HBO First Look

HBO is one of the oldest subscription television services in the United States still in operation, as well as the country's first cable-originated television content service (both as a regional microwave- and national satellite-transmitted service). HBO pioneered modern pay television upon its launch on November 8, 1972: it was the first television service to be directly transmitted and distributed to individual cable television systems, and was the conceptual blueprint for the "premium channel", pay television services sold to subscribers for an extra monthly fee that do not accept traditional advertising and present their programming without editing for objectionable material. It eventually became the first television channel in the world to begin transmitting via satellite—expanding the growing regional pay service, originally available to cable and multipoint distribution service (MDS) providers in the northern Mid-Atlantic and southern New England, into a national television service—in September 1975, and, alongside sister channel Cinemax, was among the first two American pay television services to offer complimentary multiplexed channels in August 1991.

The service currently operates six 24-hour, linear multiplex channels as well as a traditional subscription video on demand platform (HBO On Demand) and its content is the centerpiece of HBO Max (formerly Max), an expanded streaming platform operated separately from but sharing management with Home Box Office, Inc., which also includes original programming produced exclusively for the service and content from other Warner Bros. Discovery properties. Ever since December 4, 2024, live streams of most of HBO's linear feeds (except for multiplex channel HBO Latino) are accessible on the Max streaming app to American subscribers of its Ad-Free and Ultimate Ad-Free tiers (exclusive to accounts with adult profiles). Linear East or West Coast HBO channel feeds are also available via Max's a la carte add-ons sold through Prime Video Channels, The Roku Channel, YouTube Primetime Channels, and virtual pay television providers Hulu and YouTube TV (both of which sell their HBO/Max add-ons independently of their respective live TV tiers).

As of September 2018, HBO's programming was available to approximately 35.656 million American households that had a subscription to a multichannel television provider (34.939 million of which receive HBO's primary channel at minimum), giving it the largest subscriber total of any American premium channel. In addition to its American subscriber base, HBO distributes its programming content in at least 151 countries worldwide to, as of 2018, an estimated 140 million cumulative subscribers.