If you want to fail, be like HBO.

Winter is coming.  But your episode of Game of Thrones may not be if you're traveling and trying to use HBO Go to watch the latest episode.

The selling point of HBO Go was to be able to stream new episodes as they air - but as fans of ANY of the popular shows on the network can tell you, they've consistently failed to provide the proper support of their product to make this happen with any reliability.  For instance, it's currently 11 minutes after episode three was supposed to air, and I'm sitting here ranting rather than watching Margaery do her duck-lips smirk.

The real problem isn't any of the individual instances of failure - it's the fact that this has been going on for YEARS without any improvement. (In fact, things may have gotten worse - when Season 3 aired, it took us 56 minutes to get the episode to load; this season it took exactly an hour an a half.)  Seriously, how can a major business go for that long without fixing the problem?  It is, however, comforting to know that I could totally fail at my job but still get a position with HBO...so there's that.

First of all, stop putting out HBO Go updates on the same day as a season premiere or finale.  I'm sick of having to go through the hassle of randomly reauthorizing my devices when there is already a huge strain on the servers.  Secondly - Y U no have enuf servers?  Here's a concept: since you know exactly how many subscribers you have, how about *gasp* you have enough server & bandwidth capacity to service them all?  I mean, that IS what we're paying for, right?

Tonight's default HBO Go response is cute: "As always, tonight’s @GameOfThrones could take up to an hour to arrive depending upon your device/connection. Thanks for your patience."  Suddenly, after all this time, it's my device or connection, huh?  You know nothing, HBO Go.