Bob Iger Takes the Gloves Off for Disney’s Streaming Debut
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I’m generally someone who speaks with my wallet, I pay for FastMail and use DDG rather than use Google, I go out of my way and spend more to not support shitty companies, and I personally think Disney is among the most evil companies out there (for their Copyright lobbying etc).. but I’m finding it very bloody hard to resist the idea of unlimited streaming Star Wars, Simpsons, and Disney classics for my kids.
Barring some major tech fuckups from Disney, I’m pretty sure this will be absolutely huge.
I don't understand - Disney already has a streaming service - DisneyLife. Why's everyone talking about Disney+ like you can't already stream Disney's classic movies, and Marvel, and Star Wars content, all in one place?
I am one of those people. I can’t wait to sign up for Disney streaming and ditch Netflix.
For me, Netflix is just full of filler with annoying ads touting a garbage Netflix series (I Land anybody)
At least with Disney, I know I will be getting a strong catalog (classic cartoons, Star Wars, Marvel)
I'd be interested in follow-up reading on the academic research you're gesturing towards here- do you have links or any specific names/citations that would point to the material you have in mind?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/24/...
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/disney-movies...
https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.12...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-9930-7
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.933...
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4094/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-017-0773-8
http://www.hillpublisher.com/UpFile/201803/2018032844432581....
https://firescholars.seu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=105...
https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/14406
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_The_Walt_Disney_C...
I feel if anything the "pretty is everything" comes from toys, rather then the movie plots themselves.
Young, beautiful girl runs into conflict because ____. Foolishly and/or impulsively, she attempts to solve the problem herself by ___, but of course she is too weak to do so. Luckily, she is saved by the charming man, who resolves the problem by ____.
Wrap it around details of a fairy tale and bam: $300M+ profit.
Step in the right direction, still pretty lame.
This is not a narrative I find more compelling for my daughter than a mermaid trading her voice away to have the opportunity to seduce a sailor prince.
The thing is, this really wasn't just a Disney thing, it was largely a Hollywood thing in general. Strong(er), three-dimensional women in film narrative didn't hit major motion pictures with significance until the late 60s and into the early 80s.
The late 1980s was an unfortunate time for Disneys resurgence, because somehow there was also a revival of strong man/weak, beautiful woman tropes in Hollywood. So when movies like The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, Tarzan, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast came out they very much followed this template.
The plots of these and previous movies hammer home that the young women are meant as prizes for men who come and save them. It's in the stories themselves.
I’ve been pretty pleased with the last several years of children’s content though. A lot of it feels respectable of kids intellect and aware of where we’re trying to get culturally. Inside Out and Zootopia come to mind.
Frozen is an interesting one in that I felt it was mostly in line with previous Disney film tropes but it had a lot of plot points that allowed them to say, technically, it wasn’t.
I am unconvinced about the disney renaissance characters: jasmine literally storms out of a room saying "you can't decide what's best for me" to her father, aladdin and jafar; the little mermaid saves the prince, before she saves him; Belle doesn't get saved by anyone either, and the strong handsome man is actually the bad guy.
I mean, sure, they exemplify a certain passée idea of woman/girl, but they are a far cry from cinderella and sleeping beauty.
Also note how many of these present older women as the villain.
One thing I noticed is that the focus of these is on gender-stereotypical portrayals of princesses. Is only the princess-themed content specifically seen as 'damaging', or is Disney content not featuring princesses also suspect?
Another detail is that a good number of the results you dug up seem to be reflections on interactions with the 'Disney Princess' line of toys and media which was launched in 2000, which would suggest that the most 'damaging' of this content is specifically 'post-2000'. Was there something about pre-2000 Disney content you had in mind that's especially damaging, that is not the case with the post-2000 Disney Princess line, or is it all garbage?
