I ditched cable a while ago, but wasn't willing to give up watching some HBO shows, so I convinced myself that pirating them was 'ok,' since that was 'the only for me to get them.' I later realized that my attitude was hypocritical, that I just wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I stopped pirating their shows then, and have definitely missed some of them.
So I am excited about this, and will subscribe as soon as it is available. I'll get to catch up on Game of Thrones now!
I've found that it's not terribly difficult to wait for the shows to come to Amazon Instant. For a bit I pirated premium channel content on release and bought it on Amazon Instant after the fact. I eventually realized that waiting really didn't impact my enjoyment.
I do still supplement my NBA League Pass with viewing of unauthorized streams for games that are not aired on League Pass.
Game of Thrones season 4 is still not on Amazon in the US. I think that would impact my enjoyment, since part of the enjoyment is being able to talk to people about it. By the time I'd be able to watch it on there, they wouldn't even remember what happened that season.
I realized myself that copyrighted shows are supposed to enter the public domain eventually... meaning that HBO doesn't own them, it just (long term) leases them from the public. It also occurred to me that it, along with other big companies, were trying to bribe and cajole Congress into giving that property away forever, when it firmly belongs to the public.
The public has decided to revoke their privilege. If Congress hasn't codified that revocation, then this is a problem with Congress and not with the public.
I don't really understand this attitude. HBO paid for the shows to be created, so how is it that the "public" owns it? Some members of the "public" pay HBO to watch the shows that HBO creates, but that doesn't mean that members of the public who don't pay for the shows have some kind of "right" to watch them.
> I don't really understand this attitude. HBO paid for the shows to be created
So?
It's real simple: copyright is not a fundamental human right. It is a privilege granted by the public to creators for specific purpose, and if the public feels that purpose is subverted, or even if they just are in a shitty mood, the privilege can and should be revoked.
I don't understand your attitude. You seem to equate "people not paying" with theft, which sounds like something a small child would come up with. HBO hasn't paid me squat... are they stealing from me?
>so how is it that the "public" owns it?
This too is simple. If I own land, and I lease it to you for 75 years (you pay up front), who owns it?
I do. You still do not own it. You can do (most) anything you want with the land, you can use it to make a profit by using that land... but at the end of 75 years, you still have to surrender that land back to me.
Copyright works like this. Have you never heard of the goddamned public domain? What do you think that was, exactly? The public owns the work. The copyright holder only has a temporary interest in the work. It's like you've never bothered to think about any of this. You just swallow all the bullshit anyone shovels into your gullet.
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.
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. Maybe even eliminate, or at least reduce commercials.
And it's not exactly a-la-carte, because most channels aren't individual networks. And most shows are perfectly suited for on-demand viewing. There are very few things I watch that are actually "broadcast" live (news and sports are pretty much it). All I'm suggesting is that we bypass the cable companies and pay the publishers directly for content. I'd pay good money to an Internet Service Provider who gives me a fast and stable connection to the publisher's servers.
The flip side of all this choice is that it's no longer dead-simple for consumers. It sure is convenient to simply pay Comcast $100 a month and they take care of getting all of these networks and publishers into my home in one box with one remote control. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon apps are fairly ubiquitous on pretty much every platform including built right into many TVs. I doubt traditional TV networks want to invest in that technology.
It's not even the money for me. I just don't like having a cable company. They're just awful.
Also, having all the video in a choose-it-myself format avoids droning out in front of the TV for hours just watching commercials and reruns. And getting it over an IP network means a lot. Hello logging! Hello filtering per MAC around homework time!
> 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.
Unless one of those services is HBO Go. At least in my market, the cheapest cable package that includes HBO is extraordinarily expensive (often in the neighborhood of $120/mo). Of course, this makes some pretty thick assumptions about the cost of HBO Go as an over-the-top service.
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.
How are Netflix, Prime, and even HBO different? You pay them for access to all of the content they decide to carry. I don't see how Netflix is "a la carte."
You pay them for access to everything, but they know what you are watching -- this is quite unlike typical broadcast/cable where only some very small subset (historically "Nielsen Families") are tracked.
This is not accurate. There are a couple of competitors to Nielsen, but more importantly, most cable providers these days track what everyone is watching. They may not do a ton with that data (depends on the company), but it's not like they don't have the data.
It still isn't quite the same for a number of reasons, including:
1) the broadcaster is a step removed from the cable operator (though with all the mergers in the content/delivery space, they might be part of the same parent company). If Netflix develops a new show like House of Cards, they know exactly how many people watched it for how long, etc.
