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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

#131

Post by riazrizvi »

gamblor956 wrote: post #122
riazrizvi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a gigantic arctic front moving across most of the US East coast right now. Thousands of schools and businesses are closed due to the weather. The point of launching on a Tuesday morning was to test out the system with a small audience ahead of Thanksgiving, or even the weekend, when they would properly expect to be slammed. But due to the weather, they're getting slammed by all the people stuck at home with n…

Given that a good plan would involve a contingency of handling initial users between 10mm and 100mm, bad weather is a poor excuse.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#133

Post by EpicEng »

crooked-v wrote: post #99
NicoJuicy wrote: post #65

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

Also, launching on a Tuesday is a great way to get people to hammer on the service for a few days before 'seriously' using it for 'movie night' on a Friday or Saturday.

At least, it would have been, if not for the massive early winter storm currently barreling across the Midwest.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#135

Post by EpicEng »

shmerl wrote: post #79
nyuszika7h wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably because Widevine on Linux doesn't support VMP. But even Amazon Prime Video streams in SD on Linux, better than nothing but still a bad experience for users.

Whatever it is, it's simply dumb and totally Disney style.

Is it dumb though? Why should they care about Linux users? Really, how does it make sense for them to spend time on it?

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#136

Post by spike021 »

Managed to download the Apple TV app and watch the first episode of The Mandalorian last night when it released early. Watching that episode was completely smooth at the time. But later while just browsing I found several issues. Some content curation related, like one or two shows only having a single season listed, but multiple seasons' worth of episodes assigned to that single season. Also, the queuing system (adding shows/movies to the watchlist or w/e they call it) didn't seem to work; the check mark showed after selecting it for each item, but nothing would actually come up on the queue page.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#137

Post by rosege »

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…

Netflix is renown for paying their engineers very well. I would be interested to know if Disney+ also pay such high salaries to attract the best?

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#138

Post by chrisan »

dhagz wrote: post #129
mizzao wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And from the look of it, EVERYTHING is there. So far only a couple of things I haven't been able to find, which were either super-niche (an old Christmas sing-along video I watched as a kid), or Song of the South.

Almost everything, some films are still under contract and may be a while before D+ can in house them.

Solo and The Last Jedi are still under Netflix for now

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#139

Post by Qwertystop »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #126
baddox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, the "Standard" Netflix plan offers 2 simultaneous streams in HD for $12.99 per month in the US. The "Premium" plan offers 4 simultaneous streams in UHD for $15.99 per month. But anyway, I only have one screen, so it's still the case that Netflix charges considerably more just to receive UHD content. As price discrimination goes, that's a pretty scummy way to do it. They've shot and produced this content in UHD,…

Netflix's costs are higher for UHD streaming: storage, bandwidth, production, et cetera. What's scummy about it?

Storage and production costs for something available in UHD are the same regardless of whether someone streams a downscaled version. Storing multiple resolutions (assuming they do that rather than downscaling live from the stored highest-res or making the client do it) is where additional costs for more versions would show up.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#140

Post by decafninja »

gamblor956 wrote: post #120
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> willing to work for less because you were working on something related to MLB This part I don't get. The intersection of people who love MLB but are the best talent you're looking for, may not be aligned. If you want great engineers, you shouldn't care whether or not they particularly like MLB. It's a weird hiring funnel. Not all projects demand the best talent, but if Disney Plus wants 60 million subscribers, they…

Importantly, they also worked a lot fewer hours than the Netflix engineers did and probably got to go home every night and weekend. Netflix pays very well but also works its tech workers hard.

I'm sure this depends on the team, but I've actually heard from someone who works there that Netflix views working overtime consistently as a red flag? As in, everyone is supposed to be a superstar engineer, and not being able to finish your work in 9-5 makes you look bad?
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