HBO looks to be on the verge of unveiling its Internet streaming service in a wider way.
A Web site called HBO Go, subtitled “It’s HBO on your computer,” appeared online weeks ago, promising access to scores of TV episodes and films. There’s one catch: you must already be an HBO subscriber through your cable or satellite company. The Web site currently works in beta form for Comcast and Verizon FiOS subscribers.
The site is an outgrowth of the company’s tests of HBO on Broadband, an effort to export the on-demand experience of television to the computer.
HBO, a unit of Time Warner that has about 35 million subscribers, has scheduled a press event on Wednesday morning.
On a conference call with analysts earlier this month, the Time Warner chief executive Jeffrey L. Bewkes said HBO’s streaming service “will offer three times the content of what’s on HBO On Demand today.”
HBO Go is part of a larger cable industry effort, sometimes called TV Everywhere, that seeks to preserve existing its subscriber base by making more content available on demand via the Internet.
Richard Greenfield of Pali Capital noticed HBO Go in late January, and was immediately impressed.
“Spending 30 seconds with HBO Go makes you want to throw out your cable box with its awful video-on-demand interface and your nonsensical cable remote,” he wrote.