But Is It on Netflix? - Streaming Video Service Thread: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, AT+T Watch, Philo, Playstation Vue, HBO Max, HBO Now, Facebook Live and many more

A thread to discuss the ongoing balkanization of streaming, cord-cutting, new options, lament and laud the coming and going of new competitors and so on.

Sound off with your obsessive subscriptions!

I'm using Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Mubi, Criterion, HBO Max, Showtime; might very well find myself doing Apple+ if I upgrade my phone/ipad at some point but can't imagine getting Disney.

thanking u for having a long enough subcription list to make my own look reasonable

subscription, yikes

Here's the projected pile of noteworthy streaming channels purported to have unique programming to choose from in 2020... surely this will need to contract at some point in the near future?

Netflix
Hulu
Amazon Prime
Apple TV+
Disney+
NBC Peacock
YouTube TV
AT+T Watch
HBO Max
HBO Now
Showtime
Starz
Facebook Live
CBS Interactive
Discovery/BBC
Criterion
Mubi
Shudder
Acorn
Crunchyroll
DC Universe
Kanopy
AMC Premiere
Pluto

I have netflix. That is all.

Plus a space to talk about delivery services! Roku, Playstation Vue and the like.

Give thanks and praise to PLEX, which is free, has virtually no ads and mostly just magically works.

We use a Roku and currently pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and we have HBO Go since we currently have it in our cable package. We've been considering ditching cable completely, but when we talk to our provider (Xfinity) they want so much $$ for our internet service alone without a bundle that it still doesn't make sense. Since my wife works from home as a consultant and does a lot of video editing, we need a dependable connection. They really still push the bundles so dropping the cable alone doesn't seem to be the cost savings we hope for.

I know for sure we'll add Disney+ and I'm pushing for the Criterion one too, unsuccessfully thus far.

I am curious, how much of a difference is it just for internet, vs internet+cable where you are?

i cord cut earlier this year with the Hulu/No Ads cable package and i have not missed cable at all. I think it's $60 for that package and another $65 for high speed internet.
Supplementing occasionally with tt0rre3ntz helps keep FOMO at bay.

I have Hulu and Amazon Prime. I had a Showtime add-on through Hulu while Billions was airing, but dropped it after that; I had HBO for a while through Amazon to watch Insecure and Big Little Lies, but dropped that too.

If a show is on a particular streaming platform, it'll often be available for rent/purchase through Amazon, so if it looks really good I'll do that sometimes. I barely ever watch movies anymore - maybe one a month, so none of the movie-oriented services are at all appealing. And since there are no kids in my house, I don't have to worry about Disney, Marvel, etc.

xp I'd be curious to hear more about Plex's video features, I have a server installed but only use it for music.

Currently we've got Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Shudder ... at some point I want to shut down my Uverse TV service and switch to Hulu or YouTube or some other way to stream live sports and Turner Classic Movies.

I'm not sure offhand, my wife is the biggest push for cutting the cord in our house and she's been the one talking to them directly. Iirc, we pay around $140 for both right now, but I think she said they'd still want nearly $100 for just internet.

i pay for netflix (though i should really stop, i watch almost nothing on it), hulu (through spotify which is practically like not paying for it), shudder (the greatest), and criterion. i've never had cable as an adult

Hulu's live TV option is ridiculously expensive, to me.

I should add that I also have a digital antenna that pulls in network TV and some other channels like ION (lots of cop-show reruns) and Grit (old Western shows).

yeah, I haven't had cable for a very, very long time (15 years?) and I was wondering how much of a difference it is these days to not have them bundled.

I recently saw a meme about how all these subscription services with unique programming is basically reinventing into a more tedious cable tv.

Yep. Thanks capitalism for taking an legitimately game-changing technology and just turning it back into the old overpriced thing we all hated 20 years ago.

Remember back in the 1990s when they kept promising truly ala carte cable packages? "Only pay for the channels you actually watch!". Well it's here now, finally, except you have to pay $9.99 to $12.99 for each of the channels.

2019 US pricing chart for now and future reference:

Netflix (standard plan, 2 HD screens) - $13 monthly
Hulu - $6 a month
Hulu/No Ads - $12 a month
Hulu/No Ads/Cable/enhanced cloud DVR - $61 a month <- recommend this for cord cutters as it is pretty solid for sports
Amazon Prime - $13 a month, $120 a year; comes with amazon's other stuff
Apple TV+ - $5 a month; free with purchase of new apple hardware
Disney+ - $7 a month or $70 a year; pre-order starts today
NBC Peacock - As yet unannounced
YouTube TV - $50 a month cable package
YouTube Premium - $12 a month
AT+T Watch - $15 a month cable package, free if you're on their network
HBO Max -Currently reported at $15 a month, presumably will offer a package deal with HBO Now
HBO Now - $15 a month
Showtime - $11 a month
Starz - $9 a month
Facebook Watch - Free at the moment
CBS Interactive - $6 a month
Discovery/BBC - As yet unanounced
Criterion - $11 per month, $99 per year
Mubi - $11 pre month
Fandor - $10 per month, $99 per year
Shudder - $5 per month, $48 per year
Acorn - $6 per month, $60 per year
Crunchyroll - Free option or $7 per moth with hi-def and better programming
DC Universe - $8 a month or $75 per year
AMC Premiere - $5 a month
Pluto - Currently Free
Crackle - Currently Free
Kanopy - Currently Free

On the sports tip:
NFL Sunday Ticket is $74 a month or $294 a year
NBA League Pass is $120 a year for one team or $200 to $250 a year for all teams
NHL Season Pass is $140 a year
MLB Season pass is $25 a month via Amazon, $90 a year for one team or $120 for all teams

We currently pay for Netflix (incl. dvds!), get Hulu through a friend's account, and HBO Go through a family account that was supposedly canceled but still magically works! All through PS4. Have never rented/bought a digital show or movie a la carte.

if you were to buy all the above with hulu as a basic cable delivery option, that plus hi-speed internet would run you around $275 a month for television.

I highly recommend just downloading PLEX as it's free. Basically, if you have any kind of smart tv option, you can stream whatever you download directly to your television.

That netflix standard plan for me is $8usd a month but it's another country's pay structure I guess.

yeah there's a "standard definition" single screen plan for $8

No, this is for 2 screens HD.

I just looked up the basic one screen it's about 6.50 USD.

torrent everything, $0

a given.

well ya gotta pay for internet and hard drives! plus not everybody is ethically down with / has the technical expertise / willingness to take the time to learn how to join better groups / etc

although do people really torrent tv shows and movies that much anymore when you can find a free stream of almost anything?

for me it's most helpful when the tv show in question just isn't commercially available in my region

Worth noting that YouTube Premium also includes YouTube Music (and formerly Google Play Music).

a recent streaming experience with hulu, trying to start an episode in the middle:

click episode, cannot seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
accidentally clicked on another episode while trying to close the app on my fone, 90 seconds of commercials starts
click original episode again, 90 seconds of commercials
close hulu, torrent entire season of show, cancel hulu

i won't front: all video streaming services are flawed in a dozen ways that piracy frankly is not.

My friends who are subletting my place have like 6 subscriptions and when I stay there I have to leave the room when they are trying to find something to watch (which always ends up taking a minimum of 20 minutes). A lot of the user interfaces are completely horrid.

wish the cinema was cheaper

xp -- ha - i have netflix, amazon, hbo (through amazon), britbox, acorn (which i should cancel because it's pretty much the same as britbox -- i had acorn first), and MhZ --

omg the user interfaces -- yeah some are really bad -- some are not awful, but are crap when it comes to subtitle options

i watch stuff via roku -- my roku is about 6 yrs old at this point and seems to be "dying" -- is this just standard planned obsolescence?

among the most frustrating things is that depending on your device, the interface and remote controls are totally different! You can't even play Criterion on an Amazon Fire and you can't play Mubi on a Playstation. Prime is easy to explore on a Fire but nearly impossible on a Roku. Everything's fucked!

I do Netflix and will do Disney+. More often than not, if I want to see a movie badly enough I buy a physical copy or, if that isn't an option, just watch that shit on YouTube or whatever. I watched a shitty, washed-out '30s movie on Internet Archive this weekend because it appears to have never been released via any legit home video format. Does that count as a streaming service?

youtube and archive.org certainly remain the people's netflix if netflix isn't already the people's netflix

I still pay for cable (and the Criterion Channel) but need to talk to people who get TCM through other services.

i'm dumping cable as soon as we get fiber internet installed at the end of the month, and signed up for Hulu Live. This looks like it'll save me about $80 a month for basically the same channels and faster internet than the shitty Comcast service I have. Still have netflix, amazon prime, and hbo through hulu. I'll pick up disney as well.

oh yeah, and we use the latest generation Apple TVs. I had a Roku that was a few years old and yes, it crapped out. The apps developed by the providers become too resource intensive for the devices.

"That netflix standard plan for me is $8usd a month but it's another country's pay structure I guess." how is this possible?

i use vrv sometimes for anime and amazon until my last ill-advised prime resub runs out next year, and that's it.

Moving to the Los Angeles area with its video stores and cinemas means not having to really care about any of this shit and it rocks.

We cut the cable 2-3 years ago and had Vue for about a year until a price hike, then Sling. The current fight between Fox and Dish/Sling has cramped my baseball watching, so I'm going to drop all channel-package delivery in the next few weeks and not worry about it until the next season of Better Call Saul starts. Dropping Sling and not renewing MLB.tv next season will free up more than enough $$ for Disney, which my wife wants to get. Otherwise, we have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, CBS (for my wife) and Criterion (for me). Our donation to our PBS affiliate is just big enough to give us access to everything on the PBS channel.

When Filmstruck shut down, Fandor offered subscribers a special deal -- I think it was $25 for a year? Anyway, I got that but probably won't renew it.

Netflix & Prime, but in Australia we can also access iView and SBS On Demand, which are half-decent public broadcaster options.

I signed up for Youtube TV so I could talk my mom into ditching her cable bill (you can share accounts with 2-3 people) and it's been the best cable replacement I've experienced. No buffering, standard TV Guide style menu, good enough channel selection. I'm so used to going straight to Netflix or Prime I rarely think of opening the app unless I want to watch sports, though.

Netflix and mlb.tv are free w/ my cell phone, I keep forgetting to cancel HBO Now, keep Prime out of habit, pay for the Criterion Channel so I can feel guilty when I'm too numb at the end of the day to watch something with subtitles and just turn on a CW sci-fi show on Netflix instead.

I have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime. I watch all of these via roku as well as a fair amount of free YouTube and Twitch. I also use roku to play music via Spotify, as the TV plugs straight into my stereo.

The quality of film selections on Netflix seems to have really plummeted lately. Amazon has the best selections of those three.

I'm strongly considering Disney+ because I'm a sucker and want to watch the Star Wars shows.

akm xpost. I set up my netflix in Chile so the fees are 4,990; 5,990; and 8,990clp for the 3 tiers. There is currency fluctuation of course but it's been in the $8 range at least for the last year (I just checked) regardless if I am using it in the US or Europe.

"The quality of film selections on Netflix seems to have really plummeted lately. Amazon has the best selections of those three."

netflix has totally shifted their focus to original programming, only 1/10th of which is worth watching. but it's still so cheap I keep it.

we have netflix, hulu, amazon prime, and recently became members of our local pbs station to access content on the pbs app. I am constantly advocating to my partner that we pause one or all of them, bc we only ever use them to watch one show at a time and will often go months without opening the others. She doesnt want to be burdened with the annoyance of stopping and re-starting multiple subscriptions throughout the year as shows come and go, which is a reasonable thing to find annoying. For movies I almost entirely watch DVDs from netflix.

I'm constantly astonished at how shitty the movie offerings on all of these are, and yet somehow still seem to get worse every year. Was just flipping through hulu yesterday bc I forgot they had movies and the 'classics' tab included Poltergeist II, Mr Mom, and like 25 public domain westerns.

although do people really torrent tv shows and movies that much anymore when you can find a free stream of almost anything?

yes, I do this all the time for TV shows and movies. Wouldn't know where to look for free streams, and besides I value the picture quality and curated content of the big private torrent sites.

a recent streaming experience with hulu, trying to start an episode in the middle:

click episode, cannot seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
seek to middle, 90 seconds of commercials
accidentally clicked on another episode while trying to close the app on my fone, 90 seconds of commercials starts
click original episode again, 90 seconds of commercials

This is all too real. Lots of the time if theres a TV show I like that is available on DVD i'll just buy the DVDs, which most of the time can be found used for <$10 on amazon or ebay, specifically to avoid experiences like this.

I mostly just use streaming services for TV shows. WRT movies, it's consistently baffling to me that streaming services should ever pose any real threat to physical media sales. The selection has always been spotty and terrible. The notion of just throwing up my hands and being all 'hey, if it's images moving on a screen, I'll watch whatever (dopey giggle)!' is so loathsome. I'm highly-selective when it comes to the garbage I view, thankuverymuch.

My local library added Kanopy access for cardholders and, while I have underutilized it, it's awesome. Up to ten films per month, pretty interesting selection.

yeah, new york public library opting out of kanopy was understandable given the cost, but a bummer

we can also access iView and SBS On Demand, which are half-decent public broadcaster options.

