“Disney’s streaming service, Disney+, will launch on November 12th for $6.99 a month or $69.99 per year, the company confirmed on Thursday,” Julia Alexander reports for The Verge.
“Similar to Netflix, Disney+ users are greeted by rows of recommended content, new TV series or movies added to the platform, and genres. Unlike Netflix, there are five hubs that sit at the top of the page, which will bring users to designated areas for Disney’s various franchises: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic,” Alexander reports. “Disney+ will be available to stream through smart TVs, web browsers, on tablets and mobile devices, and game consoles… The streaming service has already secured deals with Roku and Sony for availability on their respective platforms.”
“All Disney+ content will be available for offline download, and the company is promising 4K HDR presentation where applicable on TVs,” Alexander reports. “Disney will also end its vault program in time for Disney+, according to a previous investors call. The vault program essentially made it impossible to buy a movie until it was released for a limited time. Now, all movies will be available to stream exclusively on Disney+, according to Iger.”
MacDailyNews Take: $69.99 per year is a no-brainer. Sign us up!
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Prices revealed at announcement. How novel.
Get that pallet of adult diapers over to Apple’s overpriced, overworked, navel-gazing colossal distraction, PRONTO!
We can’t wait to see how, or if, Apple prices Apple TV+ at launch.
And Disney has a heck of a lot more content with it’s huge library.
I’m still pretty sure Apple TV+ will be free. It’s a loss leader to get people into the Apple TV app, from which they will subscribe to additional channels and packages. (At least until they have a solid catalogue.)
How many monthly subscriptions can we all possibly have?
Cell phone
Internet
Cable
Car wash
Wine club(s)
Food prep
Kids apps
iCloud
XM Radio
Apple Music
Camera storage
Gym membership
Clothing trunk club
Razor club
Disney kids app
Disney now
Disney+
Apple games
Apple TV+
Apple news
HBO now
NFL network
Etc…
We are being subscriptioned to death. They all say, “hey, it’s only a few dollars a month”, but seem to forget we’re few dollar-ing a month to some 20 or more services. It adds up.
You know you don’t have to take ‘em right..?
also cutting cable opens up at least four or five of these direct content distributors. But he isn’t wrong, soon it will add up to more than cable yet offering far less content.
…yet. One day it will be the only option.
Well, no, not really…uhh maybe! I mean sure, if you don’t want to use your device…don’t buy the services that are already required to use all the features of your devices. Extra iCloud extra iCloud storage, for example, isn’t really an option except for very limited use cases. Apps and their subscriptions ad naseum. All of these additional fees will hurt the sales of future Apple hardware because folks won’t be able to determine the real cost of ownership and most people have a limit to their mad money expenses. Plus, it is just annoying after paying so much for any Apple device to be constantly asked to pay even more every time you click on something. Anybody who thinks this model will be appealing to the consumer needs to get out more.
Yep. It’s “the death of a thousand subs.” Lolz….
Apple was too late to this game and it’s content is too lame. Generation Y and Z are where the digital money is at for streaming – and they ain’t gonna stay up to watch Oprah and Spielberg. Disney just showed Tim how to launch a channel. Why the heck didn’t Apple just do an exclusive with disney?!
Probably because there is no reason for Disney to have signed an exclusive with Apple. This is a great example of Apple, as it is too prone to do theses days, skating to where the puck was. At one time Iger and Jobs servers close hey Jobs effectively got Iger the damn job. Equally Jobs ended up being the largest single share holder and Disney were still struggling for relevance. Ionically Pixar hoped restore that but instead of Apple taking advantage and anticipating the future possibilities they watched as a re invigored Disney they helped re vitalise, restored its reputation and jumped into a inspiring technological and creative future. Now they are left with copying a strong competitor and a company it could have once been integrally linked with in some way even owned had they wanted to, a true lost opportunity that will cost them so much more as time passes. Opportunity lost.
Probably because becoming exclusive with Apple would restrict their potential audience to primarily Apple users, a subset of their total audience. A possibility would be that Disney would like to do the opposite to Apple making Apple content exclusive to Disney+. They certainly have the content leverage and funds to ‘wait’ it out and see how Apple TV+ does for a few years.
If I were NetFlex I’d be quietly panicking…. ….they’re going up against 70 years of high quality classic content and decades of franchises they can’t come close to duplicating. No matter how much they spend.
And their ability to keep raising prices just got knee capped.
It may be a concern for Netflix, but until Disney even approaches the same data center and network capacity controlled by Netflix to ensure the reliability of their services, I doubt Netflix is doing more than keeping one eye on Disney+.
Bandwidth is a commodity. Servers can be spun up in seconds if you have the money (and Disney does). It takes years to make a high-quality television series. It takes decades to build a roster of franchises audiences love.
As Ice Cowboy said above, Disney put a serious ceiling over (perhaps under!) on the value of a Netflix monthly subscription. This has boxed in Netflix in a powerful way.
What it does to Apple, I’m not sure. It depends on what Apple’s strategy is. I suspect we didn’t see what we wanted from Apple because there’s another shoe yet to drop. Apple’s content strategy may ultimately be about selling subscriptions to others’ content.
I have Netflix, Prime and now Hulu. I will keep Prime for all the Amazon features, Netflix is on the way out and Hulu is just for the news channels and some content. As soon as another streaming service offers better/cheaper I will jump ship until I find the one I like best.
But as far as YouTube…well they seem a little toooo Googly/twitter/NYT/Facebook for me. I see this type of stuff all the time-
https://truepundit.com/youtube-hides-prageru-video-of-candace-owens-testimony-in-restricted-mode/
Here in lies the reason you keep your mouth’s shut until you’re ready to strike. All Apple did by pre announcing their TV service was to allow the competition to react and strike back first.
Bwahahahahaha.
Pipeline Timmy, always bringing his A game.
Bwahahahahaha.
I’ve read that only limited premium content will be included in the 6.99.
You will have to pay more for that. Just like Amazon or Netflix doesn’t allow you to access view all the Star Wars anthology (cos it can’t afford it or isn’t allowed to show it). Disney will make you pay more to see the vast majority of its premium content.
I’m a fan – but I’m not paying – again – for the same content on a different platform. Long live Netflix and let the rest burn… including Apple TV+ or what ever its called.
I’m going back to VHS – at least then I can watch the unbasterdisted version of Star Wars.
Solo shot first!
While I understand the feeling that there are too many subscription services, I will be signing up for Disney+. I have Netflix and Prime now. Prime is staying for sure because of the free shipping. Netflix – maybe.
Disney+ at $70 a year is a no-brainer. All of Marvel, all of Lucasfilm, all of Pixar for the cost of two family pizza nights.
Disney has enough cash on hand they can afford to take a loss on the streaming product for a few years while they build a subscriber base, don’t expect this price to last it isn’t sustainable.