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HBO cuts the cord, brings streaming-only service to Europe
- bgentry 14y agoWow. I have to admit that I didn't expect to see anything like this from them for at least a couple more years. We'll see how long it takes to bring it to the US though. I'd guess that their cable co ties are too strong here to do it anytime soon.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI wonder how long this has been in the works.
- jonursenbach 14y agoThey might also be using them as a test market and if successful, will look into bringing it over the US. I hope so.
- j_baker 14y agoI think the answer is probably "as soon as people stop giving money to cable cos for HBO".
- 001sky 14y agoThis might also be a technical reaearch project. test the weapons that are avail, etc. Go back and improve, before the real war.
- gizzlon 14y agoThe real war? Couldn't the market for HBO be bigger in Europe than in the US? (given that there's more people here ;)
- lambda 14y agoWell, this looks like something that I'd be willing to pay for once it comes to the US. Not holding my breath, but it's definitely a good sign that it's coming to other markets.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- bartonfink 14y agoAny ideas whether it would be feasible to get a proxy connection up to watch it in the U.S. via this?
- stackingcode 14y agoYou could try a VPN with iPredator. https://www.ipredator.se/ https://www.ipredator.se/ https://www.ipredator.se/page/faq#other_stream https://www.ipredator.se/page/faq#other_stream
- culturestate 14y agoYou could use a proxy, but I'm guessing they will also restrict subscription payments to European credit cards like Spotify did before they came to the U.S.
- jfb 14y agoI imagine that their market penetration in Europe in so tiny that they can experiment with new models without pissing in too many people's Wheaties. Don't expect this in the US anytime soon.
- jinzo 14y agoIn Slovenia (small country in Central Europe - so quite far from the HBO Nord AB countries.) they're pretty known (and available everywhere - for money of-course). And the article is wrong - we got HBO Go some months ago too.
- ovi256 14y agoIn Romania, cable companies have pirated HBO for years. They just offer it free to their customers. Recently, some have cleaned up their offers, but you can still bribe the cable tech for a trifle so he unblocks HBO, apparently.
- Peer 14y agoWith HBO Go you must have a subscription to HBO the cable network, but this Nordic service will only be online. I think that is what is new about it.
- gizzlon 14y agoIt's not so tiny here in Scandinavia. Most young people I know watch a HBO show or five. There where big Game of Thrones posters on the subway.
- anonymouz 14y agoI had already grabbed my wallet, but then I noticed that it will be restricted to a very few countries. Oh well, back to Pirate Bay.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- colmvp 14y agoYeah it's too bad there's no other forms of culture and entertainment to consume.
- anonymouz 14y agoObviously there's lots of interesting entertainment. But I also happen to like some TV series, and they are usually not available here in any reasonable form (i.e., if local broadcasters pick them up at some point, then they are dubbed). As far as watching TV series in original English goes, grabbing them via a torrent is by far the most convenient and available method here.
- fwr 14y agoThis is probably the first cool thing ever to appear in Poland before the rest of Europe.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoVodka.
- 3pt14159 14y agoWasn't Turkey there first?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI actually don't know, I always believed that Vodka was a Polish invention.
- jlgreco 14y agoPolish sausage. Few things in this world are tastier.
- odiroot 14y agoThat's not actually true. Russians were first. We were probably the first to produce some crude kind of brandy ("winiak" in Polish). It's actually funny that our most successfully exported vodka is Zubrowka. It's not considered that great here. I guess it's the novelty factor.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI know Wikipedia isn't the end-all of historical scholarship, but according to the entry, most existing records point to Poland, not Russia.
- klausa 14y ago
- untog 14y agoAs someone from the UK (who now lives in the US) I look forward to the reversal of roles when US techies are forced to search out proxy connections that allow them to watch online content. Welcome to the club.
- marknutter 14y agoA lot of us had to do that with the Olympics already.
- antihero 14y agoIt was kind of weirdly entertaining in a Schadenfreude-esque manner.
- creativityland 14y agoIndeed it was.
