HBO Now Streaming Service Available To Apple, Cablevision--Update

By Lisa Beilfuss 

Time Warner Inc.'s Home Box Office unit said Tuesday that its stand-alone streaming service HBO Now is available to users of Apple Inc. products and customers of Cablevision Systems Corp.'s Optimum Online.

About 2,000 titles are available through the service for $14.99 a month. The company is offering a 30-day free trial to customers who sign up in April. The launch comes in time for the premiere of the fifth season of "Game of Thrones" on Sunday.

HBO said it continues to be in discussions with its existing network of distributors and new digital partners to offer HBO Now.

Apple users can view HBO Now via an app for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch or on Apple TV using iTunes. Optimum Online subscribers can access the service through an app after an HBO Now subscription is ordered.

Cablevision struck a deal last month to offer its nearly three million broadband customers HBO's streaming service, a week after HBO announced that Apple would be its exclusive digital partner for launching the service.

By offering itself outside the pay-TV bundle, HBO must balance tapping a new market of what it estimates are 10 million households that have broadband but not pay-TV, without inducing existing pay-TV subscribers to drop their bundles.

To try to prevent this cannibalization, HBO has priced its HBO Now service roughly on par with what it costs to add HBO to a traditional pay-TV subscription.

Write to Lisa Beilfuss at [e-mail]

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