The wait is over as the sixth season of everyone’s favorite “Game Of Thrones” is on its way (releasing on 24th of April). Looks like a good news, but not for the cord cutters, as they don’t have much of the options to stream the show online, even if they pay for it!!. A bad news for all the cord cutters, who want to watch Game of thrones season 6 online. Lets get it more clear.
You might have heard of the the official OTT VOD (over-the-top video-on-demand) service by HBO, HBO NOW released in March 2015. The $15/month service was launched in US, in order to spread out their reach in the cordcutters community, to compete with services like Netflix and Hulu Plus.
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The service was launched just before the premier of the fifth season of their most popular show “Game Of Thrones”, and attracted a lot of customers within the first month of their launch (800,000+ by February 2016). Fans from different parts of the world (especially Canada, Australia and some European Countries), subscribed for the service to watch their favorite show, but within a month of their subscriptions, they got warnings form HBO informing them to cancel their subscription as the service is only for the USA audience.
Sources – The Sydney Morning Herald
Image Source – Torrent Freak
The terms of the service clearly states that the service is only for use in USA alone. In the month of April 2015, a lot of customers from Australia reported that, they have got an email directly from HBO, that the consumers using geoblocking (VPNs and DNS) will loose their subscription without any information and refund. Later that many of them lost their connections.
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If Netflix can, why can’t HBO?
A lot of buzz was created in the streaming world, because of this strict attitude of HBO. The consumers were mad on the service for which they were willing to pay $15/month, which is more than the, “below $10 services” like Netflix and Hulu Plus, plus the additional cost of VPNs.
But unlike the other services (Netflix, Amazon) who are carrying a blind eye to their content policies, HBO has way more things to look after, before taking such decision. The service runs a successful cable business in almost all the major parts of the world, they create their own original content and sell it to different cable services across the world (Foxtel has the rights to telecast Game of Thrones in Australia).
In USA HBO has its own parent cable service Time Warner Cable, so there might not be any problems or conflict for the rights and profits. But in order to maintain their position in the international market they need to protect their content.
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A Lose Lose situation for HBO
Just after the decision, the forums were filled with frustrated customers who were desperately waiting for their favorite shows. The consumers were kind of, forced to find less than legal ways to to access the service or the shows.
HBO’s most popular show Game Of Thrones” is already the most pirated show, with more than 100,000 illegal downloads in the first day of their season 5 release. The problem is more severe in countries which don’t have any other source to watch HBO shows, and totally rely on other sources including illegal downloads and pop-ons.
On one hand where the fans are download the show from illegal platform, some of them found their own ways, buy using iTunes accounts of USA. Whatever the way maybe, the service is suffering much, and might be thinking of reconsidering their strategy as the fashion of cord cutting is growing more an more.
So after all these happenings in the previous year, the message is clear that HBO doesn’t want any complications in its relations and reputation in the international market, and just like last year, this year also, very less options are available to the cord cutters outside US.
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