Wow. While it's not the latest and greatest shows that are on Prime, that's an impressive collection they've put up.
I'm both a subscriber of HBO and of Prime, and I'll actually be using this. You see, I have a Roku, and Comcast won't allow HBOGO over Roku, but they do allow Prime Instant Video. So, woohoo for that!
I'm wondering if Amazon ran into these limitations with their new Roku-killer and decided to end-around them by brining HBO series into the fold.
I recently switched from AT&T back to Comcast and I was horrified when I tired to connect my roku to HBOGO. The message pretty much said my only option was to use the Comcast box and watch On Demand.
So, if this is the same issue: it's not that Comcast is using packet inspection to prevent HBO Go from working, it's that they have not partnered with HBO to allow authentication. So you are paying Comcast for HBO but you are not getting them to vouch for that fact.
HBO Go (in the US anyway) doesn't have "paid subscribers." Comcast customers who have subscribe to HBO as part of their TV packages get access to HBO Go as an additional service. Comcast authenticates subscribers to tell HBO Go whether to allow users access to the service. But in this case, they aren't supporting their authentication on Roku devices.
It's legal in the sense that you are buying an inferior version of HBO from Comcast than you are from other providers. Comcast isn't blocking HBO Go. It's just not giving it to you. Unfortunately, the only way to get HBO Go is through your TV provider (unless they've changed it recently).
A very un-sarcastic "thanks Obama" seems to be in order
edit: strage downvotes considering that Obama specifically stated that this type of behavior is something that he wouldn't condone (once in office) and given that net neutrality is topical...
When it comes to unilateral actions, the president is mostly Commander in Chief of our military. Meaning, he could pull all our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and close Gitmo tomorrow just by saying so.
I assume he has similar command control over the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA.
It's important to separate well meaning rhetoric that's out of his hands from the actual lies he's told about the things he has power over.
> When it comes to unilateral actions, the president is mostly Commander in Chief of our military. Meaning, he could pull all our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and close Gitmo tomorrow just by saying so.
Unless, for instance, any of that required spending money, and Congress explicitly forbade spending money for the purpose. Or Congress otherwise prohibited the military from doing what the President wanted to direct.
Commander-in-Chief doesn't mean "dictator", it means that Congress' power to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces" is limited so as not to allow them to vote to have someone other than, and independent of the authority of, the President direct how the military will operate within the rules Congress has set, it doesn't give the President independent authority to set the rules on his own, or to direct the military in a manner contrary to the rules established by Congress.
> Unless, for instance, any of that required spending money, and Congress explicitly forbade spending money for the purpose. Or Congress otherwise prohibited the military from doing what the President wanted to direct.
Wait, can Congress do that? I know that they approve budgets obviously, but I thought all they could do was allocate it to different departments. I didn't think they could say, "here's this money but you can only use it for this purpose.. you absolutely cannot use it for this other purpose". I thought their only way of stopping some part of the government from doing something was to create a law removing that authority. And it's hard to imagine them removing the military's authority from withdrawing from a war. :)
> I know that they approve budgets obviously, but I thought all they could do was allocate it to different departments. I didn't think they could say, "here's this money but you can only use it for this purpose.. you absolutely cannot use it for this other purpose".
Not only can they do that, that is usually how they allocate money. Even when there is some flexibility in how the funds are spent, that flexibility is defined in the law appropriating the funds.
> And it's hard to imagine them removing the military's authority from withdrawing from a war.
Withdrawing from a war is an unlikely thing for Congress to act to bar, sure, but that's not because they couldn't, just because they would be unlikely to choose to. Closing the detention facility at Guantanamo, well, that's a different story. While they haven't exactly prohibited it, they've removed funds for it from budgets and prohibited the specific steps the administration proposed to take to do it (such as transferring prisoners from Guantanamo to the US.)
As the old adage goes...there are two types of people in the world: those who think The Wire is the greatest TV show ever made and those who have never seen The Wire.
Because The Wire is not about instant gratification. It's layers on layers that pay off in multiples by the time you're into the later seasons. Even season two, by far the weakest season, is a total treat the second time you watch it and know what you're looking for.
