HBO Go Craps The Bed During True Detective Finale

from the HBO-go-HBO-went dept

Tue, Mar 11th 2014 7:35pm — Timothy Geigner

Hey, HBO, can we talk for a moment? It won't take long, it's just that we're all worried about you. We want you to know that we really appreciate this new stance you've been slowly but surely taking on internet streaming. We really appreciate that you're finally starting to come around on unleashing your HBO Go product to the masses, even if they don't pay for your cable product. We know you're scared about this big transition in your life, especially when you've had so much trepidation about it in the past.

Maturing is scary and difficult, I know, but you have to be prepared for the changes. You're going to be awkward for a while, you might get hair in places you've never had it before, and you won't understand what's happening to you. But if you're going to be a big boy digital provider, you can't crap the bed when the show that's making you the most relevant at the moment is in such high demand.

Some "True Detective" fans hoping to watch the season finale on HBO's streaming service were left hanging Sunday as the site experienced technical problems. Instead of watching the show on HBO Go, some viewers were left looking at a stalled loading screen. Frustrated viewers took to Twitter to complain about delays and being unable to access the show.

One user tweeted, "My HBO Go is just a spinning wheel of non-loading hopelessness and despair." Another wrote, "SOS: @HBO Go is not working. This is anything but okay. Someone give me answers."

All your friends want is for you to be everything you can be, if you'd just put in the effort. You're playing with the grownups now, so it's time to put the that little kid backpack away and buy a briefcase. If you're ever going to be the streaming service you should be, the one that will net you tons of customers and money, it's time to bolster the streaming service so that it can handle peak loads. True Detective was great, but that doesn't matter if nobody can, you know, watch it. And the first step in fixing a problem is admitting you have one.

HBO Go, in a tweet on Sunday night, said: "Due to overwhelmingly popular demand for #TrueDetective, we've been made aware of an issue affecting some users. Please try again soon." In a statement Monday, the company said the site had experienced "an excessive amount of traffic" and that the service was now "back to normal."

Your service being back to normal because nobody is watching it any longer isn't exactly an accomplishment. The days of getting stars next to your name for attendance, or trophies for participating, are over. Make this thing work reliably and you'll have all the friends and fans you could ever want, but it's time to grow up.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: hbo, hbogo, true detective

17 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

S. T. Stone, 11 Mar 2014 @ 7:56pm

I hope this teaches a lesson to WWE and its new Network prior to WrestleMania 30.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 11 Mar 2014 @ 8:08pm

HBO refused to pay to have the ISPs let them have bandwidth.
Betcha they are sad they thought it was a good idea when it happened to Netflix.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- PRMan, 12 Mar 2014 @ 7:45am
  
  Re:
  Makes you wonder if their cable "partners" screwed them over on purpose at exactly the wrong time.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2014 @ 8:53pm

Their statement reminds me of when I had Clear WiMax service. They advertised an unlimited download service. Well I found myself throttled down to 20k/s. I contacted them and was told that I was using "an unreasonable amount of bandwidth". They throttle after 6GB. That's pretty damn easy to crack when you buy games off Steam and watch shows on Netflix and Hulu Plus.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Ox (profile), 12 Mar 2014 @ 8:13pm
  
  Response to: Anonymous Coward on Mar 11th, 2014 @ 8:53pm
  As well as Straight Talk. Straight Talk (Mobile Phone company, I'm sure you knew that) advertise "UNLIMITED TEXT! UNLIMITED DATA! UNLIMITED MINUTES! UNLIMITED EVERYTHING!!" for $45/Mo, which sounds pretty awesome at first because mobile carriers are greedy with Data,such as AT&T. However, after using 3-4 GB's you get throttled to Dial-Up Speeds, which I'm currently using unfortunately (I live 1Mi down the road from a major highway that provides DSL/Cable. Fucked up, eh?) which usually gave me 3 weeks to a month worth of online play with my XBox tethered to my phone, which is another big NO-NO with ST. I DGAF but I wasn't going to call them and ask 'em why the hell I was being throttled 'less they find out I was tethering. I tried explaining this to my brother because he also has a plan with ST and he loves watching Jim Jefferies on YouTube with his phone. He kept thinking his phone always fucked up because he watches so many YT videos and he gets throttled....He's not so tech savvy.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Michael, 11 Mar 2014 @ 9:07pm

Funny...
... Pirate Bay had no problem at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2014 @ 3:22am
  
  Re: Funny...
  Except it did. Pirate Bay doesn't do live streaming so you'd be unable to watch the finale until after it airs, which is not the point of this article at all.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2014 @ 9:12pm

This is the part where the bittorrent (or similar) protocol comes in. It efficiently deals with distributing large amounts of content to lots of people.

Looks like the pirates are years ahead in technology...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Vel the Enigmatic, 11 Mar 2014 @ 10:00pm
  
  Re:
  Must be why the legacy industry bastards want them wiped off the face of the planet. So they can have that tech for themselves and profit from it like the fat pigs they are.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2014 @ 10:58pm
    
    Re: Re:
    And if they manage to do that, they'll still find a way to screw that up, whine about piracy (even after throwing every "alleged" pirate in re-education camps, forcing them out on the streets due to outrageous fines, or just plain killing them), bribe some more politicians, and find ways to screw everyone else over even further.
    
    It's us or them. The space age or the stone age. Free market capitalism or cronyism/communism.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2014 @ 1:58am
  
  Re:
  This is the part where the bittorrent (or similar) protocol comes in. It efficiently deals with distributing large amounts of content to lots of people.
  
  That or join a content delivery network. But as both torrents and CDN,s require letting others hold a copy, I bet HBO wants them to pay a license, rather than HBO paying them for a service.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- ChrisB (profile), 12 Mar 2014 @ 7:28am
  
  Re:
  It drives me crazy that bittorrent, one of the greatest file sharing innovations in years, is not significantly used for anything except piracy. When I download files from Steam, when I download drivers, Microsoft updates, PS3 patches, etc., I shake my head at how inefficient and slow they are.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2014 @ 9:19am
    
    Re: Re:
    Bittorrent is often used by Linux distributions etc.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - John Fenderson (profile), 12 Mar 2014 @ 10:27am
    
    Re: Re:
    I dunno. I use bittorrent, but I use it exclusively for legal purposes. It's use for legally distributing large files is pretty common.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2014 @ 5:05am

> "SOS: @HBO Go is not working. This is anything but okay. Someone give me answers."

This is ANYTHING but okay. Oh my god the sky is falling. Seriously, is this article really newsworthy?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Baron von Robber, 12 Mar 2014 @ 7:40am
  
  Re:
  It must be newsworthy. You've made it commentworthy.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
btrussell (profile), 13 Mar 2014 @ 4:12am

"My HBO Go is just a spinning wheel of non-loading hopelessness and despair."

Isn't that called the windows experience?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]