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"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."
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?
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!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
1. Take a distributed distribution system.
2. Centralize it create a single point of failure.
3. PROFIT!
Disconnect from network before playing.
God people are stupid.
TFA is a little sparse, and I don't feel like forking out the cash right now to test whether I can work around the call home feature via a simple loopback definition for the BD live servers in my local DNS cache.
At least Xbox Live has the ability to disable logging into Xbox live to play games. It's built on a system that includes maintenence and downtime. An expected consideration for any online service. Any service built to assume to 100% uptime is really bad architecture.
I thought the only reason for Blue Ray was the enormous additional storage capacity it had.
If now the movie in fact require downloading content from servers, then I bet they don't really use the capacity the disc really have, and make me believe a lot of people will be dissatisfied with the disk as the server is taken off air sometime realizing that some of the content they accessed no longer is available from what they believed to be a disc...
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.)
With all the storage capacity available on these blu-ray discs why should there be any downloading of additional content? Does the movie really fill up the whole disc? Forgive my ignorace, I still haven't made the blu-ray jump.
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.
http://www.hawknest.com/
So I'm trying to decide if this was evil or just total incompetence.
On the evil side, we have:
And on the incompetence side.
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.
...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?
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?
This sounds like a MASSIVE Design Flaw. It is either a flaw with the BluRay standard, or with the way paramount made the BluRay disk. It should ALWAYS default to an error if the online content can't be downloaded...
However DVD's and BluRay do not NEED downloadable content. Just but the G** **MN content on the DISKS!!! Most people keep their DVD's for years! I have a few that are over 10 years old! And NOBODY is going to keep servers up and running forever just because some movies they released have online content.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I bought the disk Tuesday also and watched it that evening on my PS3. As mentioned earlier, the PS3 gives you the option to dload or not. I first tried it with my wireless disabled for the PS3 and it seemed to play fine. I then reloaded the disk and selected yes, dload content. It took about 1 minute (I have 6mg DSL). I did'nt watch the traffic to see how much content was dloaded, or to see if anything was actually dloaded other than Sony's rootkit..err... "User Experience Enhancement". It seemed to play the same, Dolby Digital Audio, 1080p, stream. Menus looked the same so I'm thinking it was the latest DRM that was dloaded. Point is that as long as your player supports it, it doesn't matter if it connects or not (for now anyway). We will see how strict the Blueray 2.0 spec is enforced as to internet access in the future.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
All that rage and bitterness from the Xbox fanboys who spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on worthless HD-DVD products has to go somewhere. These periodic 'OMG!!! BluRay Rapes Kitten" stories on Slashdot are like therapy for Xbox/HD-DVD fanboys.
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.
I, for one, am one of the people that invested in HD-DVD and hoped it would win out (I thought it was superior technology).... but the same week that Toshiba gave up the ghost... I went out and bought a PS3 and have never looked back.
People need to get over it. Bluray + PS3 = Really Good Platform. The PS3 just does so much more than just playing movies or games... I don't see how anyone with an HDTV and sound system gets by without one...
Anyway... I agree with the GP. I popped in Iron Man last night (rented) and it asked me if I wanted to download the BD-Live stuff. I didn't care so I just clicked "No" and we were able to watch the movie without issue.
BTW - What is the BFD about this movie? I waited to see it from Netflix like usual... but I was really anticipating a great movie from all the hype it got when it was released. Both my wife and I agreed that it was a mediocre movie at best. It had a lot of ridiculous plot elements and quite a few instances of bad acting. The camera work felt cliche and the dialog was uninspired. I just don't get it. I had a friend of mine say that he liked Iron Man more than the Dark Knight... but I don't think they're even in the same league...
Friedmud
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?
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.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
BTW - What is the BFD about this movie?
I suspect that expectations were just really low. For one thing, it's Iron Man. I know Iron Man has some hardcore fans, but he's really not one of the major heroes. (I'm sure some Iron Man fan will flip out at hearing this and tell me all about how he has played a major role in some terribly important events in the Marvel universe.) Also, a big project of that sort, with a relatively unproven director, and I think people imagined all sorts of ways that this thing could turn bad. These sorts of movies generally turn into special effects suck-fests.
But the movie didn't fall down in any of the ways that people were expecting to. That, paired with some decent performances from actors who you would expect to give decent performances, lead to the whole project exceeding expectations. In movies, just as in politics, sometimes exceeding some seriously low expectations ends up getting counted as a major victory.
Still, I'd say it was a pretty solid movie.
DIVX players that phoned home was a great idea that mysteriously failed.
Let's secretly try again with the new BD-drm players.
Then we can sell BD-disposables which only work in a phone-home player.