SBS On Demand alone is an incredible resource of more good films than any human can watch - foreigners can browse titles (but not play anything) at https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movies

Especially since they recently added a dedicated movie channel.

the only torrent site I know of anymore is 1337x and the selection is crap, venturing into the private tracker thing was awful when I wanted to download more movies, impossible to keep a ratio up and you probably ought to have a seedbox for privacy and blah blah blah
Easier, as it turns out, to just pay $5 to rent from iTunes or something.

I have Netflix and sometimes Mubi (through scribd) and Criterion Channel. Sometimes I split a crave tv account, which is a canadian service that includes HBO. I think these make more sense than cable, where you have to schedule what you want to watch and still have to sit through commercials. but come on people, bundle a bunch of these services together, there's too many right now.

i torrent tv shows that aren't on netflix or hbo. i just found 1337x a few days ago, when all the tbp mirrors went down together.

The biggest private torrent tracker for TV shows doesn't require you to maintain a ratio. I download all my TV from there, everything's properly curated and searchable with various HD and SD options available so no need to go with public trackers. For movies yes the biggest tracker requires you to maintain a ratio but I've never had any difficulty doing that and I don't have a seedbox. Just keep seeding and don't go overboard downloading and you're good.

Y'all mentioned PLEX upthread, its all we use in our household: 2 TVs, 2 playstations, 2 AppleTVs, a 2 TB server, and PLEX is the glue that sorts it all out. Tho we mumblemumblepiratebaymumble.

But without it how could we ever watch all 20 jillion seasons of Law and Order as we have been doing of late.

NZBs all the way...

We pay from Netflix and Prime, I assume I am paying for American Prime because we get American content rather than australian. It’s probably due to the DNS jiggerypokery I do to make BBC iPlayer work, id happily pay for a Brit box service, if australia had one, I guess I could pay for it through US amazon. Kanopy from the library is in there too.

ABC iView and SBS on demand are great but with the absolute worst interfaces. We also love the NHK world app to watch free English language Japanese tv app. I also VPN in to japan to get the free content Fuji on Demand and TBSOD, I’d love be able to pay for Paravi but can’t get it work properly with the VPN.

Top it all off with iTunes purchases and rental. Generally prefer to pay for content if there is a way (including watching adverts) but geographic licensing can make this almost impossible to do.

All watched through Apple TV (although Netflix is watched through the app on the LG smart TV)

i’ve had good luck with r/redditbay ymmv

Just recently ditched Hulu, almost nothing there I want to see. Ones I pay for: Netflix, Amazon, Criterion, Shudder, and Night Flight. The latter was an impulse move after being swept up in a wave of nostalgia. Probably won't renew it.

Anyone got BFI player? My annual sub to Mubi is going to expire soon and thinking of dropping it, unless they come up with a £22.99 deal for the year. Which I suspect was a one off.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/search-party-season-3-hbo-max.html
one of many culls from network/cable partnership synergies yet to come no doubt, but TBS is migrating Search Party over as an exclusive to HBO Max
i imagine cable is going to start being a place where things sink or swim and the hits get pulled for streaming services

i think my 6 yr old roku finally crashed fatally -- got a new one for $40

re: Plex. I don't think that's a legitimate competitor. I mean all it does is stream things that you have to download from somewhere to your devices. You may as well just say "I torrent everything I want to watch". It doesn't have working built-in capabilities to stream things directly off the web, to my knowledge; at least the few times I tried to do stuff like that via channels it barely worked.

Probably a conversation for this thread, but the plex + sonarr combo mentioned there gets closer to what you're after, although you're still downloading a local copy first.

apparently people running plex friend sharing networks is a thing, the idea being different people in your circle might rip/torrent/download different things and you browse their selection. I think a friend of a friend is in such a group and I’ve considered talking my way in

oh yeah, plex networks is the BEST but i need to figure out how to set that up. i feel like an ILPLEX network would be fucking awesome.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/23/20697751/piracy-plex-netflix-hulu-streaming-wars

going to have to tidy up my library if we do that

i would maybe like to have this conversation. 77 perhaps?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/apple-launches-house-studio-band-brothers-pacific-follow-up-1246746

Apple is ready for takeoff. The tech giant has handed out a nine-episode order for Masters of the Air, the follow-up drama to HBO's limited series Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Additionally, Apple is officially launching its own internal studio, making the series the first that it will own in-house. Apple's Worldwide Video heads Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht will also oversee the unnamed studio in a move that brings them back to their roots as head of Sony Pictures TV.

Sources say HBO released the series — focused on historian Donald L. Miller's nonfiction book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany — ages ago and before WarnerMedia became its new corporate parent. The decision, sources say, was based on the price tag for the series, which is said to clock in at an estimated $250 million

Scrolled through the gigantic twitter thread of all the content Disney + is going to have. So much shite, it's kinda unbelievable. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the only new exclusives ready for launch will be a Lady and the Tramp remake and the Star Wars show The Mandalorian, right?

I'd probably pay a monthly fee just for Frozen if I had kids, have to be cheaper than a babysitter, but I'm surprised at how bad it seemed. I mean, it has Star Wars and Marvel, it has popular 'adult' stuff, but hasn't everyone already seen those? It seemed really sparse apart from that.

p sure this is mostly aimed at parents

esp w/ all the old TV shows. price of this plus another streaming service for grownups is wayyyyy cheaper than getting cable just to have nickelodeon and/or the disney channel, in terms of things the kids might beg and scream for.

Yeah. it's probably a bargain for parents, really. Also, once I got to the early nineties I got so many Proustian flashbacks. So many films I remember from ads in the Donald Duck magazine.

Everyone has seen all the Star Wars and Marvel movies but people also watch that shit over and over and over.

the latter part is more accurate than the first

XP ^^Yeah, and as new viewers come along it'll be handy to have all of it in one place in the post-physical media world.

I saw somewhere that Adult Swim's syndication deal for Bob's Burgers is ending soon so Disney can have the exclusive on it, and maybe all the MacFarlane shows too. Simpsons I believe has already been announced to be part of the service.

adults who watch the same movie 10 times are like an alien species to me

You can watch all Star Wars and Marvel movies 10 times, and that's still just half a year of movie watching. Then what do you do? I just have to say, scrolling through all of it, it looked a lot less impressive than I'd thought.

30 Seasons of The Simpsons. (Only maybe 1/3rd of which is watchable, but still...)

Watch one Marvel/SW movie a week and you've covered half the year. Not a ton of people who are going to have D+ as their only streaming service.

Also don't underestimate millennial nostalgia for not just Disney animation, but also live action stuff like Blank Check, Mighty Ducks, and the Lohan movies--not to mention all those Disney TV shows.

If a family member signs up I will 100% borrow their login to watch Darkwing Duck & Duck Tales.

Those shows were such a big part of my childhood! Just seeing them on the twitter thread made me flash back to being six years old and watching tv friday night after soccer practice. But I made it through four episodes of the new version of Ducktails, and I kinda can't imagine going back to watch the old stuff. I'm not sure it works the same way 'Friends' does. I could very well be wrong.

In a few years this thread is going to be like when I asked what 'GPRS connectivity' was, in our old mobile phone thread

In the UK I have:

- Freeview HD (over-the-air broadcasting, comparable to basic cable, approx 50 channels, all the main ones) - £0
- iPlayer (BBC on-demand, comparable to Netflix but just for BBC content) - £0, no ads
- All4 (Channel 4) - £0, zillions of ads
- My5 (Channel 5) - £0, zillions of ads
- iTVPlayer (iTV) - £0, zillions of ads
- Plex

All thru the PS4.

Technically you need a tv licence for iplayer and freeview which would be £150 a year (I know people flout this, I would too in the days of “detection vans” but I get more paranoid the more snoopy and authoritarian-leaning everything is)

Speaking of, if we’re going on that direction it maybe couldn’t hurt to put every non-parent who’s psyched to get this Disney thing on some kind of watchlist

ah wins yes that’s true! i pay the license fee. so about £12/month for all that.

Same as Tracer (dumb TV w/Freeview, smart Blu-ray player w/apps, £13/month UK TV licence) plus:

NowTV (£8.99/mo for Entertainment Pass; got this summer '17 for Twin Peaks, had plans to watch all the Sky Atlantic/Arts content, never did... kept paying for nothing until Chernobyl; worse than that, they sent me a free HD dongle for the TV (laptop streaming is 1280x720) and it never turned up)
Netflix (£8.99/mo for two-screen HD)
Amazon Prime (£6.58/mo, paid yearly; hopelessly underused, aside from Mr Robot and the shopping benefits, until this year's ATP tennis coverage)
Curzon Home Cinema (on demand; haven't actually rented anything in months)

My 5yo Samsung box has scads of apps I've never opened, all of which would need subscriptions. I'm guessing this hardware just won't support some of the newer services, even if I wanted them.

I share the above logins with my ex, and I think she gets a bit more out of it.

disney + is going to have a ton of original content. yes, a lot of it is Marvel, but that's the draw for many.

yeah i think for a lot of these kind of fans the calculation actually will be as simple as "less than $10 to watch The Mandalorian, sure" and then once that's done there'll be something else to keep them on.

I think I can't rewatch a movie until at least 10 years pass. I also don't know how adult people do it.

D+ will pay for itself if somehow the original Star Wars trilogy was the theatrical cuts, but I'm imagining we'd have heard that by now if it was to be the case.

Re: The Mandalorian: That is probably true, that a lot of subscribers will be satisfied by that, but it's something I find really interesting. Because we've already seen a bunch of these kind of brand-extension tv shows, from 'Clone Wars' to the Defender-verse, and they haven't really been that succesful. It's a really big bet on what is an unknown strategy. If The Mandalorian turns out to be another Inhumans, what then? Tv shows go wrong all the time, they are really hard to make.

I'm not betting against Disney. I'm just saying I'm really interested in seeing how this shakes out.

The Star Wars cartoons are pretty well received among fans and after an initial misstep on Disney’s part they seem to get what people want out of them now.

Well, two out of three of the cartoons, at least. The currently running one is aimed at younger viewers and I haven’t polled friends to see if their smaller kids are into it

I'm not saying they're not succesful at all, but they aren't the phenomenon The Mandalorian kinda needs to be.

it depends what it 'needs to be.' with a streaming service all you want is for people to not cancel their subscriptions, and hopefully buy Mandalorian DVDs, t-shirts, and toys down the line.

That's an interesting facet of these services, the less you actually use it the more profitable it becomes. Creates some weird incentives.

Why would anyone buy a dvd of a show that is available on streaming?

I don't think that's true, Moodles, from what I read it seems that streaming services depend on content content content to make you watch as much as possible, to again give them more and more information about your viewing habits, which they can then turn into content content content. What you are describing is kinda the old cable paradigm, where you really only needed one Mad Men to get viewers into pressuring cable companies into keeping your channel in the bundle

Is that really true though? If I pay every month and watch nothing, that's less bandwidth cost for them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/media/hbo-att-merger.html

“We need hours a day,” Mr. Stankey said, referring to the time viewers spend watching HBO programs. “It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people’s hands that capture their attention every 15 minutes.”
Editors’ Picks

Continuing the theme, he added: “I want more hours of engagement. Why are more hours of engagement important? Because you get more data and information about a customer that then allows you to do things like monetize through alternate models of advertising as well as subscriptions, which I think is very important to play in tomorrow’s world.”

gooble gobble one of us

Disney plus will be operating on a different model I assume. I mean I will probably have to subscribe because my son is nearly as old as I was the first time I saw Star Wars, and then the need for rewatching and the other Disney/Marvel content will keep us around. New stuff is a perk, but not really the selling point.

Why would anyone buy a dvd of a show that is available on streaming?

Extras, better picture quality, collectablity, viewable when internet is down.

Also viewable when the service shutters, corporate conglomerations shift alliances, etc etc etc

there are still a bunch of people with horrible or metered internet bandwidth in the US

also, buying a series when it completes, especially if you’re planning on rewatching it over time, might be cheaper than paying for a streaming service for years

Some shows, like The Office, Friends, Mad Men, and Sopranos are dirt cheap used too.

corporations obviously hate the used disc market, but from a consumer standpoint it’s excellent

I don't know why anyone would keep a continuous subscription to any of these, unless they were a parent using Disney to babysit. I have a list of all the Netflix shows that piqued my interest in the last 3 years, I think I could binge them all in 2 months.

also i mean we're talking about star wars fans, can anyone be MORE relied upon to buy the thing just for the sake of gazing at it on the shelf next to the other matching things?

Yeah, it's kind of like hearing the Dylan Bootleg Series people saying they're worried about how much longer physical media viability will last without considering folks willing to buy Dylan on CD are among the last sure things in the business.

now picturing what the fancy metal box of the mandalorian would look like on my shelf

Theres also just a lot of good shows that are not available on streaming and likely never will be

you'll get your metalorian soon enough no doubt

I don't know why anyone would keep a continuous subscription to any of these, unless they were a parent using Disney to babysit. I have a list of all the Netflix shows that piqued my interest in the last 3 years, I think I could binge them all in 2 months.

Try being a parent and thus never having any time to binge anything. One or two episodes every day or so is an achievement.

^^ otm and so true. I mean, even the two seasons of Barry is taking us two weeks to get through in what little time we have left at the end of the day.

