HBO tech executives leave ahead of Internet launch as network's strategy changes

By Liana B. Baker NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner's TWX.N HBO is preparing to sell a standalone service over the Internet for the first time, in one of the most closely watched moves in pay TV history. Otto Berkes, who was previously a Microsoft executive, resigned from the CTO position in December, only a matter of months before HBO is expected to start selling the new product, and two senior vice presidents on the technology team, Mark Thomas and Drew Angeloff, are also leaving, sources familiar with the situation said. The original plan discussed by the network's top executives was to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a sophisticated streaming platform that would make HBO, one of the best-known premium channels in the United States, capable of challenging streaming video services from Netflix NFLX.O and Amazon AMZN.O head on. Berkes, who was also a cofounder of Xbox, was a key part of that ambitious project - he had been hired by HBO in 2011 to set up a new office in Seattle, initially hiring 80 engineers with plans to grow much bigger.



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