Disney has so much less content, and I really don't mind it.
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than logging into Netflix after a month and everything I was vaguely interested in has now completely disappeared and been replaced by even more half-assed looking projects.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.
They’re original stuff is often so incredibly generic and uninspiring. They might have changed how they display shows recently, but I swear there was a period of time not long ago when the main image for a show would only have a single person with a nondescript background. It felt like the whole thing was algorithmically generated.
> They’re original stuff is often so incredibly generic and uninspiring.
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 don't think it helps generalising either platform. There's no way you can say all of Netflix content is bad. There's really good content coming out like Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Arcane, Dark, Enola Holmes, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Sandman and so on. No other platform invests in anime in my region like Netflix does and considering Crunchyroll doesn't operate here, it's a blessing to finally have a legal way to watch a bunch of them
If you have been Star Wars fan since 70s with detail knowledge, then Andor and Obi-Wan were sub-par at best. She-Hulk is quite terrible if you know the comics background. As new age of PC-ness with emphasis on wokeness these days, it is quite good especially the 4th wall breakout in last episode. Fear Street, Escape, Koreans and anime such as Castlevania on Netlifx are very refreshing as compare to westernized-only content on Disney+. By the way, my Disney+ is free from some local popular deal. Mamy I know also on free. Plus multiple subscription to Espn and Hulu. So the number of subscribers are likely heavy double or triple counted.
For the record, while Netflix really pushed the anime angle, Castlevania is actually an entirely American production. It was written, directed, and animated entirely in America by Americans.
You're right, my bad: Wikipedia only mentions them in the "animation" section of the side panel, while the actual article only mentions Frederator and Powerhouse.
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.
Like I know ratings aren't everything... but She-Hulk is so bad it's below Matrix Revolutions and almost close to the kinds of ratings that Neil Breen movies would get.
What on earth did you like about Andre, Obi-wan, and especially She-Hulk? I didn’t even get through the first episode of any of them. So I guess they might pick up but I don’t have much hope.
Not that I watched much Netflix original content either, but it’s at least got some variety to it.
To be honest, the first Andor episode is really slow and I also almost dropped it right there, but the rest of the show is actually quite good (so far).
Andor I have 2 episodes left to finish, ah I feel its so slow and drawn out.
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.
I recently started watching their original show called 'Inventing Anna'. It was like a max 4 episode content elongated to 10 episodes. This has always been a problem with traditional TV, however differentiating the channels, content was ironically easier then.
Right now, Netflix just forces you to watch certain shows by showing them front and centre. Conscious UI/UX choices to mask limited selections.
I'm sure that Netflix has good shows. But they themselves don't even seem to care anymore.
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".
I mostly agree tho there are some decent ones. I liked both enola homes movies for instance. but that's the ones I can think of off of the top of my head.
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.
My least favorite disneyplus.com experience is using the desktop site to try to find an episode of Bluey which the kids are asking for.
"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.
>and been replaced by even more half-assed looking projects
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?
Ironically, they just cancelled Westworld before the intended final season. Not exactly a "consistent quality" show, but HBO does cancel some stuff, too.
But it is not nearly as bad as Netflix's track record of killing shows with cliffhanger second-season endings...
Last 2 Westworld seasons were very hard to get excited about. Wouldn’t be surprised if viewership dropped significantly. Netflix likely just calculated that they can buy 50 shows for the price of filming the final season.
I discovered a gem yesterday in HBO. The Outsider. Ben Mendelson and a small role from Jason Bateman. Feels like a true detective season well done like the first. How is this show not front and center in the homepage?
ATT has already fired the original crew of HBO executives that curated HBO’s selection, and now that the reality TV show sellers are the bosses, I doubt they will want to take the chances that the old HBO bosses had taken.
You aren't the only one, but this year has seen both streamers take an axe to a lot of their interesting pieces, particularly for kids: Amphibia, Ghost City, The Owl House, Hilda, Baby Sitter's Club, and Kid Cosmic all off the top of my head.
