Android, Chromecast To Get HBO Now

An anonymous reader writes: Google's I/O 2015 conference opened with a surprise announcement: that Chromecast, Android TV, and other Android devices will soon be able to offer HBO Now. "The announcement marks the end of a 7-week exclusive that Apple had on HBO's stand-alone streaming and on-demand video service," reports Digital Trends, and it also further weakens the exclusivity of cable TV packages. "Traditional TV subscriptions are slowly starting to slip," one newspaper reports, "as more people watch online video." Other online streaming sites are already confronting the popularity of HBO's "Game of Thrones" series, with Netflix already experiencing a 33% dip in their online traffic during the new season's online premiere and Amazon rushing to discount their "Game of Thrones" graphic novels, and the turmoil seems to be continuing in the online video space. "Shortly after the premier of the new season, HBO Now seems to have taken the top spot when it comes to internet traffic," reports one technology site, "causing a huge dent in Netflix's attempt to make it to the top."

Comments

data caps

[Anonymous Coward]

still no idea how comcast et.al. can be serious about data caps when this shift happens. people are used to letting their TV's sit all day on some random channel. if you do that with IPTV you're going to blow by 250GB or whatever in a week or so. caps are totally infeasible.

Re:data caps

[jeffmflanagan]

Or people just won't be able to leave Internet TV on in the background all day. All the services I use ask me if I'm still watching at least every couple of hours, so it seems that they want to avoid unnecessary use.

Caps will have to go up, but ISPs and video services do not want people to use their bandwidth streaming 1080p video 24/7 to have something on in the background, so don't expect them to go away.

Re:data caps

[Anonymous Coward]

i leave our cable receivers on known digital-switched channels all the time when the television is off.. and queue up on-demand (the free stuff) just for background noise.... just to fuck with the cable company and chew up bandwidth.

Re:data caps

[tlhIngan]

still no idea how comcast et.al. can be serious about data caps when this shift happens. people are used to letting their TV's sit all day on some random channel. if you do that with IPTV you're going to blow by 250GB or whatever in a week or so. caps are totally infeasible.

Why not? TV is really profitable, internet service less so. If data caps means Comcast etc., keep people subscribing to cable, that's a more profitable combination than just selling internet service.

And given Comcast can't give their own service any priority, it may steer some to keep their regular cable TV service.

Re:data caps

[antdude]

Comcast cares not. It's easy $$$.

Re:data caps

[Knuckles]

Or people just won't be able to leave Internet TV on in the background all day. All the services I use ask me if I'm still watching at least every couple of hours, so it seems that they want to avoid unnecessary use.

Caps will have to go up, but ISPs and video services do not want people to use their bandwidth streaming 1080p video 24/7 to have something on in the background, so don't expect them to go away.

Maybe you are right, but this means is that these services cannot satisfy a very command demand people have, which traditional TV could satisfy. Something/someone will (have to) fill this hole

Re: data caps

[AvitarX]

I suspect those people don't overlap with would be cord cutters.

The people I know that do this like having the throw away channels for the background, because it doesn't take attention. They don't wanna pick a show, they wanna tune to channel x and tune out.

By the time something similar is offered, hopefully ipv6 (ok, I lol a touch as I type that) will fill the need (it has multi cast I think).

Re: data caps

[tlhIngan]

By the time something similar is offered, hopefully ipv6 (ok, I lol a touch as I type that) will fill the need (it has multi cast I think).

Then you'll have to buy IPv6 capable DVRs. But cable companies are moving that "into the cloud" (in fact, streaming services can be considered a form of DVR in the cloud), so unless you go tell your DVR to record some IP address at some time or you'll miss it... which seems to defeat the entire purpose of streaming a show. (And really, the chances two people will stream the same show at the same time is probably quite slim, so either your DVR has to spy on you and opportunistically catch it ahead of time, or it'll sit there for a few minutes while it hopes others will join in on the stream).

Surprise?