HD-DIVX-DRM+. The ultimate way to hide our data from those consumers!!
Oh man, do I remember what I was doing at 6:66 PM that day... it was glorious. A beautiful flock of pigs were flying toward the sunset, and the ground beneath me seemed to be a touch colder (I remembered hearing about hell freezing over a couple of minutes beforehand). Meanwhile, someone, somewhere had divided by zero, causing my calendar to indicate that it was the year 1900.
Good times, good times.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This definitely breaks First-sale Doctrine. coming straight from Wikipedia:
"In 1997 in Novell v. Network Trade Center 25 F. Supp. 2d 1218 (C.D. Utah 1997)[2] purchaser is an "owner" by way of sale and is entitled to the use and enjoyment of the software with the same rights as exist in the purchase of any other good. Said software transactions do not merely constitute the sale of a license to use the software. The shrinkwrap license included with the software is therefore invalid as against such a purchaser insofar as it purports to maintain title to the software in the copyright owner. Under the first sale doctrine, NTC was able to redistribute the software to end-users without copyright infringement. Transfer of a copyrighted work that is subject to the first sale doctrine extinguishes all distribution rights of the copyright holder upon transfer of title."
and
"In 2008, in Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk Inc.[2], a U.S. Federal District Judge in Washington rejected a software vendor's argument that it only licensed copies of its software, rather than selling them, and that therefore any resale of the software constituted copyright infringement. Judge Richard A. Jones cited first-sale doctrine when ruling that a reseller was entitled to sell used copies of the vendor's software regardless of any licensing agreement that might have bound the software's previous owners [3]."
There is nothing in the spec that requires this. If they had wanted they could have tested if the player supported networking and added a new menu which allowed users to manually connect to their servers for extra content.
Frankly this is all Paramount's own fault. Aside from the technical fuckup, I have to question the whole ethic of a disk that automatically "phones home" just by inserting it. For starters it means Paramount are tracking usage of this title. It also means the experience could change every time its loaded. Could we see adverts or new trailers being inserted onto disk? Or studios prominently promoting their own online stores or other content? What happens in 10 years if the website bitrots? Will the disk even play any more or will it hang like it did here?
I think it's very telling that the first prominent user of BD-Live immediately abuses it. BD-Live is IMO a waste of time and will continue to be while it used in such superficial and intrusive ways. Every 2.0 player should have the option to disable internet on a global and per-disk basis. Maybe some day a disk will produce a compelling use for it but nothing comes close yet.
That shouldn't be possible. I mean, literally, technically, you should have to explicitly permit a disc to access to internet outside of the disc's content - something in the player software that the disc can't override or ignore. What else can blu-ray discs do on your player? Pull up a list of other discs you've watched, phone home about them, ...?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"The idea of cornering a drug struck upon my mind then as a sort of irresponsible monkey trick that no one would ever be permitted to do in reality... But I've learnt differently since. The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will presently be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy.... I will confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do that would pretty certainly go to jail. Now I know that any one who could really bring it off would be much more likely to go to the House of Lords!"
--H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay (1909)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Maybe they should use bittorrent to alleviate the load on their servers. :)
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.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You can also build a DB of "first views". If there's a unique serial number on the player, or even the disc, this could then be used for enforcement purposes at a later time. For example, say the disc plays on a player that they later discover is owned by a conference center or a school, etc... That might indicate a "public performance" for which the work is not licensed, therefore copyright infringement.
If the disc keeps popping up on different players, that might indicate a rental disc. If rental discs are issued with a different ID code, it might be used to nail mom & pop rental shops that are buying retail DVD's and renting them, or commercial outfits that are buying discs under restrictive contracts that forbid resale, etc...
All kinds of possibilities when discs phone home. Welcome to the brave new world.
Quite true, but relatively few people regular people (as opposed to Slashdot readers) watch movies on their computer.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Think closely on this one.
When you put the movie in, it must contact a server before you can play it?
This is bullshit DRM. It's not even buying a movie, it's just a rental. This is a violation of every edict of consumerism.
And this is exactly why I refuse to buy blu-ray.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Every BD article has plenty of posts about early adopters and waiting. And posts about how BD isn't worth it.
This article, however, really clarifies the issues. I think in the backs of our minds we've all seen them - but I've recently learned by contemplating my navel that differences in computer marketing vs. all-other marketing is prolly making us all schizophrenic - or quadraphrenic - and burying obvious things we know or making us discuss them obtusely.