My basic broadband package is *just* good enough to stream one thing in HD; if the kids upstairs are YouTubing or my gf is trying to watch something on her tablet, forget it. The collapse into pixel hell of sub-SD during movies is a pain; I'd rather it just sat there for five minutes after you hit PLAY and before the opening credits and just built up a solid buffer. Snack gathering time.

https://www.cnet.com/news/hbo-max-price-15-dollars-release-date-launch-may-us-shows-movies-podcast/

https://www.cnet.com/news/hbo-max-streaming-service-every-show-movie-so-far/
New Adventure Time! Sole home for Doctor Who! Dune! All Looney Tunes (presumably not the racist ones) and Hanna Barbera! Jordan Peele's Lovecraft Country! Matthew Rhys as Perry Mason! New Issa Rae! Most of the top tier Adult Swim, notably Rick and Morty and Space Ghost! All of South Park! All of Studio Ghibli! So much stuff!

will hbo max include current HBO material? HBO is already $15/month so I assume ... not. Which sucks but this is compelling. Fuck me all this shit is adding up to what I paid for cable.

Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

xp - the cnet article says current Now subscribers can move over to Max at the same price, it will still have all the HBO content

at least the actual HBO-produced content, maybe not the current movie lineup? (which has been pretty weak anyway IMO)

yeah i don't care about the movie content frankly. I find movies in other places or I pay to rent them or I see them in the theater if I actually really care about them. But that;s good news; basically they're just beefing the hell out of their library for the same price.

i guess it's $15 for everything which is what i'm already paying but they're offering it free to AT+T customers which is the real purpose of all this.

what a load of trash tbh

15 Minutes of Shame

Monica Lewinsky produces this documentary about public shaming. There's no release date yet.

all respect to Ms Lewinsky and her admirable career but with no more information this feels opportunistic on HBO's part

Anthony Bourdain documentary

This documentary will look at the life of the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. There's no release date yet.

even more opportunistic

Brad and Gary Go to...

Brad and Gary Go to... (working title) is a docuseries based on couple Brad Goreski and Gary Janetti's Instagram stories. Goreski is a celebrity stylist and Janetti is a writer and producer who's worked on shows such as Will & Grace and Family Guy. They will go on a "jet-setting culinary adventure around the globe." There's no release date yet.

"based on"

Craftopia

Craftopia is an unscripted competition show with kids 9 to 15 jockeying against one another in the making of crafts. Production begins later in 2019.

most competition shows are horrible and gross, to set pre-pubescent children "jockeying against" each other is monstrous

Warner Bros.-produced CW dramas

CW shows like Batwoman, Katy Keene, Arrowverse and others will stream on HBO Max.

There's a Katy Keene show?! I slightly rescind the previous comment if this takes all its costume designs from 9-yo girls' viewer submissions

DC movies

HBO has said that releases from the last decade "will be available within our first year of launch, (plus) every Superman and Batman movie from the last 40 years."

this is a grand total of two good films for all ages, two kind of okay films for kids depending on what version they include, and one TV spinoff that has a good reputation

DC Super Hero High

Executive produced by Elizabeth Banks, this half-hour comedy series centers around a groups of teenagers at a boarding school for "gifted" kids. There's no release date yet.

X-Titans?

Doctor Who

The long-running British sci-fi series Doctor Who will stream exclusively on HBO Max, including the last 11 seasons, which will be available at launch.

...if the previous 26 seasons are not available at launch, is that because another entity has the rights to stream them, and therefore it will not stream exclusively on MAX?

Dune: The Sisterhood

The series, based on Frank Herbert's Dune novels, will follow an order of women known as the Bene Gesserit. Dune: The Sisterhood comes from Legendary Television, which is also behind the upcoming movie reboot. There's no release date yet.

luv 2 make female-focused programming that enriches Chris Hardwick

Ellen's Home Design Challenge

Eight designers complete challenges on this design show from Ellen DeGeneres. There's no release date yet.

bun dem witch

Expecting Amy

Expecting Amy (working title) follows comedian Amy Schumer as she tours and prepares for her standup special while pregnant. There's no release date yet.

my sense is that she stopped being funny when she got really rich, so get that paper and then step off, I guess?

Finding Einstein

This docuseries is looking for the next generation of Einsteins. Produced by DeGeneres, the show is in development.

the title was gross enough before I saw the producer

The Gilded Age

In this show, set in 1882, the daughter of a Southern general moves to New York City to live with her aunts. The Gilded Age stars Christine Baranski, Amanda Peet and Cynthia Nixon. It comes from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. There's no release date yet.

why not just licence Another Period tbh

Grease: Rydell High

Riffing off the 1978 musical Grease, Grease: Rydell High is a musical series set in the 1950s. There's no release date yet.

thread_necromancy.jpg

Greg Berlanti shows

The producer-extraordinaire responsible for the DC Universe shows on The CW is producing multiple properties for the new service, including a thriller starring Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco and two new DC Universe shows, including Green Lantern.

One more for @DCComics fans. In partnership w/ @GBerlanti we're excited to bring to series the beloved Green Lantern AND intro audiences to Strange Adventures, about "man of two worlds" Adam Strange, an archaeologist-turned-intergalactic-hero when he's zeta-beamed to planet Rann
— HBO Max (@hbomax) October 29, 2019

a) G'nort or GTFO
b) is Murphy Anderson III still alive to get a cheque from his dad's work?

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai will be an animated prequel series based on the 1984 movie. There's no release date yet.

If you're making this animated, you're probably not hiring Joe Dante (Looney Tunes Back In Action notwithstanding), in which case no thank you, also prequels are brain poison

The Ho's

The Ho's (working title) is a docuseries from Lionsgate TV about a wealthy Houston family originally from Vietnam. WarnerMedia says the eight-part program will be in the spirit of Crazy Rich Asians. There's no release date yet.

lololoolololllololol bcz a common Chinese surname sounds like a slur on women! you get two disparaging jokes for the price of one in just six letters

House of the Dragon

House of the Dragon is a Game of Thrones prequel set 300 years before Games of Thrones, delving into House Targaryen.

Is this the one that was cancelled yesterday?

Karma

This eight-episode unscripted competition show has 12-to-15-year-old kids solving puzzles and completing physical challenges as they "unravel how their social actions impact their success in the game." The series is in production. There's no release date yet.

okay so puzzle challenges and Double Dare can be okay as kids competition shows but "how their social actions impact" seems ripe for abuse

I Know This Much Is True

Mark Ruffalo plays twins, but one of them has schizophrenia. The six-episode drama is based on Wally Lamb's 1998 book. It also stars John Lithgow. There's no release date yet.

"but"?

Let Them Talk

Directed by Stephen Soderbergh, film Let Them Talk (working title) stars Meryl Streep and Candice Bergen. Streep plays an author who takes a trip with friends. Production started in August.

and is finished

Little Ellen

This animated kids show stars a 7-year-old Ellen DeGeneres in her hometown of New Orleans. The series is 40 quarter-hour episodes. There's no release date yet.

is it about all the great work George Bush did saving the hometown

Looney Tunes Cartoons

Looney Toons Cartoons is a new series starring the Looney Tunes characters in their "classic pairing, in simple, gag-driven and visually vibrant stories." The series will have 80 11-minute cartoons. The full libraries of classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons from 1930-1969 will also be available at launch.

who the hell is directing these 80 (E I G H T Y) cartoons? Is that not a mildly-relevant issue when you're making Looney Tunes?

Made for Love

Another book adaptation, Made for Love is based on the 2017 novel by Alissa Nutting. Cristin Milioti plays a woman getting away from a tech billionaire who's implanted a chip in her brain to track not only her location but her emotions. Ray Romano plays her reclusive father, Variety reported. There's no release date yet.

ew

The Nevers

The Nevers will be a science fiction series from Joss Whedon. There's no release date yet.

can we guess that the release date is hidden in the title

The New Pope

This limited series follows 2016's The Young Pope.

The Fresh Pope Of Bel-Air

Persona

This documentary from CNN Films looks at why people are so interested in personality testing. There's no release date yet.

people are interested in what now

Perry Mason

This new spin on the show from the late '50s- to the mid '60s is set in 1932. The limited series stars Matthew Rhys and is executive produced by Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey. There's no release date yet.

dys

oh wait I googled and Rhys is a) an abled actor, so expect this to be hashtag cancelled before it is actually cancelled, also he should be playing Julian McMahon's brother in everything immediately

The Plot Against America

It's yet another adaptation of a book (The Plot Against America by Philip Roth), and HBO describes the show as a "reimagined history" starring Winona Ryder and John Turturro. David Simon and Ed Burns produce. There's no release date yet.

Ed Burns is the only name in this who has not been #cancelled yet, crossing my fingers for you big guy

Stand-up specials presented by Conan O'Brien

Comedian Conan O'Brien will curate and/or host five comedy specials showcasing up-and-coming comics, as well as established comics.

this number seems low tbh, esp for the amount of effort required by Conaco

Starstruck

This six-part comedy show follows what happens when a young woman sleeps with a celebrity. It'll be broadcast on BBC Three in the UK and streamed on HBO Max in the US. There's no release date yet.

FP'd for racism

Studio Ghibli films

The entire film library from this Japanese animation house will be available at launch. Notable titles include Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke.

Apart from the new probably-non-theatrical Soderbergh, are these the only films listed for the launch of Home Box Office 3.0?

Super Intelligence

This comedy from New Line Cinema tells the story of what happens when a woman's (Melissa McCarthy) TV, phone and microwave start talking back. She's being watched by AI, and humanity is in danger. There's no release date yet.

odds this will be better than that one X-Files episode written by women?

Tooned Out

Tooned Out is a part live action, part animated. Character Mac starts seeing cartoon characters and they help him though a "very rough patch in his life."

not sure if HBO are honouring the legacy of Dream On or beatjacking Herman's Head

The Fresh Pope Of Bel-Air

*subscribes*

Thank u for the obsessive rundown, sic. Generally agree that there's a whole lotta nothin' there. I appreciate these streaming services justifying my dedication to an ever-growing library of physical media.

Can I sub/rent from amazon if I’m located in belgium?

Perry Mason
This new spin on the show from the late '50s- to the mid '60s is set in 1932. The limited series stars Matthew Rhys and is executive produced by Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey. There's no release date yet.

dys

oh wait I googled and Rhys is a) an abled actor, so expect this to be hashtag cancelled before it is actually cancelled

i think you're thinking of ironside?

Perry Mason had no arms iirc

"Little Ellen" jfc

would happily pay a reasonable monthly fee just for sic's one-liners abt hbo max content though

In addition to driving up value by controlling scarcity, Disney, Netflix, etc. have a vested interest in limiting access to film history, which poses them an existential threat. They are cultivating a subscriber base with no memory of good movies as a point of comparison.

— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) October 29, 2019

Let's be real: no one who's been exclusively from streaming services or on demand for their film choices has any real interest in good movies.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL VIDEO STORES/PHYSICAL MEDIA MANUFACTURING AND DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES

'been DRAWING exclusively' that is

be more optimistic about people's ability to grow, my dear Lunchie

I am! I'm optimistic that paltry streaming offerings will hip everyone to the fact that people are still pressing discs.

"SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL VIDEO STORES" there are like two of these left in the US so that's a bit hard to do.

Criterion btw

I would advocate that everyone blow their money on blu-rays and dvds as recklessly as I but I don't feel that I can do that in good conscience.

i think you're thinking of ironside?

damn I forgot that these two shows I’ve never seen aren’t the same show

even with this helpful mnemonic device:

Cop on wheels is Ironside
East, sleep, work, cheap, nine to five
Reagan won in a landslide
Which brings us back to Rawhide

you're a weird dude sic.

sic got sicced

Does stuff streaming through Criterion Channel actually look good? I feel like streaming generally looks like shit.

Also lol @ how streaming services are basically just a la carte cable now.

criterion channel looks great on my tv; ymmv of course based on cable/internet service

Gotta use that ethernet cable instead of wifi

for sure

Might also consider turning of that motion smoothing

One of my biggest complaints about streaming in general also applies to Criterion, unfortunately. If I'm going to pay a subscription fee for a library of content, I'd like that library to have some predictable stability. Swapping out selections on the reg just makes streaming a more protracted version of bog standard TV inasmuch as you have to watch stuff when/if they make it available to you.

