Blinkbox, the online on demand TV and movies service owned by Tesco, has agreed a new deal with HBO to make new series from the leading US cable premium channels available to buy before they are out on DVD and Blu Ray.
Sky retains the exclusive rights to broadcast new HBO programming on television and offer them via Sky Atlantic, BlinkBox has secured exclusive rights to make HBO series available to purchase through its digital distribution platform. Series available include:
Game of Thrones (Seasons 1 & 2)
Boardwalk Empire (Season 1 & 2)
True Blood (Seasons 1-4, usually broadcast on FX)
Treme (Seasons 1-2). It's not just HBO either: season 5 (and previous seasons) of AMC's Mad Men are also available.
BlinkBox is currently on Macs, PCs, iPad, LG and Samsung TVs, XBox 360 and PS3. More details at http://www.blinkbox.com/TV.
From quick look I've had at Game of Thrones it looks like a streaming service rather than download, but there's no limit to the number of times you can watch. No mention of HD so I suspect it is SD only, not sure of the quality. First seasons of GoT is £17.99 or £1.89 per episode, which is pretty good. Season 2 won't be on disc to buy until next spring, so that's quite a coup the service has.
Why Virgin Media couldn't get a deal like this is what I'd like to know...
7 comments:
I suspect the reason is that VM's Tivo counts as a TV service, and hence falls foul of licensing / rights exclusivity.
Same reason (I also suspect) that Lovefilm / Netflix have yet to appear.
Blinkbox is very much SD only, and low, low end SD at that. It's unwatchable on an HDTV, and to be frank, on anything other than a phone.
Agree with Phil. Just bought an episode of Game of Thrones via the Xbox and the quality was appalling. Won't be spending any more on the service until they at least up it to a bad attempt at HD.
And it doesn't work on Android.
Whether the move from Flash to Silverlight on Tuesday will enhance the quality / frame rate is debatable.
Blinkbox now does HD and series 3 of GoT was excellent quality on both ipad and large computer screen
totally disagree with the comments made about blinkbox's streaming quality is great now, so much so,I don't buy blu rays anymore, also it's not just a streaming service your also allowed to download the titles you own on to your device, for me Blinkbox has seemed to get better and better over the last few months, new titles as well as some old classics, I'm sticking with these guys and if TiVo combine an app together with blinkbox like with Netflix wow it be a very happy bunny, well for me anyway, but loving the Netflix service which great.
Most comments here are over a year old - I think the service has improved since the introduction of HD earlier this year
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