Starz will win out over HBO in the long run. Starz is coming out with great content; Pillars of the Earth, Party Down, Spartacus. All of which I have seen. People tell me that HBO shows are good, but I have never watched one episode of The Wire, The Sopranos, or John Adams. They are in my Netflix queue, at least The Wire is, but my disc queue is 400+ deep. I will never make it through all of that content, certainly not DVD by DVD.
This is the lesson that content producers need to learn. My eyeballs are valuable. I have no interest in content piracy. I collected plenty of mp3s in college pre-Napster, and have long since lost interest in working that much for entertainment. (Though interesting to note that I now primarily listen to free and ad supported pod/netcasts over music, even what I already own on CD) I am also patient, having used TiVo and Hulu to ween myself to a place where I have ditched cable and only watch Netflix. In fact, I even ditched Hulu after they kept making noise about “it won’t always be free”. The point is, that in a world with a plethora of choices, we can choose the most convenient best content. That is your competition HBO. And seriously, Pillars of the Earth is awesome!