However it's just not about girls, it also impacts boys negatively as well. If you have to read one great book about raising kids, make it NurtureShock. One thing I learned from it was how kids learn to value nature vs nurture. When you tell your kid "great job! you are smart" you are basically saying they have natural capability to do great things, they don't have to work for it. So when they fail, they tend to interpret that there is nothing they could do. Parents who say "great job! You worked hard for it" have much more successful kids. One simple phrasing makes huge change in their lives. NurtureShock has detailed analysis and citations.
Back to movies... Here's the thing: Do you love Star Wars? Lord of the Ring? Harry Potter? Do you know what is one common thing between all of them? The hero in the movie is born with capabilities to be great. You are Jedi because force with you since you were born. You are just that way. You didn't had to work for it. You are just destined to be the great, it's written in the stars. Story writers know this simple thing is cocaine for people and they keep creating more supply to keep us fed. We get hooked on to it right away but its not good for us. Now look back in your life and think about all the time you avoided hard work in the hope that your specialness would just do the work for you. Kids should avoid these kind of movies, at least until they are 18 or may be 21.
Harry potter also employs this trope in the beginning. But builds upon it beyond the wish fulfillment.
LotR? He literally inherited the ring and was pushed into the adventure. It gets better from there, but his past doesn't really matter. If mentioned, I can't remember anything except some reason for the other hobbits to tag along. Could have happened to anyone. It certainly doesn't convey any kind of message like "you have to work hard to find great adventures in life". No reason not to enjoy a movie/show/franchise, but should probably not be entirely absent from a media diet, either.
In the last decades STEM enrollment for girls rose in poor countries. And Disney movies are watched worldwide, including poor countries...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nat...
This is just an example of a well-known recent sociology paper that can appeal to science-minded people unfamiliar with sociology.
By the way, it's a danger to rely too much on mathematical formalism as a heuristic for deciding whether a research field is scientific or valid. String theory for example lacks empirical evidence (and maybe even the possibility of empirical validation altogether).
I have only anecdotal sample size of one - but my daughter loves disney female characters, and she enjoys maths and sciences as well. Her mother has a PhD in physics so there is that as well, so... we're not exactly a good 'average sample'. But I've never got the vibe that she would not enjoy maths because the little mermaid doesn't.
Societies are driven by fashions that trickle down from perceived elite to the rest of the society. It's much more 'damaging' if there are popular celebrities setting the 'wrong' example, rather than if Ariel is not into STEM.
I know it's popular to blame big corps for all the woes of the world, but non-interactive entertainment is not harmfull on the same scale as social media or tobacco.
I have a hunch it's not the disney princesses that stifle young girls but just being told at some point in their lives that science is more for boys. You don't need more than that. Once you have a bunch of young girls, each of which have internalized this at some point in their life, it becomes part of their 'subconscious group identity' and that's that.
I think it's ok for girls to love princesses. It's not ok for their role models (mums) say so that they hear "i don't understand maths but that's ok" or something silly like that.
Kids learn rules from adults. Not from cartoons.
There's no study that supports post 2000 content does anything to improve things.
Expose your kids to physical comedy trough silent black and white classics. Young children love them and watch them again and again. Adults love them too. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and many others.
While not silent, as a child I spent many a weekend morning watching The Three Stooges on our local PBS channel.
"As a Prime member, you can already watch thousands of popular movies and TV shows at no extra cost, including exclusives and award-winning Amazon Originals available in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Save even more with exclusive deals on video purchases."
No 'extra cost'? All that content isn't free. I feel about this much as I do about cable subscriptions by default including the cost of ESPN and other sports channels:
May I not subsidize this, please?
People outside the US may actually do that, because they don’t get Prime and thus they don’t get Prime Video as a free rider.
Personally I subscribed to it for The Grand Tour alone. For $4 a month, I find that worthwhile.
Prime and Prime Video are available and bundled outside the US.
To my amazement I found a surprisingly big catalog of RiffTrax and MST3K there. Definitely an unexpected bonus.
