Take a look at the biggest films of the year so far and you’ll notice one thing: Disney absolutely dominates. Already in 2019 it has grossed over $8bn (around £6bn / AU$12bn) at the global box office, thanks to the live action remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King, the Pixar follow-up Toy Story 4, and, of course, the massive cultural event that was Avengers: Endgame. 

That figure is set to balloon further, too. Before the year ends, the company will also be releasing Frozen 2 and a little film called Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Disney is set to further tighten its grip on the small screen too, with the launch of streaming service Disney Plus. Simply put, the House of Mickey is unstoppable.

This domination is not an accident, or the result of a few lucky manoeuvres: it’s the result of calculated technological and business innovation that spans almost a century in the lifespan of the Walt Disney corporation. So join us in looking back on some of the smartest moves that made Disney’s film business so powerful.

• Disney Plus review: what we think so far

The Early Years: Pioneering Animation

Disney started life as an animation studio – and with its third film, Steamboat Wilie in 1928, it demonstrated how the company would continue to use technological innovation to keep audiences engaged. 

The 7 minute, 46 second film was actually the third starring Mickey Mouse, but what makes it notable is that it was the first to use what was called ‘synchronised sound’ – the then revolutionary idea of having an audio track that corresponded to what was being shown onscreen.

In the early 1930s, Disney first experimented with colour films, using a technology known as ‘technicolor’. This was a process where a subject – whether a human or an animation cell – was shot simultaneously through three colour filters (red, green, and blue) on to three separate strips of film. Disney wasn’t the first company to use this technology – but it perhaps had the most success thanks to it.

In 1934, the company released Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which briefly became the biggest film of all time, before MGM’s Gone With The Wind was released in 1939. During the 1940s, too – while Europe was busy having a war – Disney continued making films that would become classics, including Pinnochio and Fantasia in 1940, Dumbo in 1941, and Bambi in 1942.

After the war, the company continued making more classic animated features like Lady and the Tramp and Sleeping Beauty. The other big development of this time was the opening of Disneyland in California.

But all was not well: Sleeping Beauty actually lost money because it was so expensive to make. But this is where Disney was saved by the advent of another new technology: xeroxography.

If you’re wondering what xeroxography is, it’s essentially the ability to photocopy cells (celluloid sheets) for animation, so that not every single cell needed to be redrawn and repainted. And it arrived at just the right time, when Disney was working on 101 Dalmations. Without it, Disney would have faced the expensive nightmare of needing to hand-animate, well, 101 different dogs on the screen.

The 80s and 90s: Home Video and The Disney Vault

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a huge shift in how viewers consumed Disney content. The rise of home video meant that in theory, viewers could access Disney’s unrivalled animation library whenever they wanted to.

In theory, anyway. The reality was rather different.

Historically, Disney had pursued a strategy of re-releasing its films into cinemas every few years. This was good for viewers, as it meant in an era before video they could see films they missed the first time around – and it was good business too, as the limited time re-release would create a promotional buzz. 

When it came to home video, then, Disney made what might seem an odd decision: It was only going to sell certain films for a short period of time, before removing them from sale again.

It called this concept the “Disney Vault”, and created this artificial scarcity to maximise the hype in a world that was increasingly experiencing a very early form of “on demand” – as increased distribution of VHS video tapes meant that films could be viewed whenever someone wanted to watch them.

It was also in this era that Disney experienced an animation renaissance, with a host of incredibly beloved and popular films released into movie theatres. Under the leadership of CEO Michael Eisner, between 1989 and 1994, the company released The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, all of which remain classics today.

But it was in 1995 that technology really changed animation again: Toy Story became the first full length, fully computer-generated feature film, and was a huge success both commercially and critically. In fact, it set the template for animation in the two decades to come. So it was perhaps unfortunate then that while Disney distributed the film, it didn’t own the studio that made it: Pixar. 

At least, not yet.

The 2000s: The Force Awakens

It was only when current CEO Bob Iger took over in 2005 that Disney really began to enter its imperial phase. Within a few short years, Iger masterminded deals that saw Disney swallow up Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel and most recently 21st Century Fox. 

At the time, these perhaps felt like big gambles given the cash involved, but today they are widely viewed as acts of strategic genius. Why? Because Iger realised that in a world of streaming technology where no one company can control the distribution mechanism, the real value isn’t in pipes or airwaves, but in intellectual property.

Simply put, by owning the biggest entertainment brands in the world, audiences will pay to seek them out – including via direct subscription fee to Disney Plus. And the logic is sound: as transformative as Netflix has been, if you want to watch Star Wars, you’re not going to accept Netflix's Lost In Space reboot as a substitute. Instead, you’re going to pull out your credit card and start paying Disney directly.

