renews in April of 2022, but Disney has already started emailing me that it is going to increase almost 50% in cost at renewal time. I don't know why they feel the need to start telling me that so far in advance, or so many times (3 emails now). All it's done is make me thing "ok, that's a lot, let's see if we really use it" and also "hmm, I've spent some $ on these new releases". They don't seem patient or that they are thinking through this messaging/experience nearly as well as Netflix. Netflix does increase their prices but they do it rarely and they always pummel you with new content around the time they are doing it. They also packaged in lower resolution options, etc so you can keep your costs down if you really want to. Disney hasn't done any of that.

nicoburns 5y ago
Disney seems to be the main culprit in everything copyright related! Seriously, what is wrong with them!?
- dylan604 5y ago
  The question would be better phrased as what is wrong with the copyright system. Disney just seems to be the best at maximizing the system to their benefit.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Not really. Disney hasn't just made use of the existing copyright laws, they have had an active hand (indeed, they have been the primary campaigners) in campaigning for the vastly extended copyright terms that we currently suffer.
    - effingwewt 5y ago
      Yea 'Don't hate the player, hate the game' is pretty disingenuous when the 'player' actively changes the rules of the game through bribery and coercion.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    How Disney lobbied to tweak the copyright system to their liking, since the 1970s: https://online.yu.edu/cardozo/blog/disney-influence-copyright-law https://online.yu.edu/cardozo/blog/disney-influence-copyrigh...
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  What is wrong with making money? If they are at fault, I don't see how you can expect otherwise. On people and their goverment. What is wrong with them? Well, some people value the product at that price tag. And since people can live without that product (multimedia) their government don't really care. For me the problem of copyright mindset is locking hardware to specific Intellectual Property software. Multimedia is not a necessity, it is entertaiment.
  - Oddskar 5y ago
    If your money making is at the detriment of society as a whole then there very much is something wrong with it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Sony. Don’t forget Sony too
GordonS 5y ago
Similar situation here in the UK. Disney+ initially available at what I considered a fair price, and now they want to hike it by something like 50% - which seems totally unreasonable. Furthermore, it seems like so much more content now is not included in the monthly fee - they want to extract even more money from us! And I take issue with the actual pricing here too, for example Mulan was a whopping £20 - for comparison, an adult cinema ticket is around £10! So again, this feels totally unfair and unjustified. Disney is meant to be about "fun", but I don't think we'll be renewing, because, frankly, they are taking the piss and making me hate the service.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  > Furthermore, it seems like so much more content now is not included in the monthly fee - they want to extract even more money from us! And I take issue with the actual pricing here too, for example Mulan was a whopping £20 - for comparison, an adult cinema ticket is around £10! So again, this feels totally unfair and unjustified. That's not surprising. What if there's more than one person watching the stream? > Disney is meant to be about "fun" multiple decades ago, maybe
  - xattt 5y ago
    The problem was solved decades earlier: an FBI Warning at the start saying the screen can only be viewed by one member of a household at a time.
  - GordonS 5y ago
    > That's not surprising. What if there's more than one person watching the stream? So what if there is? I'm watching at home, using my TV - it is nowhere close to a "cinema experience", I'm already paying a monthly fee, and I don't believe I've ever seen any streaming rental as expensive as £20 before. So, it was certainly a surprise to me!
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      > I'm watching at home, using my TV - it is nowhere close to a "cinema experience" To replicate the cinema experience, for another €20 you could pay some kids to kick your seat and rustle chip packets, then turn the volume up to unbearable and play 35 mins of adverts before the movie.
michaelt 5y ago
> I don't know why they feel the need to start telling me that so far in advance, or so many times (3 emails now). Maybe they hope, by informing you so early, you'll have forgotten about the price increase by the time your renewal goes through?
dylan604 5y ago
