Those are all movies. Streaming services get traction from episodic series and live shows.

If Disney streams only feature film content, it will go nowhere. No parent will pay $10-$20 month to access the same 50 to 100 films over and over.

I think you greatly underestimate two things:

1. The shear volume of non-film media, particularly shows directed at kids and pre-teens, that Disney controls

2. The ability of kids to literally watch the same thing over and over again

I have nothing to add to this except that the kids I know love to watch the same movies over and over again to the point of speaking the lines with the movies. I don't get it but I'm not the target audience.

Then it would probably make sense to pay 20 bucks one time for the movie they love, for the ability to watch it forever, right? Especially if you have data restrictions.

Yes, it's what I would do and agree, but I might do a lot of things to maximize the value of my dollars where other people may value convenience over the dollars. In this situation the question is will the average family person going to carry a bunch of media for multiple children in multiple vehicles? My anecdotal experience this last week traveling is families of all income will use streaming over both carrying a portable DVD player or ripped DVDs on a portable device.

Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones are all Disney/Marvel. I assume they won't get pulled but Disney may not extend the license.

> No parent will pay $10-$20 month

That's literally what my family used to pay in VHS rentals. One new release and one weekly movie, three or four times a month.

There was a whole industry for production of the cassettes, warehousing, distribution, retail space, service personnel which all cost a pretty packet. The cost now of putting the post-edit file on a server with a web payment has gotta be virtually zero. Any schmuck can serve a torrent to the world for the price of an internet connection -- sure, that's the baseline, and it relies on others paying the (small) real costs, but still.

Without the need for Blockbuster retail stores, that's got to cut the price in half. Being able to keep your whole back catalog in a computer rack instead of buying warehouse space in 50 different countries has to halve the costs again, surely. Account for actual material costs, factories to make the cassettes, write them, produce the cases. What are we down to now ...

$1 a month for buying 6 new movies sounds more like it.

CDN costs of serving HD movies at scale aren't trivial.

Well sending a small parcel in the post costs me >£3 GBP, what's the cost of 9GB of CDN. Bet it's trivial in comparison.

http://www.cdncalc.com/ says it's about 34p. Suggesting it's not trivial, but ~10% of the prior cost.

Not a solid analysis but indicative IMO. Bet someone else has done all the [other] costings and probably quite rigorously?

Disney has a sprawling cable content network.

Exactly. That's why they HAD to make this move.

The Disney channel is getting hurt badly by families cutting the cord. Disney streaming will be just as much about "The Mickey Mouse Club" as it is about big budget blockbusters.

I have a 2 year old. I will be wherever the Disney content is, and they could charge me basically whatever price they want.

Why is Disney content so important to you, do you think watching a specific brand of movie/show is _that_ enriching to your child's life?

Disney's attitude to selling to children is toxic IMO. But perhaps if you fully inhale you actually do start to get happier by just buying the latest movie franchise tie-in toy, made of cheap plastic using exploited labour?

You make some good points, but I don't think you have had a 2 year old.

It's not about enriching their lives, or encouraging their development by moving them away from material things...yet. Those goals come a little later.

My kid is actually 1.8, I was rounding up. He likes Moana and watches it every day. He can say ~15 words. The movie's chicken and recognizing songs he has heard before result in pure joy.

He likes to watches the Mickey Mouse club and also likes to point out the characters he recognizes. This is intellectually rewarding to him, because it is at the absolute edge of his abilities.

But I think like you. Disney is evil. When he turns 5, I will throw a brick through the TV and hand him a copy of WALDEN. For now, I'm fucked, at the mercy of a vicious corporate Mouse.

I'll make an argument that has nothing to do with the quality of disney's entertainment or disney's ability to give value to your child in the form of happiness/lessons.

Being a human being is a social experience. If all of a kid's friends watch disney movies and have disney toys, there is an opportunity to connect with his friends. There is also the opportunity to feel excluded, to miss out on experiences and discussions with his friends. I remember quite fondly how excited me and my friends would get talking and arguing about Star Wars and Indiana Jones in the sandbox.

Absolutely. And with some data suggesting that a very significant part of youtube playtime is through small children on their mothers' accounts, such content availability will have strong ripple effects.

TFA specifically mentioned all of the series that will be included with this. The Disney channel has been around for ~35 years, so they are not lacking for content there.

Well, boy it's a shame doesn't have everything from Barbie and Tinkerbell to Star vs the Forces of Evil and the endless sitcoms and such that launch teen actor and singers' careers.

my kids dont even watch that much tv, but if it was only the entire disney movie lineup - including new releases and old releases - but not including star wars or marvel or any tv shows, id pay $10/month without blinking. at $15 id still probably do it.

edit to add: not having to handle media is a big deal - dvds get scratched _very_ easily - plus being able to access the content on an old iphone or ipad wherever you are is worth its weight in gold.

Actually I am a parent of two tween kids, and they consume a lot of Disney sitcoms.

The point was that the movie library alone isn't compelling enough for me to subscribe. If the other shows are included like TFA mentioned (and not the grandparent comment) then that's different.

I am not paying another $10 for another service. Enough is enough, I can live without Disney stuff. If I really "need it" I'll go to the library.

I'd like to agree, but i wonder if my kids will think the same. Disney owns a lot of things.

They don't need to see these movies every week for their development, and you're the parent, it's your decision to make. I'm really flabbergasted at how much every parent seem to value disney movies here (not only your comment), I (naively ?) thought that the people who read Hacker News were more anti-TV than this.

I stated Disney owns a lot of things. If that all goes behind some streaming service my kids would love to have it.

If they get it will be entirely up to the parents.

But if you're keen to know their chances; We don't even have Netflix. :)

> must-see content

There's no such thing.

They also own ESPN and ABC, back in the day Lost was something Netflix paid a ton for, and I'm sure there are other things that I have been forgetting that are relevant here.

That doesn't look very enticing at all.

So they're extremely good at providing low-quality blockbusters and rehashed kid movies. Great.