So by snaffling up Marvel, Pixar and Lucas, and sitting on a library that includes pretty much every beloved animation from the last 100 years, Disney owns a significant slice of our cultural touchstones that Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV Plus or the many other imminent streaming competitors can’t touch.

There’s one point worth mentioning that shows just how clever Disney has been adapting to this new era, and why it will continue to dominate into the future: unlike Netflix, Disney Plus doesn’t need to make money.

Why? Because as former Amazon Video executive Matthew Ball has observed, Disney isn’t too desperate to get money from subscribers – which is clear from the cheap $6.99 / AU$8.99 (around £5.50) per month subscription plan. It’s more interested in selling you a $5,000 (£3,890 / AU$7,430) Disney cruise, a trip to Disneyworld, or having you buy your kids Disney Princess and Marvel toys at Christmas – as that’s where the real money is.

Ultimately, the reason why Disney dominates today and will continue to dominate our culture in the future is because it is a company that is comfortable playing the long game.

Rather than squeeze an extra dollar from you today, it wants to make sure that when you’re 80 and want to spend some time with your grandchildren at the hologram-plex, that you’ll choose to take them to see not any old film, but a digitally de-aged Jaden Smith playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in the latest instalment of the Star Wars franchise. And the evidence suggests that we will.

• Disney Plus Star Wars: all the Star Wars films and shows coming to the Disney Service
• Disney Plus vs Netflix: who will win?
• Disney Plus and Hulu – why you don't have to choose

If you’ve been on Facebook, Twitter or pretty much any other social medium in the last few days then you can’t have failed to notice it - FaceApp is everywhere. 

Despite launching way back in January 2017, the app has suddenly received a new lease of viral life. 

But as quickly as it has appeared, the worries about what the company is actually doing with our photos and our privacy have followed too. So, is it time to worry?

What is FaceApp?

Where have you been, grandad? FaceApp is the hot new trend. It's an iPhone and Android app that takes your photos and performs some digitally wizardry to manipulate your face through a number of clever filters. 

The old age filter has become particularly popular because it is available for use in the app for free. It's pretty amazing too, and is able to produce highly convincing results.

How does FaceApp work?

The app works its magic by using the power of machine learning. This is a new technique that is increasingly ubiquitous in computing. 

Essentially, rather than try to explain to a computer what it means to age - and describe using code what a wrinkle, grey hair or Werther's Originals are - the computer will figure them out for itself by being "trained" with thousands of other photos of old people.

The results are pretty impressive - if not entirely accurate. Run a photo of someone who is old now from when they were young, and FaceApp is unlikely to produce an image which looks exactly like them now.

• The best Android apps to download in 2019
• The best iPhone apps we've used in 2019
• Best privacy apps for Android

What data does FaceApp collect?

So this is the important question! As quickly as the app has gone viral, so have the privacy worries. So much so that US Senator Chuck Schumer has called for the FBI to investigate the app. 

And there are many posts going viral on Facebook and other social media urging users to approach the app with caution. 

The worry seems to hinge on the fact that in order for the app to work, the user must grant the app access to the photos on your phone - just like you have to with Instagram or a billion other apps.

What’s worrying people is two things: What this conceivably means is that the app has access to all of the photos on your phone, so if developers chose to do so, they could conceivably tell the app to upload all or your photos to their servers, or pass them on to other organisations. 

What's amplifying this worry is that the company that makes the app, Wireless Lab, is based in St Petersburg, Russia.

• For the modern internet, what's the cost of privacy?

So… is FaceApp uploading my photos?

Despite the initial worries, at the moment the evidence suggests that the app is behaving responsibly and not uploading all of our photos. Several other developers have analysed what is being transmitted, and have concluded that all the app is uploading are the photos that the user chooses to apply filters to.

This is because unlike, say, Instagram filters, the photo processing on FaceApp takes place in the cloud. In other words, all the app does is upload the photo and then download the completed stuff - all of the clever digital ageing takes place on servers elsewhere.

The reason for the app working this way could be two-fold: First, this sort of processing is very hard to do locally. The reason machine learning is so powerful now is because processing can take place using the processing power contained within entire server farms if necessary - rather than relying on the processor in your phone.

Secondly, this could help the developers improve their product. They could use all of the pictures we upload to more accurately train FaceApp's machine learning models - resulting in even more realistic photos. And because all of the processing takes place in the cloud, it also means they can conceivably update and improve filters without needing to have everyone update the apps on their phone.

The developers have said that everything that is uploaded is deleted within a couple of days. The reason it hangs on to the data for that long in the first place is apparently to avoid having to process the same images twice: If two people upload the same image (which isn’t unlikely if you want to digitally age a celebrity), it means they only have to have their servers do the hard work of processing the images once.

What do the FaceApp terms and conditions say?

One of the factors that has been amplifying the concerns has been the terms and conditions that have gone viral. And on the face of it, they sound pretty draconian:

"You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you. 

