Still it's not allowed in India...But No geo restrictions for Netflix as I know...
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Yes, netflix has no geo restrictions. For example,The subscription bought in USA can be accessed anywhere. I’m expecting same with HBOMAX, so that my Brother can use it. Else if it is like Primevideo/hotstar ,then my brother has to buy hos own account in India.
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Lol, this is that NDTV guy. Right? He made some useless rant about Hotstar. They proved him wrong within months of Disney+ integration with Hotstar.
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What ever he has raised, we had covered those concerns on our follow up story as well.. If you haven't read it, take a look at that as well..
What does HBO Max's imminent Indian launch mean for other streaming platforms in the country?
Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix and Prime Video have long-standing relationships with different subsidiaries of Warner Media. The company’s merger with Discovery leads to more questions than answers.
onlytech.com
He's not wrong about HBO max tho... HBO Max Indian Launch isn't a priority as of now for the company as they have so many hurdles that they have try to solve before making an official launch... Also, worth Noting apart from the pricing part, the content part excluding the Indian names mentioned had a lot of third party content which Disney and MGM owns....
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Okay, if that's the case it's a win win situation for us. Too many streamers will increase our monthly expense. Anyhow I still don't get the point of renting the HBO Max originals. These are not available to stream anywhere. It would be nice if they sold the rights to either Hotstar or Prime Video.What ever he has raised, we had covered those concerns on our follow up story as well.. If you haven't read it, take a look at that as well..
What does HBO Max's imminent Indian launch mean for other streaming platforms in the country?
Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix and Prime Video have long-standing relationships with different subsidiaries of Warner Media. The company’s merger with Discovery leads to more questions than answers.
He's not wrong about HBO max tho... HBO Max Indian Launch isn't a priority as of now for the company as they have so many hurdles that they have try to solve before making an official launch... Also, worth Noting apart from the pricing part, the content part excluding the Indian names mentioned had a lot of third party content which Disney and MGM owns....
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The reasons are as follows:
- They surely doesn't want to go into another situation where they have to negotiate a way out if they want to launch the platform any time soon.
- Hotstar hasn't shown any real interest it seems, Around the world HBO licensed Max Originals to whomever are having HBO originals.
- Max Originals aren't making any case for themselves barring The Flight Attendent and Hacks of course.
- Max Originals by outside studios are given freewill as of now with Lionsgate Play streaming Love, Life..
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Congrats Onlytech team. This exclusive news gave the coverage OnlyTech deserves
Mᵜāz Kalīm
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{READ ONLY if you consent to #SpreadTheWord whenever & wherever relevant, preferably with attribution: }To add to the point of surprisingly very enlightened, un-stereotypical forumite in Mr "@sathwik69": He couldn't be more right.(
But then.. Forumites are generally miles spot-on about media-affairs as long as it's artificially-restricted to business/economic side of things and never remotely close to geo-/socio-politics. Nevermind a certain other "Q&A forum" going by maroon "Q", an irredeemable "social" network.)
Chronologically:
Actually, what happened is that the overrated "creative-haven" in Home Box Office® also used to distribute its each self-owned individual title( any output-package, say.. a show/series) to third-party media corporations across territories everywhere outside US on that very common/standard "highest-bidder" basis irrespective of whether they had HBO®-branded channel in
a given territory, or not.
They even did a multi-pronged partnership with original VIACOM™ in late 90s which led to some of their shows being distributed by them and followed by CBS® since 2006 until late 2019 when the announcement for remerger of these 2 mutual family-owned empires completed successfully( resulting in the original VIACOM™ rising again as VIACOMCBS® now).
I digressed a bit for context, so coming back to the point.. More than a decade ago, like precisely in 2009: HBO® started implementing its new revenue-model based on exclusivity, say.. Like an awards/sporting events, and to exploit it better: They also retooled their commissioning-strategy of preferring to only-&-only greenlight those projects which first-&-foremost, could be owned in-house à la Indian Television's model since past 2 decades( counting since 2021), something quite contrary to the convention of not just US, but many other Occidental media-territories. And this has borne out to near-absolute when it comes to HBO® US' scripted-output.
