The day is finally here.
I haven't felt like this since Disney+, I guess.
Anyway, today HBO Max is out,
and we're gonna be talkin' about kinda my initial thoughts
on the platform: what I like,
what I dislike, how things are goin' so far.
The TL;DR is that while I think there are some things
they could do to finesse it,
they did a lot of stuff really well right outta the gate.
Now we're gonna go much more in-depth,
so stay with me through this one,
and also, if you're excited about HBO Max
but you just aren't sure about signing up just yet,
then stick around, because at the end of this video,
I'll be giving away three one-year subscriptions
to HBO Max, so stay tuned for that.
I'll give you more details a little later in the video.
Let's dive in.
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Okay, so HBO Max.
In case you forgot, maybe you're livin' under a rock,
here's the basics of HBO Max.
The price of it is $15 a month, pure and simple,
just like it was for HBO Now.
You can get three simultaneous streams with it,
who knows how much they're going to enforce that,
I dunno, but three simultaneous streams,
and then as far as the content you get,
yes, it is still HBO,
so you get all the HBO content you were used to
with a huge infusion of Warner Media stuff,
so Friends, Big Bang Theory, Lord of the Rings,
Harry Potter, all that kinda stuff.
We're gonna get more into content a little bit later.
So, one of the big questions here
is what if you're already an HBO customer?
What happens?
Well, there's a couple of situations
you might find yourself in.
If you're subscribed through cable or satellite,
then you could get HBO Max automatically
and at no extra cost if that cable or satellite provider
is DIRECTV, AT&T U-Verse, AT&T TV, Hulu, or Spectrum.
If you're with Xfinity, I think there's one more,
but I know Xfinity, the biggest cable provider out there
gets no love, okay?
So there's no deal between HBO Max and Xfinity,
so if you have HBO through Xfinity,
you'll either need to pay twice
and get HBO Max separately,
or just cancel that HBO signup through Xfinity
and sign up for HBO Max directly.
That's the route I would go.
All right, so now that we've got that outta the way,
let's talk about the app itself
and the experience you're gonna have there.
As far as the navigation goes,
it is pretty standard.
They didn't try to pull a Hulu and do something brand new,
so it's easy to find your way around,
but I do love a few things about it.
For one thing, if you are lookin' through a series,
say Friends, which is now on HBO Max.
Series are really easy to navigate
'cause they keep the grid view throughout the entire thing.
So if you scroll down just a little bit,
you can swipe through the different seasons,
and then once you scroll into those seasons,
you can see the episodes by thumbnail,
and they make it really easy to see
which episode number, what the title is.
So yeah, that is really nice.
One thing I didn't like so much,
and this is, chalk this up to
I'm being really nitpicky here,
and they will figure it out eventually I hope,
but button location could use a little bit of finesse.
So there's the Add to My List button,
and it kinda switches from the top to the bottom
of the show photo that you're lookin' at
depending on whether it's a specific episode or movie,
or it's a series.
Sometimes it's above, sometimes it's below,
and so little things like that, they could, like I said,
finesse it a little bit, but ultimately,
yeah, that's pretty nitpicky.
At least the button is there.
As for the picture quality, I'm not 100% sure
whether they are running 4K yet.
Here's the problem: HBO Now never did get to 4K,
which is weird, right?
It's weird, but they never did get to it,
and there's been no information, no fanfare about 4K
on HBO Max, so I kinda wanna say it's not in 4K.
The problem is I can't check on my TV,
because as much as I love my TCL Roku TV,
it doesn't give me a good Info button right off the bat.
Speaking of which, available devices,
we've gotta talk about this (laughs).
I can't believe it, but HBO Max did not come to an agreement
with either Roku or Amazon.
So Roku TVs, Roku boxes, Amazon Fire devices,
none of them have HBO Max available yet.
I have no doubt that these companies
will come to an agreement at some point,
but right off the bat, it is a little bit weird
that we're missing 70% of the streaming device market
when we're missing Rokus and Amazon Fire devices.
As for the content that's available on HBO Max,
this is where the biggest change has happened.
So, and like I said earlier,
yes, you get all of your HBO content that you were used to,
and now a huge infusion of Warner Media content.