The HBO Max lineup looks like a bunch of lame crap, but Netflix is basically a bunch of lame crap and people can't get enough of it

one upside of netflix (and then HBO) for a lot of folks was that you could watch anything on there and if you liked it you could recommend it to almost anyone secure in the knowledge that they probably also had access to it. With Disney, I think your self selecting audience is parents, completists and dudes who wanna watch the boba fett show so i'm not sure that translates into the new balkanization.
Realistically, if you want to be UP ON modern TV CULTURE, you are gonna need netflix, hulu, amazon, apple, disney, hbo as a starter pack and even with all that you don't get to see better call saul

Also lol @ how streaming services are basically just a la carte cable now.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, October 31, 2019 9:53 AM (eighteen minutes ago)

yeah but I remember people wanting to be able to opt in/out of things for years, lots of stories about what ESPN was charging

having three months to set aside an hour and a half to watch something any time you like, if you’re interested in it, is VERY different to having three seconds across 2 years in which you can start watching that thing


you're a weird dude sic.

look I’m as ashamed as anyone that the deathless lyrics of Don Letts briefly slipped my mind, but I’d had a couple of glasses of box wine

This six-part comedy show follows what happens when a young woman sleeps with a celebrity.

wow hey maybe the celebrity is a man decades her senior

Think we'll see a second golden era of torrents/newsgroups or a newer alternatives very soon.

along the same lines, I'm somewhat nervous that there will be a proactive throwback to the good ol' Modest Mickey RIAA days and AT+T starts shutting off internet connections

Realistically, if you want to be UP ON modern TV CULTURE, you are gonna need netflix, hulu, amazon, apple, disney, hbo as a starter pack and even with all that you don't get to see better call saul

not for the keeping up reason so much but I do think there will be a shift from multiple vendors requiring subscription to them all offering free sign up and only charging you for the shows/films you select (time limit on viewing as with rental) - seems like the only reasonable way out of the ensuing mess

Think it’s more likely that there’ll be mergers and consolidation with libraries being subsumed into other vendors. Unless there’s a unique usp e.g. Anime,arthouse movies, horror, documentaries etc I think a lot of these new offerings will struggle to differentiate themselves against Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney+.

most of those streaming programs are being offered as sweeteners: hbo is free with At+T service, amazon comes with prime, Apple+ comes with the purchase of new tech, netflix is free with tmobile
living in the era of content is water here

I think there's an opportunity to create a service that just buys one or two services per month and rotates between them so you can binge all of that service's stuff and move on.

curated content

ILPLEX yall

Being an "I don't even own a TV" person gets more and more enticing

Netflix, meanwhile is still padding its numbers of films earlier than, oh, 1996, with such fare as racist but copyright-free WW2 propaganda films.

AMC holding out on Hulu means their viewership is just going to fucking drop off and everyone will torrent their shows.

if you want to be UP ON modern TV CULTURE

Not guilty.

I have a TV, and library DVDs. That's about it.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/31/study-claims-disney-already-has-over-a-million-u-s-subscribers-pre-launch/

Cancelled Hulu and signed up for Netflix this morning, and this afternoon my physical TV (which I used to watch network shows and other stuff via a digital antenna) died. But it seems like a replacement will cost less than $150, so I'll probably buy one in a couple of weeks.

I have a weirdly proportioned living room and watch most movies/netflix/whatever there and am in a constant struggle between moving the couch closer in a way that seems awkward and just being more comfortable with increasingly larger screens

if I’m sitting nearly twelve feet away and love movies, I need more than a 50” screen, right? probably no

i have a 50" screen at 8 feet away and that's about perfect imo. i'd go at least one size up at 12 feet

thank you for your enabling

We have a 60" (it came with the apt) and have two couches set up in an L shape. I think the viewpoints are 6-9* away and 11". We also have a rower at around the 10-11" mark and I have really terrible eyesight (like - 10 in each eye for contact lenses) and all seems fine.

Ugh but I also have maybe a 30 inch or something 20" away, high up, and that was probably a bad idea.

want to give you a sympathy hug for that -10 nearsightedness

"The long-running British sci-fi series Doctor Who will stream exclusively on HBO Max, including the last 11 seasons, which will be available at launch."

...if the previous 26 seasons are not available at launch, is that because another entity has the rights to stream them, and therefore it will not stream exclusively on MAX?

From Boxing Day, 627 episodes predating the last 11 seasons will be available for streaming on Britbox.

i have no clue why I was using a * and " to stand in for feet (') above. I am blaming my eyesight.

This looks good!

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2019-11-07/britbox-films-tv-available-stream-launch/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0FRDaHnITI

or this if you wanna scroll

It. Is. Time. From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Mandalorian, check out basically everything coming to #DisneyPlus in the U.S. on November 12.

Pre-order in the U.S. at https://t.co/wJig4STf4P today: https://t.co/tlWvp23gLF pic.twitter.com/0q3PTuaDWT

— Disney+ (@disneyplus) October 14, 2019

So when Disney+ launches next week, will all Disney IP vanish from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc., etc.? Will you be *forced* under their umbrella if you want to watch, say, Black Panther after Tuesday?

looks like they're expiring title by title depending when they arrived: https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/leaving-soon/disney-movies-leaving-netflix-in-2019-2020/amp/

so glad i have another full year to weigh watching Nutcracker and the Four Realms

can't find anything on 20th Century Fox content, idk. maybe assume the worst and prioritize your watchlist accordingly.

deeper dive list here on individual network streaming services
https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/7/20903616/best-streaming-service-netflix-hulu-amazon-disney-plus-hbo-comparison-shows

again, i'm going to suggest 77ers click on the ilplex thread

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/10/arts/television/what-to-stream.html
http://i.imgur.com/dO0kr9M.png

(perhaps worth noting that $74 goes to NF Sunday Ticket and $29 to NBA League Pass there but even so)

I got $52/month

I pay a bit more, but mostly due to the inclusion of Playstation Vue (soon to be RIP) which lets me watch a bunch of things as they're released, access a bunch of tv station apps directly, and has a DVR feature that skims all of the Law & Order episodes which are *not* on any streaming services for me to binge when I'm half-paying attention

I got all kinds of vintage/exploitation/random flicks on Sling, when I subscribed, via El Rey network. Not sure if they still carry it, or if it'd be worth returning to.

I got $63/month -- which is probably about what I currently pay, but I pay Amazon and Britbox already on an annual basis so it isn't exact -- and I'm okay with not having "everything" tbh -- so much programming is functionally interchangeable if you just want to have something moderately interesting to watch while eating dinner alone.

$21/mo which is about right, still need to cancel netflix

disney is gonna offer an ESPN/Hulu/Disney+ bundle for a reasonable price. sounds good if i can still get the ad-free version of hulu (the with-ads version is nearly unusable imo)

&13/mo, because I like Seinfeld lol. No offense but this streaming thing is a little *trumpetsound.wav* out there for me.

$ that is, though I wish I could pay with &'s

i'm down to just amazon now and that's going away for good in a few months when my sub is up

disney is gonna offer an ESPN/Hulu/Disney+ bundle for a reasonable price. sounds good if i can still get the ad-free version of hulu (the with-ads version is nearly unusable imo)

― kanye kendrick frank kendrick frank kanye (voodoo chili),

The bundle they're advertising is Hulu with ads. I'm hoping an adless upgrade will be available...

$20/mo. on first run-through, when I didn't realize I could do multiple selections, and even then I still skipped all options on questions #1, #5 and #6, so I ended up with only:

Criterion Channel: $10.99 (Which is actually less as I locked in the charter member rate and will never let go)
Amazon Prime: $8.99 (I like Maisel, what can I say?)
Shout! Factory TV: Free (Wait, this is free?!)

Did a second runthrough where I selected everything I "wanted" (including knowing that Stranger Things stood in for Netflix, and I know there's other stuff on there I do watch), and it came to $58/mo.

They need to also bundle in music streaming services for this to be truly accurate.

tbh - and i suppose this goes without saying - this "online test" is probably not the best way to decide your bundles as it is hella arbitrary

As free ads go, it's about as effective as I've ever seen, as it pushed me as close to adding Shudder and Shout! Factory TV (which is not free) as I've been thus far.

Yeah, definitely good advertising --

gonna pass on Criterion because I still have most of my pre-streaming era DVDs and VHS tapes which are mostly Criterion-esque

Emphasis on free (just handed over to streaming services) advertising to be clear.

oh definitely!

all these companies should band together and create a bundle where we can pay one monthly fee to access all these services. they could even name it after the infrastructure that delivers the media to our computers.

we'll call it "cable"

i kinda like this balkanization tbh --

Don't really understand how to watch tv no more tbh.

I'm doing Hulu with Live TV and HBO: $60/mo. Netflix at $12, amazon (yearly). Disney launched today, no? I can't find it as an add on in Hulu this morning.

it's a stand-alone service: https://www.disneyplus.com/

"There will be nothing on Disney+ that's not branded or family-friendly," Kevin Mayer, the chairman of Disney's direct to consumer division, said during a preview event at the Disney studios, USA Today reports.

But despite the vast selection, Disney has positioned Hulu as its adult alternative which will house R-rated content. The "Deadpool" films that are produced by Fox but star Marvel characters are among the films that call Hulu home.

So where is non-kiddie Fox stuff like "Alien" going to go?

hulu, i believe

But of course I assume there is no "Disney+/Hulu" bundle without ESPN, right?

Anyway, I filled out that Times thing and it told me I would continue to subscribe to Netflix (free with my phone plan), Amazon (free with my Prime), Criterion, maybe Hulu (my $1 a month promo runs out in two weeks), maybe Disney+ (could be a Hanukkah present), and that all the other movies and TV I want to watch not covered by the aforementioned I'll probably torrent as needed. Which was a surprisingly accurate prediction!

Amazon (free with my Prime)

that is how they want you to think of it! what's it up to now? $112/yr or something?

we’ve been doing Amazon, Netflix & Vue on our PS4 plus an antenna with tivo Roamio for regular tv free to air stuff and torrentz for anything else.

with Vue going away we’re stuck looking at options again and ugghh

i mean Vue kinda drove me nuts but it was good for what it was.

i guess apple tv is what we’ll end up doing but i am not 100% clear on ~when~ the promised ps4 support is coming? seemed like this year sometime but idk

Disney+ has launched, with the first 19 seasons of The Simpsons stretched out sideways to fit some exec’s office TV screen

that is how they want you to think of it! what's it up to now? $112/yr or something?

We were Prime members before they added video streaming, so it's always been secondary to us to free shipping and credit card kickbacks. So yeah, it's "free" with my Prime, the same way Netflix is "free" with my phone, but OK, I guess it all goes into the same money pool. Anyway, let's say, sure, Prime is $112 a year. Actually, I think it's $119 a year. That's (does the math) ... about $10 a month! My gosh, that's a couple dollars a month more than Disney+! And comparable to Netflix! And Criterion! And so on! And with other benefits rolled in beyond streaming! (faints)

Non-sarcastic point being none of these plans are particularly onerous. Most are about the same price as seeing two matinees in the theatre a month. Or one shop-bought coffee a week. BS like what sic just illustrated or constantly changing offerings or shitty catalog clutter is what makes me the most wary or annoyed.

Non-sarcastic point being none of these plans are particularly onerous

agreed ... though things do add up, and it depends on how tight your finances are already ...

on one hand, not so expensive. on the other hand, after a childhood of staring at what would now be considered an insanely tiny television and watching only broadcast content and a handful of VHS tapes...

turns out only some of the Simpsons are stretched, most of them they just cut 1/3 of the screen & jokes out

All the classic Simpsons episodes on Disney+ are in cropped widescreen format -- this means you miss out on tons of great visual jokes, like how Duff, Duff Lite and Duff Dry all come from the same tube. pic.twitter.com/cTy9adulFl

— Tristan Cooper (@TristanACooper) November 12, 2019

WTF. I have to assume outcry will force them to fix that.

"But of course I assume there is no "Disney+/Hulu" bundle without ESPN, right?"

no, it's bullshit. I signed up anyway since having hulu and adding disney+ means that's the deal you get unless you use a different email address for both which doesn't do you any favors.

Fuck sports, that's why I cut cable out of my diet in the first place, making you pay for sports.

Apparently the PG rated Disney service doesn’t have the straight story = it is trash

Aren't most tv-remasters in this cropped widescreen format? The Wire did that as well (though they knew all along they might do this some day, so didn't put too much information at the top of the screen). I think that whole marathon thing they did back when FXX debuted, which iirc was slightly overshadowed by the birth of BLM in Ferguson, were in widescreen as well?

"only some of the simpsons are stretched" making me picture an extremely wide bart walking around an otherwise normal simpsons ep

XP Yes, the marathon eps of the Simpsons were cropped to 16:9.

This reminds me of when Marcia Wallace died and Fox was gonna show "Bart The Lover" as a tribute, but then pulled it at the 11th hour because it wasn't 'HD-Ready', which we now know means it was cropped.

There's a way to present 4:3 shows pillerboxed for 16:9, but between screwy TV settings and corporate indifference, it's infrequently utilized except on DVD/Blu-Ray.