Thusly, they made the Home Box Office® Originals brand akin to "an event" in and of itself.
In marketing, this term was dubbed ‘Home of HBO®’.
The first-ever pilot for this seismic-shift was the UK, where Murdochs' then-BskyB™ agreed to be that first-ever announced partner outside the US to be their "Home of.." exclusive-broadcast partner. As it turns out, that partnership in particular has turned out to be quite successful.
Anyhoo.. They expanded it to rest of Europe, North America, sub-Saharan Africa( divided into Anglophone & Francophone), LatAm & WANA based on the simple-caveat that: If they( then-TimeWarner®) or somebody else operates HBO®-branded channel in any given media-territory, then the "Home of HBO®" exclusivity shall be bestowed to them( this exceptionally doesn't apply in this part of the globe, though — more on that later).
In the same vein.. They reached the shores of Asia-Pacific region within 2 years where there were quite a lot of HBO®-branded feeds operating across the region, all of them in-house one way or the other.( The glaring exceptions to this were "fIrSt World" countries of Japan & "Down Under" aka Australia and New Zealand, where they partnered with interested third-parties each.) So they enhanced the offering of their already ad-free "premium" network across the Southeast Asia to include all of self-owned HBO® Originals content.
But here's where it converges: A "little problem" with the part of the region where we are, the Subcontinent. For over a decade, the splintered-feeds of HBO® were ad-supported, cheaper pay-TV satellite( "basic cable") feeds tailored for advertising and rarely, censorship — and yes, they were operated not by any of Home Box Office®'s subsidiaries but nevertheless, the sister-concern in then-Turner™ which basically handled the distribution of such self-O&O HBO® channels everywhere outside the US, not just the Subcontinent.
So here's what they did.. Instead of forcing Turner® to give-up the reign of "cinema-only" HBO®-branded channels, they instead partnered with Bollywood behemoth then-Eros™ International to bring some of the HBO®-branded networks from across Southeast Asia to here in India. Remember HBO® Defined & HBO® Hits launches 'coinciding' with the HDTV revolution in India — concurrent with cable-TV digitisation drive? What a surprise, that Indians would lo-lo-love to bemoan perennially but nevertheless, didn't wanted to pay-up enough even when they pioneered the offering of multiple lingual audio-tracks across all of English-language movie-channels and were offering it for select foreign movies, in addition to Hind[ustān]ī-language Bollywood titles from Eros® and 'course, all of those self-owned HBO® Originals in English-language. All absolutely without ad-breaks and no regard for time-slots like "30 minutes episode" or "60 minutes episode". But 'course, since this is India: And our very own compatriots had demanded censorship to be extended to Indian Television virulently since the shenanigans in the 4th season of the flagship Indian adaptation of the "Big Brother®" reality-show franchise, ‘Bigg Boss®’[ on then-halved Viacom®'s Indian 50:50 JV, Viacom18®'s Hindi GEC flagship Colors® since past 3 seasons; as CBS® was trying to have its own basic cable operations in India work with Reliance® ADAG] followed by similar perceived "transgressions" led to the furore opportune enough for policymakers that also then-little-over a decade old Indian Broadcasting Foundation( IBF) set-up "self-regulatory" mechanism. So, 'course, those parallel HBO®-branded-but-"premium" networks in India were striven to be just as much self-censured as the HBO® South Asia channel then-operated by Turner™.
Nevertheless, whatever might be the factors: That model didn't turn out to be as tangible in India as then-Eros® pulled out of the "premium" TV venture not too long afterwards, thereby reducing its "USP" by taking homegrown film-library with them.
And finally.. Not too long afterwards, the whole venture was finally accepted as an utter-flop by their executive-suite( management) as those[ audiences] in India who wished for change in Indian Television were( read are) just not enough[ in numbers]. Therefore, the rumour initially circulated by Hindustan Times®' financial-news sister-concern that HBO® would be pulling the plug( correctly) and then-Murdochs' Star® India be operating those "premium" HBO®-branded channels going forward( inaccurately).
