You know how you can sign up for a cable or satellite TV package to get access to some — but not all — of the TV channels available in your area? And you know how you have to pay an extra fee if you want access to premium channels like HBO or Showtime? Yeah, it looks like we might have the same sort of tiered system eventually on computers and mobile devices.
HBO co-president Eric Kessler tells Bloomberg that within six months the company will begin offering videos for the iPad and other mobile devics. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in the same interview, Kessler says that HBO won’t be licensing its content to Netflix or any of the other companies currently offering TV and video streams to mobile and computer users.
In other words, not only are we probably going to end up with a tiered system where you pay different prices depending on the content you want — but you’ll probably have to run different apps to access different content.
To be fair, that’s pretty much the way things are on the internet today. But do you really want to live in a world where you have to fire up half a dozen different apps to watch different TV programs on you iPad?
Eh, whatever. I suppose I should just be happy that True Blood will eventually be available via a mobile subscription at all. Right now you have to spend $2.99 per episode to download the show from iTunes.Still, it’d be awfully nice if there was a single app with all the content you wanted. On the other hand, this might present an opportunity for an app that searches your other apps so you can fire up say, TVShowFinder to scan for content in your Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and other apps and launch videos with a single click.
via NewTeeVee
HBO content is available with the Netflix app plan, but not via streaming. The DVDs ship much too slowly, one at a time. So, I would be interested in an HBO app.