New Disney Streaming Bundle

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

This is actually a good deal if you're already a fan of Hulu and/or ESPN and want to add the new Disney streaming to the mix...

Quote

Disney announces $12.99 bundle for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+

On par with or cheaper than competitors

By Julia Alexander  Aug 6, 2019, 5:01pm EDT

 

Disney will offer a bundle package of its three streaming services — Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ — for $12.99 a month starting on November 12th, the company announced today.

The company previously hinted at a bundle for all three services, but CEO Bob Iger made it official during the company’s investors call today. At $12.99, the bundle is cheaper than or on par with competitive streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. It’s also significantly cheaper than HBO Max’s rumored streaming price of $16 or $17 a month. Hulu is currently available for $5.99 a month (with ads), and ESPN+ costs $4.99 a month.

ESPN+ is the Disney-owned sports streaming platform, which carries “hundreds of MLB, NHL and MLS games, Grand Slam tennis, Top Rank boxing, PGA Tour golf, college sports, international rugby, cricket, the full library of ESPN Films including 30 for 30, and more.” It’s also now the streaming destination for UFC fights, which Disney no doubt hopes can make up for the lack of SportsCenter and other banner shows from ESPN the cable network.

The bundle will include the standard, ad-supported tier of Hulu — not the more expensive no-commercials plan or Hulu with Live TV. Presumably Disney will offer a way to upgrade to those pricier Hulu subscriptions.

There are a few other questions that went unanswered on the earnings call. Disney+, for example, will eventually launch in international markets. It’s unclear if that will be the same for the bundle because of regional issues with content. Hulu, for example, is not available in Canada, but Disney wants to bring Hulu to international markets, too. The big question is ESPN+, again because of regional licensing issues. Iger told investors the company doesn’t have “anything to announce right now in terms of markets.”

Most of the interest from investors, however, was still on Disney+. Iger spoke quite a bit about Disney+ during the investors call, referring to the service as “the most important product the company has launched in my tenure.”

“The positive response to our direct-to-consumer strategy has been gratifying, and the integration of the businesses we acquired from 21st Century Fox only increases our confidence in our ability to leverage decades of iconic storytelling and the powerful creative engines across the entire company to deliver an extraordinary value proposition to consumers,” Iger said in a press release.

The streaming services is likely to be available through “Amazon, Apple, and other distributors,” according to Iger. Disney has not finalized any deals with the aforementioned companies, but told investors “we feel it’s important for us to achieve scale quickly, and we think it’s going to be an important part of that. They’re all interested in distributing the product.”

Disney’s goal heading into the direct-to-consumer space is ultimately to provide a ton of content in three distinct areas: general entertainment, family, and sports. The bundle is a way for Disney to offer consumers, many of whom are about to be inundated with multiple streaming services to choose from in the coming months, on top of free online entertainment (YouTube, Twitch), a low-priced option.

“That $12.99 bundle offers consumers tremendous volume, tremendous quality, and tremendous variety for a good price.”

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20757626/disney-plus-espn-hulu-bundle-price-date-streaming-service

[Seals 111]

Interesting. We finally cut the cable cord two days and I've been researching alternatives. 

[Beckers 1,136]

46 minutes ago, Seals said:

Interesting. We finally cut the cable cord two days and I've been researching alternatives. 

We are in the process of doing that. I think we are going with Hulu + live streaming. 

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

53 minutes ago, Beckers said:

We are in the process of doing that. I think we are going with Hulu + live streaming. 

We've been kicking cutting the cable cord around for a while now and are leaning towards this too.

 

[Beckers 1,136]

21 minutes ago, BradyBzLyn...Mo said:

We've been kicking cutting the cable cord around for a while now and are leaning towards this too.

 

Our cable/phone/internet is nuts so I’m hoping I can justify the savings in changing that for a camper and truck payment 😂 (back looking again since my parents are selling and my years of free loading are over 😭

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

26 minutes ago, Beckers said:

Our cable/phone/internet is nuts so I’m hoping I can justify the savings in changing that for a camper and truck payment 😂 

Love that logic!!

[Travisma 1,317]

3 hours ago, Beckers said:

We are in the process of doing that. I think we are going with Hulu + live streaming. 

Have you looked into You tube TV?

[Seals 111]

Our last 2 kids are heading out to college so paying for cable + 4 cable boxes (plus Netflix and Amazon Prime), which really made no sense before, makes even less sense now.  Our kids watched cable the most.   Besides local news (which I mostly have on in the background when I'm cooking dinner) I usually watch Netflix or Amazon Prime or my few network shows a day or two later on their apps.  My husband watches Netflix and random other things but mostly will watch whatever is on when he feels like watching.  We are fairly rural but my husband bought a digital antenna and we can get  NBC clearly with that for local news and weather. It's the local channel we watched the most anyway. I got an Amazon Fire Stick on Prime Day and it's a lot easier to use than I thought it was going to be.  If we go with streaming I've read the best reviews about YouTube tv.  But we may wait and see if we miss anything and possibly go with this in November. 

