Disney+ UK and European launch shouldn't be affected by coronavirus

Disney+ will launch to much fanfare in the UK and Central Europe on Tuesday 24 March.

However, due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and self-isolation measures across multiple countries, it arrives at a time when streaming services could be in more demand that previously expected. And, that could be both a boon and burden to the new service's launch.

Certainly, it could gain a lot more interest from those homebound over the coming weeks and months. And that could result in the service being under more strain, as server load and access could be far greater than previously anticipated.

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Even without the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney+ struggled under the weight of many more subscribers than anticipated on its US launch day. A series of outages followed, as 10 million members tried to view The Mandalorian and other launch treats.

Thankfully, Pocket-lint has learned that this shouldn't be a problem this time, no matter any extra load. Indeed, the issues experienced in the US should prove to be invaluable.

Disney's president of streaming services, Michael Paull told us that extensive launch day planning takes into account all circumstances: "We're doing a lot of planning for this launch. And, as part of that planning, we are making sure that we're able to handle significant loads in terms of traffic," he explained.

"The nice thing is that we're already operating in three regions of the world, in five countries. The service is up and running in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, so we have all that scale that's been happening.

"And we announced not so long ago that we already have 28.8 million paid subscribers. So this service has been operating at a reasonable level of scale for some time and, obviously, the launch day is something that we've been doing a lot of preparation for."

Coronavirus or no, Disney+ should therefore work in the UK and Europe from the get-go. And it couldn't be better timed.

Disney+ will cost £5.99/€6.99 per month in the UK and Europe respectively. It will be available across multiple connected platforms, including iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, smart TVs, games consoles, PCs and Macs.

You can currently get a huge discount on a year's subscription, priced at £50 for 12 months in the UK. You have to be quick though as the pre-order offer runs out on Monday 23 March.

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