Last year Disney acquired BAMTech (a spun of MLB Media) - though less known, their technical chops when it comes to video streaming are already in Netflix territory.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/8/4/9090897/mlb-bam-live-strea...
People subscribe for the content, not the technology. HBO isn't a tech first company but is probably doing a disproportionate amount of subscriptions thanks to Game of Thrones.
As long as your platform meets some bare minimum standard of reliability (and every service I use seems to be able to) then content is the only thing that matters.
>And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has.
I think you are way overestimating the complexity. Sure, it's not something two guys are going to produce in their bedroom, but video delivery is a solved problem.
Netflix says it uses about 3GB of bandwidth per hour for streaming HD-quality video. CloudFront for one will charge you $0.26 for that 3GB-hour. It's pretty easy to see how binge watchers will rack up pretty high CDN/bandwidth bills.
I agree with your conclusion but it's not the technology that will kill Disney and the likes. It's the myriad compromises they'll make about the content.
Edit: the question was obviously in the context of the parent comment talking about “the technology stack and processes“. Regarding the market share advantage, it’s debatable if each user is worth over $1000.
People are happy to pay a single Netflix subscription, and many people already have one.
People would be less happy to shell out for yet another subscription, especially for a single kind of content (unless you watch Disney all day, it doesn't make sense to subscribe).
I'd compare this to Hollywood in the late '60s - early '70s, when it needed the breeze of fresh air brought by La Nouvelle Vague or by Kurasawa's and Jean-Pierre Melville's movies. Right now Hollywood (and the media companies behind it) is stuck in making movies for late-teenager geeks (the comic-book-based endless series, the Star Wars soap opera etc), movies which have almost no interest for the general public.
Disney and Netflix are going to go head to head because, anecdotally speaking, my kids and all their friends watch these two sources primarily (some overlap ie, Moana on Netflix will likely vanish once Disney's streaming solution goes mainstream).
The key here is that Netflix is essentially free due to it's low overall cost, and parents like the non-kid content so the kid content being free (and no upsell) is a big deal - and unlike YT kids, is relatively trustworthy.
Disney will have to compete to either make a generally good Netflix replacement, or somehow dovetail into that model as a "high cost/high value" seperate subscription and edge out all other such services.
There are multiple market reports (not a public one that I can find) that show the vast majority of Netflix subscribers already do shell out for another subscription (and that's true internationally, including in non-Prime Amazon territories, so it's not about Amazon delivery).
Most people will very much happily shell out for multiple subscriptions.
Aside from stack, whatelse does Netflix have going for it? Pre-internet Blockbuster had an overpowering / dominate "stack" and that was their downfall.
If VR is the next progression in home entertainment, who is best poised for that? Who has the tech + creativity DNA?
That is because the internet replaced them. Streaming is a direct replacement for video rentals. It's the exact same movie but you don't have to drive to the video store to get it. The industry itself doesn't go away. There isn't any apparent new distribution method that will do to the internet what the internet did to brick and mortar stores.
VR is a completely different industry, more related to video games than film, and from a distribution standpoint is nothing new. VR isn't going to cause people to download games from some hypothetical new non-internet distribution network.
I see it differently. Entertainment is entertainment. In addition there is a finite amount of disposable income and disposable time.
For example, the myth is that the internet was what killed the music industry. Sure, maybe it was the death blow, but what brought music to its knees was video games. It changed the habits of plenty of kids. The only reason it didn't show was due to CD sales. Not only where ppl paying $15 for a single (since CD singles were almost nonexistent), but they were also rebuying music they already own in other formats. The music industry was a zombie propped up on inflated revenue.
As entertainment goes, Netflix is not in the next market.
… only to find that all the copies are rented for the weekend.
All those companies think: we own a lot of media, we can just build a streaming media platform. And I think they’re way underestimating how hard it is to build the technology stack and processes that Netflix has.
Netflix has an engineering team and a development and deployment process that has some production studios attached to it.
Disney can probably copy what Netflix has today, but by the time they’ve done that, Netflix will have updated their platform hundreds of time, and I don’t think they’re going to be able to build an engineering team that can keep up.