[Travisma 1,317]

38 minutes ago, Seals said:

Our last 2 kids are heading out to college so paying for cable + 4 cable boxes (plus Netflix and Amazon Prime), which really made no sense before, makes even less sense now.  Our kids watched cable the most.   Besides local news (which I mostly have on in the background when I'm cooking dinner) I usually watch Netflix or Amazon Prime or my few network shows a day or two later on their apps.  My husband watches Netflix and random other things but mostly will watch whatever is on when he feels like watching.  We are fairly rural but my husband bought a digital antenna and we can get  NBC clearly with that for local news and weather. It's the local channel we watched the most anyway. I got an Amazon Fire Stick on Prime Day and it's a lot easier to use than I thought it was going to be.  If we go with streaming I've read the best reviews about YouTube tv.  But we may wait and see if we miss anything and possibly go with this in November. 

Fire stick doesn't have You tube TV at the moment.

Amazon and Google were in a pissing contest a while back and neither would carry the others content. Chrome Sticks wouldn't carry Amazon channels.

They kissed and made up, and Fire devices are going to carry You Tube TV again this fall.  They already started carrying the official You Tube App (there were hacks to get it) a few weeks ago.

You Tube TV carries most broadcast channels, and if you are in the right zone, you can even pick up your local broadcast stations instead of the network ones.

 

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

So this has turned into a super helpful thread - thanks folks!  🙂

 

[Seals 111]

35 minutes ago, Travisma said:

Fire stick doesn't have You tube TV at the moment.

Amazon and Google were in a pissing contest a while back and neither would carry the others content. Chrome Sticks wouldn't carry Amazon channels.

They kissed and made up, and Fire devices are going to carry You Tube TV again this fall.  They already started carrying the official You Tube App (there were hacks to get it) a few weeks ago.

You Tube TV carries most broadcast channels, and if you are in the right zone, you can even pick up your local broadcast stations instead of the network ones.

 

This may be a dumb question, but I admit I don't understand how all this "magic" works,  when they start carrying You Tube TV can I just add it to the Fire Stick I already have? 

[Beckers 1,136]

15 hours ago, Travisma said:

Have you looked into You tube TV?

Nope, didn’t know it was a thing! Now I’ll have to look!

[Travisma 1,317]

30 minutes ago, Seals said:

This may be a dumb question, but I admit I don't understand how all this "magic" works,  when they start carrying You Tube TV can I just add it to the Fire Stick I already have? 

Yes you should be able to, but then to make it work you would have to subscribe to it.

I think for the first year it's about $35 a month.

If you do a Google search for it, it'll give you a channel listing of what they carry, and a cost.

In theory, you can drop any cable tv package and just keep internet to stream all your shows, live and previously aired ones.

Like the X-Files?  It will search and find you every episode and you can start watching all you want.  There is no recorder, you just watch everything on demand at your leisure.

[keith_h 420]

We cut the chord before the switch to digital TV. We had Netflix for a long time but we never really like their original programming and with the loss of so much content as their providers start their own services we dropped them. Their price increase for less content didn't help either. We switched to the lower cost Hulu plan so the Disney bundle actually looks pretty good to us as it isn't that much more for the Disney stuff (we really don't care about ESPN). I also have Amazon Prime but carry that for a different reason than TV so it is just an added perk. 

Edit: As I still need a land line, again this happened years ago, I switched to Ooma where you buy your VoIP box and you get free basic phone service for the cost of monthly taxes and fees. They also have a higher tier with all the bells and whistles for about $10/mo. No matter how you slice it much better than the $30 - $40 per month the cable and phone companies wanted.

[Beckers 1,136]

45 minutes ago, keith_h said:

Edit: As I still need a land line, again this happened years ago, I switched to Ooma where you buy your VoIP box and you get free basic phone service for the cost of monthly taxes and fees. They also have a higher tier with all the bells and whistles for about $10/mo. No matter how you slice it much better than the $30 - $40 per month the cable and phone companies wanted.

Does that work for alarm systems? This is the issue I’m having. Comcast is ridiculous and just dropping cable doesn’t change my bill much. I need to drop cable and phone but I need the phone for my alarm

[Travisma 1,317]

6 hours ago, Beckers said:

Does that work for alarm systems? This is the issue I’m having. Comcast is ridiculous and just dropping cable doesn’t change my bill much. I need to drop cable and phone but I need the phone for my alarm

Is Comcast your local phone provider?  Frontier for a POTS line is about a $70 install and I think about $25 a month. That is an analog line.

