HBO Asia and StarHub of Singapore have inked a new deal that will enable StarHub to offer HBO Go to via a new standalone streaming service without requiring an underlying pay TV subscription.
That new service, called StarHub Go, will initially provide more than 300 hours of HBO and Cinemax original series, including Game of Thrones, True Detective, Ballers, The Brink, Veep, The Knick, Strike Back, Rome and The Newsroom, to subs who take the service’s Premium Pack, which sells for SGD 19.90 (US$14.20) per month.
To prime the pump, StarHub is offering the premium package for SGD 1.99 (US $1.42) per month for three months to customers who sign up by September 30.
The service is compatible with iOS, Android and Windows 8.1 devices and on browsers equipped with the Silverlight player.
HBO, which recently launched a standalone OTT service in the U.S. called HBO Now, expects to expand the its catalogue for StarHub Go to about 1,000 hours by the end of 2015.
The companies also announced that HBO On Demand, HBO Asia’s subscription video on demand service, will be offered at no additional cost to subscribers of all HBO channels via the StarHub Go platform.
“There’s so much demand for HBO’s award-winning content that delivering them digitally on multiple devices for our fans to watch on their own terms has been foremost priority,” Jonathan Spink, CEO of HBO Asia, said in a statement. “Introducing HBO Asia’s standalone streaming service on StarHub Go without a traditional pay TV subscription is a natural progression for us to reach new audiences.”
“Together, StarHub and HBO have achieved many milestones over the last 22 years, from our carriage of a single HBO channel on Singapore Cable Vision (SCV)’s ultra-high frequency (UHF) band to the current stable of five channels on both cable and IPTV,” added Ms. Lee Soo Hui, head of StarHub’s Media Business Unit, StarHub. “The launch of HBO GO takes our partnership to new heights by delivering HBO’s content to viewers all across Singapore through our StarHub Go service. We are also pleased to inform our StarHub TV customers that following the enhancements made to HBO On Demand, all five HBO channels will be broadcast in high definition by the end of the month.”
