HBO Nordic

[BigJKO]

HBO is coming out with their HBO Go service in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. This is amazing news, and I think this is a step in the right direction for how I'd like television to work one day (without regional restrictions).

They've announced a price that's somewhere over 10€. Is anyone else here going to pick this up when it goes online?

I'm amazed by some of the comments I've seen surrounding this. People asking them if they'll be able to watch "the CSI's and NCIS" on this. People lamenting that they're not interested in any HBO series. Why were they interested in HBO Go in the first place?

[toblix]

I'll definitely be subscribing to check it out, but if it turns out to be a bigger hassle than, or of a lower quality than just torrenting shows, I'm not going to keep using it. I really hope someone makes a great, legal way for me to watch my stories in high quality and a timely fashion, and I sincerely hope this is the first one. Pirates have shown that it's technically possible, so there's no excuse for HBO to not make something even better.

Of course, I fully expect them to mess it up in some ridiculous way.

[BigJKO]

I think this is going to be it! There's a slightly longer wait time from 5 hours to 24 hours, than if you were torrenting it (how long does it take those pirates, now a days?) But with that come subtitles and streaming. I consider the ability to actually stream the content in HD to be better than what I'd get out of torrenting the stuff (downloading, whatever process you have to get it from the computer to your TV, etc.)

Let's hope they don't screw it up.

[toblix]

24hrs? Oh, that's no good.

[empika]

At least they are giving you a way to give them money. I would have no bones about paying HBO their clams and then just torrenting shows anyway, that's way less morally wrong right?

[toblix]

Maybe, and I considered it. I don't think the way to get them to deliver the best service possible is to pay them for something sub-par, though. I mean, they're really going to sit on it for 24 hours? They already have the digital video files; all they have to do is transcode them and transfer them to the customers. Pirates have to re-record the shows, cut out commercials, make sweet ASCII art for the .nfo files and then upload them to the 0-day T3 servorz, from which l4merz destory the warez community by downloading and putting on The Pirate Bay. If a company can't compete with a network of 14 year olds, they need to change their ways; Ski or die.

[BigJKO]

There's no beating the dedication of h4ack0rz..

But really, they're saying some shows will take 5 hours, some longer, but a maximum of 24 hours. I'd rather think of it as paying them for the best possible shows possible, and hope they get their shit together with the service.

I understand getting it on their On Demand service may take a bit of time (24 hours, though, is just shit), but HBO Nordic will also include some form of a regular channel, and I'm just confused as to what the benefit of a regular channel will be if it's not synced up with whatever USA is showing.

[brkl]

Huh. Their website says you get the shows "straight after the US premiere." But I guess it's okay to lie in advertising.

[BigJKO]

It all depends on how you define straight after..

[Kolzig]

HBO Nordic still isn't here, and will not be for the next few weeks. They are having some problems with the launch and at least in Finland I'm not that surprised as here they bought the systems of UrhoTV, our crappiest of crap channel that shows awfully bad quality net streams of Finnish football league and the Finnish ice hockey league.

Netflix came over a week ago and they suck also. They brag about supporting 800 devices, probably because they counted all Android device models separately. Still on tv&bluray player side they only offer Netflix in Sony & Samsung devices for 2012 models. I don't know who to blame really as both parties are giving me monkey replies.

Sony reply was that it's Netflix's fault and the whole text in Finnish was so full of alphabetical errors that I'm thinking it was written by helpdesk in India and ran through Google Translate before sending. Netflix says basically nothing and just promotes their 800 devices support.

It's incredible that only 2012 devices in tv&bluray&home theater are supported. I could use with my android or tablet, but I don't want to. My living room is also too far away from my pc room so I have no possibility to drag cables around the apartment to connect pc to the tv. I think in USA even 2010 tv models support Netflix app.

[BigJKO]

Yeah, I got Netflix here in Demark the other day. It's nice, but man.. It's missing so much stuff compared to the US one.

It's all tied to deals that other channels here in Denmark have, eg. a channel in Denmark shows Mad Men. So on Netflix you get only one season of Mad Men.

No channels are showing Breaking Bad in Denmark, therefore we get all seasons of that.

It's just.. so random. For a service with one year old content anyway, they should have a lot more IMO. I haven't had your device problems, though. But I have a 360 hooked up and just use that. I can see that it's annoying it doesn't work for your SMART tv, but those BluRay players.. Man, I hope those die off soon. BluRay is an awful format!

HBO Nordic I'm still excited about, though. Easy access to new content is great!

[njoos]

http://hbonordic.com/home

Need to get a voucher from them, or from samsung?

Anyone got a voucher yet?

[BigJKO]

Yeah, I got one today. So far it seems to be fine, but I saw Toblix grump about their subtitles being badly translated, I think. I've only tried it for a couple of minutes..

[brkl]

There's a lovely nugget of WTF in the Finnish Terms of Agreement that says in case of a dispute that cannot be otherwise settled, the case will go to a Finnish court, but according to Swedish law. To me that's peculiar.

[toblix]

Yeah, I got one today. So far it seems to be fine, but I saw Toblix grump about their subtitles being badly translated, I think. I've only tried it for a couple of minutes..

My problem wasn't with the subtitles, but that they seem to have machine translated all the text, even the legalese, resulting in an awkward, insulting copy all over the site. That, combined with the terrible terms and low technical quality of the contents makes it too obvious that HBO is just out to make a quick buck by slapping together something barely functional that they can charge for, rather than doing what they should: provide a superior alternative to piracy that people will be willing to pay for every month. They may have high quality shows, but when it comes to the business side, they're no different from the rest.

[BigJKO]

Haha, that's awful. Doesn't bode well for how they're translating their subtitles, if their legalese is so terrible.

They're blaming the streaming service (QBrick) for the bad quality, and are apparently fixing it. But this is unacceptably bad quality. If Netflix can do it right, why the hell can't HBO?

I'm more hopeful than you, toblix, that they'll sort out their shit eventually, but yeah.. this is awful so far.

[Kolzig]

HBO Nordic works these days quite well. I've been taking every year usually one month with a free month subscription as they seem to "reset" or really reset your account if you don't use it for a year or so.

 

I started really subscribing it for a longer time especially now that Twin Peaks 3rd season began. It's always a crazy Monday when I get to watch Twin Peaks and Game of Thrones at the same time as the episodes come out.

 

HBO has a lot of great tv content, but the movie content sucks. They clearly seem to not be interested at all in doing anything tv related and leave that completely for Netflix, Viaplay and other competitors. What I really like is that they seem to now have the complete HBO tv catalog for the viewers to watch. Originally for example stuff like Spawn animated series and Oz was missing. What I'm wondering is that I seem to remember reading HBO having a long tv movie history, but I don't see many HBO made movies in the movie section?

 

The service only has the Nordic subtitles in four languages or then you can choose to not have any subtitles. It's a bit annoying that there is no english subtitles option. I don't know what is the reason behind that? The app is a bit pain to use, because I especially dislike the recently watched bit that keeps having all the stuff that you have watched, I would like an option to remove stuff from that watched list so that I could keep an easier follow up of actual shows that I'm in the middle of watching right now.

 

Also, I really dislike that they are still using Flash in the website for all the video content and not html5. I really hate that I can't use the website with Firefox. They should get on with the program and get rid of Flash.