App / Streaming Service Review | Disney+

As the peculiar sort of person who likes to curate his own media library, rather than just enjoy someone else’s, I’m a reluctant on/off subscriber to various video-on-demand services. At the moment I have both Amazon Prime Video and Netflix temporarily on the go (as Star Trek: Picard and Better Call Saul are both still dropping new episodes on a weekly basis), while BritBox is likely to remain an ongoing commitment for the foreseeable future as the missus and I continue to wade through its colossal collection of 124 Midsomer Murders. With Disney+, though, I took the unprecedented step of Forkying out for an annual pass before the platform even went live. A quick crunch of the numbers showed me that I’d be paying just 96p per week for the service, and even looking at the £49.99 pre-order price as a one-off disbursement, it amounts to just a quarter of the cost of the soon-to-be-released Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga 4K UHD box set - and that’s before I factor in the cost of movies for the kids like Frozen II and Onward that I anticipate shelling out for in the next twelve months (having already blown about forty quid on each of them at the cinema). In short, at this price, Disney+ is an absolute steal.

Just take a moment to consider the wealth and depth of content on offer. As things stand, Star Wars fans will find the latest drafts of every movie bar The Rise of Skywalker on here, not to mention three of the franchise’s four canonical spin-off series and the definitive 2004 DVD documentary, Empire of Dreams, now in stunning HD. Thirty seasons of The Simpsons – a staggering 679 episodes, of which I’ve probably only seen about a third – find themselves competing with most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s theatrical releases - the record-breaking blockbuster Avengers: Endgame amongst them - as well as a handful of the spin-off TV shows, including the delightful Agent Carter, which has been my most pleasing discovery on the service so far. Of course, Disney’s flagship library of animated classics and Pixar productions is also available on demand. Even if, like us, you already own much of this content, your kids will probably delight in sifting through the library to unearth hidden gems like the various Toy Story Toons (Lamp Life is a cracker); the later seasons of Sofia the First; and the Tangled TV series, all of which are difficult – if not impossible – to acquire legally in the UK.
X-Men fans can also rejoice as Disney’s recent acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox means that many of the X-Men movies can also be found under the “Marvel” tab along with their popular animated series and, indeed, Spider-Man’s, amongst many others. Sadly the webslinger’s stand-alone MCU movies are nowhere to be found on the service, though this is both unsurprising and even forgiveable given the tortuous complexity of the relationship between Marvel and Sony. We’re lucky to have an MCU Spider-Man at all.

The streaming quality is also top-notch, with many of the movies presented in 4K HDR – some for the first time, and many with 5.1 - 7.1 surround sound mixes. Unlike some of their competitors, Disney+ also allows you to download any of its content to mobile devices, and four-screens-at-once is the platform’s standard - there are no “basic” plans. As Lenny Henry would probably say if they got him on board, everything’s premium but the price. At least at launch, you have just two payment choices: £5.99 per month, or £59.99 per year. The service itself remains the same whichever you choose.

Nonetheless, in keeping with the bleakness of the times, my initial reaction to Disney+ has been one of intense disappointment – almost to the extent of feeling that I’ve been had. Even when faced with such an abundance of riches, my inclination is to look for what’s missing, and even the most cursory of searches was quick to reveal that UK subscribers have been shortchanged with a diluted version of what is available Stateside and in other territories. In my case, half the stuff that I signed up to watch is absent. The first thing that I searched for – Frozen II – is unavailable until July, despite being made available early in other territories to raise the spirits of those self-isolating due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The last time that I checked – and, believe me, I stare longingly at those invisible bars in the window often – the UK was in lockdown too. Another devastating omission is Star Wars: Resistance, which has yet to even be released digitally in the UK, let alone get a Blu-ray release, while Disney+ manages the impressive feat of having every single episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD that I own available to stream – and none of those that I don’t. I had even hoped that, given the Twentieth Century Fox buyout, more adult-oriented shows the likes of 24 and The X-Files would have found their way onto the service but, alas, The Simpsons is about as edgy as it gets – at least for now.

Of course, to even get to the stage of even being able to search for something to watch, I had to log in, which was easier said than done on the Samsung TV app as it omits the £ character from its keyboard. This is all fine and good – unless, of course, your password happens to have a quid in it. Fortunately, the Siri-controlled Apple TV app had the decency to let me enter my (since changed) password, and unlike the Samsung app, it is buoyed by some lovely animation effects when highlighting any of landing screen’s showcase tabs (Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars etc). As expected, though, the device’s double-tap zoom function has been overridden, meaning that you can only view content in its intended aspect ratio – which, of course, is rarely one that matches the shape of your TV. Both flagship Star Wars shows – The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Clone Wars – are presented in 2.35:1 or something very close to it. Most viewers won’t care, and, to be fair, even I like to watch Star Wars TV shows in their native widescreen (as it gives the illusion of that distinct yet unquantifiable Star Wars experience), but I’m a still champion of choice and customisation, and not having the ability to blow up “Baby Yoda” irks me no end.

By far the most annoying feature of the platform though is its refusal to adopt the Netflix-style nosedive into the next episode of a TV series. Again, this doesn’t bother me when I’m watching – I actually really enjoy watching The Mandalorian’s gorgeous closing titles – but it does affect me in that, if my three-year-old watches an episode of LEGO Frozen: Northern Lights, she then has to sit through not only its end credits, but also various foreign languages credits that roll silently, which together amount to almost the length of the episode again. It’s perhaps an exaggeration to say that the whole point of Disney+ is to parent your children for you, but when I’m trying to work remotely it really would help if I could leave the room for more than five minutes at a time.

As I’m in it for the long haul with Disney+, the decision to hold back episodes of The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars to drop weekly doesn’t enrage me as much as it would were I up to my usual hit-and-run antics. Again though, I lament the lack of control – provide the damned content and let us decide how to consume it for ourselves, please. As someone who much prefers to binge-watch a series and then move onto the next, Disney+’s ’90s-style approach to content distribution is wreaking absolute havoc with my viewing habits. It’s not easy flitting between Saul, Picard and two different eras of Star Wars.

I should have been going to Disneyland this coming weekend but, instead, I’m delving into Disney’s vast multimedia archive with children aged three and eight. Whilst not what we’d planned, it’s at least taken the edge off what will no doubt prove to be the first of 2020’s many blows. Far from exhaustive and far from perfect, Disney+’s vast library of proven titles nonetheless leaves it second only to Netflix in the pantheon of streaming giants. For day one, that’s not a bad result, but Disney+ must still do much better for UK subscribers if they intend to keep them.

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