This has gone well beyond out of scope of the NANOG list. Discussing who watches what kind of content has nothing to do with networking. Can you guys take the conversation elsewhere?
* mikebolitho@gmail.com (Mike Bolitho) [Wed 13 Nov 2019, 12:05 CET]:
This has gone well beyond out of scope of the NANOG list. Discussing who
watches what kind of content has nothing to do with networking. Can you
guys take the conversation elsewhere?
On the contrary. This discussion informs eyeball networks' capacity planning requirements for the upcoming years.
It'd be nice to go from anecdata to data, though.
-- Niels.
Indeed ... as an eyeball network, this is all very relevant.
Another aspect that hasn't been mentioned in this thread (I think), is that besides there being a potential saturation of streaming services, there's also the backroom dealings between content and content-providers.
Here's some data: Netflix just lost "Friends", one of its most popular offerings (and probably more than a blip on my bandwidth graphs) to HBO Max. This is but one example, but, as a whole, stuff like this is very important for capacity-planning.
Not saying it's gonna happen, but if Disney "lost" the Star Wars franchise to, say, Amazon, you better believe there are likely to be traffic shifts. (Yes, I know they own it.)
I concur. This is silly off-topic. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here, according to NANOG guidelines.
-mel
CAVAET: I don't have a dog in this hunt.
This is silly off-topic. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t
stay here, according to NANOG guidelines.
https://www.nanog.org/resources/usage-guidelines/ > https://www.nanog.org/bylaws/
"The NANOG mailing list was established in 1994 to provide an open forum for the exchange of technical information, and lively discussion of SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES (emphasis mine) that require cooperation among network service providers.
"Posts to NANOG’s mailing list should be focused on operational and technical content only, as described by the NANOG Bylaws."
Yes, some of the Disney Plus thread has strayed outside the four corners of the rules of the mailing list, but the bulk of the thread has to do with two things: geolocation inaccuracies, and traffic capacity shifts. For some network operators on this list, the discussion does not describe issues on their networks. But "some" is not "all".
I think it would be more on topic if everyone weren’t just guessing what users will do based on hypothetical behavior patterns and hypothetical content shifts.
I WOULD be interested to see some data showing e.g. a drop in traffic to one service and a boost in traffic to another service when a particular bit of media was moved from the former to the latter. (Or a boost in both, etc.)
Justin’s original question was “…… Is it well known where the newly released Disney+ streaming service content is sourced?..”
With Eric’s finding of “I saw various content being served from Akamai, Amazon, Fastly and Limelight so far. I’m in Montreal.”
Is this an absolute answer as to how Disney+ is handling delivery of their content? If not, are there any Disney folks listening that could respond to me either off list or on the community thread here about how we should expect to see this Disney+ content sourced and whether or not Disney+ has or is planning on building out an ISP-located CDN type of network, much like all the others? (OCA, FNA, AANP, AEC, ACE, GGC)
-Aaron
This!
At the beginning of this year, I dumped Prime Video because while I
initially got it for "The Grand Tour", almost all the other content was
not available in Africa. Didn't see the point of shelling out over
US$100/year for just one show, especially since we already have Netflix
+ a local linear pay TV service.
I bought the wife a new iPhone 11 Pro earlier this month. This got us
1-year's worth of free AppleTV+. Not a lot of content so far, but I hear
the same about Disney+. Granted 2 of the 3 shows on TV+ are not bad. But
it's free, so what the heck.
I'm not keen on paying for more than one streaming service, if I'm
honest. There already isn't enough time in the world for regular life,
never mind watching one streaming service... now we have to deal with
more, each with their own price? Not sure how well the streaming
providers expect regular folk to take all of this fragmentation.
As my daughter would say, "They can miss me with it :-)".
Mark.
And an even greater social gap than what we now have.
Also, not sure about your kids, but mine are more interested in Fortnite
(boys) and Instagram (girls) than The Lion King.
I think the appeal of nostalgia by Disney and the rest of the Hollywood
establishment is likely to, I suspect, resonate more with the older
generation. I'm not sure our kids will enjoy the Mickey Mouse series as
much as we did.
For this younger generation, new, original content probably stands a
better chance. Time will tell.
Mark.
I think people are going to reject the idea that they need to subscribe
to a dozen streaming services at $10-$20/mo. each and will be driven
back the good old "single source" (piracy) they used to use before 1
(or perhaps 2) streaming services kept them happy enough to abandon
piracy.The content providers are going to piss in their bed again due to
greed. Again.This!
At the beginning of this year, I dumped Prime Video because while I
initially got it for "The Grand Tour", almost all the other content was
not available in Africa.
I foresee a new business model:
VPN / streaming bundle. Get all your streaming services bundled together, proxied and VPNd from their native regions.
