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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
D+ is also yet to really hit its stride.

In its first year, for us Nerds it was really just The Mandalorian (two season thereof) and the final Clone Wars season (which was ace, but arguably stunt programming for attention).

This year?

Mando season 3.
Book of Boba Fett
WandaVision
Falcon and Winter Soldier
Loki
What If?

For me, that’s reason enough to stick with it. And there is of course far more promised for 2022.

I suspect Disney'll be staggering things to so as one of these shows ends another is due to come up. that's 6 shows or so, assuming each contains as many episodes as the Mandalorian, of approx 8 episodes a season with 1 episode a week. that means those 6 shows taken together would EASILY be something that could span an entire year's worth of viewing. which would ensure a CONSTANT stream of subscribers. Which is IMHO disney is being a LOT smarter then net flix which dumps an entire season of TV at once, don't get me wrong I LOVE to binge that but Disney's approuch is proably the smarter from a "keeping folks attention" POV.

It's fascinating to hear other ppls opinions about this stuff. Disney+ has easily been the service I use the least in the last year. I've only ever used it to binge the MCU. I loathe the ST and the Mandalorian so there just hasn't been anything on the service to hook me. Netflix, on the other hand, continues to be my most used platform. They consistently put out great docuseries (Trial 4, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Killer Inside, Filthy Rich, etc) and other original programs (The Crown, Queens Gambit, Stranger Things, Narcos just to name a few). Like I genuinely do not understand the appeal behind Disney+ at all. How often are you gonna watch lion King or beauty and the beast?

You dont have kids do you

We can quite happily rewatch disney stuff on a daily basis in 9i4 house

Ah, yeah I suppose if you have little brats it would be a more attractive option.

Little brats dont deserve fun like disney+. If they are good, they get nice things...

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
It's fascinating to hear other ppls opinions about this stuff. Disney+ has easily been the service I use the least in the last year. I've only ever used it to binge the MCU. I loathe the ST and the Mandalorian so there just hasn't been anything on the service to hook me. Netflix, on the other hand, continues to be my most used platform. They consistently put out great docuseries (Trial 4, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Killer Inside, Filthy Rich, etc) and other original programs (The Crown, Queens Gambit, Stranger Things, Narcos just to name a few). Like I genuinely do not understand the appeal behind Disney+ at all. How often are you gonna watch lion King or beauty and the beast?

Same for me, Disney+ is only kept for me for the occasional movie.
Netflix is used way for me.
Disney doesn't hsch much for a single/childless adult. It has some things, but netflix has more interesting shows for me.
Not to mention anime.


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 Flinty wrote:
You dont have kids do you

We can quite happily rewatch disney stuff on a daily basis in 9i4 house

But if you are ignoring a big market, like childless(which is a growing market) you risk losing money.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Not to mention anime.

It is always best to never mention anime.

The ‘Disney+ is great for kids’ thing is of course true. And it’s also true that right now, there’s not a huge amount for other demographics.

But that what Star is seeking to address. It’s explicitly Not For Kids (without being explicit I guess, this is Disney after all!). Plus, we’re getting 4 MCU shows and 2 Star Wars shows this year, which is significantly more than we’ve had thus far.

I’m struggling to find a full listing at the moment, but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there somewhere.

 Overread wrote:
Amazon is also handy for free post too, esp when family are now spread around the country and with lockdowns and such. Those £2 - 5 postage and packaging costs add up steadily over a year so a one lump sum for TV and free postage on most stuff is worth it in my view.

Yup, I have an Amazon Prime membership because it paid for itself with my first two international orders. The fact that it included a streaming service was just a nice bonus. Similarly, I wouldn't have paid for Netflix, because the content is just too inconsistent, and stuff disappears. So we only have Netflix because my brother lets me piggyback off his account. Disney+ was the first streaming service that actually seemed worth paying for, even though I already have a lot of the movie content on DVD.


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 Dysartes wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Not to mention anime.

It is always best to never mention anime.

There's good anime and bad anime. My daughters would fight you if you try to say anything bad about My Neighbor Totoro.

 insaniak wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Amazon is also handy for free post too, esp when family are now spread around the country and with lockdowns and such. Those £2 - 5 postage and packaging costs add up steadily over a year so a one lump sum for TV and free postage on most stuff is worth it in my view.

Yup, I have an Amazon Prime membership because it paid for itself with my first two international orders. The fact that it included a streaming service was just a nice bonus. Similarly, I wouldn't have paid for Netflix, because the content is just too inconsistent, and stuff disappears. So we only have Netflix because my brother lets me piggyback off his account. Disney+ was the first streaming service that actually seemed worth paying for, even though I already have a lot of the movie content on DVD.


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 Dysartes wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Not to mention anime.

It is always best to never mention anime.