I do care about the new car reviews, The News, 'what would happen if we made a car...out of spaghetti noodles', on-location shoots etc. GT has its own take on each of those.
HBO seems to be doing fine, with plenty people getting HBO Go to watch their shows.
Five corporate boards exercise creative control over nearly all of Hollywood.
That's not much competition, and they seem to have arrived at a consensus about what kind of content we should experience at the theater.
Who says the content is valuable? Can you prove that the cash generation value is in the content and not the strictly regulated, consolidation-friendly oligopoly structure which Clinton put in place for these guys in the 90s?
Sure, there may be a more valuable film that was never made, but that doesn't negate the net positive.
As I said previously, there is nothing stopping anyone from distributing content via a multitude of channels.
It amazes me how many people trust corporations and want more corporate power.
What “power” do they have?
The difference between corporate power and government power is that a corporation can’t forcible take your money, property and liberty. I can choose whether to give my money to a corporation. I can’t choose whether to give my money to the government.
A corporation has a lot less “power” than the government. If a corporation makes a decision I don’t like, I don’t give them my money. I don’t have that choice with the government.
I agree with you that the film industry itself doesn't currently have a monopoly or oligopoly problem, especially not internationally. But the fact that there are huge problems in related areas of digital content distribution and discovery (app stores, search, social networks, network operators specifically in the US) is cause for alarm in my view.
The problem is spreading rapidly and it wouldn't be a surprise if the film industry was one of the next victims.
Search - nothing is stopping anyone from going to other search engines. It’s not like Bing is backed by one or two people with no financial backing.
Social networking - the social networks pre- Facebook failed because people chose a better experience.
On none of those cases are corporations forcing people to do anything nor or any of them essential services for which there is no alternative.
And the “definition” does matter. Once people in power can make up their own definitions it leads to government overreach.
Currently, that seems unrealistic in some areas like app stores where you can see egregious misuse of dominant market positions.
It's ineffective in other areas like social networks because all new market entrants are swiftly taken over by incumbents without any resistance by regulators.
The definition of monopoly is important in some respects but not for the question of whether or not we can reap the benefits of markets or suffer the consequences of dysfunctional markets. It doesn't take a clearcut monopoly to render a market dysfunctional.
(I'm not sure which people in power you are talking about)
You act as if it isn’t the goal of every startup that takes VC funding to get acquired. Yeah going public is the other route, but statistically it hardly ever happens. Look no further than YC. Only two YC backed companies have ever gone public.
VCs wouldn’t invest in companies if they thought their only exit strategy was navigating via the very unlikely road of going public. If it were harder to sell a company to a larger tech company, most of these investments would never happen.
The definition of monopoly is important in some respects but not for the question of whether or not we can reap the benefits of markets or suffer the consequences of dysfunctional markets. It doesn't take a clearcut monopoly to render a market dysfunctional.
Facebook came in and took on MySpace with a better product - not government regulation.
I'm not sure which people in power you are talking about
The government. Everyone likes government power as long as their side is in charge.
I didn't mean to imply anything wrt that question. I don't think it matters. What matters is whether the market is actually working, and it's not. There's very little competition.
MySpace was ages ago and it never had the financial might of Facebook. So that's not a good example of an oligopoly resolving itself, but I grant you that there are such examples (IBM for one, also Microsoft although regulators may have influenced that one).
I'm actually rather skeptical when it comes to the effectiveness of competition regulation. But some of the things that are happening right now are simply unacceptable, regardless of whether or not they might eventually resolve themselves.
That 30% app store revenue cut is just ridiculous, as are lifetime bans from extremely dominant platforms without explanation or recourse.
>The government. Everyone likes government power as long as their side is in charge.
You said it was a problem if people in power were making up their own definitions, and you said it in response to a sloppy use of the term "monopoly" by an HN commenter. "HN commenter" doesn't quite meet my definition of "people in power".
