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HBO Pens 10 Year Exclusive Deal With Universal
As War to Lock Off Streaming Content Escalates

HBO has penned a new ten year exclusive deal with Universal to keep the studio's movies out of the hands of competitors like Netflix and Amazon. Seeing the writing on the wall with Netflix's recent similar deal with Disney, media powerhouses Comcast/NBC Universal and HBO (Time Warner) have started pursuing exclusive deals of their own.

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Inevitably HBO will unveil a standalone competitor to Netflix, but the company appears eager to deny this real and necessary evolution for as long as possible in order to protect the huge cash benefits they receive from snuggling up to old fashioned cable ops.

After years of poisoning copies of their TV shows available for download via BitTorrent, petitioning the FCC to make DVR recording of subscription video-on demand illegal, and threatening to sue Slingbox for allowing the re-transmission of their content -- HBO finally buckled to reality and launched their streaming platform HBO Go.

Realizing that HBO Go needs more than HBO may not take quite as long, especially now that the company is targeting exclusive content deals. Granted in the end exclusive deals won't help consumers or the companies signing them, giving consumers such a fractured experience when looking for content, many will simply be driven to piracy.

Most recommended from 89 comments



ITALIAN926
join:2003-08-16

3 recommendations

ITALIAN926

Member

Vicious circle

If you dont want to pay for HBO, if you cant afford it, if you dislike their streaming option, DONT WATCH IT.

Tired of the underlying message of endorsing piracy, on almost every headline.