But: I said it snippily, and ineffectively. I apologize.

Snippy happens, given a soundbite-oriented medium. No prob. You want room 12A, just along the corridor.

This is nonsense and a horrible analogy. HBO is perfectly suited for the the future you envision. They have a digital streaming infrastructure in place to make the transition they just don't yet have the business case.

The reason the analogy fails is because HBO isn't a medium. Its the content - ask Netflix how easy it is to make a living streaming mediocre video content. Switching to a different distribution mechanism is trivial but for now they're not going to cut off their nose to spite their face just because a tiny subset of subscribers are moving away from cable.

I think that's the biggest part that goes missing in these discussions. Yeah, it's annoying that the moment that they require you to go through a tv provider, but I can see why they wouldn't want to alienate a large revenue source right now.

That said, it's pretty significant that they're building up their streaming infrastructure in the first place. The day will come when cable providers aren't worth cozying up to anymore, and it might even be sooner than HBO thinks. However, if they have everything in place it's going to be a lot easier to push out an update allowing web only customers than it would be to build their streaming service from scratch.

It remains to be seen, of course, how they will make that transition. It's arguable, though, that they aren't nearly as unprepared as some people are making them out to be.