Viewers have long complained about the original HBO Max app’s tendency to crash and its lack of easy-to-spot features. There have been some Major repair and repaired since then. Now we know why. It turned out that HBO Max rolled out its apps before they were ready to keep up with the competition. According to an interview that Sarah Lyons, HBO Max’s head of product experience, said, the app was “never intended to go global” or match the needs of the direct-to-consumer market. use. Protocol. The network wants to build an audience first, and then fix the bugs of the application as the service expands.
While Lyons admits that the early days of HBO Max were tough, she thinks the company made the right decision. She said. “I think it was the right decision to try to balance the two,” Lyons said.
HBO Max first released its app in May 2020, to join already saturated streaming ecosystem including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+ and others. At that time, both HBO Go (network on-demand app for cable subscribers) and HBO now (standalone app for cord cutters) is still available, a fact that confuses many subscribers. The network has been there ever since retirement both applications.
Viewers have flocked to Reddit since the app’s initial launch with complaints about platforms and devices. “We tried to see Harry Potter movies and literally every 15 minutes or so we get an ERROR message and force close the app. Another time it froze completely. It’s absolute garbage. I don’t have this problem with any other streaming apps or services,” one user wrote in a theme on the r/HBOMax subreddit from January 2021 with the headline “Why is this app underperforming?”
For many viewers long accustomed to the advanced recommendation algorithms on Netflix and other streaming platforms, it can be hard to get used to HBO Max’s lack of easy-to-spot features. Lyons admits that HBO Max wasn’t built with discovery in mind, and the app has tried to solve this problem by putting every new show on the app’s homepage. “You don’t have to go looking for anything, because anything [show] Lyons said.
While Engadget’s initial review of HBO Max detail its flaws, we’ve shown it’s still a “smart bet” for the company. Since then, the service has made many improvements, including a new Apple TV app and updates to its apps for Roku, Playstation, Android TV, and others. But after a recent $43 billion merger With Discovery, the biggest change hasn’t happened yet. The plan is to merge both Discovery Plus and HBO Max into one unified platform.
HBO Max ends 2021 with 43.8 million subscribers, when paired with the network’s HBO cable subscribers, who also have access to the streaming service. It will soon absorb at least one 22 million subscribers from Discovery Plus. While there may be more bumps in the road, at least viewers can rest assured that HBO Max is now more experienced.
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