Still too early to tell, but if anyone was thinking that an HBO stand alone streaming service would be less cost per household than the current portion of their cable bill afforded to HBO, they are dreaming. HBO will not introduce a service that would cost less than traditional TV so as not to (a) lose revenue and (b) upset their traditional broadcasting partners.
Agreed! Though I don't know what the cut cable companies normally take is nor the back end prices to run the hardware required to stream to customer would be but $15/mo I imagine would be enough (Netflix does it on less).
If support is created on smart TV's and various tablet / phone platforms it may work. Cutting a cord but keeping HBO could be helpful to many. I wonder if HBO can't use an existing provider like Amazon or Netflix, and just bundle an HBO option rather than reinvent the wheel.
Well they could go cheaper and not loose any thing. Don't forget the cable co gets a share of the profit as well. Meaning hbo likely sells it to them for say 10 and the cable co marks up to 15. The actual price difference between what hbo sells for and what we pay is likely not that much.
After being in retail for a while i was blown away at how little mark up there is for some stuff. In a bicycle shop for example a $1000 bike has a mark up of between 30 and 50 bucks that's it. Same for a laptop in a computer shop. while there is more markup on say a $1000 laptop it is only around 100 to 150. Parts in things like bikes computers and even car sales is where the money is at as well as service. One example i seen was for kia. A car that sells for 15 grand the dealership pays about 10 to 12k for depending on how many they order.
Again with cars a fender for a kia oem sales to the shops for about 1/3 to 1/5 the price you pay.
I suspect this translates fairly well to movie channels such as hbo showtime etc all. The mark up for comcast twc etc all is probably about 2/3 to 3/4 what we pay.
Im sure hbo has some deal with the cable cos that makes them keep the cost about the same as the average cost for the chan on cable or sat tv as part of a no compete agreement type set up.
Personally as a computer tech i wont sign a contract with a nocomp clause with a employer.