Regulators had no affect on MS getting caught flat footed when it came to media players in the early 2000s which led to Apple being able to dominate the mobile phone market (in terms of profit) or Google in terms of volume.
Facebook didn’t have a ton of funding early on and MySpace was a giant. Apple was basically bankrupt in 1997 and was much smaller than Microsoft when it introduced the iPhone.
If Facebook does “monopolize” social media, it is both because people chose to congregate there and if Facebook doesn’t meet the need of people, they will go somewhere else, there is no need for government to tell people that too many of them are on one platform.
If people don’t have any other place to show off their idealized life and post cat memes, who cares? The last thing we need is more government power.
As far as the 30% revenue cut. The revenue cut for retail use to be 60%. Even during the j2ME era the revenue cut was 60% for the platform owner.
But let’s not pretend that the App Store overflowing with apps from hardworking artists. Most of the money is being made from whales buying in app consumables and if all of those apps disappeared the world would be a better place.
On the other hand, most of the major content producers are bypassing the App Store payments and forcing consumers to buy subscriptions and content outside of the App Store c
But I actually used Microsoft as an example for a situation that resolved itself largely without government intervention, because I don't think the threat of breakup was decisive for their failure to capture the mobile space (or the web).
It did take an awfully long time for Microsoft to lose its suffocating dominance though. Many entrepreneurs and inventors who tried to compete on merit were crushed by Microsoft or never got started. Lots of consumers paid far more than they would have if there hadn't been this near monopoly.
Facebook's funding early on is not the point. The point is that MySpace couldn't have used the strategy that Facebook is using today to rid itself of competition, because MySpace was a financial dwarf whereas Facebook is a financial giant.
>If Facebook does “monopolize” social media, it is both because people chose to congregate there and if Facebook doesn’t meet the need of people, they will go somewhere else...
Yes, and that other place will then be bought up by Facebook.
>The last thing we need is more government power.
I agree that we don't need more government power in general. But we do need governments to play the part that only governments can play and play it effectively. Markets sometimes become dysfunctional and governments need to fix that using the powers they already have.
Where is the competition to Facebook? Instagram and Whatsapp were compelling alternatives that achieved traction. The US government allowed Facebook to acquire them, reducing competition, and thus the incumbent's incentive to innovate.
Recently a new competitor achieved traction, with 500M users and over 1B downloads: TikTok. What's different about TikTok? It's from China, and the Chinese government won't let Facebook buy it. (Heck, they won't even let Facebook compete against it in its home market.)
So, American industry may lose much of the social media market to a Chinese competitor, because American regulators have been asleep on the job, and our incumbents are no longer responsive to changes in market demand.
This is how many US industries have become less competitive as a shrinking number of large firms have gobbled up their competitors.
By the way, your comments in this thread seem a bit uncharitable toward those of us who hold opposing views, we are not idiots. No one is advocating that there should be a law requiring firms to hold no more than 5% of the market. I argue that big firms in markets with oligopoly or monopoly characteristics shouldn't be allowed to acquire their competitors willy-nilly, which is in fact pretty much the antitrust law that's on the books today.
What are the chances that they wouldn’t have run out of money before being profitable? Their only realistic means of survival was being acquired. They need Facebook’s advertising infrastructure to be profitable. Who else would have acquired them Twitter? They were constantly crashing around then. Google? Apple? Microsoft?
What was to stop Facebook from crushing Instagram without acquiring them by building their best features - like they are doing with SnapChat?
Neither of these studios are based in Hollywood. In fact right now, both Coming To America 2 and Bad Boys 3 are filming at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta.
On top of that, if you want to make a movie today and get distribution, there are dozens of cable channels and streaming services who want exclusive content. You don’t need to be in theaters.
In fact, you can sell your movie to consumers via any of the on demand platforms like iTunes, Vudu, Google Play Movies or Amazon.
[1] I’m personally no fan of it, it’s low brow shucking and jiving, Stepin Fetchit content. And before I get downvoted to oblivion and flagged for being racist, I am Black.
