Disney Raising Price of Disney+ Subscription to $10.99 and Launching $7.99 Ad-Supported Tier

[Jensend]

True, and that's not a good thing, but there are still big differences. With streaming services, we can subscribe and cancel at any time. No home installations or special hardware. We can even stream on our phones out on the street.

And you can watch anything on the service at any time.
Paying the price of a movie ticket to watch a couple seasons of an ad-free TV show during a month long subscription is a pretty good deal, in my opinion. Heck, both of the current subs I have, Paramount+ and Apple+, are free.

Digital media—video games, movies, TV shows, books—are just about the cheapest and most accessible they’ve ever been.
90’s me would be especially surprised with how cheap video games are. Cheap bundles, subscription libraries, and free giveaways of great games mean you can build a library for very little money.

 

[MICHAELSD]

With all these companies raising their prices, pretty soon we will be paying more than we used to pay for cable back in the day.

It’s already at that point if you have internet + all the services.

The main reason for such a drastic change IMO is that Disney is realizing that Disney+ is cannibalizing other revenue streams such as the box office for Pixar and even Marvel movies.

 

[Thebrochure]

Saw this coming from a mile away. They knew they were raising that price the moment they announced the service. Make it cheap, get people hooked, inch it up and up and up, little by little. It's called pulling a Netflix.

 

[v0lume4]

And people laugh at me for buying Blu-Ray… I have every Disney title I’ll ever want and won’t have to pay Disney for them again or watch any annoying ads to enjoy them.

Physical media forever!!!

You own it AND you get better picture quality too. Win-win!

 

[Jakewilk]

And people laugh at me for buying Blu-Ray… I have every Disney title I’ll ever want and won’t have to pay Disney for them again or watch any annoying ads to enjoy them.

Guess which one of us paid more

 

[MICHAELSD]

To be fair, Disney+ does provide $10.99/month of value with the inclusion of blockbuster movies relatively quickly and all of the recent investments into unique scripted content.

 

[AppleMad98004]

The reason is the streaming services at Disney are a business unit and if you read their financials there is a growing operating loss for Disney’s streaming services. Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ combined to lose $1.1 billion in the fiscal third quarter. That is $4+ billion in a year in the red. The are bleeding money in the streaming market.

 

[jz0309]

so Disney is opening the floodgates, everyone else to follow soon ... sucks.

 

[nimitz9]

It now seems like you subscribe for a short period, watch you really want to see and then cancel and move on to the next streaming service. No need to continuously subscribe to multiple services simultaneously. I'm not sure if that would be a sustainable business model or not for all the streaming services or not??

 

[jz0309]

The reason is the streaming services at Disney are a business unit and if you read their financials there is a growing operating loss for Disney’s streaming services. Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ combined to lose $1.1 billion in the fiscal third quarter. That is $4+ billion in a year in the red. The are bleeding money in the streaming market.

poor Disney ...

 

[visualseed]

My buddy had all his movies purchased on DVD, then when Blu-Ray came around repurchased each one of them to complete his Blu-Ray library. I'm not laughing at you, just curious if they will have some newer format and people will have to jump again.

Almost all of my content is 1080P or 4K. While I know new formats and resolution are inevitable (8K and HDR are already here), most things would require significant remastering to even take advantage of it and that's if the original source material could even support it. Regardless, a full HD 1080p copy of "Caddyshack" looks great on an 8K screen. I think it's really kind of the end of the road for migrating entire back catalogs to new formats. You will still see select remastering of blocks busters like "Titanic" or certain franchises like Star Wars or the Marvel movies, but it's probably the end of the road for the average movie.

 

[eifelbube]

True, and that's not a good thing, but there are still big differences. With streaming services, we can subscribe and cancel at any time. No home installations or special hardware. We can even stream on our phones out on the street.
[/QUOTE

yes, true, but streaming tech can force you to sit through a commercial or a series of them before being able to continue with the content, cable & DVR do not have such manipulative tech

 

[anthony13]

Wonder if this will effect the Verizon deal.

 

[DD88]

Jokes on you who pay for it. Someone I know has it and gave me their login details so Disney is free to me. I’ve heard Disney can somehow track who uses it and if they find out you’ve been password sharing with you all get banned or whatever but so far I’ve had no issues. If Disney want to take me to court over it then so be it, I’ll walk into court dressed as Mickey Mouse. They can’t sentence their own IP and I’ll go home from court and watch more Disney +

 

[bunty]

Maybe I'm alone in this, but somehow paid subscriptions with ads make absolutely no sense to me. If I'm paying for something it better not have f—n ads.

