HBO shows on Amazon Prime - May 21st

This articleHBO Cuts Exclusive Licensing Deal with Amazon | Variety

says that newer shows like Game of Thrones, Veep, and Girls will show up eventually.

I'm excited. I've never watched The Wire or Sopranos. Will probably give both a watch when this goes live.

This is a big score for Amazon, considering how many (most?) of their attempts at original programming fell flat.

Yup, huge for Amazon. This is really gives them something to differentiate themselves from Netflix in order to steal some of those subscribers away. So much value in Prime right now.

Awesome, I love prime....that + my roku = custom tv without shitty commercials. I just grabbed some Amazon stock yesterday too.....they just released their own streaming player!

Well they are upping their pricing soon, and haven't settled on if it will be a one to two dollar increase so they better add some extra shit.

They already raised it. It's $80/year I think. Totally worth it. This is exciting news! Yay capitalism!

They are raising it again, but it hasn't happened yet. It will only effect new users bringing the prices from 7.99 to a possible 9.99.
The fine print says they are giving a undefined grace period to existing users.

Part of the justification for the price hike was to bring in more content like HBO.

Tenks_sl said:

I'm excited. I've never watched The Wire or Sopranos. Will probably give both a watch when this goes live.

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The fuck??!? Bro, you need to watch The Wire asap.

The article states there's a 3-year wait for newer shows before they will be available. Ain't nobody got time for that, especially for a paid service. I'll still be torrenting it. It's a step in the right direction, but a baby step.

notafunhater_sl said:

The article states there's a 3-year wait for newer shows before they will be available. Ain't nobody got time for that, especially for a paid service. I'll still be torrenting it. It's a step in the right direction, but a baby step.

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I don't think anyone was expecting the new shows to be on quickly. This is more of a catch-up type deal. Which is the only thing I use Prime streaming for anyways.

Who knows how much money HBO is getting from Amazon for this, but if they were to release shows right away, they would have just allowed people to pay $X a month for HBOGo without an HBO subscription. This is probably a pre-cursor to this in the sense that HBO wants to see how many people stream their shows via Amazon. When this deal with them is over, they might go the way of a standalone HBOGo subscription model.

I think HBO is too tied in with the cable companies to do that yet.
A lot of people are starting to ditch cable for netflix ,and a HD antenna. So I'm sure the fatcats don't want to give them any more excuses to leave.

What's really fucked up is Netflix has to pay these same companies for data privileges.

Column_sl said:

They are raising it again, but it hasn't happened yet. It will only effect new users bringing the prices from 7.99 to a possible 9.99.
The fine print says they are giving a undefined grace period to existing users.

Part of the justification for the price hike was to bring in more content like HBO.

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Maybe because I've been a subscriber for multiple years? I don't know, I also go the yearly instead of monthly route. The price hike and my renewal was literally less than a month ago so I doubt they raised prices again in that time.

Maybe because I've been a subscriber for multiple years?

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It's only effecting new users at the moment, and hasn't launched yet.

Eyashusa_sl said:

Who knows how much money HBO is getting from Amazon for this, but if they were to release shows right away, they would have just allowed people to pay $X a month for HBOGo without an HBO subscription. This is probably a pre-cursor to this in the sense that HBO wants to see how many people stream their shows via Amazon. When this deal with them is over, they might go the way of a standalone HBOGo subscription model.

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I assume HBO makes the lion's share of their money off contracts with cable companies so I doubt they'd sever the tie and let people buy their stuff a la carte like that. But I think everyone on the planet sees a la carte sales of media as the future unless big media wants to die a horrible death to pirates. I'm still shocked how few people know how to pirate TV shows. They look at me like I'm some dark internet wizard when I tell them I just download GoT.

For me anyway, the torrent/newsgroup scene is just a gigantic DVR.

Who watches live programming anymore besides sports?

Column_sl said:

For me anyway, the torrent/newsgroup scene is just a gigantic DVR.

Who watches live programming anymore besides sports?

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My wife watches live TV a bunch. Mostly her cooking shows on like Saturday/Sunday mornings and while just laying on the couch. I personally don't watch much TV live except for some syndicated re-run sitcom shows when I get home from work. I really don't watch too much TV period but I feel between the two of us we watch enough per week to justify the monthly cable bill.