New streaming things

The end of the year is approaching, and companies are working hard to get their new offerings out in time for the holiday season. The beginning of this month brought us Apple TV+, which I’m mildly interested in but not enough to actually pay for yet. Although perhaps I should more accurately say there’s nothing I’m interested in enough to spend the time setting up Family Sharing and then actually watching; in theory my wife’s new iPhone qualifies her for a free year, and you can share subscriptions with family members.

I’m a bit more interested in Disney+, primarily because I’d like to watch The Mandalorian. I would consider subscribing immediately for that reason, but apparently Disney is only releasing one episode a week, instead of making them available all at once. So I’ll probably waiting until all the initial episodes are available and then subscribe for a month to watch them, and then ditch the subscription.

And then we’ve got Stadia coming on the 19th. I was initially skeptical; latency is a killer for interactive games, and the Internet isn’t known for providing reliably low-latency experiences. But I got to try an early version, and I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised. The success of the experience will still depend on the quality and quantity of games available, but from a purely technological perspective I’m optimistic that Google will deliver a good experience. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens on the 19th.