There's good anime and bad anime. My daughters would fight you if you try to say anything bad about My Neighbor Totoro.

Yeah. The Good Anime is a very short list.

1) Anything by Studio Ghibli
2) Cowboy Beebop
3) Akira

Thats it.

I finally started watching more of Studio Ghibli. My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. All were enjoyable, Nausicaa was the best. I should probably watch Princess Monoke next. I like GitS (the film, not the series) more than Akira, but Akira had some beautiful sequences.

Outside of Cowboy Bebop and Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, I can't really say anything positive about Anime shows. I really like Dragon Ball as a fantasy/adventure series, but it's weighed down heavily by unnecessarily lewd content. Rurouni Kenshin has some interesting historical elements woven into it (the Meiji Restoration is a fascinating period of history), but it suffers from the typical Shonen issues...and the creator got busted for having a ton of CP...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The ‘Disney+ is great for kids’ thing is of course true. And it’s also true that right now, there’s not a huge amount for other demographics.
But that what Star is seeking to address. It’s explicitly Not For Kids (without being explicit I guess, this is Disney after all!).

Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Miraxmax would disagree. All of them were Disney divisions at one point or another (Miramax was acquired and sold off, but was under Disney for 17 years).
Touchstone and Hollywood were Disney creations, partially for 'adult' entertainment (Color of Night was the first Disney film to carry the NC-17 rating. Which, since its rare and weird even in the US, is basically 'no kids, but we mean it,' whereas R is 'no kids, unless parents watch with them, unless Billy at the ticket counter doesn't care')


Of course, some classic Disney films are straight up nightmare fuel for kids.

 trexmeyer wrote:
...and the creator got busted for having a ton of CP...

He was using too many Command Points? Disgraceful.

Voss wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The ‘Disney+ is great for kids’ thing is of course true. And it’s also true that right now, there’s not a huge amount for other demographics.
But that what Star is seeking to address. It’s explicitly Not For Kids (without being explicit I guess, this is Disney after all!).

Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Miraxmax would disagree. All of them were Disney divisions at one point or another (Miramax was acquired and sold off, but was under Disney for 17 years).
Touchstone and Hollywood were Disney creations, partially for 'adult' entertainment (Color of Night was the first Disney film to carry the NC-17 rating. Which, since its rare and weird even in the US, is basically 'no kids, but we mean it,' whereas R is 'no kids, unless parents watch with them, unless Billy at the ticket counter doesn't care')


Of course, some classic Disney films are straight up nightmare fuel for kids.

Depending what they still own, such things could be put up on Star.

I really hope it’s got solid content. Whilst there’s stuff I’ll definitely watch, the value/crap ratio remains important.

I don't know about them growing up but the hand they want to stick in people's wallets sure keeps getting bigger.

That's a weird comment to make in a thread talking about how they're adding a whole extra channel of content onto existing subscriptions...

Another thing about the advantages of streaming services.

There’s less need for a given show to be a set length of time. This means each episode can vary, which we’ve particularly seen in The Mandalorian. Yes, the times are largely comparable, and the shorter ones can leave one feeling a bit short changed.

But, contrast and compare to the Netflix Marvel shows. So. Much. Filler. Especially for grown up action shows. Yes there does need to be time made for plot and exposition. But if you’re script can do that and the Acton in say, 32 minutes, then do that. Don’t pad it out to 45 or 50, just because that’s your time slot.

And whilst it’s still very early days, we’ve seen the same in Wandavison, with episode 1 being particularly short and to the point. Judgement on the effectiveness reserved until I’ve seen the whole of the thing of course.

Almost a disadvantage though is when documentaries come through designed for ad breaks every 5 minutes...

I was watching drain the oceans with my son and good grief the constant recaps get annoying...

Streaming is nothing but a cluster#$#@
I know a show that has 8 seasons on netflix, but for some inexplicable reason, s9 is on hulu.

 Flinty wrote:
Almost a disadvantage though is when documentaries come through designed for ad breaks every 5 minutes...

I was watching drain the oceans with my son and good grief the constant recaps get annoying...

A lot of documentaries today seem to fit one of two patterns - constant repetition of the same points or constant subject hopping. Both I find annoying; the constant repetition goes beyond the need for repetition to improve learning; as you say sometimes its designed around ads, but often its so repeated that it more sounds like its the only handful of facts they've got. The subject hopping can be neat at times, but I get annoyed because often as not they never or rarely go into any depth before they are jumping to the next scene/animal/event/fact.

It's also not even needed; a lot of classic TV shows were made with gaps and spots for ads, such as the old Frost TV series. The only real thing is a play of the saxophone and a dramatic moment or key moment and then it all ends and starts up again. They don't have to repeat the last 5 mins of the show and continue on again. If they do repeat information then its blended into the story and thus subtle rather than an overt recap.


