Amazon Prime and Netflix are currently the big players in the UK streaming market, with both offering thousands of hours of content – both original and external – but with some households only wanting to have one service rather than both and people still having to pay for their TV Licenses and services such as Sky and BT, will people accept more additions to this market?
Britbox:
Britbox is currently available in the US but will be available in the UK later this year.
Britbox is the latest streaming service to be announced, but this one is a little different. Currently only available in the USA, Britbox brings together BBC and ITV with all their original programming. These two companies coming together to make a streaming service would be something unprecedented in the UK but does offer some unique content.
According to reports, not only will Britbox feature new content from both production companies, but it will also have a lot of their archived shows, my own personal hope is that Britbox allows for me to watch shows such as Primeval and Waterloo Road.
Whilst this does sound like a good streaming opportunity, it may make some people question why they still pay for a TV License when a service like this is available, that being said, Britbox will not be a replacement for BBC iPlayer or ITV Hub and you will not be able to stream live TV or watch catch-up on these services.
Disney+:
Disney+ will be available in ‘late 2019’.
Perhaps the biggest streaming service to be announced, Disney + is Disney’s own attempt at their own streaming service, exclusively featuring their own content.
If you hadn’t noticed, some Disney content has been leaving other services – a high profile example would be the Marvel Netflix shows being cancelled – and this is all because Disney is preparing to launch their own streaming service where you can get all your Disney needs fulfilled.
Currently Disney has confirmed that their whole collection of movies will be included on this service (including films such as The Goofy Movie, Atlantis and Treasure Planet) as well as creating new content that will be exclusively shown on the platform. At the moment, Disney has quite a few projects in the works for this platform, including The Mandalorian (a show about Bounty Hunters in the Star Wars Universe) and also a series of different shows set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe such as a Loki TV Show and an animated ‘What if’ series.
The fact that Disney is developing a log of new shows, and investing a lot into this market shows how seriously they’re taking it, the other good news? According to reports, the price will be kept ‘competitive’ with other services – so the price shouldn’t be too bad.
Do you think you’ll be able to pick up another streaming service? Will you ditch Netflix for Disney? Or do you just stick with Live TV? Let me know in the comments!