I'm still confused as to why there needs to be both an "HBO Now" and an "HBO Max". What the hell is the difference? If they're the same price, why not just get rid of "HBO Now" and make "HBO Max" the new service? Why do they have to do it this way?
And people wonder why folks are frustrated by streaming services. Not only are there too many of them, but now the same company has multiple ones with the same content!
It's history. Hopefully in a few years all these intermediates will go away.
Basically you have
HBO - olden times, a cable TV channel(s)
HBO Go - a way for people paying for cableTV HBO to get the same content on their streaming devices
HBO Now - a way for people who don't WANT cable TV, to pay for the same stuff as HBO and HBO Go.
All that's the past (and hopefully dies the same slow death as cable TV). What's new is
HBO Max - basically think of this as TimeWarner Plus, their equivalent of Disney Plus. So it's all of the previous HBO, along with pretty much everything else that TimeWarner owns/controls, like Cartoon Network, CNN, DC, TNT, plus some other stuff they could license.
So essentially we're seeing a round of streaming service consolidation.
One set of "channels" gets bundled into Disney Plus.
Now another set into HBO Max aka TimeWarner Plus.
Maybe soon a Comcast Plus and a Viacom Plus?
It's all kinda a mess right now (eg although Disney recently acquired Fox, the Fox content on Disney Plus is all over the place). Comcast has, eg, XFinity, but can't decide if what they are selling is XFinity (kinda sorta a brand for "look how great our internet service is") vs Peacock (a more standard content brand). Also they haven't yet figured out that what they should be selling is not Peacock (which is basically NBC) but Comcast Plus (which includes Sky, Telemundo, Cozi [lots old stuff from 50s, 60s]).
So basically to simplify:
Disney, always first and smartest, introduces Disney Plus.
TimeWarner, not quite idiots [The ATT part is braindead, Time Warner close, but HBO is the real intelligence], copies this idea with HBO Max.
Next is probably Viacom.
And last of all, dragged kicking and streaming into the 2020s sometime around 2030 will Comcast, always the stupidest of the lot. (There is a reason they were portrayed the way they were on 30 Rock.)
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I am actually surprised because I thought a big part of HBO Max was for HBO to not lose money on the channel add ons.
HBO Go (cable subscribers, no Max content)
HBO Max (HBO's new stand alone service with extra content)
HBO Now (the channel add ons through Amazon/Apple), would not include Max content
HBO takes a big hit when people subscribe as a channel add on. Amazon/Apple take something like 30% of the price. HBO Max would only be through HBO and push people away from channel add ons/HBO Go thus letting them keep more of the money.
This new news makes me wonder why the hell is going on haha.
Don't confuse two different things:
(a) Why is HBO creating a new brand HBO Max? I answered that above.
(B) Why this change to allow Apple billing? The answer to that is almost certainly the same as the with Amazon Prime.
Apple created a deal whereby if a content provider doesn't just run on Apple devices but implements (and implements PROPERLY) every UI feature that Apple thinks is important (right now that includes things like getting the Apple TV UI right [lots of free-ish Apple TV content apps like Kanopy and Hoopla screw this up], integration into the Apple TV main TV app, full support for content indexing, ...)
THEN Apple will charge them substantially less than the usual 30% cut.
Details here, including why this is a win-win deal for both Apple and Amazon (and now, probably, TimeWarner).
It is tempting — and useful — to look at Apple and Amazon’s deal in a bilateral context. It probably makes more sense, though, in the context of Netflix and the future of video.
stratechery.com
