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

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#291

Post by mikelbring » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

a-wu wrote: post #151

jonwachob91 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> The logical conclusion, of course, is that Disney should've just bought Netflix Why buy Netflix when you could get a similarly qualified team and infrastructure by buying Hulu? Oh wait... Disney already owns Hulu... Whoops. What about ESPN. ESPN has a really good streaming product. Oh wait... Disney already owns that one too... Disney didn't need to buy Netflix, they just needed to use the resources they already…

ESPN's streaming is one of the worst ones I've ever used. It is constantly buffering on my 275 Mbps downlink and every other time it has issues with authenticating to my provider.

I have noticed ESPN works way better on my Roku than my Xbox. A lot of the apps do. I use to think it was just ESPN but started to notice this.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#292

Post by cwkoss » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

quacker wrote: post #280

cwkoss wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture is public. By arguing that it should be privately owned, you are effectively saying that poor people shouldn't be allowed to participate. Disney's business model has been destroying the potential of thousands of great artists who failed to reach cultural relevancy because their parents were barely making ends meet and couldn't afford to buy in, and the cultural language is now locked behind a gate with a toll…

> Can you name single great work of art created by Disney that isn't mostly derivative? Reflect on why you can't: they are monetizers of existing culture, not creators of originality. You sort of have a point, since this is Disney we're considering, but this is a slippery slope. Most _everything_ is derivative work. Should I pirate all commercial software that's powered by open source software? Should I never pay for…

You should pirate content that you want to consume without supporting the creators.

If Disney only made derivative movies and didn't lobby to to make IP laws more strict and punitive, I would not think it was immoral to give them your money.

Consumers should consider paying for IP an investment in the creator's future work. If a creator made something you enjoy, fill their pockets so they can make another great thing. If the creator is known to damage society with their profits, giving them money should be avoided.

Does paying for (before viewing) vs pirating a Disney film have any meaningful effect on the quality of future films?

The current system optimizes for movies that look good in a 30-second trailer, because you can't get your money back if the movie is bad. If you really like a movie you pirated, you should buy it to send the signal. I'd argue paying for any movie before you see it contributes to the decline of film as art we've seen in the past ~3 decades.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

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Post by scarface74 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:13 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #290

scarface74 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney has always been about technology. From the animatronics and the other attractions at the theme parks to the engineers at Pixar and LucasFilms. As I posted above, they own BAMTech, one of the most well respected companies in the streaming infrastructure space. Building for scale is not hard for good engineers, building for rapid, reliable scale from day one is hard. No one knows how to do it. Building for scale…

>> Disney has always been about technology. Um.. have you ever worked at Disney? It's a great company but having worked there I wouldn't describe it that way. >> From .. the engineers at Pixar and LucasFilms. Two visionary companies, staffed by many ex-Disney employees and bought by after their technical innovations were completely mature. Disney is an amazing company that I respect but having worked there I would sa…

and they figure out technology when they have to.

How is that different than any other company? When you do otherwise, you end up with Google that just throws a lot of stuff up against the wall and comparatively little sticks or the pre-Jobs 2.0 Apple with the “Advance Technology Group” that couldn’t ship a product if their life depended on it.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

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Post by aprdm » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

All and all seems like a pretty successful launch. Massive scale and issues seemed to be resolved pretty quickly, props to the team !

I am very curious about the future of Netflix as Disney has way more content and deeper pockets.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#295

Post by swasheck » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:16 AM 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…

Broad device support is also a large factor that favors Netflix. We have children who range from 3-14 and Disney has something for all of them - except support for the devices we have. Our TV is an older (NetCast) LG, we “only” have a Wii-U, and we don’t have old computer hardware just laying around. Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Google Play, YouTube support our TV. Not Disney+. Looks like we’re gonna do our one week and then wait for a while.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

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Post by cwkoss » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #278

julienb_sea wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon and kickstarter models function based on closed-off perks for the supporters, not just superfans ready to give money for no reason. This is reliant on some protection for those perks, otherwise there is no reason for that model. The idea that piracy isn't stealing is nonsense. Why don't you try creating something, then having someone rip it off against your will, plaster it all over their ad-supported platfor…

I've seen developers spend years making a game only to have little press and no one buying or playing it. That game was put on torrent sites and people started to write about it and the game became a success. Piracy can turn a great product that no one knows about into a success.

I agree. I think the segment of people who are willing to pay full price but pirate purely for financial reasons is vanishingly small.

Most pirates are trying content they would not be willing to buy, which expands the market for most content (provided that content hasn't already been carpetbombed via ads across many media channels so most people already know about it).

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

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Post by rblatz » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

jamroom wrote: post #190

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hulu is so buggy on my TV I regularly think of cancelling it. I'm not sure how valuable their technical infrastructure is.

Hulu on my Apple TV is excellent - I find the interface to be much less "noisy" than Netflix and I like the large back catalog on a lot shows. Honestly I subscribed for one show (forget what it was now) but found I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

I constantly am fighting Hulu, the stream will crash. It looses my place, shows like 6 ads and is a pain to seek to the place I was last at. It’s also super jumpy and will jump out of the video if you look at the remote wrong. Such a messed up interface.

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

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Post by sowbug » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #238

mike_hock wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make the moral choice and pirate their content instead of giving them your money to fund further overreach. ... if you absolutely must have their crap in the first place.

Tangential, but does anyone know of good hardware to function as a standalone HDMI output video server? I've been wanting to play with making a 'plug and play' box that I could give to kids/grandparents in my life who don't have the technical skills to pirate for themselves, preloaded with content I think is good and they'd enjoy. What is the cheapest hardware that can output arbitrary 1080p video over HDMI at a good…

About $21 shipped: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32960646521.html

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

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Post by taurath » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:14 AM UTC

jamesjyu wrote: post #276

user5994461 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The olympics and world cups do that every year just fine.

But their usage pattern and infra can build on past experience, whereas D+ has none of that. Black swans galore.

BamTech has the experience, and they built the platform that Disney bought. It’s not a new team

Re: Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

#300

Post by rawoke083600 » Wed, Nov 13, 2019, 4:22 AM UTC

Ja a good rule/tip I learned about scaling: Everyone knows their first bottleneck... be the the db, the search service or the webserver... very few ppl know their SECOND bottleneck. Sometimes the first bottleneck is fixed suddenly(new upgrade, fixed config) but few people knows their second item in the chain that's the bottleneck and get hit by this in production.