A cable company might track what station their customers are watching but unless they are reporting that back to the broadcaster it won't change programming in the near-term. It may make the cable company make different decisions about their lineup but such decisions are often part of many-year contracts with forced bundling (eg. Disney saying you must carry all these stations if you want ESPN) so even if they do have data I doubt it has much impact.
2) The cable company can know what channel your settop box is tuned to, but a lot of people have setups where the cable box is essentially always on (and only the TV is switched off) and there is no reasonable way for the cable operator to know if anyone is actively watching or not without resorting to very imprecise heuristics like only counting it if the channel has recently been changed.
This is unlike Netflix, et al, which have less passive interfaces where you can be more reasonably sure that if the user started some content they are actually watching it and not streaming it to a TV set that is off.
1) There's obviously a lot more separation here, but it's worth noting that there is a lot of data out there available to broadcasters that doesn't come from Nielsen, such as broadcasters licensing data that comes initially from cable providers. The number of set top boxes here dwarfs the size of the Nielsen data set.
2) You can get more precise if you want. At a basic level, you can look at a lot more options than just changing the channel. You can also train models based on the overlap with something like Nielsen where you have more information about when they are watching. If you can match up comcast data to Nielsen data, you can build a model for active vs. inactive boxes on the comcast data.
3) To backtrack a bit, the fact that Nielsen is a "very small subset" as you said a couple of comments ago is relevant for some things but not others. For the broadcast network prime time shows, it's certainly a big enough sample to see which shows are popular among what demographics without having the level of detailed information that Netflix or cable operators have.
All in all, I agree with you that there is more separation and it is harder to use, but there's still a key distinction between Nielsen, which is in something like <~0.1% of homes and the other data sources which are many times larger. They don't all seek it out, but it's possible for broadcasters to acquire the sort of data necessary to answer questions about content popularity like Netflix can consider.
I have sonic net, and I pay (a little handwaving here) for amazon prime, netflix, and hulu plus. So monthly, that's $42 (sonic) + ($99/12) (amazon) + $9 (netflix) + $8 (huluplus) =~ $67 a month. I also have a digital antenna. I'd be locked out of espn (sonic net and no cable), except that I have an .edu domain so they allow that through for most programming. It's a mish mash but it kind of works.
There's plenty of wiggle room here for HBO, and because it's more a la carte, I could easily drop a couple of things there once I have HBO.
Not sure what they'd charge for standalone HBO yet, but I think it could be as much as $50 a month and I'd still come out ahead (especially if I dropped something). I got rid of comcast a while ago. As I recall, if you get the minimum level of cable service required for HBO plus specific surcharge for HBO and your internet service through them, I think it's was over $120 a year… I know I'm being vague, but that's largely because comcast doesn't really want to make it easy to figure out what things cost, though, and you can play various games (threaten to quit and get a deal that they hope you won't notice when it expires)… but they weasel right back and get you on all kinds of little things, though, so you have to pay close attention to your bill.
Also, every now and then comcast will tell you to return something like a cable box, and then claim you haven't returned it, and send you a letter threatening your credit history if you don't pay for not returning it even though you have, and then ask you why you're quitting. So you have to factor in that extra cost too.
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).
Good way to watch the one or two shows you want from some of these networks. Although its not an all access plan to every show you can atleast watch the latest.
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.
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 Game of Thrones (amongst other great HBO shows like True Detective).
> As an Australian resident with no real access to current episodes of Game of Thrones without getting cable TV …
That's the same situation as USA.
Australia actually briefly had it better than USA, with the AU iTunes store releasing HBO shows like GoT within a day or two of their USA cable release. But then HBO + Foxtel broke that.
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...
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.
You don't think there is a group of people who will, when confronted with the choice of hunting down a torrent every time or paying $10 a month to watch GoT/True Blood/Last Week Tonight/etc, could decide to pay?
Especially considering outside of the US where the choice is: pirate it or don't watch it.
It seems silly to just leave those money on the floor, even if 90% of the people will still pirate content.
Torrents provide a superior service than Netflix. I regularly download shows even when they are on Netflix. Better control over sound, subtitles without Netflix's schizophrenic language restrictions, ability to fix audio/video (move the video frame, brightness, volume), etc.
Because DRM never gets cracked on day one anyways. And because DRM totally stops you from using a screen recorder to save the content in a DRM-free format.
Maybe with something like video games it can net a few extra days of sales before torrents go online, but ripping music and video is so simple. In that case, DRM is just a joke that makes the executives and lawyers happy, wastes money and time developing, and can cause trouble for the consumer.
he was talking about a legal source that works everywhere... I know that DRM doesn't stop piracy, it only inconveniences law-abiding customers (inconvenience is probably too light of a word).
