'How am I going to watch The Handmaid's Tale now?' Lightbox users fire up over outage

Lightbox users have fired up at the television streaming service after an outage overnight caused delays to watching the latest episode of The Handmaid's Tale.

Users took to Twitter and Facebook to complain about the outage, which happened after Lightbox upgraded its platform on Wednesday night.

One wrote on Facebook: "How am I going to watch The Handmaid's Tale now?! In future please don't do this on a Thursday!"

"Me and the missus sat down with a nice cup of tea in our comfy slippers hoping to watch handmaids tail. Now we'll have to talk to each other...well done Lightbox!!" said another.

A third wrote: "Some of us need our Handmaids Tale. It's Thursday - Handmaids Tale day. COME ON GUYS!!!!"

@LightboxNZ my lightbox is completely blank...and can't search any shows...what have you done!

— Josie Shapiro (@JosieB24) May 17, 2018

So disappointed lightbox very bad timing!! Supposed to be 12 pm tonight I imagine a lot of annoyed people trying to watch Hand Maids Tail ...

— sarahmiln (@sarahmiln1) May 17, 2018

In a statement to the Herald, Lightbox said the service was "running smoothly" this morning .

"Lightbox implemented a platform technology upgrade yesterday morning. The upgrade overall went smoothly and throughout the afternoon and evening, the majority of Lightbox customers were able to log in to the new platform and access their favourite TV shows and movies," it said.

"However, the new platform did experience a technical issue for a couple of hours yesterday evening. While the majority of viewers would not have noticed any impact, a number of people were unable to access Lightbox or experienced degraded quality when watching content.

"We apologise for the frustration that Lightbox customers experienced who were keen to watch The Handmaid's Tale last night."

The service also apologised in a series of tweets, calling it an "unforeseen issue" and apologising for "any inconvenience".

We’ve struck some unforeseen issues with our upgrade and are currently looking into this. We sincerely apologise for any disruption and will have Lightbox up asap!

— Lightbox (@LightboxNZ) May 17, 2018

We are still working on a resolution for the technical issues that occurred this evening and hope to have this fixed soon. We apologise again for any inconvenience this has caused and will be in touch soon.

— Lightbox (@LightboxNZ) May 17, 2018

Lightbox trumpeted its upgrade in a press release issued yesterday lunchtime, saying the platform was now able to offer standard and premium plans.

It also allowed usage across four screens on one account, as well as a movie rental service, a slicker interface and a kids platform.

The Handmaid's Tale is one of the year's most anticipated shows, with episode five of the second season due to be made available on the streaming service from last night.