Can we trust streaming services after House of the Dragon NZ meltdown on Neon?

Photos / Supplied, Mark Mitchell

Sky's Neon service ran into grief on Labour Day, as some users were unable to stream the finale of House of the Dragon after it was made available mid-afternoon.

Down Detector recorded a spike in Neon outage reports between 2.15pm and 3pm.

"House of the Dragon has been topping Neon's most popular series list since it premiered in August and yesterday's release of the finale episode was no different," a spokesperson for Sky told the Herald.

"Demand was so great from Kiwi fans that our system was briefly overloaded, impacting some Neon customers in the afternoon.

"Neon's behind-the-scenes team quickly swung into action to resolve the issue and normal service was resumed in under an hour. We apologise to our customers who were affected by this issue."

The temporary gremlins amounted to nuisance value for fans of the Game of Thrones prequel.

Yet if it was live sport, it would have been more than half a game - a fact that won't be lost on sports fans as they weigh their options for the 2023 Rugby World Cup, for which Sky holds both broadcast and streaming rights.

For the 2019 Rugby World Cup, Spark Sport infamously had to make the second half of a New Zealand-South Africa match available through TVNZ after problems with its stream.

There's no doubt that in 2022, streaming generally performs a lot better across the board than in 2019.

But Monday's Dragon contretemps prove there are still potential issues when we all try to stream the same piece of content at the same time - be it a season finale or a big game.

Hi , to help with the crashing issues you're experiencing, please go to any other show/movie on HBO Max, turn off subtitles/captions, and then try streaming House of the Dragon again. Let us know if that helps! ^KP

— HBOMaxHelp (@HBOMaxHelp) August 22, 2022

And you can't just kick Sky.

House of Dragon producer HBO - part of the giant Warner Bros Discovery conglomerate - suffered streaming issues in the US during the premiere of House of the Dragon.

When it was first announced, part of me thought it was overly retro for Sky to launch its new Sky Box as a hybrid, with apps and on-demand content via fibre, but a satellite dish still required for broadcast channels.

But events over the long weekend make that seem like a sensible kick for touch.

It’s a public holiday, why promote a finale your system can’t handle. Absolutely ridiculous, streaming 101 I would have thought.

— Ashleigh Dean (@AshleighDean3) October 24, 2022