HBO LAG
NEW YORK, NY, January 29, 2013—Positive Flux, a firm that prepares media companies to make the most of emerging distribution opportunities, today announced that it has been an integral part of the team developing the HBO GO® online entertainment platform that recently became available to subscribers throughout Latin America.
Background: Positive Flux has worked since the project’s inception in late 2010 to help with feasibility analysis, technical evaluation, and operational coordination, as well as the platform’s development, deployment and testing.
“HBO GO is an exceptional entertainment experience that was built and developed in-house to HBO’s exact standards and requirements,” said Emilio Rubio, president of HBO Latin America. “To extend it to new markets, we need project support that works from within our organization, not from the outside looking in. Positive Flux has been instrumental to the HBO GO Latin America project, complementing HBO’s resources and working effectively within our organization while bringing valuable expertise from across traditional and digital media.”
HBO GO in Latin America is being distributed in conjunction with regional Pay-TV operators.
Mission: Positive Flux worked with executives to detail the benefits, costs, technology, challenges, and risks HBO Latin America would need to consider for the project. In order to ensure a successful launch in the region, Positive Flux assisted the Latin American team in identifying and solving unique, region-specific quality issues related to bit rates, encoding technique and bandwidth availability in different markets. The goal of the project was to integrate the new platform with the existing HBO business systems and enabling the system to handle multiple languages.
Method: “Extending HBO GO to Latin America presented many new challenges, both technical and as a business,” said Dionne Bermudez, senior director of new media and business development at HBO Latin America. “Positive Flux has a unique combination of technical knowledge and business acumen that makes a great fit for new media distribution projects on a larger scale than have been attempted before. Positive Flux refers to everything as ‘we.’ They fully immersed themselves in our company, our team, and this project.”
Results: “This has been a fantastic opportunity to help one of Latin America’s premier entertainment brands extend its groundbreaking TV Everywhere service,” said Larry Thaler, president of Positive Flux. “This project was far more complicated than simply replicating the U.S. version of HBO GO. Instead, working as part of the team at HBO Latin America, we started with the superior user experience of HBO GO, then enhanced the underlying platform to manage the different requirements of the multi-national distribution model.”
