Also Disney bundles in live sports coverage in some countries.
it's the point of your life where disposable income is easily spent to make them happy and you look at products not with respect to shelf life, but with respect to how much the kid will _actually_ enjoy them even if for only a brief time
subscriptions to disney+ are a 'no brainer', the content is there, _something_ will fit the bill without you even having to do the mental analysis
Two hour drone shipping! :)
Netflix is now an ad/ tech company.
There's nothing I hate more than logging into Netflix after a month and everything I was vaguely interested in has now completely disappeared and been replaced by even more half-assed looking projects.
Also, shout out to Disney for actually making it easy to restart a show from the beginning. I don't understand how Netflix has dropped so much money into children's programming without doing any sort of user testing to find out that kids generally like watching the same shows again.
Andor was trash. Obi-Wan was trash. She-Hulk started out bad, got better, then killed itself in the last episode.
Most of the marvel stuff has been terrible compared to Netflix's Jessica Jones, Dare Devil, Luke Cage.
And there are a lot of gems in there too.
It is just simple and we have to acknowledge it: people like watching trash shows.
Right now, Netflix just forces you to watch certain shows by showing them front and centre. Conscious UI/UX choices to mask limited selections.
Say what you will about traditional networks, they have occasionally have executives with eyeballs who watch things and say "this show sucks and needs to be fixed" or "this show is much better than it looks and may succeed with a bit more attention".
When hotstar was bundled with Hulu - hulu suddenly got huge infusion of Indian movies and shows. Nothing Netflix has even comes close.
I wonder also, if they are counting hotstar, which is pretty big in India.
Having said that - I personally find content on disney+ boring and stale. Some Marvel and Star War spin offs are okay, but most are meh. I don't know how to put it, but disney+ is trying too hard to en-cash popularity of existing franchise and I believe lacks depth.
Netflix while has uneven programming has/had shows which are pretty good and break new ground(IMO). Queen's Gambit, Dragon Prince, Arcana etc are pretty good. They have also wasted money on the whole witcher show and their "original" movies are by and large meh.
"We want to watch 'The Beach', please."
OK let's go to disneyplus.com and type in "Bluey" (no search by episode name). There are 3 seasons available. I can see five episode titles at a time.
Hmm, how do I see more episodes? Oh right, if I hover my mouse over episode 6, a right arrow is visible. Let's tap that one...two...three..four times, here we go, s01e26 The Beach.
There are about 50 episodes per season, so good luck finding s02e45. Also, the order in which they are shelved on Disney Plus sometimes varies versus what's shown in Web searches for the episode order.
It is a very strange contrast to have such high quality and garbage next to each other.
Also the restart show works, but not a whole series… it will still sometimes get confused and jump ahead because you watched future shows.
the "half-assed" projects are the only thing that has me coming back. Netflix in contrast to a lot of the other services still has a decent amount in particular foreign and original IP. Most recent example, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, that would not be on Disney+. I just don't care about the 50th take on Star Wars. Given the numbers apparently I'm the only one on the planet but I just don't understand it.
But I’d say that HBO takes the cake for unique shows with consistent quality that are - most importantly - allowed to run to completion. My go-to example is The Leftovers. What kind of network would ever greenlight that kind of show, let alone have it run for three whole seasons to its natural conclusion?
Near as I can tell, Netflix just plain...isn't good at content. Or I think more accurately, has been getting chronically shafted by trash-tier writers.
Does it really? (Serious question.) We got Disney because of the Disney part but I was pleasantly surprised by how much other big name content is on there.
I'm hardly highbrow in my viewing habits and enjoy a good blockbuster movie or popular show as much as anyone. I do like to spend my limited viewing time on stuff that isn't complete junk though.
I've all but stopped even checking Netflix now because the odds of anything on there being Netflix-made junk that I won't even finish watching are so high. Meanwhile I'm probably working through a couple of different shows and have several movies waiting at any given time on Disney. I suspect our Netflix subscription will be ending soon as I don't think anyone else in the house is watching anything on there either right now.
As a long time subscriber, it's got me thinking about only subscribing a few months a year; since I'd usually rather wait to binge a show anyway...
Why they can't link account age and binge-ability isn't clear to me; guessing something to do with contracts.
I'm baffled at how much of a pain this is. Don't show him more stuff, he very clearly wants to watch what he's chosen; yes again, what do you want from me?
