Disney to Pull Movies From Netflix, Launch New Streaming Services

[X--X]

Looking at the few Disney movies available for streaming on Netflix (Brother Bear 2?)....don't think much is being lost here.

Yes, only literally the biggest movies being made every year.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain America, Frozen, all the Pixar Movies......

It's all Disney.

 

[WarHeadz]

None of this matters anyway. Once Trump's FCC does away with net neutrality, the cable/internet companies will jack up prices for habitual streamers to make up for all the cord cutters. When the cable companies got into the internet business back in the late 90's, they didn't expect broadband internet to become the primary method of pumping television content into people's homes.

 

[jdillings]

I feel Disney should do what they are good at, create content just like Pixar, and let someone like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. battle for the rights.

The problem is Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc, are now creating their own content. They're Disney's competitors, not friends. It makes no sense for Disney to license their content to competitors and make them stronger.

 

[Novus John]

Meh... there's not much content from Pixar and Disney on Netflix Sweden. And the only film that I've watched from their catalogue was Rise of the Guardians, I have it on itunes.

Goodbye Disney, don't let the door hit 'ya on your way out.

 

[X--X]

The problem is Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc, are now creating their own content. They're Disney's competitors, not friends. It makes no sense for Disney to license their content to competitors and make them stronger.

I agree that this is probably the reason why Disney is doing it, but it still doesn't make sense.

People watching a Disney movie on Netflix doesn't make a Netflix produced movie "stronger".

I think this move will make Disney less money in the end and they will backpedal.

But I'm not a billionaire CEO, what do I know.

Meh... there's not much content from Pixar and Disney on Netflix Sweden. And the only film that I've watched from their catalogue was Rise of the Guardians.

Marvel = Disney

 

[mmm1345]

Or we consumers will be begging for an all-in-one service so we can find something to watch without having to jump app-to-app or box-to-box. And we'll be whining about our broadband bills being as much as what broadband used to cost when it included cableTV too (because not even Netflix can work at the Netflix bargain without paying a broadband toll). And we'll be whining about the drop-off of new pilot shows that are not low-budget reality programming or similar. And on and on.

I bet the view of the cable/satt ripoff looks much different 5 or 10 years from now... when we are probably finding ourselves paying a lot more than what we used to pay... while having access to a lot less and/or still having to jump through a lot of hoops trying to find what we do want to watch. And I bet we won't be enjoying feeling like we are teaching a class to non-techie family & friends how to watch television in it's new incarnation.

How it was: Turn on and push a lone (channel) button to find something to watch.

How it is: Turn on and try to know which app will have what you have predetermined you want to watch. Don't know what you want to watch? Go to a website and start looking for things that are on now. Now magically know or use a website to help you figure out which app has the desired programming. Are you a subscriber to that app? On which STB does that app run? If different than the STB you are using now, change STB and TV inputs to the desired STB. And so on.

Now that "is" may be exaggerating some steps a bit (and "may" is the key word), but consider the TV watchers. Is there more techies like us that don't mind making a 1-step process a 12-step process to maybe save a few bucks or are there more grandmas & grandpas that will be lost at "OK which app has what you want to watch on it?"

Don't even get me started on the authentication song and dance I have to go through every damn month. I have multiple devices and have to re-authenticate 20 apps every month. It's painful.

 

[TechZeke]

Well, everyone wanted to pay for channels a la carte. Now you can.

Which I like. With cable you are paying $70/month for 95% crap. The remaining channels that you actually watch are also 95% reruns.

Fragmentation will be the death of this.
Eventually consumers just wont have the money to keep adding a monthly subscription service.

The whole idea is that people are ditching cable. Ditching cable can free up $50-$100+ per month depending on how many sets you have in the house.

Those paying cable are just going to keep watching Disney Channel.

 

[mmm1345]

Which I like. With cable you are paying $70/month for 95% crap. The remaining channels that you actually watch are also 95% reruns.



The whole idea is that people are ditching cable. Ditching cable can free up $50-$100+ per month depending on how many sets you have in the house.

Those paying cable are just going to keep watching Disney Channel.

I wasn't aware that all I watch on cable is the Disney Channel. Thanks for telling me that. But I guess that's obvious because it's CLEARLY the only channel available on cable.

 

[Novus John]

Marvel = Disney

I don't watch any superhero movies or tv series, I just don't enjoy any of them. The only film that I really like is Blade, which I have on DVD. Is Blade from Marvel?

