Good problems

Age of the Geek Column: It's finally happening.
The streaming service landscape is about to get even more crowded as Disney officially joins the fray with Disney+.
For years I've wondered when Disney was going to get into the streaming game. It seemed like a no-brainer. Disney's immense catalog of movies and television is unmatched by any single entity in the entertainment industry, and that's before you consider the contributions from Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, and most recently, Fox.
That's right, the upcoming service will not only be the place to enjoy cartoon ducks, space fairing bounty hunters, and new shows for super heroes, but also where you can marathon 30 years of "The Simpsons."
At seven bucks a month, Disney+ is uncharacteristically inexpensive compared to their competitors. Netflix, which just initiated yet another price hike, is nearly double that now. Seven dollars a month is a pretty small price to pay for unfettered access to the Disney vault, but it is yet another service to add to the monthly entertainment budget.
Once upon a time, streaming was supposed to be the cheaper alternative to cable. Remember cable? Remember trying to decide if adding that extra 50 channel package was worth it just to get those one or two channels you actually cared about?
Where once we were paying out the nose for hundreds of channels just to get to the few that had the shows we want to watch, now we have to do it across a dozen or so different streaming services.
For fans of Star Wars and the MCU, getting Disney+ is going to be pretty much mandatory. If you're into DC properties, DC Universe is your go-to source for original content. Star Trek fans will need to pick-up CBS All-Access for the upcoming Jean-Luc Picard series. Tolkien fans best make sure their Amazon Prime subscriptions are up for their Lord of the Rings series.
And of course outside of the major franchises there are always a great scattering of must-see shows spread out across the streaming landscape, all buried under mountains of ancient TV shows, B-movies, and whatever other cheap content these services use to pad their selection.
By the time you get signed up for all of these services, you'd probably be spending the same, if not more, than you did on cable.
The trick is, of course, to not sign up for all of these services. At least not at the same time.
If you've run out of things to watch on any given subscription service, shut it down and come back when they've built up enough new content to get your money's worth.
HBO is doubtlessly experiencing this phenomenon in action right now as thousands of lapsed HBO Now subscribers reactivate their accounts for the final season of "Game of Thrones." Some of these returning customers may stay on with HBO after we finally find out who will ultimately rule Westeros, deciding that the content they provide is worth sticking with it. Others however, will suspend their subscriptions and move on to the next thing.
Lately I've been using my Hulu Plus subscription to get caught up on various shows but that particular well is starting to run dry. This feels like a good time to put that particular service on suspension and instead restart my CBS All-Access account to catch-up on the second season of "Star Trek: Discovery."
Of course there are downsides to this tactic. Most streaming services aren't utilizing the Netflix model that dumps the entire season of a show out all at once, opting instead for the traditional weekly release. For a 12 episode season, this means having to subscribe for at least three months of a service if you want to avoid spoilers and join in on the play-by-play discussions.
Then there's the vigilance needed to keep track of which subscriptions you have going. It's all too easy to just let it ride, especially when some services offer a discount for a yearly subscription. It feels fundamentally different to pay for something once a year than it does month to month.
At the end of the day, I'm not complaining about the abundance of choices. If it means that there are a dozen companies out there pushing out top-quality content in order to compete for my attention, that's a problem I can live with.
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and really should invent a subscription service to manage subscription services.