HBO’s CEO Richard Plepler has announced at a Time Warner investment meeting today, that they will be launching a stand alone streaming only version of its service in 2015. This is some pretty outstanding news for HBO fans out there that have cut the cord, or can’t because they will miss out on their favorite HBO programming.
“That is a large and growing opportunity that should no longer be left untapped,â€Â Plepler said. “It is time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO. So, in 2015, we will launch a stand-alone, over-the-top, HBO service in the United States. We will work with our current partners. And, we will explore models with new partners. All in, there are 80 million homes that do not have HBO and we will use all means at our disposal to go after them.â€
HBO already offers an app, HBO Go, that does allow you to stream a large amount of content that is provided by the network. The major downfall with it is you must have a valid subscription to HBO through a provider. Which is checked against a login. Many got around this by using friends or families logins who didn’t care to stream. Back in January of this year Plepler even let loose a statement that sharing of those logins was a good thing. It was free marketing for HBO. I think they failed to see that cord cutters wouldn’t need to get cable and pay for HBO if someone else was. HBO took its time in the begin to even allow the app to carry video over HDMI out. Of course now it supports Chromecast. Still, you need that nagging subscription service through a supporting television provider.
There are multiple route that HBO can go with this. Plepler ran down three potential variations. The first would be to offer the streaming only service through their current cable partners to consumers who just have internet service through them. For instance, you have Comcast cable internet, but no cable TV subscription, then you could add HBO as a streaming service to your bill. A second option is to distribute through new partners like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The third would be to take out the middle man and stream directly to consumers, like Netflix.
The final option that cuts straight to the consumer is my personal vote. I fail to see how hard that would really be since they already have apps for mobile devices and the ability to login and watch on a PC. All they would really need to do is offer a payment structure in the app to stream. So long as they don’t go per-episode, season, movie, but more so a flat rate. There is lots of time for HBO to figure out how they want to approach the situation. Hopefully it goes over well and we see Showtime, Starz, and some major sports channels start to take a similar approach.
Source: Businessweek | Entertainment Weekly