They should bring this to Australia FIRST. There's a reason we lead piracy world wide for HBO shows, and it isn't (just) because we're all descended from convicts.
I canceled my Hulu+ subscription once they started telling me I wasn't allowed to watch shows on my iPad... The ENTIRE reason I signed up for it in the first place. I even put up with them still showing me ads, but "web only" shows were the last straw.
HBO Nordic covers all of Scandinavia (and has been around for more than a year). They started out with an expensive monthly and less expensive 6-month subscription but have now a uniform monthly price of around USD 14/month. It's usable from various devices and supported TVs (e.g. newer Samsung series). http://hbonordic.com/how-to-watch-hbo
Not sure about the other countries, but in Sweden it's $11/month (79 kr). Netflix is also 79 kr/month, and the (in practice) mandatory TV license which pays for (awesome!) public service is roughly twice as much at 173 kr/month. All have decent streaming services which covers the devices I care about.
There is very little reason to pirate TV in Sweden today, I think the only major shows you can't get are AMC's.
I cut the cord 3 years ago and regularly pay 2 dollars an episode for shows I want to watch. I own several rokus and pay for prime, hulu (occasionally) and netflix (occasionally). I have never been happier with my tv/media consumption.
Hulu is the only thing I would like to replace... I have no tolerance for ads... I'd pay more to get rid of them. I don't know how anyone watches regular tv (unless it's with a DVR).
This. I actually had an idea for producing a product that gave users truly commercial free cable (the way it was actually intended to function in the first place).But considering the nature of that market the only real way to make it work, at least based on my cursory research, is to become the content provider (much like what Netflix is doing).
What would really be groundbreaking is to allow non-US based viewers to subscribe to the service, without any type of geo fence. I would be happy to pay for the service as a European consumer. That would mean no more GoT torrenting for me.
I wonder how much money they are making selling their content to foreign networks vs. the amount they could make opening their online service up globally.
I am assuming that if they did open it up globally, they would not be able to sell the shows for as much money to other networks.
I understand your comment, and you are probably right. I like to watch movies/tv shows in their original language, so not many would be open to pay to watch english only shows... I don't know.
Here in Portugal, I'd say subtitles are still a must if you want to reach most of the market. The average HBO show viewer has certainly a better grasp of English than the average citizen, but probably not good enough to understand complex dialog.
That said, subtitling from English is fairly cheap, especially at the current level of quality, so there's no reason to avoid it.
Imagine, that, for a fee, they could include subtitling/dubbing in the given GEO for an additional fee - wouldn't that be worth it over subscribing to a VPN?
I've spent the last 5+ years using subscription models. I'm about done with them. Disappearing content. Inconvenient or no access at times and places. Increasingly feeling I've been funding the very "editing" and abuse I've wanted to escape.
My personal conclusion is that the money would have been better spent just gradually building up my own library. And, were it closer, in supporting my local library.
Wouldn't it be nice. As a Canadian who hasn't had cable for a decade, every six months or so I check on options. I subscribed to Netflix when we got it here, and it's cheap and good, but I'd love to be able to access HBO and other movie content.
I tried to find a legal download of Bladerunner the other day, and got the following:
1) Amazon.com geofenced it
2) Google Play won't let me download it (I have "bought" movies on Google Play before, but like any digital play-for-now service they will eventually become unavailable to me: I will no longer buy digital content I can't rip to an open format, because temporary proprietary access is not what I'm looking for.)
3) iTunes doesn't have it
4) Amazon.ca doesn't do digital downloads of films, near as I can tell. They certainly didn't have the one I was looking for.
All I want to be able to do is pay for a legal digital copy of a film, and I can't. I can buy a piece of plastic with the bits burned into it that I have no device to play, but that's a ridiculous waste.
I didn't torrent the film... I just ended up saying, "Screw it. No sale for me."
Business 101: make it easy for customers to give you money.
This is something that digital streaming companies (other than Netflix) have not mastered.
Bell owns the rights to the HBO name here, and currently bundles HBOGO (and HBO content) under TMNGO. You currently need to be a subscriber on one of their "approved" TV providers to access it, like HBOGO.
Now Bell will likely make some concessions to prevent complete Canadian public outrage, but whatever the US gets, I'm sure the Canadian version will have a few drawbacks added to the existing ones in the US service.
I would have cut my cable years ago if I could have gotten current episodes of True Blood and The Walking Dead through streaming services.
This is a step in the right direction. Comcast and Verizon must be quaking in their boots because as more networks decide to go the direct distribution route, the less necessary their TV distribution services will become.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So I am excited about this, and will subscribe as soon as it is available. I'll get to catch up on Game of Thrones now!