>Now, my subscription renews in April of 2022, but Disney has already started emailing me that it is going to increase almost 50% in cost at renewal time. I don't know why they feel the need to start telling me that so far in advance, or so many times (3 emails now). All it's done is make me thing "ok, that's a lot, let's see if we really use it" and also "hmm, I've spent some $ on these new releases". Well, if you are thinking of not renewing and foget, it is 100% on you. If you are considering not renewing, you should unsub now so that it doesn't auto-renew.
docdeek 5y ago
Disney+ in France is reasonably priced. I think the first year it was about €65 and it is now expanded with Star and costs €90 a year. That's €7.50 a month which is great value in a house with a kid mad about Star Wars, a toddler who needs occasional distraction, and a couple of adults who find things on Star to re-watch from years ago. We also get some Hulu shows on our Disney+ stream here, too, which can be good. We do not have Disney+ 'special' films here for a one-time €20-30 fee, a result of film release regulations in this country (I think). Still, considering it is about €13 an adult ticket at the cinema here, if there are a few of us watching a new release I can see how it might make sense. Sure, not the cinema experience, but comparable in price, improved comfort, the chance to pause if needed, and no babysitter to pay for.
cassianoleal 5y ago
I don't have a Disney+ account but what you describe sounds bad. Not quite Prime Video bad though. Early Prime Video used to have a lot of shows with only the first season available with not extra cost, and you'd only realise that by the time you finished it and was going to watch Season 2, only to be slapped with a rental fee for it and all subsequent ones. I haven't seen much of that for a while (although admittedly I rarely go on there - I wish there was a cheaper Prime tier with only the delivery advantages). A couple weeks ago though, I started watching a show. I logged in, put on S1E1 and all was good. That is, until I tried to watch S1E2 and found out that everything from that point on was behind a rent wall. Just to clarify, I had actually had a quick look to see if the later seasons were included, and it did look like they were. Until they didn't. Utterly awful experience.
wavefunction 5y ago
Disney is one of the two media companies my friend is always willing to pirate from due to how they constantly try to rip off the creative talent that is the only reason they're a company. He's one of those types that still pays for and downloads FLACs and has no problem paying for streaming services that are fairly priced and treat their creative resources better than Disney does. I guess it's kind of weird to associate a moral impulse with the act of media piracy but no one says that humans aren't complicated messes of competing paradoxical impulses.
sparrc 5y ago
This might not be a longterm strategy, because they aren't doing it for their latest major release (Encanto). It's currently in cinemas only.
SSLy 5y ago
My cinema is a 15 minutes brisk walk from my flat. There's no way I'd overpay for D+ if I can just pay 4 euros and see it on a bigger screen, with better audio.
nebula8804 5y ago
Do we know if Disney+ is returning a profit or operating at a loss in exchange for increasing its long term user base? Seems like the latter. In regards to theaters being a "special occasion", I am not sure where you live but here in the US we have "monthly subscriptions" for movie theaters. For example, for ~25$ a month I can sign up for AMC Stubs A-List which allows me to see three films a week in any format I want (standard def, IMAX, Dolby Premium, 3D or whatever else they have) each week for the month. (Thats typically 12 films a month). This is unbelievable value, yet even to this day I see theaters are flat out empty with the exception of Superhero films and established franchises (eg. James Bond). I can't tell you how many films I have seen this year (since getting vaccinated) where I was literally the only one in the theater. For one film I discovered there is a regular light switch that controls the lights in the theater and so I watched the film with the lights on ha ha! I think movies and ;possibly "old media" are just failing for peoples attention in favor of things like Youtube/Instagram/Twitch etc. After all there are 24 hours in a day and no way to expand that so everyone has to compete by taking away some time spent on existing forms of media.
- thedevelopnik 5y ago
  My wife and I have the Cinemark subscription and used to see an average of 1-2 movies per month. My son has a sleepover with his grandma once a week and we have date night. We might start that up again once he’s fully vaccinated (mid-December) but otherwise we haven’t seen a movie in theaters since February 2020. I know the world has been open for most people for awhile now but for a lot of us it hasn’t been. I’m really looking forward to taking my son to a movie in a theater for the first time in his life, maybe on Christmas day (he was too young when the pandemic started).