[drhamad]

How is this a surprise announcement? We knew Apple only had it as an exclusive for a few weeks.

Good Grief

[cahuenga]

a 33% dip in their online traffic

Horseshit. Netflix traffic dipped down to a 33% share. You really can't screw up a writeup much worse than that.

Re:Good Grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether their traffic dropped by 33% or to 33%, what does it matter unless people were also canceling their subscriptions?

Re:Good Grief

[cahuenga]

As link points out, it's the difference between a 3% drop and 33% drop.

Just barely within the margin of error required for moonshots.

Re:Good Grief

[MightyMartian]

Sure they could have screwed it up more. They could have mentioned that Alpha Centaurians have invaded Duluth, and are transforming Minnesotans into angry Communist half-snake half-jelly fish chimeras who chant "Serve the giant penis god!"

Now THAT would be a screwed up writeup!

Re:Good Grief

[Voyager529]

Sure they could have screwed it up more. They could have mentioned that Alpha Centaurians have invaded Duluth, and are transforming Minnesotans into angry Communist half-snake half-jelly fish chimeras who chant "Serve the giant penis god!"

Now THAT would be a screwed up writeup!

And equally as newsworthy.

Re:Good Grief

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed what I was saying. The drop in traffic seems irrelevant to me. I would think what matters is whether or not there was a drop in subscribers.

Does a drop in traffic, but not a drop in subscribers, matter? Why? I am genuinely curious.

Re:Good Grief

[ITRambo]

According to the original article Netflix traffic was up slightly. "Overall in the full report, Netflix remained the clear leader on North American fixed networks (as opposed to mobile) during peak usage times, up slightly to 36.5 percent of downstream traffic, with YouTube again a distant second at 15.6 percent." Do you have a link that shows the number of subscribers leaving Netflix? It sure looks like they're doing just fine based on the linked report.

Re: Good Grief

[Stewie241]

Short term, perhaps not. Longer term, it could result in a drop in subscribers if people continue to find more on HBO now and less on Netflix.

Re: Good Grief

[AvitarX]

I am thinking about it.

I have my hbo go through someone else right now, but I would prefer to go legit.

I currently have Netflix and hulu. I suspect hulu will lose out here, as with the daily show change, I question whether I'll want to keep paying (there were a couple shows I watched as they aired last season, but the back catalog overlaps immensely with netflix).

I'll probably make a list of criterion movies I wanna watch, burn through them, and cancel hulu. Netflix has decent original content, and will likely keep my money. This is going to really put the pinch on them I suspect though.

Hbo moved quicker than I thought, I really thought it'd be another year until this happened, or the price would be punitively high.

Re: Good Grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you if they invaded Duluth, they wouldn't have around long.

Re: Good Grief

[finlan]

Mind you if they invaded Duluth, they wouldn't hang around long.

What's so terrible about the word "and"?

[wonkey_monkey]

Android, Chromecast To Get HBO Now

Would it kill you to use the word "and"? Commas instead are so 20th-Century-print-media.

$15/month for one channel?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Sure, it's HBO, and sure they have some stellar in-house programming; but it's one channel. People who are dumping their $60/month (and up!) cable TV plans aren't likely to pay $15 for one channel. Heck, Netflix is under $10. Even the old baboons that run Hulu don't try to charge that much for Plus...

If you're on Comcast's lowest tier TV-included package - "Internet Plus" - HBO is a free add-on. Right now we're paying ~ $70/month total for internet plus Cable TV (The TV channels include HD and are basically a throw-in, it's how Comcast tries to hide how many of its customers don't want cable TV anymore). I can't imagine paying $15 for any single channel.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[Voyager529]

Sure, it's HBO, and sure they have some stellar in-house programming; but it's one channel. People who are dumping their $60/month (and up!) cable TV plans aren't likely to pay $15 for one channel.

Two genuine questions here. First, if a disproportionate reason why a person has cable at all is for HBO, then $15/month is less than what they're paying for HBO + everything else, so it may well be worth it. How many users fit this particular category?

