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‘True Detective’ Finale Causes HBO Go Crash: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

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Uh, no, Marty. No we did not.

As many “True Detective” fans know by now, the HBO Go streaming service collapsed under the strain of the staggering number people who wanted to see the “True Detective” finale.

It’s gonna be a sleepless night for many fans of the show, as they wait for their service to be restored.

Here’s what you need to know about the HBO Go outage, including how to determine if the outage is affecting you and how to find out what happened on the finale.

1. High Demand Caused HBO Go to Crash

So many people wanted to see the thrilling conclusion of “True Detective” that the HBO Go servers simply overloaded.

While HBO Go is still down for some users, others can access the service just fine. To test whether HBO Go is still down in your area, visit this website to run a diagnostic.

You can still watch the “True Detective” finale on the regular HBO TV channel, if you are a subscriber. The HBO schedule says that that “True Detective” finale will re-air at 11pm Eastern time tonight.

2. When HBO Go Crashed, the Internet Went Nuts

“True Detective” has an intense fan following. Predictably, many fans took to Twitter and Facebook to freak out about missing their chance to watch the finale on their terms.

But it wasn’t just devoted fans who went into fits of hyperbolic rage. Business Insider ran an article in the wake of the outage titled “HBO Go Is Crashing For People At The Worst Possible Time.”

It’s not just “True Detective” fans who can’t access HBO Go. Some people who wanted to watch HBO Go tonight were trying to watch other HBO original programming, but we also unable to get their video of choice to load.

3. ‘True Detective’ Finale Was Hotly Anticipated

Earlier this week, Mashable reported that “True Detective” star Matthew McConaughey would not be returning for the show’s second season. This news made fans extremely curious about what would happen to McConaughey’s character, Detective Rustin “Rust” Cohle, in the Season 1 finale.

4. Some Believe HBO Go Crash Was Not an Accident

TIME reports that some people believe HBO Go went down as part of a larger plan by HBO to increase the number of “legit” subscribers. TIME writes:

“While some observers speculated the problem might be an attempt by HBO to clamp down on subscribers sharing their usernames and passwords with non-paying users, HBO CEO Richard Plepler recently said he doesn’t mind customers sharing their login information.”

It does not appear that this outage was planned in any way. It also does not appear that the outage was isolated to just people who shared their HBO Go account passwords with others.

5. HBO Is Working to Resolve the Issue

HBO is aware of the issue with HBO Go and is working to restore normal service. HBO has not released an estimate for how long the outage will continue, but they are likely to make an update on their Twitter page when the issue has been resolved.

These kinds of streaming service outages are not uncommon, but they can be extremely frustrating. HBO Go isn’t the only service that has frustrated users in recent years: Netflix had a notable outage on Christmas Eve 2012 again around Christmas 2013.

On the next page, we’ve got the dirt on the outage and the best fan reactions…

6. HBO Go Outage Could Have Many Causes

Many people trying to access HBO Go tonight are wondering just what exactly has gone wrong on HBO’s end of things. From a technical standpoint, there are many reasons for a streaming video server to become unresponsive. HBO hasn’t revealed many details related to this outage, yet.

However, we do know the causes of some notable streaming video crashes in recent history. In the past, Netflix outages have been caused by accidental data deletion.

After a particularly bad outage in 2012, Netflix posted an interesting technical breakdown of the problem on their blog. It reads, in part:

“Netflix streaming was impacted on Christmas Eve 2012 by problems in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) service that routes network traffic to the Netflix services supporting streaming…

Netflix uses hundreds of ELBs. Each one supports a distinct service or a different version of a service and provides a network address that your Web browser or streaming device calls. Netflix streaming has been implemented on over a thousand different streaming devices over the last few years, and groups of similar devices tend to depend on specific ELBs. Requests from devices are passed by the ELB to the individual servers that run the many parts of the Netflix application. Out of hundreds of ELBs in use by Netflix, a handful failed, losing their ability to pass requests to the servers behind them. None of the other AWS services failed, so our applications continued to respond normally whenever the requests were able to get through.”

UPDATE: The Wire sheds a bit of light on HBO’s situation with “True Detective”:

“The infrastructure that allows HBO GO to function is not HBO’s own. The streaming service, and associated operations like customer service and billing—even authenticating logins—is handled by cable companies like Time Warner and Optimum. So if you’re really mad about the outage, it’s probably not worth writing an angry missive to HBO. You might just want to yell at your cable company. Again. For, like, the thousandth time.”

7. Full Number of Affected HBO Go Users Unknown

The Hollywood Reporter notes that “True Detective” averages around 10.9 million viewers, so it’s not inconceivable that millions of people have been unable to watch the finale using HBO Go.

Since so many people share HBO Go passwords, it is hard to estimate how many people tried to watch the show online and failed. If social media activity is any indicator, however, it is likely that there are a very large number of angry fans out there.

The Daily Beast has some notes on what percentage of HBO subscribers watch “True Detective”:

“According to the media research and analysis firm SNL Kagan, HBO has a total of approximately 28.7 million subscribers—though the network doesn’t release these statistics—which means that about 38 percent of overall HBO subscribers consume True Detective.”

8. ‘True Detective’ Spoilers Are Out There

Unfortunately for many “True Detective” fans, the HBO Go outage didn’t affect all users. Many HBO Go fans have experienced no problems with the streaming service.

The outage also didn’t prevent social media users and bloggers from talking openly about the finale. As many “True Detective” fans took to Twitter and Facebook to try and discover when the HBO Go outage would end, they inadvertently stumbled upon major spoilers for the finale.

These spoilers, combined with the HBO Go outage, might sour some TV fan’s impressions of the final episode.

9. HBO Go Just Came to Playstation a Few Days Ago

As the tweet above shows, HBO Go launched on the PS3 just a few days ago. It is possible this extra load contributed to the HBO Go crash.

Then again, Comcast customers can’t access HBO Go through the PS3, according to the Verge, so perhaps the new HBO Go channel didn’t contribute that much to the overload.

10. The HBO Go Outage Is a Good Thing

While it may be frustrating for “True Detective” fans, this HBO Go outage is likely going to be a good thing for the show. Blogs and social media will be talking about the outage and the “True Detective” finale all day tomorrow, which basically means lots of free press for the show.

All that buzz is likely to intrigue some people who haven’t watched a single episode of “True Detective” to finally start watching the show. Being the “first show to break HBO Go” is kind of a great marketing tagline.

Moreover, all of the social media backlash is likely to prompt HBO to make upgrades to their servers and streaming system, which will ultimately mean a better viewing experience for fans.

Can’t access HBO GO, and need to know what happened in the finale? Click here to read our recap and review.

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So many people wanted to use HBO Go to watch the "True Detective" finale that HBO Go crashed. Here's what you need to know about the outage.