'it wasn't cropped'

FXX had the option to watch the whole episode or just 2/3 - Disney replied to multiple enquiries ahead of launch assuring folks that they would be in 4:3 on Disney+

also, apparently Greedo and Han now shoot at the same time

the sensible centrist take

Well, they've done it again. #DisneyPlus appears to have altered the infamous Han and Greedo scene from #StarWars. See for yourself. pic.twitter.com/6aGqwoOrzF

— Garrett McDowell (@GarrettMcDowel1) November 12, 2019

BREAKING: Greedo shouting "Maclunkey" isn't the only major change to the Original #starwars trilogy on #DisneyPlus pic.twitter.com/7HMRKGQkc0

— Eric Fell (@ericfell) November 12, 2019

maclunkey indeed, my dude. maclunkey indeed.

looooooool at Harrison Ford's digital head suddenly leaping six inches right, unattached to his neck, to dodge that laser bullet

u get the best pictures on the radio imo

the funniest thing is that isn’t Disney’s edit of Star Wars. George Lucas made edits *every single time* a new theater or home release came out. he’s a weird dude

A modern parable in two acts pic.twitter.com/k1eqiPB69x

— Scott Nye (@railoftomorrow) November 12, 2019

meanwhile HBO is claiming BBC, TBS, CNN, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, DC Universe, Tru TV, TNT and Adult Swim, along with the Ghibli, WB and New Line catalogs.

also this disclaimer is interesting:

Get HBO Max with HBO NOW
HBO NOW subscribers who are billed directly through HBO will also get access to WarnerMedia’s new offering, HBO Max, at launch for no extra cost.
Offer available only to new and existing HBO NOW subscribers who subscribe through hbonow.com and are billed by HBO. Offer not available to HBO subscribers that obtain their subscriptions through third-party providers that are authorized to distribute the HBO NOW service.

in other words, please stop subscribing through apple and amazon and hulu and buy your shit direct from the plug

What about if you get HBO through your cable provider like a philistine?

meanwhile HBO is claiming BBC, TBS, CNN, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, DC Universe, Tru TV, TNT and Adult Swim, along with the Ghibli, WB and New Line catalogs.

??

prob cool as long as you're a time/warner philistine (or i guess they rebranded as something else?), otherwise tell your story walking

http://i.imgur.com/l8QOZb7.png

📌More than 700 episodes of BBC shows will be available on #HBOMax exclusively. Includes:

🔸Doctor Who
🔸The Office
🔸Top Gear
🔸Luther
🔸the honourable woman
🔸pure
🔸Trigonometry
🔸Stath Lets Flats
🔸Home
🔸Ghosts pic.twitter.com/JWkssfGhx3

— HBO Max News (@HBOmaxNews) November 11, 2019

though, i mean, you know, TWITTER, so

and not so much claiming as boasting corporate synergy with i suppose but the question from the consumer end is mostly who got what content

(i look forward to stath lets flats having a big US fanbase in about two years)

More than 700 episodes of BBC shows will be available on #HBOMax exclusively. Includes:

ah okay - that's a fan account, not an HBO claim, at least. and 700 episodes isn't much when we already covered that the EXCLUSIVELY STREAMING ON HBO MAX

🔸Doctor Who

alone will in fact have 627 episodes exclusively on another streaming service

Careful not to cross the streams while engaged in your measuring contest, there, fellas.

take away the 145 episodes of Dr Who that HBO Max is likely to actually have and they'd be bragging about "More than 500 episodes of BBC shows"

If they have all of Top Gear, that's half the 700 in just two shows

measuring contest

I don't think either forks or I have anything invested in a fan account (?!) for a streaming subscription service (??!!?!)'s attempts to stan for clout, we're curious about how these pitches and narratives are being written

wait til you find out how many episodes of stuff are available on free-to-air TV!

Please don't step on my v clever joke with your 'facts' sic.

joke's on them, I'll pay extra to NOT get the Max content

pls to add ("stream"s!) at the end next time, I had just added up 343 episodes of TV and my brain had not switched modes

i look forward to stath lets flats having a big US fanbase in about two years

It's already here, if you count me. (Saw it last year when my girlfriend and I were visiting the UK -- absolutely hilarious.)

I'm with you on that.

Oh hey, it's a Popper-adjacent joint, I'm down.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/simpsons-episode-featuring-michael-jackson-kept-disney-1254609

also OL, check out ILPLEX and it's watchable now

Forget the technical issues, there are apparently some frustrating fundamental UI problems with Disney+. Like, no "continue watching" options for things you've started, no indication of which episodes of a TV you've already watched, no "start from the beginning" option on stuff, piles of things you can add to your watch list that (supposedly) you click on only to find the titles are "coming soon" and aren't streamable for several months (!) ...

wtf, hulu just jacked up their no ads/live tv price by $10 a month

yeah fucking assholes.

disney+ needs a lot of work on their app and their system. I consistently got errors even yesterday while trying to start streams (though that would stop after a second)

the UI of most of these apps on appleTV are fucking awful. Netflix and their auto-play thing; Hulu is practically impossible to navigate.

apparently hulu's reasoning is "because". seriously considering stepping away from it; need to look at the cost breakdown.

Yeah, Hulu UI sucks.

I can't imagine needing the live TV option (which was ridiculously expensive to begin with). I guess if you're into sports? I just dumped no-ads Hulu in favor of Netflix, which after my free month will be just $1 more than Hulu was.

are any of these services making money yet

i guess probably some of the ones that are just licensed content and aren't playing the original content arms race

id imagine amazon is doing ok

not that arm of it!

disney is gonna offer an ESPN/Hulu/Disney+ bundle for a reasonable price. sounds good if i can still get the ad-free version of hulu (the with-ads version is nearly unusable imo)

― kanye kendrick frank kendrick frank kanye (voodoo chili),

The bundle they're advertising is Hulu with ads. I'm hoping an adless upgrade will be available...

― Trussrippers WILL be persecuted! (WmC), Monday, November 11, 2019 1:43 PM (five days ago)

OK, I figured out the situation here. To get the bundle with ad-free Hulu, you get (or already have) an ad-free Hulu account, then sign up for the Disney+ bundle and get a $5.99 credit toward it every month, the value of the Hulu portion of the bundle. Gotta use the same email for both accts.

Can’t imagine that’s where it will lie, too chaotic. Maybe in three months they’ll get it together

So I guess this means I can get Disney+ and ESPN+ for $6 a month. Question is how much will I watch either?

The way I break this down in my head right now is

Netflix = original content
Amazon Prime = movies (maybe some original too)
Hulu = TV shows
Disney+ = Marvel/Disney/Star Wars

My biggest concern is that the Disney+ stuff and movie stuff both used to fall under the Netflix umbrella. So is Netflix still worth it?

I would drop Netflix in a hot second if my wife didn't want it. I'd drop everything but Criterion Channel, for that matter.

I got rid of amazon prime earlier so am satisfied with just netflix but was considering trying something else for a short period of time. Maybe I will do the hulu/disney thing and then go back to netflix. I just saw that you can no longer put your netflix account on hold but you can cancel and restart within 10 months to keep your account data.

Netflix is pretty easy to drop once you figure out that 99% of their original content is passable at best and that their good movies tend to get Oscar-qualification theatrical runs.

I could probably take or leave Netflix, but I have hundreds of things in my queue, so it's hardly a good content desert.

Netflix works well for me because I like the mediocre original content (it's what I put on while exercising since I don't have to pay too much attention). I haven't been to the movie theater in ages. I got really turned off about it when I saw a bunch of bugs on the walls at one of the theaters in midtown nyc. Plus it's at least $17 for a regular ticket now.

Netflix is pretty easy to drop once you figure out that 99% of their original content is passable at best and that their good movies tend to get Oscar-qualification theatrical runs.

― Simon H., Saturday, November 16, 2019 10:48 AM (one hour ago

while I appreciate the snobbery of this post, the function of netflix is moderately engaging media to watch at home when you don't feel like leaving the house.

like, y'know the function that television has had for the past 60 or so years?

Also, doesn't netflix have the largest amount of streaming selection available (minus sports or kids/marvel stuff)? I don't keep up with these things, maybe something else has overtaken it.

Having the largest amount of stuff is not a positive if 99% of the stuff is bad, because it dilutes the good stuff

like, y'know the function that television has had for the past 60 or so years?

I can appreciate this but there's gotta be a cheaper way to pipe ignorable background content into yr home

The selection of movies on Netflix has really gone downhill over time, and the loss of marvel and star wars stuff annoys me. But I do enjoy lots of their original shows. The Dark Crystal series has been blowing my mind lately.

I enjoy most of the stuff on there and I pretty much want to pay for only one streaming service at a time. Like, it's my primary/only tv.

also, outside of the US you do get first run movies and things like The Good Place or Better Call Saul in with only a day delay from air.

I guess I should add the caveat that I only ever used it in Canada where it seems to be worse/more limited in every possible respect

if you use a vpn you can watch other programming.

Only select VPNs, apparently. They're getting better at blocking them.

I haven't had any issues (I just logged into the US netflix and redid some of my list) but I guess luck?

netflix movie selection has DEFINITELY declined. amazon, sad to say, is the only one of the "non-snob" services that consistently has some kinda cool movies one could be curious about, tho often these will turn out to be transfers from late 80s pan-n-scan VHS releases, complete with the logo of some forgotten, perky little company

I can appreciate this but there's gotta be a cheaper way to pipe ignorable background content into yr home

Pluto has about 200 channels streaming free plus stuff on-demand

NHK World is free worldwide and has some pretty awesome documentaries about japan and Asia in general. There was a really interesting one about Chinese internet influencers and everyone should really try and catch the Duck Master at some point.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/lens/441_28.html

It’s the standard background free to air, ad free content in our house.

Nice, just added that to the lineup, thanks Ed.

didn't know about Pluto,, that seems moderately worthwhile

Are Studio Ghibli films in Disney+?

No, they’ll be on HBO Max

What a bummer, I thought Disney had them.

Bit the bullet on Disney today. I figured, you know, I've got two kids, two girls, who love that shit, even as they get older, so might as well let them at their favorite Disney stuff. I got the bundle with Hulu and ESPN, the latter of which I didn't want but at least gets me all the 30 by 30 episodes (which are excellent) and the former gets me all sorts of surprising stuff (it's where I watched "Shoplifters" the other day).

it’s 30 FOR 30, gawd

shut up and take my money

We're hard at work adding several new categories to our service to allow for easier browsing. Stay tuned for even more updates. pic.twitter.com/EC4MkyhC3w

— Disney Prime Video (@GetDisneyPrime) November 17, 2019

irl shameful lol at Louis CK

Adam Driver (2019) pic.twitter.com/tNLWmO3J9B

— Disney Prime Video (@GetDisneyPrime) November 8, 2019

<blockquote>I think there's an opportunity to create a service that just buys one or two services per month and rotates between them so you can binge all of that service's stuff and move on.</blockquote>

That's what I've been doing on my own for the past year or so. I rotate one at a time for a month each. Right now I've got Criterion. In two weeks, I'll cancel it and get Prime for a month (in time to also use free shipping over Christmas.) After that maybe I'll go with Netflix for a month. Or maybe a free trial from someplace else.

It's been working out well. After not having Criterion since around May, I've watched about 25 movies over the past two weeks. In another two weeks I'll be getting tired of classic cinema and ready to catch up on my Prime watchlist. Back when I carried annual subscriptions to Netflix, Prime, Filmstruck, etc. months would go by where I hardly used one or the other. I hated the waste and facing the "tyranny of choice". Paying by the month, I'm spending far less overall and getting more bang for it.

It hasn't been hard managing this myself. I always enter a reminder on my phone of the date to cancel a subscription before it auto-renews. With most of them, you can cancel in advance, and keep watching until your month is up.

You know the most messed up thing about this streaming service Balkanization? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but none of these services are streaming "Die Hard!" What's up with that?!! 'Tis the season!

the Disney-Fox merger and film/TV production/exhibition hegemony in general

Disney+ users have been hacked.

The hackers have stolen thousands of customer accounts, days after the launch of the service, and are selling the accounts on the dark web.https://t.co/KLXM86WluJ

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) November 19, 2019

netflix movie selection has DEFINITELY declined. amazon, sad to say, is the only one of the "non-snob" services that consistently has some kinda cool movies one could be curious about, tho often these will turn out to be transfers from late 80s pan-n-scan VHS releases, complete with the logo of some forgotten, perky little company

― weird ilx but sb (Doctor Casino), Saturday, November 16, 2019 5:00 PM bookmarkflaglink

the major advantage that appealed to me about Amazon's video collection = kung fu movies. Amazon had a ridiculous amount of classic ones streaming free a few months ago. was practically getting through two a day.

Netflix has some, but not as many

that disney plus hack seems like kind of a big deal? first i've heard of it.

of course the day I joined it

'the dark web' lol, selling them on reddit for <$3/account. bitcoin only of course

my netflix details got sold to someone in Germany 4 years ago, but the idiot violated the cardinal rule "don't change the accountholder's password", so I found out about it almost immediately

My much more obsessive teenager, who had been hounding me about Disney, just realized that I had activated the service. (My younger daughter, who is more into musicals, has been busier singing in actual musicals, so hasn't noticed yet, but I'm going to tell her when she has a friend over Friday). Anyway, the first thing my older teen gravitated tower is "Phineas & Ferb," which I totally forgot was a Disney property. That show is so great, and I love that it's not Marvel or Star Wars or even Disney/Pixar she wants but Phineas and Ferb. That and "High School Musical, The Musical, The Series," which is the real title.

lol The first episode she watched was the one where the mad scientist devises a ray that makes people see aliens so he can pretend to be king of the aliens and take over city hall, but when he does so he gets lost in the weeds arguing about 401k plans and medical benefits.

dang, high school musical branching out!

Yes, into ... musicals.

It sounds like something from BoJack

to be clear, just in case, that's the description of the Ferb episode, though I wish that is what High School Musical was about. Though it might work for Riverdale.

Phineas and Ferb rules. If Wander Over Yonder is on D+, your kids will love it.

I don't know that one, but the fact that it is literally a Disney show but not on Disney+ - and in fact I came across a petition to get in on Disney+ - is another thing to slot in the "Disney sucks" column.