Second, how much of HBO's back catalog is included? The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Dead Like Me are all still highly regarded series that have a good amount of rewatch value. HBO has also produced a wide array of well produced documentaries. Yes, everyone says "zomg Game of Thrones and True Blood!!11" because they're trendy at the moment, but if HBO Go gives on-demand access to virtually every piece of HBO produced content, in 1080[i/p]...that may well be a worthwhile number.

Bonus round: Once all the major draws have been binge watched over the next year, the dropoff rate will likely be noticeable, for the very reason you specify.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[taxman_10m]

$15 a month to stream and binge watch season 5 of GoT immediately after the season is done is a quicker and cheaper than iTunes or Amazon.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Two genuine questions here. First, if a disproportionate reason why a person has cable at all is for HBO, then $15/month is less than what they're paying for HBO + everything else, so it may well be worth it. How many users fit this particular category?

Admittedly that is a very good question. I would not think it's a large number, but then I am not in that group so of course I assume most people are like me rather than "them"! That's been proven demonstrably wrong on many occasions in the past, though...

Second, how much of HBO's back catalog is included? ...

I think most of it is, actually - but you incidentally hit on a different point. HBO GO (a different product than HBO NOW, which is what was being discussed here) also has the same access to the entire HBO back catalog - and anyone that has HBO (including people like me that get HBO basically for free) still get access to HBO GO! It'll be interesting to see how they differentiate the products in the future.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[UnknowingFool]

If you don't have cable but have internet, $15/month for HBO might be worth it. Especially since you can add/drop at will. I see that once Games of Thrones is over, HBO Now will drop in some subscribers.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[trawg]

If you're on Comcast's lowest tier TV-included package - "Internet Plus" - HBO is a free add-on. Right now we're paying ~ $70/month total for internet plus Cable TV (The TV channels include HD and are basically a throw-in, it's how Comcast tries to hide how many of its customers don't want cable TV anymore). I can't imagine paying $15 for any single channel.

The way I see it (as an Australian that moved the US ~18 months ago and is agog at the variety of entertainment options), Netflix is awesome because it's a nice cheap catalogue of mostly older content that I either haven't seen or am happy to watch again.

HBO for $15/mo seems reasonable to me because they have a (much smaller) amount of really amazing content (The Wire, Rome, Sopranos, Deadwood, etc) which I'll happily watch again and again, but they're almost always running the New Hotness (Game of Thrones at the moment, which I actually don't really care about that much).

The one channel of HBO for me is more value than many, many of the other available channels here put together. I have little or no interest in most of the other channels - almost everything I want to watch is on Netflix or HBO.

But, of course, YMMV depending on taste. I've been looking forward to getting HBO on a non-Apple device to try the trial and see how much of it I watch. I might end up deciding $15/mo is too much 12 months of the year but I'll definitely roll it out a couple of times and binge.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[quantaman]

Sure, it's HBO, and sure they have some stellar in-house programming; but it's one channel. People who are dumping their $60/month (and up!) cable TV plans aren't likely to pay $15 for one channel. Heck, Netflix is under $10. Even the old baboons that run Hulu don't try to charge that much for Plus...

If you're on Comcast's lowest tier TV-included package - "Internet Plus" - HBO is a free add-on. Right now we're paying ~ $70/month total for internet plus Cable TV (The TV channels include HD and are basically a throw-in, it's how Comcast tries to hide how many of its customers don't want cable TV anymore). I can't imagine paying $15 for any single channel.

Maybe, though I'm guessing a lot of people only watch shows from 3-4 channels on a regular basis and watch only a very small amount of programming for the rest. HBO is a very exclusive channel, but even if you did that for all those 3-4 channels you'd pay $45-$60 for almost all the programming you get currently, but commercial free and on-demand with a back catalog.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[AmiMoJo]

Assuming it's only a monthly commitment I'd pay for it for a few months a year, so I can binge. Of course it isn't actually available in my country, so for now I'll just carry on pirating.