Lol - you are not alone. Netflix has weird stuff and in a good way. Ironically - some of their biggest/big name shows are also some of the worst (I am looking at Witcher series), but as a sci-fi fan, Netflix is pretty good.
Netflix's animation successes are basically where Netflix gets the distribution rights and someone else does the entire thing (this is what Edgerunners did - and yeah it was great).
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.
Disney also owns awesome legacy IP; superheros, star wars, pixar and disney movies. It's also a lot cheaper and indeed less bloated. Netflix has zero such legacy content and it's more expensive; soon even harder to use with them locking down sharing!
Netflix is also doling out shows a few episodes a week to keep people from subscribing, binging, and unsubscribing. That works fine for something like Stranger Things but they're even doing it for shows no one is subscribing to see. Frankly, the ability to binge a show is like decanting a wine or heating sake. It can make a mediocre show a lot better. Taking away that ability should be used with caution.
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.
The only source we have that it's a rumor is Netflix. Netflix is also my source: Several shows that were released in bulk for previous seasons are releasing between 1 and 3 episodes per week for their current seasons.
True, I am relying on their statement. That said, my personal experience is that Netflix is generally still binge-able while every other streaming service is not. Maybe you and I are watching different content.
I don't know how you compared using Disney+ to Netflix and came to the conclusion that it's less bloated. In my experience on a Roku, D+ is SLOW, it takes forever to do anything from loading up, just browsing, thumbnails populating, or actually starting a show.
Netflix is bloated with tons and tons content that does not already have a built in audience/rabid fanbase like Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and Disney classic has. With Disney I click through and see lots of shows with well known characters with decades of familiarity (legacy characters/content). Netflix I click through and have no idea what 90% of the content is via clicking through.
I personally have Never had any connection issues with Disney, Netflix, HBO Max or other streaming services.
Re: app issues, I've had HBO Max crash on me about 100x over the last year'ish - no exaggeration. This was across LG C1, Roku, PS4, Xbox Series X, and Android. It's improved substantially over the last couple of months, but it's still the most likely app to have problems. I would have cancelled a long time ago, but the content kept me hanging on. It looks like I'll be cancelling with the Discovery acquisition.
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.
> 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.
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?
Disney has decades of experience with content that the whole family can enjoy. Netflix has a decade of experience with...AWS
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
> 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.
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.
> But they failed to pivot from digital distribution to content.
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.
No one fills that niche because finishing out shows that were otherwise cancelled, is unlikely to be a growth market. At best, you attract a dwindling set of diehard fans, but the reason the show was cancelled is probably because the audience for it wasn't growing, or the economics of producing the show could not be justified against the size of audience attracted.
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.
The problem with Disney is that if you are not into… well Disney stuff then there is nothing to watch. On HBO you just get quality, in many different genres and formats.
Hulu has some good content. Disney+ is a well designed service, but I am just not into their storytelling/world-building (super heroes, Star Wars, etc). Original Star Wars was fairly watchable sci-fi, but modern Disney is unbearably banal (for adults, still probably good for kids).
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.
idk about you but I know of atleast 15 gems made by Netflix. but majority are cartoons.
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
Everything about Klaus seems like something I wouldn't like... I'm iffy about Santa movies, I definitely don't like the "backstory which explains every minor detail"... and yet, it's fantastic. It somehow breaks through schlocky fake sincerity and makes it to real sincerity in a way that most shows & movies don't.
Centaurworld was really something else, very... Gen Z in its sensibilities. We enjoyed it a lot. The Cuphead show is way better than it has any right to be too. Dogs in Space seemed like fun but it didn't land with my kids for whatever reason, so we haven't watched much.
Not surprising, Disney (plus ESPN and HULU) is bundled with several cell phone plans in the US. I subscribe because it’s “free”.
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.
> 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.
