HBO.com Is Blacklisted On Windows RT

By | March 20, 2013


HBO.com Is Blacklisted On Windows RTAnother stone in the garden.

Recently, we have reported about the changes in Microsoft’s IE for Modern UI blacklists where only specific sites won’t run Flash by default.

Well, it looks like HBO.com, one of the best known content providers around, is one of such sites that won’t run on Windows RT. As it turns out, IE10 for Windows 8 blacklist has 3 sites: briggs-riley.com, webassign.net and webinato.com while the RT version includes a total of 12, HBO and Twit being two of them.

However, while Twit.tv will work on their HTML5 based site, users browsing HBO on Windows RT will see the following message:

HBO.com Is Blacklisted On Windows RT

That’s what you get for buying an unfinished product.

[Via: ZDnet]


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

Comments (7)

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  1. Assholeblog says:

    It will not certainly be an unfinished product if it protects me from draining my battery.

  2. James says:

    @Vygantas To call IE10 on windows RT an unfinished product due to its flash preferences is a bit of a stretch. By that token, iOS would be a complete waste and Android a failed experiment. The fact that MS has changed its policies from a white-listing to a black-listing is a great step in the right direction. As for HBO specifically being black-listed, one can really only fault HBO as they’ve had ample time to correct what-ever issue MS is blocking them for. While I don’t much approve of black-listing nor have i been a fan on MS/IE, Windows 8 is ahead of the game when it comes to flash and I commend them for not dismissing a significant part of the web. Unfinished? I think you might want to re-think that.

  3. Przemysław Lib says:

    Do not be to haste to call ire upon MS heads.

    It can be as easily poor work on behalf of Adobe, or HBO team. Neither one of them may have cared about such “stupid” things as power efficiency of their software/website.

    Adobe is working on that problem, HBO team could just ignore WinRT market..

  4. Wixred says:

    “That’s what you get for buying an unfinished product.”
    How is this comment necessary or even relevant to the issue addressed in the rest of the story? What does being finished or not have to do with purposely blocking flash on certain websites?

  5. Rafael says:

    “That’s what you get for buying an unfinished product.”
    I guess you’re referring to HBO’s lack of HTML5 player! Right?

  6. iecustomizer says:

    this is incorrect….

    hbo.com is using a shim to detect the flash version from

    http://futureblend.com

    here is their test page: http://www.featureblend.com/javascript-flash-detection-library.html

    which is failing in IE10 because of browsersniffing code that incorrectly detects the IE version from the UAS.

  7. ks says:

    The guy doesn’t give any proof, but it’s correct that hbo.com is on the noflash list for ARM/RT devices. I guess the reason is that the Flash use on hbo.com is excessive and might overwhelm the slow processor of the RT surface devices. That’s also been the main reason for excluding so many flash sites from the beginning. They had to chose between complaints about sluggishness of the browser or even the whole device or some sites not working. I tested the hbo.com site on Windows 7 and it needs a ridiculous amount of downloads (in size and quantity) before it can display.