Android Community App of the Week: HBO GO

Hello everyone and welcome to the Android Community App of the Week! This week we present you with HBO GO, something we have been waiting for and wanting for a while now. Yes it has been available online via the HBO GO website but now you can get it right on your android phone, anywhere you go, just like the name implies. We announced it back in April when it first went live, and showed you the teaser that HBO released a while back also. Today we are going in a little deeper and giving you an inside look at HBO GO for Android.

HBO GO is available in the Android Market, get that here to start, and the best part is — it’s free! Sort of. It is pretty simple actually, if you are an HBO subscriber you can access all the movies, series, shows, comedy and content your little heart desires. As long as your plan is unlimited, because it might add up quick. All you need to do is sign in (I used my Cox Cable log-in) and from there you get everything HBO has to offer.

I did say an “inside look” so now I’ll go ahead and show you how it is once your signed in and ready to go. It has a very simple, intuitive, and user friendly interface and and browsing through the menus you can see they took their time. It is smooth, and clean and easy to understand. I like the layout as well.

From there you can choose any category you’re in the mood for, if you want movies they have everything from Avatar, to chick flicks for the ladies like shown below. Buffering for a full movie seems fast as well. On my G2x with T-Mobile 4G, Avatar started in about 5-7 seconds and ran for more than a few minutes without a single hiccup. You can choose your favorite series and watch anything you have missed from last week, or from last year.

When I mention last year I’m talking about great series such as Big Love, or one of my favorites Boardwalk Empire, they have every episode so you don’t have to miss a single one.

For all you parents out there you can also control all of the content, or late night viewing. In the profile settings there is everything from parent controls, to series pass, and preferences. You can control everything you want with parent controls, they give the user a pretty wide list of options to suit your needs. A much needed feature if you have kids using the app.

Obviously you need to be a HBO subscriber so it isn’t actually free, but it sure is nice to have such a well designed application that works great and is free, but charging for both wouldn’t be very cool so it is pretty expected. The last thing I want to mention that I think is a great idea is a new thing for HBO GO users only that will allow you to see sneak peaks, and the latest weekly show of your favorite series early. Like I said this is only for HBO GO users for now and it is a great idea to get more people using it. Here you can see a sneak peak of the show Game of Thrones Episode 5 that is not until next week, and I’ve read they will be allowing users to see the next week show a few days early starting with episode 7 and after. I’m not sure if all series will get that special treat, but it is pretty exciting.

Sadly it is not available for Honeycomb tablets yet, and that would be a perfect place for something like HBO GO. I’m assuming they have something in the works that they will release soon. One of my favorite things is the ability to stream anything I want, then mirror it over HDMI out on my G2x right to the TV. So if I’m out of town visiting family and don’t want to miss the latest episode of my favorite show I can throw it up on the big screen right from my android phone. That is awesome.

In closing I’d like to mention that this is the first release for android, fixes and changes are probably on the way soon as well as a Honeycomb version. I tried backing it up to transfer to my Xoom but that was a no go, it didn’t work but it was worth a try. I mention fixes and changes, but I didn’t notice any issues throughout the last week or so that needed any immediate attention. I’d rather have a Xoom version than anything right now. That is it folks, head over to the Android Market and get HBO GO, or just click here. I hope you enjoyed this weeks App of the Week and next week we will try to bring something completely free. Thanks for reading.