I mentioned HBO Go a few posts ago, but I’ve been kicking the tires a little bit more recently. The service is surprisingly better than I thought it was going to be. The desktop browser version is an amazingly overdone Flash app, but it gets the job done. For some reason, it occasionally just takes a long to time to connect.
The HBO Go iPhone app is actually good! At least using Wi-Fi on my fast Verizon FiOS network. No stutters or buffering pauses on the movies I’ve sampled. The movie scrubber isn’t particularly precise, but that’s a nit. And I have to admit that I haven’t tried to watch a full movie end-to-end.
Next up is to try it over 3G and see how much of a dropoff there is.
Of course the key point is the content selection, and it’s pretty impressive. HBO Go seems to have a wider and more varied movie selection than the HBO On Demand provided through my Verizon FiOS subscription. The HBO Series collection is amazingly impressive with access to all episodes from recent top flight products including: The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Treme, Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and True Blood. That’s right gorge on each of those series from start to finish and stone your friends with deep pop culture criticism.
Just the above buffet alone is worth the price of admission, which is free for me. The movies and other stuff is just a bonus. The only areas that look thin are Sports and Documentaries.
If this is the future, I’ll take it.