With Netflix you get a mixed bag of Stranger Things + stuff that most folks expect to be dropped after 2 seasons.
When Netflix pivoted into content, they needed to get creatives and passionate people in charge rather than the tech-world PMs they ended up putting in charge.
Disney might not be perfect, but for the MCU and Jon Favreau-adjacent Star Wars stuff, theres a distinct respect for story telling and characters that just totally missing from some of the high budget Netflix stuff.
Properties like MillarWorld just have the soul sucked straight out of them in Netflix's hands
And Netflix continues its long slide into irrelevance. I’ve was a subscriber for many years, but cut it last month. Too much low-quality programming and it continually recommends shows I’ve watched previously and refuses to allow Apple to index it’s catalog so it appears in alongside other providers inside Apple TV.
I hate this so much.
I understand the idea. “We want you to come to Netflix for all your needs”. Makes sense from their perspective.
But I’M the user. My Apple TV helps me keep track of everything I’m watching right now. New seasons of shows I watch pop-up so I know they are out. I don’t have to check 7 apps every few days to stay on top.
But Netflix won’t participate. You know what happened to me? I forgot about it! Instead of constantly reminding me it exists by seeing it in my Up Next section (like Hulu, HBO, Disney+, etc) it’s buried under a pile of other content I’m constantly reminded about.
Terrible user-hostile decisions. Just like hiding your queue of what you were watching last to promote The Floor Is Lava: Season 7: Back to School Adventures or whatever I wasn’t going to watch anyways.
The (movie) streaming wars have content as a differentiator in the market, but it doesn't seem like Spotify/Apple music is effected.
Assuming both the RIAA and MPAA members both don't care about consumer complaints that much, why do record companies not start their own streaming services?
I assume it's easier than making a movie streaming service, and it's basically the same business model right?
Why aren't we reading these headlines about Top Dawg vs Spotify instead of Disney vs Netflix.
I thought Disney streaming service now has more paying customers than Netflix. Still not the case.
Netflix doesn’t have the breadth of monetisable IP that the mouse has. The latest season of The Crown is basically scraping the barrel of royal family drama. Stranger Things has a season or two left. If I had Netflix stock I’d sell.
I really hope not. It’s possible the 2010s will be seen as a golden of the TV shows where there was so much competition for eyeballs that many shows were made which otherwise might not have been. Niche demographics seemed catered to which otherwise might not have.
Moving back to Disney owning everything and other channels not being able to compete… that’d be sad. Some people aren’t really excited about super hero shows or Star Wars anymore.
Netflix thought they we being smart by doing this, but they may have simply upped their content risk and simultaneously convinced top talent to work with other streamers.
It's important to note that Disney pushes hard for buying these 3 together as a package for a reduced price, therefore basically tripling some customer numbers.
Since the bundle includes ESPN+ we have an upper bound on how big that "some" can possibly be: 24.3 million according to https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/disney-plus-subscribers-164...
The actual bundle numbers will be less than that of course, but without knowing how many people subscribe exclusively to ESPN+ (i.e. not as part of the bundle) we don't know by how much.
It's usually an expression, but you may, in fact, be the only one.
Prime is the UHF of streaming platforms carrying the WTBS catalog of content.
It's free, towards the end of the dial, and almost all re-runs with the occasional trophy showpiece.
Yes, the art style is similar. The animation quality isn't remotely close. The environments aren't remotely close. Clone Wars environments, especially the outdoor ones, are extremely bland and repetitive.
Clone Wars was exactly what I was referring to, and upon your recommendation I did a side-by-side comparison, and you're definitely right about the quality. The general rendering quality (especially the environments) have not only improved from a technical standpoint, but it's also clear that more care has been put into the work.
I guess my only complaint is the reuse of the style from the Clone Wars series. To play devil's advocate to myself, I didn't really follow Clone Wars. I was only aware of it. I can imagine that long time fans would be happy to see the style continue.
Edit: typo
1: https://www.gq.com/story/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house...
Back in 2010 it tried new things and was quite affordable.
But it became a run of the mill cabel network, and not even a good one, many shows simply dissapear all the time.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
Edit: discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33526360
There's really nothing that interesting in these streaming platforms anymore.
Disney can just buy out content from competing services and HN will cheer them on with how amazing they are when they prevented other services from streaming the same content.
