Star on Disney Plus has been launched in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In case you missed Disney’s extensive social media marketing campaign, here’s what it means: you now have a lot more movies and TV shows to watch on Disney Plus, including adult content, and it’s included in your subscription.
American customers don’t get a Star because there’s a Hulu service, which covers a similar area of what Disney calls ‘general entertainment’.
But you’ll also face modest price increases if you’re a new customer – Disney Plus now costs £ 7.99 / $ 11.99 per month or £ 79.90 / 119.99 AUD per year. It’s not an insignificant amount, though it’s pretty close to the price of a new PS5 game if you’re trying to add value in your head.
Still, launching the app this morning, we’re pretty excited about Star. There are 16 seasons of American Dad available in the UK – and to a lesser extent 18 seasons of Family Guy. All 10 seasons of Futurama are here. All of this very nicely complements the existing 31 seasons of The Simpsons.
Shows like Scrubs, Alias, Lost, 24, The X-Files and Prison Break are simple overtime clocks, even if we’ve seen most of them hit Amazon Prime Video UK in the last few years.
Meanwhile, Star has landed with several episodes of each of its four launched originals. Two episodes of Helstrom, the show orphaned by the end of the Marvel TV split, are here to watch – although the entire season is already available on American Hulu. There are three episodes of Solar Opposites, a new animated series by Rick and Morty by Justin Roiland. There are two episodes of Big Sky and Love, Victor, the other two shows are at your service. There will be more appearing each week, so you’ll have something to look forward to on the platform, in addition to the new episodes of WandaVision and The Falcon and Winter Soldier. More movies come every month.
So far we are quite impressed and it seems to us that the issue of Disney Plus which does not have enough adult shows to watch is resolved overall. Meanwhile, the caliber of the original that Star will be coming to Disney Plus next year – including new FX shows like Jeff Bridges ’spy drama The Old Man and the sci-fi series Y: The Last Man – hopes to Star will justify the price rising many times over. Local originals are also under construction.
Along with the upcoming onslaught of Star Wars and the Marvel TV show, Disney seems to be trying to light a fire under the Sky with the weight of its content coming to the platform. £ 7.99 a month for all of this looks great so far – but it’s even sweeter if you’re an existing buyer, as you’ve managed to temporarily avoid price increases until 23 August 2021.
So, if you haven’t checked it out yet, sign up for Disney Plus and see what new treats you need to enjoy. Below we’ll talk a bit about the app’s new parental controls and what content is streaming in 4K.
Not everything is in 4K
One of the best things about Disney Plus is that, unlike Netflix, 4K streaming is offered as part of the basic package, rather than being charged at a higher level. Some of the new content added via Star is 4K – Die Hard Men, for example, or Independence Day – but not movies like Oscar winner The Favorite or the new Star Big Sky.
Sometimes it’s obvious why something doesn’t flow in 4K – we didn’t expect to watch the 2002 peeling season in higher resolution – but other times it’s less clear. In addition, among the originals, Love, Victor broadcasts in 4K, while Big Sky broadcasts only in HD resolution, according to the list of applications, so it is difficult to figure out what the pattern is when this content is offered in Ultra HD resolution. I hope this will be smoothed out over time.
Still, having extra 4K content is generally nice given the modest price, and the Disney Plus homepage has usefully updated its ‘Ultra HD and HDR’ category to fit the new Antiques offerings.
As always, the “Details” button on Disney Plus is your friend – this will tell you whether the title supports 4K streaming or not.
How to Set Parental Control in Disney Plus Star
If you’re running Disney Plus for the first time since the app was updated with Star, this part is very easy. You simply can’t enable a star without re-signing in to your account – and once you do, you’ll be asked which profiles to allow adult content for as an account owner. You will also be asked if you want to create a PIN to restrict access to your Disney Plus profile.
However, outside of the app, there are more parental restrictions – sign in to your Disney Plus account using a web browser (this is the page you want) and you can choose a content rating limit for titles available for viewing on an individual profile. There are seven different settings. This degree of control means you can fully customize the Disney Plus experience to whoever is in your household.
Here’s what the subject page looks like:
Within the app, you can also click the ‘Restrict Profile Creation’ button which means you will need to enter a password to add new profiles to your Disney Plus account.
All in all, that means little Timmy will have to wait until the first time he lets him watch Prison Break.