I understand the concerns that other people have with Disney's actions, but it doesn't affect me much as long as other networks don't start pulling their own content from Netflix. Then we'll have a problem.

 

[2010mini]

how obnoxious. why not offer an alternative service with competitive pricing given the library size and offer benefits like the ability to stream films in theaters without making the bulk of your content exclusive to your service?

Fragmentation will be the death of this.
Eventually consumers just wont have the money to keep adding a monthly subscription service.

Well your answer is in the below quote:

Well, everyone wanted to pay for channels a la carte. Now you can.

Careful what you wish for.

 

[spinedoc77]

The thing that drives me nuts


You don't have to pay $14.99, you can pay $200 for a box and $300 for lifetime service. That's $500 for a box that most people will use for 4-5 years ... which even if you toss it meant you paid $8.33 a month for... but tivo boxes have huge resale value because of their lifetime service.... I get every other generation box, so really about every 3-4 years or so... and I usually sell them for about 70% of what I paid... so say that $500 example, I'll sell the box for so for 4 years of service\hardware I pay $150 (aka $3 a month). I'd pay 3x that to have the reliability of Tivo's iOS app, and ability to watch my home TV from anywhere on the planet.

Wow, sounds like they drastically lowered the prices for a box and the lifetime sub. It's still not worth $500 to me though, I like free better, and with better functionality IMO. I'll have to look at selling my boxes, but I always assumed it was a tough sell selling yesterday's technology. Where do you sell/list them?

 

[TechZeke]

I wasn't aware that all I watch on cable is the Disney Channel. Thanks for telling me that. But I guess that's obvious because it's CLEARLY the only channel available on cable.

You missed my point. I'm saying that even if you are paying for both Hulu and Netflix, adding a Disney subscription isn't going to break the bank like the person I was replying to was suggesting. If a family cuts cable, that opens a significant amount of monthly income, and they have the choice to pay for online the services they want. I was just using Disney as an example.

 

[EdT]

Why are you even wasting our time commenting then? Bully for you, you are a hipster and better than us mere mortals who do like cable tv.
[doublepost=1502230889][/doublepost]

Why do Chord Cutters feel a need to tell the world that you are a Chord Cutter? And do it with such anger and vitriol? Guess what most of us don't care that you cut the chord.

I think that what they want is the ability to only buy channels/shows that they actually want to watch without having to buy a lot of channels that they don't. And because they only have 20-50 channels they think it should be cheaper than the 100 plus channel plans that cable has. I'm not a Chord Cutter, because I can't use the internet reliably for streaming HD, let alone 4K TV, but there are sports and channels I'd like to watch, except that 4 out of the 5 channels that I have to subscribe to to get that one I want are either marginal sports by almost anyones definition or a sport that I am not interested in. So I pay 15-20 dollars to buy 1 channel, in essence. I don't speak Spanish, or Chinese, or Japanese or Korean, so I really don't want shows broadcast in those languages. A lot of the shows are soap operas, and I don't watch American versions of those either.

I could go on (and on and on and on) but unless someone here is really a cable exec who wants to change this all I'm doing is uselessly ranting. But I do understand the frustration.

 

[frankgrimes]

Well considering Disney has BY FAR the most gigantic movie releases every year making BILLIONS of dollars (Avengers, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain America, Frozen......), it seems your analyses is not quite right.

There is literally no movie studio bigger than Disney.

Not a fan of captain America, New Star Wars... also the newest movies weren't on Netflix anyways one had to use alternatives to watch them.

Anyhow Netflix is great, no ads, news or culture crap just straight watching what you like when and how you like it for 10 Euros a month.

Cable behemoths and their overpriced service will soon be a thing of the past

 

[RowellE]

Shoot, then they'll remove from Netflix their primetime programs that air on ABC, Freeform, etc. That'll be so sad! I'm going to miss Once Upon a Time, Grey's Anatomy and so many others when it goes off Netflix.

 

[Meandmunch]

Thats right marketplace, keep walling everything off so no one can afford any of it, making all of it irrellevant.

These consolidations will only bring cable back into fashion and increase torrent use.

 

[2010mini]

Disney owns the content, and as long as they are not breaching any existing contract, they can choose how they want to deliver said content to end users.

However, I do wonder why a publishing house would want to bear the burden/overhead of maintaining and hosting their own service when they could just let others(Apple, Netflix, whoever) do it for them?

