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HBO and Apple in Talks for $15/Month Apple TV Streaming Service Launching in April
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I still don't believe this is only going to cost $15/month. I think they are going to have to charge more than what the cable companies charge or else they are going to piss off their biggest revenue source.
My guess is $20-25.
My guess is $20-25.
I think my point was more along the lines that people who want HBO are already paying $10-12/month to have it, along with the rest of the bundle. This allows you to get the channel, by itself, for about the same amount. If someone isn't interested in HBO, or if an additional $10-15/month is beyond their budget, they don't have it now and won't have it on Apple TV.
If you do like HBO (and I do), this may be a good chance to get it without the additional 200 channels of content that you may or may not be interested in. Personally, of the 200+ channels I get, I probably watch 6, 2 of which are HBO and SHO.
Verizon essentially gives you the FIOS TV service for the cost of your Internet connection, but then they charge an additional $11 per month to rent you the set top boxes. (With one set top box being required, so there is no way to get around that "extra" minimum of $11/month.) I cut the cord back in 2010 and wouldn't go back to watching TV the old way. Waiting for shows to come on at a certain time is just nutty. And with the DVR you still have to program it and put up with commercials.
That said, it is more expensive than cable. We end up buying about three to five shows per season off iTunes, plus our Netflix subscription. Most people I know don't want to bother with that or more importantly pay for it. On the other hand most people I know are content to watch whatever schlock is on every night, whereas we are much more targeted with our TV viewing.
Drop a movie into iTunes, activate home sharing, and you can view it on your Apple TV. No server software required. That service would directly compete with Plex.
Apple offers Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services because they are all vastly different business models than the one Apple uses through iTunes. Pay-per-view (iTunes) is not the same as a subscription service (Netflix). You are comparing apples to oranges. A fair comparison to Apple's iTunes library would be comparing it to Vudu, Amazon Prime, or Google Play. None of which are on the ATV because they're in direct competition with iTunes. Hulu is not.
I didn't ask a question, so I'm not sure what you're answering.
I'm paying $150/month to DirecTV - $41 of which is for HBO,Max,and Showtime. So $15 sounds AWESOME if you ask me.
Wonder if this will include MAX GO too?
Now that SLING-TV has AMC I'm thinking I can get everything I want with just:
SLING
HBO Stream
Hulu Plus
Netflix
Amazon Prime
Already paying for Netflix and Amazon prime, so those don't even factor into the price difference.
Tried out HuluPlus for the first time this year and the Short Ads are truly better than constant fast forwarding on DirecTVs Genine-DVR.
APPLE Better Hurry Up though, because I don't see me getting Amazon Prime or SLING added to my AppleTV hockey puck. But I can see having everythigg on an AmazonTV stick or RockU.
Wonder if this will include MAX GO too?
Now that SLING-TV has AMC I'm thinking I can get everything I want with just:
SLING
HBO Stream
Hulu Plus
Netflix
Amazon Prime
Already paying for Netflix and Amazon prime, so those don't even factor into the price difference.
Tried out HuluPlus for the first time this year and the Short Ads are truly better than constant fast forwarding on DirecTVs Genine-DVR.
APPLE Better Hurry Up though, because I don't see me getting Amazon Prime or SLING added to my AppleTV hockey puck. But I can see having everythigg on an AmazonTV stick or RockU.
If you pay a la carte you will pay more per channel than what you will with a bundle. If you buy a season pass you'll pay more per show than you would if you paid for the whole channel a la carte. If you pay for just a single episode of a show it will cost more (per episode) than if you paid for a season pass.
IMO $15 for HBO Now is appropriate. HBO going direct to consumers only makes sense if it will make them a lot more money than continuing to just go through cable companies. HBO going direct to consumers means additional risk and cost (their own servers, their own support, their own billing department, their own marketing efforts, etc.,) at the same time that they are alienating their long time business partners (cable/sat companies). HBO has always been a premium channel and I don't see them changing that anytime soon. Netflix has more subscribers but HBO has more profit.
