

HBO’s New Streaming Service, HBO Now, Exclusive to Apple at Launch - blhack
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/09/hbos-new-streaming-service-hbo-now-exclusive-to-apple-tv-at-launch/

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fuligo
What I want entertainment companies to give me is _exactly_ equivalent to the
result of downloading episodes from illegal Bittorrent sites plus the ability
to actually pay for them.

I want a DRM-less HD video file that I can play on any computer, when I want.
I want to be able to download it from anywhere I might be in the world, and my
nationality should not have an effect on the availability of the content.

Heck, if HBO had a web-based _tip jar_ , I would just pay something for every
Game of Thrones episode and otherwise go straight ahead and torrent it. You
know, HBO, don't "offer" me anything, just give me an option to pay you which
makes my download quasi-legal, and I'll take care of the rest myself.

~~~
ebbv
You're ever going to get that, sorry. The big content providers are never
going to sell you a file that you can turn around and put on Bit Torrent. DRM
isn't going anywhere any time soon.

~~~
fuligo
_> big content providers are never going to sell you a file_

This is obviously wrong in principle. The way music downloads work _right now_
is exactly what I've been describing - music from iTunes or Amazon comes
without DRM, and they allow me to purchase songs wherever I am, from wherever
I am.

If your argument is those DRM-less music files don't make it onto Torrent
sites, you're mistaken. Nevertheless, they sell them without DRM, because
customers pressured them into it.

I buy it on iTunes, I put it into my music folder, copy it around to all my
machines, it's just fine.

So I'm a German national being in France right now. If I decide to buy some
music from iTunes, I click on the "buy" button and stuff starts downloading.
However, if I try to purchase a TV show, it starts out by showing me only
German shows. Deep down, I can find outdated US originals with subtitles -
which is the best option they give me! What happens when I try to actually
purchase one? "There is a problem with your iTunes account". Oops, I'm
currently in the wrong country, no show for me! There is no getting around the
fact that this sucks, it sucks needlessly, and to the detriment of everyone
involved.

~~~
sebkomianos
Yeah, but what's their cost for one of these files and how does it compare to
an episode of...Nurse Jackie, let's say?

 __You __might not want /need subtitling but the vast majority of the foreign
fans of Games of Thrones (for example) depend on it to be able to watch. So,
if HBO was ever to give "files" around just like that, they would __have __to
make sure that they are offering something far superior to torrented content,
at a cost that makes it more convenient to choose it over the torrents.

~~~
fuligo
_> they would have to make sure that they are offering something far superior
to torrented content_

I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, so this is the last time I'm
going to respond to that (no offense): I want _exactly_ the torrent file. I
don't want them to pile on _any_ of the additional crap they assume I need or
should need.

Anyone who wants subtitles, or dubs, or a free rootkit, or whatever can use
the _existing sales channels_. I want you to give me your product, as is,
without any additional considerations or features, just straight up. I want
the torrent file, and nothing else, no guarantees, no contracts, no nothing.

Just _me giving you money for the right to legally consume what you made_. Not
some version of it, just the thing, with nothing added or subtracted.

You seem to assume torrenting shows is popular because it's free. Well, it's
not free, it carries a substantial legal risk. There may well be a big portion
of downloaders who don't have the money to buy the show legally. But the
_rest_ of them do it because of the benefits of the medium, not its price tag.

Offer us _exactly_ the benefits and the convenience of the bootlegged medium,
just give us an option to pay you for it. It really is that simple. Nobody is
advocating you should cease any of your current offerings. Just create an
additional sales channel and _allow_ the money to flow in.

------
pbreit
So this is what the a la carte advocates want? Two channels (HBO & ESPN) for
$35? Bundling seems so obviously the better way to approach this (180 channels
for $65).

~~~
urda
You mean 180 channels, where 160-170 are just absolute trash?

So you're really paying $65 bucks for 10-20 channels at best. Not much of a
deal there.

I'm very welcome to this pick what you want idea. I'm ready for cable to die
as a cord cutter.

~~~
diminoten
Yeah, because $3.25-$6.50/channel is totally not a deal, compared to
$17.5/channel. At all.

~~~
IanCal
That depends entirely on what you want to watch, surely.

It's still $30 more, so if those extra channels aren't worth $30 to you then
it's much better.

Besides, I'm not sure what you get if you have a larger cable package. The HBO
$14.99 appears to be for a big back-catalogue.

