HBO is the household name that consumers trust with premium content. Quite stupid to abandon that.
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Warner Bros. to Replace HBO Max With New 'Max' Streaming Service
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Yay, another streaming service getting worse. 
Paying to see ads…a premium for 4K…I love seeing cable be reinvented in real time.
Paying to see ads…a premium for 4K…I love seeing cable be reinvented in real time.
Wow. It's staggering anyone would pitch removing HBO, and all of the overwhelmingly positive equity that comes with it, from their name in favor of rebranding to Max. More staggering? That execs would sign off on something that moronic. I'm not smart, but neither is this decision.
I mean... maybe if you were struggling, this level of desperation might seem understandable? But last I checked, HBO was anything but struggling. This decision wreaks of doofus execs wanting to put their doofus stamp on their acquisition. Nothing more dangerous than bored executives.
Not-as-important-as-he-thinks agency blow-hard:
"Hey Coke. Idea. Drop Coke from your name and just go with Zero. It'll be a hit with Gen Z! See... Z... Zero. Magic!"
Overpaid executive doofus:
"Brilliant. Where do we sign?"
I mean... maybe if you were struggling, this level of desperation might seem understandable? But last I checked, HBO was anything but struggling. This decision wreaks of doofus execs wanting to put their doofus stamp on their acquisition. Nothing more dangerous than bored executives.
Not-as-important-as-he-thinks agency blow-hard:
"Hey Coke. Idea. Drop Coke from your name and just go with Zero. It'll be a hit with Gen Z! See... Z... Zero. Magic!"
Overpaid executive doofus:
"Brilliant. Where do we sign?"
Very very bad move imo. Of course on my Apple TV I watch Apple TV+ which truly confuses many since they think you get the streaming automatically with the device. And others don't know you can see the content without the device. Dumb moves by executives seem to rule the world. 🙄
Streaming, as a whole, is a giant mess right now.
What we're going to end up with in the end is something that resembles cable TV but worse because we'll be limited by how many TVs we can use and we'll have to have multiple "cable TV" subscriptions because each of these conglomerate services will only have 1/3 of the "channels" as it were and each one will end up costing about as much as one cable subscription did previously.
This is why I'm just out on TV almost entirely. The only thing I pay for is Disney+ because it's still relatively cheap and it entertains the kiddos and occasionally myself and Apple TV+ because it's included in my Apple One and I use a lot of other Apple services so it made sense to pay for the plan and get other things for free. And Apple TV+ has enough content for a casual TV viewer such as myself.
The recent streaming thing that has pissed me off is NFL Sunday Ticket. Apple had it in the bag but the networks complained to the NFL that they would be undercut by Apple and that's why Apple lost. Now Google has it and is charging the most ever for it. I just want a single team plan for a reasonable price to watch my Chiefs. Since they are popular nowadays, they are on a different network each week so I would have to pay for several streaming services which is ridiculous.
What we're going to end up with in the end is something that resembles cable TV but worse because we'll be limited by how many TVs we can use and we'll have to have multiple "cable TV" subscriptions because each of these conglomerate services will only have 1/3 of the "channels" as it were and each one will end up costing about as much as one cable subscription did previously.
This is why I'm just out on TV almost entirely. The only thing I pay for is Disney+ because it's still relatively cheap and it entertains the kiddos and occasionally myself and Apple TV+ because it's included in my Apple One and I use a lot of other Apple services so it made sense to pay for the plan and get other things for free. And Apple TV+ has enough content for a casual TV viewer such as myself.
The recent streaming thing that has pissed me off is NFL Sunday Ticket. Apple had it in the bag but the networks complained to the NFL that they would be undercut by Apple and that's why Apple lost. Now Google has it and is charging the most ever for it. I just want a single team plan for a reasonable price to watch my Chiefs. Since they are popular nowadays, they are on a different network each week so I would have to pay for several streaming services which is ridiculous.
"Discovery+ will continue to be available as a standalone service." Ok, thanks, I'll stick with that for $4.99/month. HBO has always been grossly overpriced.
Yeah winding down my watching I suspect with this stupid greedy move. I have Disney plus and Apple One as well. Still deciding about Netflix
HBOhwehadagreatname, but now we decided to chuck it out the window.
Because of reasons.
Because of reasons.
I'm really looking at dropping Apple One back to just music and storage. There's just not much content I like on AppleTV, and the lack of a watchlist makes it frustrating to find the few things that I do.
BritBox, PBS, Netflix all have tons of stuff I watch and are good value for money. DirectTV Stream for live TV because it has the RSNs where I live. Disney+ has just enough to keep me there, but I'm very tempted to turn it into a four times a year binge watch thing - Ditto on Discovery+. Prime video is such a UX disaster that I'd never pay for it on it's own (I get prime for 2 day shipping)...they really need to stop mixing included/free and paid/subscription content in the same lists.
And here we thought cord cutting was going to save us money over a cable subscription.
As soon as I catch up on the things I want to watch, I definitely want Britbox.
Also, for movies I am dying to try out this:
MUBI: Watch and Discover Movies
Watch truly great cinema. Wherever you are. From iconic, award-winning directors to emerging auteurs. Transformative films from all over the world. Stream Now. Download to watch Offline. Start your free 7 day trial now.
it doesn't seem like the wisest move, I hope this won't mess up with my spectrum plan..
AT&T already increased monthly bills by $15 per month when they sold HBO. It was better to take advantage of their newer data plans which were more than $15 cheaper for more data and then buy the annual subscription to HBO max.
However, I don’t know that I will renew if they cut off 4K access at fhe $15 price point. I actually think they owe me a refund since my previous subscription included 4K and there are at least 8 months left on that
It's like they read a business school book of case studies of mistakes streaming companies have made ever since Netflix, and decided to do every one of them.
I don't see this being around for much longer. AT&T hasn't had it listed on their website for quite awhile.
Let's see how many people just put the pirate hat back on.
Dumping the name HBO, a brand synonymous with quality content to name it Max seems stupid to me.
I do wonder what will be coming for us Canadians as currently HBO content is included with Crave up here, but Discovery+ is a standalone app. I have Crave but not Discovery+. I generally just get the annual plan for Crave since between the HBO content and Paramount+ (i.e. Star Trek) content it is a good value for us, but if the HBO content goes away I may need to re-evaluate when it is time to renew.
I do wonder what will be coming for us Canadians as currently HBO content is included with Crave up here, but Discovery+ is a standalone app. I have Crave but not Discovery+. I generally just get the annual plan for Crave since between the HBO content and Paramount+ (i.e. Star Trek) content it is a good value for us, but if the HBO content goes away I may need to re-evaluate when it is time to renew.
The Mandalorian is on Disney+. Not the same as Discovery+
Yes there are a lot of streaming services.
That ended years ago when AT&T bought it. Luckily Apple TV+ now fills that void for high quality content.
AT&T let all go all of the creatives that made HBO great and turned it into just another streaming service. Media articles detailed how the executives had no idea what they were doing but thought they could do better. That transition is now complete. Sad that all they cared about was making more money. No appreciation of creativily or quality programming.
Disney+