HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor. They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet streaming running and proven. They're signing 10-year content deals with exclusivity agreements that simultaneously give them a future catalog to rival Netflix while locking Netflix out of acquiring the same top-quality content. HBO has all its ducks in a row, it's playing the long game.
All they're waiting for is the tipping point in consumption habits. Today, most of their subscribers are paying $17+/month via bundling with cable TV, and every major cable provider in the country is heavily advertising them for free. The moment they can go independent and accept subscribers without going through a cable company is the moment the trickle of people dropping cable TV in favor of internet media turns into a tide. It's not today. If they split from cable today, they'd lose free advertising to hundreds of millions of people a year, and they'd likely earn far less per month from each subscriber they pick up.
HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor.
They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet
streaming running and proven.
I guess (failed to find how I can check it so far) that this is again US only. Of course we're talking about a US anti 'piracy' law, so that kind of makes sense. But the GP still has a point: Making content available, in a reasonable way, would make people like me shell out a good amount of $currency (in this case, USD?) to get access.
I love a couple of TV series. In Germany everything is dubbed (Yeah, Sheldon Cooper sucks if he talks German.. Don't even get me started on Dexter, who sounds like the most uninteresting guy ever on the German show). I'd love to pay for timely access to good content, in its original language.
All of Netflix, Hulu (and, with the disclaimer that I couldn't check yet, probably HBO as well) play that braindead, stupid 'Not in your country' game. Which isn't 2013 and something I have problems to accept since the 90s.
The service is built, but does not work, unless you already have a cable subscription, even in the US.
There's no way, to the best of my knowledge to legally watch Game of Thrones, besides buying it on DVD/Blu-Ray or actually subscribing to HBO (and using that subscription to watch it on-line).
Download a service like Hotspot Shield. It will run your IP through a proxy and make it look like you live in the US. Boom - US HULU, US Netflix, no problem
That's a band-aid until the copyright maximalist bandwagon expands its jurisdiction to your local government, and at that point they'll be sending notices to you or cutting off your internet access.
OT: I've seen a few of these dubbed shows across Europe and Asia. And you know what I found fascinating? Most of these dubbed shows from Europe are done really well. Of particular note is how much pains go in choosing the the dialogues in order to lip-sync with how the original is spoken (Check some HK action films to see the contrast (-;)...
>> who sounds like the most uninteresting guy
In most cases, I noticed they take pains to get similar sounding actors/actresses from the original, perhaps this was one of those occasional poor choices.
I challenge you to compare a couple of 'well-known' German voices.
- Bruce Willis in any movie
- Kirk
- Dexter
These samples are picked for being quite different. While one might argue that Kirk is an improvement (cue the protest!), Bruce Willis has a very different voice and Dexter sounds so. damn. boring.
The production quality is usually alright. Still, depending on the content a lot of context/humor is lost and voices regularly don't match the original, at all.
Edit: For fun - someone on Youtube allows you to compare Bruce (and more.. ;-p) directly here [1]. So these voices are ~fixed~ in our heads as the normal voices of the actors. It's actually pretty hard to find non-dubbed content here (TV? No way, unless on discs. Cinema? Hardly. Some movie theater show originals, but usually just a very limited/blockbuster selection. And I'm living in/near a 1000000 citizen city here, so that's already the bright side).
I'm wondering if partnering with Netflix and taking the potential flak from TV would be worth it. I don't see the reason for HBO to have HBO Go other than the tie in with TV companies.
Would it be more profitable to pair up with Netflix or to sell their shows drm free easily online? I know I'd pay for that service in a heartbeat, and I wonder how many people who own cable (I don't) would switch to paying for the few channels they actually want. However, I don't want to buy cable for one or two channels / shows, so they lose out from all money I'd willingly give them. I don't want them to cancel an amazing show because of the perceived lack of profit (Spartacus) if they could in fact double their profit from people who would buy their shows directly.
I'm hoping the idea of exclusives goes away - as long as the producer gets paid, who cares how the actual video was delivered (cable, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, DVD etc). Unfortunately in the battle for market share it is worth some of those video deliverers to pay more to lock out competitors, but it doesn't benefit the consumers.
This seems like wishful thinking, though: most of the attempts of media companies to take on "disruptive" technologies end up looking fairly ridiculous.
All they're waiting for is the tipping point in consumption habits. Today, most of their subscribers are paying $17+/month via bundling with cable TV, and every major cable provider in the country is heavily advertising them for free. The moment they can go independent and accept subscribers without going through a cable company is the moment the trickle of people dropping cable TV in favor of internet media turns into a tide. It's not today. If they split from cable today, they'd lose free advertising to hundreds of millions of people a year, and they'd likely earn far less per month from each subscriber they pick up.