Netflix already doesn't have that big of a library, and it's been steadily shrinking. But if it comes down to it, i'm willing to pay for $10/mo to netflix purely for their original content. I'd also pay for HBO Now if they would let me (I'm in canada). I don't think there's any other company putting out enough quality first-party content that i'd be willing to pay a monthly fee for their service. maybe a couple bucks here and there for a one-off movie rental, but if i have to think about money before i watch something - even a completely insignificant amount - i'm probably going to find other options.

And as you say, there's always piracy to fill the gaps in any streaming catalogue.

In 2004, my cable budget was $160/mo in a bundle. Now it is $100/mo for a half-gigabit internet connection.

I'd have to sign up for 6 different services in order to add up to my previous budget. So far... its' not come to that point, but if it does I'll be happy to cut out some services.

After all do I really need Netflix? I don't watch if for months at a time, and only keep it out of laziness. I'll happily cut it and swap in Disney for that time period of budget constraints become an issue.

> After all do I really need Netflix? I don't watch if for months at a time, and only keep it out of laziness.

I put my elderly mother on my netflix account with her own profile and she couldn't be happier. I saved her a bunch of money that she'd otherwise be spending on cable and as a bonus she's not watching 24hr news that's making her afraid all day. For something that I occasionally will use but she always uses, $10/mo is _cheap_.

Now if I could only nudge her towards some of the Korean soap operas that they have now...

I'm reading your comment in Buster Bluth's voice and it is great.

Lol, I guess I'm glad you find it amusing?

In all honesty though, it keeps her from calling me constantly every day. Netflix is great for my sanity.

Is your username not a reference to his arm?

It is not.

I just read that in a Ron Howard voice.

I just read that in a Morgan Freeman voice.

Heh. My elderly father watches 100x more Netflix than I do. It makes him happy, particularly for the price. I'm glad he enjoys it, even if I also wish I could nudge him towards a wider variety of shows.

Korean soaps are great for old people! My mom (Caucasian middle american) also now likes running man.

>I'd have to sign up for 6 different services in order to add up to my previous budget.

that's a good point. but for comparison, in 2004 my cable budget was zero because i was in high school and living with my parents. In college we shared hard drives full of movies around the dorms, and ever since i've lived on my own my tv/movie budget has been some combination of netflix and piracy that added up to less than $10/month. The ship may have sailed on people being willing to spend $60-100 per month on TV.

In 2017, I paid for 100/40 VDSL 30€/month and for all TV channels I could ever need 5€/month (Satellite dish and HD+ decoder card).

I'm currently paying 2€/month for Amazon Prime for Students, and I'm not willing to pay more than 10€/month overall for access to streaming platforms (as long as I'm a student, after that maybe 20-30€ overall). That simple. In my family we have Amazon Prime and Netflix, if stuff isn't on there it gets pirated, no discussion.

More broadly, Netflix has had 3 distinct business models in its lifetime: disk rental, streaming other peoples' content, and now, streaming its own first-party content.

http://www.cravetv.ca/ has a bunch of HBO.

Never seen a pay/subscription site with an anti-adblocker. It wouldn't load until I let it connect to facebook, twitter, scorecardresearch and load a 1st party tracking script included in two tracker lists (Fanboy's and another). It was so tenacious it piqued my curiosity.

Really hard to fathom the thinking behind that. At first I thought it must be a pirate site that depended on ad revenue, but nope it's $8 / month.

MotorTrend on demand have the same, but is only a white overlay over the whole page. So it is enough to set the overlay to display none to get the site to work without allowing a bunch of tracking scripts

Relative to every other steaming service they have a huge library, I'm not sure what you mean.

relative to their immediate competitors, yes they have a fairly big library. but in absolute terms, the chances that a random movie i want to watch is available on netflix is already pretty low. losing the disney catalogue isn't going to significantly change that.

my favourite movie piracy website claims to have 32 times as many movies as US netflix does.

Movies no, but they do have a decent percentage of TV shows.

> The only competition with the streaming service would be piracy.

Piracy is the only thing that will lead to a consumer friendly streaming option. If it weren't for music piracy, a service like Spotify might not exist. For video, Bit Torrent was popular for years.

Now people are flocking to things like Kodi, which can be installed on a Firestick [3] and, with add-ons, can stream anything for free [1]. In order to fight piracy, the studios will need to make it more convenient for consumers to pay [2].

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/liz-bales/online-piracy-netf...

[3] https://kodifiretvstick.com/best-kodi-addons/

We know what will happen, though: studios will spend $ on content and $ on their streaming service, and $$$ trying to stifle competition and consumer rights. If they had instead spent $$$ on content and $$ on their service, people would pirate much much less, but somehow they don't see that or can't / won't run the real numbers.

>"If all major studios pull their content from Netflix, then it will not have the large library size anymore."

I think think that happened when they parted ways with Starz.

And look at Starz now! (TIL Starz has their own app to pay for and download their content)

Dividing content by movie studio cuts against the grain. In most cases a single studio produces an arbitrary subset of the stuff I might want to watch. This is unlike, say, ESPN, where I can add it to my cable subscription if I like watching sports. ESPN is a semantically coherent unit of content. Disney isn't.

If the Disney move represents a trend, it's going to be particularly frustrating for end users, as there will be no legal solution for watching what we want to watch when we want to watch it, unless we subscribe to all services. Guess how many users will do that, and how many will just click the magnet link.

> If all major studios pull their content from Netflix, then it will not have the large library size anymore.