"When you post or otherwise share User Content on or through our Services, you understand that your User Content and any associated information (such as your [username], location or profile photo) will be visible to the public."

Yikes!

What is important to bear in mind however, is that they are not a million miles away from those used by other social media apps. 

The only real difference - and it is significant - is that unlike, say, Facebook or Google, there isn’t an easy way to delete your data from the app. At the moment, you have to email support with a written request - though the developers have reportedly said they are planning to make this easier.

There is also a secondary concern that the app does not comply with the strict new GDPR rules with its advertising. Whether this has merit or not we'll leave to the lawyers - but this isn't really the meat of the privacy concerns.

Should we be worried that the company is Russian?

And this… is the contentious bit. The fact that Wireless Lab is based in Russia is perhaps why FaceApp has attracted the skepticism of politicians more than any other app. And these concerns are not entirely without merit.

Russia, of course, has a fairly notorious recent history of using technology to meddle in international affairs: From the digital operations conducted during the 2016 US election, to hacking the power grid in Ukraine. It is definitely conceivably that Vladimir Putin might see this latest viral sensation as a means by which to access the data of westerners or other adversaries… somehow.

There is no evidence that, say, the Russian government or military is obtaining data from the app or involved in the company in any way, and the company itself has said that data is in fact stored on Amazon and Google's cloud servers outside of Russia.

However, there is arguably cause for concern about the location of the company headquarters. If Vladimir Putin wanted to access the data for some reason (maybe he wants to see everyone’s selfies?), by virtue of the location of the company and its employees, he would have some pretty significant leverage.

So… should we be worried about FaceApp?

Ultimately, with FaceApp we're making the same privacy trade-offs and considerations we make with any other app. When we download Instagram, should we worry that the US government might want to have a flick through our photo albums? Perhaps we might assume there are more safeguards there because America is a functioning democracy.

And what about other apps that are surging in popularity like TikTok? That app, which has made real inroads with young people, is owned by a Chinese company. So there is a strong case for similar reservations there - though because the scaremongering hasn’t gone viral in quite the same way, nobody seems to care.

So is FaceApp safe? As with any app it depends on the risks that you’re willing to take. Perhaps the best takeaway from FaceApp blowing up is that if nothing else, it is a potent reminder that you should check your privacy and sharing settings on every app you download - not just the ones that go viral.

• How tech is blurring boys and girls

We’ve all thought it while cruising through Los Santos or galloping towards Hyrule Castle Town: sure, this is fun, but wouldn’t it be much cooler if we could explore the world’s greatest city? No, I’m not talking about Washington DC or New York, as featured in The Division, and definitely not the Chicago featured in the original Watch Dogs. I’m talking about London.

Which is why it was so exciting to see that Watch Dogs: Legion will be set in Britain’s capital - and unlike the Victorian era Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, it looks like we might finally get to experience a London that is more than vaguely familiar. Not since The Getaway on PS2 have we seen a triple-A London sandbox that looks quite so lifelike.

The question then is… just how life-like? Let’s take a dive in and explore what the game has built, based on the E3 2019 reveal video and trailer.

How big is the Watch Dogs Legion map?

Now just a quick note before we go any further: we've yet to see the full Watch Dogs Legion game, so what we have here has been pieced together from reveal trailers, our own in-depth knowledge of London and what else we've heard and seen from Ubisoft so far. All this could change, and until we've got the final game in our hands, all this remains speculation.

First, an important question: Just how big is the map? Though Ubisoft does not appear to have so far said so, we'd wager that the size of the city was given away on the bus stop seen in the launch video near Piccadilly Circus.

This is a safe bet to be the game’s fast travel system, and it reveals a map roughly bounded as follows.

Kings Cross St Pancras -> Notting Hill Gate -> Battersea -> Brixton -> Elephant -> Tower Bridge -> The City of London -> The Isle of Dogs -> (A massive, non-existent road in real life cutting through Whitechapel) -> Old Street -> Back to Kings Cross St Pancras.

So roughly this:

Now let’s explore some of the places we saw in greater detail.

Piccadilly Circus

The reveal video started in Piccadilly Circus, and good grief, have they done a good job of recreating it. All of the buildings look pretty accurate to me. There’s just one problem: the 42 bus doesn’t go anywhere near here in real life. It is actually a route that goes from East Dulwich to Liverpool Street. And just as egregiously: the real route doesn’t use double-decker “New Routemasters” - it sticks to single deckers. And “City Centre”? What the hell is that? The game is ruined.

Here’s a wider daytime shot from the trailer - note the arches and the domed building. Even the road layout is pretty spot on.

We also learn that the Tube is out of action, with a sign reporting maintenance. Presumably this is so the game can avoid having to have a fast travel system where the player has to spend ten minutes pushing through crowds and descending on multiple escalators to get to the train, with NPCs passing out due to the lack of air conditioning. Though on the plus side, it means that it won’t annoy us with a completely fictional and implausible orbital railway, like Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate did.