I have no doubt they're going to be rotating out their content. Vaulting it, if you will.

What's the point of having their own channel then?

is that rhetorical?

the idea is people will sign up for all the exclusive stuff that will, in good time, be totally D+ exclusive and never available anywhere, but you don't get all of it at once so that you get that general sense of "ooh new stuff being added" that keeps you from unsubscribing

I mean, slowly yank content from the service as long as they're still maintaining or growing a subscriber base. As soon as it flatlines: "Welcome to Beauty & The Beast month on Disney+! We're bringing back all your favorite B&tB content along with two exclusive interview specials!"

They've made mad bank for decades fomenting artificial scarcity. They aren't about to stop now.

Like did you guys know The Black Hole has finally been released on Blu-ray? Oh, but only to Disney Movie Club members, sorry proles.

Weren't Disney DVDs of their big movies only available for a limited time? xp

And on VHS before that!

While it would not surprise me, it would, well, surprise me if Disney+, which was created as an exclusive subscription home for Marvel, Disney, Pixar, etc., started taking their own stuff out of circulation from their exclusive subscription service to create a sense of artificial scarcity to get people to ... subscribe to its exclusive service?

Yeah, that's still the case for their core of old-school animated classics. They're at least only vaulting shit for a couple of years now but it's still stupid as hell. And I say that as someone who owns those old-school classics and has no personal reason to grouse.

Like, it seems as unlikely to me that they would ever take off, say, "Star Wars" or "The Little Mermaid" as it does that they would withhold a cartoon I've never heard of as an incentive for people to subscribe in the future.

Not to mention that they've had some sort of falling out with at least Amazon and possibly other retailers so that being a DMC member is about the only easy/affordable way to buy some of their stuff.

Despite having affection for some of their output, never let it be said that I don't hold the corporate entity in utter contempt.

If Netflix started vaulting content I think people would flip out.

Exactly, because it's ... why people subscribe to Netflix! If Disney already has exclusive content, and has it locked down, then why would they remove it?

the disney vault is a tactic they have used forever

designing scarcity of their IP for commercial reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ1zXTIUYzc

Also, Netflix is constantly rotating out content. All of the streaming services do it. I don't know why Disney+ would be any different. Their original programming will probably stay put but I wouldn't count on anything else.

Because Disney owns everything on their channel, but Netflix and Amazon and Criterion and so on are essentially leasing/borrowing most of their content.

But again, I cannot conceive of Disney taking a beloved property like "Frozen" offline just so that they can announce "'Frozen' is coming back to Disney+!" Maybe in the distant future, perhaps.

Per the above, it would be like Netflix taking away "Stranger Things." Why would they do that? I understand the concept of artificial scarcity, but this is a subscription model; they already have our money on an ongoing basis. It's built in to the model, unlike selling a videotape, which is a one and done deal.

because they'll go through a fallow period like the mid-90s pre-Pixar acquisition and their main value proposition will be remastering and re-releasing old faves or whatever the new cynical business pitch is

I mean, that's if they're relatively pragmatic. It's not really in the interest of publicly-held companies to imply that they have anything less than an infinite growth model right now, regardless of industry. And it not growth, then trimming of expenses

xpost Nah, as I mention, I'd expect them to adopt the Netflix model and keep all of the stuff created specifically for the services.

Look, I know this doesn't make sense. I agree with you. I'm just saying that there's scads of precedent suggesting what they'll likely do and I'll be way more surprised if they do just make everything available in perpetuity.

I think what they're far more likely to do is just keep jacking up prices, which is a much better extortion scheme. "We have your beloved Mermaid, now pay up!"

If Netflix wanted to test out vaulting, they have the perfect show to try it with: House of Cards.

"Vaulting" before was to make you buy the object quick so you could play it over and over in the future... is there a Blu-ray promotion aspect to Disney+, yet? The streaming equivalent is already in effect, it's built in..... Pay the monthly toll or else you can't watch Frozen every day.

Extras and stuff could be "cool" limited time features ("beauty and the beast month!")

what Josh said

FYI, Disney+ only allows 50 items in your watchlist, so don't try to add more than that. You won't be notified that you're removing stuff from the bottom of your list.

due to the general limited availability of the company's golden era of hand-drawn animation material (which is really all I'm interested in), I signed up for a trial of Disney+. They do have a lot, but it doesn't look like it comes close to everything and it's organized in a really weird way. For example, if you search for Goofy or Donald, it won't turn up all the shorts that they appear in - and the collection of shorts they do have are not complete either. Still, looks like all the feature films are there, which is great, and the shorts they do have are fantastic.

I searched for Donald Duck yesterday, myself

so there's stuff that didn't show up because they've tagged it poorly? that's good, because... I need more Donald

FYI, Disney+ only allows 50 items in your watchlist, so don't try to add more than that. You won't be notified that you're removing stuff from the bottom of your list.

I generally try to be forgiving about clunky interface stuff when things like this first launch, but LOL that is super fucking dumb.

speaking as someone with 194 films in their Kanopy watchlist, and a five-item-a-month viewing limit, getting through <49 TV series at a time before adding another >49 is probably a sensible piece of guided user design

betting that not telling the user about the limit was a different person's decision

yeah but what do they care what % of your watchlist you actually get through or if youre watching things in a sensible orderly fashion, just as long as youre continuously watching a steady diet of High Quality Disney Content? Its a feature that can only be experienced as an inconvenience.

If anything I'd think theyd want to encourage watchlist-bloat to make people think theyre getting more out of the service than they are. ("how can I cancel when I've still got 375 wonderful items of Disney Content queued up & waiting to delight me?")

Please tell me that the classic Muppet Show is on here and it's just another weird search error, because all I can find is nu Muppets.

Please. They never even finished releasing the series on DVD, and a good number of bits were excised even then. Pretty sure it's in music rights limbo.

Yes mh, things are tagged poorly. I searched for donald duck too, and only returned a handful of shorts. But then i looked through some other collections like “Disney through the Decades” and spotted a bunch of other shorts featuring Donald that had not turned up in my search.

Xps

I have a lot of childhood fond memories of the educational “Donald in Mathmagic Land” and would love if it was streaming and not just a VHS tape I saved from my parents’ basement

Yeah thats not on Disney+ I have the tin collection w that tho. Its great

yeah but what do they care what % of your watchlist you actually get through or if youre watching things in a sensible orderly fashion, just as long as youre continuously watching a steady diet of High Quality Disney Content?

mb a calculation made on the amount of eg database calls / processing time / etc per login, freeing resources for menu rendering or content loading

Its a feature that can only be experienced as an inconvenience.

only if they don’t tell you! it could be sold as a feature: “pick your top 50 out of our 794 content options” or w/e, grabbing the chance to sell rather than obfuscate

even if i knew, i would still find it inconvenient if i had 50 things in my queue and noticed something i wanted to see sometime and had to make a mental note to go back add it after i watched the next thing that i watched, but i dunno maybe my streaming habits are outside the mainstream, i usually have huge queues of stuff

I never queue anything

Things come and go so quickly/randomly I figure whats the point?

I actually just went through a bunch of my streaming stuff and edited my watch list, which was useful, because there was stuff I had downloaded months ago that I hadn't gotten around to watching yet, and I learned a bunch of it had finally made its way to one of the services.

Looks like Muppets Take Manhattan isn't there either, and some other Muppets stuff. Rights must be a mess.

For All Mankind on Apple TV is pretty good

yes! agree. I am enjoying it. Ep 3 with their take on theMercury 13 women was really great imo

Ooh, that looks just my thing!

100% your thing

it’s so spacenerdy, i love it so much

though it is weird af that frank sobotka is deke slayton

I ordered, then cancelled Disney + after being unable to stream anything without it freezing for extended periods or just simply stalling out before ever loading any content. Would be nice if the apps would allow you to adjust streaming quality settings, or for that matter any common customizations like that.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING is censored on Disney+, altering the only good line ("Don't fuck with the babysitter" becomes "Don't fool with..."). How is this a paid streaming service?

— Bill Chambers (@flmfrkcentral) January 2, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK2ZGOsbeqo

When I was a kid we lived next to an office building which housed the local McDonalds corporate office. We would skateboard in the underground parking lot under the building, and at some point in the late 70s/early 80s we found winning McDonalds Monopoly pieces in and around the dumpster. These were all just for food, mind you. I think they were throwing out all the winning tickets in that dumpster (without voiding them or destroying them). Me and my friend would grab them, head to McDonalds, and ask people to get us the food (since you had to make a purchase). Many chicken nuggets were consumed.

apple tv+ is the most barren of these innit? around 20 original series, then everything else you need to pay for.

yeah, they are not doing well. I want to rep for "Little America" though which is very good.

dis+ is very lame to me. basically one original show so far?? thought they'd be smart and have tons of new content in the hopper. Netflix is lapping them.

Dis+ is very much not meant for people like us. It is for people who kids who want to watch Aladdin over and over again.

the novelty of being able to watch boy meets world was kinda fun for 3 minutes till I started an episode...
same with most of the old stuff on there.

well if they have dreams of stomping out their competitors then they'll need more than that

Agree, I'm having fun catching up on all of the Star Wars shows I'd never seen but once I'm done I won't have much use for it until the new Marvel shows drop (although I'm mildly intrigued by all the cruddy Fox Kids early-'90s Marvel cartoons on there, at least until I actually try to watch them). If it hadn't been gifted to me I probably would've waited a year to get onboard.

yeah we got disney+ off a free trial so boo could watch the baby yoda show (as she thinks of it), and we've let it roll one paid month to continue my project of watching a bunch of listless and occasionally charming 70s live-action movie. in that time, so far i think the only new thing they've added was the CGI Lion King remake. tellingly, the Roku app doesn't even *have* a "newly added" section (along with many other odd interface choices). agreed that it's basically for families that in earlier times would have bought a bunch of clamshell VHS, and got fancy cable packages solely for the sake of the disney channel. once I can finally arrange for my one buddy to come over for a double feature of "the strongest man in the world" and "the castaway cowboy," i'm dropping this thing for either Mubi or Criterion Channel.

i feel like cancelling disney + since mandalorian is done, and picking it up again when the new marvel shows start.

Watch the Clone Wars. I'm promoting it all over the place, it's great. And a new final season is airing streaming soon.

The Imagineering docuseries was quite good, as well. Surprisingly more objective than I'd expected, too.

We had PS Vue which dies at the end of this month RIP
have now signed up for YouTube Tv which seems like it has pretty much the same stuff & local channels.

we also got appletv+ free for a year
i like the Morning Show & For All Mankind, yet to investigate their other shows

Dis+ is very much not meant for people like us.

haha Disney + is like all the popular content that I have no desire to see (or see again) -- all conveniently packaged for me not to subscribe to!

I'm pretty sure Disney has not fixed the Simpsons yet. We watched a couple, and they looked like shit.

I was never going to sign up but they did inspire me to pick up the DVD sets whenever I see them at thrift stores in decent condition. (So far I've picked up 3 and 6.)

Only on the USA network right now afaict but I just watched the first episode of Briarpatch and I think I'm on board. Rosario Dawson, shady events in a small Texas town, some mild surrealism

Yeah I liked it! The surreal parts feel a tad forced but I’m rolling w it

Listened to the Watch special on Briarpatch and the way they plan to do recap podcasts is a Serial-style true-crime podcast by one of the characters in the show, which I thought sounded cool. Is there a more high-profile example of a TV critic becoming a show runner?

I like it. It felt a little clumsy, but the dialogue is fun and the acting is great!

Its on hulu i believe

Only on the USA network right now afaict

lol

I am watching two streaming shows rn. I like them both.

1) Wicked Tuna on Nat Geo (through Disney+) is a silly 2012 series following a bunch of bluefin tuna fishermen off the coast of Massachusetts. Fantastic personalities, low production quality, lots of great accents.

2) McMillion$, ep. 1, on HBO, a pretty compelling new wild docu-series about the rigged Monopoly games that ran in the '90s and '00s. And more entertaining than the documentary itself (which is good, if a little low-budget re-enacty at times), are the fantastic personalities, great accents and ... yeah, I'm an easy mark.

Increasingly, I realize that I'm drawn to shows about hustlers, hucksters, and frauds. My ideal subject is, like, a working-class saga about an Elizabeth Holmes type.

Counterpart is now on Prime. My premium tv subscription ended before I ever saw the last couple episodes so I’m enthused to see how it ended

Counterpart was such an amazing surprise and I hope more people check it out if it's on Prime. Spy show + sci-fi was already likely to satisfy me but the story is excellent. Justin Marks is heading the FX Shogun remake next, which I'm excited about

i just started it - so good!!

What is better than JK Simmons? JK Simmons x 2

it’s genius casting -
those congenial older Dad-type roles are kind if his bread & butter
but
he can be SO good as the grittier type of hardass (his arc as an excon grifter on Veronica Mars for example was so good)

best of both worlds - and they really feel like 2 diff characters, partly bc of the physicality he gives

it was a little confusing to jump back in after a break because as the two characters gain experience they start to react similarly!