The problem is that there are too many things in this world which people assure me will be amazing if I just stick with them, and not enough time to try them all out.
Got to season 3 of the Sopranos -- still hated it.
Used vim for 9 weeks as my only editor -- still hated it.
It has amused me to no end that we live in a time when we can develop communities around amazingly obscure interests, but people still believe that preferences are objective. If you didn't like the Sopranos, c'est la vie. If you're an emacs guy, hey, that's cool, too. I'll never understand why we keep communicating under the guise of, "My opinion is a fact."
It's ironic that in a world of nigh infinite communities and interests, you can still be wrong about what you're interested in.
How can you tell a series like that from one that just sucks? Putting 40+ hours into an entertainment product before it begins to pay off just isn't reasonable.
Why does "character driven" have to imply "starts slow"?
Maybe we have different ideas of what that phrase mean, but for example, I'd say that Firefly was "character driven" and yet was able to hook me (and lots of other people) within about ten minutes.
Anyway, the discussion here isn't so much about why people like or dislike The Wire, but more of a meta-discussion about how you can determine whether a show is worth watching, and how much of something you have to see before you're allowed to say you didn't like it. dublinben seems to imply that you can't declare dislike unless you've literally watched the entire thing from beginning to end. The question is then raised as to why you'd spend that much time watching a series if you didn't like what you saw of it to start with, and responses which talk about how great The Wire is once you put a lot of time into it are then entirely missing the point.
Serenity. I was so skeptical of the concept of a western-with-spaceships that I didn't try it until years after it aired, and so was able to watch it all in the proper order.
Experiences like that have made me truly interested in how you can really evaluate this stuff. People praise The Wire. I didn't like what I saw of it. Is it worth my time to keep watching it to see if my opinion changes? I don't have time to do that with everything, so there has to be an initial filter. How do you decide?
I tend to err heavily on the side of caution here. I'm happy not having any TV to watch, but I hate wasting hours on something bad. I'd rather miss out on something good if it comes down to it.
I didn't make it past the first episode because I thought the first episode was one of the cheesiest ridiculous plots with the most comical over the top stereotypical acting I've ever seen. There are very few shows that I have been excited to start yet couldn't make it past one episode, but The Wire is one of them.
> I'm both a subscriber of HBO and of Prime, and I'll actually be using this. You see, I have a Roku...
I'm in a similar situation, but I use a Chromecast instead of a Roku. Why oh why Amazon doesn't implement Chromecast support baffles me so much. I would spend a good amount of money on their streaming content that way. Instead, my money goes into the Google Play store.
How is HBOGO different from Xfinity On Demand? If you subscribe to HBO, all content is anyway available OD, so there is no real need for a separate 'client' for watching it.
Because Roku is a one-time purchase, where additional cable boxes are monthly fees. I already own the Roku. By taking away HBO Go access on it, I can no longer watch HBO in that room at all.
Last I checked, all the content wasn't available on-demand either. There was a larger selection on HBO Go versus On Demand. OD only has the last 1-2 seasons of the series it has at all, and has fewer movies. HBO Go has all the seasons of all the series.
Is your iPad permanently hooked up to your TV? Many people have rather large HDTVs and would much prefer to watch on there rather than on a tiny screen you have to carry around or dock somewhere.
Maybe your question is genuine, so I'll reply with my genuine response: why not? What business is it of Comcast if someone wants to watch an Internet service they've paid for on their Roku or Playstation or Linux PC?
Putting Amazon Instant on the main shopping website is such a befuddling experience.
I'm on Amazon Instant. I see they have some HBO stuff, so I search for Game of Thrones. The auto-suggest immediately directs me to the books, ignoring my context. So, I skip auto-suggest and search just in HBO, and I'm prompted to buy Season 1 for $40. Huh? Meanwhile I'm always being distracted by recommendations to buy those solar panels I searched for a month ago.
I think it was a bad idea to conflate the contexts of "shopping" and "looking for entertainment" so throughly. I don't think Netflix has anything to worry about.
I often wonder how amazon has gotten so far with such little focus on usability. I wonder if they don't actually WANT you to get lost in layer upon later of stores. Like how the mall makes it hard to pop in for a quick purchase.
