The biggest competitor to Netflix, Stan, and Amazon Prime Video is coming, and it’s going to be coming with Ultra HD and 3D sound, among other things.
Over the weekend, Disney held its annual D23 showcase, talking up what’s coming from the House of the Mouse, and with a streaming serving launching soon, much of the focus was on that.
Announcing a whole heap of original programming designed to tempt beyond the massive archive Disney already has access to, there’s a good chance your kids and any other Disney-, Pixar-, Star Wars-, or Marvel-obsessed person in your family is going to ask you to sign up ASAP when it launches in November.
When it does arrive, Disney has announced that the Disney+ streaming service will get 4K Ultra HD support, or up to it, which means some content will be playable on 4K, though not all. Disney doesn’t have a massive amount of 4K releases just yet, though we imagine we’ll start to see more beyond that of Coco, The Lion King, and Wreck-It Ralph 2.
Disney has also said that Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision will also be supported on the 4K Ultra HD library, with Dolby Vision providing High Dynamic Range (HDR) content alongside that of HDR10, while Atmos provides support for 3D audio.
There’s even support for up to four registered devices to stream video content at once, and be downloaded to up to 10 mobile and tablet devices with no constraints on how many times something can be downloaded per year, different to how Netflix does it. That essentially means the Disney+ plans on offer should be able to handle the needs of most families with very few problems.
And that’s good, given the content library will be fairly varied. While Disney’s current archive of movies and TV shows stretches between Disney itself, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, National Geographic, and what Fox has in its library, there’s more on the way from the House of the Mouse.
Star Wars fans have a few things to look forward to, including a new show helmed by Jon Favreau named “The Mandalorian” following a Star Wars bounty hunter in the days before the emergence of the First Order in the recent movies.
A second live action series will be on the way, likely next year, based on characters in Rogue One, while the return of the animated series The Clone Wars will occur in February next year (2020), not to mention the return of Ewan McGregor for a show based on Obi-Wan Kenobi. Hey
Marvel has even more happening than Star Wars, though, with a lot of new shows kickstarting for Disney+. New shows will include Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Moon Knight, with next year bringing The Falcon and The Winter Soldier played by their on-screen counterparts from The Avengers, as well as WandaVision with Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany trying to adjust to everyday life as superheroes, while Loki will see Tom Hiddleston play the bad guy in this series.
There’s another series on the way in What If…?, this one animated, providing a sort of “what if this happened” approach to Marvel movies having different endings.
Plus there’s what’s coming from Disney itself, with more from High School Musical, Lizzie McGuire, new unscripted short-form shows with The Muppets in Muppets Now, plus a series of shorts from Pixar named Forky Asks a Question and a slightly longer runtime of shows from the Monsters Inc universe named Monsters at Work.
There are also documentaries, including The World According to Jeff Goldblum and the Kristen Bell musical performance show Encore!, as well as a live action recreation of the 1955 Disney classic, Lady and the Tramp.
“With less than three months until launch, Disney+ will soon entertain and inspire audiences of all ages for generations to come, and we’re excited to preview some of the amazing original content being created for the service exclusively from our world-class brands today at the D23 Expo,” said Kevin Mayer, Chairman for Disney’s Direct-to-Consumer and International Segment.
“Storytelling is the cornerstone of The Walt Disney Company and we’re thrilled to unveil a new slate of original shows from the Star Wars and Marvel cinematic universes, along with popular television franchises set to return with all-new series streaming only on Disney+,” he said.
If all of this sounds like the sort of thing you could easily see yourself streaming, the good news is you won’t have to wait terribly long.
While America is getting the service first on November 12, customers in Australia and New Zealand won’t have long to wait, with Disney+ arriving locally on November 19 for $8.99 per month or $89.99 for a full year’s worth of access.