Very, very true. Disney's magic is their strength as a content brand. Not just their core products; with ESPN you know exactly what it's going to be, from live sports to documentaries.
Netflix made an amazing pivot from physical to digital distribution, and that will be studied in business schools forever.
But they failed to pivot from digital distribution to content. They knew they needed to, they spent billions of dollars trying to, but they didn't understand that content has to be the primary brand identity. Distribution is an implementation detail.
There is a niche that no one fills, that I'm hoping Netflix shifts into: "Popular series was canceled? Let's pick it up and give it a final season!"
They're doing it with Manifest right now. It was on NBC and canceled after 3 out of 5 planned seasons, and the creator was trying to figure out how he could finish the plot as a single movie, then Netflix bought it and gave him an entire 20 episodes to finish the plot - almost the entire two missing seasons. First half was just released a few days ago.
- all the fox content which is a massive range of genres
- Disney animation and live action stuff (including Pixar)
- Marvel and Star Wars
- national geographic documentaries
- a bunch of shows on Hulu or from FX
The range is actually quite a bit higher overall.
In the US these are split out over multiple services but in most of the rest of the world, Disney merged it in to the one app.
I currently have the latest Pixar film in my recommended list next to The Bear and Reservation Dogs.
15 is nothing tho compared to all of their flops.
if anyone likes cartoons checkout: centaurworld - awesome wrap up on the last episode dogs in space Maya and the three dead end Cuphead over the moon Klaus
Somehow, the video landscape has shaken out to have generalist (Netflix,maybe Amazon) and specialty content, not all that different from cable. So people are used to it that way. And come to think of it, radio generally plays music from all record companies, so there is a precedent there too.
With more fragmentation, particularly with Netflix losing it's generalist position and having more self-produced crap, I suspect that downloading movies is going to become viable for more people
Interestingly enough, the record labels - or at least Sony and Universal - actually do have minority ownership in Spotify. I would not be surprised if that was specifically pushed to get those labels on-board with Spotify's really low royalty rates.
As for why they don't do it today... my guess is that the exclusive content model just isn't as much of a draw for music as it is for movies and TV shows. Or, more specifically, we don't listen to music like we watch TV shows. Imagine if someone just made a list of episodes of Netflix shows they liked and watched them in a random order - that'd be insane. But that's how we handle music all the time. Pulling your music off Spotify means you lose out on radio and playlist royalties, because nobody can make playlists across streaming apps. You'd have to switch into the one streaming service that has the latest Taylor Swift album, then switch back to the one that has the Sony BMG catalog, and so on. Nobody would do this.
The record labels pulled off the ultimate coup right when technology was making them irrelevant. Ethically, they should have negotiated for a larger revenue sharing with the artists, and then taken their percentage from that. But they realized they could make far more money by forcing Spotify to give them equity in exchange for screwing over the artists.
The end result is that the record labels simultaneously were negotiating supposedly on behalf of the creators against the streaming platforms, while simultaneously becoming owners of the streaming platforms. They agreed to terrible terms for the artists, in exchange for making themselves the beneficiaries of the crooked deal.
People these days usually don't listen to entire albums, but to individual songs as part of playlists. If all record labels created their own streaming services, it would break this experience and people would go back to piracy again to get it back.
Further, music is something that usually exist in the background while people do other things, whereas movies/shows requires attention to benefit from the content.
Service like Netflix or Disney+ can manage to create exclusivities because people watch episodes of a show in sequence due to the nature of the medium and are emotionaly engaged/invested in the story/characters, so they are essentially "captive" of that serialized content for its duration.
And that makes it harder to get convince someone to subscribe to your service because quality is not important for background noise. Even a unique song gets old after listening to it more than a few times on loop. That leaves quantity as your sole selling point, which if it is only your catalog is not much.
Maybe they could make an organized effort with other record companies to pull out of Spotify/Apple Music/YouTube Music all at the same time. But any of the smaller companies wouldn't be interested in that because it would make it harder for them to compete because they have a smaller catalog and less money to spend on the tech.
As a consumer I very much prefer the Spotify/Apple Music model. I don't want to have 20 subscriptions. I want to go into Blockbuster or some other video retailer and get any movie and pick what I want. I don't want to think about studios and distributors and rely on external services to even figure out what to use (in Germany: https://werstreamt.es which tells me where I can watch/download)
The content probably works better for film streamers too. If you have to change apps every time you finish a 3 minute song to listen to the next one you probably would look for a different solution, but film is a much longer commitment so switching services after watching is less of a hassle.
