HBO is reportedly negotiating with Apple to have the Apple TV included as a launch device when the network’s new standalone streaming service launches next month. International Business Times reports Apple has been “aggressive” in pushing to get access to the new service as HBO reportedly plans a launch by mid-April in time for the latest season of hit show Game of Thrones:
HBO is in talks with Apple to make Apple TV one of the launch partners for its highly anticipated streaming service when it debuts next month. HBO and streaming partner Major League Baseball Advanced Media are working to have the standalone service, called “HBO Now,” ready to launch in April in conjunction with the premiere of the fifth season of “Game of Thrones,” according to sources familiar with their plans.
The much anticipated HBO Now streaming service, first announced back in October, will allow users to access HBO content outside of a subscription from a cable TV provider for the first time.
While the Apple TV already offers an HBO channel, it and many others currently require users to first authenticate with a cable TV account. The new streaming service, according to today’s report, will cost around $15/month when purchased directly from HBO and could arrive as soon as next month. The report adds that Apple could “add a second app for HBO Now,” which would help distinguish the standalone service from the HBO GO apps already available for cable subscribers.
HBO hasn’t yet announced an official launch date, pricing or device support for the service.
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Woohoo A La Carte tv is here for 15 bucks a channel! Cutting cable is super affordable!
There is Hulu for $8 a month.
But once everybody cuts their cable though, I wonder if that price remains
I signed up for Hulu the other day and I got rid of it. They had a bunch of really bad movies and not much that I can wholeheartedly say was watchable. There is better content on Amazon Prime. I signed up to Amazon Prime because i buy a ton of products over Amazon and it actually save me a lot of shipping costs. It’s a great deal for those that buy lots of stuff on Amazon, but not so great if you don’t.
Oh yeah, the movie selection is terrible, but what they exceed at, and the main reason people subscribe to Hulu is for their television offerings. It’s Tivo for folks who can’t catch programming at the time they are first aired or who cannot receive the over-the-air channels without cable.
I think it’s $15/month for all of the available HBO channels for which there are many. HBO Signature, HBO, HBO Family, etc.
The problem that some of us have is not all of us have really fast internet connection to stream 1080p (or even 4K video) very well. I have enough problems just trying to watch a freakin YouTube video that’s only 10 minutes.
I still prefer cable TV. I just wish they just charged per station a monthly fee of around $.50 to $1 a month, depending on the station and just let us pay for only stations we want to watch and then if we want to add or delete a station, we can do it individually. I think we have to have at least 20, 30 or even faster ISP speeds to make watching TV over the internet a good experience.
Every time I watch a movie from Amazon, Hulu, Crackle, etc. I can’t watch it without it constantly stopping every so many minutes due to bandwidth issues, many times I have to relaunch the player. It’s frustrating.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a super fast and reliable ISP at this time. I wish I did.
These are the reasons why I haven’t bought a AppleTV. Plus, it should have a Tivo type DVR, and I just like fast channel switching with regular cable. If future AppleTV boxes would add a DVR, connection to cable TV so we’d use an AppleTV box instead of what the cable providers give us, then I might consider an AppleTV box.
I agree, I think HBO should be running around 4.99 allowing for basic cable channels to come on board around the 0.99 figure. Also to add to your above reply about Amazon Prime, I really like it and its been improving a lot lately.
You don’t yet get it but you will.
1) $15/month is too much. Even if they paid Apple a 30% cut this would be over $10/month direct to HBO with apple handling all of the billing and marketing for the service. Compare that to the $5/month the cable companies pay to HBO and this is classic protectionist pricing to keep from pissing off the cable companies. It is evidence that HBO is not willing to do what it needs to do to compete with Netflix. $7.99 to $9.99 would be the sweet spot for this service.
2) Dream on! individual TV broadcasters would allow for individual shows to be rented for 24 hours for $1. They are not going to give you access to their content for $1/month. Someone like Apple will have to negotiate another style of bundling.
3) DVD quality video requires about 2-3mb/sec 1080p requires 5-7mb/sec. I’ve been doing this for almost 5 years now and I know what you need.
4) DVR is pointless in a streaming world. Everything is already captured and stored. If you want to schedule a local cacheing of certain programs to augment your bandwidth, that’s fine but there is no reason to capture data for later viewing because there is no reason to distribute it to everyone at a set time.
I switched from DirectTV to Apple tv over 4 years ago. At the time I was paying $84/month for a single HD DVR and one of their standard packages (no HBO, showtime etc). This translates to about 36 season passes per year. All of them in better quality than DirectTV and all of them without commercials!!! and all of them owned by me and able to be viewed on any computer or iOS device in my home or the homes of my immediate family.
The combination of Netflix and iTunes crushes traditional cable IMHO!
Are you being serious? HBO is one of, if not the most expensive TV channels because they don’t have advertisers, have a high production value for their originals and show newer movies. Your comment is like saying all cars are too expensive because a Bentley is $200,000. Yeah, Bentleys are expensive, which is why most motorists don’t drive Bentleys.
Anyway, compared to the status quo, where you have to have cable to even be able to buy HBO, this is a huge improvement.
Are you being serious because who wants to cut cable pay 15 per channel and end up paying more than they started with for 90 less channels? Its not about the channel and its content its about the fact that for a cable package you will end up paying LESS if you want at least 5 channels at that rate!
