Thoughts on Max

The new kid on the block in the streaming market is here, and it is “Max.” I’m not sure if I should think of Max as a “new” streaming service, as much as it is a rebranding of HBO Max with Discovery content thrown in. From a technical perspective Max was re-engineered using Discovery’s backend, so in that sense I suppose it is “new.”

The name is kind of silly, but it doesn’t bother me and we’ll all get used to it. I like the idea of protecting the HBO brand to continue to stand for prestige TV while Max can also house Friends, The Big Bang Theory and The Property Brothers.

The branding mistake that I think Warner Bros Discovery made was switching from purple to blue. When I saw a purple frame for a trailer on YouTube I immediately recognized it as being HBO Max, because very few brands use purple. Blue on the other hand is probably the most overused branding color on Earth, likely because no one has strong feelings about it. The Max app icon is now lost along with Disney+, Paramount+ and Prime Video, all of which use blue.

Fortunately Max, like HBO Max before it, integrates with Apple’s TV app which is my preferred home experience on my TV (if you know anything about me, you know that I use Apple TV hardware too). When Max first launched it was reported that it didn’t work with the TV app, but thankfully that turned out to be a launch day issue. (Please Netflix add TV app integration!)

On the downside Max no longer uses Apple TV’s native video player, so some of the controls are finicky (like the 10 second forward/back buttons) or unavailable (like Siri’s “what did they say?” feature).

Another drawback is the sneaky price increase. Max still hits the $16 price point for ad-free, but now you have to pay $20 for 4K content which was available with the $16 plan before. On the other hand, I recognize that streamers have thus far operated at a loss (with the exception of Netflix) so we either need to get used to paying higher prices or having less content.

In the end, Max is my favorite streamer just like HBO Max before it because of the top notch content. I am a huge fan of HBO’s prestige TV and have been for over two decades. That plus the Warner Bros film catalog guarantee that I will remain a loyal customer.

I am decidedly not a fan of Discovery’s reality content, but other members of my family will appreciate its being available. Strategically this makes a lot of sense for WBD because you may initially sign up for Max to watch the new season of Succession or House of the Dragon, but you are less likely to cancel if you like to watch House Hunters while you fold laundry, or if someone else in your household does and you don’t want to piss them off.

And launching it just days before the series finales of both Succession and Barry guaranteed that HBO fans would figure out how to setup the new app very quickly.