HBO’s CEO, Richard Plepler, just took the stage at Apple’s watch event to announce that HBO’s stand-alone streaming service, HBO Now, will be launching this April. The service, which does not require a cable subscription, will initially be exclusive to Apple TV devices and will cost $14.99 per month. A launch date was not given, but Plepler did say the service would launch in time to watch Game of Throne’s season 5 premier on April 12th. Apple has also announced that the 2 year old Apple TV will finally be receiving a price reduction from $99 to $69.
Seeing how the announcement came at an Apple event, it’s no surprise that no word was given on when the service would make its way to other devices. Considering Amazon has a tight relationship with HBO, it’s safe to say the service will eventually make its way to the Fire TV. We’ll just have to wait and see when that will be.
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This better not stop the Fire TV stick from finally getting HBO Go (yes, I know there’s a difference between “Now” and “Go”) per the “Spring” promise?
This is hilarious lol Over priced HBO on an outdated Apple TV? Really. Apple is losing customers left and right. Why not release a brand new Apple TV with better hardware? I see issues a lot of buffering and customer complaints in the near future.
There are people out there that have money to throw away on an Apple TV. Those people will spend $69.00 on an Apple TV just to have access to the overpriced HBO subscription. I fortunately am not one of those people, I think that the Amazon Fire TV is the best streaming device on the market only because I can put Kodi on it and run Netflix from the Kodi application. I unplugged my Roku 3 and purchased a second AFTV so I have one rooted and one upgradable. I was a Roku fan for years but I cannot put Kodi on it. That is the only reason I don’t use Roku anymore.
Amen to that. I purchased two ATV3’s a couple years back with the high hopes that they would be jailbroken so I can stream my own media files to it. No chance of that. Once the AFTV hit, and I could use it to stream services like Netflix, Prime, and other paid services, as well as load Kodi and have access to my personal media collection, there is no need for my ATV3’s. They do make nice paper weights though ;)
I do think that the $15 price of HBO Now is a bit high, and they are over reaching and priced too high, especially when there are much larger streaming libraries with Prime, Hulu, Prime for a lot cheaper.
TWC offers HBO for $16 to existing customers and $10 to new customers. Not to mention all the cable companies try to cram HBO in to every offer they have, so HBO is probably better off going at it alone. HBO is not able to make as much money off cable subscriptions as they will on their own so its a great move for them. It may cost the customer $10-$16 to get HBO, but HBOs cut of that is probably less than $5 dollars a subscription, so $15 a subscription will be much better for HBOs profits. HBO says they have 30 million cable subscribers and if they are getting around $5 of all those subscriptions, with the app they will only need 10 million subscribers to make the same amount they are making from cable subscribers. Hopefully other networks will come out cheaper and force HBO to lower the price. I understand why HBO cost so much in a cable package, but $15 seems a little high for a stand alone stream(s).