In an effort to justify the extra added expense of paying for HBO in addition to paying for a required cable television package, HBO parent Time Warner is sweetening the deal for an estimated 38 million HBO and Cinemax subscribers, and that method is one familiar to anyone who uses Netflix.  If you’re like me, you get your little red envelope in the mail, but you also use the wonderful Netflix On Demand service to stream movies directly to your computer or television.  (I think I use my Netflix On Demand more than my actual Netflix.)  Since HBO can’t exactly leap into the movie rental business, they can do the next best thing and leap into the video on demand business with HBO Go.

That’s right, HBO is launching a Netflix rival that will stream over the Internet, just like Netflix On Demand does currently.  The service will be known as HBO Go.  Once you verify with HBO that you are a subscriber via some registration process, you have instant access to whatever streaming video HBO will be offering.  Given HBO’s lower overhead and big payments to studios for early access windows to new movies, that means HBO Go will offer the newer releases faster than, or at least concurrent with, Netflix.

There’s already streaming video infrastructure in place thanks to HBO’s on-demand content you can access via the cable box, but now they’re going to take it online.  Streaming online video is what the people want these days, which is why everyone is offering it.  In tightening economic times, it’s only right that HBO spends a little bit of money to try and hold their ground against cheaper competition.

Tags: HBO, HBO On Demand, HBO Go, streaming video, video on demand, Netflix competition, pay tv, Time Warner, web-streaming movies

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