by jmacd 5y ago

nicoburns 5y ago

Disney seems to be the main culprit in everything copyright related! Seriously, what is wrong with them!?

dylan604 5y ago
The question would be better phrased as what is wrong with the copyright system. Disney just seems to be the best at maximizing the system to their benefit.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Not really. Disney hasn't just made use of the existing copyright laws, they have had an active hand (indeed, they have been the primary campaigners) in campaigning for the vastly extended copyright terms that we currently suffer.
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    Yea 'Don't hate the player, hate the game' is pretty disingenuous when the 'player' actively changes the rules of the game through bribery and coercion.
- yunohn 5y ago
  How Disney lobbied to tweak the copyright system to their liking, since the 1970s: https://online.yu.edu/cardozo/blog/disney-influence-copyright-law https://online.yu.edu/cardozo/blog/disney-influence-copyrigh...
catlikesshrimp 5y ago
What is wrong with making money? If they are at fault, I don't see how you can expect otherwise. On people and their goverment. What is wrong with them? Well, some people value the product at that price tag. And since people can live without that product (multimedia) their government don't really care. For me the problem of copyright mindset is locking hardware to specific Intellectual Property software. Multimedia is not a necessity, it is entertaiment.
- Oddskar 5y ago
  If your money making is at the detriment of society as a whole then there very much is something wrong with it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elzbardico 5y ago
Sony. Don’t forget Sony too

GordonS 5y ago

Similar situation here in the UK. Disney+ initially available at what I considered a fair price, and now they want to hike it by something like 50% - which seems totally unreasonable. Furthermore, it seems like so much more content now is not included in the monthly fee - they want to extract even more money from us! And I take issue with the actual pricing here too, for example Mulan was a whopping £20 - for comparison, an adult cinema ticket is around £10! So again, this feels totally unfair and unjustified. Disney is meant to be about "fun", but I don't think we'll be renewing, because, frankly, they are taking the piss and making me hate the service.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
> Furthermore, it seems like so much more content now is not included in the monthly fee - they want to extract even more money from us! And I take issue with the actual pricing here too, for example Mulan was a whopping £20 - for comparison, an adult cinema ticket is around £10! So again, this feels totally unfair and unjustified. That's not surprising. What if there's more than one person watching the stream? > Disney is meant to be about "fun" multiple decades ago, maybe
- xattt 5y ago
  The problem was solved decades earlier: an FBI Warning at the start saying the screen can only be viewed by one member of a household at a time.
- GordonS 5y ago
  > That's not surprising. What if there's more than one person watching the stream? So what if there is? I'm watching at home, using my TV - it is nowhere close to a "cinema experience", I'm already paying a monthly fee, and I don't believe I've ever seen any streaming rental as expensive as £20 before. So, it was certainly a surprise to me!
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > I'm watching at home, using my TV - it is nowhere close to a "cinema experience" To replicate the cinema experience, for another €20 you could pay some kids to kick your seat and rustle chip packets, then turn the volume up to unbearable and play 35 mins of adverts before the movie.

michaelt 5y ago

> I don't know why they feel the need to start telling me that so far in advance, or so many times (3 emails now). Maybe they hope, by informing you so early, you'll have forgotten about the price increase by the time your renewal goes through?

dylan604 5y ago

>Now, my subscription renews in April of 2022, but Disney has already started emailing me that it is going to increase almost 50% in cost at renewal time. I don't know why they feel the need to start telling me that so far in advance, or so many times (3 emails now). All it's done is make me thing "ok, that's a lot, let's see if we really use it" and also "hmm, I've spent some $ on these new releases". Well, if you are thinking of not renewing and foget, it is 100% on you. If you are considering not renewing, you should unsub now so that it doesn't auto-renew.