-Bill
than any other provider because they are everywhere, and have no/very
little geographic restrictions.
I, for example, am not interested in Disney+ because they are not
available in Africa.
I already dropped Prime Video because they were not really in Africa. If
Disney+ go the same route, they'll end up the same way.
Speaking for Asia-Pac and South America too :-).
Mark.
I'd avoid investing in a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, e.t.c. streaming service until
we see where this lands.
I feel whatever happens is going to happen quickly.
We already see Apple starting to consolidate its various subscriptions
services to make this simpler for their customers.
Mark.
Maybe it's the changing times, but my 4-year old nephew, 12-year old
sons and 8-year old nieces all get their kids programming from Youtube.
Mark.
That was very popular in Africa as recently as 2017-ago. When Netflix
came into town with local clusters and/or OCA's, the pleasure and joy of
VPN and proxy hell died a sudden and resolute death.
I see some have tried again with Disney+, but not having to deal with
this hell for over 2 years, they've all given up and returned to simpler
ways :-). If it ain't local, they ain't buyin'...
Mark.
While I agree about the likely outcome, I will point out that consumers have been
begging for unbundling for years.
This fragmentation of streaming services _IS_ the direct result of that request.
It’s unbundled service, exactly what they have been asking for.
Owen
Well, not exactly. Each service is still a bunch of shows and movies bundled together. If you only want to watch one show, you can’t just buy that, you have to buy the whole service.
Of course, there are services where you can buy individual movies and episodes (Google Play comes to mind). But Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. don’t operate that way.
-Ross
While I agree about the likely outcome, I will point out that
consumers have been
begging for unbundling for years.
This is not the "unbundling" that consumers have been begging for.
Rather I would submit that it's actually quite the opposite and much
more like the bundling that they have been railing against.
The "unbundling" that consumers have been begging for is minimally, the
ability to buy a single channel for a fair price and not have to take
14 other channels of *garbage* with it at 15x the cost one of those
channels. I say minimally because I suspect that the really savvy
consumers would actually rather even pay (again, at a fair price) per
show or episode.
But that's not what's happening with this fragmentation. This
fragmentation is like the cable company splitting up that "once price
for all" bundle and putting the pieces into other bundles, each at the
same cost as that original "all in one" bundle that the consumers were
originally happy with and saw as fair value. Of course now to continue
to getting those pieces of the original bundle that they were happy
with, consumers are having to buy multiples of these new bundles and
their costs are driving up sharply accordingly.
This fragmentation of streaming services _IS_ the direct result of
that request.
I would submit that that is completely untrue. Do you really think
Disney pulled out of Netflix and started their own service because
consumers wanted Disney to unbundle from Netflix? I would suggest that
that is completely not why. Rather, Disney was not happy to have just
a piece of the Netflix pie, and decided, as greedy as they are, that
they would sell their own pies and take the fully monthly subscription
price.
It’s unbundled service, exactly what they have been asking for.
Again. No. Not at all. Not even close. Quite the opposite in fact.
The problem with suggesting that this is unbundling is that the cost of
Netflix didn't reduce when Disney pulled out and Disney (I would bet, I
haven't actually looked at it's cost) isn't charging the faction of the
Netflix cost that would be commensurate with their percentage of the
entire Netflix library.
So there has been no "unbundling" of any sort. Rather it's been an
exercise of actually creating a new bundling. And I still predict that
once the reality of this sets in with consumers, they are going to
reject it and head back to that low (zero) cost means of obtaining
their media that they used when they were unhappy with the previous
generation of bundling.
b.
I agree with Brian, this is not unbundling, it’s just removing one layer of distribution; you no longer need the Cable company to play aggregator to the content distributors, you now buy from them direct (especially true in the case of HBO and Disney, except ESPN is not yet included). The next logical large player to enter the global** direct-to-streamer market would be NBCUniversal, so I’m sure we will soon be preparing for that one too 
Rob
Back in the old days, we had the ultimate in unbundling: you walked up, got a ticket, and watched the movie.
In principle it wouldn’t be that hard these days to do something similar with a tremendous reduction in friction. Basically pay-per-view on steroids.
My sense is that it would be tremendous failure though: how would a consumer know how to value different content? Going to a movie is comparatively a big commitment with plenty of time to decide if you think it’s worth it. Channel surfing, not so much. So maybe we are doomed to some sort of bundling.
The big problem is that I don’t want to pay for a month of content to watch one or two shows. And I definitely don’t want to pay a month’s worth of content to three dozen providers of which i may only watch a few of their programs a couple of times a month. Now if you reduced that to, say, a day pass I might bite, especially if there was no more friction than the usual channel surfing.
Mike
Again, this has gone beyond off-topic for the NANOG list. Please take the discussion elsewhere.
-Mike Bolitho