I would love to tell you this morning that the record breaking Iron Man Blu-ray release on October 1 was all puppies and rainbows, but that just isn't the case. And I can't lie to you, dear readers, at least not about Iron Man. The truth is, while the release made director Jon Favreau a happy man, it's done nothing but piss off consumers, thanks to huge BD-Live-related traffic jams the popular release created on Paramount's servers. Tony Stark, thy newest enemy and threat to the free world is BD-Live!More seriously, the rush to download Iron Man BD-Live content from Paramount left many consumers completely unable to download the content contained on Paramount's servers. The standstills got so bad that the hapless Paramount was forced to issue a statement on the server snafu:
"The Iron Man Blu-ray went on sale Tuesday and due to the overwhelming popularity of the release an unprecedented demand was placed on the BD-Live connection. The disc represents a truly state-of-the art Blu-ray presentation with a first of its kind BD-Live application. As such, the heavy amount of traffic strained the servers due to so many people heading to the same destination. The bandwidth capacity was increased in preparation for the release but the demand exceeded all expectations so capacity was expanded dramatically last night and local servers were established worldwide to accommodate all the fans. The issue should be completely resolved but if anyone experiences a brief traffic jam, we have provided consumers with a menu option during disc startup that allows them to go directly to the movie main menu or continue to download the BD-Live features."
I suppose this is one of those "good problems to have," because it shows the popularity of the title (and Blu-ray? Maybe?), while at the same time "educating" Paramount on what not to do with the sequel. Or maybe it's just a straight up problem—you decide. [High Def Digest]