Disney's Streaming Services: Disney+ (and Hulu, ESPN+, Star, & hotstar)

[Animaniac93-98]

Was hoping to see more Muppet related shows but only showing 6 out the 8 movies and no Muppet show, Muppets Tonight, The Muppets (abc), or Dinosaurs...I might just hold off...

I believe Muppets Take Manhattan and Muppets From Space are still with Sony. Disney did not release them to DVD or Blu-ray.

 

[Captain Barbossa]

Is anyone having problems finding it on Vizio SmartCast? SmartCast is the same thing as ChromeCast, and ChromeCast is listed as one of the carriers. SmartCast automatically updated itself, which it normally doesn't do, so I thought that it was adding the app, but I'm having trouble finding it.

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

I believe Muppets Take Manhattan and Muppets From Space are still with Sony. Disney did not release them to DVD or Blu-ray.

There is others like Muppets wizard of Oz, Kermits swamp years and the very merry Muppet Christmas Movie as well

 

[seascape]

There have been some minor problems I have had today as only 1 of my 3 TVs has the app but my Galaxy 8s have had no problems. Love the service and amount of content.

 

[Disstevefan1]

As I expected, Disney + IS DOWN on its first day of launch! I added it to my ROKU, logged in and.... its a blank screen. Good Job Disney!!!!

 

[Slpy3270]

I get that people want to shrug these issues off, but Disney massively hyped this service so there were high expectations. The fact that Disney couldn't prepare the servers for the high demand is going to serious implications for future attempts to win over subscribers and skeptics (see this article here: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/12/20961365/disney-streaming-outage-bamtech).

That's not even getting into the security implications. If all it takes is high volume to cause error messages for Disney+, imagine how easy it could be to launch a DDoS attack on the service.

 

[Frank the Tank]

Sure.. we file that under 'greater than expected demand'... either through true surges or just bad modeling. But really Disney should have been massively overbuilt from the start... this is not some 'tip your toes in..' service... Disney has been banking on this all the way up to the board/street level as the big keystone to their media future.

If they don't have the capacity issues sorted by the evening news time.. they're gonna get roasted this week. A few hours or half day.. ok, if they can't address it quicker than that.. they'll be a punching bag for the next 2 weeks.

Disney is not breaking new ground here with tech... This is Disney playing catchup and the microscope is already on them.

Further to this, does anyone understand why Disney didn’t allow for the download of the app itself until today? I understand that the infrastructure can be strained with a deluge of users coming on all at one time on the launch day, but I wonder is some of that could have been mitigated if people could have downloaded the app over the past several weeks/months instead of all today. Having everyone need to download the app today on top of it being the launch of the service would seem to have put additional strain on the system in a concentrated time period.

 

[seascape]

I have only had minor problems between different movies and shows. There have been no problems during any of shows. The pictures are perfect and no slowdowns, something I can't say with Yahoo or Netflix.

 

[nbreier0805]

As I expected, Disney + IS DOWN on its first day of launch! I added it to my ROKU, logged in and.... its a blank screen. Good Job Disney!!!!

I've been watching all day with no problems? Must only be down for some.

 

[Epcot_Imagineer]

I will always be confused by the people who didn't expect there to be outages and upset by them... there are always outages on every internet service and they always end up just fine. You think Netflix got to where it is today without a single outage? Amazon powers about every online service currently in existence and even they experience near monthly outages.

I wouldn't worry about outages on a brand new streaming service that expects millions of new subscribers right off the bat. Expect some continuing outages while behind the scenes work is done to smooth things out on the server side of things. All will be well.

 

[Slpy3270]

I will always be confused by the people who didn't expect there to be outages and upset by them... there are always outages on every internet service and they always end up just fine. You think Netflix got to where it is today without a single outage? Amazon powers about every online service currently in existence and even they experience near monthly outages.

I wouldn't worry about outages on a brand new streaming service that expects millions of new subscribers right off the bat. Expect some continuing outages while behind the scenes work is done to smooth things out on the server side of things. All will be well.

Disney spent months hyping and promoting the service. They should've also spent enough money to ensure the servers were ready. The fact that they weren't will make skeptics even more skeptical of spending money on something that can only handle so much volume at a time, especially if, as I've said before, the service becomes a target of DDoS trolls.

 

[Epcot_Imagineer]

Disney spent months hyping and promoting the service. They should've also spent enough money to ensure the servers were ready. The fact that they weren't will make skeptics even more skeptical of spending money on something that can only handle so much volume at a time, especially if, as I've said before, the service becomes a target of DDoS trolls.

