HBO Now premium streaming, in a nutshell

HBO's standalone streaming service now available

Just in time for Sunday's season five premiere of "Game of Thrones," and the return of "Veep" in its fourth season, HBO has launched its online streaming service, HBO Now. It's HBO, but without the cable subscription. Here's what you need to know.

What it has: Every episode from every season of many HBO series, plus movies. The programming is the same as you get on HBO Go.

Supported devices: As part of its exclusive partnership with Apple, announced at Apple's big event in March, the HBO Now app comes automatically loaded on Apple TV generation 2 and later. You can also watch on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch running iOS 7 or iOS 8.

Optimum broadband customers can also subscribe by adding HBO Now to their monthly Internet service. To watch on the computer, you'll need either Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows (Vista or later), and updated versions of Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome or Firefox.

It will eventually roll out to other devices and providers, but no specifics have been released. HBO said, "Support for Android devices is coming soon, and we will add support for more devices over time."

How to subscribe: Right now, subscriptions can be bought through iTunes or Optimum. Eventually, customers will be able to sign up through other subscribers. In either case, after subscribing, users will have to register their subscription with HBO Now to use the service.

Cost: It's not cable, but it still comes at a premium. The service is $14.99 per month. (Of course, that doesn't include the Internet service required to actually get the content onto your TV or tablet.) HBO and Apple are offering the first month free.

Here's how it stacks up against some of the other streaming services:

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