On the night of the Golden Globes ceremony last month, Netflix and HBO held dueling parties at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Bono and Julia Roberts mingled underneath a bejeweled tent as Netflix, the upstart streaming service, joined forces for the party with the Weinstein Company and celebrated a small piece of history — its first Globe, for “House of Cards,” its splashy entrant into original programming. At HBO’s party, Matt Damon and Lady Gaga sipped drinks by the pool as the cable network toasted its two awards, pushing its total to 101.

If there is a rivalry between the two companies, it is by many measures a mismatch — certainly in terms of creative achievement (HBO has also won 463 Emmys, to three for Netflix). But that hasn’t stopped Wall Street and the entertainment media from salivating at the story line: Netflix, the brash Silicon Valley interloper, driven by metrics and technology, not to mention a checkbook that makes seasoned Hollywood players blush like teenagers, taking on HBO, the East Coast establishment player, in the rarefied and profitable world of quality television.

The competition is energizing the medium. Cable networks like HBO and Showtime, and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, are spending lavishly on programming and embracing new technologies, giving producers incentives to take creative and financial risks and generating an upward spiral in quality.

The result, said Mike Vorhaus of Magid Advisors, a research and consulting firm, is “an arms race in programming.” Both Netflix and HBO are “seeing the best pitches from the best people,” said Rick Rosen, head of the television division at William Morris Endeavor.