I am not a fan either...
The amount of at home entertainment with HBO, Amazon Prime, CBS Streaming (for Star Trek), and Netflix is phenonimal. I am fine with paying for services and just experiencing a wide sampling. It does take some self control to be willing to stop watching series after sampling some episodes.
People might still go because the theater experience is convenient, even when the content produced by the studios is crap. Happens all the time.
The flurry of movies loved by critics coincidentally working for media outlets owned by big players, and hated by actual fans shows the power of this.
Terminator: Dark Fate should have been amazing but it pretty much sucked, for example. Being out of sync with the fans doesn’t seem to matter to studio bosses, even if the movie tanks.
Jon Favreau's a pretty decent director, so I'm excited to see how the Mandalorian turns out. Honestly I feel I need to launch a side project w/ passive income so I can retire and have enough for everything I want to stream off disney+... lol -- I'm 40 this month, and have two kids (2 and 10 months) and they're obviously going to love d+... I think D+, Hulu, Prime, and Netflix are really all you need for streaming... maybe HBO, though I don't know if I'll have time for all that content. I think network TV might die soon, w/ the streaming options nobody's going to need cable or even Over-the-air tv anymore. Nobody's going to be watching NBC, ABC, etc unless they're direct-to-netflix/hulu etc...
* Has an 85/100 on Metacritic ("Universal Acclaim")
* Has a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes
* Made $619M
So it was both a box office success and a critical success. Personally, I think it's far from an atrocious film. I think it's a flawed film, although my complaints have to do with structure and film mechanics, not story choices.
[1] While this is usually to drive down a score, you can find the reverse occasionally, such as the Atlas Shrugged movies. It's hard not to notice that the point the brigades are making usually revolves around "stick it to the Hollywood liberals," although I don't think that's true in TLJ's case.
The test will be this years film and how it does.
Having said all that, I don't think you're wrong -- I just think it's going to be the film after this year's that's going to be the real test!
Disney has managed to kill all my enthusiasm I ever had for SW with a single movie. TLJ felt like an attempt to show how little they care about fans of the older movies imho.
Rogue one is my favorite thing so far out of Disney SW. It was so dark, and unexpected. Basically Hamlet in space. Would love for more of that, and i have high hopes for the mandalorian.
The fact that it was nothing like 1-3 is it's saving grace and no creature like jar-jar showed up. Though I was kind of hoping Snopes would end up being Jar-Jar because it could be the only explanation why Lucas would put that baffling idiot in there if he was really a brilliant Sith lord in disguise.
It's a fun watch, like Abrams' Star Trek reboot, but has the same problem of extremely lazy plotting. Not that the original trilogy never ever has something happen purely because it's convenient for the writer and they can't be bothered to think of something better, but that's the underlying motivation for a lot of the writing in TFA and Abrams' other films, while it's usually rare or absent in a well-plotted film, including the original trilogy.
He'll even, sometimes, write in nonsense because it's convenient, then have to come up with other nonsense to find an excuse to get rid of the first nonsense, without bothering to try to make any of that seem reasonable or natural. Example: Han and Chewie show up in a big ship just because we need them to be here now and can't be bothered to write them into the plot some more natural way that doesn't require introducing a new ship, but we don't need that big ship around past this scene because it only exists in the first place for the writer's convenience in the moment, so we'll just... make up some plot-irrelevant reason for them to abandon it suddenly, at exactly the time we need them to. Boom, problem—which we created due to laziness—solved, by applying more laziness! It's basically a whole movie of that, ground up, from a plot perspective, and it really grates once you notice it.
About the best thing I can say about Abrams is he runs one of the the best casting operations in the business and seems to be a good director of actors. I mean, damn. And he's about 100x better than, say, Michael Bay at creating good, popcorn-dumb but not dumb dumb or hard-to-follow-for-no-reason-but-laziness, action scenes. He's no master of action, but he does entirely serviceable work, which is more than a lot of directors manage. His plot writing is just god awful technically speaking. About as bad as it can be without suffering outright incoherence.
