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HBO Is Coming to Amazon Prime

11K views 70 replies 25 participants last post by  Bigg 
#1 ·
The war between Netflix and Amazon intensifies: (Netflix lost round one)

http://time.com/73525/hbo-is-coming-to-amazon-prime-whether-you-have-hbo-or-not/

"Prime members; this isn’t HBO signing up to let Amazon charge you to watch these shows. Amazon says Prime members will have “unlimited streaming access” to shows that include:

All seasons of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome and Six Feet Under, as well as Eastbound & Down, Enlightened and Flight of the Conchords

Miniseries, including Angels in America, Band of Brothers, John Adams, The Pacific and Parade’s End

Select seasons of current series such as Boardwalk Empire, Treme and True Blood

Original movies like Game Change, Too Big To Fail and You Don’t Know Jack

Documentaries including the Autopsy and Iceman series, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and When the Levees Broke

Original comedy specials from Lewis Black, Ellen DeGeneres, Louis CK and Bill Maher

Amazon says earlier seasons of HBO shows like Girls, The Newsroom and Veep will roll out “over the course of the multi-year agreement, approximately three years after airing on HBO.”
 
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#52 ·
The thing is, with a la carte, a big chunk of the middle of cable would either get WAY better, or they would go clean out of business within months. There are dozens of channels that have degraded to low-value programming that people aren't going to pay for. It would probably also kill off all of the tertiary channels that various networks have started up, like most of the 13 Discovery channels, several of which are basically trashbins for re-runs, and turn over on a pretty regular basis. It would also kill off the channels that just re-run old movies. Lastly, it would force networks to be much more topic-centric and not wander all over the place, in order to make a good value proposition to a specific type of viewer.

I can't handle DVR'ed sports... just knowing that it's not live makes it bad enough, even if I isolate myself from everything else. I need the excitement of LIVE!
Live or recorded the excitement would be identical. Besides with a DVR your are never watching anything live. There is first a delay in the transmission from OTA, cable, or satellite. Then on the dvr it is written to the hard drive first and then read off of it. So it is never actually live.
 
#54 ·
Don't be pedantic.
Sorry I am with aaronwt on this one. The only way you are actually watching live sports is if you are at the event watching it directly. Otherwise it is recorded and it is delayed even if it is only a few seconds. The assertion that it changes anything because you are watching a recording that has been delayed a few minutes instead of a few seconds is what is ridiculous.
 
#55 ·
Sorry I am with aaronwt on this one. The only way you are actually watching live sports is if you are at the event watching it directly. Otherwise it is recorded and it is delayed even if it is only a few seconds. The assertion that it changes anything because you are watching a recording that has been delayed a few minutes instead of a few seconds is what is ridiculous.
Maybe I misread the original post regarding not DVRing sports, but I believe he was referring to recording something and watching it much later, like hours or days later. Not "delayed a few minutes"

I always "DVR" my sports, but I also watch it "live". It being delayed by a few seconds or minutes (I'm almost always behind by a few minutes because I often trickplay) is not worth mentioning. But, I too cannot watch a sporting event that happened hours ago or days ago. Just not the same.
 
#56 ·
It would also kill off the channels that just re-run old movies. Lastly, it would force networks to be much more topic-centric and not wander all over the place, in order to make a good value proposition to a specific type of viewer.
I actually like the old movies. I remember when I first got cable, AMC ran old movies without commercials. I also enjoyed the commentary and background about the movie they gave before the show started. Watching a movie was a popcorn event then.

Now there are a couple of local channels in my area that run old movies and I record them, especially the old film noir.
 
#57 ·
Live or recorded the excitement would be identical. Besides with a DVR your are never watching anything live. There is first a delay in the transmission from OTA, cable, or satellite. Then on the dvr it is written to the hard drive first and then read off of it. So it is never actually live.
Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.

I actually like the old movies. I remember when I first got cable, AMC ran old movies without commercials. I also enjoyed the commentary and background about the movie they gave before the show started. Watching a movie was a popcorn event then.

Now there are a couple of local channels in my area that run old movies and I record them, especially the old film noir.
It's a waste of channels. That's what Netflix is for.
 
#58 ·
Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.

It's a waste of channels. That's what Netflix is for.
Except, because of exclusive deals like this between HBO and Amazon, Netflix is now having a hard time obtaining material to stream.
 
