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HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

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Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#41

Post by emacdona »

This is really great news for me (I "cut the cable" a couple of years ago). I was thrilled when HBO released a lot of content on Amazon Prime. I've been buying content they haven't released on Prime through Amazon streaming (Silicon Valley, Game of Thrones). I have been anxiously awaiting the day where I could buy a "season pass" for current run HBO content.

I've concluded there were a few benefits HBO got from their close relationship with cable companies: 1) The huge customer base that cable companies have 2) The advertising that cable companies provide 3) The distribution of content that cable companies provide

I always felt the release of content to Amazon Prime was an experiment and judging by this news, I think that experiment was deemed a success. I suspect that HBO concluded that Amazon is more than capable of distributing the content and that there are plenty of customers willing to pay for it when it's delivered by a means other than the cable company.

I still suspect that Amazon will play a role in hosting and distributing content for whatever "HBO Go" becomes one year from now.

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#42

Post by Tloewald »

eric_cc wrote: post #40
rogerbinns wrote: post #39

Hopefully they will decide not to be yet another island and also work with Netflix. I'd be perfectly happy paying the subscription fee to Netflix and being able to see the content through the existing Netflix apps I have everywhere.

Hopefully they DO decide to be yet another island. Otherwise, services like Netflix will turn into cable. I have no problem using AppleTV/Roku browsing to the service I want.

I do wish AppleTV had federated search. Well, maybe it will tomorrow.

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#44

Post by [deleted] »

bkeroack wrote: post #36
daigoba66 wrote: post #32

Now this just needs to happen with other TV networks. For example, I'd love to pay AMC Networks[0], A&E Networks[1], or NBC Universal[2] a nominal monthly fee to access their catalogs on-demand. While it's true that these networks stream some of their current shows online, the players and streaming experience is usually very terrible. That's how I want to the future to be: everything is like Netflix or HBO-sans-cable…

The aggregate of all these fees (plus Netflix, Amazon, etc) will likely approach or exceed the cost of a typical cable subscription.

[deleted]

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

bkeroack wrote: post #36
daigoba66 wrote: post #32

Now this just needs to happen with other TV networks. For example, I'd love to pay AMC Networks[0], A&E Networks[1], or NBC Universal[2] a nominal monthly fee to access their catalogs on-demand. While it's true that these networks stream some of their current shows online, the players and streaming experience is usually very terrible. That's how I want to the future to be: everything is like Netflix or HBO-sans-cable…

The aggregate of all these fees (plus Netflix, Amazon, etc) will likely approach or exceed the cost of a typical cable subscription.

> The aggregate of all these fees (plus Netflix, Amazon, etc) will likely approach or exceed the cost of a typical cable subscription.

The single-service cost of any one of the most popular services will likely approach or exceed the cost of a typical cable subscription while providing far less (but more focussed) content.

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#46

Post by protonfish »

jdmichal wrote: post #30
protonfish wrote: post #6

So all that stuff they were saying about how it was financially impossible to do this was just PR fabrication? I never would have suspected.

It may very well have been financially impossible, if they had a contract in place preventing them from doing it. Circumstances change, contracts expire...

I assure you that was not what they were saying. I have been trying to find the AMA some VP of HBO did on Reddit (basically as a response to this http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones ) where they "explained" why they just simple cannot put their content online and the Redditors lapped it up.

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#47

Post by themoonbus »

thevdude wrote: post #23
themoonbus wrote: post #18

Glad to hear it. For the time being, for anyone with Amazon Prime, the HBO collection isn't bad: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=9097393011 It's not nearly as complete or up-to-date as HBO go of course, but it has lot of the most popular shows. We have HBO go and actually use Amazon prime to watch HBO shows since Comcast has yet to support logging into HBO go on PS3.

Spend the $35 and check out a chromecast. If I'm remembering properly, a friend with comcast had no issues shooting HBO go over to it.

Ah good advice, I will check it out.

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#48

Post by tylermac1 »

bkeroack wrote: post #36
daigoba66 wrote: post #32

Now this just needs to happen with other TV networks. For example, I'd love to pay AMC Networks[0], A&E Networks[1], or NBC Universal[2] a nominal monthly fee to access their catalogs on-demand. While it's true that these networks stream some of their current shows online, the players and streaming experience is usually very terrible. That's how I want to the future to be: everything is like Netflix or HBO-sans-cable…

The aggregate of all these fees (plus Netflix, Amazon, etc) will likely approach or exceed the cost of a typical cable subscription.

I'd gladly pay a premium for the freedom to choose where/when I watch the movies/shows on each service. Owning a cable subscription now allows me a few free on-demand shows but they have selected availability windows (usually a week or two after air).

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#49

Post by rogerbinns »

eric_cc wrote: post #40
rogerbinns wrote: post #39

Hopefully they will decide not to be yet another island and also work with Netflix. I'd be perfectly happy paying the subscription fee to Netflix and being able to see the content through the existing Netflix apps I have everywhere.

Hopefully they DO decide to be yet another island. Otherwise, services like Netflix will turn into cable. I have no problem using AppleTV/Roku browsing to the service I want.

Note that I am not suggesting they only go via Netflix, only that it also be an option. The content is the important bit, so providing it widely works. There is far less friction making it available via existing mechanisms in addition to direct.

Re: HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable

#50

Post by teej »

bkeroack wrote: post #36
daigoba66 wrote: post #32

Now this just needs to happen with other TV networks. For example, I'd love to pay AMC Networks[0], A&E Networks[1], or NBC Universal[2] a nominal monthly fee to access their catalogs on-demand. While it's true that these networks stream some of their current shows online, the players and streaming experience is usually very terrible. That's how I want to the future to be: everything is like Netflix or HBO-sans-cable…

The aggregate of all these fees (plus Netflix, Amazon, etc) will likely approach or exceed the cost of a typical cable subscription.

And I'm okay with that. Having transparent pricing means that I am voting with my dollars for the content I care about. With a cable subscription, most of your dollars just go to Disney and not the content producers whose content you are personally consuming.
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