- te_chris 14y agoIndeed, Rowan Simpson summed it up best for me (here in New Zealand) https://twitter.com/rowansimpson/status/230392577071923200 https://twitter.com/rowansimpson/status/230392577071923200
- achille2 14y agoThat just redirects me to a mobile signup page
- voltagex_ 14y agoHighlight of #Olympic2012 so far: seeing Americans struggle with not having immediate access to new content (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how-nbcs-olympics-strategy-became-a-new-media-fiasco.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how-nbcs-olympics-strat...)
- 14y ago
- digeridoo 14y agoEurope as in: the 4% of Europeans that live in Scandinavia.
- freyr 14y agoThe 4% that live beyond the Wall. The wildlings.
- codesuela 14y agoLet's get a P2P network started. Americans get BBC and HBO, we get Hulu and Netflix
- antihero 14y agoWe already have one of those, except everyone gets everything.
- jrockway 14y agoLetting people access content they want to see is killing the industry.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoWhy would I care about industry? If something would be killing me, would "the industry" care? They provide the product, I pay; they don't, I'm not paying; and the package never includes caring.
- jrockway 14y agoThat's a fine attitude. My comment was mostly sarcastic: pirates already provide everything for free, yet the content creators refuse to let people pay for their product (country limitations, format limitations, drm, etc.) Then they whine about how they're losing money and blame the pirates, when it's really their fault for not selling their product at all.
- kierank 14y agoThey do let people pay to access their content - it's just done in a price discriminatory fashion. If they started offering content online they'd lose cable customers who pay more than casual web users.
- baddox 14y agoIf only there was already some P2P network that facilitates the illicit sharing of multimedia content.
- seanc722 14y agoI feel like the price is a little steep. If all your networks did the exact same thing it would cost a fortune. Though HBO is nice...
- chrischen 14y agoIt still beats buying it off iTunes, which can cost around $40 per show per season. This I'm assuming you can probably subscribe when you need, watch all the shows, and then unsubscribe.
- reustle 14y agoHow many shows do you actually watch? I'm not talking about the crap you let play while you walk around the house.
- seanc722 14y agoI watch quite a few shows across different networks. I guess this is a good start though. If they did follow with options similar to posted in the previous comments then I feel it would be superb... Though I feel like these days it rarely happens.
- incision 14y agoWho really wants all those networks? I think $12.50 is perfectly acceptable for the second largest and likely most desirable premium network out there. I'd expect that most folks probably watch fewer than a dozen channels with any regularity. Nielsen says that the average household was receiving 130 channels yet only watching 18 of them in 2008 [1]. I think we eventually get to an a-la-carte system with app-like monthly price points where premium content falls comes in at $5, $10 or more and there are dozens of solid options in the $1-3 range with loads of free (ad-supported) content. 1: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/tva_2008_071709.pdf http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/...
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoHBO's typically ~$7-10 on top of your normal cable bill anyway. If the regular networks went down this model, you'd probably be buying all of [Time Warner, NBC, Disney, Fox]'s channels at $10/mo rather than one by one.
- incision 14y agoDespite all the naysaying, I have a feeling this could show up in the US sooner than expected. HBO GO is very good, surprisingly so. The quality of that effort in combination with moves like this suggest some very smart, visionary folks are at work there. Anecdotally, I'm seeing rapidly growing interest in cord-cutting among non-technical folks. As tablets and 4G phones proliferate I see people in general becoming increasingly frustrated with cable and desirous of having content when and where they want it.
- tptacek 14y agoIf you have cable, HBO GO is free on your phone.
- bratsche 14y agoThat's the problem. It shouldn't be tied to a cable carrier at all. Also, it's not available with all cable carriers. If I subscribe to HBO with Time Warner Cable in Dallas, HBO Go is not available to me.
- kodablah 14y agoThis also affects the XBox app for me w/ TWC in Dallas (and I presume elsewhere). HBO GO on your laptop works just fine, but if you try the HBO GO XBox app it will fail. I have search and searched and I still just can't understand how there should be any difference between different methods of delivery. I am not sure who is to blame, but I suspect HBO charges TWC a different price for more delivery options for its customers. Edit: Apparently this is no longer the case and now it works.
