If you’ve been waiting for HBO Now, the network’s standalone streaming service, but haven’t been able to sign up because you’re one of the tens of millions of people with an Android phone or tablet, then you’re in luck.
HBO said on Thursday that the service, which allows you to stream past and current HBO shows online and costs $14.99 per month, is now available on Android devices and on Amazon Fire tablets.
People who sign up, through apps downloaded from the Google Play Store and Amazon Appstore, will get a 30-day free trial.
The service will also be coming soon to Amazon’s Fire TV as well as Google’s Chromecast, which are devices that plug into your TV and allow you to stream video from the internet.
HBO teamed up with Apple to launch the service in April, so for the first three months, Apple was the only non-pay TV provider that could sell the app. Cablevision subscribers could also buy the service.
HBO Now is similar to HBO Go, a streaming service available only to people who pay their TV company for HBO, in that you can stream both past and current seasons of HBO shows. New shows become available on HBO Now around the time they air on TV.
Until this year, the only way you could watch current seasons of HBO shows, like “True Detective” and “Game of Thrones,” was if you subscribed to the network through a cable or satellite provider.
But with HBO Now, the network is trying to go after the growing number of “cord cutters,” people who’ve decided to stream video online from services like Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu rather than pay a cable, satellite, or phone company for an expensive package of channels.
The number of households in the US that subscribe to high speed internet but don’t pay for TV grew to more than 10.5 million last year, growing 16 percent over the same period in 2012, according to the research firm SNL Kagan.
An HBO spokesperson told Business Insider there’s no update on when the service become available on game consoles like the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox One, as well as on popular streaming devices from Roku.
[“source – businessinsider.com”]
