Errr..right, not quitting the day job. Of course D-Day in these parts means the long awaited Worldwide Download of the Digital Theatre’s production of The Old Vic’s The Crucible.
I was right there with everyone else…I had a great plan. It’s Spring Break. The campus – and more importantly, the web server – is virtually empty. I hooked my computer to the web via a nice, sturdy Ethernet cable and away I went. When I finally managed to enter my credit card info correctly (after three operator errors on my part) the purchase went smoothly.
There it is…in my Digital Theatre Library – along with my purchase of the “Exclusive Interview” (we’ll pretend that the original audience wasn’t there…more exclusive that way really 😉 ) Since I’m not able to devote 3 hours 19 minutes today, I proceeded to the download. The player and some Adobe utility downloaded rapidly and then came the main attraction – The Crucible. (At 6.5GB in HD, I made the right decision to NOT download the file to my iPad…I like you a lot Richard Armitage, but I’m not purging 99.5% of the apps on my 8GB free to me iPad for you. Sorry.)
Here’s where we run into a bit of a snag…I employed the stopwatch app on my phone shortly after the download started and didn’t move from 0% complete. After 1:17:39, it was still only 3% complete (that’s .195GB if you’re keeping score). Speedy…like dial up speedy! Good thing I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to watch…
…or I might still be hoarse from ululating and half bald from tearing my hair in despair! Unlike the ladies above (funeral mourners), I’ll live to download another day (my hair intact, thank you!), so I figured I might as well cancel out of the download and make room on the Digital Theatre server for someone else…You’re welcome! 😉
Best of luck to those still in the queque!
Ancient Armitage 
I don’t know of anyone whose download is yet complete. LOL. Not entirely unexpected, though. Nice poem!!
Nope, not at all…hence my relative Zen 🙂
You probably shouldn’t encourage my attempts at poetry…who knows what will happen?!
Lovely Paddy’s Day pressie from DT 😀 but I won’t download this today but will wait a few days, assuming that it’ll be available not only today. But ok, I speak from the luxurious POV of someone who saw the play on stage… Therefore it only seems fair to leave the server to all those fans who haven’t seen the play yet. (Oh, and never mind that I am broke to the point of having maxed my CC, anyway…)
OMG – OMG – OMG!!! Welcome back!!!! I know you had a fabulous trip, but I have been selfishly and impatiently waiting for you to return 😀
Mine’s bought and paid for (considering I saved all that $ on airfare and tickets 🙂 ) I can wait a few days to download and still watch online – I’m oddly patient that way.
Thanks for the lovely welcome, Obscura. I am my usual reluctant self after a long absence and have avoided the computer so far (but can’t resist the mobile). As soon as I am back in business I will be back online, too. In the meantime, I will join you waiting 😀
While you are reacclimating to home and hearth, I have resolved not to pester you as I am sure your inbox is overflowing with missives (don’t I sound so Austen-ish!?) Rest assured that I am waiting for your official return!! 😀
welcome back :-))) hope normal life treating you gentle 🙂
Thanks, Hari. And… well… sort of. A few disappointments upon arrival: No one at airport to meet me after 6 week absence :-(. And then to find out that the shower in our only bathroom is broken when all you want to do after 56 hours of travelling is a hot shower and wash off all the dirt and sweat. Hmph. But well. That’s home for you…
Oh dear… Yeah, that’s a kind of a double punch of a welcome home. Family. Don’t pick ‘m and can’t shoot ‘m
I always have a terrible time with the sheer volume when I come home from a long trip…the worst was getting home after three weeks in Greece at 2am and climbing into the minivan for a two day road trip to Georgia with my parents and kids…both sets bickering 23 hours a day. Bleh.
LOL – that sounds like a true nightmare. Washing and unpacking got done pretty quickly here, but I still haven’t had that shower. (Yeah, I know, DISGUSTING!) The happiness of my misfortune is that I have also brought back a nasty cold, so I can’t smell myself 😀
Glass half full 🙂 …is a plumber on the way?
Supposedly… Hubster is working on it. (Not sure if that is a guarantee for speedy resolution…)
Yeah..I know how that can go…my hubs “fixed” the kitchen drain last week. Good thing I left a bucket under it is all I’ll say as I call the plumber 🙂
sorry about the non-welcome at the airport — that is one of my absolute dislikes about traveling. Getting off a very long journey and then having to sort myself out. I don’t often want to be taken care of but I do love the being whisked away, to creature comforts (food, water, bath, bed).
Sorry your arrival home has been disappointing. A broken shower really stinks. You’ve been missed 🙂
I’m selfishly DLing; my geeky heart wanted to know how long it would take of course. On a fast laptop and fast connection and at 1 hr, 40 mins, I’m at 35%. Probably waiting a few days might be a good idea. 🙂
I also am motivated by the fact that I don’t want to have to stop it in the middle but I also don’t want to leave my laptop at the office since I won’t be back until at least Thursday…of course it might be done by then 🙂
(I’ll report back how fast it downloads 2 days from now 🙂 )
I believe I started my download about nine hours ago. At 22% now.
