The launch of HBO’s long-awaited internet television service this week went past with little fanfare or scrutiny. By Sunday night, expect to hear about it — loudly — if HBO Now doesn’t deliver on the promise of real-time streaming video for the return of Game of Thrones, a blockbuster swords-and-dragons series now in its fifth season, which will premiere tonight.
The network’s online-viewing operation has periodically crashed during heavily-watched shows — disruptions marred episodes of Thrones and True Detective last year — but those problems affected HBO Go, a freebie service available only to cable-TV subscribers and their freeloading friends. HBO Now has opened the premium-cable door to a new demographic of digital customers who are paying handsomely to access its hottest shows. With a monthly rate of $14.99 (Dh55.06), significantly more than Netflix’s typical $8.99 price, HBO has a lot riding on this test of its ability to handle a streaming surge.
HBO spent several years trying to build a digital capability in-house that could compete with the impressive technical operation of its main online rival. It gave up last fall and hired MLB Advanced Media, the tech operation spawned by Major League Baseball that now provides streaming services to traditional television networks and other clients. Bob Bowman, the head of MLBAM, believes HBO Now will be a sort of litmus test for how the wider entertainment industry views streaming. “That’s one of the major media brands in the world, and that’s doing a launch with one of their best content properties ever,” Bowman told TechCrunch last month. “I guess what I’m saying is, this has to be 9s all the way across — 99.999, in terms of reliability, customizability, beauty, and all of those other things in order to be successful with the entire world examining it.”
Video-streaming services have consistently suffered from spotty service. Avoiding outages requires a sufficient number of servers and adequate connections to move content from those servers to people’s homes. This means choosing the right data centers and securing a lot of space. Having locations spread out around the country improves performance by allowing traffic to travel shorter distances — although this is also more expensive than having fewer, larger data centers.
Streaming is particularly hard for live events. Experts point out that the internet just wasn’t built as a way to provide real-time television to millions of people. HBO’s challenge isn’t quite as severe as live sports. A new episode of Game of Thrones will prompt a large proportion of users sign on and request that one piece of content in unison. But HBO has the advantage of knowing exactly when that will happen. Unlike live events, HBO Now doesn’t have to pull a video feed in real time from, say, a television truck parked outside an arena. The company can prepare the content itself, allowing the bloody exploits of Westeros to arrive onto its servers several days beforehand an episode premieres.
— Bloomberg
