Disney Switching To Netflix For Exclusive Film Distribution
An anonymous reader writes "When Disney films leave the theater and head for TV, they currently go through the Starz channel first. That's going to change in 2016. Disney has signed a deal to give Netflix the first crack at its animated and live-action films. Even if you're not a fan of either company, this is a bit of a big deal; Disney is ditching a traditional pay-TV service in favor of online streaming. (It also includes properties from the recent Lucasfilm deal.) The article wisely points out that pay-TV in general isn't in danger until the live sports situation changes, but this is a big step away from the status quo."
As more content providers embrace streaming, they are going to where customers want to buy their data. I hope more companies follow their lead, they allow for multiple distributors (sucks if you have amazon prime and not netflix and it is an exclusive deal), and distributors make sure they support the big three platforms. Hopes aside, this is a good step in the right direction.
That's eons away in the context of consumer electronics. By that time, they might be the last one switching to online streaming.
for 5-10$usd you can get a vpn or shell to ssh tunnel through from within the US.
not that you're wrong to be annoyed, but there are reasonably low cost solutions out there to get around region based internet services.
I think this will start working out well for Disney, and their execs will get the idea into their heads: "Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier if we just owned Netflix?"
Technoli
Netflix: $1.5 billion in revenues in 2011 and growing.
Starz: $1.6 billion in revenues in 2011 and relatively stagnant.
Pretty much explains why.
Don't jack up rates to pay those Disney people. We'll just move elsewhere.
— Your customers
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
disney also owns marvel property rights this is a pretty big move as right now disney houses a large tent of what i enjoy watching
This is huge for Netflix. Disney huge.
That's a HELL of a lot of content!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you have a buddy in the US you can both setup a VPN and trade BBC for Netflix.
Dude the live sports situation is awesome! I am streaming live NBA and NFL games and watching their archives directly from the respective sources. You don't need Fox or ESPN for anything besides college football right now.
Peace, K1
Star Wars on Netflix!
Interesting they didn't go all in with Apple and put it up on iTunes.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Use the MediaHint plugin for firefox (and chrome) and you no longer need a VPN.
Netflix = Windows and Mac OS X and i have none of them so i have to keep on pirating movies
There were lots of good streams of the Olympic Games, and not very good TV coverage. Sure there were some geographical blocks to things like BBC coverage, but that's a small technicality that would be easily overcome if the need/want was great enough (once TV dies). Sure Netflix might not be able to manage ALL the sports, but each provider might manage their own part.
Uh, 1 + 30 x 2 = 42
42
This is deal that Steve Jobs would love to have signed before his death !
I remember his talk from an AllThingsDigital conference where he stated that the problem with TV is the go-to-market conditions !
Having the Internet as a distribution medium for a behemoth content producer like Disney certainly is going to change some established rules in the market !
Finally there's way for an Apple tv set! Yay ...
I can't wait to be able to streammonstering the latest olympic events. #objectchucking #staged Kappa
This is pretty radical and suggests a significant management change of philosophy within Disney.
Historically - with VHS, DVD, rentals, DivX, etc - Disney has *always* been a follower of tech advances, not a leader. In fact, it's appeared that they've been DRAGGED to every new advance, in a seeming effort to prevent their IP from moving to media that would allow piracy.
For them to push out to a streaming company is both a huge win for Netflix and for, I daresay, the viewing public.
-Styopa
Dixons group already have a similar deal for their Knowhow Movies service in the UK. Other than its already in effect.
Why's it taking them FOUR years? With how fast tech moves Netflix could be out of business by then.
That makes corporate IT look fast by comparison.
I'm always surprised at the positive comments on netflix here on slashdot. It's a drmd format and you're totally at the whim of netflix on whether content is removed/changed. Personally I'm quite happy we have physical discs so there's a backup of say.. star wars the unspecial edition on laserdisc somewhere out there still. What about the future archival of culture if everything becomes streaming/on demand and we're totally slave to our masters?
Just in case you didn't know, Netflix used to carry Starz in its entirety like a year ago. Then content providers threw a big fit, saying they aren't allowed to sub-lease their content or whatever and that clearly that was 2 things for the price of one and forced them to break off.