Because they will have no control on how that content is “pushed” to the end user. Every streaming site uses it own content discovery algorithm. Disney it seems wants better marketing of its content.

 

[Meandmunch]

So many complained but so few of them understood that this is what was going to happen.

Around 25% of your cable bill each month goes to ESPN. That's right, a single channel gets a huge chunk of the money. The rest is divided amongst the rest. People are cool paying $60/month for 100 channels but when you start looking at $15 a month for just ESPN, that seems crazy to most. Thanks to bundling, you get a price that seems more reasonable as it includes far more for the money.

With unbundling, a number of things happen. First, you have less subscribers. This means that each channel has to increase their rates. ESPN can't afford to charge just $20 a month because now they have far less subscribers. So they have to increase their price in order to make the same amount.

The sad second thing is that you put a lot of channels out of business. Within your typical subscription bundle, there are plenty of channels you might not watch but some others do. With a bundled service, everyone helps pay for those. Maybe you even really enjoy one of the small channels. But now that they aren't bundled, they aren't going to make enough to survive. Say goodbye to channels like FX and others that don't have the huge viewership of the big 10 to keep them in business.

There are goods and bads to bundled TV subscriptions. But most don't understand the goods, only believing they'll be able to pay less than what cable companies charge now for even greater choice. That simply isn't true. Enjoy having subscriptions to Netflix, HBO Go, and a dozen others if you want the same choices you use to enjoy.

SPOT ON.

Yeeeah, I cut my cable bill. Yeeeeah, I'm paying more now for less...?

 

[X--X]

Every streaming site uses it own content discovery algorithm. Disney it seems wants better marketing of its content.

If there is one problem Disney doesn't have, it's that its content isn't "discovered" ;-)

 

[FelixDerKater]

In the end, all of the $9.99’s will add up to more than the corded cable bundle...

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

I feel Disney should do what they are good at, create content just like Pixar, and let someone like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. battle for the rights.

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others are doing just the opposite. They're making their own content so they don't have to pay Disney. They're making moves to cut Disney out or at very least pay them less. This is exactly why Disney has to seek other means of getting people to stream their shows.

Look at how prominently Netflix shows their own shows as suggestions and highlighted series within the Netflix interface, while Disney and others are now relegated to far less stature. Netflix knows they make far more from showing you their own content (which also hooks you in and gets you to keep paying them each month) than they do from showing you a Disney movie and paying Disney a cut.

 

[rictus007]

People believe in the magic of Disney .... my nice will make me subscribe.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

that was short
[doublepost=1502230525][/doublepost]
a la carte doesn't mean that providers can charge more than cable, at the very least should be same pricing scheme. Once everyone is a la carte only then prices should come down thanks to supply and demand.

Read my earlier summary of exactly why a la carte will not at all bring down prices and in fact makes them higher. The math is sound. Expect to pay more for each channel/network, just as the cable companies have said for years about the idea of going a la carte.

 

[chriscrowlee]

Wow, sounds like they drastically lowered the prices for a box and the lifetime sub. It's still not worth $500 to me though, I like free better, and with better functionality IMO. I'll have to look at selling my boxes, but I always assumed it was a tough sell selling yesterday's technology. Where do you sell/list them?

There's no such thing as "free" ... even if you're going to every content provider and streaming on their websites, you're still subject to ads, and to get the free content you have to authenticate with a cable subscription. Not free.

Tough selling yesterday's technology? How old are they?!?!? If they're Bolt or Roamio, they'll fetch a reasonable price. Ebay, Craigslist, Offerup, etc... tons of options. Tivo boxes with lifetime subscriptions are like iPhones\iPad\iMac, they hold their value well.

Do you happen to have a Roamio you're looking to sell? I'm in the market for one actually.

 

[Art Mark]

But isn't that what everybody wants? A la cate instead of paying one provider (be it the cable companies or netflix) for things you don't need?

/s

Yes, but it will take time to work it out. Very few content producers can offer a service of just their work. What's missing here is the notion of a 'network'. This is still better for me than paying for ESPN which I never once watched after 15 years of paying for it. What time will tell is how many individual services people WILL pay for. Disney already has networks some of which they feed with only their content (Disney Channel) and some with content from other producers (ABC). I think this is them trying to get around the cable companies legal issues as Disney can't just stream Disney Channel. So they are taking their toys and going home.