Re:$15/month for one channel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for myself, but I'd like to see a package that would give us Limited Basic plus five channels of our choice, provided those channels aren't premium or sports. Premium channels can still be tacked on though. I figure about $40 to $50 per month would be fair. This doesn't include Internet access.

You had me at Amazon Discounts books

[countSudoku()]

Seriously, so very glad I bothered to read GoT and complete the main books rather than committing to the HBO series. Those silly fucktarts are going off in all sorts of directions with the story and none of that shit is going to correspond to any of the novels. Plus Emilia Clarke doesn't want to show her boobs anymore or do any of the sexy in-book story lines, so HBO can give away their service for free, I'll save my time for reading. When I want to watch a movie, I have all my favorites in my own online lib and cheap media players already. Why is there even an HBO to bother me? Because they fund the shows? I'll pay directly to the producers for a good show and cut out the middle-man content barons. HBO doesn't make shows, people do. And sometimes we don't like a show, but we have to pay for it anyway with the fucking TV package "deals" where I get 90% shit channels and 10%(or less typically) I bother to put in my custom guide. All online, direct access media channels that I get to pick and choose myself and ignorant asshole don't make decisions about the level of maturity and bad taste within said shows? I'm all in for that! It cannot happen to quickly. Fuck Dish and Concrap and HBO and NBC and Dice and CBS and that guy who hates video games and Emilia Clarke and Verizon you too fuckers and AT&T and Hulu and Netflix and the rest! I will beat all of your execs to bloody piles of pulp and bone fragments with my largest dictionary or other suitable hard-bound volume of written works!!1!

was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was going to sign up, but then they came out saying they were going after all the people who pirated those leaked episodes, and now I'm just like fuck HBO. Thought they had learned not to threaten their audience.

In other vendor specific news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone service from Verizon is only available on VTech handsets, but it'll be coming to Panasonic handsets soon.

The weather forecast from the National Weather Service is only available on Asus laptops as an exclusive, but HP is negotiating to have it available on their laptops too.

Seriously, who in the hell wants this world where instead of vendor neutral interoperability, we have all this fucking lock-in? Well, of course the locked-in vendors want you to be locked in, but why in the world would any customer ever want that? Who is buying this kind of shit, anyway?

I say screw you HBO

[Anonymous Coward]

What really gets me about the entire thing is why HBO is even using third party systems to sell their service, I would of gladly paid just to have access to Game of Thrones, BUT instead they chose to only allow (at first) a cable company which you have to be an existing customer of, and Apple which I refuse to use any of their products. In this day an age they could have their own payment processing solution up and sell direct access, but nooo, they want to play these silly games by keeping middle men around, so screw HBO in my opinion.

Just one channel, but great library and content

[SuperKendall]

Sure, it's HBO, and sure they have some stellar in-house programming; but it's one channel.

Not exactly - because it's not just "HBO Now", but also "HBO Then".

That is to say, you aren't just getting current seasons of stuff like Game of Thrones - you are getting all the seasons they aired. Plus things that aren't even airing that were great - like Rome. Plus many more somewhat-current movies than Netflix has (although to be fair Netflix has a small number of near-current movies I actually like to watch, whereas almost none of the movies HBO listed were interesting at all to me).

That said I may just subscribe during Game of Thrones, then cancel again... it'll be interesting to see how I feel at that point.

Netflix has a shit library of content

[finlan]

I signed up to Netflix. Got a month for free. Had a look at the content available. Twas mainly shit. Unsubscribed there and then.

Re:Netflix has a shit library of content

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to use it awhile to find the good stuff. It has a pretty good recommended algorithm after you start rating programs. Have a look at some of the British shows... Peaky Blinders, Broadchurch, Dark Mirror, etc are pretty good.

No new news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a strike going on with slasdot due to the sourceforge scandal? No new articles today and nothing new in the firehose.

Cable TV on my computer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, next you'll tell me I'll be able to get genuine telegraph service on my Android! Cool!