Amazon Prime members will soon be able to watch HBO. Announced just this morning, a new partnership between Amazon and HBO will make “Prime Instant Video the exclusive online-only subscription home for select HBO programming.” Prime members will be able to begin streaming on May 21st, and Fire TV users can also look forward to getting an HBO GO app.
For now the HBO GO app for the Fire TV is said to be coming “by year-end.” As for the “select” aspect of the Prime availability; the list includes all seasons of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome and Six Feet Under as well as Eastbound & Down, Enlightened and Flight of the Conchords. Prime Members will also be able to stream some miniseries, original movies, documentaries and comedy specials.
- Epic miniseries, including Angels in America, Band of Brothers, John Adams, The Pacific and Parade’s End
- Select seasons of current series such as Boardwalk Empire, Treme and True Blood
- Hit original movies like Game Change, Too Big To Fail and You Don’t Know Jack
- Pedigreed documentaries including the Autopsy and Iceman series, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and When the Levees Broke
- Hilarious original comedy specials from Lewis Black, Ellen DeGeneres, Louis CK and Bill Maher
This is described as being a multi-year deal. Coming along with the previously mentioned content will be early seasons of shows such as Girls, The Newsroom and Veep.
This marks the first time HBO has licensed content out to an online streaming service. It also happens to come at a good time for Amazon, and a not so good time for Netflix. This deal is exclusive to Amazon, which means Netflix users will not be seeing HBO content. But perhaps equally important to consider was the recent news about price increases coming to Netflix. Sure, Prime was recently upped, but the value seems to remain as the service includes quite a bit more than streaming video.
SOURCE: Amazon
