HBO = my brain thinks Game of Thrones, Sopranos, The Last of Us, Band of Brothers, Chernobyl. Literally decades and decades of quality premium content.
MAX = porn. My brain immediately associates the name with porn. Idk why.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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For me it's because of Cinemax - ie Skinemax - which used to be associated with the softcore porn they'd play late at night.
It always mystified me that HBO Max was even able to use that name since it was so evocative of another premium cable network.
Skinemax, the Saturday night Shannon Tweed special.
Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon
It's pretty ironic how companies will spend so much money on advertising to gain brand recognition, but then throw it away on a whim.
It's just like spending, what was it, 44 billion dollars or something like that to own Twitter, and not even a year later you drop the brand and rename it X. Like, dude, any decent programmer or sysadmin could spin up a copy of Twitter in a few days of work. You paid $44 billion for the brand.
44 billion for the brand, but more importantly the user base. Although let's not discount the tech behind the scenes. Any decent programmer or sysadmin might be able to spin up a copy of Twitter in a few days. But it's not going to scale to the size Twitter is, and have all the moderation and legal tools Twitter does (although Elon is gutting those by the day), integrate into as many places as Twitter does, have the app infrastructure Twitter does, etc.
But regardless, all those things are irrelevant without people actually using the service. No clone is going to have the user base, and even with the rebrand to X, Elon still has a lot of users. Not as many as when he started, but still a lot. That's what the 44 billion bought.
I imagine executive meetings with people rambling about (an already well established) brand cannibalizing (what could become, if everything goes perfectly, an equally or even more recognized) brand. Basically, throwing away what you have for what you could have in the future.
The quality of the entire thing went down sharply too.
The menu configuration is nearing Amazon Prime levels of stupidity when they used to have one of the easiest to navigate.
Right, the title implies it has something to do with the name change, which is silly. The reason Max has fewer subscribers than HBO did is that HBO was objectively better than Max is.
I also saw a lot of posts from people that just had issues even getting logged in or with opening the app itself. Honestly it's embarrassing for such a large company to look so incompetent.
I want to pay for max so I can watch warrior season 3 and let their BS algorithm know there's interest in it and not cancel it outright. They don't even allow subscribers from my country UK so I have no choice but to pirate. They also have not released the season 2 bluray yet and I'm not gonna get the season 1 one if I'm just gonna end up with an incomplete collection cause this company is just allergic to taking my money.
Warrior is great!
You literally cannot change the fucking size of the subtitles anymore, at least on Android or Chromecast. So you're stuck with giant letters, black background. It's the most infuriating shit of all time, HBO Max had options to change these things, I can't believe that 1 programmer couldn't solve this in a single day.
I feel like Netflix is the only one with a sensible default subtitle size.
Everyone else is like "Oh, you need subtitles. ARE YOU DEAF? IF WE MAKE THE LETTERS EXTRA BIG WILL YOU HEAR THEM BETTER!"
No motherfucker, I just need them because modern audio mixing is a fucking mess and actors have started mumbling. This is what happens when all the stage actors retire or die. I never had trouble understanding Alan Rickman or Tim Curry. They didn't need subtitles. But them you get Matthew McConaughey, and he's all "mmmhmmhm Murph" even without the spaceship engine noises, like even his fucking name is mumbled. Fuck you.
:)
It doesn't help that TVs don't include decent speakers anymore. A soundbar is a minimum, although I've seen those start to cheap out on the speakers too. Poor audio quality makes humans less understandable.
Kinda like rebranding Twitter into X
y'arr
I swear that companies are really misunderstanding how most people interact with brands, or I am. But given recent events, I think it's the companies. On another topic, for reasons I cannot fathom, Schwans home frozen food delivery is re-branding from Schwans' (which is hard for me to spell, but easy to say) that it's been since the 1950s and is widely understood and recognized. What are they re-branding to? It sounds like they got right up to date with mid 90s Internet company branding, going with Yelloh! (I think). No one wants to say Yelloh!. It looks stupid, and somehow more out of fashion than their old logo.
We've got whatever the heck is going on with Twitter/X, we've got this (Yea, no one recognizes HBO, that's OLD./s) The Great Courses Plus renamed Wondrium (which is again, giving up a rather well known brand in some niches with an obvious idea that it's slightly different as a subscription). At least this doesn't entirely sound / look stupid, and they added content when doing it, but still.
I probably could go on, but just... why? IDK - have you ever looked at an existing brand and thought - oh, that's too dated? Usually companies pull this stuff to "trick" people into thinking it's a different company, like when Blackwater became whatever, or Jeep etc became Stellantis. Such self owns.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
During an earnings call, the company’s chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, attributed the downward trend to “overlapping subscriber bases between Max and Discovery Plus” as well as “expected churn” following the end of The Last of Us season 1 and the series finale of Succession.
CEO David Zaslav had something similar to say, noting that “while we have seen some expected subscriber disruption, we have experienced lower than expected churn throughout this process” — a process that involved asking HBO Max subscribers to download a new Max app to their devices in order to continue using the service.
Zaslav has previously hinted at incorporating news and sports into Max, and rumors suggest that it could add live CNN broadcasts to the platform.
As Hollywood producers as well as writers and actors butt heads over the use of AI and streaming residuals, Zaslav said it’s “important” that the strike gets settled soon.
“We’re hopeful that all sides will get back to the negotiating rooms so that the strikes get resolved in a way that the writers and actors feel they are fairly compensated and their efforts and contributions are fully valued.”
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and Writers Guild of America are set to have their first meeting since the strike began on Friday.
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I was a subscriber and there was no smooth move over to max. I had to keep resetting my password every time I logged in and then eventually couldn’t get into either site even moments after a reset. Eventually said fuck it and cancelled.
If it’s anything more than barely inconvenient to use your service I’ll spend my money elsewhere
Having to configure settings all over again on every single device pissed me off, especially since the new app didn't even have subtitles customization of any kind. As someone who uses subtitles for almost all viewing, nothing turns me off of a streaming service faster than being stuck with shitty black bars and gigantic blocky text by default and being unable to change it.
And for fuck's sake, nobody likes video previews with sound, and you can take your credit-skipping autoplay and shove it up your corporate ass.
Got rid of omniverse but gained myth busters
I started a discovery plus account because I wanted to watch Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs again, after all these years. Then immediately after, the merger happened and they came to max (without commercials like on my discovery trial), so I immediately canceled discovery plus.
LOL you can't even have a conversation with this name.
"Oh I've been watching this awesome new show, it's so good."
"oh yeah, where can I watch it?"
"max"
"...???..."
"it's on max"
"what? max what?"
"it's the old hbo, it's just max now though"
"hbo renamed themselves to max?"
"no ... but .... "
"okay nevermind"
Idk if it’s necessarily related to the name but haven’t they been getting rid of a ton of beloved animated shows?
Very dumb rebrand. I like all the trashy TLC content don't get me wrong, but changing the name was completely unnecessary.
I remember when TLC was the learning channel. Used to be awesome.
If you like that reality garbage, I won't yuck your yum, but I enjoyed not having to see any of it. I miss being able to forget that shit like Obese Hoarder Wars or Little Person with 13 Kids exists.