My thoughts exactly, but many people (my wife springs to mind) simply don't care. I'm always amazed how some friends are happy to watch the most awful pirate streams, even where they could comfortably afford a subscription to whatever streaming service it's on.

To each their own, I guess.

I often find myself wanting to pirate when watching an official stream that just plain sucks. The worst is when I am forced to watch ads when I start and scrub, then the video fails for some reason shortly after starting (and watching the ad). I refresh the page, watch the ad, scrub to where I was watching, watch another ad, then it fails again a few more minutes in. Finding the pirated copy might be a PITA, but I at least will have a file on disk that I can do whatever I want with and there's no question whether I'll be able to watch all the way through.

This is not my experience with HBO Go, however. There's one skippable "here's what else is on HBO" promo (I think it's skippable—usually I just queue it up while we're settling in to watch), then right into the show with no breaks. Is HBO Now different?

It's the same obnoxious minute long ad before.

At least it's only HBO shows.

Some shows either don't have English subtitles (or if they do, it's small, or is horribly displayed), which is a big reason why I want to pirate too.

I had something similar happen when I was watching a movie on an airline flight... I gave up after the third or fourth time it reset.

Why watch a show in HD, legally, for $15 a month when I could get 3 latte mochiattos with shots of vanilla, then watch a crappy 360p pirate stream of a show I'm a "diehard" fan of?

My biggest problem is that I am more than willing to pay the subscription fee, but being based outside of US most services won’t allow it or have a delay when the episodes become available.

by pirate streams, do you mean the torrent downloads too? because those are almost as good as watching it on HBO.

I was thinking the same thing. I don't see pirating as a sacrifice in quality. You reliably get 1080p releases of episodes as soon as they have aired, often with subtitles.

What you sacrifice by pirating is a bit of conscience and (arguably) convenience.

Game of Thrones is based on a book. Some people care more about story development than video resolution.

But it's already diverged enough IMO to warrant enjoying them separately. Might as well get the full experience... Plus without the source material to work from I'm skeptical as to just how great the TV ending will be. But I guess we all take what we can get at this point.

Yes, it's almost like "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" divergence level at this point. The movie/show and book(s) are both excellent but tell very different stories.

Douglas Adams changed HHGTG for each medium. Whether from boredom, appropriateness, craft... I dunno. But I do know that I love each retelling on its own merits.

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 4 that leaked was actually pretty good quality. The audio and video were synced perfectly, the episode was complete from start to finish and it wasn't high def but it was very watchable.

Those are most likely the same people who are willing to watch pirated cam-recordings of cinema movies right after they release.

Actually the leak is quite good. I just watched over a guy's shoulder in a flight as he watched episode 4. It was obviously not for public dissemination but it was very good.

Resolution doesn't matter.