~~~
diminoten
I'm commenting _solely_ on the factual incorrectness of saying the above was
not a deal, when it very clearly was, assuming "deal" means a more economical
choice. That's all.

~~~
IanCal
> I'm commenting solely on the factual incorrectness of saying the above was
> not a deal, when it very clearly was, assuming "deal" means a more
> economical choice.

And again, this assumes that all channels are equally valuable to you.
Spending more money on things you do not want is _not_ more economical.

~~~
diminoten
Person I replied to said 10-20 "valuable" channels.

~~~
IanCal
No, at best they classified them as "not absolute trash". And _again_ you're
assuming that all those channels have _the same value_.

~~~
diminoten
They do have the same value, and that value is "do I want to pay for this
channel?"

The person I replied to said there were 10-20 channels worth paying for, and
then complained about the cost of those channels, despite the fact that they
were undeniably cheaper than _anything_ the person could get individually.

I hope you realize I have no dog in this fight, and am merely commenting based
on internal argument consistency. The argument the above poster made was
incorrect, internally. That's all I'm pointing out.

We've now spent the better part of 3 hours talking about this. Consider for a
moment the possibility that this isn't a very important distinction, and that
your continual insistence on the issue is perhaps detrimental to the greater
conversation and HN in general.

~~~
IanCal
> They do have the same value, and that value is "do I want to pay for this
> channel?"

By that logic, all items in the world have the same value and that value is
"do I want to pay for this item"?

They each have a different value based on " __what __do I want to pay for this
channel ". It is not a binary option of "I WILL PAY NO MATTER THE COST" and "I
WILL NEVER PAY NO MATTER HOW CHEAP".

> The argument the above poster made was incorrect, internally. That's all I'm
> pointing out.

And all I'm pointing out is that your argument is incorrect.

> We've now spent the better part of 3 hours talking about this.

Which is odd, since all I've been saying is that the choice:

More expensive & more channels vs less expensive & fewer channels

has no clear winner without agreeing on what each particular channel is
"worth". This is a classic case of multi-objective optimisation. I'm quite
interested in finding out why this is such a disagreeable concept to you.

> Consider for a moment the possibility that this isn't a very important
> distinction, and that your continual insistence on the issue is perhaps
> detrimental to the greater conversation and HN in general.

And yet your continual insistence is beneficial? I'm a little confused, it's
worth your time to try and point out a problem in someone's thinking, but not
worth anyone else's time to point out problems in yours?

~~~
diminoten
The person I replied to was stating that 10-20 channels are "worth".

The rest of your comment is just "I don't want to be wrong" nonsense.

~~~
IanCal
> The person I replied to was stating that 10-20 channels are "worth".

Worth _what_?

> The rest of your comment is just "I don't want to be wrong" nonsense.

Silly me.

I have two offers for you:

1\. I have a pack of 10 different coins. I will sell them for $5.

2\. I have a pack of 5 coins, and am willing to sell them for $3.

Which do you want to buy?

~~~
diminoten
You're so far off topic and against the spirit of HN at this point, the only
reason I'm even replying is to hopefully make you realize that.

This isn't Reddit, our comment chain isn't supposed to be this long.

~~~
IanCal
I'm unsure as to why pointing out problems in your argument is against the
spirit of HN. Perhaps you want a hackernews where we all misquote each other
and logical flaws are left unchallenged. I'd hoped we'd all try and at least
have sound arguments, which is what prompted you to post your original
sarcastic comment.

I'd hoped that through discussion we could straighten it out, but that seems
futile now as I've repeated myself enough times in different ways. Instead
I'll just ask that you look at the honestly look at the claims you've made and
see if you find any problems with them.

And finally, in case it isn't clear, I think that _both_ you and urda are
wrong.

~~~
diminoten
10-20 channels worth buying at a price of $3.25-$6.50/channel is a better
economical choice than 1-2 channels worth buying unbundled at a price of
$17.50/channel.

Everything else here is you making HN a worse place to be. That's it.

~~~
IanCal
> 10-20 channels worth buying at a price of $3.25-$6.50/channel is a better
> economical choice than 1-2 channels worth buying unbundled at a price of
> $17.50/channel.

It's simply not the case that spending more money to get more channels is
always more economical just because the cost per channel goes down. Which is
more economical depends on the value you associate with each channel.

If one channel cost $20, or I could get that channel and 9 others for $40,
which is better for me? It depends on whether or not those 9 channels are
worth $20 to me. If they're not, then it's not a better deal. Just because I
might be willing to pay _some_ money for those 9, doesn't mean I'm willing to
pay $20 for them. If those channels are worth more than $20 to me, then it may
well be a good deal for me.

Therefore, packages are good deals for some, unbundled channels are good deals
for others.

