Can you cut cable's cord?
Any day now, HBO Now will formally launch. The service – which finally lets you watch HBO’s movies and original TV series without a cable subscription – is scheduled to go live before April 12, when the blockbuster series “Game of Thrones” begins its new season.
Initially, HBO Now was to be an exclusive to owners of the latest version of Apple TV, and would cost $15 a month. But on Wednesday we learned that Sling TV – Dish Network’s streaming TV service – will also offer HBO Now when it goes live. Customers who have the $20-a-month “Best of Live TV” package can also get HBO Now for another $15 a month.
The deal was worked out as part of an agreement between Time Warner, the parent company for HBO, and Dish Network, which owns Sling TV. It gives HBO Now a little more reach before the three-month exclusivity for Apple TV ends and other devices – likely Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV, among others – are allowed to offer it.
And it’s a watershed moment for cord cutters and the slow, inevitable crumbling of the cable TV monolith. If HBO Now is a success, other services will likely uncouple themselves from cable. For example, can a standalone version of Showtime Anytime be far behind if HBO Now thrives?
But HBO Now may have a big stumbling block, and that’s the wild success of HBO Go . Access to this service, which was designed to be used by HBO cable subscribers on portable devices and streaming boxes, is often shared by subscribers with friends who don’t pay for HBO. You can safely assume that the number of people who illicitly share HBO logins is large.
And as early as January 2014, HBO’s honchos were saying this was no big deal. CEO Richard Plepler told BuzzFeed that sharing had “no impact on the business” and that “we’re in the business of creating addicts.” The message was clear: Steal our content, we love it!
But that was before HBO Now. Clearly, HBO has been leaving money on the table, and now that it has a tool for doing so, it will soon be time to collect that coin.
While there has been no immediate indication that the company will take steps to lock down HBO Go accounts, you can bet that, once HBO Now is solidly launched, there will changes made to the way HBO Go works.
The launch of HBO Now also presents an ethical challenge for those using someone else’s HBO Go login. Now that there’s a legitimate way to pay for HBO without having a cable subscription, how many will let their conscience be their guide and pony up the $15 monthly to get legit? I suspect not many, unless HBO makes it difficult to use a shared HBO Go login.
How about you? If you’re using someone else’s HBO Go account, will you sign up for HBO Now? Let us know in the comments.
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