I didn’t see it posted, but any word on PS3? This would be huge.
Just rumors, but I imagine HBO Go will be there eventually.
Seriously, does the cable industry not understand why pay tv is hemorrhaging customers? People don’t want to pay for a bunch of shit they don’t watch/need. This was such a great opportunity to have a consumer choice option. What a tremendous lost opportunity.
They understand precisely why people don’t want legacy cable. They also understand that if they enable that, they’ll make less money overall. So, they drag their feet.
Not true - I get ESPN3 on the Xbox, and all I have is Verizon DSL. No cable or satellite TV of any kind. I hope against hope that I can get HBO Go the same way.
Exactly. If there was ala carte pricing, you’d see a lot of those 500 cable channels disappear. Not to mention the cable companies’ revenue streams would shrink. (Though, they’re already under pressure from cord cutters). There’s an enormous amount of resistance to actually giving the consumers that kind of choice. Basically amounts to a lot of media companies and cable companies spending millions on buying politicians, as well as flooding the airwaves with ads about how ala carte pricing is UnAmerican and equals socialism.
Choice and competition, two of the most UnAmerican and socialist concepts ever dreamed up.
HBO has made it very clear that HBOGo will only be available via various devices only if you already have an HBO subscription. So, for example, if you go through Boxee to get to HBOGo, you get a web page on which you log on with your provider login info (in my case, since I have Dish, I use my Dish online login info.)
That said, HBOGo is very cool. I went back and watched all of The Pacific via the app, and we watch episodes of regular series via the app. There are also a LOT of past documentaries and older series to view - they do a nice job of keeping full series of older shows on there.
It will be after the way the lobbyist spin it. “How dare the government come in and tell these companies they have to offer more choices to consumers. Consumers are entirely happy with their choices, else they wouldn’t be paying for our services. There’s plenty of choice out there, if by “plenty” you mean two!” The Republican party will then go full throttle behind corporate America out of 1. it being corporate America and 2. the crazies wanting to shit on anything that even hints of government. The Democrats will wussie out because they have no spine.
Or rather, they get free health care, we (mostly) don’t get HBO Go either.
You guys hate Oprah Winfrey. How will her network make money if we actually have to choose it directly?
We might not pick it, but I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of women and stay at home moms who would choose it directly. As much as a pick what you want cable plan seems nice and dandy, in reality it probably wouldn’t bring down prices much if any. Instead everybody would just be paying a lot more for the few channels they watch.
Many of the cable channels you get are paying the cable companies to be on your TV. If you don’t pick them, they don’t pay the cable company. The revenue would shrink, sure, but not on the side most people think it would.
“Free health care” is not free my friend; as Greece, Italy, Spain and pretty soon UK is about to find out.
I don’t get “free health care” nor HBO Go either so it’s all cool.
Xbox 360 is the first console to offer access to the world’s greatest TV properties, including BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and LOVEFiLM in the U.K.;
Have to laugh at this. PS3 has had BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Lovefilm for ages. Plus the idea that Channel 5 is one of the “world’s greatest TV properties” is hilarious.
In fact, they would have had the BBC a long time ago, but they wanted to restrict it to Gold users which the BBC could not legally allow.
I understand that, and still would prefer it to the current system in the US. But that’s not a discussion for this particular forum.
Woot! I just checked, and RCN has caved and gotten in on the HBO Go bandwagon! Suddenly HBO anytime without going through the OnDemand craptastic interface is possible!
My town has a local cable provider, so it’s looking like HBOGo is a long ways out for me. Aside from that I’ve actually found them to be generally better than all the big providers.
So Comcast and HBO Go went live today, and goddamnit, Comcast won’t let you use HBO GO if you’re a subscriber. You have to use their goddamn Xfinity app, which won’t even load because the servers are slammed.