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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the cake-eaters dept.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/mulan-skips-us-theaters-will-debut-on-disney-sept-4-for-an-extra-30/

After delisting Mulan from a potential theatrical run in June, Disney has firmed up its plans for its newest live-action remake. Starting September 4, Mulan will premiere exclusively on Disney+ in various territories, including the United States, Canada, and New Zealand, according to Disney CEO Bob Chapek.

Unlike other Disney+ streaming premieres, however, Mulan will launch with an extra price point on top of the service's $7/mo subscription rate. Paying Disney+ users in the US will have to fork over an additional $30 for what Chapek described as "premiere access," which likely equates to a temporary rental of the film instead of full-blown ownership a la platforms like iTunes and Amazon Video. Other territories' rates have not yet been confirmed. (Chapek took the opportunity to confirm that Disney+'s worldwide subscriber numbers are somewhere near 60.5 million.)

[Update, 9:30pm ET: Disney has since confirmed that a $30 payment for Mulan will permanently unlock it in your Disney+ account, so long as you remain a paying subscriber.]

The beginning of the end of movie theaters?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday August 06 2020, @08:00AM (7 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Thursday August 06 2020, @08:00AM (#1032184) Homepage

    Haven't been to a cinema in years. When I did, it was because there was a 50p ticket deal. It was, surprisingly, quite a nice experience as there was almost nobody in the theatre. No wonder they had to give tickets away. And it was for a big-name movie only a week after release, in a major city cinema, at a decent time in the evening.

    Still, without those kinds of discounts, I wasn't going to see it.

    But $30 to watch it *at home* on equipment I paid for? Nah. I haven't paid that much for a movie ever, let alone one I have to set up myself, or one I've never seen before (it might be utter junk!).

    It's like these $80 games... er... nope. Sorry. Too much. Especially years after release. When it comes down into about a quarter of that, and I know whether the thing is any good, then we can talk.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday August 06 2020, @10:12AM (6 children)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Thursday August 06 2020, @10:12AM (#1032201)

    Same here, last went to a cinema as a teenager.

    Then at uni we managed to "borrow" one of the spare projectors and set it up in the common room. It was only 800x600, but it was good enough for us. Spent ages watching movie matinees after lectures.

    Now I bought my own home projector (a nice 1080p 3LCD unit), and it provides an experience close enough to the cinema, while giving me far more comfy seats (with the best view), whatever food and drink I want to bring, and the magic "pause" button if people need a loo break, etc...

    The cinema offers me nothing above that. Possibly only better surround sound, but that's about it. The screen, while larger, and the resolution higher, is offset by the distance I sit from it, and also the fact that unless you get in early, chances are you will be in some awkward corner that will just give you neck ache after a while. Then you got the people fiddling on their phone, those who incessantly talk through the film, and those who aren't interested in the film and just mess about.

    Only time I would consider a cinema is possibly when starting to date someone, and we are not yet comfortable going to each others place, but want to watch a movie together. Even when I want to watch a movie with friends, its better at my place. I really don't see much of a future for cinema.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:29PM (5 children)

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:29PM (#1032352) Homepage Journal

      I am near-sighted. My eyes focus at about 15 centimetres. So I take off my glasses and watch movies on my tablet. From 15 centimetres, the tablet is a wide screen.
      Now if only I could get the tablet to talk sshfs so I could get access to the video I have on my hard drive!
      And if only I could get the tablet to float comfortably in front of my face so my arm doesn't get so tired!

      Currently watching Sailor Moon R.
      I can pause it when I'm tired or need a bathroom break, and resume later.
      Day before yesterday the Crunchyroll streaming service was inaccessible. Maybe Isaias damaged some network connexions? A DVD would not have been shut down. Neither was my hard drive. Downloading could be better, except for Android's networking limitations. Even when the streaming service allows downloading, tablets have *so little storage* it's not very useful.

      Yes, I'm using an old-fashioned spelling of connexion.

      -- hendrik

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:02PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:02PM (#1032367)

        Crunchyroll is known to be unreliable. It was still using a Flash player until recently.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:07AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @05:07AM (#1032750)

        You can use VLC to stream directly from SMB, DLNA etc. on both iOS and Android.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Friday August 07 2020, @06:04AM

        by Unixnut (5779) on Friday August 07 2020, @06:04AM (#1032777)

        Try using VLC. I generally find it useless on most "proper" machines (laptops/desktops/etc...), but on a tablet/mobile phone, it one of the better media apps. It specifically supports SMB/NFS and other protocols. Unfortunately I could not get it to work with NFS despite all my attempts (my network is pure NFS), so in the end I set up samba on my server just for it. It works fine, I use it to stream videos to my bedroom when I can't sleep (I hold no media on the phone itself).

        In my case, I attached my phone to two square bars of balsa wood, which I attached to my bed frame, so I can lie back in bed and watch without holding it up for ages (I would get the "tired arm" issue as well). Same thing should be doable with a tablet.

      • (Score: 2) by stretch611 on Saturday August 08 2020, @05:04AM (1 child)

        by stretch611 (6199) on Saturday August 08 2020, @05:04AM (#1033338)

        Actually, I find Kodi pretty good for this.

        All you need to do is have a server on your home network and connect via wifi. Kodi will connect to NFS without any problem if you have a linux file server.

        --
        Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
        • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday August 23 2020, @02:18AM

          by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 23 2020, @02:18AM (#1040614) Homepage Journal

          Last time I used NFS it had trouble communicating reliably between machines with differing numerical UIDs. Is this still a problem? Nowadays I use sshfs, which doesn't seem to be supported as far as I can see.