Good point, I should have qualified my example as being US focused.
Netflix shows old TV shows and old movies with a very small sprinkling of original content. HBO shows newer and older movies with a much larger percentage of original content.
So whats the endgame for Apple here? $15 a month for each channel is a complete ripoff when you can get full on satellite with hundreds of channels for like $45 a month.
No they are not, girl. Most movies are filmed much wider, usually 1.85:1 or 2.39:1. When HBO or any other tv channel crops a movie like "2001: A Space Odyssey" to 16:9, it basically ruins it. So, you're wrong. Feature films have NOT always been filmed in 16:9. They are CROPPED to 16:9 to appease people who think it's more important to fill their tv screen than see the movie as it was intended. I avoid watching epic movies on HBO for this reason. I would rather pay to rent it than watch a cropped big movie on the HBO I'm already paying for.
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Especially since I'm a woman. Wrong in EVERY way.
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Yeah, and there you said this:
Care to apologize to me for that? Especially considering I create video content in a wide range of aspect ratios for a living? Maybe you should rethink your signature.
Like the poster below, I had DTV (since you mention satellite) and it was ~$130/month with the mid-range package (locals, FX, FXX, Travel, Disco, Cartoon Network, etc., in HD), HBO and 1 HD DVR and 2 HD STBs (all which had janky, slow UIs...)
Had as in no longer as of about 45 days ago
We watch quite a few HBO originals, so it would be a great deal for us (heck, even if we we're OK waiting for release on BD, it's almost the same price with sets being $30-50/season).
It is pricey when you consider almost no one ever pays the $15 rate for HBO.
Most people get a deal for it in a package... and when they cancel HBO when the deal expires, their cable provider offers it half price to get them to keep it.
Honestly, if you are paying $15 for HBO.... you're screwing yourself. Cancel it. They will discount it to get you to keep it.
With that in mind, $15 is too much.
If you truly want to cut cords...
$15 hbo
$7 netflix
$7 hulu
maybe $20 for that new direct tv streaming package to keep sports and a few other tidbits like food network, disney, some news....that's still $49 plus cost of broad band.
Quickly one is back to a cable package in price.
Even $29 plus broadband (which is a lot more money without a cable subscription) puts you at a cable package price almost.
Depending on where you live, you can get high speed for $20-$30, but usually dsl and not quite the reliable speed for good streaming.
Let me guess, you don't own any stock do you? I love how you're demonizing the free market capitalism and evil shareholders. Yet you're posting on an Apple fan site....a company that is the textbook example of ridiculously high margins and obscene profits...all for the sake of making their shareholders rich. (Though you probably believe that Apple is driven by you happy, not milk every penny they can out of you.)
You probably think that Apple is getting into the TV game to somehow save you money.
The Napster revolution was triggered by people deciding they didn't need to pay for music anymore and being happy to steal it off Napster. Ask musicians how that Napster revolution worked out for them. Most are making a fraction off sales than they used to. Albums are largely a loss leader to get enough exposure to make money off live performances.
No problem. I wasn't critical of your personal choice. We essentially agree, I'm critical of paying for 200+ channels bundle when I also only watch around 6. HBO just isn't one of them.
So yes, it's better to pay for each channel per month without being tethered to a cable subscription, but I'd like to take it a step further, subscribe per show. Essentially, pay-per-view for TV shows. I was making the comparison earlier about iTunes allowing TV show rentals back in 2011 but not now.
Why can we rent Movies for $4-$5 costing hundred of millions to produce, but not TV shows costing only a few million per episode ? We have to buy those at $3 per 43min show instead of the initial 99c rental model proposed by Jobs.
Hulu Plus is the closest thing, but it's not legally available outside the US.
I think the difference is that when you make a tv show you have to know that you can fund the entire season, unlike a movie where it's one and done.