Chrisl84, nobody wants to pay $15 per channel for most channels. Duh. HBO is different. I already cut cable and pay for Amazon Prime, Hulu+, and Netflix. Considering I already paid for high speed internet access and Amazon Prime, that’s $18 for plenty of TV and movies. I would happily add $15 for access to all things HBO. I don’t care about other channels. You can keep your 90 channels. I’ll take the content I want and leave the rest.
So I could subscribe to this, and unsubscribe from HBO from by cable provider?
That’s a start, though I think the cable package with HBO has a number of other channels I would want.
The rest of my family may not be happy, but if I could get HBO, Showtime, and MLB baseball, (along with Nextflix I already have) I could get rid of cable TV.
check out my drawings, please?:)
Let’s do some math:
Netflix: $8, Hulu: $10, HBO Now: $15 = $32 a month that covers just about everything (worth watching) save for live sports. But the cost of MLB, NFL Sunday Ticket and NBA League Pass would still come out cheaper than a year of cable/satellite.
A new day is here.
tes, but I would still need a major live news channel
I’d add Amazon Prime to the bunch as well.
Relatedly, I hope Apple introduces a global cable account sign-in/authentication for Apple TV. It’s very cumbersome currently when you have to sign into your cable account separately for each network “app.”
slowly but surely, the television model is dragged kicking and screaming into the future
That’s far, far too much.
You’d have to be a moron to pay $15 a month just for HBO. It’s a good channel but seriously, that’s just dumb. that’s almost twice the cost of Netflix, or half the price of basic cable where I live. For one channel with maybe a half dozen good shows.
Then they will get low adoption and say “See! We tried this Internet thing and it didn’t work.”
Yea if I’m not mistaken with my cable subscription I get every movie channel from HBO to Cinemax to showtime to encore to whatever else for like 25$. 15 is definitely a hard swallow.
It’s actually less than I thought it would be. You’d have to be a moron to not know that cable companies charge more than that for it (my provider charges $20), they just discount it initially or bundle it with something else (or do both both) so you don’t realize how much it actually costs, and clearly, the ruse has fooled you and Ryan Morano. If you can’t afford $15, then maybe HBO isn’t for you; nothing wrong with that.
For those of you that still want a live news channel, you can buy an antenna and get OTA broadcasts from the major networks. Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Torrents, and OTA tv shows. I cut the cable about a decade ago. All I need is Formula1 and MotoGP a la carte, and I’m set. For now, I’ll just stream or download torrents of the races.
There is also SlingTv for $20 a month, $25 with ESPN, ESPN2, BeIn (International Futbol).
The move to Ala Carte is good but also navigation is terrible for Cable. One of the worst User Interface experiences ever. Should you really have to skip over the Quilting Channel. Needs to be personalized.
Both reasons why I’ve been a cable cutter for a long time.
Man, never knew about SlingTV till now. Looks legit. They just added IFC and AMC apparently. $20/month, no contract, bunch o’ channels … can only get better and bigger.
This would be plenty for me as I don’t watch much TV:
– OTA for HD network and local channels – $0
– ATV – $0
– Netflix – $9
– SlingTV – Live CNN, Food Network, AMD, IFC, ESPN, etc. – $20
That’s $29/mo for 30-50 channels depending on your local OTA channels. Add a ChannelMaster DVR and that makes a great package. All without any kind of contract or much nonsense.
I cut cable TV four years ago. Unfortunately they have jacked up the cable bill itself. I use to pay $21.95. Now its around $67. Able to switch? No because there is no competition in the area. You cannot buy the equipment but you cannot access the connection without the equipment so you have to pay $6.00 rental charge. This is such bull.
$15/month? Bahahahahaha. Ok, good luck with that.
I don’t think you understand the economics of this. This will be a huge success. Huge. There are millions of “cable-cutters” around the world waiting for this. And millions more will join our ranks when they realize the one reason for keeping cable is gone.
Reblogged this on ideasspace.
A compromise between a la carte and the status quo should be made.
My idea: Apple negotiates directly with producers but bundles are put together with similar content. Then you buy these bundles, like other people. You get channels you may like and others you may not. You vote on your favourite and disliked channels with a Spotify-like system. All of the votes fine tune the content to everyone’s preference and Apple determines which producers to retain and which to drop.
For $15 a month, it is a no deal for me. When I paid for HBO (and the other premium channels) they were $5/mo each. sure, that was a “intro” price, but when the year, or two, is up, just haggle for the $5 plan again. When I switch providers I get more special packages.
Then there is the streaming speed. I have Comcast 105 now and it seems slower than my old Fios that was 45. Then Comcast has that monthly GB cap too. There are a bunch of shows on Discovery, Smithsonian, History, HGTV, Food Network, etc that I like to watch and though some are on Apple TV (with subscription) I am not sure I’d want to buy the shows on iTunes.
and then I have never been a Netflix, or Hulu subscriber, so that could be an issue or answer to the equation i am building.
I will buy this.
I would really love something like that to happen here in Denmark, but unfortunately i dont think it will happen :-(
$15 is waaaay to much for their content. They have less to offer than Netflix, and should therefore cost less. Count me out.