~~~
diminoten
The person I replied to set the value of the 10-20 channels at "worth paying
for" at the price set, so the value beyond that is irrelevant for this
discussion.

~~~
IanCal
Are you interpreting

> So you're really paying $65 bucks for 10-20 channels at best. Not much of a
> deal there.

as meaning "those 10-20 channels are worth $65 to me"?

~~~
diminoten
That's irrelevant, so no.

"Worth buying" is a boolean. It's either "worth" or it's not, because we've
already establish that "worth" channels are willing to be paid for at $17.50,
so less than $17.50 is still within any pricing range that might exist.

Would it be easier for you to grasp if we called them "quality" channels?
10-20 _quality_ channels? Paying for 10-20 _quality_ channels that are bundled
together is more economical than paying for each _quality_ channel on its own,
based on the values given by the commenter.

Your "scale" idea is just a pointless intermediary step towards deciding if a
channel is "worth" or not. While yes, you could decide what cost you're
willing to pay for each channel, you will still arrive at a "yes/no" decision
for each channel (a decision that will only get _more generous_ the less
expensive the cost of the individual channel), which will be the "worth" value
I've been talking about.

~~~
IanCal
> "Worth buying" is a boolean. It's either "worth" or it's not, because we've
> already establish that "worth" channels are willing to be paid for at
> $17.50, so less than $17.50 is still within any pricing range that might
> exist.

What part of their comment did you interpret as them thinking each of those 20
channels is worth $17.50 on their own?

We have only established that _two specific channels_ were worth that much.
Not any of the others. This is an absolutely vital distinction.

> . While yes, you could decide what cost you're willing to pay for each
> channel, you will still arrive at a "yes/no" decision for each channel (a
> decision that will only get more generous the less expensive the cost of the
> individual channel)

Right, so if I'm willing to pay $17.50 for HBO, I'm obviously willing to pay
$5 for HBO. But being willing to pay $17.50 for HBO doesn't mean I'm willing
to pay $5 for a _different channel_.

> based on the values given by the commenter.

urdu did not specify how valuable those channels were to them. They just said
that it was 20 (let's call them "quality channels") for $65 and that wasn't
much of a deal.

> Would it be easier for you to grasp if we called them "quality" channels?
> 10-20 quality channels? Paying for 10-20 quality channels that are bundled
> together is more economical than paying for each quality channel on its own,
> based on the values given by the commenter.

And the decision is not "buy them all on their own or buy them all together"
it's "buy some on their own and not others or buy them all together". Nobody
here is arguing that buying the same items at a higher price each is better
value, they're arguing that buying a subset of them at a higher price each can
be better value overall.

This should be obvious if we split out the two channels like so:

Package A: Two channels at $17.50 each

Package B: Eighteen channels at $1.67 each

If I don't value the channels in B enough, it is more economical to me to only
buy package A rather than package A _and_ package B.

~~~
diminoten
> This is an absolutely vital distinction.

No it's not.

------
spdy
Even with AppleTV this is US only? Any guesses if this will be usable via VPN
like Netflix?

~~~
cjg_
Well, depends where you live, HBO Nordic is available in some nordic countries
(at ~$10). However not on AppleTV I believe.

~~~
tolle
Yeah, but you have to airplay it to the Apple TV. No app on the actual Apple
TV Device. The iOS app could also use some love.

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blhack
After some digging, it sounds like "exclusive" is used pretty loosely here.

You can log in with a browser, its just registration that requires and apple
device, and that includes osx.

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laluser
This is huge for HBO. Although it will be a difficult battle, it seems that
they are fully committed to breaking ties with traditional TV cable providers.

~~~
function_seven
I have a feeling we'll find out that the cable companies need HBO more than
HBO needs the cable companies.

The cord-cutting trend has barely just begun. Television five years from now
will be a _completely_ different landscape than it is today, and the change
from now to then will make what has happened over the past five years look
like barely a movement.

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sergers
3 month exclusive for signups through the HBO iOS app only for HBO standalone
service.

can also access via the hbo now website on pc or mac

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rodgerd
Nope.

It means HBO will be getting money exclusively from Apple users. Everyone else
will be getting the service for free.

