Regarding the À la carte / "let me pay for it"; keep in mind that historically HBO sells their content to cable companies - they don't have the support infrastructure to go "direct to consumers" at that scale yet (though I think there is some limited HBO GO support at present). Additionally, I'm not sure how thrilled their currently customers/cable companies would be about HBO going direct - essentially opening up a channel for getting content without the need for a cable subscription. I'm not at all saying it's a bad idea, but I think HBO is in the very early stages of flushing out the kinks...