You know how you can sign up for a cable or satellite TV package to get access to some — but not all — of the TV channels available in your area? And you know how you have to pay an extra fee if you want access to premium channels like HBO or Showtime? Yeah, it looks like we might have the same sort of tiered system eventually on computers and mobile devices.
HBO co-president Eric Kessler tells Bloomberg that within six months the company will begin offering videos for the iPad and other mobile devics. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in the same interview, Kessler says that HBO won’t be licensing its content to Netflix or any of the other companies currently offering TV and video streams to mobile and computer users.
In other words, not only are we probably going to end up with a tiered system where you pay different prices depending on the content you want — but you’ll probably have to run different apps to access different content. Read the rest of this entry »