[Beckers 1,136]

2 hours ago, Travisma said:

Is Comcast your local phone provider?  Frontier for a POTS line is about a $70 install and I think about $25 a month. That is an analog line.

Comcast is our phone/internet/cable. They have a monopoly here and Comcast is the only internet provider we can get, which is crazy because I don’t live in the sticks or anything. But they bundle everything and basically screw you 👎🏻

[keith_h 420]

22 hours ago, Beckers said:

Does that work for alarm systems? This is the issue I’m having. Comcast is ridiculous and just dropping cable doesn’t change my bill much. I need to drop cable and phone but I need the phone for my alarm

That would be up to your alarm company. When we switched ours, ADT, did not. It has nothing to do with power outages as even cable is affected by that but what ADT considered full time monitoring of the telephone network. I have no idea what that entails. However in our case being a long term customer the ADT retention department upgraded us to a cellular connection for free to keep us as a customer. So our system tries the phone and if it doesn'r work it switches to cellular which also works when the power is out.

Edit: I looked up the ADT site what they says is the phone needs to be part of a "Qualified Managed Facility Voice Network" and to ask your provider if they are one.

[Travisma 1,317]

1 hour ago, keith_h said:

That would be up to your alarm company. When we switched ours, ADT, did not. It has nothing to do with power outages as even cable is affected by that but what ADT considered full time monitoring of the telephone network. I have no idea what that entails. However in our case being a long term customer the ADT retention department upgraded us to a cellular connection for free to keep us as a customer. So our system tries the phone and if it doesn'r work it switches to cellular which also works when the power is out.

Edit: I looked up the ADT site what they says is the phone needs to be part of a "Qualified Managed Facility Voice Network" and to ask your provider if they are one.

Most providers that offer bundles have phone services that are considered VOIP or IPT.  That means they are converted to a digital signal leaving the house. Alarms won’t work with that service.  You would have to ask for an analog POTS (plain old telephone service) line, the ones we had growing up. Providers will be thrilled to hook one up for you at an additional monthly fee.

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

On 8/10/2019 at 7:19 PM, Beckers said:

Comcast is our phone/internet/cable. They have a monopoly here and Comcast is the only internet provider we can get, which is crazy because I don’t live in the sticks or anything. But they bundle everything and basically screw you 👎🏻

Same here and we are far from in the sticks - you can throw a rock over the river to a decent sized (for NH) city and yet we have no other cable/internet options.

[Beckers 1,136]

Mo, I’m so close to Philadelphia my grocery store has a beautiful view of the skyline! crazy how things work, I’m sure someone’s pocket is benefitting and it’s not mine.

[Travisma 1,317]

51 minutes ago, BradyBzLyn...Mo said:

Same here and we are far from in the sticks - you can throw a rock over the river to a decent sized (for NH) city and yet we have no other cable/internet options.

Very few municipalities offered more than 1 cable TV provider.

It was take it or use an antenna.

That all changed when the phone companies decided to install fiber cabling and had the bandwidth to add cable TV services.

In Tampa all we used to have was Brighthouse (now Spectrum), until Verizon started offering FIOS service.

To combat the phone companies cutting into their territories, the cable companies started offering telephone services via VOIP.

 

[keith_h 420]

22 hours ago, Travisma said:

Most providers that offer bundles have phone services that are considered VOIP or IPT.  That means they are converted to a digital signal leaving the house. Alarms won’t work with that service.  You would have to ask for an analog POTS (plain old telephone service) line, the ones we had growing up. Providers will be thrilled to hook one up for you at an additional monthly fee.

There are a number of VoIP providers that will support alarm systems. The key is the alarm system has to be able to seize the line in the event the phone is in use. This all happens in the house phone panel and house wiring. The alarm panel must be in between the house network and the telephone adapter. The VoIP adapter feeds the existing input line of the alarm panel. In my case a new phone line was run from the room where my equipment is to the house phone panel when the cable company installed my service years ago. The existing alarm panel line feeds the input of the house telephone panel. This is no different than the POTS connecting to the alarm panel and the alarm panel feeding the house panel input. When we switched to Ooma it was plug and play. The only potential issue is some cheap VoIP adapters are not robust enough to handle the electrical current of more than one phone meaning they might not be able drive an alarm and phones. Not knowing how the internals of the alarm are designed I can't say if this would be a problem or not.

The bigger issue is the alarm system requirements for phone service. The big alarm companies require a public-switched telephone network (PSTN) or a managed facility-voice network (MFVN). The old phone lines are PSTN and all of the larger cable companies are MFVN (as are many other medium and small but it all depends upon the provider). When we switched to OOMA is was not a MFVN provider but I seem to recall at that time though not now Vonage was. The result is my alarm company installed a cellular transceiver on my system. 