#59 ·
Except, because of exclusive deals like this between HBO and Amazon, Netflix is now having a hard time obtaining material to stream.
True, Netflix isn't the source of movies it was a few years ago, although they still have a LOT of stuff.
 
#60 ·
Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.
....
I still don't get that. If you don't know the outcome or anything about the game, how can it be less exciting watching it from a dvr that has already recorded it?

What makes a live game less exciting for me is all the commercials. Which is why I don't want to watch it live. Take the NFL. Actual game play where there is any action is only around 12 minutes of the actual sixty minute game. The rest of the 48 minutes are mostly players standing around. Then you add time outs, commercials, and talking heads and that adds another two hours of mostly nothing to the three hour plus game that is broadcast.
 
#61 ·
I still don't get that. If you don't know the outcome or anything about the game, how can it be less exciting watching it from a dvr that has already recorded it?

What makes a live game less exciting for me is all the commercials. Which is why I don't want to watch it live. Take the NFL. Actual game play where there is any action is only around 12 minutes of the actual sixty minute game. The rest of the 48 minutes are mostly players standing around. Then you add time outs, commercials, and talking heads and that adds another two hours of mostly nothing to the three hour plus game that is broadcast.
Just because I know it's not live. I like seeing some commercials, but if they put the same ones on over and over it gets pretty bad.

Basketball is a lot better than NFL for actual gameplay time...
 
#62 ·
Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.

It's a waste of channels. That's what Netflix is for.
"Waste" is a subjective term. It's not a waste to me because I don't have Netflix and I enjoy them. I think paying $8 extra for Netflix is a waste, if I can get the same thing free. Again, value is subjective.
 
#63 ·
"Waste" is a subjective term. It's not a waste to me because I don't have Netflix and I enjoy them. I think paying $8 extra for Netflix is a waste, if I can get the same thing free. Again, value is subjective.
That bandwidth could be used for something that isn't kicking around in a zillion other places.
 
#64 ·
Otherwise, NO! OnDemand is horrible. They don't let you FF anything, they just delete stuff from the library whenever they feel like it. Linear TV is here to stay. Also, what about live events?
That's not true, FF in Comcast's On Demand depends on the content provider. All HBO can be FF'd, for example. Agree that with the other limitations it can only supplement QAM delivery now.
 
#65 ·
That's not true, FF in Comcast's On Demand depends on the content provider. All HBO can be FF'd, for example. Agree that with the other limitations it can only supplement QAM delivery now.
Fair enough. But most of it is un FF-able now. Not sure why anyone would even use XoD. It really sucks. For TV content, I'll just DVR it. For movies, I'm not going to watch a crummy MPEG-2 stream when I can stream VUDU HDX.
 
#66 ·
That's not true, FF in Comcast's On Demand depends on the content provider. All HBO can be FF'd, for example. Agree that with the other limitations it can only supplement QAM delivery now.
Why would HBO not allow you to fast forward through their content? The whole point of restricting fast forward is to force you to watch advertising, which HBO doesn't have.
 
#67 ·
Why would HBO not allow you to fast forward through their content? The whole point of restricting fast forward is to force you to watch advertising, which HBO doesn't have.
But don't they have VOD where you can't fast forward through anything? EVen though there are only a few minutes of commercials you can't FF through the content or the commercials? AT least that is what my co-workers sometime complain about when watching VOD on Comcast.
 
#68 ·
My understanding in my area is that recent network shows on most, but not all, networks cannot be FF on TiVo Xfinity On Demand, but archived shows can be FF. It's been a while since I tried it out, and I won't be back in Comcast-land for another month so I can't test it.
 
#69 ·
But don't they have VOD where you can't fast forward through anything? EVen though there are only a few minutes of commercials you can't FF through the content or the commercials? AT least that is what my co-workers sometime complain about when watching VOD on Comcast.
Maybe, I don't know. It would make sense that it's based on the individual content and not disabled system-wide. I've never had a cable company provided set top box so I couldn't tell you.
 
#70 ·
Maybe, I don't know. It would make sense that it's based on the individual content and not disabled system-wide. I've never had a cable company provided set top box so I couldn't tell you.
It's part of the deal with the content provider so they can sell teh ads.

On UVerse VoD you sometimes get the message "Fast Fording may be disabled." but sometimes FF works anyway. Rewinding and jumpback always work.
 
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