"cable cutters" is a term for people who drop their cable subscriptions and stream media via broadband Internet. It's a growing trend.

There are many services that let you stream popular shows -- these are generally preloaded on "smart TVs", TIVO, Roku, Apple TV etc. The only catch is that it's either advertising-funded (with no way to skip ads), pay-per-view or subscription-based. Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix are just a few. It seems that HBO is teamed with Apple to deliver content only on iOS or Apple TV initially. They own the IP so why not sell it wherever they can turn a profit?