In beta for a while, HBO Go has launched: It's a streaming site with access to over 600 hours of HBO programming, from original series like Big Love to Watchmen. The catch? You already have to be an HBO subscriber. Dumb.

You also have to have the right cable provider to have access (right now, Comcast or Verizon FiOS). (Update: Comcast people might be redirected to Fancast, but the same video's available there. It should switch to the HBO site in the day or two.) The idea is that it gives subscribers more options to watch stuff, not to let everybody get some HBO action. HBO thinks of it like HBO On Demand, but able to offer 4x the content that they could On Demand, not a way to pull in new people. That is, even if I want to pay HBO $15 a month to get their awesome content, I can't. Even though they're tight with cable operators, seems like a missed opportunity—HBO is the kind of TV people might actually want to pay for.

Though for now, the amount of content has some serious holes—where the hell is True Blood, for instance? So even if you could subscribe to HBO online only, right now it wouldn't quite be worth it anyway. [HBO, Bits]