It’s also curious to see the actual TfL roundel logo present in the game, given that Transport for London has been historically protective of its brand. For example, though Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 had a sequence set on the Tube (don’t get me started on the geography), it was unable to use any TfL branding.

After the player beats someone up, we see them get into a taxi and race off - heading down Coventry Street towards Leicester Square. Good detail on the tourist tat shops, and unless we are mistaken it appears that the Prince of Wales theatre, currently home to Book of Mormon has made it into the game.

The taxi then approaches the North West entrance to Leicester Square, where we can see the large building that replaced the Swiss Centre. There is one crucial omission though. Look at the ground floor of that building: M&Ms World does not exist in Watch Dogs Legion. So maybe the dystopian future isn’t so bad after all?

The car then turns and gives us the first indication that though tonally very accurate, the map does appear to have been compressed: Haymarket and Whitcomb Street appear to have been combined. On the right you can see the Horses of Helios statue, and on the left you can see the red glow of the Angus Steakhouse. Presumably in the game you won’t be able to go inside, as the developers surely won’t be able to find a single Londoner who has ever actually been inside an Angus Steakhouse.

Trafalgar Square

We then hit the Pall Mall approach to Trafalgar Square which looks accurate, with Canada House on the right and the National Gallery on the left. There definitely isn’t a bus stop there in real life though.

Incidentally, the outlook for Canada House in the game doesn’t look too good. Here’s a shot from the trailer:

Trafalgar Square looks pretty faithfully recreated - check out St Martin-in-the-Fields church in the distance. Try not to knock over any of floating Yodas on your way.

Here’s a look back at the National Gallery, which appears to be hosting some surveillance drones. Well, they do have form for this sort of thing:

Here’s the south view of Trafalgar Square. Aside from the overall accuracy of Nelson’s Column, the fountain and the steps, I also like how the LED warning sign looks accurate for Britain too.

Victoria Embankment

The reveal video then crosses to the Victoria Embankment. The river side looks spot on. The arch on the right hand side is presumably for the Victoria Embankment Gardens - but it doesn’t look quite right to me. Though it does look vaguely familiar.

New Scotland Yard is in broadly the right place - though in real life the actual building looks very different, even once you remove all of the luminous sci-fi stuff.

The proximity of the Golden Jubilee Walkways to New Scotland Yard does, however, also show further how the map has been compressed - in reality, it would be slightly further away.

Here’s a higher up shot of Westminster which shows us something we currently can’t see in real life: Big Ben (yes, we know) without any scaffolding around it. Note an accurate Portcullis House next to it (that’s the building on top of Westminster Tube Station which is part of the Parliamentary estate), and, Of course, the London Eye and the old County Hall building across the river.

It does, however, show a number of missing buildings including, most obviously, the Shell Centre. Though look through the Eye, and you can see the new One Blackfriars skyscraper that was presumably inspired by Arrival.

Here’s another shot of Big Ben, this time with the rest of Parliament attached. In the background we can see what appears to be the silhouette of the Millbank Tower, an office block from which the Labour Party ran its 1997 campaign, and where today the People’s Vote Campaign is based (though presumably they’ll have moved out by the time post-Brexit dystopia Watch Dogs London actually happens).

Also extra points if you spotted the most annoying thing about this photo: once again it is the 42 bus. Still wrongly a double decker, and still not on the correct route. What’s wrong with the 159, Ubisoft? Maybe the TechRadar UK team start a campaign to make the bus numbering accurate.

On the other side of Parliament, here’s Parliament Square. This is the view from the north side looking towards Parliament. I can’t tell for sure, but it definitely looks as though St Margaret’s Church - the smaller one next to Westminster Abbey - may have been cut. What I’m most interested in though is to see whether the square’s newest statue, that of suffragette Millicent Fawcett, has made the cut.

The most incorrect thing from this screenshot though is staring us right in the face - and it isn’t the “Kensington Rovers” bag. It’s the pub that the character is leaving. Called “The Earl’s Fortune”, it appears that it may be the player’s home base. Unfortunately, there isn’t a pub there in real life, instead it’s the Supreme Court and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

One last thing from Westminster. Behind the character here is the Guard’s Memorial in St James’s Park, and behind her we can see a wall covered in greenery, suggesting we’re looking North towards the Mall. However, that building behind, whatever that is, shouldn’t be there. To the right and just out of shot should the Horseguards grounds where Trooping the Colour takes place.

South of the River

Crossing the river we get to see a little bit of South London. In this aerial shot from the trailer, going left to right look out for Guy’s Hospital, The Imperial War Museum (green dome a little further back), the Shard (of course), and the Baby Shard - now home to Rupert Murdoch’s empire in London. A little further back is the massive Park Plaza hotel that sits to the South of Westminster Bridge, and we can see One Blackfriars again.

