Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends
And now there’s Max. The road to becoming a streaming service dubbed “the one to watch” has been long and winding and has undergone two major rebrandings in just a few years. But here we are, with the former HBO Max now combined with (and living under the same corporate umbrella) as Discovery.
Short version? Once upon a time, HBO was owned by Time Warner, which at one point was owned by AT&T, which decided that maybe telecom didn’t need to be in the entertainment business after all, so it made a deal that merged WarnerMedia with Discovery. Hidden in that timeline was the dawn of the streaming age, with HBO first managing a messy dual live/on-demand strategy with HBO Go and HBO Now (or was it the other way around?), before merging them into one HBO Maximum service.
And since the merger with Discovery, there is now only … Max.
It’s important to think of Max as more than just a rebranded HBO Max. Because it’s not. The addition of Discovery content is a big deal, as it’s a lot of cable-friendly shows to go along with the prestige that is HBO, plus cable-friendly lineups like TBS, TNT and others.
Maximum price
As of May 23, 2023, Max has three levels to choose from.
- Max with Ads: Costs $10 per month or $100 per year. You’ll get the same content with a bit of advertising, but all in 1080p resolution at most. You should expect up to 4 minutes of ads per hour.
- Ad-free Max: Costs $16 per month or $150 per year. There are no ads and you can download content (limited to 30 downloads) to watch offline on mobile devices. The resolution is still 1080p (that’s a change from the old HBO Max), and you can stream on up to two devices at once.
- Max Ultimate Ad Free: Costs $20 per month or $200 per year. If you want anything in 4K or anything with Dolby Atmos for sound, this is what you need.
Note that if your subscription is managed through another service — say, if you’re on a free plan because you have AT&T Internet service — you may not yet have the option to upgrade to Ultimate.
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It’s not global yet
On day one, Max had a number of headaches, mostly due to the fact that some platforms required downloading the new app, while others just updated the old HBO Max app.
And that was complicated by the fact that until now Max was a US-only streaming service. This led many to believe that Max was down, even though it wasn’t actually available yet. The reason for this is almost certainly that with the addition of Discovery content, the distribution rights had to be reworked, and that takes time.
So at launch, Max was available in the US, along with American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Max will go international after all. And it probably brings Discovery content with it. First are Latin America and the Caribbean until the end of 2023. Then Europe and Southeast Asia sometime in 2024.
Watch Max with a VPN
If you live outside of supported countries, you may still be able to watch Max via the old tried and tested method of using a VPN. It stands for virtual private network, and it’s a technology that basically routes all of your internet traffic through a specific set of servers in a specific location — say, within the US
Using a VPN to bypass geofencing is a bit of a gray area (depending on who you ask), so just be aware that this could be a bit of a cat and mouse game. It’s entirely possible that Max (like some other streaming services) could block VPN usage.
good news? There are many good VPN companies to choose from.
The new Max app looks almost identical to HBO Max. But they are two very different applications. Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends
What’s on Max?
Once you’ve gotten over all that fuss about price and availability, bugs and whatnot, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty. What’s up Max.
You can break down the taxonomy like this: Max is everything HBO, plus Max Originals (those are the shows and movies that aren’t on the old legacy HBO, but were/are on HBO Max. OK, it’s still confusing). Things like Game of Thrones, Succession, Sex and the city — the things that make HBO HBO. You’ll also get movie releases, though that’s certainly not as important as it was in the years before streaming.
Plus you get all the other networks that made up HBO Max, like the DC universe, and all the Turner networks. That means TBS, TNT, CNN, HLN, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Turner Classic Movies, TruTV and Adult Swim. You’ll also find other networks like Studio Ghibli, Rooster Teeth, and Pogo.
And there are all Discovery content and sub-brands — Naked and scared, The deadliest catch, dr. Pimple Popper — you get the point.
That’s a lot of stuff in one place.
Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends
Where to watch HBO Max
This last part is the easiest. You can watch Max on almost anything with an internet connection. That means streaming devices, such as Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, Google TV, and Android TV. The same applies to smart TV platforms from all major manufacturers.
And you can always watch Max in a web browser if you’re on the go or just prefer to do things that way. The point is, there’s nothing inherently special or difficult about watching Max.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn