HBO Max

Subscription creep – the term given to increases in subscription fees after someone has signed up – hit a full two-thirds of US consumers in the past year.

Some of the increases were steep ones, and others imposed with little notice …

The subscription streaming spend of the average American is now close to a thousand dollars per year, according to a new report.

While more than half of subscribers have responded to recent steep price increases by cancelling at least one of their streaming subscriptions, the overall spend keeps rising …

HBO Max last year was rebranded to just “Max” following the platform’s merge with Discovery+. While the rebrand was first launched exclusively in the U.S., Warner (which owns the streaming platform) is set to turn HBO Max into just Max in Latin American countries next month.

Still freeloading on 4K Max content for the low, low price of $16/month? Yeah, Warner Bros. Discovery needs you to pay up. Starting next month, Max will no longer serve up 4K HDR content to legacy HBO Max subscribers who haven’t switched to the more expensive plan.

A report yesterday revealed that a set of popular streaming TV services can now cost more than traditional cable TV packages.

It pointed out that subscription costs have risen dramatically, which creates an obvious risk of people cutting back on the number of services. But I think there’s a second issue, too, and that’s the competition for attention …

Streaming TV costs are now higher than cable packages, says a new analysis. It follows warnings that a “crash” was on the way – a day that has now arrived.

The report says that after price rises by Apple TV+, HBO Max, Disney, Hulu, and others, the total cost of a basket of popular streaming TV services has now hit $87 per month …

What do you get when you mix HBO Max and parts of Discovery+? Max. That’s the name of the new streaming video service from Warner Bros. Discovery launching next month. The totally original, utterly distinctive, completely creative name has been rumored since December. The marketing department either couldn’t conjure a better name or, more likely, couldn’t convince their bosses that something including HBO, you know, signaled that this is the HBO stuff.

The top brass at the merged media companies certainly aren’t married to the HBO brand, despite those three letters being synonymous with prestige television. The Apple TV+ approach of having fewer shows with a higher value (than, say, Netflix) is regularly described as the HBO strategy. (Apple also inked an exclusive deal with the HBO guy.) It could be that the Discovery brand is just boring or too closely associated with reality shows and ex-HGTV talent, and the bros from WBD are showing max hubris.

HBO Max is joining the ranks of streaming services getting more expensive. Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO Max, announced today that the ad-free HBO Max plan will increase from $15 per month to $16 per month for both new and existing subscribers.

Some Apple TV 4K users have been experiencing issues when using the HBO Max app. More specifically, the app shows a “can’t play title” error when trying to stream content. Although the bug has yet to be fixed, HBO has confirmed that it is already working on an update that should be released very soon.

In 2023, US users will have HBO Max and Discovery+ as one streaming service. The announcement was known for a few months, but during Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 earnings call, the company revealed a few more things

A new version of the HBO Max application is now rolling out to Apple TV users, and it promises some major improvements. As reported by Variety, this update will roll out over the next two weeks. WarnerMedia says that the app has been “rebuilt on its next-generation platform,” promising improved stability, new features, and faster performance.

Last year, Netflix brought a shuffle play button for when you don’t know what to watch next. Now, HBO Max has followed the trend, and it’s now offering a similar feature but for a limited number of shows.

HBO Max is almost two years old. Soon, the streaming service will add Discovery Plus to its catalog as the channel will become part of AT&T’s WarnerMedia. Instead of offering these two services as a bundle, WarnerMedia will incorporate Discovery into HBO Max.

Streaming service HBO Max is set to expand to 15 new European countries next month, bringing the total to 61 regions across the globe.

As first reported by Reuters, WarnerMedia has been slowly rolling out the service to additional countries, with the goal of being available in 190 regions by 2026.

Update: The latest version of the HBO Max app on the App Store fixes this issue.

You may remember that earlier this year, HBO rolled out a new HBO Max application for Apple TV that abandoned the native tvOS video player in favor of a custom solution. After backlash, HBO reverted to the native tvOS player a few weeks later. Now, the HBO Max application for iPhone and iPad is facing criticism because of a bizarre bug affecting video playback when connected to AirPods.

WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max was officially launched in the US in May 2020, and it has already been made available in Latin America and the Caribbean. Now the company is getting ready to launch the platform in Europe with support for six new countries coming in October and more coming in 2022.

HBO Max users have been facing a couple of hard months with the main app from WarnerMedia. Now, an HBO executive has promised that the company will build a new app for the “ground up to match the needs of the current service.”

More than one year since HBO launched HBO Max, it’s now following an Apple TV+ strategy. The streaming service will start to offer free episodes of its best TV shows for non-subscribers. According to a blog post by WarnerMedia, starting now, “potential new subscribers in the US” are offered “the opportunity to watch select episodes of some of the platform’s most popular programming in-app before they sign up.”

When WarnerMedia launched its new expanded streaming service, HBO Max, earlier this year, HBO simultaneously stopped participating in Apple TV Channels. This meant that new subscribers could not sign up for HBO through Apple TV Channels, but existing subscribers could continue to access their subscriptions.

HBO appears to have flipped a switch today, however, that completely shuts off access to HBO via Apple TV Channels, including the ability to sign in using your Apple TV Channels subscription information.

Following the HBO Max launch, HBO has decided to leave Apple TV Channels — which let users subscribe to and watch HBO content directly in the Apple TV app. Unfortunately, it seems that the experience with its own app has been disappointing users, as a recent report notes that the latest version of the HBO Max app for tvOS “breaks several key features.”