Good day all. There has been a lot of buzz regarding Disney Corporation’s entry into the streaming media market with Disney+. Since I am on vacation this week, I decided to activate an account and give it a try.

I’ve downloaded the new app onto both my phone and my Amazon Firestick. I’ll probably remove it from my smartphone since I rarely watching videos on a teeny little screen when I have 50” televisions in my home. I will be testing the download feature on the phone just to see how it works.

Currently, I am exploring Disney+ using the 7 day free trial. I did have to provide a credit card, (Although they also accept Paypal), and the monthly fee is $7.99US. If you prebuy for a year, the cost drops to $67 per year. I may pay for a month or so to see if this has value for me.

Currently, Disney+ has most of the Marvel universe in it, along with most of the Star Wars universe. Most of the content is streaming in at 4K, so you can expect some decent pictures. I watched both Captain Marvel and The Avengers: Endgame yesterday. I did experience a couple of pauses indicating either caching issues or connection issues. Since I’m not set up to test for what that may be, I put the blame on my provider. (Note, I’ve recently replaced my modem and router so I know it isn’t a hardware issues on my end)

Also in the Disney library is the entire Pixar collection, so if you have small children, you may want to look at subscribing to this. Since I really have little interest in locating a clown fish named Nemo or a parrot fish named Dory, I really won’t be paying to much attention to that section. The Angry Girlfriend? She actually likes that sort of thing, so she might watch it. (Of course she also has the mantra “Cost money? Don’t watch!”)

The Disney+ service also allows you to log into up to 10 devices, and stream across 4 of them simultaneously. This is superior to Netflix which allows only 4 connected devices, (Although you can stream to all 4 at the same time). Netflix also has a larger library of course, although Disney+ also has a subscription to Hulu and ESPN. I don’t care about ESPN, and the Hulu plan appears to be the lowest available. (Ad supported) I dropped Hulu a few years ago since I wasn’t watching it much)

As I explore Disney+ I do see some very nice features. If I start watching a movie or TV show, and then switch to another device, it picks up right where I left off. This includes downloading and streaming from your tablet of phone. (A nice feature if you don’t want to blow out your data plan)

There is a lot of original content already available or planned. One of the big draws is a new show based in the Star Wars universe called the Mandalorian. I watched the first episode and it does seem to have some potential. For this reason alone, I may extend my subscription.

As I mentioned, it’s only been a day since I set this up and I’m still exploring it. Right now, I think it’s not to bad. It is a reasonable cost, and since Disney is starting to pull back all the content they had on other services, so if you are a big Star Wars or Marvel fan, you might want to sign up. If you have kids, you probably should sign up in order to shut them up….Or send them to visit their friends houses that have subscribed and give you some peace and quiet. If you choose to sign up, I found the easist way was to visit https://www.disneyplus.com/ and set up an account.

Thatisall