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| Emilio Rubio: "HBO GO Is a Unique and Wonderful Experience" |
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In his interview with ttv, the head of distribution and media development at HBO Latin America Group announced HBO GO will be launched in Brazil and other Hispanic territories in the upcoming months.
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Emilio Rubio, Head of Distributon and Media Development at HBO Latin America Group.
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Despite having a VOD service in the reigon foro ver four years now (HBO On Demand), HBO is now taking it one step further by premiering HBO GO, a service described as "unique and wonderful" by Emilio Rubio, president of distribution and media development at HBO Latin America Group.
"The SVOD service was launched a little over four years ago. Back then, we expected it to be very successful in the market with the arrival of telcos with their IPTV, yet that was not the case. The truth is telcos chose DTH over IPTV due to technical difficulties, and with that, HD networks grew instead of SVOD," said Rubio.
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"Yet, ever since the arrival of several online-subscription offers last year, the business grew significantly. During 2012, we've experienced an important growth in the number of subscribers and HBO On Demand, which has been available for four years yet is now growing everywhere. We have great expectations for further growth in the field," he added.
Taking advantage of this growth, the company decided to launch its own online platform this year.
"The idea is to start with Brazil. It's an announcement we expect to make shortly. We've been working on the project and are very excited. We believe what we'll launch is different from any other service in the region. It's a product unlike any other and it's wonderful. We expect to launch it in Hispanic-speaking markets before the end of the present year," he said.
The executive also stated that, since it's an online service, it has fewer limitations than HBO On Demand, and content will be even greater.
"HBO On Demand is a catch-up for HBO subscribers with the most relevant content from the TV networks. This is limited by certain technical aspects in operators' headsets. HBO GO has a more assorted offer since there are no such limitations. Thus, all the episodes of HBO's new series and its main movies, in addition to HBO's most popular franchises in Latin America and the US, will be available," he explained.
Rubio also revealed the company had very successful meetings with operators at Canitec, and everything is going according to plan.
HBO 2 and HBO SIGNATURE
The executive also spoke about HBO's two new channels: "HBO 2 was requested in a way; a necessity expressed by a group of clients and our partners. As you know, over the last few years, the main growth in Latin America's pay TV industry was promoted by lower socio-economic segments. In this context, channels in English with Spanish subtitles were always rejected by a small group. That's the whole point of HBO 2: to present the same content with a local approach, in each country's own language," he said.
"On the other hand, with Signature we had a similar experience to the one we had in the US over the last two years. With fans being so loyal to HBO's exclusive products and the amount of hours we were producing, there was no room for it. So we created this new channel to broadcast content 100% exclusive to HBO for HBO fans. Both options can be accessed as part of HBO's package," he concluded.
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