HBO Co-president Eric Kessler says his company’s HBO Go streaming TV and movie service will be available on the iPad and mobile devices for the network’s paying customers within six months.
The news was buried in a Bloomberg article about the coming rivalry between HBO and Netflix. The piece says that HBO Go will be available on “all major cable systems, on Apple Inc.’s iPad, on mobile devices and elsewhere” at no extra cost for existing network subscribers.
In addition to hosting acclaimed TV shows like True Blood, HBO has the online rights to the feature films of Universal, Fox and Warner Bros, including Jurassic Park, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Night at the Museum: Battle in the Smithsonian and The Informant!. So these might stream exclusively on HBO Go.
While it’s exciting to see that HBO’s films and series will go mobile in the near future, it’s deflating to know that to stream all the movie content online you’ll have to pay for more than one service. As the Bloomberg article states, a deal between HBO and Netflix is extremely unlikely right now.
There’s already a Netflix iPad app, and Netflix just paid almost a billion dollars to HBO competitor EPIX for the rights to films from Paramount, Lions Gate Entertainment and MGM. Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service is available on a plethora of devices, including not just the iPad but several set-top boxes, TVs, Blu-ray players and video game consoles. HBO is going to try to bridge the gap.
[via NewTeeVee]
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