Note to HBO 23


Forget all the excuses you're making about not having a direct customer billing infrastructure.  Get off your ass and create one, it's not that hard.  You're leaving a hell of a lot of money on the table right now by not offering HBO GO directly to consumers without cable or satellite service.

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'Game of Thrones' is most pirated show this season, may be most pirated show of 2012
Game of Thrones is the most pirated show of the season and is on track to be the most pirated show this year, TorrentFreak reports. The combination of high demand, low availability, and HBO's…

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23 thoughts on “Note to HBO

  • Hoormazd Kia

    Sam I think they fully realize the long term profits of going independent and separating from the cable companies, but the short term implications are quite painful. That's what you're talking about, right?

  • Kelly Bradley

    What's kinda humorous about this is even though I have HBO as a pay-for package on my sat dish, I've downloaded several episodes of GoT, and will likely do so with True Blood, because I want to watch it upstairs, on the big sceen w/killer sound.

    And no, I don't want to move forward with technology "allowing" me to do this via the sat company, because I then no longer own the equipment.  Pass.

  • Kelly Bradley

    Exactly.

    HBO spaces out their shows over a calendar year so there is always something new showing.  Damned clever, and it has me hooked.

    GoT just has the season (series for you furriners) finale last Sunday, but tonight Sookie returns.  They cancelled Luck, because of old horses being run too hard, and that's unfortunate, but I've never not seen them have a back-up plan.

    The Wire – damned good show
    Six Feet Under – got me through a very bad time in life, honestly, and very well done
    The Sopranos – I gotta take care-uh Big Pussy
    Carnivale – only one season, but I liked it
    Boardwalk Empire – a pleasant surprise

    et cetera.

    They do have series I don't dig, but yeah, I'd rather be able to download/stream everything in real-time, so I can flip around, if'n I want.  This is how I found a surprisingly good movie, last week, Man on Fire.

  • Sam Abuelsamid

    +Andrew McDonald that will be HBO's loss then because even though I pay for HBO and cable now, I don't use HBO GO because I have no interest in watching on mobile devices. I could use it on the Roku or XBox but there is no reason to use it that way when I already have a cable box. If I could pick and choose just the couple of dozen channels we actually watch and get them all through the Roku I would abandon standard cable and use HBO Go that way. If channels don't move in this direction soon, I may well just do it anyway grabbing the shows I want and the channels can lose out on the revenue.

    I'm happy to pay for the content we actually watch. I don't expect creators to produce content for free. What I don't want to do is subsidize the Disney corp by paying for all the ESPN channels we don't watch along with the hundreds of other channels we ignore.

  • Chris Wall

    I would be willing to pay a higher price for Netflix streaming, if that allowed for more licensing and a bigger selection. They could do a tiered service I suppose. I'm not willing to pay for cable/sat, however. Paying to be bombarded by commercials without most of the content streamable on demand? No thanks.

  • Scott Rosenberg

    I dislike apple as a company. They are far too litigious.

    Regardless, I'd prefer my shows cheaper, with ads, even if it is alecart.

    Personally, I'd like the option to buy into a TV show over the internet, and not a channel. 20$ season pass for a show, with or without ads, that terminates 3 months after the end of the shows airing, so people have some flexibility sounds fair. If you charge too much, people won't want to pay it, since they feel that they can buy it on disk to own forever cheaper.

  • Andrew McDonald

    There's really no difference between streaming or DRM content that you download. Either way you are restricted from certain playback options.

    I don't see the point of buying streaming access for a single show. I'd prefer another pricing tier from a streaming service that included first run television. Which would essentially be my cable bill. I had hoped that Hulu+ would turn out that way, but no such luck.

  • Chris Wall

    I should've been more specific. I have a problem with DRM attached to specific content that you own, as opposed to services. If Netflix has DRM, that sucks, but as long as the service continues to work, I'll keep paying. On the other hand, if I purchase specific content, it had damn well continue to work forever. DRM, outside of Steam, does not have a good track record in that regard.

  • Andrew McDonald

    +Scott Rosenberg Yes, if Netflix or Hulu, or anyone really, had a streaming option that gave me first run shows on air-night, or maybe the next day, for $20/month I would be totally into that. I pay Comcast a ridiculous amount of money , so, $20/month is a complete bargain. Which, is why it will never happen. 

  • Andrew McDonald

    +Chris Wall Streaming media is, by its nature, DRM content. You can't save it, play it with any other software but the Netflix player, etc. The only differences from Apple iTunes DRM is that you aren't giving Apple you're money, and, with Netflix you have to be connected to play the content. 

    That last item is the main reason I went with Spotify for music streaming – they have an offline playback feature for when I'm not connected to the Internet. 

  • Scott Rosenberg

    The FCC is considering making it so companies like netflix have the option to be considered actual cable services, and force media providers to sell them stuff… but they operate at lower cost, since they don't provide the actual cables

  • Andrew McDonald

    That sounds like an uphill battle. It'll be interesting to see that play out. I have to imagine that the cable operators would push back hard on the networks to not make their content available on Netflix and other streaming services.