About HBO Go and its History

HBO is a household name in the USA. But how much do you know about HBO Go? We designed this article to let you know everything about HBO Go. This article will help you understand why HBO introduced this free streaming service and what updates did it receive through the course of time since its launch. We will dive deep into its history to find every little detail about it.

What is HBO Go?

HBO Go is a free streaming service that is accessible to HBO subscribers only. An HBO subscription costs money for your information, so basically, HBO Go comes as a bonus for all the HBO subscribers. You can’t watch live TV via this service, but new content becomes available as soon as the live broadcast ends.

Now that you basically know what HBO Go is, let’s learn about its history.

History of HBO Go

Home Box Office introduced HBO Go nationally in the United States of America on February 18, 2020. HBO on Broadband was its predecessor, and they launched it in Jan 2008 for Time Warner Cable viewers. To get access to HBO on Broadband, you had to be a customer of digital cable with an HBO subscription. It had over four hundred hours of HBO original TV films, specials, and original series, including one hundred and thirty movie titles.

Most of the content in the previous paragraph was all about the HBO on Broadband service. Now, let’s move on to its successor and our main topic of the day - HBO Go. Initially, Verizon FiOS was the only provider offering HBO Go. With time, other providers, including Comcast, AT&T U-verse, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Dish Network, jumped in to offer HBO Go services in some states.

Multichannel television in the United States like Hulu, AT&T TV, and AT&T TV Now also started offering HBO Go over the following years. You can get access to HBO Go services via select smart TVs, Android, iOS, Amazon Fire, Roku, Chromecast, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

In the beginning, people were able to access HBO Go through the official HBO website only on their personal computers. Then, on April 29, 2011, HBO released its applications for Android and iOS. The launching of these applications meant that HBO Go was now accessible via tablets and smartphone devices. In just one week, the application received more than one million downloads. By June 2011, it had over three million downloads on Google Play Store and App Store.

Soon, in Oct 2011, Roku streaming players started offering HBO Go and became the first TV-connected devices to do so. Later, other devices like Apple TV, Play station consoles, Xbox consoles, Chromecast, and Samsung smart TVs also made it available on their platforms.

PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 took HBO Go off their platforms in Jan 2019.

WarnerMedia removed HBO Go’s digital media player and mobile apps from the app stores on July 31, 2020. If you still had the app on your smartphone or digital media player device, it was unable to go past the splash screen.

Most of the providers had already said goodbye to the HBO Go website after transitioning to HBO Max by Nov 2020.

What content does HBO Go offer?

On HBO Go, you can stream a number of theatrically released films from 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Universal Pictures. It adds and removes a good number of movies every month from its service platform. However, the HBO original series are available permanently. People love it because new episodes become available on it as soon as they start broadcasting around the world on the HBO channel.

Many HBO series from the past, including Tales from the Crypt, 1st and Ten, The Ricky Gervais Show, Da Ali G Show, and Tenacious D, are currently unavailable on HBO Go. There were some series that were removed from HBO Go in 2016 but were added again in 2018. Unlike other services, HBO Go doesn’t offer near-real-time access to the HBO channels, which can be a little disheartening for hardcore HBO fans.

Conclusion

HBO Go is very popular in the United States of America, and there’s a good reason behind it. The first thing is that Americans love HBO services. And the second thing is that it comes free of cost with an HBO subscription. If you are an HBO subscriber, you can access the HBO Go content without paying any extra fee.

Now that you have read everything about HBO Go and its history, you can surprise your HBO fan friend with an HBO Go trivia.

We hope you enjoyed reading the article. Leave a comment if you still have a query about HBO Go in your mind, and we will be happy to solve it.

Source:- About HBO Go and its History

Reference:

Wikipedia. 2021. HBO Go. [Online]. [2 March 2021]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBO_Go

Pocket-lint. 2016. What is HBO Go and how do you watch it?. [Online]. [2 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.pocket-lint.com/tv/news/139243-what-is-hbo-go-and-how-do-you-watch-it