For video a session is generally one movie or a bunch of episodes of the same TV show, so you can sit in one service for a long time.
But for music, you'd either spend lot of time hopping between services OR you are forced into making compromises (e.g., do you listen to the classic rock radio station on the service that has rights to rolling stones, or the app that has rights to led zeppelin)?
Compare the fact that people used to pay for (individual!) cable TV channels, but there was no equivalent for radio - a few people did pay for satellite radio, but I don't think you ever got people signing up for the premium package in the same way they did on TV.
So this is a total guess but as far as I know radio stations have always played all music. As far as I know there’s never been Sony stations and EMI stations and such. Maybe with original programming like soaps and game shows long ago or talk shows more recently but never music.
On the other hand TV sort of started siloed. Maybe because of radio consolidation? But CBS had CBS stuff, NBC had NBC, etc. Cable kind of continued that (outside of syndication and reruns).
I just can’t imagine listening to a BMG station. I don’t have any clue what label(s) my favorite artists are on.
1) There's so much more producer variety in music than in video, even at the top of the charts.
2) Music listening habits are very conducive to variety. In the time I watch a single Marvel movie, I could have listened to songs from 10+ different record labels.
There's no parallel in movies. But it would be interesting to see the actors of star wars in a play that tries to recreate the movie.
For some reason Netflix seems to think it’s 2009 and they’re still untouchable. Like “no one would ever leave us. We’re Netflix. We are streaming”.
And it’s really hurting them.
bluey "the beach" episode
"Muddy trucks please"
Me types "muddy trucks kids show".
Exact show is in the top 5 and you have the hover to play snippet feature that gives the kids an idea if its the show they wanted to see.
I get the bundle for free from Verizon but never login. Thanks for the reminder that it also includes National Geographic, can't remember if the original Cosmos series were produced by them. Will log in to browse the catalog.
Might there be some diamonds in the rough? Sure. The Expanse seemed to do well enough with its second chance on Prime Video after Syfy cancelled it after 3 seasons. But that seems to be an exception rather than the rule.
It is: https://www.looper.com/274997/the-secret-behind-netflixs-per...
And to think these are supposed to be opposites... When Netflix started doing their own productions, I think everybody understood it was the right business decision - to make them less dependent on big studios. But they spectacularly failed. Apart from a few shows everything else is so generic, there is no character in it. It is as if they were afraid of experimenting, of adding some creativity, of being a failure. Well it's all just uninteresting - it turns our I prefer to watch interesting free content on Youtube than supposedly premium content on Netflix.
I personally have Never had any connection issues with Disney, Netflix, HBO Max or other streaming services.
IME, Netflix still stands heads and shoulders above the rest in terms of UI quality, functionality, reliability, and speed. I've often thought that they should license out their stack. My ranking for apps (which I've used for at least six months), would be Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max, with Prime and Max often infuriatingly bad.
(/me busy binge watching the latest Dragon Prince release).
But it is not nearly as bad as Netflix's track record of killing shows with cliffhanger second-season endings...
But Andor has been great! Obj-Wan was ok.
Netflix's JJ, DD, LC, Defenders, were also great.
Have you _watched_ recent Netflix content? It's truly abysmal.
On the other hand, I have zero interest in superhero or starwars content. Disney is basically for children.
Another comment named some of the better recent content, which to my discredit I grouped as abysmal when it was actually decent.
But any of the Sandler movies? Etc. Etc.
Shocking!
Each of these have various things I liked.
Not that I watched much Netflix original content either, but it’s at least got some variety to it.
She Hulk is an engaging legal comedy in the style of Ally McBeal, with Marvel elements.
Both get better after the first episode.
It’s a slow start though for the first 2 episodes.
She Hulk, I hated the first episode, but it kinda came into its own and I ended up really enjoying it, but the last episode absolutely ruined the whole thing for me.
It doesn't look like that's right.
My reply was incorrect, and I'm not trying to move the goalposts, but it has to be said that the studios you listed have animated many of what would be considered "western" shows: Ben 10, Spiderman, and Animaniacs show up in the credits for Mua Film and Tiger Animation.
My intent was not to focus on the American aspect as much as the "this is very much a western production, unlike what Netflix is trying to imply." I should have worded it better.