I looked at the offerings & they seem pretty expansive. Sounds great and all but I could not locate a principal factor that is important to the equation: PRICE! I clicked help, get started and even searched...
I do not want a free trial, I do not want to sign up & I do not want any more spam UNTIL I have deemed the terms agreeable. I am sick of this obfuscation bullshit. Terms are terms, games are for suckers & marks.
Thanks, I understand it is buried somewhere, I found the price by Googing it. Sounds like a great deal.
However, I vote with my dollars, and I am less inclined to give them mine when they treat their customers like marks in a confidence game. If a product is worth it's salt(as this is), why not be forthcoming? Perhaps because customers may be more apt to notice when 99 becomes 109 then 119 then 129....? behavioral economics isn't my forte, I just hate mealy mouth BS and won't abide it nor fund it. YMMV.
amazon.com's homepage has a letter outlining this change/new content and ends with: Amazon Prime is the best deal going at just $99/year.
This HN entry links directly to the 'Learn More' or 'Start your free month' link provided in that letter (button is variable depending on if you're a member), which is an index of content.
Also, if I go to a amazon.com/prime from a browser that doesn't have me signed in automatically to my Prime account (otherwise it gives me a 'give the gift of prime option since it sees I'm already a member), it shows me a 30 day free trial button and says directly under the button: "After your free trial, Amazon Prime is just $99/year. You can cancel anytime. "
I don't feel the price is obfuscated. It's not perfect, but I don't get the impression there's bullshit afoot.
I see it, clicked Amazom Prime link and it is indeed in the right margin...I missed it first time. I found it on Goog too. My point is, it is arguably the most weighted deciding factor of the transaction, why isn't it stated plainly right on the content page rather than buried in small print behind a link?...granted, it could be smaller and buried further. They managed to get the 'Free Trial' bait plainly centered on the page, why not the terms? Obfuscation.
"We have detected that you are not located within the US. Due to licensing restrictions, Amazon Instant Video customers must be located in the United States when viewing videos online."
Oh well, back to kickass torrents for now. (I'm a US citizen currently in Argentina).
You can get it through Comcast as a part of the Internet Plus package ($49.95/mo for me in CA for twelve months and then you should call them to prevent them from upping your rate to $69.95/mo.)
Yes, you can, through third party HBO partners like Pirate Bay and Kick Ass Torrents.
It has many benefits over Amazon offering:
1) It's available worldwide
2) Price is good even for starving students
3) For older seasons, you can choose between 720p/1080i streams and high quality ~30Mbps streams (also known as untouched blu rays)
You can't. I've bought all the episodes through Season 3, but I can't get Season 4 yet, and HBO Go isn't an option because they won't let me pay for it.
They will happily let you pay for it, you just need to have a cable subscription first.
They are going to keep all of their money maker current programming exclusive to their platform for now unfortunately as this is how they currently can afford to make new episodes of Game of Throes for $6 million an episode.
This is a good step though as there is some old content I've been wanting to watch forever which I now can do.
Yeah, you can't. I don't watch cable television, I just use the internet access. So unless I feel like donning a standard cable television package + HBO for $120+/mo I can't get access to HBO Go. It's a shame, I'd certainly be willing to pay for just HBO.
To clarify, you can already pay to watch past seasons of Game of Thrones on Amazon Video on Demand in the US. It's just not included for free with Prime which as I understand is the change that's happening for a subset of HBO content.
Doesn't seem to apply in the UK, can't seem to do anything other than pay a quite high sum of money for a season (£26). Is this a deal only in the USA?
If people had a problem with this comment:
1. This was removed from the homepage shortly after I posted this comment.
2. An answer explaining to me why this is appropriate would have probably been more helpful.
I'm both a subscriber of HBO and of Prime, and I'll actually be using this. You see, I have a Roku, and Comcast won't allow HBOGO over Roku, but they do allow Prime Instant Video. So, woohoo for that!
I'm wondering if Amazon ran into these limitations with their new Roku-killer and decided to end-around them by brining HBO series into the fold.