Netflix is naturally afraid of giving Apple, a trillion dollar competitor, access to their viewing data and help accelerate Apple's growth in the area.
Here's a question I've had and maybe someone from HN can answer it.
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.
The streaming services only work if they are "better" than just downloading the content for free. My guess is that music has a much lower barrier, both in terms of availability and in people's tolerance to listen only to parts of a catalogue divided along record company lines, so if only 25% your top 40 (or 90s or whatever) was available on SONY Streaming, you'd just say fuck it and download it.
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
I think a lot of the reason is length. With movies you get disappointed once per 2 hours of content if you don't find what you searched for. With songs, it's 10-20 times per hour.
They tried. They failed so horribly that the RIAA basically granted Apple a monopoly on digital music for the next half a decade. Steve Jobs had to basically slap the labels around a lot just so that they wouldn't limit how many iPods you could sync your music to or make you buy a subscription. Music streaming was tried by basically every other player in the business and failed until Spotify pushed for ad-supported free streams.
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.
Your guess is close to correct but with some critical differences regarding the power dynamics and incentives between Spotify and record labels.
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.
I think the difference is how music is consumed. When was the last time you just sat down and listened to music? The same way you would with a book or a stream? For me, music is just something I put on in the background rather than something I'm devoting my full attention to. This makes one song very interchangeable with another song
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.
It is an interesting topic why those markets are separate. My assumption is that music is way more casual and affiliation to labels and distributors is a lot smaller than with video. Some big stars aside there is lots of interchangeability ... that song not available, well then I listen to something else, but if a Star Trek movie isn't there I won't watch Star Wars. But that's speculation.
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)
I don't think people would use a music streaming service that doesn't have all the content they want. I think the record companies agreed to the streaming deal because they saw that piracy was a legitimate issue, and the business strategy probably just worked better than for film. $5 or $10 a month per user adds up to an acceptable amount of revenue for music labels + streaming services to split, but there's just more money in film so the price for a universal streamer would be bonkers and no one would pay.
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.
I think this the main reason -- it really just comes down to the number of unique pieces of content a user will stream in a session.
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)?
People mostly aren't willing to pay for music exclusives. (Tidal tried to make a go of it, but that hasn't really gone well for them). People are willing to sign up for Amazon just to watch The Grand Tour or whatever, but there's no real analogue to that in the music world. Maybe because a single album or even a single artist is too "small" to make an impact?
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.
You can't launch a new service without exclusives. Exclusives are much less effective in music than they are in TV/movies.
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.
The music industry was losing out on tons of money until Spotify and music streaming services came up. Unlike movies, I think people like to have all their music in one place so if they cut Spotify out of the middle then instead of people moving over to subscribe to them, people would just stop listening to their music or go back to piracy.
Best guess is that the business model in music has moved to live performance. It's important for stars to get their music heard by the most people so that they can have the greatest demand for concert tickets.
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.
Content is king. Once the big studios started pulling their stuff from Netflix in favour of their own streaming platforms, the writing was on the wall.
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.
I'm surprised by this because Netflix has Heartstopper & Neil Gaiman's Sandman. They've also canceled a bunch of stuff that could come back really strong, Sense8 comes to mind.
Sure, yes, but Heartstopper was a risk and Sandman, one of the more bankable IPs, was kept in limbo for a new season until the last few weeks for fear that not many people would want to watch it (probably an indicator in and of itself as to why all their original shows were cancelled)
Realistically the second season of Sandman and final season of Stranger Things probably won't materialize until 2024 given how long they take to produce.
I recall reading that Netflix intentionally capped the production of successful shows to avoid overpaying for actors. Actor contracts apparently have predetermined rates for 3-4 seasons, and then must be renegotiated. For a successful show the actors can have immense leverage (see Seinfeld).
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.
To be clear. Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu when _combined_ have more customers.
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.
