HBO: Is it really quality over numbers?

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I've been watching interviews/panels with David Simon, the creator of the wire, that must have been filmed over ten years ago. Based on what he's been saying, HBO seems to be somewhat different because they don't seem to take viewer numbers quite as seriously as "broadcast" does.

So, is David Simon right about this? Is HBO's web streaming service worth the money? I do like the fact that they have a pricing model that allows you to be charged with or without ads, monthly or yearly.



I think so....


Amazon - you don't know what's free and what you have to pay for
Hulu - good content but the ads are rough
Netflix - solid original programing but it takes forever for new stuff to come out
Disney Plus - expensive for what you end up getting

HBO Max - has quality films and a deep library and solid shows to rewatch.



I've been watching interviews/panels with David Simon, the creator of the wire, that must have been filmed over ten years ago. Based on what he's been saying, HBO seems to be somewhat different because they don't seem to take viewer numbers quite as seriously as "broadcast" does.

So, is David Simon right about this? Is HBO's web streaming service worth the money? I do like the fact that they have a pricing model that allows you to be charged with or without ads, monthly or yearly.
I go in & out of HBOMax depending upon what’s available, but it’s my favorite streaming site. Very high-class IMO.
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That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
I've got HBOmax streaming and like it. There is at least one major release each week, a good selection of B/W classics (IMO), plus the hub streaming options that include a few titles from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup, the BBC's Doctor Who, Studio Ghibli selections, along with almost every HBO original series offered. Not everything, for some reason, is available. For example, Fraggle Rock is not.

That's from memory, btw, and may change regularly depending on licensing I'm guessing.
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I've got HBOmax streaming and like it. There is at least one major release each week, a good selection of B/W classics (IMO), plus the hub streaming options that include a few titles from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup, the BBC's Doctor Who, Studio Ghibli selections, along with almost every HBO original series offered. Not everything, for some reason, is available. For example, Fraggle Rock is not.

That's from memory, btw, and may change regularly depending on licensing I'm guessing.
hope HBOmax gonna release here in australia



Based on what is on this thread, I might get rid of cable and go with HBO/Max. I only have cable for TCM and if HBO/Max has a deep movie library why not switch. The only thing I would miss is Bravo's Below Deck. For some reason, I enjoy watching young people cleaning and making bad decision during drunken revelry.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Just a quick run through highlights from the International tab of HBOMAX:


47 Ronin 1 and 2
8 1/2
War and Peace I-IV
Bicycle Thieves
Three Colors (blue, red and white)
Daisies
The Four Feathers
Breathless
Solaris (1972)
A few of Hanzo the Razor
Haxan
Ikiru
Black Narcissus
In the Mood for Love
Rashomon
The 400 Blows
Seventh Seal
La Strada
Orpheus
Stalker
Vivre Sa Vie
Watership Down
Wild Strawberries
There were several films of Melies not long ago
and of course, David Bowie the Last Five Years


There are 449 titles in this tab alone. Granted, there are a lot of B movies like a handful of old Godzilla battles and crap like Hobo with a Shotgun, but this tab doesn't overlap too much as many of the other category tabs do (sci-fi and action, for example).


This has been a great starting point for me to dig deeper into film and its history, IMO.



I just know they're coming to kill me.
My only issue with HBO Max is that it's the one streaming service that is consistently buffering whenever me and the lady try and watch it. The rest of the ones we use don't have that issue, nor is it a problem indicative of our WiFi setup.
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That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
My only issue with HBO Max is that it's the one streaming service that is consistently buffering whenever me and the lady try and watch it. The rest of the ones we use don't have that issue, nor is it a problem indicative of our WiFi setup.
For whatever it's worth, I ran into that a few years ago. Online chats seemed to always show HBO support pointing to user-side connection issues. After months of watching others complain, peppered with my own back-and-forth with support, I finally broke down and purchased a new router. That fixed it. Seems that HBO requires a higher bandwidth stream than all of my other apps. For whatever technical reason that's beyond my understanding, my router at the time was either too old or faulting in some way. I've had no issues with buffering since the upgrade.

*EDIT*
Great avatar, btw!



My only issue with HBO Max is that it's the one streaming service that is consistently buffering whenever me and the lady try and watch it. The rest of the ones we use don't have that issue, nor is it a problem indicative of our WiFi setup.
Personally never had this problem with HBOMax. Buffering makes me mental. The Daily Mail online has constant buffering.



I had the absolute worst experience with HBO Max when I had it last year. I can’t argue with the impressive breadth of their library; between Warner Bros, HBO, TCM, Studio Ghibli, Cartoon Network, DC and even the Criterion Collection, it’s a pretty great catch-all catalog). For my money, though, they’re easily the worst streaming service out there. Their user interface is unusably laggy, they lack basic Roku support and they apparently also lacked a sufficient number of servers to handle the amount of web traffic they get.**

In fact, despite living just outside of a major city, HBO Max was literally unusable from sundown until sunup (when people were home from work) and their day-and-date 2021 movie slate (like In the Heights and The Suicide Squad) wouldn’t play for me at all.**Friends of mine who lived in-town evidently had none of these issues, but the service might as well not have existed even 20 minutes down the road.

Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Shudder, the Criterion Channel, Prime Video, Peacock, Tubi, Kanopy, Arrow, Mubi, Kino Cult, Shout TV, Apple TV+, YouTube TV, (all of which I either currently have or have had at some point in the past) never gave me any of these problems that HBO Max does.



You ready? You look ready.
For my money, though, they’re easily the worst streaming service out there.
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Paramount+ has entered the chat
Touché. Although, to be fair, the only person I’ve ever known to actually subscribe to it is my sister-in-law, and only then because her kid really loves Paw Patrol. I’ve thankfully never had a strong enough need for superheroic puppies in my life to have to have to find out how the service plays for myself.

So I ended up checking out more HBO Max while visiting my parents for the weekend. Despite living near Chicago (instead of downstate like me), the audio was badly desynced on pretty much everything we watched all weekend, although the other issues that I’d previously experienced on my own never seemed to materialized. I’m not sure if that’s due to server proximity or if they actually fixed some of the problems on their end, though.

Apparently we can get a free week of HBO Max through Hulu, though: which I guess specifically uses Hulu’s servers. Since my partner really wants to see The Batman, it sounds like we’re going to give that a try this weekend, although I’m still feeling pretty skeptical about the whole thing.



Sorry to sound like a broken record, but the merger just may have shifted their commitment to excellence. They cancelled Raised By Wolves without any regard. Before the merger they never would have done that. Pretty sure we may seeing a shift in the HBO standard thats been maintained for so long.