Apple Brings HBO to iTunes, More Content for Apple TV

Now you can watch your favorite HBO TV Shows on Apple TV. Today, Apple announced that programming from HBO is now available for purchase and download on the iTunes Store. This could be the first step into a new era of prominence for downloadable video.

The company announced some of the HBO shows, including Sex and the City, Flight of the Conchords and The Wire, will be available for the standard iTunes price of $1.99 US per episode. Other shows, including The Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome, will be available for download at the higher price of $2.99 US per episode.

The agreement, which includes different prices for TV shows, marks a shift for the Cupertino company, which has resisted pressure from the entertainment industry to change its pricing model.

Like all iTunes TV downloads, HBO shows also come with digital rights management restriction that prevent users from watching these videos outside of Apple’s software or hardware or burning them to a DVD. The iTunes store, which offers downloads of 800 TV shows, has so far sold 150 million episodes.

NBC Universal last year pulled its shows from iTunes, because Apple was unwilling to charge higher prices for more popular shows. NBC wanted to sell episodes of newer, highly rated shows for more than the standard $1.99 US each, but Apple disagreed. However, according to Ross Rubin, NPD Group analyst, NBC and Apple could shake hands again:

If this is successful, it could perhaps pave the way for resuming NBC content on iTunes. Uniform pricing was one of the issues behind Apple’s conflict with NBC.

Last year, the network’s CEO Jeff Zucker told Variety magazine that NBC’s demands were “modest,” and added:

We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side. We wanted to take one show, it didn’t matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99. Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money. did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes, said the higher prices for some of HBO’s shows are still cheaper than buying the DVD sets of the full seasons of those shows, which translates into prices two or three times higher per episode. “I don’t think it’s a shift in strategy - I view this as an extension of the strategy we’ve had,” - he said.

Apple has about 50 million registered iTunes users, making up less than 10 percent of Apple’s $24 billion in sales last year. Television shows purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store can be viewed on a Mac or PC, iPod nano with video, iPod classic, iPod touch, fifth generation iPod, iPhone or on a widescreen TV with Apple TV.

HBO (Home Box Office) is the premium television programming subsidiary of Time Warner. It offers two 24-hour pay television services - HBO and Cinemax - to over 40 million U.S. subscribers.