The DC Universe Digital Subscription Service Launches Tomorrow

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Batman Day signals the launch of the DC Universe digital subscription service. Fans of DC Comics can interact with and stream Batman movies, animated series, comics and giveaways throughout the month of September. A DC Daily show will feature news from the DC Universe. Exclusive original series will premiere on the service as "Titans" is scheduled to debut on October 12, 2018. Pricing is set at $7.99 a month or $74.99 a year.

Kicking off on Batman Day and through the month of September, fans will be able to access a variety of content ranging from more than 400 issues of Batman comics to acclaimed films like The Dark Knight. DC UNIVERSE will kick off 30 days of giveaways for members starting with the DC Gallery: The Joker 1:1 Bust by Rick Baker, #1 of the limited series.
 
The beta version has been up for a couple days. I think everyone that "pre-ordered" got access to it.

A few thoughts based on watching a few things:

The player isn't terrible, but has some minor annoyances. The mouse pointer does not vanish while the player is in fullscreen. If you try to move the pointer off-screen, at the bottom, then you have to deal with seeing a tooltip on screen at all times, depending on where you shoved your mouse. On the other hand, it works well with multiple monitors. No issues with the bar at the bottom not going away when working on another monitor (I've had this happen with a lot of video players, WWE Network's horrid player comes to mind).

Picture quality on the player is solid. It's obviously not super high bitrate, but it isn't bad. The quality will adjust on the fly and it seems decent at snapping back to a clear picture if your internet speed likes to jump all over the place.

The comic viewer is excellent. Even looking at older comics on a 4K TV they look good. I think I like the way it does panel-by-panel more than Comixology's viewer.

The layout of the service is excellent. The main page is well categorized and each section has it's own set of categories. It is a really solid layout.

Supposedly more content will be launching tomorrow, so I'm not going to comment too much on the exact amount. I'll just say that what they offered for the early launch wasn't too bad, but it is very Batman focused. It is nice to see some of the newer DC animated features like Batman Ninja and Death of Superman Part 1 on there, hopefully that's a sign that subscribers won't have to wait too long after those movies release before they're added.
 
They're gonna need revenues from the actual comics related ventures 'cause the DC Universe in terms of the movies appears to be tanking hard and could just close up shop entirely:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...rman-warner-bros-dc-universe-shake-up-1142306

It's not just about Henry Cavill, there's a lot of stuff going on and the Ben Affleck situation certainly didn't help them at all. They just forgot that people want to watch movies as entertainment, not dark dingy shitty looking dreary tales with nothing interesting happening - basically they forgot to bring the funny and make fun movies. Marvel got it right a long time ago and they keep on doing it right so let's hope Disney realizes they better not fuck around with the MCU at all or it'll cost 'em.
 
F.E.A.R. said:
They will have enough DCU content for something like this?
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Probably. There have been a lot of DC based TV shows over the last several decades, not to mention a bunch of cartoons. All the animated movies, some specials. Its a bit lighter on the live-action movie side, but there are still a decent number of them. Once their deal with Netflix is up, they can add all the CW DC shows. On top of that, starting in October they're doing original shows. Starting with Titans, they plan to add, at least, one episode of an original show per week for an entire year. After that I imagine it'll all depend on how those shows (Titans, Swamp Thing, Stargirl, Young Justice: Outsiders) are received. If people like them I imagine they'll get new seasons rolling right away so they can keep up the episode per week plan, if not they might have to figure out a replacement.
 
It would be better if they partnered with netflix or amazon and made it part of their service. But everyone is going it alone these days.
 
Nice going to wind up costing $500 a month to watch the shows you want when every show/universe gets its own streaming service.
 
tunatime said:
Nice going to wind up costing $500 a month to watch the shows you want when every show/universe gets its own streaming service.
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The one "advantage" I see with these services is that it's easy to sub for one or two months, watch the show(s) or movies you're after, then cancel and move on. Once Netflix streaming become a big thing this was inevitable. It is basically the ala carte cable service that people had been demanding for years, these kind of prices are what likely would have happened had that ever become a reality.
 
Derangel said:
The one "advantage" I see with these services is that it's easy to sub for one or two months, watch the show(s) or movies you're after, then cancel and move on. Once Netflix streaming become a big thing this was inevitable. It is basically the ala carte cable service that people had been demanding for years, these kind of prices are what likely would have happened had that ever become a reality.
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People wanted ala carte cable service for channels, not for streaming content. Big difference.
 
They're going to need to pump out new content like crazy if they want to keep this going.
Might be sweet for the DCAU since they're pretty great and darker than the live action.
I'm 42 and really could care about the older TV shows like BM, WW, SM from the 40s-70s, had enough of those as a child.
Having a hard time seeing the CW shows move to the streaming service, will they pull in more money than what they get from ads?
 
I think it's a great idea if it was priced properly - like, $1.99 or maybe even $2.99 a month. If their service includes the new comics, that's cheap.

They could add a true DC Wiki that follows the threads of all the heroes and villains through all the alternate DC universes. They could print the definitive catalogue of DC comics and they could offer a marketplace for people selling old comics and collectibles, with an etsy-like area for people selling cosplay gear. Fan art and fan comics. Extend the cartoon series and do something they should have done a long time ago - make a proper DC comics anime series. Make it so that all the comics can be read in foreign languages, and then tie it in with foreign language classroom material (I learned to read German through Asterix and Obelix comics.)

There's a lot they could do to make it a great product. It's the price that is the problem.


In 1984 the original Macintosh was supposed to have 256k of RAM and be $500 to $1,000 less than its original price of $2,495. Many people believe that Apple's internal fight to go with a lesser product for a greater price stalled the adoption of the Macintosh and gave Microsoft and IBM the chance to recover. I'm not saying there's any relationship between Apple and DC Comics, but this is a big venture for the DC brand, and they can either do it right and succeed, or they can take on huge debt, development time and company stress, eventually cancel the project, and alienate a block of their customer base. People are leery of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney and iTunes / Spotify bleeding them with subscription prices. DC needs to adopt a price that feels like a bargain for a fun product.
 
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