TV Streaming

For quite a while, there has really only been one big player in TV streaming. Netflix was the giant.

Other small fish popped up, but the only one that competed at all was Amazon Prime.

Price in these things is always important. This posting will use Canadian costs, rounded up by one penny. Every one of the streaming services ends their price with .99 but I refuse to let them play their mind games. They want you to let your brain truncate to a lower dollar value, which most of the time it will whither we want it to or not.

Netflix charges $14 per month unless you want to get your stream in 4k resolution, and then the price is $17.

Amazon Prime has a far smaller catalog of offerings, and will run you $8 per month. There are other perks with this service that relate to Amazon’s online marketing empire.

That was the landscape, but that is all about to change.

A whole plethora of media companies have decided to throw their hats into the ring.

The two most significant newcomers in this field are Disney and Apple.

Disney started preparing for this move over the last few months by removing all of the content that they control from Netflix and from Amazon. This turns out to be quite a lot of stuff. They not only have everything that you think of when you think Disney, but also all of Pixar, and Fox, and ABC, and all of the Marvel stuff. Likely I’m leaving a lot out, but you get the picture.

Their new service is called Disney Plus, and is slated to launch on November 12th. The price tag in Canadian dollars will be $9 per month.

It is interesting that they are coming in at a little higher price than Amazon Prime, but significantly lower than Netflix. They will stream at 4k, putting their price well below the $17 for the same quality of signal.

Clearly their cannons are aimed at Netflix.

The other big contender will be Apple TV Plus.

Apple has been playing their cards pretty close to their chest. To date, they have no content of their own. This is a very different situation to that of Disney. Likely Apple will have a lot of stuff from other media sources, much like Amazon and Netflix do.

They also have a ridiculous amount of money sitting around in piles, and it looks like they have thrown a lot of that into getting vast amounts of prestigious new stuff made. Companies such as Disney are much more focused on the immediate bottom line. Apple is willing to play a much longer game.

Apple has just announced their service’s launch date, and price, and both seem aimed directly at Disney.

Apple TV Plus starts on November 1st, eleven days before Disney Plus, and is priced at $6 per month. They are including a year of free Apple TV Plus access to anybody who buys at new iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod Touch, or Apple TV box. That alone guarantees very many millions of people watching who won’t have outlaid a penny beyond their regular purchasing.

Clearly their launch date is totally designed to take wind out of Disney’s sails, and their price is one third lower.

How will this all turn out?

I predict that Netflix will take a beating due both to their much higher price, and the significant loss of much of what they can offer. I suspect they will have to restructure their pricing in response, and put more focus on their original content, which they’ve already started doing.

How will Disney respond to Apple’s blatantly aggressive moves? I can’t see them cutting their price in any way. Disney is known for holding the line on prices, both to maintain a juicy cash flow, and also to inflate the value of their offerings in consumers’ minds.

Personally, I don’t find Disney Plus being intriguing at all. I like their animated shows, and love Pixar, but couldn’t care less about what Fox has or ABC or the Marvel stuff.

I didn’t think I had any interest in Apple’s streaming plans either, until their actual announcement was out. Their price may be designed as a weapon against Disney, but it also falls into a range that I would consider. I have also been toying with the idea of a new iPad Mini, which would come with a year of access. If I were to decide to get the Mini strictly on its own merits, the streaming stuff for a year would be free. Conversely, I could also consider the year of access as being a reduction in the price of the iPad by $72.

But that is neither here nor there. The wise thing for anybody considering changing streaming services is to decide what they want to have, and is the price acceptable.

We have Netflix (not 4k) and Amazon Prime now. That adds up to $22 per month. We could stay that way, although both will likely lose more content to the new options.

We could cancel both, saving $22, or maybe shift to one or more of the new players. Disney doesn’t seem to wet my whistle, content-wise, so that only leaves Apple Plus as a possible add-on.

The thing that really complicates it all is that there are other competitors that are planning to launch sometime in 2020. None of them sound particularly interesting at this point, but a year from now it might all be a horribly jumbled mess for consumers.

In any case, the streaming universe will soon be totally swirled about.