SDCC WILL Stream Hall H Panels But There’s A Catch

Last month, SDCC announced its partnership with Lionsgate to create a new streaming video service for Comic-Con called Comic-Con HQ. With this new tag team, the goal was to stream panels from Hall H – but there’s a catch. The content will be streamed but will not be live.

In an interview with /Film, General Manager of the Comic-Con HQ app Seth Laderman said that fans would in fact be able to watch the big panels that take place in Hall H. That’s where you get the biggest and most exciting announcements from the event. But, there’s a catch — the panels won’t be streamed live. Laderman explained:

“The short answer is yes. We’re going to be working with every single studio, every single panel host to be able to take the content and put it on our platform. We’re not going to be live streaming anything because we really don’t want to take away that experience of people who are the first to see and be there for it, but we can put things up shortly after.”

To an extent this makes some sense – I am sure that the people waiting hours (if not days) in the infamous Hall H lines would be ticked off if Joe Kick-Ass could wake up at 8am, brew some coffee, and waltz on over to his computer to watch the same content that you spent waiting 15 hours to see. Granted the viewer is not actually there and won’t be able to take part in a Q&A.

Now if live streaming is not an issue for you, then this might make you mad. Any exclusive footage/content will not be streamed, either. This means that is a company wants to unveil a movie/tv show/anything exclusively they will not have to stream it. Basically this favors people who are physically at SDCC.

“That is one of the options as well and we’re going to be working with all the studios and the panel hosts to figure out what would be the best way to handle that, because a lot of these studios have their marketing plans and how they want to control their assets. We’re really just here as a conduit to be able to help promote everyone, similar to what Comic-Con is, so whatever’s best for them will be good for us.”

Now this is a cool way to bring more viewers to SDCC but I am very curious to see what content will actually make it to the general public.