HBO NOW handles Game of Thrones season 7 traffic, premiere online early

Going into Game of Thrones season 7, one of the biggest storylines actually had to deal with whether or not HBO NOW would handle it. Last season, the streaming provider suffered a pretty significant outage at the start of it, which delayed many people watching it live with the remainder of America. (Of course, “pretty significant” in the modern era means a handful of minutes.)

So was HBO NOW able to handle everything this time around and launch without a problem? Well, we do come with great news: They actually put on early! While we’re talking mostly a matter of minutes here, it is still very much notable that the show arrived a little bit earlier than usual. This was a nice gift to longtime fans, and hopefully, this sets the stage for more reliability and consistent awesomeness throughout the year to come. (We are hearing of some minor hiccups here and there for people, but let’s be honest: Compared to past years, this is almost nothing. We’ve been watching for around ten minutes without any major issues here.)

For those who are checking out Game of Thrones now, HBO also did a nice thing in kicking things off with a fairly lengthy recap. Sure, that may have eaten significantly into the show’s runtime, but given just how much has happened on the show over time, it was more than valuable here.

Mass kudos to the network for figuring things out with their streaming provider, which we actually think is even more useful these days than subscribing to the network through a cable provider. In this cord-cutting era, many people out there probably know just how expensive that can end up being. For those of you looking for other great HBO programming, know that Ballers premieres next week and the second season of Insecure is coming.

Why does this happen with Game of Thrones?

Well, that’s fairly simple to explain. After all, remember that this is the most-popular show in HBO history and one that has an enormous audience behind it who’d watch it anywhere. Also, this is a show super-popular with millennial viewers a.k.a. the cord-cutters who won’t have packages.

Want more news?

If you do want to get some other news when it comes to Game of Thrones, including our reviews and previews when it comes to the show, be sure to head over to the link here. (Photo: HBO.)