HBO On Demand Changes

[RJMacReady]

Hey, Earlier this year, I could not access any seasons of Game Of Thrones except the most recent one, without paying for it. Now I see all the seasons are avaiable. When I selected S1,E1, a dialog box came up with a TOS agreement, saying I could download a copy to a PC, portable device... If you don't accept, you are taken back to the main menu. So, I did, and did not see anything about a rental charge. I have had FIOS since it became available, w/ all the premium channels, but I never once rented a title, so I don't know how it works. I looked at my bill, there is no charge for the episode of GOT I watched.At least not yet, it was earlier today.  I assume all kinds of prompts show up asking you to confirm you want to spend a certain amount of $$ for a rental before you can access it? If this is the case, it is a welcome change to the programming. My neighbor uses Comcast, and he had no charge access to all HBO archives, as long as he was a subscriber, of course. Has Vz policy recently changed, or am I not remembering correctly? As for the rentals, I would rather spend the same amount of $$ on eBay for a new, but unboxed BluRay new release than have a sub par quality, cropped version of the same film available on a server somewhere. HBO still insists on cropping most, if not all, of the new releases in HD, which is a pet peeve of mine. I want to see the entire image composed by the director, and if that means black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, so what. You don't see the bars when watching the movie. When I pay $14 to watch a new sci-fi release in HD, I want all of the 2.40:1 aspect ratio (usual aspect ratio of big budget films except comedies, which tend to be shot in 1.85:1) image, not 60% of it. SHO does not crop their movies, thankfully. If you want an example, buy/borrow a widescreen version of say, "Die Hard With A Vengance", and then compare it to the version shown on HBO. 40% of the image is missing on HBO, by "panning and scanning"(enlarging) the image until the the black bars disappear. Anyway, off point. Did the Vz policy change in regard to HBO's archived series?  THX, RJM

[CRobGauth]

Most older series are available on HBO Go.

Not sure why Verizon doesn't have older series on demand.
Could be cost, could be HBO.

But I have had good luck with HBOGo.