HBO Now was a bit of a watershed in internet streaming. HBO did something many said they would never do. While HBO Go had been available for quite a while, allowing consumers to stream HBO content across most platforms, you still had to have a cable tv connection and plan that include HBO. HBO Go was designed to allow people who subscribed to HBO through cable to watch the content away from their TV. A small grey market of HBO Go subscriptions sprung up, where people who had access to HBO Go, but didn’t want to stream online could sell of their access to an HBO Go account to someone else.
HBO Now was announced at an Apple event in 2014, and launched about a month later in April 2014 in time for the new season of Game of Thrones. HBO Now started as an exclusive to Apple TV and iOS owners. The only way to sign up to HBO during the first three months was with an Apple device and an iTunes account. After signing up with an Apple TV or iOS device, you could then log into the website and watch content in a browser, but Apple had already secured their cut of the subscription cost. On the plus side, it makes it very easy to pay for HBO Now using iTunes gift cards and a US iTunes account.
Content: 4 stars.
HBO offers a lot of high quality content straight from their cable TV channel. While a single TV channel of content doesn’t seem like much, it also includes a lot of movies for streaming which make it to HBO long before they are picked up by Netflix. They also have complete back catalogues of content online to watch. While some content seems to cycled through with a limited time online, a lot of series going back years are available in full. If you like HBO content, you’ll like the content on HBO Now.
Video quality: 4 stars.
The video quality is good. On my Apple TV it looks very similar to iTunes 1080p content, not quite as good as Netflix, there are more artifacts in the shadows or dark areas, but it still looks good. Recently HBO Now has been added to Roku, and I’ve used that app and watched some content on Roku, and I have noticed a marked difference in quality, the bitrate is lower and it looks like it drops to 720p more often. HBO Now runs on the same platform as MLB, and while it handles a large number of subscribers without issue, I think they video encoding platform has not been optimised for the type of content on HBO. Netflix continues to spend a lot of resources on optimising their streaming platform.
Audio quality: 4 stars.
I’ve never had any issues with the audio quality, and I did managed to get 5.1 out of my Apple TV. However I have not managed to get 5.1 out of my Roku with HBO Now.
Device Support: 4 stars.
There is a HBO app for most platforms, Android (which supports Chromecast), Apple TV, and Roku. A few months ago, this would have been an Apple TV exclusive, and it would have rated around 2 or 2.5.
User Experience: 2.5 stars.
I am not sure what they are trying to do with their app sometimes, and I can find myself scrolling through a list of episodes of John Oliver going back to February to see the most recent episode. Most shows are preceded with a pre-roll ad for something else on HBO. While this has gotten me excited about the upcoming series Vinyl, that doesn’t start for months, and I’ve seen the same trailer for it many, many times.
Overall Value: Medium to High.
This is the most expensive online streaming service I have subscribed to at $14.99(USD), but it is cheaper than buying all the different series from iTunes or on BluRay box sets (which I’ll probably end up with anyway). The movies are a nice addition, and mean that you could spend a lot of time watching HBO Now instead of Netflix or Hulu, but with limited new shows each week there isn’t the same breadth of content as Hulu. But those shows, they are amazing. The Leftovers, Game of Thrones, Last Week Tonight. The exclusive HBO content make this streaming service worth it.