Hoping High Fidelity is getting all of the "remember this from the book/movie?" out of its system in this first episode

unfortunately, no. they recreate a lot of the plot beats and mysteriously listen to nearly the same slate of music. it’s truly weird

it looks stupid but I'm not going to pretend that I'm not going to watch it

it looks stupid but i'm not going to pretend that I'm going to watch it

xxxp - bummer. "We made Jack Black's character a black woman with the exact same personality but we better cast someone overweight so they'll know who it is" is mind-boggling.

what if the main character is the daughter of the actress who played the character the movie version of her character fell for?

The Lisa Bonet stand-in is no Lisa Bonet

i seriously had a split second where I forgot about lisa bonet and lenny kravitz.

not allowed

The Night Manager is pretty good and there are a lot of 'that guys' in the cast - Lepidus and Brutus from Rome! The guy from In The Loop climbing the mountain of conflict!

Haha I wish I’d read this thread before I watched two episodes of high fidelity. I actually thought Zoe Kravitz was its only redeeming quality, even if her Bowie top five was basic af

no berlin trilogy in top 5 is really bonkers

the romanoffs is a dud

i ended up liking High Fidelity. they did a good job casting.

Astutely sensing a marketing opportunity, Disney is apparently adding Frozen 2 to Disney+ months ahead of schedule. I wonder if other services will follow suit with similar exclusives.

they'd be idiots not to

for some reason i thought miyazaki's films would be on disney plus and i can't tell you how bummed i was to realize they weren't

but we will definitely be watching frozen 2 tomorrow. and probably many more times over the next few weeks

miyazaki in us is gonna be on hbo max

Watched the HIllary documentary on Hulu. It's depressing.

"the romanoffs is a dud" about half of them were good, but there are a few that are fucking dire, particularly the Tina Fey/John Slattery one.

my attempt to engage my family in the Expanse did not go over well, I was informed it was 'so much science fiction' by my wife who watches tv in 30 second spurts while looking at her phone.

:(

but it is a lot of scifi it is true

I think we watched maybe two episodes of The Expanse, based on a recommendation from a friend that it was quality sci-fi. And indeed, it was quality sci-fi, but my wife never asked about it again and indeed probably already forgot she saw those two episodes.

The Whitmer Thomas special "the golden one" on HBO is funny and genuinely affecting. Cant remember the last time I thought a comedy special was good

I've never heard of him, but I love comedy recommendations, thanks. Watched the trailer and have no idea what to make of it, but worth a shot!

(Not) speaking of which, I'm sure The Plot Against America is great, but I'm not sure I need another reason to be bummed out.

on Amazon, started this a couple days ago, it's really well done

soundtracked by Mogwai

https://youtu.be/4UYGmqsIFIM

ZeroZeroZero^

my brilliant friend series 2 is on hbo now

We’ve just started watching Mythic Quest on ATV+ and it’s pretty hilarious. Lots of great actors, and F Murray Abraham just slaying it as a washed-up fantasy writer.

my brilliant friend series 2 is on hbo now

Quick shoutout to the Chrome extension "Netflix Party," which lets you share a Netflix viewing with any friends who have Netflix, Chrome, and the extension. The extension generates a link, you share it with friends, they click that, it opens the movie on Netflix, and then they click the browser extension button at top right to join the party. There's a chat window too. We did it with a general group of friends last night and it was a nice little shared time in the midst of these strange days. Feel like it'd be an epecial blast with my bad-movie-night buddies specifically, in terms of riffing over the movie making it feel even more talkative/communal. Lord knows there's enough schlock under the surface in Netflix.

F Murray Abraham just slaying it as a washed-up fantasy writer.

He has looked 80 years old for decades, hasn't he?

my brilliant friend series 2 is on hbo now

― akm, Tuesday, March 17, 2020 4:06 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh shit.. Hurray!

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21182425/movies-anywhere-screen-pass-feature-share-loan-digital-movies-friends

Apologies if some has posted about this on another thread, but I just signed up for this free service that aggregates all of your movies from different services into one app (which I guess will start showing up on all of your devices), which is sorta cool. Much cooler is that it will allow you to lend movies which you've purchased to friends!

"With Screen Pass, Movies Anywhere users will be able to share up to three films per month, giving temporary access to the recipient. Users will have seven days to accept the offer, which will give them access to the film for 14 days. Once started, recipients will have 72 hours to finish the film. The three-share limit resets on the first of every month, letting you share more films. (Unused passes won’t roll over.)"

Pretty Hollywood-friendly terms, but still better than the current deal.

The Plot Against America is fine but doesn't really add anything if you've read it before

This looks like it could be good (from Greg Daniels of The Office and Parks and Rec):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZfZj2bn_xg

Promising based on pedigree alone. Sidenote: I really hope "Once in a Lifetime" does not become the new "Let My Love Open the Door."

That sounds great DC, especially right now xps

thanks for the heads up

" The Plot Against America is fine but doesn't really add anything if you've read it before"

I found the book incredibly dull when it was published so maybe this will be more engrossing.

Brockmire is still incredibly funny.

And painfully prescient

Devs is pretty cool, Offerman is the worst thing about it.

Still on the fence about this whole $20 On-demand Rentals for New Releases thing - good option for us consumers, but will it drive theatrical into the ground even more? - but I'm glad Disney made the choice easier for me with Onward. Really wanted to catch it, and got released for rent yesterday, but it'll be on Disney+ on April 3.

https://www.popsugar.com/family/onward-disney-plus-47327624

$20 is approximately twice what I'd be willing to pay to watch The Invisible Man on my laptop.

I would pay $4.99 for The Hunt but that's it.

I think it was on HBO, but my wife was really excited about watching the McMillions doc, but I think it's pretty run of the mill and padded out for what could have been a more thrilling story. Or at least as thrilling as a fast food contest rigging scheme can get.

yeah I gave up after one ep, so horribly padded. just read the article it's based on.

Glad it wasn't just me. Why did they think this story needed 6 (iirc) hour-long episodes?

i mean you need space to painstakingly re-enact the events, every time someone says something like "...but to get approval for an inquiry preparatory to opening an investigation, you need to walk down the hall and get signatures from both the section supervisor *and* the district agent in charge," followed by "well, we hit a real snag when it turned out the district agent in charge wouldn't be back from vacation for another two days," etc.

"I would pay $4.99 for The Hunt but that's it."

all of these just became a piratebay splurge for me. FWIW: Invisible Man is quite good. Didn't watch the Hunt, Onward, or Emma yet. Actually I started emma but it annoyed me a lot so I'll give it another shot.

Seeing the various personalities involved made McMillions very entertaining, and most of the recreations were very well done, but it totally could have been three episodes.

This thread now appears to be about broadcast television and theatrical movies. Somebody should start one for streaming video services!

Guess I'll finally watch the only Lynch I haven't seen when The Straight Story goes up on Disney+ on April 3.

caught it on the big screen last month - it's fantastic.

Watched Onward last night (which is maybe up for streaming or rent? dunno because I obtained it some other way) and it's fine but it's really B grade Pixar. Wonder how well it would have done if this current situation hadn't happened. Like the Dinosaur movie, it feels fairly unnecessary and minor. Some great animation though.

i thought it was pretty bad and painfully predictable. the first pixar i ever turned off.

It seemed like they couldn't decide between doubling down on the insane photorealism of Toy Story 4, or doing something more cartoonish. They ended up in this odd place that didn't work for me.

yeah I didn't like the actual character designs much. the backgrounds and lighting were excellent as usual.

This show has one of the craziest backstories (based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag), but it actually looks pretty good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1htuNZp82Ck

if anyone's been looking for a good time to try out Shudder, they just added Friday the 13th pts 1 thru 8.

Oof, rare family agreement that "Onward" was really subpar. Pretty precitable, not exciting, not funny (one or two gags aside), looked good but given the scenario still pretty uninspired, and really didn't earn its wannabe heartwarming conclusion. Bummer.

so, Future Man on hulu is ridiculous and cliched, but somehow their pivot for season three is a point in time: December 31, 1999 at Iowa State University with a guy using a lot of internet bandwidth

I have it on good authority the person in real life using the most dorm bandwidth was in fact my roommate. Or at least he was the only person cited in a meeting about that with a group of network administrators I was in

lol

this has probably been covered before,
but what’s happening with all the movies that were supposed to come out now? are they all on hold indefinitely? are some of them going straight to Netflix?

Some delayed, some already available to rent for around 20 bucks on streaming services (eg The Invisible Man)

lol 20 bucks?? that’s somewhat more than a ticket at the movies

Yeah, I think their thinking is there'll be more than one person watching.

Of course, once they're up for streaming they're almost instantly available on all the torrent sites too

https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/here-are-all-the-movies-and-tv-shows-affected-by-coronavirus.html

You can get The Invisible Man for free on the torrents and it was not up to much. Lol 20 bucks for that. No way!

Oops sorry for repeating you groovy panda, I'm on the phone and missed your comments!

The question I had (and this isn't really a good fit for this thread but it is as much as any, I guess) is does that mean when things get back to closer to normal there will be a bunch of movies/shows all running behind? There have to be far more movies and shows that didn't even have release dates, that had to shut down pre-, mid- or post-production. And then, following through, will there be, at least for a while, a relative dearth of conventional new releases? Will opening weekend consist of one or two new films vs. the usual five or whatever? Will TV seasons be totally off? I have a friend who is a show runner on a popular network series, and he said they lucked into wrapping their upcoming season on March 6, right before everything everywhere shut down, so maybe I'll ask him what comes next.

from everything i've read/heard, the answer to most or all of your questions is "yes"

Disney+ added The Straight Story yesterday.

lol 20 bucks?? that’s somewhat more than a ticket at the movies

It’s two dollars more than a single ticket at the movies, but this way all four of you can watch, and you aren’t spending any money on parking / petrol / the bus / popcorn / beer / twizzlers / sugar water.

movies cost $18??? fuck

my local Vue (walkable) is £7.50 for any movie, any time, has fantastic screens, and their concessions are so atrocious, and so poorly run, that i never spend any money on them

movies are not $18 for a non-3d showing in most of the US, no. They're more like $13.

Invisible Man was fun

I wanna see The Invisible Man, but I'm good to wait four or five months until it shows up on one of my many streaming services. Can't think of a single movie that'd be worth paying an $18 rental fee for.

that 18$ rental fee is the normal fee for "now in theaters" kinds of rentals. Eventually it comes down to 4 bucks or whatever. Should they change that now that theaters are only for bed bugs? Sure.

my local Vue (walkable) is £7.50 for any movie, any time, has fantastic screens, and their concessions are so atrocious, and so poorly run, that i never spend any money on them

The Cineworld near me is £11 a pop for non 3D films whereas the Vue a couple of miles further away is only £5

I can get a ticket, beer, and small popcorn for about $18 at the locally-owned theater here!

why did no one tell me that ridiculous Stallone/Schwarzenegger vehicle Escape Plan has not one, but two sequels?

and both apparently feature not just Stallone, but also Dave Bautista and 50 Cent?!

minor hangover today... so I'm going in

Invisible Man was playing in multiplexes here, so you could see it for $5 on a Tuesday afternoon at AMC, or for $17 at Regal on the night of the week that it was released for home rental

Yeah, still kicking myself a little for now going to see it in early February before the panic set in. But eh, I can also wait until it's on a streaming service or rentable for a decent price.

Gonna mention ilplex on 77 again

shrug emoji?

Yknow who is consistently terrible is this fellow JIM STURGESS, constantly turning up in stuff and spoiling my viewing experience. Like I am quite enjoying this Apple+ series Home Before Dark but Holy Fucken Shit this man makes my teeth hurt (also Precocious Brat content, but otherwise decent)

Jim Sturgess has a knack for starring in some of the dumbest movies I've ever seen (Across the Universe, Heartless, Upside Down)

Also that cheffery drama with David Schwimmer, I forget the name but it was terrible, oh wait I just looked it up and it was called FEED THE BEAST, fucking red flags all over the shop, why did I watch that?

Actually Simon H. do a podcast about the tv show Feed The Beast starring David Schwimmer and Jim Sturgess, it is Lynch levels of inscrutability

Sturgess managed not to ruin Cloud Atlas, but he was also mot much good in it.

it's also not a very good movie so its not like he could ruin it on his own

what was the pitch for Quibi? "It's Youtube Red from 2014, but !"

but ____________________!

whatever the pitch for quibi was, it did not take into account a world in which the vast majority of urban people are stuck indoors for months

otoh, i probably am glued to my cell phone even more usual these days

the pitch for quibi was "we don't have to pay union minimums if the episodes are under 15 minutes"

Holy shit, Quibi is *exclusively* for your phone?! That is, you can't watch it on your TV or computer even if you want to? Well, fuck that. That's like publishing a novel that can only be read on Facebook.

https://www.tor.com/2020/04/10/apple-tv-plus-original-shows-free-limited-time-for-all-mankind-snoopy-servant-watch/

Apple Makes Some of its Original Shows Available to Watch For Free

Holding off until they actually pay me

*highly* recommend For All Mankind esp if you are a space/Apollo nerd

Is it related to the doc of the same name?

Holy shit, Quibi is *exclusively* for your phone?! That is, you can't watch it on your TV or computer even if you want to? Well, fuck that. That's like publishing a novel that can only be read on Facebook.

If you have a Chromecast or similar device it's pretty easy to cast from your phone to your tv.

