Disney Streaming Service Debuts With Technical Issues Amid High Demand
November 12 2019 - 11:00AM
Dow Jones News
By Erich Schwartzel
Walt Disney Co.'s big streaming debut arrived with technical
glitches that the company blamed on unexpectedly high demand.
The company's new flagship service, called Disney+, launched
Tuesday and immediately caused technical issues for some users,
many of whom took to social media to complain about long wait times
and error messages.
"The consumer demand for Disney+ has exceeded our high
expectations," a Disney spokeswoman said. "We are pleased by this
incredible response and are working to quickly resolve the current
user issue. We appreciate your patience."
An attempt to watch the Star Wars spinoff "The Mandalorian" on
Tuesday was met with a loading page that lasted for more than 40
minutes and still never resulted in the show starting. Other users
said online that their attempts to watch a movie or TV show were
met with error messages that said, "There seems to be an issue
connecting to the Disney+ service." The error messages appeared
with animated Disney characters like Pluto.
DownDetector.com, a web service that monitors technical issues
on websites, at one point had more than 8,000 reports of issues on
Disney+ on Tuesday morning. The majority of the issues reported had
to do with video-streaming capabilities, with a smaller number
reporting problems with logging into the service.
Disney has been under intense pressure to get this launch right.
The company acquired BamTech, a streaming-technology company, to
build the technical infrastructure of the app.
Disney+ has been marketed to users for months, and many of those
trying to watch today bought three-year subscriptions to the
service at a significant discount. Users signing up today can
either pay $6.99 a month or an annual rate of $69.99 after a
seven-day trial.
Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 12, 2019 10:45 ET (15:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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