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One thing I haven't heard is how DisneyLife fits into this. I use it at the moment for my kids and it has all the stuff you expect from Disney, basically the an
by lordnacho 7y ago
One thing I haven't heard is how DisneyLife fits into this. I use it at the moment for my kids and it has all the stuff you expect from Disney, basically the animated movies like a Frozen and Moana.
The service is terrible, often breaks, and has an undocumented but necessary auth code step, with the added gotcha that the ui covers over the code sometimes. The ui is also terrible, who would make it so the next episode of a series doesn't come on by itself? Children are the target audience.
Anyway why wouldn't they either fix up what they've got, or use the lessons so that they don't get a meltdown on the first day?
Also does anyone know whether this was outsourced to say Accenture? It really feels like it.
- madrox 7y agoHello! Former engineering director for DisneyLife here. Most of the team wasn't allowed to move to Disney+ and have since moved on. The DisneyLife journey would make a great book, but doesn't really fit into a HN comment. FWIW, DisneyLife was built by a team smaller than most YC startups. The core technology for DRM/streaming was licensed by another company. When BAM was purchased, the entire product got outsourced. The auth was a central service that we didn't own but were required to use. When I left, we had autoplay of next episodes.
- CountSessine 7y agoHave you ever considered writing a blog about your experiences there? What little you did write here in the response about DisneyLife is actually how I think Disney+ is going to turn out (small team, underfunded, demoralized, forced to license 3rd rate tech based on external mandates, etc).
- madrox 7y agoMaybe one day when I can feel more analytical about it. This is a weird day for me, as you can imagine. Also, lots of people I know and like have put a lot of time into Disney+. I don't want to take away from what they're trying to accomplish right now.
- disneysockputty 7y agoWhat exactly are these folks trying to accomplish beyond promotion? Is there anything beyond selfish interests behind the Disney efforts of late further fragmenting the video streaming ecosphere?
- weej 7y agoI feel ya, Mr. Horn. :-)
- madrox 7y agoWhen are you going to reply to my text messages!
- keenmaster 7y agoThere is way too much riding on Disney+ for it to ever have a small team working on it or reduced funding. It may be the future of Disney.
- madrox 7y agoI think you may be surprised.
- chrisseaton 7y agoIs Disney+ the same tech as DisneyLife? For what it’s worth my daughter loves DisneyLife and I also enjoyed being able to watch the classics so thanks very much for your work.
- madrox 7y agoSome of the central services are, but most of it was redone by BAM...especially the streaming infrastructure. I don't know where they host. Last I heard, they still used their own metal. I have to imagine that changed. The DisneyLife browse experience was built on Google Cloud using App Engine in Python.
- oplav 7y agoWhen BAM was part of MLB Advanced Media, it was pretty heavily involved with AWS, so unless things changed, I would guess there.
- chrisseaton 7y agoWhy does it log out so much?!?
- madrox 7y agoLong story short, Disney has a policy about such things. You'll find yourself logged out of most Disney services on the same cadence. I believe this was never an issue before us because most Disney services you log in for aren't daily use, such as buying park tickets. That may have changed for Disney+. We all knew it was a huge pain point in the UX.
- crooked-v 7y agoIf it hasn't changed, it will right quick when they start getting nastygrams from all the people having to log in over and over again on TV apps.