HBO programming available on Amazon Prime
amazon.com
amazon.com
I'm both a subscriber of HBO and of Prime, and I'll actually be using this. You see, I have a Roku, and Comcast won't allow HBOGO over Roku, but they do allow Prime Instant Video. So, woohoo for that!
I'm wondering if Amazon ran into these limitations with their new Roku-killer and decided to end-around them by brining HBO series into the fold.
Wait, what? Do they seriously do that?
Can Comcast please die any more quickly?
edit: strage downvotes considering that Obama specifically stated that this type of behavior is something that he wouldn't condone (once in office) and given that net neutrality is topical...
I assume he has similar command control over the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA.
It's important to separate well meaning rhetoric that's out of his hands from the actual lies he's told about the things he has power over.
Unless, for instance, any of that required spending money, and Congress explicitly forbade spending money for the purpose. Or Congress otherwise prohibited the military from doing what the President wanted to direct.
Commander-in-Chief doesn't mean "dictator", it means that Congress' power to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces" is limited so as not to allow them to vote to have someone other than, and independent of the authority of, the President direct how the military will operate within the rules Congress has set, it doesn't give the President independent authority to set the rules on his own, or to direct the military in a manner contrary to the rules established by Congress.
Wait, can Congress do that? I know that they approve budgets obviously, but I thought all they could do was allocate it to different departments. I didn't think they could say, "here's this money but you can only use it for this purpose.. you absolutely cannot use it for this other purpose". I thought their only way of stopping some part of the government from doing something was to create a law removing that authority. And it's hard to imagine them removing the military's authority from withdrawing from a war. :)
Yes.
> I know that they approve budgets obviously, but I thought all they could do was allocate it to different departments. I didn't think they could say, "here's this money but you can only use it for this purpose.. you absolutely cannot use it for this other purpose".
Not only can they do that, that is usually how they allocate money. Even when there is some flexibility in how the funds are spent, that flexibility is defined in the law appropriating the funds.
> And it's hard to imagine them removing the military's authority from withdrawing from a war.
Withdrawing from a war is an unlikely thing for Congress to act to bar, sure, but that's not because they couldn't, just because they would be unlikely to choose to. Closing the detention facility at Guantanamo, well, that's a different story. While they haven't exactly prohibited it, they've removed funds for it from budgets and prohibited the specific steps the administration proposed to take to do it (such as transferring prisoners from Guantanamo to the US.)
I recently switched from AT&T back to Comcast and I was horrified when I tired to connect my roku to HBOGO. The message pretty much said my only option was to use the Comcast box and watch On Demand.
Edit: I found this: http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2011/11/comcast-not-supporting...
So, if this is the same issue: it's not that Comcast is using packet inspection to prevent HBO Go from working, it's that they have not partnered with HBO to allow authentication. So you are paying Comcast for HBO but you are not getting them to vouch for that fact.
Latest, no. Greatest, YES.
Comcast also doesn't allow their Comcast iOS app to stream via Airplay.
Got to season 3 of the Sopranos -- still hated it.
Used vim for 9 weeks as my only editor -- still hated it.
It's ironic that in a world of nigh infinite communities and interests, you can still be wrong about what you're interested in.
People who don't like it because:
1. It starts slow (it's character driven)
2. They assume it's another Cop Drama (it's not)
3. There is a lot of violence
4. There is a lot of foul language
5. Many of main cast are black and the show portrays inner city life
Maybe we have different ideas of what that phrase mean, but for example, I'd say that Firefly was "character driven" and yet was able to hook me (and lots of other people) within about ten minutes.
Anyway, the discussion here isn't so much about why people like or dislike The Wire, but more of a meta-discussion about how you can determine whether a show is worth watching, and how much of something you have to see before you're allowed to say you didn't like it. dublinben seems to imply that you can't declare dislike unless you've literally watched the entire thing from beginning to end. The question is then raised as to why you'd spend that much time watching a series if you didn't like what you saw of it to start with, and responses which talk about how great The Wire is once you put a lot of time into it are then entirely missing the point.
They are out of order.
Experiences like that have made me truly interested in how you can really evaluate this stuff. People praise The Wire. I didn't like what I saw of it. Is it worth my time to keep watching it to see if my opinion changes? I don't have time to do that with everything, so there has to be an initial filter. How do you decide?
I tend to err heavily on the side of caution here. I'm happy not having any TV to watch, but I hate wasting hours on something bad. I'd rather miss out on something good if it comes down to it.
That said, as you put it, after multiple viewings, I love every season.
Reminds me of this Family Guy clip: "Breaking Bad is the best show you've ever seen, except maybe The Wire". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXbaxVeteRE
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/dec/27/tv-drama-davi...
Last I checked, all the content wasn't available on-demand either. There was a larger selection on HBO Go versus On Demand. OD only has the last 1-2 seasons of the series it has at all, and has fewer movies. HBO Go has all the seasons of all the series.
I'm in a similar situation, but I use a Chromecast instead of a Roku. Why oh why Amazon doesn't implement Chromecast support baffles me so much. I would spend a good amount of money on their streaming content that way. Instead, my money goes into the Google Play store.
Amazon Prime is already on a lot of devices and I'm sure that they just haven't had enough pressure to implement chromecast support yet.
I'm on Amazon Instant. I see they have some HBO stuff, so I search for Game of Thrones. The auto-suggest immediately directs me to the books, ignoring my context. So, I skip auto-suggest and search just in HBO, and I'm prompted to buy Season 1 for $40. Huh? Meanwhile I'm always being distracted by recommendations to buy those solar panels I searched for a month ago.
I think it was a bad idea to conflate the contexts of "shopping" and "looking for entertainment" so throughly. I don't think Netflix has anything to worry about.
I do not want a free trial, I do not want to sign up & I do not want any more spam UNTIL I have deemed the terms agreeable. I am sick of this obfuscation bullshit. Terms are terms, games are for suckers & marks.
TLDR: No price, no sale.
However, I vote with my dollars, and I am less inclined to give them mine when they treat their customers like marks in a confidence game. If a product is worth it's salt(as this is), why not be forthcoming? Perhaps because customers may be more apt to notice when 99 becomes 109 then 119 then 129....? behavioral economics isn't my forte, I just hate mealy mouth BS and won't abide it nor fund it. YMMV.
This HN entry links directly to the 'Learn More' or 'Start your free month' link provided in that letter (button is variable depending on if you're a member), which is an index of content.
Also, if I go to a amazon.com/prime from a browser that doesn't have me signed in automatically to my Prime account (otherwise it gives me a 'give the gift of prime option since it sees I'm already a member), it shows me a 30 day free trial button and says directly under the button: "After your free trial, Amazon Prime is just $99/year. You can cancel anytime. "
I don't feel the price is obfuscated. It's not perfect, but I don't get the impression there's bullshit afoot.
Oh well, back to kickass torrents for now. (I'm a US citizen currently in Argentina).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/devices/ref=atv_dp_hd_de...
which does not include a PC. Trial cancelled.
They make it so that the only way to find that out is to subscribe first and try it. I consider that false advertising.
The only thing thats keeping me from pulling the plug is access to new shows/episodes and seeing shows as they air (for the first time).
They are going to keep all of their money maker current programming exclusive to their platform for now unfortunately as this is how they currently can afford to make new episodes of Game of Throes for $6 million an episode.
This is a good step though as there is some old content I've been wanting to watch forever which I now can do.
It has many benefits over Amazon offering:
1) It's available worldwide 2) Price is good even for starving students 3) For older seasons, you can choose between 720p/1080i streams and high quality ~30Mbps streams (also known as untouched blu rays)
sigh.