HBO is finally going to let you watch its shows without cable • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by res0nat0r » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:14 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #4

It is about damn time. Welcome to the present, HBO. I am assuming this move is in part to the massively high piracy rate for Game of Thrones episodes. As an Australian resident with no real access to current episodes of Game of Thrones without getting cable TV, I hope they do come through on delivering the service overseas (especially Australia), because if the price is right, I will gladly pay for HD episodes of Gam…

I predict the price will be high enough that the next postings about this new service will be that HBO without a cable subscription is way too expensive...and the entire piracy discussion / justification will continue anew...

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

#22

Post by cswhatt » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:23 PM UTC

Just another example of leverage tipping more towards content generators. Good trend for consumers ultimately, bad for providers.

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

#23

Post by thevdude » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:30 PM UTC

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.

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

#24

Post by jonlucc » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:31 PM UTC

jessedhillon wrote: post #9

So this only matters if the video stream can actually be delivered to your house with reasonably good bandwidth. I hope there isn't someone between your house and HBO's servers who has an interest in degrading that traffic!

Perhaps they are offering this as an addition to ISP (as in, you can have HBOGo as an add-on to your Comcast internet plan).

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

#25

Post by op00to » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:38 PM UTC

jessedhillon wrote: post #9

So this only matters if the video stream can actually be delivered to your house with reasonably good bandwidth. I hope there isn't someone between your house and HBO's servers who has an interest in degrading that traffic!

THIS. I predict the next big peering standoff to be between HBO and Verizon / Comcast based on these news. Looking at my HBO GO connection now, HBO seems to be getting bandwidth through Level3. I expect to see the same "congestion" shenanigans from the cable companies that we saw during the Netflix peering dustup.

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

#26

Post by geophile » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:39 PM UTC

HBO has enough good content that I keep subscribing to cable to get it. I have zero interest in sports (ESPN). So for me, this is the end of my cable subscription.

This is the beginning of the end for cable. And hopefully also for propaganda stations like Fox News.

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

#27

Post by op00to » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:40 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #7

RIP cable.

I'm not so sure this is bad for cable companies. Until the cable companies are treated as common carriers, they will be free to pull whatever games they want to play against content providers, like leaving handoff links from transit providers overloaded.

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

#28

Post by dwild » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:49 PM UTC

uptown wrote: post #3

Seems like they're finally embracing the philosophy to fighting piracy from Kim Dotcom: How to stop piracy: 1. Create great content 2. Make it easy to buy 3. Same day global release 4. Works on any device 5. Fair price

Pirates will only move to new arguments, that's all. Before theses arguments became mainstream, my friends simply said that they didn't care, now they use theses arguments, it's not accessible, it's not a "fair price" (hard to be fair when free exist). I still remember when Breaking Bad came on Netflix, I was so happy to believe that now I won't be the only one I know that use Netflix! I was wrong to believe in their ethics... torrents were too good for them.

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

#29

Post by ghshephard » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:50 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #10

This has been pretty much the only reason I keep expensive cable services. The only thing that will keep me away is if the price is a lot more expensive than the $14 a month I a currently paying for HBO.

The cheapest I was able to get HBO in Redwood City, California, was $72/month all in - and that was waiting for a bit over a year for their $20/month special. The cost of the Digital Cable was the thing that made it pricey (in addition to the basic cable service).

Given that the only thing I wanted cable for was HBO, that meant I would be paying $72/month for HBO. A little rich. My over/under is probably around $30/month.

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

#30

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 5:51 PM UTC

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...