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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

#71

Post by tptacek »

dragonwriter wrote: post #66
Retric wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. No, having 45 years of exclusive back catalog is a real and concrete competitive advantage. > GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material. I'm not sure I agree; I mean, I get why it seems like they in retrospect, but the history of genre fiction jumping from print to film…

I don't think that last argument is true. Yes, Netflix has a shotgun approach to picking content. But Netflix has core prestige series that hold their own against HBO, and HBO has middling series that go nowhere; the only difference is that Netflix has more stuff.

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

#72

Post by X-Istence »

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…

Creating a HBO Now account can be done through the web at https://hbonow.com/

You need a web browser.

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

#73

Post by X-Istence »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #10
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?

If you live in a country where they offer HBO Now, you should be able to do it today. You'll still need a box of some type to consume the content, but it looks like they're covering all of the major players[0]. [0]: https://www.hbo.com/order/hbo-now-devices

You can use a modern web browser to play the content. Safari works without issues for me.

No need for a extra device of any sort.

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

#74

Post by mbesto »

tptacek wrote: post #62
mbesto wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's not a great metric. Here's a much better one: Metacritic will give you an aggregate score for every TV show made during a year, and also does a year-end Pazz-and-Jopp-style roundup of critic top 10 lists; here's 2018's: https://www.metacritic.com/feature/critics-pick-the-top-10-b... (You can edit the URL to go back to 2015). The actual critic roundups tell as much a story of FX's dominance of prestige TV as HB…

> and also does a year-end Pazz-and-Jopp-style roundup of critic top 10 lists; here's 2018's:

A ranking based on how many paid-for critics are talking about a TV show? Huh? That's like saying "this startup is better than another because they've gotten more press on TechCrunch/Wired/WSJ/etc". IMDB is imperfect, but it's a better proxy for what consumers enjoy.

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

#75

Post by stingraycharles »

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…

I concur. I am both a Netflix and HBO subscriber, but even though it has far less content, I watch HBO much more often. I would easily be willing to pay much more for it to survive.

HBO is the rare gem in today's entertainment world that still produces high quality content, where you can rely on it to be good when it's coming from them.

I hope they don't join the race and stay on their own path.

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

#76

Post by criddell »

rwc wrote: post #68
criddell wrote: post #4

If AT&T wants to drag anything out of the dark ages, I wish they would take a look at the DVRs they give to their customers. They are so slow and their user interface is atrocious. When our contract is up, we are going to try YouTube TV and Hulu to see if either of those is better.

The solution is DirecTV Now and, while far from perfect, is under very active development.

I think our current provider is actually DirecTV, but I'm not 100% sure.

There are a lot of on-demand channels, but you can't skip the ads in them so I'm not going to watch them. Is DirecTV now better with respect to ads?

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

#77

Post by com2kid »

colechristensen wrote: post #29
btmiller wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deliberation is slowly going extinct in favor of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. I see it as the "news feed"-ification of video content.

OR A/B testing until every product fits only the lowest common denominator niche. Same argument as the "dictatorship of the majority" in democratic government. Everybody doing what is most popular results in many people losing.

It is perfectly possible to A/B content to find which content targets a more lucrative niche.

It just depends on the goals you set for the test.

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

#78

Post by dragonwriter »

tptacek wrote: post #59
smacktoward wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wi…

> GoT is going away.

GoT has, at the last count I saw, four successor series under development at HBO (down from a peak of five, and likely but not certain to get down to only the best actually getting full-scale production), with one already, unless I missed a schedule change, already filming, with the showrunners of GoT and GRRM all involved in all four.

> Content of the same quality is much more available now than when GoT started running.

I don't think that's actually true. It think content of GoT quality is available from almost exactly the same number of sources, in almost exactly the same number of titles, as when GoT first aired, and that's even more true if you consider value to people who would pay $15/mo just for GoT (and even if it wasn't, most of the people who would can afford to pay the same amount more than once if they have another source of equal-quality content available.)

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

#79

Post by Wowfunhappy »

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?

You can buy Game of Thrones on iTunes if you find that preferable to a subscription. I believe this is the case for all HBO shows.

(By contrast, Netflix shows are not available on iTunes. I had to wait a year for Stranger Things to come out on BluRay...)

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

#80

Post by dragonwriter »

kharms wrote: post #50
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…

>HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well. That might be true in terms of popularity, but in terms of critical success Veep & Curb Your Enthusiasm were pretty dominant.

Critical success doesn't pay the bills (though it may be more indicative of value in the back catalog than first-round popularity is.)
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