Exactly! It is obvious that Netflix and Amazon are pivoting to be more like HBO and Showtime. Apparently, as they reach out to a global audience they need to rely on original content to avoid costly licensing disputes [1].

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/12/amazon-netflix-look-shows-key-...

Ya, this isn't really about Disney content. It is whether you want to be able to stream Star Wars, and get access to exclusive Star Wars content. Marvel too. But Star Wars.

star wars is 2 hours of content a year. maybe you can stretch that to 60 if you push out a bunch of 'star wars universe' content. and you can just pay $15 to see that in a theatre

netflix added 600 hours of content in 2016 and will surely dwarf that in 2017 and beyond

disney is in a for a rude awakening if they think they can go it alone in this marketplace

Netflix may have added 600 hours but have you plumbed what Netflix adds? Most of the content is crap. Content is not a numbers game it is a hits game.

"Star Wars is worth more than harry potter and james bond combined."[1]

Just the first 6 episodes of Star Wars is 17 hours of footage. This does not include special features, cartoons and other offshoots in this franchise.

Access to this on a whim, along with immediate access to exclusive preview-type content every year prior to the theatrical release is seriously valuable on its own.

I'd venture many people are HBO Go subscribers simply for Game of Thrones right now. And that more than enough do not bother to unsubscribe in the off season.

I think people on HN underestimate how people value content. They don't realize people pay huge sums for complete garbage cable content plans already. A commercial free experience of Disney content, particularly Star Wars / Marvel powered with exclusives priced the same as HBO or Netflix would probably do great.

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/12/24/star-wars-value-worth/

Content is hits+depth. You do the 30 day trial to watch star wars, then stay on because you find other stuff you like. Unless you're going to watch a different star wars movie every week[1], you can just rent or buy the star wars movies for cheap.

1: By 2019 there should be about a dozen feature-length star wars movies, counting the 3 2-hour television specials, so you're right that just star wars movies is not that great.

Truly, I think you're underestimating what people will pay for to get exclusive content in their core interest. Star Wars film releases are rapidly becoming an annual, family tradition for movie goers.

When you can drip out production updates and use electronic marketing channels to hype them or include fan AMA type stuff, there is big potential here to keep people around.

But to your point, if you take Star Wars out of the picture, you still get the entire Disney film collection. Just about every middle class family in America in the 90s had some portion of the Disney VHS collection on their shelves.

I don't see this desire for easy access to familiar, high quality, family-friendly content going away. I see it increasing.

Don't forget Pixar.

Star Wars is already the movies, plus two animated series (Clone Wars and Rebels). You can look at the Marvel strategy to see where it could go, with multiple movies a year plus multiple tv/streaming series (Agents of Shield, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Legion, Defenders, Gifted, Inhumans, Punisher, Runaways). If all that Marvel content moves to Disney streaming, plus new Star Wars content, plus their kids TV shows, plus Pixar, ABC, and ESPN, then you have a package that is really strong.

Atleast 50% of the marvel content on your list are Netflix Owned Orginals, they can not pulled to Disney's new service. This would be Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Defenders, Punisher. It is highly unlikely Netflix would be stupid enough not to have those locked down.

Agents of Shield I believe a ABC owned production, and would be governed under what ever terms Netflix and ABC have, Same with Inhumans I would image but it is a newer property so it might have to stings attached it to

Movies, yes those will likely be pulled. I can see the Non-Netflix Originals being pulled.. maybe.

Based on both an article from the announcement time [1] and the wiki page [2] the Defenders are jointly produced by Marvel TV and ABC Studios, merely distributed by Netflix. If that is true[3], then Disney (which owns Marvel and ABC) owns the rights to them, and once the current contract expires Netflix will no longer be able to distribute (stream) any of the Defenders series.

That would apply to Agents of Shield as well, which is also part of the Disney family.

[1]:http://deadline.com/2013/11/disney-netflix-marvel-series-629... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Jones_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Cage_(TV_series) [3]: You would need a lawyer to examine contract language to be 100% sure, but Disney has armies of really good lawyers and understands the importance of IP better than anyone else on the planet, so it is extremely plausible.

Even if Netflix retains streaming rights to some of the existing episodes they co-produced, Disney owns the properties and future seasons will show up on Disney's streaming service.

>Agents of Shield I believe a ABC owned production

and ABC is owned by Disney.

Where will they get the money to bootstrap such a large production pipeline?

Did you perhaps reply to the wrong post? I cannot make sense of your reply.

Both Netflix and Disney already produce a lot of content, so they don't have to bootstrap a pipeline anymore.

The various incarnations of the Disney Channel currently have 33 ongoing series and 6 upcoming series. There are hundreds of completed series. Their back-catalog will probably be smaller than netflix in 2019, but they have more new content than you would think.

Disney isn't just movies. It's ABC content. It's their Disney Channel content.

> If all major studios pull their content from Netflix, then it will not have the large library size anymore.

It already is a bit like that if you leave the cushy confines of the USA, where the rights to even stream some of their own Originals (e.g. Orange is the New Black, Arrested Development, Lilyhammer) have not been secured and thus us poor souls must resort to pirating or waiting, potentially for years.

To quote Netflix[0]:

> Depending on the region, Netflix may not get the licensing rights for an original series for many years.

[0] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/4976#why-are-some-netflix-o...

Another thing I bet they'll do is arbitrarily pull movies from the streaming service for a period of time so people will flock to the service when they announce its return in a 2 minute commercial you can only see in the theater before their latest movies. They are the kings of artificial scarcity.

thats why Netflix is going insane on original spending, they have no long term plans to keep other content

Yes, and with every pullout they are more like a dumb pipe full of sewage content.