I agree, and I think time will eventually come to agree as well. TFA was visually interesting as all of the modern Star Wars films were, but plot-wise it was such an obvious fanservice-laden rehash of ANH that it left me unsatisfied. Yes, seeing Han Solo again engaging in space pirate shenanigans was fun, but another Death Star, just bigger this time, really?
TLJ actually tried to say something new and push the lore forward (in a direction a lot of fans didn't like, but still, no longer circling the drain of decades-year-old nostalgia.) I liked what it had to say about the nature of the Force and how the Jedi and Sith were both wrong, I like that Luke turned out to be a flawed character cynical about his mythical status as a hero, and that there is more than just the binary morality of "Jedi good, Sith bad, let's fight now" at play.
My biggest criticism of TLJ would be that, while I enjoyed it as a movie, I think it failed at its role as the second part of a trilogy, spending too much time undermining the previous movie. Although, as far as I know, that's because there never was an "arc" planned for this trilogy, so I don't even know how much blame TLJ can get for deviating from a plan which never existed.
I get a bad feeling that Rise of Skywalker is going to wind up being nothing but a fix-fic for the last two parts, though.
My biggest criticism of TLJ was that I think it did the intended arc justice, but I didn't enjoy it on its own as a single movie. (Some of that is because I accidentally sort of double featured it with Three Billboards and Three Billboards entirely broke Poe Dameron as a character for me.)
I don't have any expectations for Rise of Skywalker yet. Waiting for reviews.
I mean JAR JAR! for fuck sake.
Do you also deny that Rogue one is better at all than 1-3?
It would've redeemed his character if he was able to infiltrate the opposition by being an imbecile.
The problem is, no one would have shown up to the cinemas to find out. People hated Jar-Jar so much they wouldn't have wanted to see him redeemed.
Edit: corrected the version numbers, dunno what I was thinking when I first typed the comment.
And yes, the Despecialized versions are wonderful and worth hunting down.
You could probably sell a Terabyte hard disk with the best shows and movies ever made and probably keep people entertained for quite a while.
I have an incredible archive of traditional 'charango' music from Bolivia and Peru through these fine gents, but they had all the latest HBO and Hollywood stuff as well.
Also can a NAS be easily setup without using the manufacturer's software? (e.g Synology)
There is a whole world of info out there. But for someone with little network experience it's hard to know what's good advice or not.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Plex
They even have sections about security, albeit fairly short.
This was never about availability, it was always about not paying.
For reference, here all of the apps that integrate with the TV app.
There are also numerous annoyances, such as shows split across multiple services, lots of exclusive shows, and of course a lot of older films can be hard to find on streaming services.
Gabe Newell was right, pirating is a service problem.
I pay for content, but I find is desirable to supplement it with the occasional torrent.
TV and movies haven't figured that out yet and the rights warfare is very intense. People just want to see the content they want to see easily when they want it, they will pay for that gladly. There is almost a PTSD about what movies/shows are available, not, when they will go away, etc. I like to own movies and shows to always have them.
Streaming catalogs are all incomplete except Netflix, a bunch of parts to a collector that is madness. Another annoyance is even if you buy streaming access you might not get the show you expect, for instance CBS All-Access doesn't have a CBS show Everybody Loves Raymond. Streaming movies/shows is a patchwork of minefields that requires research in times of leisure. Noone wants to go hunting down the show they want to watch right now and should be available across the 5 streaming services + live TV they use, but it half the time is not there. You have to search and find which platform it is on currently if at all.
Side note, I buy tons on iTunes because I can still download the movies. Though the content protection is also problematic for customers that bought it, just an annoyance that they shouldn't put on content. Netflix is allowing this now as well, same DRM trap though. The quality of streaming still sucks especially on desktop/PC where browsers are limited to 720p. 1080p/4k is what people want and streaming is going to get extorted more and more by ISPs when they start pushing more 1080p/4k.