Here’s a dramatic rooftop shot. The building on the left used to be the headquarters of MI5, but today has been repurposed as some very expensive flats.

We also got to see this very brief shot of Brixton - we know that because there’s some big letters saying “Brixton”. Though what’s curious is that I can’t quite place this: It looks like it should be Windrush Square, but the building on the right doesn’t match the architecture of either the church there or The Ritzy cinema. Though architecturally, it is definitely very similar to many other churches in London.

Here’s perhaps the most obscure spot though - and full marks to Twitter follower Liam Blizard for spotting this. Remember this shot of what looks like a fairly informal housing estate from the trailer? It turns out it is a fairly accurate recreation of Southwyck House in Brixton. Maybe one of the developers lives there?

Amazingly it appears that the game even makes it down as far as Battersea - as we can see from Battersea Power Station in the background of this shot.

We also get to see Vauxhall Bridge and the Vauxhall Tower - as well as some of the new blocks of flats that are down that way.

Oh, and here’s the Tate Modern and the Millennium pedestrian bridge:

And what comes after the Tate Modern? City Hall, of course!

Going north again

It wouldn’t be a London game without Tower Bridge, and we can also see HMS Belfast, St Paul’s, Mansion House and the Walkie Talkie.

It looks like there’s going to a mission at the Tower of London.

Here’s a close up of St Paul’s:

Here’s another aerial shot of the city that appears to have done a very good job hiding the Walkie Talkie. If only we could do that in real life. Most obviously we can see the Gherkin and the Cheesegrater, as well as what looks like a stand in for the massive boxy skyscraper in the city that is still under construction.

It also appears we’re going to get a little bit of East London, as that Chimney belongs to Truman’s Brewery on Brick Lane.

More north of the river

Here’s Kings Cross St Pancras, complete with massive clock on the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

This is a cool shot. It might be a strange one to work out at first but this is a view of BBC (here called “GBB”) Broadcasting House on the left - which retains its shape and (ornamental?) antenna on the roof. On the right is All Souls Church, which sits opposite the entrance. The BT Tower looks familiar but has had a bit of a redesign on top. It also shows how the map has been shrunken slightly - in real life it isn’t visible from this vantage and feels like it should be slightly further away.

There wasn’t a clear shot unfortunately, but we do see the retired assassin lady take someone down right in front of the Victoria Memorial and Buckingham Palace. There’s another bus promising to take riders to the “City Centre” too.

Here’s Admiralty Arch on the Mall side with that sodding bus again. No buses go down this road for a very obvious reason: it is regularly closed and disrupted by various royal happenings. Not a good place for a bus route.

China Town also gets a look-in. Here we see it correctly placed behind Leicester Square.

Though annoyingly, we then see this arch, which is real… but isn’t placed here. Wherever here is supposed to be.

I’m not entirely sure which bridge this is supposed to be. It looks a bit like London Bridge, but the landmarks don’t entirely match up.

And now we’ve reached Camden Town, which features heavily in the reveal as we saw a rescue mission take place there. It’s an incredibly impressive recreation. The “Camden Market” branding is spot on, but in slightly the wrong place. The cut by the side of the railway arches we see the mission take place in though? That’s entirely real, and is called Gin Alley.

Unknowns

And finally, here’s some of the other London locations that we've so far been unable to place.

This modern shop front with a colorful bridge?

This place has a very strong Camden Town vibe, but it is hard to pin it on anything in particular.

The location of this house is frustrating. It looks like it could be either Downing Street or Doctor Johnson’s House, but neither match up correctly.

And finally this football pitch at the bottom of a large tower. If you’ve any ideas please do tweet as we will be genuinely and unironically interested.

So that’s London, as seen through the eyes of Watchdogs: Legion. And… it is pretty incredible what the developers appear to have done. 

Now all we have to do is wait until March next year to play it, by which time we could have tipped over into Brexit dystopia anyway (food shortages, civil disorder, the 42 bus being rerouted, etc), so the game might eventually become even more realistic.

All image credits: Ubisoft

• E3 2019 is the biggest gaming event of the year. TechRadar is reporting live from LA, telling you all about the biggest announcements of the week, from epic game trailers to shocking release date reveals. Follow our expert analysis of the keynotes and what we see on the E3 show floor.

The goal of every athlete is not just to win, but to continually grow faster and stronger, so that they may keep on winning in the future. But this isn’t just the case in sports. As we speak, every player in the mobile industry is gearing up for their biggest competition yet: the launch of 5G.

5G will, of course, be a lot faster and stronger than the 4G we’re used to – just as it was an improvement on the 3G that came before it. The improvements are pretty mind-boggling; speeds could conceivably be up to 100 times faster than 4G, but this is only one benefit of the new standard. 

