
 HBO cuts the cord, brings streaming-only service to Europe - nightbrawler
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/hbo-cuts-the-cord-brings-streaming-only-service-to-europe/
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untog
As 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.

~~~
slurgfest
Why do you want something unpleasant for people who weren't responsible for
your own unpleasant experiences?

~~~
untog
Awareness. I will often see someone post a link to Hulu and be genuinely
unaware that no-one outside of the US can view it.

~~~
autodidakto
You want to hurt the innocent to build awareness for your cause? In America,
we call that terrorism!

But then again, we call everything terrorism.

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bgentry
Wow. 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.

~~~
001sky
This might also be a technical reaearch project. test the weapons that are
avail, etc. Go back and improve, before the real war.

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gizzlon
_The real war?_ Couldn't the market for HBO be bigger in Europe than in the
US? (given that there's more people here ;)

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001sky
_The service, named HBO Nordic AB, will allow customers in Sweden, Norway,
Finland, and Denmark to stream subtitled versions of the same content
available in the US_

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gizzlon
oh, ok :)

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incision
Despite 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
If you have cable, HBO GO is free on your phone.

~~~
bratsche
That'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.

~~~
tptacek
The 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.

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CamperBob2
_The cable carriers outbid you for access_

I wasn't aware that I was in competition with a cable company. I guess I
should read my own S-1 statement sometime...

~~~
tptacek
You are in competition with the cable company when you ask to be able to pay
HBO directly instead of paying the cable company, and in the sense that the
cable company pays more to deliver HBO to you than you yourself would be
willing to pay.

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jfb
I 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
In 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
In 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.

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stcredzero
Paying 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.

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danso
I love ArsTechnica too, but I think the link traffic should've gone to Variety
mag:

<http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118058484>

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anonymouz
I 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.

~~~
colmvp
Yeah it's too bad there's no other forms of culture and entertainment to
consume.

~~~
anonymouz
Obviously 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.

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fwr
This is probably the first cool thing ever to appear in Poland before the rest
of Europe.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Vodka.

~~~
3pt14159
Wasn't Turkey there first?

~~~
pavel_lishin
I actually don't know, I always believed that Vodka was a Polish invention.

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lambda
Well, 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.

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digeridoo
Europe as in: the 4% of Europeans that live in Scandinavia.

~~~
freyr
The 4% that live beyond the Wall. The wildlings.

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codesuela
Let's get a P2P network started. Americans get BBC and HBO, we get Hulu and
Netflix

~~~
antihero
We already have one of those, except everyone gets everything.

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jrockway
Letting people access content they want to see is killing the industry.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Why 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
That'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
They 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.

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bartonfink
Any ideas whether it would be feasible to get a proxy connection up to watch
it in the U.S. via this?

~~~
stackingcode
You could try a VPN with iPredator.

<https://www.ipredator.se/> <https://www.ipredator.se/page/faq#other_stream>

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sien
While 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
I 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.

~~~
dminor
There are inexpensive VPNs you can use. Kind of perverse to watch a local team
through a non-local proxy, but oh well.

~~~
r00fus
So this is basically a fee on technical incompetence.

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BryanB55
Love 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.

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wmeredith
One more crack in the dam.

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vegardx
I 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.

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sfall
I hope for the US that HBO will make it an add-on for Hulu or Netflix, I
really have enough streaming services.

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JanneVee
Nice 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.

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tjtrapp
i 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.

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seanc722
I 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...

~~~
reustle
How many shows do you actually watch? I'm not talking about the crap you let
play while you walk around the house.

~~~
seanc722
I 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.

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blario
Next VPS will be in Europe :-D

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stripe
"... will allow customers in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark..." Then
call it HBO Nordic ffs.

~~~
apl
Which is, in fact, precisely what they're doing?

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masklinn
I'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
My 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?

