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Disney+ to Start Cracking Down on Password Sharing in November

Cracking down on password sharing probably won't boost (or reduce) revenue significantly as these folks, if they can't get it for free, won't pay anyway. But introducing adverts will boost piracy. I know plenty of people who subscribe to cable or any streaming service that has ads but then download illegally to get an ad-free version of a programme. And the more widespread this becomes, the more likely people are to think 'hmm, maybe I'll save money and not subscribe anymore, given downloading the episode is one click anyway'.

Disney are treading a fine line.

Spotify (and Apple Music/Itunes to an extent) almost eliminated music piracy with a one-stop shop, no adverts, reasonable price and mass adoption of technology.

Streaming services competing against each other, raising prices, introducing adverts, making it hard to watch their stuff legally... None of this is going to go down well. And once younger people (who are most likely to pirate) get into the habit of not paying for media (again) then they'll carrying on doing so as they get older.
 
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We recently ditched Disney+, we still have Netflix and Apple TV+ but I am considering getting rid of Netflix too, at least for a while until more content arrives.

Realistically we have everything through the 'Firestick' but the lip sync is often out slightly and the audio is 2.0 so its not really comparable. I have about £2k worth of Sonos 5.1 in the lounge, I really don't want to watch stuff which is 1080p and 2.0 audio.

We liked Disney+ but the kids don't care about the quality or the lip sync or the rubbish audio from the Firestick so that was an easy decision. I think the best option for Netflix is to cancel and sign up again in 6 months so you have some new content to watch, 75% on there is absolute guff that no other platform would even entertain.
 
Streaming services haven’t been profitable and maybe they never will.

Perhaps the best play was simply not to play to begin with. I think Apple made the right call at the start to be extremely disciplined with their content spend, prioritise quality over quantity, and not bother with a back catalogue.
 
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I am willing to pay for actual physical products like a smartphone, but not for digital content. I know it costs money to produce, but digital content is actually less than air, which still is physical and necessary to breathe.
 
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Really not bothered by this, Disney has crashed and burned and its HUGE loss in profits and share price proves it, it is entirely their own fault by following the political stance they have, and incredibly bad writing. When they start making decent programmes and films then I’ll use it. I share at the moment and will not pay for it if they block it. I will pay for Netflix though.
 
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Stromos said:
At this point I just use Pluto TV free with ads. The paid services have them too now so what’s the point?

I live by myself so all of these services don’t acknowledge me as a customer. If it takes 4+ streams to watch 4K I’m not interested.

Similar to what many of you are all saying about sharing I will not pay for four people to subsidize your costs having a family. Not paying for a family plan living alone.

When these services charge per stream I’ll buy one cheaper 4K stream for myself.

Streaming services currently tailor to families that need babysitters so they don’t need to parent. Eventually they will run out of subscribers and have to acknowledge us.
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I’ve found some old gems on Pluto I have to admit lol. Freevee is also good.
 
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I think the inherent issue with Disney+ is that what was supposed to be their greatest strength (powerful brands in the form of Marvel and Star Wars) have now become their greatest liability.

People are conditioned to expect marvel and Star Wars content to be of a certain scale and quality, and the amount of work that goes into making it work is simply not economically feasible for a streaming service, where people expect a steady diet of content (which in turn means it needs to be cheap if the studios are to be able to churn them out en-mass).

A lot of the content I have watched so far feel like they were 2-hour movies made to stretch out to 6-8 episode tv series, and the result is lots of padding and filler, which just further makes it a chore to work through, especially if you want the accompanying movies to make sense.

I don't know if "woke" is the right word for it, or if it's simply due to poor scriptwriting, but I haven't found Disney content enjoyable in a long time. Something just feels off. Like the magic is gone. For example, I couldn't bring myself to finish watching any of their phase 4 movies in one sitting. I had to break up my watching of "Eternals" over 4 viewings, and still each half-hour interval felt like a chore.

Secret Invasion is another example of what could have been an awesome movie, demoted to a tv series, with none of the budget to bring in any of the OG avengers cast. It should have been an animated film where you can have characters like Thor and Spiderman return without having to pay any of the OG actors.

It would have been okay if Disney+ was unprofitable if they could use it to help grow these brands and make it up via sales of merchandise and theme park visits, and it seems like Disney has managed to screw even that up phenomenally.
 
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Why is it described as a "crackdown"? It's a legitimate service you pay for. There is no loophole - you are permitted to set up accounts for other people and share at present.

In reality Disney+ are removing the sharing service option.
 
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So all these services are no longer portable? You can't use them while traveling??? I've never had anyone else use my streaming accounts but apparently I can no longer use my service while traveling, RV, hotel whatever........

Does that also apply if I want to use the service at another home I have? Again no one else uses my service but me and spouse.

This doesn't work if those are truly the terms they are trying to enforce.

So 20th century.........
 
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TundraKing said:
So all these services are no longer portable? You can't use them while traveling??? I've never had anyone else use my streaming accounts but apparently I can no longer use my service while traveling, RV, hotel whatever........

