Streaming Wars

I have previously written a blog about the different streaming services but this one is slightly different. More and more and coming around now and the big players have released their initiation dates and prices …. And there’s gonna be a war … and we are all gonna be caught in the amazing content crossfire.

November is when the war will start … shots have already been fired with Disney announcing their INCREDIBLE line up of movies and tv shows and brand-new content … all starting at a low low price of 4.99. But the list of content is EPIC … I looked over that list and knew INSTANTLY that it’s something I will get because not only will I get the new content and be able to watch and see phase 4 (which atm is a bit eh movie wise for me but YEY SPIDER-MAN IS BACK) … but their list of older content really got me going.

Back when I was growing up, there were some amazing cartoons on tv … things that made me into the geek I am today like the x-men cartoon, the spider-man cartoon, original ducktails, gargoyles, spider-man unlimited, BUG JUICE (ok not a cartoon but I used to watch it during the summer break from school), the mighty ducks cartoon etc etc. ALL OF THESE ARE ON THE SERVICE … and a great deal more. Those alone will sort out my Saturday afternoons when I’m bored and that’s not even the movies.

All the marvel movies produced by Kevin Fiege (minus Spider-man but with the new announcement I’m not sure if that will change), all the star wars movies, all the Disney movies I grew up with (classics with the princesses), all Pixar movies, all mighty ducks movies, and the list goes on and on. It is WELL worth the low low price and I’m not 100% sure if anything else will be included on the UK version as America also gets ESPN and other things. It’s gonna be EPIC.

Apple also announced their streaming service price and date, and it also looks quite good. I do feel that some of it I won’t watch as it’s not quite my thing but the few shows that have been announced look alright so far. I’m waiting for the Steven Spielberg one to go on. HOWEVER, their launch line up is quite small with new content every month so if I binge watch it the first month, I'll have to wait until the next month for more. I also heard a rumour that the way apple are launching it will be the first few episodes on launch day, and then one episode weekly after that. 

I kinda get that, I mean it’s not the healthiest thing to sit and binge watch tv, and their software has the screen time checks and what not imbedded into it so they kinda don’t want you to sit there for days watching content. But I mean COME ON!! … I’ve stopped watching shows because I found myself waiting a week and then the episode was boring and I couldn’t bring myself to wait countless weeks for mediocre content, waiting for something good to happen (I’m looking at you Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead … (My opinions so don’t attack)). Oh, but they did announce that if you bought and activated a new device after September 10^th(yey me buying a new iPhone) … you will get Apple TV+ FREE for A WHOLE YEAR!!! … that’s like $60 (£60) saved right there so it’s less of a worry for me.

I heard there was another tv streaming service but I can’t think of its name right now so it can’t be that important … but it shows that studios are waring with each other … rather than working together, we are gonna be paying through the nose to watch all the tv we want to watch … or piracy and torrent downloads will skyrocket because it will cost a fortune to pay for every streaming service to get their content.

As of right now I pay for Netflix, Spotify & amazon prime which works out to be around £37 a month (round about … amazon is 1 charge for the whole year and gives you free books, next day delivery, twitch sub, etc etc & I pay for the family Netflix and Spotify).

So, I soon will be adding another £10ish to that when the free Apple TV+ service runs out … assuming that the services won’t raise their prices. That also doesn’t include apple News+ which I’ve wanted to get and look at since WWDC 19 but hasn’t become available in the UK yet. So, round it up to £50 a month, just on streaming content … I also want to point out that this is only ones I get and ones you can get in the UK … I know in the US there’s Hulu etc and it also doesn’t include the actual TV packages like sky, virgin media etc.

One of my favourite movies is Ready Player One … on the opening dialog says,

“I was born in 2027.After the Corn Syrup Droughts, after the Bandwidth Riots. After people stopped trying to fix problems and just tried to outlive them.”

Now if you swap bandwidth riots for streaming wars … I think that time is now … 7 years for all of that to happen and with the world health becoming healthier) or trying to) … I think the corn syrup droughts are coming. People already have stopped fixing problems and powering through … so who knows … in the near future, a genius like Halliday could make the Oasis console and we could escape into there for work and fun … and for that I can’t wait … I just hope it’s not gonna be a huge upheaval and massacres to get there.

Ready Player One - Warner Bros Movies, Image from https://www.warnerbros.co.uk/movies/ready-player-one