HBO GO makes watching movies and shows on your Droid or iPhone easy...or does it?

HBO GO is here. Their ads claim that you can watch HBO anywhere. On your computer, your iPad or Smartphone. Since I now have a 4G Android phone on Verizon (my HTC Thunderbolt - review here), I figure I can provide an objective review of the app and program on both 4G and 3G.

Being an HBO subscriber, I had seen some of the promotions for HBO GO, but I wasn't compelled to look into it until I saw the HBOGO Twitter account as a (paid and promoted) suggestion for me to follow. It worked. I follow. They are really doing aggressive marketing to get this app in users' faces. They've even offered episode 7 of "Games of Throne" on HBO GO a day before it is aired on television.

So, okay, time to load the app and see if I can actually just log in and watch HBO on my Droid.

I went to the Android Market and searched HBOGO. There it was. Downloaded quickly.

I then launched the app and it first asked for me to choose my cable provider from a dropdown list. I'm currently with Comcast/Xfinity. I proceeded and was asked to log in with my Comcast/Xfinity username and password, then to set up an HBO GO account. Only took a couple of minutes and I was ready to pick a show for my viewing pleasure.

I did the first test on 4G, so I had to first turn 4G service. Why? Because if you have a 4G phone and don't turn it off when you don't need it, then your battery will be dead and you won't be able to watch HBO or do anything on your dead Droid. If you have a 4G phone and don't know how to turn off 4G, here's a little tutorial.

The opening screen offers all of the latest hot shows, movies and specials. The menu allows you to choose from a list of categories including movies, series, comedy, sports, etc. You can also set up a Watch List of shows you want to add to your queue for easy access later. Pretty slick.

I chose to watch an episode of Entourage for my test. When I clicked, it asked me to sign in. I did, then clicked on the Entourage episode again. It said:

"The GO ID is playing video on another computer or device. Please stop the previous video stream or try again later."

That wasn't the case as far as I knew (since this was my first time), but I think because I tried clicking on the same episode twice I screwed things up. So I logged out, then back in and again went to the Entourage episode. Everything loaded quickly and the streaming was excellent with no buffering. Not happy that you can only watch on one device at a time, but I guess it makes sense since people could share their usernames and passwords so that non-subscribers could watch.

Now, let's try the same thing with 3G. (Used this method again to switch my device to 3G). This time I logged in and clicked on the movie "All About Steve." Honestly, it seemed to load as fast and stream just as well as on 4G.

In a nutshell: very, very, very, very cool app. I have spent a lot of time figuring out ways to watch movies and TV shows on my devices, and HBOGO is probably going to be my first choice because of it's easy interface and a pretty damned good selection of stuff to watch.

You GO HBO!