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Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

bbc.com

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Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#41

Post by fluidcruft »

crooked-v wrote: post #32
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix has ~160 million subscribers. So, they're saying they need to be a third of the size of Netflix to break even. Since "break even" isn't all that interesting to investors, for it to be profitably worthwhile, I'd imagine they need to essentially become as big as Netflix. It seems unclear how feasible that may be. The only thing keeping me wanting to use Netflix is quality content, which has been in decline rece…

A key thing drawing me from Netflix to Disney+ is that the latter is willing to actually just give me lists A-Z of all available shows and movies. I'm sure there have to be others who feel the same way.

Yeah, what is it with Netflix and making it impossible to find something to watch anymore? It's like you open it up and not only do all the lists change and it's not easy to find things, but they also run around changing the cover images of the series you've been watching so you don't even recognize it at first and you're hunting around to find it again.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#42

Post by riazrizvi »

MentallyRetired wrote: post #3

I don't think anyone on hackernews would be surprised by this. The scale they have to operate at is absolutely insane. To scale flawlessly on day 1 is a big ask of any development team.

It breaks when you hit the main CTA button to start a free trial now. I don’t understand how a company with billions of dollars in resources can fail to solve such a well trodden problem. Even if there were a billion users on day 1. I wonder if the problem is due to an abdication of parts of the engineering problem, an over reliance on 3rd party services, that meant that no-one in the engineering team was able to study the whole engineering problem from first principles, which would result in inadequate fail overs.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#43

Post by jl6 »

I cannot imagine any org being able to pull off such a large scale launch as one single event. Makes me wonder why they didn’t try to phase it by offering “insider” access, trial periods, limited invites, etc. like Gmail did back when it launched.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#44

Post by cookiecaper »

futhey wrote: post #12
dgritsko wrote: post #7

> "Disney has estimated it will need to attract at least 60 million subscribers, putting it on a par with Netflix, in order for Disney+ to break even." How's that for a barrier to entry? I don't doubt that they will be able to hit it, but it's still a mind-bogglingly high number. I think that's part of why I'd like to see Netflix's continued success - competition is a good thing, and if they were to ever go under I d…

Likely a calculation of break-even with lost licensing revenue. The Disney+ adventure is a risk because you're foregoing easy licensing money for hard product money, and gambling that it'll be worth it.

Above all, Disney+ is an attempt to reclaim the massive royalties Disney was reaping from every cable subscription that carried ESPN. Almost a quarter of The Walt Disney Company's revenue originated from ESPN in 2015-ish (which was the last time I looked), making it neck-and-neck with Parks and Resorts for Disney's most valuable business unit. Cord-cutting was a serious risk to them then and I'm sure they've only felt the sting more over the last five years.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#45

Post by berdon »

riazrizvi wrote: post #42
MentallyRetired wrote: post #3

I don't think anyone on hackernews would be surprised by this. The scale they have to operate at is absolutely insane. To scale flawlessly on day 1 is a big ask of any development team.

It breaks when you hit the main CTA button to start a free trial now. I don’t understand how a company with billions of dollars in resources can fail to solve such a well trodden problem. Even if there were a billion users on day 1. I wonder if the problem is due to an abdication of parts of the engineering problem, an over reliance on 3rd party services, that meant that no-one in the engineering team was able to stu…

"well trodden problem" does not make it any easier.

Scaling is hard. For everyone. Testing that scaling works is harder.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#46

Post by tedsanders »

crooked-v wrote: post #32
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix has ~160 million subscribers. So, they're saying they need to be a third of the size of Netflix to break even. Since "break even" isn't all that interesting to investors, for it to be profitably worthwhile, I'd imagine they need to essentially become as big as Netflix. It seems unclear how feasible that may be. The only thing keeping me wanting to use Netflix is quality content, which has been in decline rece…

A key thing drawing me from Netflix to Disney+ is that the latter is willing to actually just give me lists A-Z of all available shows and movies. I'm sure there have to be others who feel the same way.

Netflix has had A-Z sort for years. On web, click on TV Shows / Movies, then click on the four box icon, and then change it from 'suggestions for you' to 'A-Z' or 'Z-A'.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#47

Post by fullshark »

dgritsko wrote: post #7

> "Disney has estimated it will need to attract at least 60 million subscribers, putting it on a par with Netflix, in order for Disney+ to break even." How's that for a barrier to entry? I don't doubt that they will be able to hit it, but it's still a mind-bogglingly high number. I think that's part of why I'd like to see Netflix's continued success - competition is a good thing, and if they were to ever go under I d…

I'd be curious how projections were calculated and what the timeline is to get to 60 mill for this calculation. Seems like adhering to business as usual is a slow but profitable death for their home video / TV department.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#48

Post by lotsofpulp »

fluidcruft wrote: post #41
crooked-v wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key thing drawing me from Netflix to Disney+ is that the latter is willing to actually just give me lists A-Z of all available shows and movies. I'm sure there have to be others who feel the same way.

Yeah, what is it with Netflix and making it impossible to find something to watch anymore? It's like you open it up and not only do all the lists change and it's not easy to find things, but they also run around changing the cover images of the series you've been watching so you don't even recognize it at first and you're hunting around to find it again.

They are clearly engaging in user hostile behavior hoping that the number of users who cancel due to being inconvenienced is less than the number who are retained/gained by being fooled into thinking there is more than there is.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#49

Post by Hamuko »

Qwertystop wrote: post #34

On the one hand, of course launch day of a big service is going to have problems; they always do. On the other hand, Disney owns Hulu. Why is this a launch day of anything other than the cosmetic parts of the frontend and a new empty copy of some databases? What is there to break that's not already well-established?

Pretty sure it's not built on top of Hulu. They bought a majority in BAMTech way before getting Hulu.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#50

Post by logfromblammo »

fluidcruft wrote: post #41
crooked-v wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key thing drawing me from Netflix to Disney+ is that the latter is willing to actually just give me lists A-Z of all available shows and movies. I'm sure there have to be others who feel the same way.

Yeah, what is it with Netflix and making it impossible to find something to watch anymore? It's like you open it up and not only do all the lists change and it's not easy to find things, but they also run around changing the cover images of the series you've been watching so you don't even recognize it at first and you're hunting around to find it again.

As well as the annoyance of snippet videos auto-playing as you're trying to browse titles, without an explicit user action for "show me a snippet of this".
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