There are also some devices that are suppose install on your alarm system to allow direct access to the internet from the alarm controller. I have no idea how these work but my guess is card manufacturer is in the middle and being unlike the regulated phone providers is even less reliable as to connections with the alarm company.

The only way to determine what to do is contact the alarm company, tell them your intentions and find out what their requirements are. After that I would contact the VoIP provider you intend to work with and see if they meet the MFVN requirements. Regardless it is worth negotiating with the alarm company if you need to change out or upgrade equipment. As I said our alarm company installed the cellular link for free to keep us as customers so it is worth a try. The nice about the cellular is it works during a power failure where neither cable or traditional phone will (they all use the same telephone poles in my area so if a tree takes out one it takes out all).

[Travisma 1,317]

2 minutes ago, keith_h said:

There are a number of VoIP providers that will support alarm systems. The key is the alarm system has to be able to seize the line in the event the phone is in use. This all happens in the house phone panel and house wiring. The alarm panel must be in between the house network and the telephone adapter. The VoIP adapter feeds the existing input line of the alarm panel. In my case a new phone line was run from the room where my equipment is to the house phone panel when the cable company installed my service years ago. The existing alarm panel line feeds the input of the house telephone panel. This is no different than the POTS connecting to the alarm panel and the alarm panel feeding the house panel input. When we switched to Ooma it was plug and play. The only potential issue is some cheap VoIP adapters are not robust enough to handle the electrical current of more than one phone meaning they might not be able drive an alarm and phones. Not knowing how the internals of the alarm are designed I can't say if this would be a problem or not.

The bigger issue is the alarm system requirements for phone service. The big alarm companies require a public-switched telephone network (PSTN) or a managed facility-voice network (MFVN). The old phone lines are PSTN and all of the larger cable companies are MFVN (as are many other medium and small but it all depends upon the provider). When we switched to OOMA is was not a MFVN provider but I seem to recall at that time though not now Vonage was. The result is my alarm company installed a cellular transceiver on my system. 

There are also some devices that are suppose install on your alarm system to allow direct access to the internet from the alarm controller. I have no idea how these work but my guess is card manufacturer is in the middle and being unlike the regulated phone providers is even less reliable as to connections with the alarm company.

The only way to determine what to do is contact the alarm company, tell them your intentions and find out what their requirements are. After that I would contact the VoIP provider you intend to work with and see if they meet the MFVN requirements. Regardless it is worth negotiating with the alarm company if you need to change out or upgrade equipment. As I said our alarm company installed the cellular link for free to keep us as customers so it is worth a try. The nice about the cellular is it works during a power failure where neither cable or traditional phone will (they all use the same telephone poles in my area so if a tree takes out one it takes out all).

I'm surprised that the alarm will work with VOIP.

We are switching over most Post Offices to VOIP service, and we have to make sure that the alarm and fax numbers stay POTS lines and are excluded for the cut over to VOIP.

We have numerous sites that used the alarm line as the unpublished # that the carriers call in on.

We have to either get them a new VOIP # to call in on, or get a new POTS line/number installed for the alarm.

Maybe it's just the way our nationwide VOIP provider has their systems set up.

[keith_h 420]

13 minutes ago, Travisma said:

I'm surprised that the alarm will work with VOIP.

We are switching over most Post Offices to VOIP service, and we have to make sure that the alarm and fax numbers stay POTS lines and are excluded for the cut over to VOIP.

We have numerous sites that used the alarm line as the unpublished # that the carriers call in on.

We have to either get them a new VOIP # to call in on, or get a new POTS line/number installed for the alarm.

Maybe it's just the way our nationwide VOIP provider has their systems set up.

It isn't  for technical reasons at the building  but how the phone service provider configures,  sends data and manages its network that is the determining factor. The issue with alarms is they use use tone signalling so need a reliable transport and for the signal to remain unchanged. MFVN guarantees this. Without this this the data could be broken up in such a way as to lose tone data or be of too poor a quality to recognize. These types of problems don't make much difference to voice conversations but could be detrimental in machine to machine communications. FAX is also tone based and requires special handling. For this reason I had to setup my phone service to configure the use of FAX so it is handled correctly. Who knows this might be why I have had no issues with the alarm now that I think about it. I have also heard some of this actually gets back to the national fire standard for fire alarm reliability. Anyhow it is all back to what the alarm company requirements are since they are responsible for knowing all of the rules and laws. ADT does not support Ooma which is why they gave me the cellular transmitter as backup. If it wasn't for that I'd be stuck with Spectrum as they are a bit cheaper than Centurylink POTUS for phone service in my area.