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AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

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Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#51

Post by [deleted] »

jjoonathan wrote: post #21
stolson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can subscribe to HBO NOW for $15 a month.

That was an option last season too, but I think I had to have a unique, partnered, non-computer device on which to register the HBO Now account, and the process was broken on the one "acceptable" device I had. I don't remember what it was, but I do remember digging it out of storage and being terribly inconvenienced. In any case, after two thorough, time-consuming attempts I gave up and mooched of a friend who had re…

[deleted]

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#52

Post by Retric »

mbesto wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well. HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's…

> GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at Netflix. As The Dude once said "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man" Objectively speaking, there isn't a single Netf…

How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing 45 years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point.

GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material. Recently HBO’s actual original content has been lacking. Their library is enough to get people to sign up and binge watch old content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd party content and or high volume production like Netflix to keep people paying 15$ a month.

In the end streaming needs new content to keep people paying every month. And the economics of that are going to be brutal.

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#53

Post by rconti »

jjoonathan wrote: post #6

Am I going to be able to give them money in exchange for watching Game of Thrones? Or do they still expect me to mix and match a cable TV package, a "partnered" home entertainment box, and some other nonsense?

Knowing they're owned by ATT, once Sonic installs my fiber I'm going to ditch Comcast and explicitly avoid spending money on any of this telco-aligned junk.

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#54

Post by kvika »

tptacek wrote: post #25
sharkweek wrote: post #3

My problem with this is as follows: HBO has led the way in making some of the highest quality television of the last 20 years. Competition has gotten stiffer, but I still view HBO as the premier place for TV (Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City, Curb, Veep, Leftovers, True Detective, Deadwood... and of course GoT, the list goes on and on). I would argue many of our favorite broadcast/cable shows would simply not exi…

We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well. HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's…

This is no golden age. What you are rattling off are modern day drugs that turn the mind off with over-stimulation.

Turning everyone into Wall-E type obedient consumers that queue up like cattle for their next dose is just an unimaginative use of the power of story and the new medium. We haven't see anything yet.

A golden age is when Narrative and Medium influence individual and societies behavior positively. Moving from over stimulation to action to enlightenment. In that story what HBO and Netflix have uncovered is just a stepping stone.

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#55

Post by anth_anm »

sharkweek wrote: post #3

My problem with this is as follows: HBO has led the way in making some of the highest quality television of the last 20 years. Competition has gotten stiffer, but I still view HBO as the premier place for TV (Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City, Curb, Veep, Leftovers, True Detective, Deadwood... and of course GoT, the list goes on and on). I would argue many of our favorite broadcast/cable shows would simply not exi…

> HBO Go/Now are fine.

Not really, they are lousy apps.

You can fix that without engaging in the "spew content and see waht sticks" style of netflix.

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#56

Post by Dirlewanger »

smacktoward wrote: post #15

I personally have not found the UX of HBO's streaming offerings (I use HBO GO, primarily through an iPad and a PS4) to be appreciably worse than Netflix's. The apps load and are straightforward to find my way around in, I can always find the content I'm looking for, I've never had any technical issues prevent me from streaming that content. In some regards, I would even say their UX is better than Netflix's -- scroll…

A couple years ago, HBO GO was horrible in FireFox, so much so that I downloaded Chrome specifically to use HBO GO. Not sure if it's still the case.

HBO is still lacking certain basic features; their dearth of different watcher profiles is appalling, especially when Netfix has had it for years. It's personally a pet peeve of mine when I share an account, the other person watches something I was in the middle of, and I lose my place. Basic UX shit like this is inexcusable.

I wonder if they've unified HBO GO/NOW. I remember reading when NOW launched that it and GO were separate Java applications maintained by separate teams.

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#57

Post by tptacek »

wyldfire wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well. HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's…

> True Detective, a Mindhunter. "Mindhunter" was great but it's no "True Detective" IMO.

Mindhunter's first (and only) season is much better than True Detective 2 and arguably better than True Detective 3.

I like the idea that Netflix needed an algorithm to discover that people like true crime detective stories.

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#58

Post by tptacek »

bobthepanda wrote: post #45
mr_tristan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed something similar. HBO seems to have a "premium" brand mostly because it led the pack with their content before streaming, but that was a while ago. Given that I'm 41 years old, I remember the early shows that set HBO apart. But I'm not sure this holds for the 20 year olds and younger right now. It sure seems like HBO executives think they're a cut above, though: https://static1.businessinsider.com/att-ceo-…

The young people like Westworld. They may have duds, but their good exclusives are just that, good and exclusive. So long as they have one above and beyond show every time they will be fine.

Westworld's ratings are far south of even True Blood's. It's a good show. But it's not in many people's top tier.

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#59

Post by tptacek »

smacktoward wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well. HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's…

> More importantly than what Netflix itself creates is the fact that everyone else is creating great TV, and Netflix can just license it. The whole reason Netflix started creating its own original content was because they can't license good stuff from elsewhere anymore. It's too expensive. That play worked reasonably well when everyone else thought of streaming as a tiny niche market, since that meant they were willi…

Netflix and Amazon Prime represent most of the best TV drama series of the last 10 years, and what isn't on those services is available a la carte from Apple and Amazon.

I know the article sets up the conflict this way, but the point really isn't that Netflix is an unstoppable juggernaut, so much as that what Netflix represents is. Maybe Amazon will figure things out and it'll come to dominate TV, or maybe Netflix will, but either way: HBO hosts only a small fraction of the prestige shows, in an era where there are too many to watch anyways.

The rap on HBO has been, if you look at the ratings, they have GoT, and used to have True Blood, and before that The Sopranos, and that's what's kept people paying. GoT is going away. Content of the same quality is much more available now than when GoT started running. Why are people going to pay a premium for HBO?

Re: AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages

#60

Post by ghaff »

slg wrote: post #37
ghaff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WRT Netflix, their stated strategy was that their access to data was going to allow them to create superior content as demonstrated (at least for a time) by House of Cards.But it became evident pretty quickly that 1.) The beast needs to be fed with quantity as well as quality (as you say) and 2.) Quality TV/film isn't just an algorithmic exercise.

>WRT Netflix, their stated strategy was that their access to data was going to allow them to create superior content I would argue that Netflix has and does do this except for a different definition of superior. They aren't really trying to make a single show with broad market appeal. An algorithm isn't going to help with that anyway. What an algorithm can do is find niches to serve. Netflix has done a good job of cr…

There's truth to that. The dynamics are certainly different than simply counting the total number of eyeballs watching your programming. Everyone having one or two must sees on your [all you can eat subscription] network probably trumps 10 shows that people are "Meh, it's something to watch."
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