Market forces will drive the price. Worked well on that Netflix debacle (that also enabled me to buy a few shares at $73, tee hee).
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I think a lot of people forget they have a package deal on HBO and let the price go up. I put it on my iCal so I wouldn't forget to revisit it a year later. My package deal is up next month but I had to call Xfinity about something else and asked about it. She said she had no deal to offer me and I should call next month when my deal was actually up to see if they have a new deal for me, which I suspect they will when I threaten to dump the triple play.
Movies and TV shows are monetized in different ways. This is oversimplified, but movies get revenue from consumers directly (movie tickets, DVDs, VOD, etc.,) while TV shows get revenue from advertisers, and the more people that tune in to FOX on Wednesday night at 9pm to watch Empire the more money FOX can charge advertisers. By offering a VOD option the TV channel is effectively competing with themselves. Not only can this impact ratings it also impacts the value of the show for syndication (and syndication is where shows really earn their profits). For example, there's much less motivation to watch reruns of Friends on channel XYZ since the entire series is now on Netflix. Since a VOD offering impacts both the short term and long term earning potential of a TV show the amount charged to the consumer has to be worthwhile and has to generate *more* revenue for the show than if the person had watched it on TV. What's the motivation for getting into a new distribution model if it doesn't generate more profit than the current distribution model?
Time also plays a factor in this. The movie you can rent for $5-6 today came out months ago and has been earning revenue since day 1. Some movies have released in theaters and on VOD simultaneously and if you want to stream those movies it'll cost around $15 (basically the same price as a movie ticket). If you want to stream a brand new TV show it will have a premium price attached. If you can wait until it's an 'old' TV show it will probably show up on Netflix or as free on Amazon if you are an Amazon Prime member. For example, last year I bought a season pass of Orphan Black season 2 on Amazon but now that season 3 is getting ready to air season 2 is free on Amazon (if you are a Prime member).
As far as budgets go, the average cost for a 1 hour drama in primetime on one of the Big Four networks (FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS) is $3-4 million per episode and most shows go for 20-25 episodes per season so that that's roughly $60-100 million per show per season. It adds up quick and this is a big reason why reality shows (which are dirt cheap by comparison) are so prevalent. The average Hollywood movie budget in 2007 was about $65 million, and while I'm sure that's gone up, the cost difference between a feature film and a season of a primetime drama isn't that great. Budgets for cable shows (Madmen, Walking Dead, Justified, etc.,) are generally lower but the ratings and earning potential are lower too compared to broadcast TV.
Can you assign any parallel to the way tv shows generate ad revenue with tv stations and the way movies generate concession revenue for movie theaters? How many tv shows are created by production companies and simply sold to say, CBS and local affiliates (like they are movie theaters that need concession revenue) vs tv shows that are created by NBC themselves? Not sure how all that works and how it affects how likely a particular TV show would end up in an ala carte scenario.
Good points you raise here.
Sure, movies get revenue directly from the consumer, but also later (much later) from TV and their advertisers.
TV shows however, also get their initial pay check from TV advertisers, although since the use of PVRs are now common place, I don't know how many people still sit thru commercials to justify that whole model.
Between the torrenting and reduced eyeballs on TV commercials the squeeze is definitely on for the current TV production model.
Movies get to double dip more often, but their up front costs are considerably higher.
I think your estimate is quite on the low side when you factor in marketing costs that have been soaring:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/200-million-rising-hollywood-struggles-721818
Total up front costs are definitely in the 3 figure millions these days, except for indie films.
I'm still hoping that aside from the existing sales models, that we will see an a-la-carte download model. I was certainly renting (at $0.99 a pop) a lot of TV shows back in 2011 and now I haven't bought a single show. I either wait for it to become available on Netflix or wait 'til the price for the Bluray complete seasons package drops. The last package I bought was the complete "Breaking Bad" seasons for about $90.