Starting off the Apple Special Event today, CEO Tim Cook welcomed HBO CEO Richard Pepler on stage to announce a new content deal for the Apple TV. HBO Now, the network’s premium, Internet-based subscription service, will debut exclusively on Apple TV next month.
News of HBO and Apple being in talks to distribute the new HBO Now service first broke earlier this month after being announced last fall.
HBO Now will be available within the HBO channel for $14.99/month, no cable subscription required, and subscribers joining in April will get the first month free. HBO Now will include past and current television shows and movies.
For iPhone and iPad owners, the new subscription service will be available on mobile devices exclusively through the HBO app available on the App Store. HBO Now will be available starting in the United States only.
Apple has also lowered the price for Apple TV by $30 with a new $69 price tag.
HBO to Launch Standalone Premium Streaming Service in April
APPLE TO OFFER HBO SUBSCRIPTION FOR FIRST TIME THROUGH HBO NOW
SAN FRANCISCO – Home Box Office announced today the name of its standalone premium streaming service — HBO NOW — and that the service will launch this April, bringing the highly anticipated new product to audiences in time for the fifth season of Game of Thrones. HBO and Apple also announced that for the first time an HBO subscription will be made available directly to Apple customers through HBO NOW.
HBO NOW provides instant access to HBO’s acclaimed programming. Watch every episode of every season of the best series programming, more of the biggest and latest Hollywood hit movies, original HBO Films, groundbreaking documentaries, sports, and comedy and music specials. To subscribe to the streaming service HBO NOW, consumers only need the internet.
Apple will give viewers the ability to enjoy HBO programming via HBO NOW. Upon launch, customers can subscribe using the HBO NOW app on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch or directly on Apple TV for instant access. Users can purchase HBO NOW directly in-app for $14.99 a month. Upon registering, subscribers will also be able to watch at HBONOW.com. HBO will offer a 30 day introductory free trial period to new HBO NOW customers who sign up through Apple in April.
HBO continues to be in discussions with its existing network of distributors and new digital partners to offer HBO NOW. At launch, HBO NOW will be available on iOS devices and on PCs.
“HBO NOW is the next phase of innovation at HBO,” said Richard Plepler, Chairman and CEO, HBO. “With this new partnership, a natural evolution for the network, we have access to millions of Apple customers who are used to getting their favorite apps immediately. Now, they can do the same with an HBO subscription.”
“HBO NOW offers a new generation of HBO fans many of the best TV programs in the world without a cable or satellite subscription,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “Now, with the same simplicity as buying an app, customers can subscribe to HBO NOW and instantly start viewing their favorite HBO programs as they air—this is huge.”
Similar to HBO GO, HBO NOW will offer more than 2,000 titles online. This includes current critically acclaimed series like Game of Thrones®, True Detective®, Silicon Valley®, Girls®, Veep® and The Leftovers®, as well as classics like The Sopranos®, Sex and the City®, True Blood®, The Wire® and Deadwood®.
Highly-anticipated upcoming original programs like Westworld, the drama series starring Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Evan Rachel Wood; The Brink, the dark comedy series starring Jack Black and Tim Robbins; the new season of the Emmy®-winning True Detective, with Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams; and HBO Films’ Bessie, starring Queen Latifah, will become available on HBO NOW as they air on HBO.
In addition, HBO NOW will showcase Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, named “best of 2014” on many critics’ lists; VICE, the Emmy®-winning, cutting-edge news magazine series hosted by Shane Smith; HBO Sports documentaries, series and World Championship Boxing events; and groundbreaking documentary programming like Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst and the Oscar® winning, Citizenfour.
Home Box Office, Inc. is the premium television programming subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. and the world’s most successful pay TV service, providing the two television services – HBO® and Cinemax® – to approximately 127 million subscribers worldwide. The services offer the popular subscription video-on-demand products HBO On Demand® and Cinemax On Demand®, as well as HBO NOW, HBO GO® and MAX GO®, HD feeds and multiplex channels. Internationally, HBO branded television networks, along with the subscription video-on-demand products HBO On Demand and HBO GO, bring HBO services to over 60 countries. HBO and Cinemax programming is sold into over 150 countries worldwide.
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15 bucks… interesting. Canada now has 3 streaming services, 2 of which are built by the telecoms (and netflix) and free with traditional subscriptions (premium sat or cable subs). Both have a large catalogue of old HBO shows and neither costs more than 10 bucks a month if you don’t have a premium sub. Neither has an AppleTV app, though both work through airplay.
Apple must be taking 5 bucks of the 15.
$15 month for just hbo, it seems a bit high to me it should for a year like netflix
If you have HBO with your cable company, it costs around that. Netflix also does not cost $15.99 a year.
does the apple tv still have the same hardware specs?
We will never get it in Europe. We never get anything in Europe really. We got Netflix after years and a *lot* of content is missing (shows up in search but not available).
iTunes Radio we never got it.
All the “great content” of Apple TV Cook talks about is only in the US.
Apple Pay now word of when and if we get it in any country in Europe (you can already pay contactless here too).
The content providers play a weird game that results in people illegally downloading tv shows in english instead of waiting a useless dubbed version to be shown here, based on whomever decision and whatever nonsense commercial agreement. I don’T understand why all content produced is not simply available worldwide and the viewer chooses simply what he likes. And when dubbed versions are made, if necessary, simply add them.
We still live in the middle ages of everything disconnected and separate. It’s quite frustrating.
You can move, I can recommend a great place called America in which you would get all that stuff.
Would you move to a great place called Europe to see a TV show? I doubt.
My point was, why content providers continue stubbornly to provide shows only in a single region, when it is possible to share it worldwide via the internet at no cost and no risk.
There are more than 20 countries in America.
I’m not an Apple customer so this move just made me decide not to get HBO this year. There really are only two shows I wanted to watch on HBO but this move is just enough incentive to stop watching them for a while.