The other is in terms of latency – the time it takes for your device to communicate with the network.

To demonstrate what this means, the US network Verizon and infrastructure provider Ericsson put together a rather clever demonstration: they gave two American football players VR headsets and mounted cameras on top.

They then sent the video from the cameras over 5G back to the 5G base station, and then from the base station back to the VR headsets – so they would still see what their eyes would naturally, but it would be sent over 5G first.

The result? It turns out that 5G is so quick, it’s possible to throw and catch a football even with images being transmitted to a base station and back, while still maintaining millisecond precision.

Faster connectivity for fans

This clever demo, however, is not the only thing that 5G and sports have in common. In fact, 5G looks set to transform the entire sports viewing experience.

First, let’s look at stadiums and arenas. The most annoying thing that can happen at large events is the mobile networks not working, because thousands of people are all in the same place and are trying to connect to the same mobile antenna. 

The good news is that with 5G, this should become a thing of the past as the next-gen mobile network won't just support a denser number of connected devices, but has also been designed to support millimeter wave frequencies, which mean venues will be able to place more, highly directional 5G equipment to ensure everyone can maintain a decent connection.

Having everyone connected in their seats is not just convenient for social media platforms like Facebook as this sort of connectivity could also be used to offer attendees access to action replays from multiple angles – making up for the one thing that TV can do better than being at the game in person. 

On a more practical level, 5G could also end the nightmare of queuing for ages at the bar at half time, as ordering drinks and snacks from our seats using our phones could become the norm.

Even more ambitiously, we may not be too far away from 5G-powered augmented reality  according to Verizon– we may soon be able to hold up our phones and have the players name and stats float above them as they run around the pitch. The line between FIFA on your Playstation 4 and real life is going to get a little blurry.

Slice that network

Viewing away from the stadium could also improve with 5G. Most obviously, the increased bandwidth and reduced latency should put an end to buffering, even when you’re trying to catch the game while on the bus, but its reliability could go far beyond this thanks to a controversial new technology that’s baked into the 5G standard called network slicing.

At the moment, when you use the internet, all traffic is treated equally – whether you’re sending emails, doing some important work, or rotting your brain watching TikToks. 

Network slicing, however, could enable phone networks to pick and choose what gets priority, and syphon off slices of the available bandwidth for particular favored services. 

Most obviously this will help the emergency services, but it is surely inevitable that as phone networks compete to win over customers, reliable, slice-off access to live sports will prove and attractive proposition. So we can hopefully expect no buffering whatsoever.

The benefits of 5G and network slicing go beyond the immediate consumer proposition too. In fact, 5G could make it easier for TV networks to film and broadcast games – meaning there could be plenty more sporting content to watch, even if your team is in the lower leagues.

How? As SportsPro reports, BT Sport and EE carried out an intriguing trial, sending a team to film a football match between non-League UK football titans Braintree Town and Bromley FC. 

What made it unique wasn’t the diminutive stature of the teams playing, but the fact that all of the pictures were not edited and produced from the stadium as in traditional football broadcasts. 

Instead, pictures were sent back over 5G to BT Sports’ headquarters in London, where a production team was able to turn the raw images into a TV show. If the production team can all stay in one place, it means they can produce multiple broadcasts on the same day – or even at the same time.

In other words, 5G could massively reduce the number of people needed to make live sports broadcasts happen – which could, in turn, result in more sport to watch; perfect if you support a smaller sports team.

But there is one last twist: in a world of 5G ubiquity, will people actually want to watch more football, or other traditional sports? The challenge from 5G is that it might make another type of sport more attractive: esports.

Esports have experienced huge growth over recent years thanks to social media and services like Twitch popularizing the players and the clans. According to one estimate, last year 400m people watched esport content – a number that is expected only to continue rising, with stars like Ninja and the “FaZe” clan commanding millions of dollars in sponsorship and advertising revenue just as easily as the biggest footballers do.

With 5G, broadcasting and watching esports is going to be even easier. No longer will there be any constraints on where we can watch from – so don’t be surprised if we start to see players broadcast from their mobile devices, rather than from their bedrooms.

5G Uncovered, in association with Samsung, brings you everything you need to know about the next wave of connectivity - not just how fast it's going to be, but in just how many ways it's going to change your life. Our 5G Uncovered hub is carefully curated to show everything there is to know about the next generation of connection.   

• FC Barcelona's Nou Camp will be the first 5G stadium

Have you ever tried to stream a video on the bus? You know how it is – the latest Marvel movie trailer has just been posted by your friend on Facebook, and you don’t want to wait until you get home to see what all of the fuss is about. So you hit the link and…hope for the best.

If you’re lucky, the video will play without a problem over 4G, but if you’re unlucky, you could quickly see the action paused, as a circle of dots tells you that Spider-Man is currently buffering. And when it does play, you can’t really work out what's happening because the action has turned into a low-resolution mess of coloured blocks.

