If HBO hoped its new streaming service, HBO Now, would become a rival to Netflix, or be able to quietly start bringing down those Game of Thrones piracy numbers, it hoped in vain, at least as of right now. Yesterday, Time Warner announced that, over the first ten months of HBO Now’s life, the subscriber base for the new service stood at a mere 800,000. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it falls far short of the competition.
Part of the problem was that in order to make the roll out happen prior to Game of Thrones Season 5 last year, HBO chose to focus on a single platform: AppleTV. Historically, pairing with Apple gives companies a lift—think AT&T’s lock on the iPhone for years. But in this case, AppleTV was in need of just as much of a lift from HBO as HBO was from Apple. The result was that the subscriber base was kept limited until the end of Season 5. HBO attempted to roll out to other platforms on the back of True Detective, but unfortunately Season 2 was not the critical darling or must watch appointment TV Season 1 was.
But with HBO Now now out on multiple platforms, and Game of Thrones Season 6 promising to be must-watch TV, what with everyone wondering about Jon Snow’s fate, the hope is that this is the year when the service takes off. Engadget quoted HBO CEO Richard Pepler as saying: “I wouldn’t say only 800,000 subs. We’re just getting started.”
Still, when it comes to streaming providing a legal alternative that strikes a blow against piracy, like iTunes did when the music industry was going through this a decade ago, HBO Now proved to be inconsequential last year, as Game of Thrones was pirated more than ever. Of course, cavaets exist. TV reviewer screeners of the first four episodes were leaked to the web 24 hours prior to the show’s premiere, for example. HBO has taken steps to make sure nothing like that ever happening again, as Season 6 screeners will be delivered to reviewers via passwords to protected portals. No more mailed DVDs.
Chances are that the piracy numbers will probably fall in 2016. But even as HBO Now nears a million subscribers, it’s still fighting the advance of technology. Yesterday, it was announced that the world record in dataspeed had been reset at 1.125Tbps. Or as the article I read on it said: “It’s so fast you could download an entire HD season of Game of Thrones in one second (presumably legally).” As video downloads become as easy and fast as music downloads were in 2001, the entertainment industry could be facing a revolution.
h/t The Inquirer