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 is like $20/mo for all three vs $16/mo for just Netflix. It is a good deal that is hard to beat although I think they are going to start running ads on the $20/mo plan so who knows it it will be a good deal for much longer.
I saw somebody describe Netflix as a library of unfinished books. That sums up my feelings about the platform well. I don't bother, because I don't like to get invested in things that are very likely to be cancelled.
I know it's not Disney / Netflix, but am I the only one surprised by how good and unappreciated Prime Video is? I find there's some good stuff on there and it's all bundled in with my Prime subscription so as a long-term Prime subscriber I feel like I basically get it for free. The Boys is amazing for example, probably the best superhero show I've ever watched. Amazon Music got a nice upgrade recently as well with more albums included with the standard Prime subscription.
I mean… they just bought it recently, the show is not really Prime’s accomplishment. Kudos to Amazon for letting the show film its final season though!
Given just how important content is to streaming services and Netflix's reputation for canceling good shows, this doesn't seem that surprising to me. Especially since rather than focusing on content, Netflix is instead focusing on limiting password sharing, which was never going to give them good PR.
While I'm still a big fan of Disney+, lately I feel like they're watering down some of their brands (such as Star Wars) by pushing out low-effort storylines coupled with rehashed digital assets. For instance, the animation in the new "Tales of the Jedi" show that was released recently looks very similar to the animated Star Wars shows released 15 years ago. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the animation and storylines in "Star Wars: Visions", so it's not exactly like they're sinking the ship or anything.
I strongly recommend going back and watching some of the 15 years ago Clone Wars to re-asses that observation. I'm rewatching it now and the difference is stark.
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.
> I strongly recommend going back and watching some of the 15 years ago Clone Wars to re-asses that observation
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.
In Canada Disney+ is where most of the stuff on Hulu or FX eventually ends up, among some other things, and at this point I think it's actually probably the streaming service with the deepest library because of that, which is kind of funny. It's probably the one I'd be least likely to drop, while Netflix has been on the verge a few times now.
I don't think they were able to "become HBO faster than HBO can become us"[1] and now they're paying the price. They have effectively zero moat with their own IP and now they're competing with everyone else for the same creative talent without an ability to separate the wheat from the chaff resulting in quality all over the map.
Thanks for letting me know. It's hard to figure out which services support Linux; usually they don't mention it, despite the browser being a so-called OS indepedent platform.
You can bypass it with a user agent extension. Change it to chrome on windows. There's no tech reason for the block, just crapy devs at a crappy company.
I've not watched a single Netflix show the past half year and possibly more. I've only glanced over them as I walk by the living room when my family members are watching them.
There's really nothing that interesting in these streaming platforms anymore.
Is there any concrete evidence they are in a battle? How many households have both? I know Verizon includes the Disney bundle for free. Netflix just launched it's ad supported plan as well. Lots of things are in flux right now.
Anecdotally: not in a battle. I have unsubscribed from Netflix last year and got Disney+/Hulu for free. So these services are not fighting for my money!
Same. Although we resubbed to Netflix after going without it for 3 or 4 months. Netflix has juuuuuust enough content to keep my wife interested. I could go without it and wouldn't miss much. For as little TV she watches though, having "her" shows available when she does want to watch means we keep paying.
For me it wasn't just about money, I really disliked the process of going to Netflix and browsing their trash piles for 40 minutes before deciding to give up and go to bed.
Honestly Disney has it's own classics, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, National Geographic... That alone means I can't unsubscribe, even if I generally like Netflix better. And I'm sure lots of people feel the same way.
Because they're not allowed to due to exclusivity deals.
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.
Disney numbers may be larger due to budling with mobile subscription plans in several large countries, including India(where numbers are likely very large).
Also Disney bundles in live sports coverage in some countries.
I'm one of them. I unsubscribed to Netflix and subscribed to Disney+. I don't watch a lot of shows, but I'm a huge fan of Star Wars, which Disney owns.
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
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.