Amazon Snags Older HBO Shows For Web Streaming

&quot;In addition, HBO GO will become available on Fire TV, targeting a launch by year-end.&quot;<p>Looks like this deal also adds the last missing checkmark to the Fire TV comparison chart: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fire-TV-streaming-media-player/dp/B00CX5P8FC#compare" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Fire-TV-streaming-media-player&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B00C...</a>

&gt; It’s the first time HBO has offered access to its catalog via a streaming video service that’s not its own HBO Go.<p>Wrong, iTunes and Google already have the first three seasons of Game of Thrones.<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/game-of-thrones-season-1/id482730236" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;tv-season&#x2F;game-of-thrones-season...</a><p><a href="https://play.google.com/store/tv/show/Game_of_Thrones?id=71Edzxe9gmo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;tv&#x2F;show&#x2F;Game_of_Thrones?id=71E...</a>

This is great for Amazon. Looks like they&#x27;re attempting to be the primary outlet for premium big-name content producers, while Netflix is trying to be the primary outlet for their own content, which has the HBOs and Showtimes shying away from doing business with them. Both Netflix&#x27;s and Amazon&#x27;s are viable strategies, and it&#x27;ll be interesting to see which pan&#x27;s out.<p>On the other hand, piracy has gotten <i>way</i> easier. The technology is already here for the more tech savvy to instantly stream (or at least quickly download) The Wire and Game of Thrones, bypassing Amazon, as well as Arrested Development and Orange is the New Black, bypassing Netflix. Netflix and Amazon aren&#x27;t just competing with each other, they&#x27;re competing with illegal p2p technology. And in the case of Netflix, throw in traditional premium content producers as well.<p>Reed Hastings currently has great hair, I expect that&#x27;ll start turning grey real fast.

There is an amazing quote I read over a year ago on the Netflix vs HBO battle and it basically said that it&#x27;s a race for Netflix to become like HBO before HBO can become like Netflix.

On the one hand this reinforces that cordcutting will continue to be a second-class citizen in terms of first-run&#x2F;same-season content, but on the other hand, making it easier for people to discover Six Feet Under is a great thing.

As Amazon Prime&#x27;s catalog has improved, I&#x27;ve bought fewer videos in the last few years, even as prices have plummeted. (Whole series are selling now for what a single season used to cost!) Good news for my closet space, but to the collector in me it seems so ephemeral. When the copyright on The Sopranos lapses a few hundred years from now, my DVDs and Blu-rays will be in the public domain. Meanwhile, Amazon could lose its license before I get halfway through season three.

I don&#x27;t know what to think about TV.<p>On one hand, there&#x27;s a lot of progress happening. Streaming, on-demand and pay-per-view&#x2F;download are really getting bigger and more prominent every year. HDboxes, are getting better too and achieving a lot of the same things (watch anything anytime).<p>The artform itself is improving. Game of Thrones or Breaking bad are better that any show could be in the stand alone episode paradigm of Star Trek. They are using the 10+ hrs hours of sequential viewing to do some serious plot &amp; character development. Walter White wasn&#x27;t possible before serials.<p>On the other hand, it&#x27;s all such a kludge.The whole thing is built around creating and maintaining an artificial scarcity modeled on the slightly less artificial scarcity of a few years ago. We pretend that we&#x27;re paying Amazon or Netflix&#x27;s for a cable or pretending that we&#x27;re paying Apple for a video cassette. Don&#x27;t get me started on loaning.<p>I&#x27;m not claiming that copyright could go away and still have Game Of Thrones. This isn&#x27;t that kind of statement. But… it&#x27;s just <i>such a kludge</i>. Something this brittle and ugly can&#x27;t be the right way to do anything.

Well, that was a pretty effective move, since now it seems worth it to get a streaming device that does Amazon Prime, where yesterday I didn&#x27;t care.

Wow, this is big surprising news I think. Not so much what it says about Amazon, more what it says about HBO. Seems to indicate strongly that they may never offer a straight stand-alone streaming app without a TV subscription.

This is basically a marketing move: HBO gets to keep their new programs so customers have to have HBO to see GOT and so forth (HBO gives up its back catalog but I doubt their old shows bring in new subscribers so that isn&#x27;t a huge loss), Amazon justifies their Amazon Prime price increase and also gets people to buy Fire TV (Amazon Prime is probably not coming to any other device like Chromecast). I would say it&#x27;s a huge win for Amazon and a so-so win for HBO, so likely Amazon is paying a hefty price to HBO for this ad campaign.

In my experience, Amazon does not care for high quality streaming. As a Prime member for a while, I gave their streaming a shot. Laughable. Might as well have been watching the video on a 56k USRobotics modem with a very high latency connection. Low resolution, fuzzy picture, stops and starts. I simply do not trust Amazon to do it right.

The money is in the back catalog, as Ted Turner showed when he kept the MGM film library and sold the rest of the company.

But only in the US, it seems. So far, while the UK might have (a poorer selection of) Prime Instant Video, it doesn&#x27;t have the FireTV and won&#x27;t be getting the HBO shows. Maybe they&#x27;ll launch at the same time?

This is a very big deal for me. I&#x27;ve had Netflix, Amazon and Hulu streaming via my Roku for over 2 years now but no HBO. I use comcast for internet but no TV so the Roku HBO app would not work.

I&#x27;d really like to watch Oz.<p>Coming from the UK that was the first show I watched where I thought &quot;There&#x27;s some good American TV, What is this HBO thing?&quot;

Too bad there&#x27;s no first-party app for hardware-accelerated 1080p&#x2F;DD5.1 streaming on Windows like there is for Netflix and Hulu...

So what was it about the Amazon deal that made HBO say yes when they&#x27;ve been telling Hastings to gfh for years now?

I was actually hoping this meant shows like The Larry Sanders Show and Dream On had found a home online. Darn.

Exclusive deals don&#x27;t solve piracy, we&#x27;re just jumping from one platform to the next.

As a German customer is it possible to get any movie or show on amazon prime in English?

This explains why Amazon Prime now costs $20 more per year! ($99 vs $79)

Amazon Fire TV is just the perfect platform. Now with old and new HBO series you can literary watch anything you want, including good foreign movies, Hollywood crap. Not to mention the gaming capabilities of the device.