1. By the time BD could come down in price - volume shakeout in manufacturing, etc. - there should be new video codecs (normal (whatever that means) evolutionary time assumed) and faster processors. It seems more and more obvious that this adds up to better lossless compression. And that for me implies full HD content on normal DVD media. (Anecdotal proof - BD is so old, AFAIR, Apple was pre-Intel when first supporting it. Whack away if I'm mis-remembering. Not to say that we should use Apple calendars, just saying, most remember that, and can think of the many tech changes since then.)
2. By the time BD has its approach to consumers with respect to live content figured out (repeat - approach to consumers, not technical issues) - there will have been another revolution in internetworking and web designs and web threats.
BD is beyond a non-starter as of right now.
Compare DVD:
0. Develop
1. Only game in town (practically, um-k?, let's overlook laser discs from two generations earlier)
2. Format figured out by the time players hit
3. No change to format
4. Price comes down due to usual market and manufacturing processes
5. Early adopters may more for privilege (nothing wrong with that!!!!), overall, consumers win
Compare BD:
0. Develop
1. HD-DVD comes out as a fuck-you-me-too
2. BD rushed to market to combat HD-DVD, well before intended release
3. Design not finished
4. Format and delivery options vague or driven by too-soon-to-market
5. Some early adopters report already being fucked
6. BD providers scrambling to fix live content delivery problems, DRM woes - minimize fuck-you to early adopters and protect BD reputation
7. Rushed development to market - were live delivery or protection requirements really known???
There was no incentive for DVD changes other than price from day one. It just worked.
There is a lot of incentive for BD change from day one. It does not just work.
BD madness must end. Continued consumption of BD products is support for a format that either might not survive, or will cause BD to survive in a fit of corporate face-saving when better solutions could have existed, or are known to exist by some researchers, but become buried.
Summary:
The development and beta cycles for BD are out of whack because of the HD-DVD war. Money and time lost. More money and time will be - or should be - spent to recover. No proof that proper recover with newer technology won't achieve same results with DVD media, different DVD content layout. Feel free to substitute XXX for DVD in above argument, where XXX is better solution following DVD-to-market model.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
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.
Well, I picked it up on Tuesday, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. It didn't. A blue flashing circle showed up on the screen, and no message whatsoever about what was happening appeared. I took the disc out. I cleaned it and put it back on. I changed the input on the tv and WATCHED A 45 MINUTE TV EPISODE on my DVR, then went back to it to see if it had finished doing whatever it was that it was doing. It hadn't. Eventually I figured it out that it was due to BD-Live servers and changed the PS3 settings.
Here's what happened with you. Either you picked it up before their servers started messing up / after their servers were back up by which point they added the additional menu option that asks if you want to download the additional content or you had your PS3 set up to "ask" before connecting to BD-Live.
Under BD settings for the PS3 there's an option on whether or not to allow the Blu-Ray discs to connect to BD-Live servers. Here's the fucking catch. The two options are "allow" and "ask". You can't set it to I never want to fucking connect . So those of us who were tired of having the menu pop up every single time we put a blu-ray on the PS3 asking if we could allow it to connect to BD-Live had given up and set it to "allow." Then the servers were overloaded, the disc menu never said it was connecting to the net, so I didn't think to turn that feature off, and we had a horrible experience. So no, it's not fud.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Only a pirate terrorist would deny a corporate citizen its inalienable right to profit. Why do you hate freedom so much ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The one thing that the PS3 does not do that an upscale player will do is upsample the old DVDs to provide near-HD quality. A $100 DVD player can do this in hardware, but the software of the PS3 does not do this. So even though your PS3 is hooked to an HD display, DVDs you play on it will not look as good as a DVD played on an upsampling player attached to the same display. If your entire collection was BD then that is one thing, but while your collection still contains DVDs, either a high end BD player, or a PS3 and an upsampling player together are a better solution. That is what I have. An HDMI enabled display, an HDMI switcher, a PS3, and an upsampling DVD player, so I can play games, watch BD movies, and watch my old DVDs (in near HD quality).
Thank you Steve for adjusting my erroneous belief in such a polite manner. I stand corrected and my face is slightly red. As a software engineer, technical accuracy is very important to me. You have my appreciation. My apologies to those I misinformed. I purchased the PS3s because I recognized the Cell made them a powerful computing engine, and I thought they would make a nice addition to my development network. Since then Sony has cheapened the product, and I consider my units to be valuable collector's items. I purchased Yellow Dog. My only sadness is the lack of ability to add substantial ram. I don't like violent games. I do like driving games, but don't like steering with my thumb. Is there a high quality human interface device currently for the PS3 that would make my driving games more enjoyable? Something from Logitech maybe? I would value your advice on this. :-)
I also am waiting with anticipation for the release of the @home service as I am a nerd hermit who wants to participate in a 3D world, but doesn't really like 2L.
Thanks again, Doug