And oftentimes --especially in the case of Disney-- the consumer has paid for the movie several times in several different formats. Meanwhile if a pirate downloads a digital copy he has it for life, with the ability to transfer it between devices and watch it after cancelling a service. Piracy is still a distribution problem.
Signing up to different services that are based around monthly fees and then having to deal with those services when you might only want to binge one show is inconvenient.
Having to deal with personal data loss / fraud when those services get hacked is onconvenoent
Having to use multiple different apps (or even devices) for different shows is inconvenient.
Having to be online to watch the show is inconvenient.
Pirating can be more convenient than the above (see other posters fully automated setup) and when it is, the path of least resistance wins.
It's really less convenient than setting up a plex server buying multiple TBs of storage and presumably dealing with all of the hassle involved in joining a private tracker?
Piracy is simple.
Piracy is only simple if you are content with watching cheap rips that you download from the pirate bay on your laptop.
Not if you have ADHD. Subscriptions are one of the worst prisons imaginable.
The new streaming reality is quickly turning into hell.
Netflix did occupy that comfortable spot but now the market is being needlessly fragmented because every copyright holder wants to make their own streaming service. Not having to manage one's subscriptions is obviously better than having to do it, regardless of how fast it is to switch.
with the exception of regional blocked content you are right, but now we are back to a point where it becomes (relatively) expensive to have a big enough variety available to watch
It's really not about the money aspect for me. I pay for usenet connections and indexers. I pay for the Plex Pass. I pay for the gigabit internet connection to facilitate those download speeds. I paid for the NAS and disks to store terrabytes of content and host all the software I need to get it. I'm okay paying. I just want a better experience and switching between half a dozen streaming services without a consistent search mechanism or offline viewing option just isn't cutting it.
For my stack, I've got a Synology NAS device which is running docker versions of the download managers Sonarr and Radarr, the download client NZBget, Ombi for user requests and Plex for streaming to devices.
I tried a similar Dockersetup with a Atom C2000 based NAS and spinning disks and it was really easy to setup and maintain but painfully slow.
The DS1019+ has no issue with transcoding from what I’ve read, and can handle even up to 4K right?
I since switched to an Intel NUC running Ubuntu + Docker. I was able to use bash scripts to auto update everything nightly so it’s thankfully (almost) zero maintenance now that it is setup and it stores everything on my Synology.
Running outta space though...
To be honest I’ve been slowly replacing my Plex library with iTunes purchases. A lot of movies come up on sale for £2.99.
Apple even upgrade HD purchases to 4K for free and I don’t have to worry about hosting anything. Think given how many £££s I’ve spent on my Plex homelab vs buying from Apple I’d come out even and if factoring in time spent curating a digital library (a lot of time) I’d probably be somewhat ahead.
Still hedging my bets by keeping my Plex library though!
I'd be happy to purchase iTunes movies if I could play them back over Plex, so I can still access my content from one place and have consistency of features across devices. I don't think any commercial platforms really support that though. It's one of the reasons I don't use Lidarr and pirate music too. I'm okay paying for Spotify because it's my one source of music and with the family account everyone can sync songs with their devices. If I had to go to multiple platforms for music the way we do for streaming and movies I wouldn't hesitate to start downloading music again.
You see this sometimes in large B2B projects. As soon as v senior management are involved in "tweaking" products you know you are likely screwed given their disconnect and lack of ability for people further down to say "no". And thats for software, cant imagine the impact it would have on something as creative as movies/TV.
With companies like Apple and Disney at the helm you're only going to get milquetoast film and TV.
Not saying TV needs sex and violence to be good, but once creators are limited through the lens of a wider production company brand, they're always going to be limited.
Typical case of the person writing the cheque thinking they're way more important to the creation of the work than they actually are, Disney and Apple execs live in a world where they have convinced themselves we'd watch their movies and at the end think "Wow, Disney/Apple did a great job on this" rather than the director or actors.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-sex-please-were-apple-iphone...