Actually, I think he intended it as an exponential growth function, rather than a linear growth function. Badly worded, though. where day 1 = 1, day 2 = 2, day 3 = 4, day 4 = 8, and so forth.
in other words, f(x) = 2^(x-1), solve for the area under the graph from x=1->30. I'm lazy, however, and will just use wolfram alpha to solve it.
On the Netflix blog, they promised The Nightmare Before Christmas would be available for streaming starting last night. Sure enough it was (I checked mid afternoon and it wasn't yet), with subtitles (in english), and if you ask me the quality of the streaming was some of the highest I've seen from Netflix.
This will be a boon for Netflix, and a real kick in the pants to Starz. I love the turnabout. Starz wanted to jack the rates so high that Netflix does an endrun around them and gets Disney exclusively. Its perfect! Stocks of Starz fell on the news, while Netflix went up like 14%.
Yeah, well try using Netflix Canada, which has about 1/4 of the US content.
How long until this actually happens.
Broadcast networks wouldn't go broadband, so Apple buys broadband company with contracts and original content production.
Even as a stunt it would shake things up a bit. Eddie Que could run Netflix and compromise more and more studio relationships until the studios either tried to set up their own direct to consumer market or the Broadcasters got nervous and setup their own download networks. They might even buy "peering" companies to set up local hotspots that wormhole traffic in and out of the Internet between major metropolitan markets and route around the rural areas of the Internet where QoS doesn't work.
I would think the Broadcasters would be pushing and lobbying Congress to ban net neutrality as "unfair" to the Studios and themselves.. or pushing for a Tax on network downloads as a national security interest kind of thing. They have to have regulatory control over the bit rates by Taxing the system otherwise the markets will run wild on the local country networks and could endanger the population during catastrophic events like Earthquakes or Hurricanes.
which calls for a window of exclusivity, nothing more.. could just mean that netflix has a 30 day head start before stuff goes on traditional tv networks.
reserving judgement til more is known but if its online-only for anything longer than 1-2 months we ain't gonna like it... and no, it wont get us to netflix either... we aint chewing up what precious few gb we get every month to watch movies
Disney has been eying this space for nearly two decades, trying to find a way to monetize digital content streaming. Starz has been an impediment to content distrubtion, forcing content to go through pay-channel services first... Netflix has made a huge win here. The legalities of these contracts are insane too. They have release windows for TV, streaming, DVD distribution--it's all factored into these contracts.
People don't want to lug around DVDs to watch movies, and now they don't have to with smart phones and tablets and other media rich devices. Personally I want to get rid of my DVD collection altogether--it'd free up a closet's worth of space in my house. I want to be able to log into my favorite website and watch stuff on my flatscreen tv, that's connected out there to some cloud activated device, or better yet put it in the display, more than just a cable service and get rid of the old model altogether.
Hopefully Netflix can profit from this deal. Of course if they go under, I wouldn't be surprised to find a company like Disney buying them outright.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I want DRM-free files to download.
A whole bunch of disney movies especially famous ones are in netflix now so I don't understand why they are stating 2016. Hopefully they will get all the star war movies onto netflix soon, I don't think they can squeeze anymore $$ out of the franchise.
Do you mean from day one to day 30 or all days excluding the first 30 days (i.e. after 30 days)? The first step to solving any problem is making sure the specification is unambiguous and intended.
Its great to see content creators embracing the new paradigm!
Concerning live sports, I recently discovered that this weekends UFC fight is available online as a live stream for $9.99. I've ditched cable\ satellite years ago and its nice to see some live sports becoming available online. As we see some of the bigger creators like Disney shift to services like Netflix its just a matter of time before we see networks follow suit.
What I would love to see is networks offer online subscriptions that plugin to your device of choice, pay for a stream and receive content on your Roku or XBMX for example. There is no reason we need to be tied to a cable, satellite or phone connection specifically, its all data and I should be able to access it any way I choose.
No sig here...
I for one wouldn't mind if Netflix added 'premium' channels for extra fees. they are only able to provide 'X' amount of content for their price, I want more content, and am willing to pay for it; but don't want to have to add apps; change streaming devices, etc. The biggest advantage with Comcast right now is their set up box Just Works. But I know they are taking more steps to lock out 3rd parties (encrypting basic cable for example)
I want to watch Crunchyroll anime; Comedy Centrals Colbert Report/Daily Show; Adventure Time...