Up and up

Word on the street is that Netflix is once again raising its prices. For 4K top quality Netflix, folks are now looking at $22.99 per month. Is it just me or is that dangerously close to basic cable pricing? Include the other streaming services a person is likely to also subscribe to, then it is basic cable TV costs. We’ve cut the cord, but the money is still flowing out.

Fortunate for me, I don’t subscribe to Netflix. But I am not delusional to think that other streaming services - the ones I do subscribe to - won’t hike their monthly fees soon enough. Imitation is the sincerest form of making money. Remember a few months back when Netflix effectively banned password-sharing? It seems to be a surprise revenue increaser for the company. So of course Disney Plus has begun doing the same thing. Our neighbors up north in Canada will receive the initial brunt of the crackdown. It’s just a matter of time for us here in the States.

My friends who are sharing my account (would this be incriminating?) will have to find other ways to watch Disney programming. Legal or otherwise.

Prices for everything keep going up and up, way too rapidly. A good way to combat this, at least for McDonalds, is to use its app. The deals offered on the McDonalds app really blunts the hefty prices. Yesterday there was a buy-one-get-one-free deal on the double cheeseburger. Two sandwiches for less than five dollars is a win these days. Also, the more you use the app, the more points you earn towards free food.

Not to say you should make McDonalds a constant staple of your diet…

View fullsize

Laguna.

Disney launching it's own streaming service

Disney has announced that it will soon pull its library of films off Netflix and will start it’s own streaming service, ostensibly with a monthly free just like every other provider out there. 

It never occurred to me until I read the news, but it’s kind of amazing that Disney, the media juggernaut with vast amount of IPs from its own production house, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and ESPN, doesn’t yet have its own online streaming platform. I've no doubts whatsoever the service Disney plans to put out would be a tremendous success. Wouldn’t you sign up if the only place to stream Pixar or MCU movies was on Disney’s own online property? ESPN’s entire 30 for 30 documentary collection?

Here’s the problem: it’s starting to get to be too many streaming platforms, compounded by the fact they all respectively have in-house original content. Therefore if you’re a TV and movie buff and want to stream a great majority of it, you’re looking at a potential monthly outlay similar to having a cable subscription, at which point isn’t the endgame of ‘cutting the cord’ completely lost? 

Of course, some tech-bro in the Bay Area will create an app that aggregates all the services together and sell it in an omnibus package priced from $70-$100. It’ll be christened as innovation while the Twitter hoard will lambast it for being a logically circular facsimile of the age old cable tv package. It’ll be like that whole ride-sharing app ‘bus’ episode a few months back all over again. 

As the online streaming fracture continues on, those of us without the financial means to subscribe to say more than two services at a time, the selecting process will be met with more scrutiny. With that I predict comes the battle for exclusives: ‘only on Neflix’ or ‘only on Hulu’ slogan in adverts will be a common thing. Console gaming has been like that for years: I’ve got a Playstation and not an XBOX because I value playing Gran Turismo, which is a Sony exclusive. 

It’ll be interesting to see how Neflix plans to fill that gaping void Disney will vacate in its library.