- tptacek 14y agoThe cable carriers outbid you for access. If that was "wrong", they should naturally go out of business, right? Otherwise, what you're asking for is an artificial discount for being a cool Internet person. I take your point about TW Dallas, but feel like that's going to resolve itself soon as HBO GO generates more demand. I don't want to stick up for cable companies (they are terribly annoying to deal with) but at the same time, if everything cost what HN readers thought it should cost, they'd have to have filmed The Sopranos entirely using finger puppets. I think the market is going to sort this out within the next 5 years as more and more serious, big-budget productions are going to be shot and produced for Internet venues. In the meantime, I have a hard time arguing that existing media companies should be forced to forgo market rates for their investments. We're only going to get our glorious Internet media future if the market works.
- vegardx 14y agoI wonder when more services like this will be released in northern Europe. The legal systems are more or less identical on copyright and intellectual property, which should make it a lot easier? Combined, scandinavia covers around 20 million people and have one of the worlds highest purchasing power.
- wmeredith 14y agoOne more crack in the dam.
- sfall 14y agoI hope for the US that HBO will make it an add-on for Hulu or Netflix, I really have enough streaming services.
- stcredzero 14y agoPaying more per-show, but only paying for the shows you want to watch, will likely encourage higher quality shows. When you have, to steal some words from Pink Floyd, "500 channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from." Then the next channel of crap will always capture marginally more money, and will be profitable if costs are low enough. So what you get is in-your face lowest common denominator crap designed to draw the attention of bored channel surfers. On the other hand, if shows need to generate buzz around the water cooler, such that people are proud to have discovered the show and announce to the world they're paying for it, the focus needs to be on quality.
- danso 14y agoI love ArsTechnica too, but I think the link traffic should've gone to Variety mag: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118058484 http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118058484
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sien 14y agoWhile it appears there are not that many sports fans here it is worth noting that for sport this is already happening. The NBA and others have started online subscriptions for their content. For people in places like Australia where cable subscriptions with good sport cost $100 / month it's well worth it. Setanta, an Irish concern, has a streaming service that allows you to pay $17 a month or $100 a year for live sport much of which is soccer. I watch the Bundesliga using this service and it is excellent. It's a shame that you can't get Ligue 1, Serie A, La Liga and the EPL this way. Yet.
- gtCameron 14y agoI have the MLB package. They still restrict the content to appease the cable companies, you can only watch the games that are outside of your market. Works well if you like an out of town team, but if you want to watch the local team it's worthless.
- tjtrapp 14y agoi will cancel my TWC cable subscription in a millisecond once I can get NFL and HBO streamed to my house via my TWC internet connection. cable is so 1950s.
- BryanB55 14y agoLove it. I cancelled my Directv subscription last month for Hulu + Netflix. Haven't looked back. I'd like to see ShowTime go in this direction for US customers.
- stripe 14y ago"... will allow customers in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark..." Then call it HBO Nordic ffs.
- apl 14y agoWhich is, in fact, precisely what they're doing?
- masklinn 14y agoI'm guessing his issue is that "nordic countries" is a well-defined geopolitical entity (it's even had a passport union since the mid-50s) composed of 5 nation-states (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) and their associated territories. Assuming that associated territories are included in the offer to their parent country that still leaves Iceland out of "Nordic HBO", assuming the worst case (that only the territories explicitly listed are in) that leaves out Greenland, the Faroe and Åland as well.
- stripe 14y agoMy issue is that a few selected countries from Europe do not justify such a headline. Even the article itself states that the service will be named "HBO Nordic AB" (in Sweden). The original source article from Variety has way more information anyway and does make a difference between some European countries and Europa as a whole - so why not link to Variety?
- masklinn 14y agoNot sure what the problem is, assuming danish realm autonomous countries and countries under scandinavian sovereignty (Svalbard) gets the access of their realm/sovereign, only Iceland is missing, so it's way closer to nordic than scandinavian (which would either disqualify finland or also be missing iceland)
- JanneVee 14y agoNice one, giving it to the nordic countries first means that they can reduce the number of high-bandwidth seeders for their content on Bittorrent. At the same time profit from it.
- blario 14y agoNext VPS will be in Europe :-D