Apple’s new show See isn’t much if not sex and violence.
[1]: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/its-time-to-break-up-disn...
If McDonald’s started acquiring lemonade stands the moment they opened up, you’d start to see a lot of lemonade stands.
Companies will bleed insane amount of money in the streaming war.
The 1:1 trade doesn't seem so balanced anymore.
Their streaming isn't great either. The two times we watched a movie, playback was regularly interrupted, one of which proved impossible to continue that same evening. And no, that never happens when watching Netflix.
Anecdotally, I was just at Disneyland on a weekday recently and it was as packed as can be, and among my friends who aren't at in tech many of them are diehard Disney fans and are super excited for Disney+ (especially their new show Mandalorian). Considering Disney's track record at the box office the last 5 years I expect Disney+ to do well.
Well they almost fucked up Guardians of the Galaxy 3 with the firing of Gunn.
Compare with the previous two versions or even Spiderman: into the spiderverse.
Meanwhile, my NAS and Plex server don't seem to mind serving up DRM free files of mine.
The harder part would be convincing my girlfriend and roommate to ditch cable... We have the option to get gigabit internet but I was outvoted on the switch. Gotta fork over money to Comcast because they don't mind the ads.
It's my opinion that it's more time-consuming and tricky to rip/re-encode everything. I use MakeMKV and a few extra apps to rip/convert subtitles. Handbrake is, seemingly, what everyone uses to convert to MP4/MKV or whatever... and it takes a fair bit of patience to find the sweet spot of quality, size, and compatibility.
I started ripping/converting DVDs and BluRays last year around this time and I'm still on it. Some of that is due to the fact that I've had to go back and re-rip stuff and some of that is due to the fact that the machine I'm using for conversion is about 10 years old. A BR film takes about a day to a day and a half to encode.
[1] https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/automatic-rippi...
Now I just wonder: am I lazy?
2. They’re probably describing their ideal day, that actually happens less than 30% of the time
The more people who need your input/help and make demands on your time, the less personal and free time you have.
Being a CEO feels exactly like being a Dad with 6 Toddlers. If you want even a micro-second for yourself it has to be before everyone else wakes up.
That's why they wake up at 4:00am. It's not because they are dominating the world... its because they are trying to hide from it.
Then it wouldn't be so hard to work out every morning at 6am, joined by your personal trainer who won a bronze medal at the 2002 Olympics.
I was a late riser until well into my thirties. Then suddenly something weird happened (well, not so weird sadly -- hormones shifting, I'm sure) and I started waking up early. Now, being up at 6am doesn't sound like some great accomplishment to me. Staying up past midnight on the other hand, now there's a challenge!
To me it's a matter of getting it done - no one is going to derail or disrupt your workout at 5:30 AM by calling you to see if you want to go get a drink last minute or by having to shuttle your kids around after school. Similarly, you're not going to be relying on your willpower at 8PM after a long, arduous day.
That's been the biggest benefit to me personally. The confidence (both in appearance and sense of accomplishment) and energy boost throughout the day is icing no the cake.
Personally, it makes me way more productive and less stressed. I get my quality work done before everyone else starts the day, nobody sets meetings at 7 am so im not disturbed. If I get lumped with a task in the evening I dont sacrifice it, instead ill push it until the morning and have it done before the rest get into work. I don't hit rush hour ever.
Note at least for me its not about superhuman discipline & stamina. I prob do the same hours of work, just more productive this way. And im a lazy fart, so you dont need to worry about the discipline. Just need enough to force yourself to go to bed at 9pm for awhile and after a week you'll be up with the chickens too.
It's comforting, as I'm the same way. I'd rather work 10-10, than 8-4.
Or perhaps you are just normal.
The idea of many similar stores that push exclusives could scale for purchasing, but not for rent.