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Suddenly, Amazon’s recent price hike for Amazon Prime makes a whole lot of sense. The company has just announced a multi-year deal with HBO that will deliver much of the cable network’s past content to Amazon Prime Instant Video users. The library is pretty impressive to start, with the first content scheduled to drop as early as May 21st. Here’s what you can look forward to in the near-immediate future:
- The Sopranos
- Six Feet Under
- The Wire
- Big Love
- Deadwood
- Eastbound & Down
- Family Tree
- Enlightened
- Treme
- early seasons of Boardwalk Empire and True Blood,
- mini-series like Band of Brothers and John Adams
Of noteworthy mention is the fact that more current HBO hits — such as Veep and The Newsroom — are currently missing, though Amazon says shows from newer series will be available for streaming approximately 3 years after their original airing date.
Notice I didn’t mention Game of Thrones? Because the press release didn’t make mention it either, leading us to believe that HBO hasn’t include their most popular show since the Sopranos in this deal.
That’s not confirmed, though, so we’ll be reaching out to Amazon and HBO to see if we can get a beeline on its whereabouts. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to come, though — they do have to keep something to get people to stay subscribed to their premium offering.
All told, Amazon Prime probably isn’t worth HBO Go alone but if you’re already a subscriber and you’ve accepted the price hike, then this is a nice added bonus that should bring much entertainment to your living room.
On a slightly related note, if you have an Amazon Fire TV you’ll be happy to know that they’ve finally confirmed the arrival of an HBO Go app. No word on its arrival date just yet, but we imagine it won’t take longer than what it’ll take for the shows mentioned above to be made available for Prime users.
[via Amazon]
yea.. how about that Amazon Instant video app for my Android device??? with Chromecast support would be nice..
I wish I could like you comment twice…
Pretty silly since my t.v. (which I think runs android) and a roku box I have (i think also android) both have the app.
No amazon, I’m not going to buy one of your crummy devices just to pay 2 bucks per episode (even with a Prime sub).
No, no, no, no.
They should remember what consumers do when they can’t easily access content legally…
This is certainly welcome news. Sure is a leg up on Netflix. But 3 years? That should mean that the 1st season of GOT (maybe) will be available this time next year. But whatever, ill take it.
This is great news. Adding content like this will justify the price hike in Prime this upcoming year. Thinking about it, a flat out partnership between HBO and Amazon allowing access to both sets of content would be fully worth a $150 per year price tag.
Small step in the right direction. I’d really like to see a single portal to streaming content subscriptions. One of the advantages to the classic TV model was I had one interface where I could see everything I’m subscribed to. I could just surf around until something struck my fancy.
With streaming, I have to bounce between multiple apps or web sites to get a full list of options.
Yes, but even with Prime a lot of the t.v. shows still require you to pay per episode. That’s just not something I am willing to do. You can very rapidly end up spending way more than you would for a cable sub if you’re buying episodes for 2 or 3 bucks each!
No, included with Prime means the episodes are free.
They use the words amazon instant video and for the hbo stuff they say prime instant video, makes me think that it hopefully be free for prime, but who knows? Considering netflix gets lots of showtime shows, these hbo shows shouldn’t be costing amazon all that much.
Anything labelled prime on Amazon instant video has no additional charge per episode.
When are they going to put Fraggle Rock up on HBOGO?
Do they own it or did Jim Henson?
So we’ll be getting this for free? Nice.
Prime price hike.
No Silicon Valley? I know H.T.M.L
For this price how many simultaneous connections can you stream? If you have three people can you stream to 3 sets in your home?
Meh. I have Xfinity and HBO so this wouldn’t do much for me, and the few shows I love enough to want to ensure I can watch in the future regardless of a subscription, I just buy on Google Play. The free Prime shows are almost all either on Netflix or Hulu Plus (which you can get free using Bing Rewards quite easily)…they have to do better before I consider going back to using Prime.