Error 83 on Disney Plus: Why you're getting it and how to deal with it

Publish date: 2022-12-02

With hundreds of films from the most popular franchises on the planet — not to mention thousands of TV episodes from our childhood — it's little wonder that Disney+ is popular. However, when errors invade your movie marathon, things are anything but magical. There's a few different errors Disney+ can spit out when things go awry, but Error 83 is by far the most prevalent Disney+ error you come across. Here's a few of the reasons you may be seeing it, and what you can do about it.

Reason #1 — Server timeout

Error 83 is one of the most common errors. When the servers are overloaded and your Disney+ session can't connect to the servers fast enough to pass a DRM/account check — or can't connect at all — Error 83 is what Disney+ displays when it can't play your video as requested.

This is far and away the most common reason to see Error 83, and dealing with it can take a few forms:

If you live in an area with congested internet that's more prone to regional server overloads, you may want to keep a few favorite shows and films downloaded on your phone through the Disney+ Android or iOS apps. Then you can still watch some Disney+ when the servers aren't playing nice.

Reason 2 — Incompatible platform

Error 83 is seen on a variety of laptop and desktop computers that can't pass the DRM check that Disney+ requires before it begins playing videos. These days, it's more likely that the DRM failure is a server-side timeout rather than a device-related one, as we saw more during the early days of Disney+, but there are a few things that can cause DRM failures on your side rather than Disney's:

Unfortunately, for this incompatibility, you'll likely have to switch to a different device in order to get around it. This isn't a satisfying workaround, but it's all we got, but please, go leave feedback with Disney+ (opens in new tab) so that they have more incentive to fix things.

It's not all magic

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Disney+ finally brings together all our favorite shows and films from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Fox, and of course Disney in one easy-to-use service. Disney+ goes down less often than most streaming services, but it still happens from time to time.

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