"Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers 283
secmartin writes "Shortly after the release of Iron Man on Blu-ray on October 1, people started complaining of defective discs; the problem turned out to be that all the Blu-ray players downloading additional content brought down Paramount's BD-Live servers, causing delays while loading the disc. Which really makes you wonder what will happen when they decide to shut down this service in a couple of years."
PS3 (Score:5, Informative)
The PS3 has an option to allow/disallow Blu-Ray discs to connect to the Internet. It might be for just this sort of thing?
WFM. Well, FGFM. (Score:5, Informative)
People will get BD players that don't suck?
I bought Iron Man shortly after work on Tuesday, and put it in my media center (currently running a demo of Arcsoft Totalmedia Theater). The branded "loading" screen spun for about 10 seconds, it gave me a warning saying it couldn't connect to the BD-Live server, and threw me to the disc's main menu.
(Of course, there is a secondary WTF for the disc being mastered to try to download from BD-Live in the beginning, instead of when you go to the appropriate menu, but the primary WTF is the other players out there not failing gracefully to the disc.)
Today I put the disc in again, and this time it downloaded the content.
(Granted, there are real concerns about the key servers for authenticating BD/HD-DVD discs, but this discussion is just within the scope of downloading extra content via BD-Live.)
Pure FUD (Score:5, Informative)
No BD-Live just means I can't have the option to have random quiz questions pop up on my screen during the film like "What kind of plane is shooting at Iron Man?" (F-22, btw). So no, it won't cause the world to end if they shut down the servers. All you have to do is click "No" and continue on to watch the movie that you actually bought the disc for.
Re:PS3 (Score:5, Informative)
I don't remember that, but you might very well be right. I don't go into those menus very often. What I do know is that the Iron Man disc itself asks if you want to download whatever extra content there might be. Just pick "no" and the menu loads and the movie plays perfectly, at least it did for me.
Re:Okay. (Score:5, Informative)
The answer is there are no circumstances under which a BD player truly needs to be hooked to the internet. In fact many BD players don't even have network connectivity. The only "advantage" to a player that does offer internet connectivity is that it offers a way for the studios to monitor what you are watching, and to deliver extra material to your player, and a way to obtain firmware updates for the player.
Re:PS3 (Score:5, Informative)
i thought the BD live content was extra content only downloaded once when you first play the disc--things like bonus scenes, soundtracks, ringtones, and other promo material--rather than just video streamed live each time you play it. i mean, that's the impression this kotaku article [kotaku.com] gives.
so all this is just so that the BD you bought will show you the latest movie advertisements each time it's played? that hardly seems worthwhile. preview trailers are something you skip over, not something you waste bandwidth on.
i wouldn't have thought that Sony or the movie studios would waste money and resources to provide each BD release with an ever-changing online video stream. just keeping the servers up would be expensive enough, but they'd also have to pay people to constantly update the live content for each disc they put out. and for 5 years? how much would it cost to produce or license 5 years worth of live content? that's like running a really unprofitable TV station that people only watch for 15-20 minutes once every few months.
Re:Okay. (Score:5, Informative)
My experience is with a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, but I'll answer the questions as best I can.
No.
No.
Not to view the movie, but the BD-Live content would require you to have an active Internet connection.
You would have all of the content of the disc available, but none of the extra features (whatever those may be) that come from the BD-Live segment.
Not sure what to make of it... (Score:3, Informative)
I think there was more to it than just the BD-Live issues.
Around 9:00pm we tried playing the disc on a first-gen PS3 80GB (just for reference) and it kept getting stuck at the loading screen (the ARC reactor and nothing else). Finally at 9:50pm we went back to the shop and exchanged it. Back home by 10:10pm, popped the disc in and it went through to the regular menu on the first try.
Did the server manage to come back to life in the 20 minutes it took to get a different disc? Or were there really a bad batch of discs?
Re:It's not about live content (Score:1, Informative)
both blue-ray and hd-dvd have the remote kill switch option of the drm standard. why do you think it requires a net connection?
Re:It's not about live content (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Evil or incompetence? (Score:4, Informative)
Though to be fair, my linux computer can't shut down correctly, either, because it gets to "unmounting network filesystems" and just sits there forever.
No, that's not fair. A network mounted disk is very much a horse of another feather, or something like that.
If you have any local state that has not been written back to the disk, it will be lost forever. In that instance you want to do a umount -f and kiss whatever data you most recently dealt with goodbye.
Definitely NOT the same thing.
Re:media conglomerates: (Score:2, Informative)
I use to download, but it's too traceable. And slow. So I upgraded to a 'download by mail' service. For about the same cost per bite as my dsl line for DVDs (and significantly less for HD content) they send me DVDs, HDDVDs, and BlueRay disks of all the movies I want to watch! I just pop them in my ripper and next thing you know they show up on my media server just like I downloaded them! And when I'm done, I just mail them back. It's like downloading DVDs just the torrent client is your mail person!
Re:Web isn't Really for National Media (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PS3 (Score:3, Informative)
Oh wonderful. Not only does my movie break because of some crashed server off in Paramountland, but it breaks because it can't show me an ad.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
My decision to eschew Blu-ray in favor of downloads/not supporting assholes seems better by the day.
Re:PS3 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Web isn't Really for National Media (Score:3, Informative)
On interactive TV forums I've written extensively talking about how web infrastructure isn't really for national TV and large events with not 100 or 1000 but multiple millions of people try to access the same data within a few seconds of each other.
This is on a smaller scale but certainly proves the point; I do feel there are solutions for pre-caching to tiered servers through the network fabric; but some day when SuperBowl XXX runs and 200,000 TV sets try to access the same JavaTV Applets at the same time... that real fun begins.
The problem is that we're using unicast when we mean to broadcast. IP isn't really engineered for broadcast like TV is but that's what mass media needs. 200M people want the olympic opening ceremony? The main stream gets broadcast. Only things that are truly on demand, or only required by a few, is it reasonable to unicast -- be they Klingon subtitles or the names of the current members of the IOC.
Re:First Post. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually HiDef (not specifically bluray) is that much better when played full screen on a computer. Do the comparison sometime yourself and you will see that the difference is not subtle. However, I concede that the difference is not so great or obvious on many TVs. Also the degree of difference depends on the title. Some transfers are better than others and some of the older prints do not do so well on HiDef. On those titles there may be virtually no difference at all.
Re:PS3 (Score:2, Informative)
imho it's not a good financial decision to buy a standalone BD player.
Re:PS3 (Score:3, Informative)
where the hell do you live that you actually get to "pick" your ISP? i live about 30 minutes east of L.A. and here we used to only get Adelphia (now Time Warner i think) cable internet. for about 2-3 years we regularly experienced 75% downtime on a daily basis. when Verizon DSL came to our area, we switched over immediately. we still lose connection about 4-5 times a day and sometimes for several hours at a time, and don't get anything close to the advertised speeds, but it's acceptable (we don't really have any choice but to accept it).
the point is, most people don't get to choose who their ISP is. if you're lucky you can choose between cable or DSL, but you're stuck with the provider that is in your area. unless of course you expect people to move to a different city in order to choose a decent ISP.