14 DAY TRIAL // Tuesday marked a turning point in HBO's long-term strategy: it just rolled out a service to deliver to its subscribers the programs, movies and sports shows that until now were only for TV, the Associated Press reported. I cannot imagine a better prolonged lunch break other than "tuning" in on your laptop in the caf? and watching a rerun of "Rome" while you eat. Call me limited, but I think that's one of the moments you'll remember.
The new service was rolled out for those in Milwaukee and Green Bay, Missouri, but the plan is to extend it to many other areas. While right now you'll only be granted access to it if you're using Time Warner Cable, in the future they're thinking of bringing it to other cable providers to increase its spread.
There'll be some downloading involved probably, as HBO announced that a special video player would be needed in order to properly use this option. Then again, it's a small price to pay (don't worry, there's no money involved for the download) to enjoy all the entertainment that is headed your way.
What's quite unexpected (at least to me) is that users will be able to download the shows to their computers or watch them online, just like with a regular video-on-demand program on cable TV, according to the AP. Let's go back to the downloading part for a while and note that by doing so, HBO is actually giving away the one thing that set it apart from the others: the uniqueness of the content, which was brought to time Warner Inc.'s TV station, as soon as it was available for such broadcasting. In case there's somebody who just wants to download a complete series and then decides to share it with others who aren't subscribed? well, that's gonna suck for HBO.