Well, this is big news: Apparently HBO has decided to go streaming in a big way, and is bringing all of its older shows to Amazon Prime. With one or two notable exceptions, of course.
Let’s just answer your first question right up front: No, Game of Thrones and True Detective will not be streaming. In fact, it’s pointedly missing from the press release about this. But just about everything else will be available for streaming, albeit on a three-year delay:
The collection includes award-winning shows such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Big Love, Deadwood, Eastbound & Down, Family Tree, Enlightened, Treme, early seasons of Boardwalk Empire and True Blood, as well as mini-series like Band of Brothers, John Adams and more.
Also included will be a lot of HBO’s “pedigreed” documentaries and comedy specials for streaming, as well as HBO’s original movies. In other words, HBO just dropped a lot of content on Amazon Prime, and the goodies will be available beginning May 21st. Oh, and it adds HBO Go to the Fire TV.
A lot of people are construing this as a setback for Netflix, but the truth, really, is that Netflix was never in the running. HBO hates Netflix, and realistically, all this really does is put paid to the idea that HBO can pretend cord-cutters don’t exist. It may also be a testing bed for spinning off HBO Go into a Netflix-like service.
But, for now, this just made Prime a lot more valuable. And now you can stop faking that you’ve seen The Wire and actually watch it!