docdeek 5y ago

Disney+ in France is reasonably priced. I think the first year it was about €65 and it is now expanded with Star and costs €90 a year. That's €7.50 a month which is great value in a house with a kid mad about Star Wars, a toddler who needs occasional distraction, and a couple of adults who find things on Star to re-watch from years ago. We also get some Hulu shows on our Disney+ stream here, too, which can be good. We do not have Disney+ 'special' films here for a one-time €20-30 fee, a result of film release regulations in this country (I think). Still, considering it is about €13 an adult ticket at the cinema here, if there are a few of us watching a new release I can see how it might make sense. Sure, not the cinema experience, but comparable in price, improved comfort, the chance to pause if needed, and no babysitter to pay for.

cassianoleal 5y ago

I don't have a Disney+ account but what you describe sounds bad. Not quite Prime Video bad though. Early Prime Video used to have a lot of shows with only the first season available with not extra cost, and you'd only realise that by the time you finished it and was going to watch Season 2, only to be slapped with a rental fee for it and all subsequent ones. I haven't seen much of that for a while (although admittedly I rarely go on there - I wish there was a cheaper Prime tier with only the delivery advantages). A couple weeks ago though, I started watching a show. I logged in, put on S1E1 and all was good. That is, until I tried to watch S1E2 and found out that everything from that point on was behind a rent wall. Just to clarify, I had actually had a quick look to see if the later seasons were included, and it did look like they were. Until they didn't. Utterly awful experience.

wavefunction 5y ago

Disney is one of the two media companies my friend is always willing to pirate from due to how they constantly try to rip off the creative talent that is the only reason they're a company. He's one of those types that still pays for and downloads FLACs and has no problem paying for streaming services that are fairly priced and treat their creative resources better than Disney does. I guess it's kind of weird to associate a moral impulse with the act of media piracy but no one says that humans aren't complicated messes of competing paradoxical impulses.

sparrc 5y ago

This might not be a longterm strategy, because they aren't doing it for their latest major release (Encanto). It's currently in cinemas only.

SSLy 5y ago

My cinema is a 15 minutes brisk walk from my flat. There's no way I'd overpay for D+ if I can just pay 4 euros and see it on a bigger screen, with better audio.

nebula8804 5y ago

Do we know if Disney+ is returning a profit or operating at a loss in exchange for increasing its long term user base? Seems like the latter. In regards to theaters being a "special occasion", I am not sure where you live but here in the US we have "monthly subscriptions" for movie theaters. For example, for ~25$ a month I can sign up for AMC Stubs A-List which allows me to see three films a week in any format I want (standard def, IMAX, Dolby Premium, 3D or whatever else they have) each week for the month. (Thats typically 12 films a month). This is unbelievable value, yet even to this day I see theaters are flat out empty with the exception of Superhero films and established franchises (eg. James Bond). I can't tell you how many films I have seen this year (since getting vaccinated) where I was literally the only one in the theater. For one film I discovered there is a regular light switch that controls the lights in the theater and so I watched the film with the lights on ha ha! I think movies and ;possibly "old media" are just failing for peoples attention in favor of things like Youtube/Instagram/Twitch etc. After all there are 24 hours in a day and no way to expand that so everyone has to compete by taking away some time spent on existing forms of media.

thedevelopnik 5y ago
My wife and I have the Cinemark subscription and used to see an average of 1-2 movies per month. My son has a sleepover with his grandma once a week and we have date night. We might start that up again once he’s fully vaccinated (mid-December) but otherwise we haven’t seen a movie in theaters since February 2020. I know the world has been open for most people for awhile now but for a lot of us it hasn’t been. I’m really looking forward to taking my son to a movie in a theater for the first time in his life, maybe on Christmas day (he was too young when the pandemic started).