So, like I mentioned, Friends, Big Bang Theory,
all eight Harry Potter movies.
That's pretty cool.
I don't know how long they'll stick around,
but they've got 'em for now.
They do have a bunch of DC stuff,
but Justice League Snyder Cut fans,
you're gonna have to wait 'til 2021.
That's not ready right away,
and neither is the Friends reunion episode.
That's supposed to come out sometime later.
I dunno, I guess we'll see.
Anyway, the range of programming
that you now have on HBO Max is unthinkable.
It's huge, which is great,
but I will say it is a bit odd
to see The Wire show up next to the Teen Titans Go
in the Featured Content tier.
It's a little bit odd.
So presumably, their recommendation algorithm
will improve over time,
and things will get consorted really well,
but for now, it is nice to have
all that content in one place.
They also have a ton of kid-friendly stuff,
which is fantastic, but I would recommend
creating a kid's profile,
which you can PIN lock, which is something
that Netflix only just added.
So basically, you create the kid's profile.
You put a PIN on it.
You can get into it with no problem,
but if you ever wanna get out of that kid's profile
into the regular HBO Max, you have to put in a PIN.
So kinda nice to have that.
Plus, on top of that, it's not just HBO Max
curating what counts as kid's content.
You can actually go in and set specifically
what your parental controls are, and what ratings,
whether TV ratings or movie ratings
that you want to allow them to watch.
As you go through the interface,
I also like that they do have these,
this little grid of different categories.
So like DC Universe stuff.
They also have one called TCM,
so this is a Turner Classic Movie curated library.
So as far as I can tell,
it's not every Turner Classic Movie,
so you're not getting all of TCM,
but it is a great collection of classics
that is curated by TCM.
So again, it is a little bit odd
to see "Casablanca" next to Doctor Who
and "The Hangover Part II", or whatever else
shows up in that list, but I guess that's only odd
in an HBO context.
We've been used to weird things
being mashed together on Netflix for years,
but I guess I'll get used to it here, too.
Just a couple other things to note,
things that I would either like to see, you know,
implemented, or gotten rid of.
So for instance, there's a holdover
from ghosts of HBO's past
that is the ads for other HBO shows
at the beginning of my movie
or my TV episode, right?
And so every time I play something,
I gotta sit through an ad for some other HBO show.
Now, I get why they do it.
Obviously they wanna get the word out
about certain things,
but frankly, it gets a little bit annoying.
I'm paying $15 a month and I have to watch your ads?
Ugh, I wish they wouldn't do that.
The other thing I wish they would do
is a Skip Intro button.
That is not in here yet,
so this is one of Netflix's greatest additions
of all time, is the Skip Intro button.
So if you're watching 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory,
and you wanna skip past that intro,
you actually have a button to do it.
Not so much on HBO Max.
The good news is overall, I didn't have any glitches.
The app worked just fine.
Obviously, I had to bypass my Roku TV,
couldn't plug in my Amazon Fire stick,
so I had to go to the Apple TV 4K
and plug that in, and then it worked just fine.
So there's no glitches, it's very smooth, it works great.
None of the issues that we had with Disney+ on day one.
That's probably largely because this is built
on top of the HBO Now platform,
so they didn't have the massive influx of subscribers
that Disney did on day one,
but whatever the reason is,
I'm glad that it worked well.
So, let me know what your opinion is.
If you've had a chance to use it yet,
hit those comments and lemme know what you think.
And if you haven't yet, tell me if you're excited or not.
And also, on your way down there,
I mentioned the giveaway earlier.
I want you to go to the description,
and check the description there for more details about this.
What we're doin' is three one-year subscriptions
to HBO Max, and to enter, this is really complicated,
so hang in there, send an email to giveaways@reviews.org,
and put HBO MAX in the subject line.
That's it, you've got until June 5th.
There are some more, you know, details,
terms and conditions and all that,
so please check the description below
for all of that, and good luck.
You know, HBO Max is really nice.
They put the classics right next to each other.
"Casablanca", "X-Men Dark Phoenix".
It's just nice.
It's nice to have everything in one spot.