"Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers

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

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?

Re:PS3

how much live content is there usually? with the huge capacity of dual-layer BDs wouldn't it be more efficient to just put the live content on the disc itself in the first place?

i mean, unless they're having users download more than 4~5 GB of data, it should be possible to squeeze the live content onto the BD by compressing the movie by 1% or stripping out previews. and if they are having users download more than 5 GB of data then that seems really impractical anyway.

the only thing i see live content being good for is perhaps for downloading extra subtitle languages so studios don't have to print localized discs for smaller markets, or perhaps you're a Czech living in the U.S. and want to buy a BD at the local Best Buy but still want Czech subs, etc. and depending on how compressed the audio streams are, they could also do this with alternate language streams.

Re:PS3

how much live content is there usually? with the huge capacity of dual-layer BDs wouldn't it be more efficient to just put the live content on the disc itself in the first place?

Without time travel ability, no. "Live content" means "That movie you bought 5 years ago is showing trailers for next summer's movie lineup."

Re:PS3

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:PS3

preview trailers are something you skip over, not something you waste bandwidth on.

Not if the studios have anything to say about it. Remember good old user operation prohibition [wikipedia.org]? And remember how it was only ever used, pinkie swear, for those FBI warnings in the beginning, never for commercials?

I don't know whether they have done so yet; but the studios would love nothing more than to cram a new set of ads into your eyeballs before every showing.

It's not about live content

It's about tracking the consumer. Even if the "live content" was all of one kilobyte Paramount would host it on their own server. Having each disk "dial home" is in valuable for marketing and racketeering^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopyright enforcement.

Re:PS3

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.

Great Idea!

Now that they've got their servers back up and running, let's slashdot 'em!
Now I remember why I decided to go with software development over network administration!

Re:Great Idea!

Now I remember why I decided to go with software development over network administration!

As a network administrator, let me be the first to say, I hate you.

Re:Great Idea!

The feeling is mutual. But, look on the bright side... at least we're not database administrators :)

Re:Great Idea!

And you know why we become DBAs - because we don't just hate you -- we hate everybody. Us Oracle DBAs even hate ourselves.

Re:Great Idea!

You're not dead yet? Damn modern medicine is keeping people alive forever... so much for quality over quantity... too bad euthanasia is not legal ;-)

STEP2 REVEALED!!!!!!

1. Take a distributed distribution system.
2. Centralize it create a single point of failure.
3. PROFIT!

WFM. Well, FGFM.

Which really makes you wonder what will happen when they decide to shut down this service in a couple of years.

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.)

Re:WFM. Well, FGFM.

Sony's Log:
1/1 11:38pm Fo0 watched Bikini Babes 14
...
1/2 08:45pm Fo0 loaded Ironman
1/2 08:45pm Sent ads for Bikini Babes 15 to Fo0
1/2 08:46pm Fo0 watched Ironman
...
6/6 06:66pm All viewing records subpoenaed and enter public record.

Evil or incompetence?

Here's a better story [yahoo.com] by the way.

So I'm trying to decide if this was evil or just total incompetence.

On the evil side, we have:

• Release a disk with mandatory downloads. They would have to know this will end up bricking the movie for fans. Perhaps they are thinking they can sell "upgraded" disks to the same fans again years later without the stupid download.
• Since no one could be so stupid as to not plan for heavy traffic and use a CDN for content (which they now are), perhaps they planned this failure to get some press about the release of their disk.
• Tell people that it shouldn't happen again, but you have provided a menu to skip the download as if that should make people happy. The fact that they could change the menu means it had to load the menu from their web site. So it still can have timeout issues.

And on the incompetence side.

• Stupidly release a movie which not only downloads mandatory content, but doesn't time out if the download fails. Internet 101 here. 10 minutes trying to connect to a server. Please.
• Don't scale your servers to anticipate traffic. Using a CDN to serve this content is absolutely a no brainer.

Hard to tell. Both are unbelieveable, yet this happened. Thankfully, there is a solution. Don't connect your Blue Ray player to the internet. That will work for now, until they start tying DRM into BD-Live. Idiots.

Re:Evil or incompetence?

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
-- Hanlon's razor

I've worked with Marketing people before and can easily believe that they had no clue about the infrastructure requirements and possible fail points. Actually, even if they did, they wouldn't have asked a techie. They would have asked the techie's manager who probably told them "don't worry about it.

Business as usual in a big, dysfunctional, corporate environment.

Poor planning...

...from companies who have also bought into DRM. Go figure, right?

That optional, downloadable content would slow down the movie itself is just another extension of the two minutes of FBI warning I am forced to sit through when I play a DVD in a standard player.

How much further will this go before the majority of people begin to care?

Okay.

Dead serious question here. I don't have a Blu-Ray player yet. Under what circumstances do they need to be hooked to the internet? Do you have to hook them up when you're doing initial setup? Do you have to hook them up when you want to play any DVD? Do you have to hook them up when you want to play a disc with BD-Live content? What would happen if you just didn't have it hooked to the net and tried to play this?

Re:Okay.

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:Okay.

My experience is with a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, but I'll answer the questions as best I can.

Do you have to hook them up when you're doing initial setup?

No.

Do you have to hook them up when you want to play any DVD?

No.

Do you have to hook them up when you want to play a disc with BD-Live content?

Not to view the movie, but the BD-Live content would require you to have an active Internet connection.

What would happen if you just didn't have it hooked to the net and tried to play this?

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.

media conglomerates:

pirated movies

it's not just about avoiding $20

it's about avoiding this kind of bullshit

when you weigh down your product with this kind of bullshit, pirate product is superior product

retards

Pure FUD

There is no requirement to actually utilize the BD-Live features to watch this title. I picked it up the other day, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. You know what happened? A screen came up ASKING wether or not I wanted to download the additional content. I chose not to, and it continued on its merry way to the main menu and I was able to watch the movie without any issues whatsoever.

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:Was not the Blue Ray capacity enough??

I think part of the need for the extra capacity is the volume of the media in the place.

The size difference of the data files from 480p to 720p to 1080p shouldn't be discounted. Having seen the media + added downloadable content as "value add" model on Xbox, it's a good idea in theory, but it appears Sony once again has questionable execution.

Re:Why is it downloading at all?

Here's a hint:

When picking on someone for their spelling, don't misspell words.

Ignorat twit.