Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day • Hacker News Board

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#61

Post by bluedevil2k » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #29

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.

Indeed. Last night I was telling my wife that it'll be real interesting to see how well the launch goes and that I'd expect them to have continuous issues for the first 3-6 months (which may be Netflix's only prayer). Video is hard to get right, with quirks across many combinations of platform/device/OS/browser version/video card/playback resolution/format features, and it consumes around 90% of total internet traffi…

Buying Netflix? I think Netflix is going to start a steady decline as the content owners continually pull their stuff from Netflix for their own streaming services. The Netflix original stuff, let's be honest, is hit or miss, with most of the movies being a hard miss.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#62

Post by phd514 » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #22

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…

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…

On the engineering compensation factor, I interviewed with BAMTech (the successor to MLB [Major League Baseball] Advanced Media and the underlying video streaming platform for Disney) a few years ago. Their comp was considerably lower than Netflix. I got the impression they expected you to be willing to work for less because you were working on something related to MLB.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#63

Post by dwoozle » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #49

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.

Hulu is dogshit technically, I would hope that Disney+ doesn’t hit a line of Hulu code.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#64

Post by dwoozle » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #43

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.

They did do all that.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#65

Post by NicoJuicy » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

Why would they want to be fully working on day 1. At day 5, yes.

But before that, it's great marketing:

Our platform is too popular to handle demand currently, is the message

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#66

Post by tssva » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

hamburglar wrote: post #30

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 haven't figured out how they will dig themselves out of the hole of not being ubiquitous like Netflix. I'm a prime candidate for buying their service (small children who are definitely going to be missing some of the Disney content they've previously gotten on Netflix) but as far as I can tell, I have no options to subscribe on my two smart TV devices (Roku and Samsung). I'm sure as heck not buying another device j…

Disney+ is available on Roku.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#67

Post by OnlineGladiator » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

sterileopinions wrote: post #57

berdon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"well trodden problem" does not make it any easier. Scaling is hard. For everyone. Testing that scaling works is harder.

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

I have to agree with sterileopinions here. The fact that it's been done multiple times before means you know a lot about how hard it will be, the necessary resources, and can learn from past mistakes.

That doesn't make it easy. But it definitely makes it easier. To say otherwise is to argue that experience isn't useful.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#68

Post by cookiecaper » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

berdon wrote: post #27

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 wonder how that plays with their canabilizing of Hulu subscribers. Does it count those subscribers in the 60 million?

Hulu is primarily owned by Comcast (afaik Disney only has a minority stake). After Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox last year, Comcast and Disney own the vast majority of what people consider AAA entertainment content.

Assuming Disney+ finds its footing, the stage is set for a Hulu/Disney+ duopoly. Comcast and Disney will starve Netflix, Amazon, et al for popular content, while simultaneously bleeding them on exorbitant license fees for the minimal selection they'll be willing to offer.

Instead of switching between Netflix and Amazon Video, most consumers will switch between Hulu for Comcast-owned content (Universal, NBC, others) and Disney+ for Disney-owned content (Disney, ABC, Fox, Pixar, and many more). Netflix subscriptions will lapse accordingly.

Meet the new boss -- same as the old boss. About the only way this is better for the consumer than the old-school cable setup is that municipalities won't be signing exclusive contracts with cable cos barring any competition for decades-long periods of time.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#69

Post by dwoozle » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #33

cycop wrote: post #8

How can you be unprepared for the load? They would have and should have expected and tested for the load on launch day.

Well, it doesn't necessarily make sense to be prepared. You'd basically be preparing for a load spike that you're unlikely to see ever again. It probably makes more sense for most systems to just take the L on day 0 and design for day 1+ instead of designing for day 0 and being overengineered for day 1+.

That’s not the kind of thinking that really works for a brand with such massive consumer trust as Disney. You’re talking about a brand worth $100-200 billion, you don’t just “Take an L.”

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#70

Post by mizzao » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #22

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…

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…

The main cost for Netflix is content, not engineering. They spend billions developing new shows. Disney has tons of existing material they can just monetize, so huge advantage there.