The Wars to Come Hits Series High Despite Piracy

[fear2433]

I'm Australian. I work in the movie industry so I can afford it, but to the people who work blue-collar jobs Fuck Foxtel for their high prices and fuck HBO for not caring for their international viewers bye signing the exclusive deal. I would have happily paid 15 dollars per month for HBO Now instead of 15 dollars per week for a cable service I only watch for entertainment and sports

Streaming speed and jitter when you stream 1080p must be worse than $15 per month.

How do you cope?

Anyway GoT is not shown in my area, so I still torrent.

[TaenaOfMyr]

On the subject of why they wait so long to release the DVDs/Blurays, its probably to incentivize people to obtain an HBO subscription. Its the main reason why you'll never see them do the Netflix model. They move to that model, then people will buy the subscription for only as long as they are able to watch the 10 episodes (at least those who subscribe due to the show and not other HBO shows).

[ummester]

@ TaenaOfMyr,

But this is forcing the customer to subscribe to things they may not want to subscribe to. It's like saying you can only buy milk from my shop if you also buy 10 apples.

There is nothing wrong with going you can get a discount on your milk if you also buy 10 apples, but not allowing people to buy milk without buying apples is one step away from theft in itself, especially if there are no other shops you can go to (like Foxtel in Australia). Where is consumer choice in any of this?

[Ran]

But this is forcing the customer to subscribe to things they may not want to subscribe to. It's like saying you can only buy milk from my shop if you also buy 10 apples.

Bundling actually reduces costs. If you paid for just the channels you wanted, you would pay a lot more per channel, generally speaking. If you only want one channel, fine, bundling sucks. But if you want a dozen cable channels, bundling's actually beneficial in many cases.

Re: Australians, they have iTunes and Google Play and Quickflix, IIRC, and unless things changed from last year, you'll get the episodes shortly after they air in the U.S. According to Lifehacker AU, a season pass on iTunes would be $30 dollars australian for all 10 episodes.

[The Drunkard]

Browsing itunes at the moment, haven't been able to find any of season 5 yet, and past seasons are $32.99.

The price isn't that bad as I think that's around what I payed for season 1 on dvd, but having to wait would turn me off.

[ummester]

Ran,

The seasons are only released digitally in Australia after the entire season has finished airing on Foxtel. Foxtel secured a monopoly for GoTs first run down under in 2014, purchasing exclusivity from HBO and locking Apple out. As far as I know, that hasn't changed in 2015. Only way to see GoTs as it airs in Austrlaia is with Foxtel and Foxtel must be purchased on a package subscription and contract.

One of the Ozzie polies even said recently that Australians should get a VPN if they want to watch content without a Foxtel subscription :D As noted earlier in the thread, I have Foxtel, coz the mrs needs her sports fix but I do think that Australia has an incredibly biased distribution model for GoTs and feel immensely for those who do not want to sign up with Foxtel for a year just to watch it.

Loras Tyrell doesn't like Foxtel:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-star-criticises-archaic-foxtel-distribution-deal-20140405-365pb.html

The Drunkard,

$33 is a very decent price for an entire season, IMO. If HBO went here ummester, here is the latest season for you to download in HD and it's only $33 I would be thanks HBO, deal well struck.

I've always held to the notion of fair trades in all of my dealings :)