Does that also apply if I want to use the service at another home I have? Again no one else uses my service but me and spouse.

This doesn't work if those are truly the terms they are trying to enforce.

So 20th century.........
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The shareholders must earn a profit! (Spoken with a very dry and sarcastic sense of humour.) The shareholders are the real Disney customers, the plebs paying for content are the product, not the customer. In order to make their investors happy they have to squeeze more from their product.
 
Boeingfan said:
The shareholders must earn a profit! (Spoken with a very dry and sarcastic sense of humour.)
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Why? Never understood bashing shareholders. You do realize some of the biggest shareholders on the planet, including the U.S., are pension funds for government employees, teachers, health care workers, first responders? Federal Retirement Thrift (federal employees) is almost $900 billion dollars in AUM. CalPERS (California public employees) is nearly half a trillion U.S. dollars in AUM. Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, TIAA, has $1.2 trillion in assets under management.

You know what these pension funds are? Shareholders. For tens of millions of retirees.
 
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How does this affect those who received these services as part of a cell phone plan? For example, Verizon provides "free" Disney/Hulu/ESPN if you have a certain tier cell phone plan and is shared between all plan members.
 
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Velin said:
Why? Never understood bashing shareholders. You do realize some of the biggest shareholders on the planet, including the U.S., are pension funds for government employees, teachers, health care workers, first responders? Federal Retirement Thrift (federal employees) is almost $900 billion dollars in AUM. CalPERS (California public employees) is nearly half a trillion U.S. dollars in AUM. Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, TIAA, has $1.2 trillion in assets under management.

You know what these pension funds are? Shareholders. For tens of millions of retirees.
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Exactly, and they must earn a return. No investors, no company.
 
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jayducharme said:
I don't understand how they could post a half-billion dollar loss on content they already own. How are they accruing those losses? From paying too much to produce original content? They could easily lean on their extensive back catalogue for many years.
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I’d rather they not rely on their back catalog. I would stop subscribing if that were the case. The back catalog is a nice extra, but not why I subscribe.

They make mostly expensive shows and don’t show ads. They can get away with charging a bit more.
 
cawgijoe said:
How does this affect those who received these services as part of a cell phone plan? For example, Verizon provides "free" Disney/Hulu/ESPN if you have a certain tier cell phone plan and is shared between all plan members.
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They are probably just looking at TV streaming.
 
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whitby said:
I have never understood why password sharing was considered legitimate on a paid for service. I know Netflix actively encouraged the practice for a while, which makes it difficult to accept them removing the privilege. However in this case it was never a legitimate option and we should be prepared to pay for an ad free service. Now if they add ads. then it is a different matter because I will never pay a company to deliver advertising to my house and the service should be free.
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Cable TV has ads, even though you pay for the service. Netflix has an ads tier, Disney + is rolling one out as well.

All of these services that were supposed to be enticing to cut cable are now resorting back to the ways of cable.

Oh, and not everyone pays separately for streaming services. Lots of carriers and companies offer them as part of their service.
 
scheinderrob said:
i pirate all my media anyways, this doesn't bother me.
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I prefer to support media I care about. As long as they are not requiring bundling, year long contracts, or ads, I prefer the legal route. That is most media these days. Same thing with Music. All my music is legal now that the industry adopted a sane model.
 
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fmillion said:
Why not a family plan that offers multiple households?

$15.99 for one household
$19.99 for two households
$22.99 for three
or something... up to some maximum.

You keep all of them under the same user/pass to discourage people using this discount beyond families and trusted friends.

Like a per-household additional charge that is still less than the other person getting their own subscription outright? Think of it like how people add a friend, partner, etc. to their phone plan since splitting the cost of a two-line plan is usually cheaper than a single user plan.

Streaming services used to explicitly charge for "more screens" - I'm sure this is part of why people felt sharing was OK, because to them they were paying more to allow someone else to use their account.

All in all though, this is the consequence of every single media company deciding they need to do their own streaming service. Netflix will tell you - running the infrastructure to support streaming is expensive. It would have made so much more sense in the long term if companies just let a handful of providers handle the streaming stuff and license their content, like with cable TV. It would have been better for consumers too. Easy to budget, consistent experience, no "which app do I open to watch ___", no "We can't carry ___ anymore, go pay an extra $15 to subscribe to ___ to see it", and so on. Instead, media companies saw what Netflix did, saw their success, and stupidly believed "let's just tell Netflix to screw off and start our own service!" Not realizing that Netflix's success (and the success of ANY media platform like this) was content - specifically the wide variety of content from many different sources. Imagine if you had to sign up for "Disney Cable" just to watch Disney, then you also needed to sign up for "CBS Cable", "Paramount Cable", etc. each with its own cable box, TV interface, etc. Cable would never have worked. Too bad the executives were so focused on potential short-term gains and not on long-term success...
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‘Expensive’ is subjective. Perhaps a more appropriate term would be ‘more than they care to pay’, which we all know is zero.
 
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