Hasta La Gadget!

Tesco’s VOD service Blinkbox beat all other UK players to the punch when it hosted the second season of Game of Thrones well before the box-set launch, and it’s doing the same with season three. It’s only just ended, but from July 15th, the latest series will be available to download or stream in its entirety, and what’s more, its arrival marks the first time HD content has been accessible on Blinkbox. You’ll also be able to watch season three in SD, should you want to, and both previous seasons will get HD options when the third lands. Pricing isn’t yet confirmed, but we’d expect the cost to be similar to that of season two, which was £1.79 (around $2.80) per episode, or £17.99 (around $28) for all ten. If you haven’t seen Game of Thrones yet, and we highly recommend you do, you’ve got just over a month to prepare for the Blinkbox launch and subsequent marathon.

Filed under: Internet, HD

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Haven’t been reading every Netflix quarterly report or listening to each earnings call for the last several years? No problem: you can quickly get caught up on the company’s strategy thanks to a “Long Term View” document posted to its investor relations site. Boiling down many of the things executives like Reed Hastings have been saying into a single PDF, it’s an easier to digest road map of where Netflix thinks this whole online video thing is going. Among other things, it sees the simplicity of its offering — no ads, no VOD, no-hassle cancellation, access on any screen at any time mobile or TV — as a main selling point. How to keep customers happy? Make sure that they think of Netflix as the better option for their entertainment time than other possible choices. Hit the source link to dig into it yourself or check below for a breakdown.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Netflix (PDF)

Google Fiber has a lot going for it, both as an ISP and a pay-TV platform. There was was one gaping hole in the service though: no HBO. Lets be honest with ourselves, its the big geeks that are looking to hop on that 1Gbps service first. And what do geeks love almost as much as blazing-fast Google-branded internet? Game of Thrones. Now Kansas City (and soon Austin) based nerds will be able to watch Joffrey become an even bigger monster live, rather than wait for some torrent site to get an illegal copy of it up (or, if they’re smart, mooch off of someone’s HBO GO account). Alongside HBO, Google Fiber has also added Cinemax: Home Box Office’s less cool sibling. The branded families of channels are both available today for $20 a month or $10 a month respectively. Or, if you’re a real premium TV fan, you can get both, plus STARZ and Showtime for $40 a month. Hit up the source for a few more details.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Google

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Source: Google Fiber

With all the hoopla that has been built up around piracy over the last several years, you might expect anyone associated with a television or movie studio to see people who pirate their content as the devil. At least one HBO executive seems to have a different opinion of pirates. Recently HBO programming president Michael Lombardo spoke with Entertainment Weekly about Game of Thrones and piracy.

In 2012, Game of Thrones was one of the most pirated shows on television. Lombardo says that being ranked as the most illegally downloaded TV series for 2012 “is a compliment of sorts.” He went on to say that the demand for the content is there and that despite the huge amount of piracy for Game of Thrones, “it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales.”

Lombardo sees piracy as something that simply comes along with a successful show on a subscription network. The executive also noted that Game of Thrones is currently on a per-seasonal basis and is the highest earner for the network. Lombardo specifically said when aggregate sales internationally and for DVDs are considered Game of Thrones is the highest earning show HBO has on the air now.

Despite seeing piracy as a sort of compliment, Lombardo says that HBO’s policy continues to be anti-piracy. HBO does try to stop piracy when it sees it happen according to the executive, particularly when people were selling pirated versions of the show. He does say that HBO hasn’t sent out the “Game of Thrones police” for individual users downloading pirated versions of the show.

[via Entertainment Weekly]

HBO exec sees Game of Thrones piracy as a compliment is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Game of Thrones has a unique honor to its name. It became the most illegally downloaded TV show of 2012. According to latest numbers, it is not giving up that throne any time soon. Last night HBO aired the Game of Thrones Season 3 premier and in merely a day it has been downloaded over a million times. There have never been so many people sharing a file at the same time, with 160,000 simultaneous peers, its a new record. It broke the record for the largest BitTorrent swarm ever. Previously this record was held by the season premier of Heroes with 144,663 peers.

One of the main reasons behind this rampant piracy is the delay in airing for viewers outside the U.S. HBO has been working to plug these delays but adamant turn to piracy as they don’t want to miss out on the latest and greatest episodes. The data shows that Australia has the highest piracy rate, with a population of over 22 million. London was the city with the highest piracy rate followed by Paris and Sydney. The U.S. comes in at the top. We’ve got to ask, how did you watch the premier last night?!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Chinese Man Calls Police On Himself To Help Fight Internet Addiction, Feedly Updates Mobile Apps, Adds New Features And Better Search,