HBO Web-only Version

HBO says it’s finally ready: Sometime in the next year the pay-TV service will be selling a Web-only offering.

HBO CEO Richard Plepler, speaking at an investor presentation hosted by HBO parent company Time Warner, said the company will start selling in 2015 a digital version of its service that won’t require a pay-TV subscription.

Plepler said the company will go “beyond the wall” and launch a “stand-alone, over the top” version of HBO in the U.S. next year, and would work with “current partners,” and may work with others as well. But he wouldn’t provide any other detail.

Even that vague statement is a milestone for HBO, Time Warner and the TV business in general. For years, Time Warner and HBO have said they’re happy with the existing system, where HBO is sold to consumers by TV providers, and is usually only available to customers who are already buying another bundle of TV networks.

That arrangement helped generate $4.9 billion in revenue for HBO last year, and also kept pay-TV providers like Comcast* happy.

But now, under pressure from investors to show that Time Warner can extract more value from HBO, Plepler and Time Warner seem willing to risk upsetting that structure. The move will also be seen as a response to the rise of Netflix, which has more than 50 million subscribers for its Web video service, and may generate more revenue than HBO this year.