Remember the days of ad cards falling out of magazines? and most mags were something like 40% ads?

 

[bunty]

I just only subscribe to Netflix. We only need one streaming service. The rest can F off. No way I'm paying for more than one.

I just realized I have some Free Trial subscriptions that auto-renewed like AppleTV+, you just reminded me to cancel them which I'm doing right after I post this. I'm gonna cancel Netflix also, heck I'm gonna cancel all of them and see what it does to my free time for a month or two as an experiment.

 

[TinyMito]

Hold on... they gained millions of subscribers and raise the price? What?

 

[eifelbube]

Almost all of my content is 1080P or 4K. While I know new formats and resolution are inevitable (8K and HDR are already here), most things would require significant remastering to even take advantage of it and that's if the original source material could even support it. Regardless, a full HD 1080p copy of "Caddyshack" looks great on an 8K screen. I think it's really kind of the end of the road for migrating entire back catalogs to new formats. You will still see select remastering of blocks busters like "Titanic" or certain franchises like Star Wars or the Marvel movies, but it's probably the end of the road for the average movie.

8k is “here”, really? Where? If it really is, don’t tell Netflix because they (and YouTubeTV) are charging extra for 4k already …

 

[DD88]

Almost all of my content is 1080P or 4K. While I know new formats and resolution are inevitable (8K and HDR are already here), most things would require significant remastering to even take advantage of it and that's if the original source material could even support it. Regardless, a full HD 1080p copy of "Caddyshack" looks great on an 8K screen. I think it's really kind of the end of the road for migrating entire back catalogs to new formats. You will still see select remastering of blocks busters like "Titanic" or certain franchises like Star Wars or the Marvel movies, but it's probably the end of the road for the average movie.

Cant see 8k becoming mainstream at all or at least not for a very very long time. I think 8K TV sets are a bit of a con too with the only thing they can do currently is upscale 4K content because hardly any 8k content is around . To even view genuine 8K content you need a minimal of 100mbs internet speed ( hardly anyone near where I live is even at 35mbs) and you’ll use about 44gb of bandwidth per hour. Not to mention the size of the TV to even appreciate 8k content must be 75 inches or above. I just purchased a 55” Sony A90J this April and it’s like a cinema screen to me lol

 

[jdclifford]

Bye Bye!

 

[Scoob Redux]

Saw this coming from a mile away. They knew they were raising that price the moment they announced the service. Make it cheap, get people hooked, inch it up and up and up, little by little. It's called pulling a Netflix.

Except over 50% increase in 2 1/2 years is not really "little by little"...that's a giant leap.
But, I'm super happy b/c the stock price will pop, more than paying for my Disney+ sub for life.

 

[visualseed]

Cant see 8k becoming mainstream at all or at least not for a very very long time. I think 8K TV sets are a bit of a con too with the only thing they can do currently is upscale 4K content because hardly any 8k content is around . To even view genuine 8K content you need a minimal of 100mbs internet speed ( hardly anyone near where I live is even at 35mbs) and you’ll use about 44gb a bandwidth per hour. Not to mention the size of the TV to even appreciate 8k content must be 75 inches or above. I just purchased a 55” Sony A90J this April and it’s like a cinema screen to me lol

I don't think they will be a mainstream for a long time either, but their future is the future and things we haven't even thought of yet will be mainstream one day. Heck, we may even have holographic 3d projectors built into our phones in the coming years. Who knows.. but I have blu-rays of movies that came out before the idea of having a TV in the home was even a Sci-fi trope much less possible.

 

[GDF]

Disney really does not offer a lot to get that price, at least for my wife and I. I like the new Star Wars stuff, but those are few and far in between and don’t last long. Unless you have kids, just not a good value.

These streaming services are really going to start suffering more by continuing to raise prices. Guess people can binge watch and just cancel, but that can’t be sustainable for the streaming companies.

 

[alexandr]

Remember the days of ad cards falling out of magazines? and most mags were something like 40% ads?

Vividly. I used them for making collages during high school and college. Online ads are good for nothing.

 

[alexandr]

Disney really does not offer a lot to get that price, at least for my wife and I. I like the new Star Wars stuff, but those are few and far in between and don’t last long. Unless you have kids, just not a good valuse.

I think Disney generally is kid—oriented...