FIOS RIDES HBO'S ‘FERRARI'

Verizon First to Take Premium Net’s ‘TV Everywhere’ Service

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 2/22/2010 7:14:00 AM

New York — HBO last week debuted its “HBO Go” broadband portal with Verizon Communications, as Comcast turned down the chance to hook into the premium programmer’s service in favor of its own Fancast product.

Verizon FiOS TV and Internet customers who subscribe to HBO will be able to access more than 600 hours of content, for no additional charge, by logging in at either the premium network’s HBOGo.com site or via a Verizon site. About 25% of the content will be refreshed by HBO every week, with new episodes available on the service immediately following their TV premiere.

The portal, which features an attractive interface, will be cobranded with Verizon and other participating affiliates. The service is “HBO On Demand with the engine and styling of a Ferrari,” HBO co-president Eric Kessler said in a presentation here.

“Ultimately, this is about extending the subscriber life cycle,” Kessler added. “It’s more about subscriber retention.”

Comcast offers the same 600-plus hours of HBO content through the Fancast Xfinity TV online service, which the cable company launched for doubleplay cable TV and broadband customers nationwide in December. However, Comcast has declined to provide access to the HBO Go interface. Instead, Comcast customers will be redirected from HBO Go to the MSO’s Fancast site.

HBO, for its part, is not contemplating offering an online-only version of the service: “This is affiliate friendly,” Kessler said. “Our target audience for this is the 100 million [U.S.] TV subscribers.”

HBO began discussing its broadband strategy, which has always been intended to reinforce the existing pay TV service, as early as spring 2007 under then- CEO Chris Albrecht. The programmer initiated a trial with Time Warner Cable’s Wisconsin division in January 2008, providing around 400 hours of on-demand video via the Road Runner cable-modem service.

At this point, Time Warner Cable, an erstwhile corporate cousin of HBO, is not currently working with the premium programmer on an authenticated online service, according to spokesman Justin Venech, who declined to elaborate. TWC last summer said it was planning a 5,000-home test of a TV Everywhere service with about a dozen programmers, but HBO is not currently in the mix.

Comcast representatives did not respond to inquiries about why the MSO declined to offer HBO Go. Previously, though, Comcast executives have argued that using Fancast would provide a better overall user experience and allow it to launch the service quickly.

“At the end of the day, you have to have a great consumer experience. They need to get a great payoff . They need to have a consistent experience across content and content providers,” said Comcast Interactive Media senior vice president of Fancast and online entertainment Karin Gilford in an interview last year.

Compared with the Fancast site, Kessler noted, HBOGo.com is “a more HBO-centric experience.” He said the aim with HBO Go was to present the programmer’s content in a highly visual, easy-to-navigate interface.

“The content is always front and center,” Kessler said.

Verizon, for its part, is looking to capture the edge in being “first” on a new video service. “It really is about answering the consumer’s demands,” said Verizon vice president of consumer strategy and planning Shawn Strickland.

It’s worth noting that Verizon was the first TV distributor to announce a deal with Epix, the joint-venture movie service from Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer and Lionsgate, and currently off ers the Epix online component to subscribers. In addition, the telco offers the Starz Play online movie service to broadband customers for $5.99 per month.

With HBO Go, Verizon also hopes to see a promotional boost and benefit from buzz about the service, as the parties plan to promote the partnership with an advertising campaign that includes newspaper ads, TV spots, online ads and billboards.

HBO Go’s 600 hours of programming represent four times the amount available through HBO On Demand, according to the network. Currently, for example, HBO Go provides every episode of the original series. The Wire. The service also includes exclusive and bonus material, soundtrack and cast information, and parental controls.

HBO Go uses Adobe Systems’ Flash media player as well as the Adobe-developed encrypted Real-Time Messaging Protocol, referred to as RTMPE, as previously reported by Multichannel News. The service is available on both PCs and Macs, whereas the previous broadband service tested with TWC Wisconsin was Windows- only and used Microsoft’s digital-rights management system.

Th e video is in MPEG-4 format, encoded at two different bit rates: 1.2 Megabits per second and 2.6 Mbps. If a customer attempts to access HBO Go on a connection that can’t keep up, the video is buffered.

HBO Go was defined and built in-house, while the interface was designed with an outside agency, New York-based R/GA.

Affiliates who participate with HBO Go are responsible for providing authentication and a content- distribution network to deliver the video to subs. Verizon “already has an extensive CDN, and our goal is to get the content as close to the user as possible,” Strickland said.

FiOS users will be able to access the HBO Go service from up to three diff erent computers simultaneously, the companies said. Th e Adobe RTMPE provides a form of digital rights management to inhibit piracy, according to HBO executives.

HBO Go isn’t the only programmer- led “TV Everywhere” initiative. HBO’s parent, Time Warner Inc., has been beating the TV Everywhere drum loudly, with TNT and TBS part of Comcast’s Fancast Xfinity TV service. Those two Turner Broadcasting System networks also are participating in trials with Time Warner Cable, Verizon’s FiOS TV and others.