You can only prepare and build infrastructure so much. They used the month long test in the Netherlands to work out the client/server kinks, and I'm assuming they prepared best they could for a network stress test, but there isn't any way you can truly prepare for a couple million log-ins to a service without a beta (which I'm sure was prevented due to licensing agreements for opening any earlier than the 12th), so I think what's occurring now. DDoS can always be mitigated, but there is always a potential of it; DDoS attacks still plague large services with DNS targeting, that's what took down half the internet a year or so ago for ~12 hours, and that sort of thing couldn't even be prevented by Disney if they tried.

 

[Andrew C]

Disney spent months hyping and promoting the service. They should've also spent enough money to ensure the servers were ready. The fact that they weren't will make skeptics even more skeptical of spending money on something that can only handle so much volume at a time, especially if, as I've said before, the service becomes a target of DDoS trolls.

I would imagine the volume/spikes today is something they will never experience again. Also, I am sure any other glitches outside of just capacity will be corrected.

 

[MisterPenguin]

At 1 PM EST, both the web site and Roku are working fine, now, for me. Can even quickly start up the Mandalorian on both now.

 

[Andrew C]

At 1 PM EST, both the web site and Roku are working fine, now, for me. Can even quickly start up the Mandalorian on both now.

Yep..my Roku TV and fire stick are now operating much better than a couple hours ago. I was still able to watch some stuff then, but now do not seem to be getting errors any more like on the home screen.

 

[DisneyFreak]

Chef Bork has stated that the Disney+ projector has gone "a flumy, flumy!"

 

[mikejs78]

I get that people want to shrug these issues off, but Disney massively hyped this service so there were high expectations. The fact that Disney couldn't prepare the servers for the high demand is going to serious implications for future attempts to win over subscribers and skeptics (see this article here: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/12/20961365/disney-streaming-outage-bamtech).

That's not even getting into the security implications. If all it takes is high volume to cause error messages for Disney+, imagine how easy it could be to launch a DDoS attack on the service.

Disney spent months hyping and promoting the service. They should've also spent enough money to ensure the servers were ready. The fact that they weren't will make skeptics even more skeptical of spending money on something that can only handle so much volume at a time, especially if, as I've said before, the service becomes a target of DDoS trolls.

You obviously have no idea how this works. Capacity is probably not the issue here. More likely a bottleneck that was unanticipated until users actually started using the platform.. And those things become easy to identify and fix once you have actual load (you can simulate load all you want, but nothing stresses a platform like actual users).

I've never seen a single high volume service like this launch without issues, with the exception of something from Google or Amazon. As someone who works in this field I would have been shocked if they hadn't had issues.

 

[phillip9698]

I get that people want to shrug these issues off, but Disney massively hyped this service so there were high expectations. The fact that Disney couldn't prepare the servers for the high demand is going to serious implications for future attempts to win over subscribers and skeptics (see this article here: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/12/20961365/disney-streaming-outage-bamtech).

That's not even getting into the security implications. If all it takes is high volume to cause error messages for Disney+, imagine how easy it could be to launch a DDoS attack on the service.

Even Amazon experiences load outages, this doesnt implicate anything.

 

[Master Yoda]

You obviously have no idea how this works. Capacity is probably not the issue here. More likely a bottleneck that was unanticipated until users actually started using the platform.. And those things become easy to identify and fix once you have actual load (you can simulate load all you want, but nothing stresses a platform like actual users).

I've never seen a single high volume service like this launch without issues, with the exception of something from Google or Amazon. As someone who works in this field I would have been shocked if they hadn't had issues.

Even Google and Amazon have issues from time to time. I know I am not the only one to see this screen nearly every Prime day.

 

[flynnibus]

Further to this, does anyone understand why Disney didn’t allow for the download of the app itself until today? I understand that the infrastructure can be strained with a deluge of users coming on all at one time on the launch day, but I wonder is some of that could have been mitigated if people could have downloaded the app over the past several weeks/months instead of all today. Having everyone need to download the app today on top of it being the launch of the service would seem to have put additional strain on the system in a concentrated time period.

And probably significantly... would have allowed them to stress their authentication and partner integration platforms.. which is probably a lot of the variability that needed hammer testing.

Big Bang rollouts are tough to nail perfectly. Like I said, as long as Disney gets it together in the first 6-12hrs... should be able to stand proud I think.