"Disney Movies Anywhere" Digital Streaming

[Chris D]

Got this announcement today. We've known for a while that Disney is pushing towards an all-digital video world, where they can control at any time what movies you have access to, which ones "disappear into the vault", limit sharing and distribution, etc. No more loaning your Snow White disc to your daughter's little friend! "Disney Movies Anywhere" is the digital collection of Disney movies you've bought the license to, including the Disney discs you've previously bought and registered on the Disney site. (whether they came with a digital copy or not) "DMA" now lets you stream those movie titles you have rights to, through the DMA website or DMA app. Supposedly you can also stream them through iTunes, but I couldn't figure out how.

With the announcement, they have a limited time offer, that if you sign up and link "DMA" to your iTunes account, you get "The Incredibles" in your account too.

http://links.dvdmailcenter.com/ctt?kn=1&ms=NDUyMTQ2MzcS1&r=ODMwOTk3Mjc0MjQS1&b=0&j=MzgzNTQwOTk4S0&mt=1&rt=0

So, I checked it out, hoping for a good experience. Once complete, I clicked on "My Collection" in my Chrome browser, and then The Incredibles. After many seconds of loading, it started. Not horrible. But regular pauses/hiccups, occasional pixelation artifacts, and slight audio sync errors. And that's not to mention that it was nowhere close to high-def audio or video. I'm not sure, but I'd guess the video resolution was something like 480p, with maybe 120 Kbps 2-channel stereo. I coudn't find exact specs about "DMA", but in their help section, they indicate that if you're using a computer, it's possible to get 720p video, but only "SD" through the app. No mention of audio quality. http://www.disneymoviesanywhere.com/help

I had to stop the video, as I have download caps on my home internet service, with VERY expensive fees if I go over my limit. So I have to restrict the large downloads or streams I do every month.

To compare, I popped my "The Incredibles" BD into my same computer, and also with a loading time, it played straight up, full 1080p and lossless multichannel audio. No comparison--personally, I'll be sticking with my discs for regular viewing, thanks. I'm sure this will meet the needs of others, though, with different internet capabilities and access.

Unfortunately, this just reinforced that my own experience with streaming hasn't been corrected yet. So this service doesn't work for me yet, but hopefully this offer benefits somebody else for whom it does.

[aud19]

Be interested to read someone's results on this with less restrictive internet issues. Also curious what the full specs/capabilities of their service is...

[Chris D]

Huh... I just noticed that there's a statement now on my "Account Information" page in iTunes:

Your iTunes account is connected to your Disney Movies Anywhere account. You may only connect one account at a time and switch accounts every 180 days.

So apparently I'm all officially hooked up.

[Lex]

One of the biggest issues with online content are all bandwidth providers are moving toward MORE and MORE limited bandwidth!!!

How can you have any cloud if you can't have any pudding! (Where pudding is bandwidth?)

These are the issues I see for the "digital age" that everyone seems to want. It's fine if you are at work with a T2 backbone or two, but take it home where you have Comcast service? Goodluck. I have a lot of slow delivery occurrences at home. Soemtimes, rebooting and restarting my router helps, but the point is, isssues always seem to crop up with content playback for one reason or another. I don't like the idea of someone being able to turn stuff off whenever they like too, and determining my content. If I buy something, I consider it mine. IF it's borrowed, then I don't feel as bad about it. So free content well, free because I have a channel, fine if it goes away I guess. But not if I paid someone for specific programming, no!

[Hdale85]

Actually it's kind of the opposite, bandwidth limits were very popular several years ago and have actually been moving away. Some places still have them but I think most providers would have a pretty hard time putting new bandwidth limitations in places where there weren't any previously. I think this will be driven even more by the availability of unlimited bandwidth cellphone plans that are starting to have better speeds than connections available locally to some area's. I get 40Mbps down and 15Mbps up on my LTE connection, granted I have a 50Mbps connection in my house my upload is only 5Mbps.

The only places that really seem to have bandwidth caps are generally places that are harder to get internet to (such as Alaska where Chris lives). Eventually this will go away as well though. With companies like Google and Facebook pushing super highspeed internet with no limits at all and very cheap or even free in some instances (Facebook and Google bother are pushing to offer free global Wifi with drones) I don't think companies like Comcast and such are going to be able to do the complete opposite and keep their customers happy.

[RPAudio1]

Bandwidth will have to start expanding- one of the areas driving this is video games (online content and live online play). As the bandwidth increases, it becomes more viable to stream digitally. We live in a crazy convenient world!

[Lex]

Comcast did it Dougie, I swear. Just this past YEAR! Once you get past a certain point, they will sell you $10.00 additional bandwidth slices. I forget how much, 50 gb more or something like that or downloadable content. I don't recall the exact numbers.

[Hdale85]

They do sometimes for people that are excessively using bandwidth, many time in your EULA it'll tell you what the limit is. But for the most part I've never run into such issues and most $ per gb moves companies have made have gone the opposite direction after testing it out. Time Warner was doing it a lot a few years ago but I haven't heard of them expanding that strategy at all recently. People don't want it and it won't get much support. You guys act like we have no control over this stuff, we may not like it but we can live without internet and such or live with slower internet and so on if our ISP's decide to do something we don't like. I can move to AT&T DSL and lose a lot of speed, and I definitely would if the cable company here decided to start charging me in blocks of data rather than unlimited. And if AT&T did the same I'd just start using my cell service for limited browsing. Consumer can judge with their wallets and if ISP's decide they want to try and push this onto us I'm sure consumers will respond.

Now if they did start charging by bandwidth used it could turn out good if the price was really competitive, if it turned out to be a lot cheaper for people who use very little bandwidth, and around the same for high bandwidth users it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing at that point.

[Ovation]

I don't think the argument is that people have no choice, but rather the choices are unpalatable for many people with respect to bandwidth cost IF there is a large-scale abandonment of physical media, especially for hi-def movies and TV series.