Turbid magic: The launch of Disney Plus in Israel is an insult to the local audience

We have been waiting so long for the launch of Disney Plus in Israel, only to encounter frustration after frustration.

Not only the lack of content that is supposed to be in the service in the first place, but the lack of episodes arbitrarily in various series, poor quality and technical glitches.

There is no way to beautify it: it's a gig at our expense

Living Room Fellow

19/06/2022

Sunday, 19 June 2022, 13:15 Updated: 13:27

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Trailer for the series "Only Murders in the Building" (Hollow)

Naturally, like many families in Israel, my daughter and I were very excited about the rise of Disney Plus' service in Israel.

While many have been waiting, and rightly so, for the contents of Hollow, Star Wars and Marvel - at home we were thrilled with the basics - the overflowing library of Disney content.

In my head I have already imagined how we would watch together in classics like "Mary Poppins", "Old Healer" and "The Wonderful Journey Home", as well as more memorable content such as "He Walked on All Fours", "The Last Flight of Noah's Ark" or "Thomsina's Three Lives" ".

Of course I could not wait to see with her for the first time all the contents of the "muppets".

The girl, for her part, was excited about the service, which is entirely dedicated to Disney, with her own personal profile in Hebrew, and the opportunity to watch her favorite content dubbed into Hebrew.

It's hard to put into words the disappointment that fell on our home with the launch of the service last Thursday.

Fate wanted and the service went up in parallel with the strike in the education system, which allowed my daughter to start the morning with the dubbed version of "Ancanto".

The service was slow, cumbersome and not particularly intuitive - but we thought it was forgivable.

Anyway, the service just went up in the air, it will probably still work out.

Then the girl started watching the movie, and after ten minutes the movie got stuck.

Leaving the film and returning to it led us to the beginning again, as if we had never watched it.

The second viewing got stuck this time after a quarter of an hour.

The technical problems continued even when we tried to watch "Mulan", and then the girl asked: "Must see it on Disney Plus, is it impossible on Netflix?".

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A series of glitches.

"Ancanto" (Photo: Film Forum)

It's amusing that a 6 year old girl already knows which streaming service is more convenient for her to use, but she's not wrong either.

We all have a lot of complaints (very justified) about Netflix content and the clear preference for quantity over quality, but its its own.

The great advantage of Netflix over all its competitors remains in the simplicity and efficiency of the service.

It has to do with the fact that she was just there before and actually invented this whole business.

She knows how to "talk" to her audience, and most importantly presents a convenient and effective app across all platforms.

The Disney Plus app in Israel feels cheap.

It is slow and awkward, with annoying technical issues and a faltering search engine.

For example, in the app version adapted for my LG TV, it is not possible to transfer the interface language to Hebrew (in the Android version and the other devices, the language is in English).

In contrast, every time I re-start a series or movie I have to choose the language of translation and audio, instead of the app learning by itself that I prefer to watch movies in English with Hebrew subtitles.

I did not find "Roger Rabbit" in a search in English, and precisely when I searched for it in Hebrew, it suddenly appeared.

There is nothing at all to talk about effective categories that allow a sense of a rich library at the moment.

This is what we would expect from a pirated movie download site, not from the rich content company's app in the world.

Hopefully these little issues will be fixed in the coming software updates, and in any case everything would have been forgiven if the content library had lived up to expectations.

Well, she's not.

A short example: out of 140 episodes of the animated series "Futurama", only 74 episodes can be found in the service, and they are also presented in the wrong order.

Why?

It is not clear.

The American version of the service has of course all the chapters.

This is especially noticeable in the episodes of the sixth season of the series, which actually consisted of four TV movies, each of which is divided into four parts.

At the moment Disney Disney has only two parts out of two movies.

One film has the fourth part, while the first three quarters of the film are not available in service.

In one film the phenomenon is reversed, there is the first quarter, and there is not the rest.

There really is no way to justify this stupidity other than criminal neglect and blatant carelessness on the part of the service's subscribers.

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The arrangement of the episodes is a joke.

The sixth season of "Futurama" at Disney Plus (Photo: screenshot, Disney Plus)

The peak of contempt for viewers comes from a much clearer place - the quality of viewing.

Outrageously, Disney has decided to launch in Israel the expected content of Hollow in poor quality relative to the US.

Continuing to browse the service brought up a lot of nostalgic content that I would love to watch again, or at least the possibility of doing so - but almost every time I discovered this weird feature to upload only some of the content.

For example Mike Jadge's "King of the Hill" is present in the service, but only with 142 out of 259 episodes.

Here at Disney Plus they decided to indulge to the end, and not only is the series not translated into Hebrew, in some episodes there are not even English subtitles.

The fantasy of watching with the girl in forgotten Disney movies has also disappeared: quite a few of the Disney Studios movies just do not appear in the local service, including real classics like "The Wonderful Journey Home" in the 1990s version.

Oddly enough, the puppet movies (classic and new) do not exist in the service, which personally discouraged me (and the 6-year-old) very much.

Even series that appeared in the presentation at the press conference, such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Scrubs," are not available on the service.

However, the peak of contempt for viewers comes from a much clearer place - the quality of viewing.

Outrageously, Disney decided to launch in Israel the much-anticipated content of Hollow in up to 1080p quality, and not in 4K like in the US. "," How I Met Daddy "or" Just Killers in the Building "- you better download them pirated, because the quality of the torrents is better than those of the Disney legal app in the Middle East.

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Where's the 4K?

"Only murderers in the building" (Photo: Hollow)

There is a double and triple impudence here.

As if it's not enough that Disney presents less content in Israel than in Europe and America, and in addition charges higher prices than the whole world (I searched, I did not find any country where Disney charges prices like in Israel) - it brings here the inferior version of the app.

This can be taken to an interesting discussion on the subject of Eurocentrism.

Why does the Western world get one app in the first place, while the East gets a less good app in the first place?

One can grow a ponytail and develop a complete theory on the theory of the second Disney app.

The sweet content, the bitter disappointment.

The truth is that sociologically it will be really interesting, but the bottom line is that this is a consumer issue.

Another streaming service that has come into our lives and we as consumers need to ask ourselves if it is worth the money.

As a man who drew a lot of inspiration from the Walt Disney Man, and traveled specifically to his family museum in San Francisco to learn more about his work - it's hard for me not to run away from the feeling that Walt himself would be very upset to be signed to this embarrassing launch.

Think of all the girls who were excited to see "Ancanto" or "Break the Ice" and had to give up because the movie got stuck for them.

This is not a Disney heritage, this is a common Mediterranean gig.

We asked Disney for a response to the article, but just like the hundreds of complaints posted on social media by fresh subscribers, this time too we were left with no comment from the company.

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