As it turned out.. It was the good ol' grapevine all-too-familiar to online-forums given their correlation with showbiz-news more often than not: It only had "bits-&-pieces"( element/kernel) of the truth right, as "channel operations" part was actually referring to simply the rights for "Home of HBO®" library. Afterwards, the deal with then-Star® India was ultimately announced back in 2015. At the same time, all of the channels in the network were discontinued save for HBO® Hits HD which was handed-over to then-Turner® to be retooled as belated HD feed of regional HBO® channel operated by them.
But you pointed out about Warner Bros® and since nobody is absolutely correct/wrong about anything, beyond the realm of theory: You're right to suppose that but a-gain, as Mr "sathwik69" cookie-cut it, it simply can't occur.
To spell-out a bit more: While you're right in your presupposition since Home Box Office® could never build a competent international-sales team of their own so it's in fact the dedicated-subsidiaries of then-Warner Bros® International Television Distribution( WBITVD) & now-Warner Bros® Worldwide Television Distribution( WBWTVD) which has almost-always sold( the original-Viacom®-turned-CBS® exceptions notwithstanding) HBO®'s self-owned output, both pre-&-post "Home of.." era. However.. These subsidiaries which literally sell anything and everything audiovisual from the rapidly-monopolistic then-Time Warner™-turned-now-WarnerMedia®-to-projected-Warner Bros Discovery™ media-&-entertainment Empire.
But since those libraries are not beholden to "Home of.." sales-model, simply put: The deal with amazon® prime video™ India simply has no parallel to the one done with now-Disney and Star™ India back in 2015. 'Course some or all of the content may have limited-period exclusivity on prime® video India but that's simple economics: Extra-cash from Big Tech. The informal-exclusivity would never-ever be as long-term as the "Home of.." model since it isn't even projected to be. The agreements/deals aren't simply structured that way. They're merely "first-look" in that: First right-of-refusal. Whereas the "Home of.." model is predicated on the agreement being: "Overall". You can't pick-&-choose which title you( a media corporation) want, and which you don't. Take it or leave it, but you've to pay for the full-library[ on offer]. In turn, the supplies( in this case, self-owned HBO® Originals) can't be sold to any of your competitors in the territories identified as your area-of-operations in the agreement/deal.
Get it?
That's the key.
It ought to be noted the reason why I'm repeatedly referring to that peculiar sales-model only with the prefix: Because rival US premium-cable networks viz. VIACOMCBS®' (SHO)WTIME®, now-Lionsgate®'s STARZ® & even the basic-cable-but-"premium-esque", then-Murdochs-to-now-TWDC®-owned FX[X]® copy-pasted the same not too long after HBO® pioneered it back in 2009. Now all of them have their "Home of.." exclusivities in place worldwide outside of their home-market, for their self-owned commissions.
However.. As an extra-nugget to part with: They're effective only to varying degrees. That's because as you might recall that I referred to HBO® being “overrated”, none of those networks have gotten as much "Word of Mouth" and frankly, hype generated by the press — as "creative-havens" in spite of taking just as much risks, if not greater.( Perennial canards about "budgets" notwithstanding.) So therefore, they're just not as comparably-popular with perceivably championing artistic/creative freedom[ at great-peril] as the Home Box Office®, so they don't have the very same luxury of absorbing as much genius of the creative-community which goes to work with( read for) them as the former still does. Consequently, they can't insist on owning the output they commission as much as it can.
And the very same also trickles-down to their negotiations with buyers across the globe, as well. And that's why their success with copy-pasting Home Box Office®-pioneered model is.. Well.. To put it charitably: A mixed-bag.
But #NeverSayNever so.. For the sake of that saccharine, they're considerably "new" given they're behind at least half-a-decade from the former.(
Now please, somebody: Don't bring-up those global/US-domestic OTT/streamers vis-à-vis the hyped-up/organic brand of Home Box Office® Inc to show off your smartness, either.)
Edit Note: Made 4 edits to improve formatting[ and punctuation], as originally-intended.
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Mᵜāz Kalīm
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Is that a powerplay?