Sometimes they say things like "modern people only have short attention spans" which I think gets pushed through to show producers not just as a theory or idea but as a mantra and suddenly you get a studio producing a lot of programs all built around the concept into the extreme.

This was one thing that really bugged me when I tried watching the National Geographic programmes on Disney+. I think I got 15 minutes into it before I went 'nope, can't deal with this'.

"Coming next, coming soon, coming up. Soon... Up next...."

It's like frikking clickbait in television form. Give me Sir David Attenborough any day of the week compared to that.

Yeah, you’ll never touch Attenborough when it comes to nature docs.

His gentle voice, and clear enthusiasm for it. Stick your metal riff shark attack overly dramatic nonsense. Just, do what David does. Show me nature, and let it’s inherent majesty wow me on its own two feet.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yeah, you’ll never touch Attenborough when it comes to nature docs.

His gentle voice, and clear enthusiasm for it. Stick your metal riff shark attack overly dramatic nonsense. Just, do what David does. Show me nature, and let it’s inherent majesty wow me on its own two feet.

Once you realise how contrived many documentaries are so that they can tell a story with the material they have* the "heavy action" ones feel even more fake. Sometimes you can even spot when the animal they are following is clearly a different animal or scenes are shown out of order to tell a story. In good documentaries they do it to show behaviour that's authentic, just near impossible to record in sequence; in more dramatic ones its done purely to create a sense of danger and hype and often aggression.

That said there's a big difference between many USA ones and many BBC uk - the USA ones go for a much bigger injection of drama and dramatic music. Heck you even get it on other shows, compare Kitchen Nightmares UK to USA and almost every moment in the USA version is amped up with powerful music to make things feel far worse/edgy. I think its a different attitude in that UK documentaries go for that more information angle whilst US ones are often going for a purely entertainment value angle and thus hype things up.

* with exceptions of course, eg I believe many of the "bigcat diaries and such" were mostly authentic

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Streaming is nothing but a cluster#$#@
I know a show that has 8 seasons on netflix, but for some inexplicable reason, s9 is on hulu.

Yeah, that's one of the things that made me give up on the Arrowverse, outside of Arrow... Down here, Arrow and Punisher were on Netflix, but The Flash and Legends were on Stan.

 trexmeyer wrote:
I finally started watching more of Studio Ghibli. My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. All were enjoyable, Nausicaa was the best. I should probably watch Princess Monoke next. I like GitS (the film, not the series) more than Akira, but Akira had some beautiful sequences.

Outside of Cowboy Bebop and Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, I can't really say anything positive about Anime shows. I really like Dragon Ball as a fantasy/adventure series, but it's weighed down heavily by unnecessarily lewd content. Rurouni Kenshin has some interesting historical elements woven into it (the Meiji Restoration is a fascinating period of history), but it suffers from the typical Shonen issues...and the creator got busted for having a ton of CP...

There's such a broad spectrum of anime fans that you do end up with many things you won't like in most shows. And even more often than normal shows, there's a tendency for series to overstay their welcome. That being said, if you, or a loved one is thinking about watching Dragonball in any of its forms (especially if your kids are going through THAT phase) then subscribing to Funimation until it passes is WAY cheaper than buying the whole series. Those things are monolithic!

Just received an email from Disney+ about my annual subscription. Long and short? No price increase for me, as they’ll bill me £59.99 for the year at the end of March.

Though as I’ve got a new debit card, best get that sorted as my payment type. For technical reasons I won’t go into because they’re very dull I shouldn’t need to, but worth saving the trouble now.

I just got my email, too; working out at £5 a month is still nice.

Whilst I would love to cancel the subscription on account of recent managerial decisions, having two small children in the house means that I'm stuck with being subbed for the foreseeable future. Case in point, the end credits of Frozen are currently playing on the TV...

What was the change? I only Just signed up this week at $6.99 a month.

It’s going up £2, but we are getting Star as of Tuesday.

As I pay annually, that’s me not paying extra until next year at the earliest.

 AduroT wrote:
What was the change? I only Just signed up this week at $6.99 a month.

It doesn't affect the US.

Here's a spotty summary:
https://www.cnet.com/news/disney-plus-reveals-full-lineup-star-movies-and-shows-with-more-to-come/


It doesn't go into detail on the 'why not US?,' but it seems to be existing agreements. They mention that some of the stuff is currently on Hulu or ABC, and I'd guess from the context that other stuff is currently tied up on other platforms.

Another attempt to simplify the (overly complicated) regional breakdown:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_(Disney%2B)

Basically since Hulu already exists (and there's some sort of bundle deal with Disney+, Hulu and I think ESPN?) and the other stuff is coming from various TV networks, we just... aren't getting it, and have to scrounge around the current clusterfeth of streaming services.