Kiss goodbye to cable: HBO to allow online subscriptions

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Kiss goodbye to cable, then kiss your cable provider straight on the lips when they circle around to the back door, charging you an arm and a leg to deliver your video subscriptions over the internet tubes they ownā€¦

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See, Iā€™d probably jump at this if it became available in the UK. And thatā€™s even though I already see most of the HBO shows Iā€™m interested in. Basically, Iā€™m sitting here waiting to pay them money.
Itā€™s kind of insane that a handful of gatekeeper companies have seemingly convinced the world that consumers like me donā€™t exist, and that everyone is either a penny-pinching criminal or wants to pay a fortune for a big worthless spume of ad-encrusted crap.

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A promising start.

Good for you HBO, welcome to 2001.

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Just in time for Game of Thrones to be wrapping up!

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You are not alone. Iā€™m more than happy to pay (a reasonable amount) for the content I want but refuse to pay for cable package deals that heap on a bunch of crap I donā€™t want.

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Iā€™m probably going to kill my cable anyway, but it would be nice to have HBO I guess. Thereā€™s very little I donā€™t get from Amazon already, with their HBO back-catalog and pretty much every movie either available for free through Prime or for a fee of between $4-$6 for other movies. Iā€™d spend far less if I just bought movies rather than paid for cable movies via subscription that I never watch.

The one thing that I think is still broken is the per-episode or per-season pricing for TV shows through services like Amazon. Itā€™s crazy to pay $3 an episode. I think Amazon will be able to fix this with their ā€œwith/without special offersā€ model though. It sure is an interesting time to be a consumer of TV entertainmentā€¦

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$3 per episode - with no commercial interruption. Itā€™s too much, but for the two shows I watch currentlyā€¦ itā€™s fine.

And I sort of hate Hulu. Even when you pay, you get served ads. NO NO NO I say! Bad model!!

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I donā€™t suppose this will have any effect, either way, on network neutrality.

If it really turns out to be $3 per episode, that makes GOT quite affordable to not pirate. Iā€™m looking forward to seeing what they end up doing.

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My only problem with this (on the heels of my saying Iā€™d love to see FX and AMC do this as well)ā€¦

I would honestly rather pay $50/month for Netflix and have access to everything, rather than $10 for Netflix plus $10 for HBO plus $10 for Amazon plus $10 for Hulu.

$2.50 for Doctor Who in HD gets me on Amazon.

It means more companies with a vested interest in countering the bribery efforts of ISPs with bribery efforts of their own.

Because I refuse to call it ā€œlobbyingā€.

Iā€™d get hopeful but canā€™t imagine this will be available to me here in Japan w/o some jumping through hoops.

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