The problem with 4G is that sometimes there just isn’t enough bandwidth. If too many people are trying to connect within the same area, your download speeds are being shared with everyone else – which is why it can sometimes be so unreliable.

But luckily, the solution is just around the corner. Over the next couple of years 5G is going to arrive and transform our mobile video experiences.

• What is 5G? Everything you need to know

For a start, watching video is going to become a lot more reliable, particularly in terms of download speeds. As 5G hype builds, this means you can expect to see lots of crazy claims about how you’ll be able to download full HD movies in just seconds. 

Though it will be significantly faster than 4G, 5G will probably never live up to those claims, simply because you will still be sharing the connection with everyone else in your local area.

But don’t worry, 5G is still expected to be around 20 times faster than 4G – and the benefits go beyond speed. 5G uses parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that will mean signals are better at penetrating buildings – so you can expect a more reliable connection when indoors. If we’re lucky, we may even be able to get a reliable signal when travelling through more remote areas on train journeys.

The other major boon is with regards to latency – this is the speed at which your device can exchange data with the internet. This will be most significant for gamers who need fast response times when playing online games like Fortnite, but it will also make watching video better too, as there will be less lag between hitting play on a video and it actually playing.

Second-order consequences

What’s perhaps more interesting though, is to consider the second-order consequences from this technological shift – not just how 5G will make downloads faster, but how 5G could change our behaviour.

For example, today if you’re planning to watch some Netflix or catch up with Amazon Prime Video, you have to plan ahead and download what you intend to watch on to your device ahead of time to get the best experience. 

With 5G, and near ubiquitous connectivity, streaming will become the default option and you’ll be able to trust that the bandwidth and connectivity will be available when you need it.

It also goes without saying, that 4K streaming over the air should also become routine, which will be just in time for 4K screens on phones to become commonplace.

Of course, 5G isn’t just going to change us – it’s going to change where we get film and TV from too, and upset the industry in the process. It’s going to accelerate the process of unbundling and 'cord-cutting', as the idea of watching TV will be further divorced from the need to have Sky or Virgin Media in the UK, or Comcast or Verizon in the US – why would we want to pay for bundles when apps will let us download what we want specifically, over 5G? 

Given the bandwidth 5G enables, it is likely that, just like how many millennials have never had a landline phone, future generations may not even bother getting a home broadband connection.

Portrait mode

5G could also have a really big impact on the types of content we consume. For example, with ubiquitous connectivity, will we be producing more video content ourselves than ever? 

Will Hollywood films find themselves challenged by our friends' live streams, or the hoards of ‘influencers’ creating YouTube videos?

The lines between games and film could also continue to blur. Following the success of Bandersnatch, the interactive episode of Netflix’s Black Mirror, there was a lot of excitement around the possibilities from branching narratives. 

But as Cnet argued last year, this could only be the start. In the 5G world, we won’t be watching video on dumb screens – our phones have other sensors built into them, like a camera and gyroscope. 

What if films could watch us watching them, and adapt the experience based on how we react? 5G’s increased bandwidth and connectivity could make this viable for big-budget film.

And perhaps strangest of all, the actual shape of the pictures we watch could change too. If we’re consuming more video content on our phones, then it stands to reason that more content will be produced with phones – and not just TVs – in mind. This could lead to more professional quality film designed for portrait mode.

In fact, there are already some exciting examples of this, and one of the most striking is Eva Stories. This is a film that is premised on the question of what would it be like if a girl had Instagram during the Holocaust? 

This might sound like a silly idea, but the project takes its subject seriously, and presents an entire narrative experience, educating viewers about the horrors of World War II, telling the story entirely through Instagram Stories that rely heavily on video.

We think of a lot of social media video today as being trivial or disposable – but it stands to reason that as we consume more content using 5G, filmmakers will start to take phone viewing more seriously.

5G Uncovered, in association with Samsung, brings you everything you need to know about the next wave of connectivity - not just how fast it's going to be, but in just how many ways it's going to change your life. Our 5G Uncovered hub is carefully curated to show everything there is to know about the next generation of connection.   

• 5G's impact on the future of work

Back in 2013 Netflix’s Ted Sarandos perfectly captured the strategic challenge that  the growing streaming service rapidly faced: “The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us”, he told GQ magazine, in reference to the premium cable powerhouse that broadcasts the likes of Game of Thrones.

In other words: Though Netflix’s streaming technology is new and exciting (or at least it was five years ago), the technology alone won’t keep Netflix ahead - content matters too. That’s why, fast-forward to 2019, Netflix has utterly transformed both the living room and the movie theater. This year it is expected to spend a eye-watering $15 billion on films and TV shows for us to watch. 