Holy 1991 Speed download Batman!
…methinks Digital Theatre grossly underestimated the tech requirements of this particular offering…
more like it doesn’t make either technical or financial sense to invest what it would require to deal with this spike in activity which is unlikely to occur ever again, unless they plan to acquire some Batchy thing. They have however clearly prepared as the server has not broken down, they just manage the activity to prevent that from happening. Makes sense 😉 Speaking from years of experience with rush booking days and sales systems failing repeatedly this sounds perfectly acceptable 🙂 But then again i can wait, so i sympathise with everyone else, but then again do a few days matter so much at this point? 🙂
I suspect it might be a combination of factors. At the very least, it would probably be politic to caution people that unusually high traffic may result in extremely long download times…never underestimate the fact that many people downloading just don’t realize that they are among thousands trying to do the same.
The wait doesn’t really matter to me since I have no idea when I’m going to find three uninterrupted hours in the near future, but I am positive that there are more than a few people gnashing teeth and drafting irritated emails as I type. I suspect DT saw that coming too 🙂
yeah by now they sure know that dealing with fans is not quite the same as dealing with the general public 😉
I agree. I think they’ve done very well not to crash. The BBC crashed under the weight of Armitage 😉 I like that they advised me to upgrade my DT player a couple of days ago. I did so I was all set when I started.
Point taken….however, the BBC was taken completely unawares by The Armitage Effect (plug to Angie 🙂 ) in 1995. In contrast, DT must have been aware by now that there would be unusually high traffic on this title…there are temporary measures – not terribly cost prohibitive that they could have taken.
This too shall pass 🙂
Welp. I can now officially report that my download took 13 hours and 16 minutes.
Just, wow.
You’re lucky your browser didn’t log you out … I was reading an account on FB where someone had been downloading for 12 hours, her browser logged her out, and she had to start all over …
There was a brief moment of panic when I was informed during (the fifteen-minute-long) verification that I had timed out of my Digital Theatre and needed to log back in, but the download seems to have completed just fine.
Whew.
This has reminded me of the old days in the LotR movies fandom, when we used to wait all day for a download of a single leaked still to complete. The trailers we would leave our computers downloading overnight — and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over dropped internet connections.
and you could listen to your modem and hear when something was wrong …
Ah, the good old days!!
I left and went grocery shopping and when I got home my computer had gone to sleep. It only downloaded 1% the two hours I was gone. I thought I would have a problem but it seemed to pick up where it left off. I didn’t have to log in again or anything.
I have “turbo” speed internet so I think that helped me. Seven hours minus the two I was out so it really only took five hours. LOL it just struck me if anything else took five hours to download I would be bitching!
Seriously. This whole experience has been seriously challenging to us North Americans in our North American expectations …
“I want it. I want a lot of it and I want it NOW!!”
Is that so hard? 😉
apparently it is if you’re English. 🙂
Let’s just wait politely. For several hours. While nothing at all is happening. We wouldn’t want to be rude, would we? (with hugs to my English friends)
LOL!
Obscura, I had a bit of trouble entering my credit card info also. Perhaps that was affected by the volume too.
Early in the day it was very slow for me (at the rate it started it would have taken 32 hours.) As the day has gone by it speeded up considerably and it finished by 6 pm. I didn’t start until 11 am so seven hours total but the first three were extremely slow. Also it is almost 3 1/2 hours long so a BIG file. I wonder if anyone has tried to stream it today. I would think that has the potential to be very frustrating.
Love your poem!
The credit card stuff was totally me…first I forgot to check the “I Agree” to terms box..checked that, but going back erased the security code for the card…Third time was the charm 🙂
The poem? My sincere apologies to Clement Clarke Moore… 😀
I have three or four friends who streamed it without problems. DT may have simply misestimated how many people would want to stream vs want to buy. An hour for 195M is ridiculous. That’s about 1% of the speed that I enjoy on a free connection in a coffee shop …
I’m waiting, too, having already seen it.
Thanks for sharing! I guessed that fans would be overloading the DT system. Ha! So I will wait to down load as well. In the lead up to today, DT kept sending me ads for their other available productions. But I want The Crucible to be my “first time” download–special. *wink*
Besides taking approximately 13 hours to download (my ISP seems to think we’re Netflix, that’s how slow a certain large telecommunications company’s download speed is here), I did not have any problems yesterday. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to watch it due to other commitments. So I just set it and left for the day. No timeouts. No drops. Just refreshed the screen and checked progress. I am happy to report that it finished and I got my first glimpse of Proctor. I plan to watch at my leisure later. (I did, however, devour the interview right away. I am only human. 😉)
I seem to have picked up a virus that totally borked my computer and I’ve had to spend all day dealing with. Literally the only thing out of the ordinary that I did yesterday was download TC.
that’s quite disturbing!