If they put up a 10 foot wall, I'm going to get an 11 foot ladder and climb somewhere else.

this Apple TV+ free period is great! so far we’ve given up on for all mankind and servant

Lol

Mythic Quest was in my top ten of the year but I don’t think apple is giving that one away? Super-funny right out of the gate.

was is

For All Mankind had an interesting concept and first episode then went to shit faster than anything I can remember.

I saw the first Mythic Quest, was ok.

Little America is very much worth your time.

i like Servant, it's absurd

I don't really need another service full of stuff I think I should watch but don't actually watch

Well guess what? It's full of stuff you'll have no impulse to watch!

I think you might enjoy Mythic Quest, given the subject matter. Or find it infuriating.

it's... not very good? I mean, i finished it but imagine if sunny and silicon valley had a very boring baby and ubisoft did interstitials

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/media/disney-splash-edited/index.html

They covered up Daryl Hannah's butt in Splash, erasing one of my formative pre-pubescent sexual memories.

xp good description imo

the Plot Against America is v v good

waiting to hear if it improves on the book's ending

quibi doesn’t have tv casting support yet. it also doesn’t let you take screenshots.

Peacock launches today, goes wide in July
https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/peacock-streaming-lineup-free-tv-shows-movies-1234580315/

i could absolutely not get into that book at the time, maybe I will try the series.

Tales from the Loop is pretty good btw, in a twilight zone, black mirror lite sort of way. It's kind of nice to not have something relentlessly grim and dark.

I love Cate Blancett dearly, but I gotta say, not terribly eager to watch this new Hulu series where she plays Phyllis Schlafly. the woman was a fucking ghoul, plain and simple, case closed.

ditto

otm

me either but I hear it's very good

her rictus grin is very on point, i will try it.

not a fair comparison but i was also leery of watching Vice because I did not want to see Dick Cheney humanized in any way. but i don't know if it does that or not

Losing my fucking MIND at this Quibi show where actual Emmy winner Rachel Brosnahan plays a woman obsessed with her golden arm pic.twitter.com/rSfqCv75SG

— Zach Raffio (@zachraffio) April 15, 2020

incredible.

Watched the first ep of “Run” on HBO
v watchable so far & ridiculously horny.
Phoebe Waller Bridge is exec producer & guest stars in later ep.
Domnhall Gleeson is great too, but he is great in pretty much everything even if it’s garbage (cf: About Time)

Yeah that was enjoyable.

Devs finale was excellent. LIke the Leftovers, and Twin Peaks: the Return, I can't even believe someone greenlit this for television and paid for it, it's so fucking crazy.

Devs was (no season 2, right?) a great show, but...

SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I just don't buy that you could watch your future self and then just sleepwalk through what you watched perfectly when the time came. I don't even think I could re-create what I saw in the machine even if I was TRYING to make it happen. All very trippy to think about though.

Combining the ideas of devs and Wolfram's latest messianic proclamations with some stay-at-home levels of consumption has been fun.

on quibi i wrote this almost a year ago and i’m interested to see if my prognostication was stoopid or smart

this profile of Meg Whitman (eBay, Hewlett Packard) is off the back of launching the start-up Quibi – whose value proposition is 'high quality snackable video', aiming to become 'the Netflix of the mobile generation'.

She's co-chairman with entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenburg. He provides the entertainment contacts, she's responsible for getting the finance, producing a high-profile investment roster of 21st Century Fox, Viacom, Alibaba, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.

In some respects the logic is sound: she points out people are spending 4-5 hours a day on their phones, but average session length is 6.5 minutes. Twitter and youtube are filling that space.

I'm not convinced - people pay for high quality when there is an investment of their time involved. here it's filling the cracks. text-based apps like twitter are perfect to pick up and put down, music videos on youtube can get a quick rewatch, but you don't have to stick to the end. Part of the point is that you don't know when your time poor snack break might need to suddenly end.

Who else has paid $3.33 for the Night Flight app and what have you watched so far? It has a LOT of weird stuff, like having the cool video store inside your house + old eps of NF may be the most soothing thing on earth next to time lapse photography of plants or Planet Earth.

wow I didn't know that existed, just checked out the website. I'll absolutely sign up for that later today. Decent price and shitloads of stuff I'd watch while stoned.

Did not know about Night Flight app! I have like twenty burned DVDs of old Night Flight material that I incidentally started digging into the other day so this news is up my alley.

that fucking Quibi golden arm show

xp to stuff you just don't care about

the start-up Quibi – whose value proposition is 'high quality snackable video', aiming to become 'the Netflix of the mobile generation'.

i’ve just watched a quibi sitcom about dan harmon’s sex doll, can we start 2020 again please

... a fictional sitcom starring Dan Harmon, or a sitcom about the actual mannequin leg that he used to fuck?

Was said mannequin leg gold?

a fictional sitcom about a fictional dan harmon (whose name is dan harmon) and the sex doll he used to fuck, which comes to life and provides handy creative writing tips

did the IRL Dan Harmon write this?

(or a writer who used to work under him?)

his partner wrote it, it’s all quite self aware

and honestly, i can’t really fault this for being an original idea, and based on what i’ve seen so far it doesn’t not work

how do we know the sex doll didn't write it

technically the sex doll is also “his partner” so

perhaps that’s how they get around his sex doll not having an equity card

I’m enjoying ‘For all Mankind’ on AppleTV+, which is free right now.

I started watching Messiah on Netflix last night and really like it,then discovered it was cancelled likely due to cost and necessity for overseas shoots which they didn’t want to commit to given the situation. I hope it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger.

just finished up McMillions, was pretty entertaining though it definitely didn't need to be 6 hours. in particular I couldn't find myself caring much about the 'winners' who were otherwise just regular people. also disappointing: the reveal of how he stole the tickets (no way could they not figure that out until the trial), the identity of the informant, the fact that neither of the main figures appeared - it was kind of a shock to find out that the 'mastermind' behind it was still actually alive. I liked the main detective guy though, he was like a real life Brooklyn Nine Nine character

That show was WAY too long

I’ve been enjoying Night Flight app a lot, so much non-inflammatory content to enjoy.

goddamnit, Messiah does end on a cliffhanger, kind of.

I watched Le Choc du Futur, one of this year's SXSW films, on Amazon Prime. It's about a young woman in 1978 Paris with an apartment full of analog synths, trying to create the next new thing. Pretty much Moodles fanfic.

Know what is on amazon prime and is super duper topical? SOMEONE I TOUCHED, starring Cloris Leachman. It's about a syphilis outbreak and the contact tracer who has to tell people "guess what, you've been exposed"

TV movie! Recommended if you just can't get enough contagion irl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjjK61JXZM

that video clip is great!

The whole movie is enjoyable — would recommend for 1975 TV movie contagion entertainment!

Theme song is sung by Cloris Leachman herself

The Normal People adaptation is good

yeah started it last night and was dubious with the first episode but it gets it's stride rather quickly. the one thing that throws it off slightly, or at least makes me rethink things about the book, is that Daisy Edgar-Jones is hardly unattractive, or awful, or gross, which was really how I'd thought she was supposed to be before she went to University. So the discomfort he has with being with her seems really weird if you've only seen the series. But both of them are very good. As it is television, there are bits of it that are far more sentimental than how I took the book, where the love scenes can be graphic, but it's a bit brutal and almost clinical.

yeah, her casting does strain credibility for sure. And the accent slips now and again

the guy who plays Connell is brilliant though. Only his second screen role or something

yeah, I actually think they're both extraordinary and now I am in love with Daisy Edgar Jones forever so you know I'm not complaining.

the supporting garbage men are also extremely well cast - the schoolmates, Marianne's brother, the college boyfriends. I've met all those types

I'm six episodes in and I feel like they cut a lot of the brother stuff out. maybe more happened near the second half of the book? I now can't recall.

Ok, finished. I found the very ending seemed much more ambiguous than the book, which was a little ambiguous but I certainly came away from it with a reasonable feeling about what was going to happen. Maybe it was just me.

I certainly hope they don't try to make a second season of this though.

I doubt it, but Lenny Abrahamson and Alice Birch are also adapting Conversations with Friends for the BBC

that'll be interesting. I quite like both of these novels but Normal People has a leg up on having two characters I actually liked and cared about despite them making frustrating and stupid decisions over and over and over. Conversations had two main characters who I thought were deeply unlikeable. It's still a great book.

We watched the odd Parks and Rec reunion/benefit show, which was better than it had any right to be, while still being totally contrived and goofy. So many great people on that show, and almost all of them showed up.

On Hulu/Peacock

Upload on Amazon is pretty good. Interesting that Greg Daniels and Michael Shur went on from Parks and Rec to both make shows about the afterlife.

Opposing viewpoint after two episodes: Upload is not good. Actors are not great (plus everybody is too pretty/character is too shitty), writing is by the numbers and draw everything out unnecessarily, the larger MYSTERY isn't interesting me in the slightest and the constant product placement undercuts the cynical themes in a really cynical way.

Daniels didn't really work on Parks & Rec after the pilot afaik, so it looks more like him specifically chasing his decade-ago collaborator's more recent success

Opposing viewpoint after two episodes: Upload is not good.

yeah this. i binged three and lost interest. what’s great about the show (the concept, the future vision, the dramatic elements) is so undermined by a complete lack of charisma that it feels more like a tech showcase than a fully developed series.

nathan might as well be a robot. i couldn’t give two shits what happens to him. nora’s drawn to nathan because the story needs her to be. nathan’s girlfriend is so superficially villainous that i struggle to see her as anything more than a plot device. and how is this show set only 13 years in the future?

i’ll watch it to the end because there’s enough here to enjoy, but i will definitely keep drifting off, and i really doubt i’ll care what happens to whom.

Yeah - the same. It's not great - but I'll finish it. The episodes are short, and there's just enough mileage in the concept to keep it going.

my kids just discovered Crunchyroll. i don't think i'll need another streaming service for a loooong time.

i'm enjoying normal people even though it doesn't really have much of a story. the lead actors are interesting because they are both good but in different ways. the woman who plays marianne is way more actor-y, while the guy who plays connell is very naturalistic. i've been pretty impressed with that dude in particular.

Remember when Steven Spielberg was like "FUCK Netflix, that shit ain't cinema." and he went on to develop a show for fucking Apple + and a Quibi show that you can only watch at night

— Ben Schouten (@BenGSchout) May 12, 2020

I mean... he didn't make a movie for either one.

true, and tbh good on him for trying new things in his 70s

nothing on Apple+ has been watchable, it's impressive how bland and mushy they made all this content they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on

it’s a very odd proposition. i’ve read every rationalisation going for the existence of apple+, and none of them seem to make any real business sense. as a standalone subscription service, the content isn’t there to justify the cost. as a bundle-in for hardware (1 year included), i don’t see it making any difference to people who were going to buy the hardware anyway.

milo's right, the beastie boys thing had the best clips in the credits and it's what I have enjoyed most

+ makes sense as a sweetener to buy a device for the free entry but it's not very sweet

nothing on Apple+ has been watchable, it's impressive how bland and mushy they made all this content they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on

it’s almost as if you can’t engineer good drama as is it’s a polycarbonate screen

at the very least, it's the cheapest of all the services right now at $50/year

Apple has enough cash to just shut it all down and call it a day, write off the loss whenever they feel like it. but like Quibi it's hard to see... why did they even bother?

quibi is fascinating whichever way you look at it. you’ve got a service which (until this week) has been deliberately locked to mobile phones; you’ve got a free three-month trial which very few people took up; you’ve got katzenberg saying quibi is failing because of the coronavirus (disputable); you’ve got a quibi fan podcast called ‘quibiverse’ being threatened with legal action by quibi for using quibi’s name without permission; you’ve got the same podcast rebranding as ‘streamiverse’ with a new mission statement to take the piss out of quibi five times a week; you’ve got a podcast called ‘streamiversity’, a ‘streamiverse’ fan podcast; and in the midst of that you’ve got quibi itself, which offers content such as:

• a show in which people have a meal fired at them from a cannon, and are then given 30 minutes to replicate that meal
• a show in which architects and interior designers build luxury dog kennels
• a sitcom in which dan harmon’s sex doll comes to life and helps a screenwriter win contracts (mentioned upthread)
• a home renovation show in which the homes were once murder crime scenes
• a show about obscure pasta shapes
• a dance show in which the dance floor jerks around until the dancers fall on their arses
• a feelgood show in which famous people give money to a recipient who then must give half that money to someone else in a heartwarming fashion
• a daily weather show which conveniently gives you the weather for generally the whole of america in just seven minutes

i'm kinda curious which of those you made up

quibi really does feel like a multi-billionaire made a lot of coked up phone calls and then rather than admit he did that, he started a network

otm. i can’t wait to read the book on the failure of quibi, which should be out by august

the netflix doc about it will be great

a two hour special in 17 instalments

i see what you did there

Liiike...I really only got as far as learning that Quibi was a streaming service for smartphones only and said 'wow, that's really fucking stupid' and moved on with my life. Assuming if I thought it was that stupid that it would probably wind up being wildly successful because that's the way the world goes. But reading more about it (thank u AA) it seems like a venture deliberately constructed to fail as catastrophically as possible.