In just a few short years Netflix has transformed from the new upstart challenger into the 800Ib gorilla in the entertainment industry. Even Amazon, a company that eats entire sectors for breakfast, has to play second-fiddle to Netflix when it comes to streaming.

And for that reason, there are some people out there like John Meyer, an industry analyst and founding partner at Transpire Ventures,  who think that even Disney, one of the biggest names in entertainment, might not be able to beat it. 

"I strongly believe Disney will not become a threat to Netflix whatsoever"

"I strongly believe Disney will not become a threat to Netflix whatsoever," Meyer said in an email to TechRadar. "After all, they are a tech company at heart and have enormous power with the data they capture on their millions of subscribers, which helps them design what original content to create."  

But here’s the thing: Maybe Disney doesn’t need to beat Netflix. Maybe Netflix isn’t even Disney’s biggest strategic challenge. Instead, maybe Disney CEO Bob Iger should probably spend more time worrying about Fortnite. 

Picking your battles

Now, at first that might sound confusing. Why would Disney+, a new streaming service that bears close resemblance to Netflix, compete with an online game?

The answer was probably best given by Netflix itself in a letter sent to shareholders earlier this year: “Our focus is not on Disney+, Amazon or others, but on how we can improve our experience for our members.” 

"We compete with (and lose to) Fornite more than HBO."

Furthermore, “We compete with (and lose to) Fornite more than HBO.” 

That's a pretty telling statement.

It's basically acknowledging that streaming services aren't that concerned with one another and instead, they're looking at the bigger picture - not only your generation, but the generation coming up right after it, too. 

And Netflix knows they're going to be much harder to win over.

Disney will need to duke it out with Fortnite

At this point you might be thinking that Disney, rights holders and creators of franchises like Star Wars and Frozen must have kids wrapped indefinitely around their finger, and that that gives them an advantage here, right?

Wrong.

Chances are that if you’re reading this article, you grew up in a vastly different media environment to kids today. The reason we’re so excited about Disney+ is because it appeals to us, our interests and our sense of nostalgia. 

But if you’re eleven years old today, your world isn’t (exclusively) one of Marvel and Disney Princesses. It is one where mindshare is dominated by Fortnite, aggressively dumb YouTubers and, presumably, a bunch of other entertainment brands in the gaming, fashion, music and movie world. Instagram influencers. Snapchat stars – not to mention the content your friends are producing.

So there could be a generation of kids growing up today who lack the pavlovian reaction we have when we hear John Williams’ Star Wars theme tune, because that mindshare has instead been stolen by the Epic Games upstarts.

We might love these characters, but it doesn’t mean the next generation will too.

It’s inevitable that Fortnite the game will at some point be knocked off of its perch as top dog and replaced by another new game in the next year (cough, Apex Legends), but the real threat to Disney in the long term is that there’s currently a generation of kids who will have a similar reaction when Epic Games reboot Fortnite in 20 years time that we have to the Star Wars Episode IX trailer.

We can already see the generational schism starting to happen. When Solo came out, the childrens’ market research firm Kids Insight found just 2% of kids mentioning the film in the month before it was released - performing worse than Deadpool 2 (not exactly a kids film) and Peter Rabbit (yes, the one with James Corden). To them, Star Wars is less a cultural touchstone and more just a logo on one of dad’s old t-shirts.

Similarly, when The Muppets performed at London's O2 last year, they failed to sell out the arena - because the characters lack the cultural cachet they once commanded with an older generation. We might love these characters, but it doesn’t mean the next generation will too.

Kids are the key

Disney owns your childhood and, if everything goes right with Disney+, it will own your kid's childhood, too.

Whether Disney+ manages to beat Netflix in terms of subscribers numbers is almost irrelevant. Even if it ends up second or third place, there will always be a place on your smart TV or your iPad for Disney+. Why? Because Disney owns your childhood and, if everything goes right with Disney+, it will own your kid's childhood, too.

For both better and worse, Disney isn’t a company that makes a technology platform, or even one that makes films. The entire company is instead focused around intellectual property - hence why theme parks are just as important to the company as feature films. Under current CEO Bob Iger, Disney has hoovered up all of the characters you enjoyed as a kid: It bought the Muppets in 2004, Pixar in 2006, Marvel in 2009, LucasFilm in 2012 and 20th Century Fox just this year. 

Think of the mindshare that gives Disney - whether it is Kermit, Buzz Lightyear, Captain America, Han Solo or Homer Simpson you want to watch, you have to hand over your cash to their single corporate gatekeeper.

Disney is still thinking about that future generation - this year alone, Disney is rolling out Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars Episode IX and a remake of The Lion King, all of which will attract a young audience and win significant mindshare - but the utter cultural dominance of Fortnite among young people is an example that even though Disney might seem unbeatable today, it shouldn’t assume that the characters and stories that we love will continue to work forever.

• Disney+ streaming service: price, release date, shows, movies and more