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Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
Nope. But HBO as a capitalist corporation should be maximizing profits. With the amount of people who have watched the show without subscribing to HBO or buying the DVD's they have obviously lost a lot of potential revenue.
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I agree. My guess is that HBO has been looking hard at their current and potential revenue streams, and have chosen this model for now, as is their right. It's hard to know how much revenue they have lost through piracy - I think a lot of the evidence presented is anecdotal, but I'm sure it's possible to get a rough number of pirated downloads and extrapolate. I'd also be surprised if HBO doesn't know the same numbers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
The earlier poster has a point that they are obviously trying to base their model on subscription to their channel. Whether that model is the most successful model they could be applying is what a lot of us are questioning. Does HBO really think that allowing consumers to buy series on demand will cost them money in the long run? I think that is shortsighted personally. I'm not sure I know a single person who subscribes to HBO and yet I know of a ton of people who watch their shows via torrents.
In this case what would benefit the consumer (watching the shows on demand for money) would also seem to benefit the producer. So why isn't that a reality? Seems to be cable companies lack of adaptation to the changing world.
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Questioning a business model, and piracy are two different things. I, myself, don't know if HBO's business model is the best. But I do see how it benefits HBO, how it impacts the quality of the shows they can produce, and it doesn't seem wholly unreasonable to me. Allowing ondemand access to episodes to the general consumer lowers their value to the cable companies, and so it can impact their revenue stream in a big way. When individual downloads can make up for the loss from cable companies (who may be willing to pay a premium for exclusive access), I'm sure HBO will cater to the casual fan in this way.