HBO, the premium cable channel in the US, which is best known for Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under, is taking its first tentative steps on to the Internet.
The Time Warner subsidiary are going to start offering their programming online to all subscribers via Broadband. The online service will start this week in Green Bay and Milwaukee, before being rolled out across the rest of the United States.
Available To Subscribers
Although the service will be free, it’ll only be available to people already subscribing to HBO on cable, at least for the time being. There will initially be 400 hours of movies and television shows made accessible over the web.
The service will be marketed and distributed through cable operators, and the company plans to begin distributing CDs containing the application to HBO subscribers in the Wisconsin area soon.
Eric Kessler, a co-president of HBO, told The New York Times:
“There are a lot of people, particularly young people, who are watching TV through the PC. We wanted to create a product for them.”
30 Million Potential Viewers
HBO currently has around 30 million subscribers across North America, and if even a small portion of those sign up for the service, it will be seen as a successful venture in to video on demand.
Once they have installed the supplied application to their computers, users will be able to download shows directly to their PC, and have the programme accessible for between four and twelve weeks after download.
This is due to strict digital rights management, which will also mean the content isn’t able to be copied on to portable media devices, or shared over peer to peer networks.
Only For Windows PCs
One big problem the company faces is the fact that the service is only available for Microsoft Windows operating systems initially, meaning Mac and Linux users (two growing groups) are immediately shut out.
HBO already offers a small number of shows through Apple iTunes, but this new announcement signals the company can see that online video is the future, and want to be a part of that.
