HBO Max is a forthcoming American on-demand streaming service from WarnerMedia Studios, a WarnerMedia subsidiary of AT&T.
HBO Max, AT&T’s upcoming $15 a month streaming video service, looks nothing like its HBO Now counterpart.
Here’s the look of HBO Max :
AT&T and WarnerMedia showed off the first look at its product interface at a special investor event today, with Andy Forssell, executive vice president and general manager, speaking about the importance of human curation, instead of simply relying on algorithms like Netflix and other competitors.
Celebrities will now have pages where they can list their own recommendations. HBO Max customers can then use those recommendation pages to select a movie or TV show directly from that celebrity’s profile.
“Highlight” Feature
A new feature, called “highlight,” was designed to help people not need to think about scrolling through an app to pick something to watch. Users only swipe through options for about nine minutes, and HBO Max is designed to cut through that. As seen in the photo below, highlights are curated and packaged together to offer more specific options for subscribers.
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Friends, for instance, have highlighted packages focused on celebrity cameos, in case consumers actually want to see the episode of Brad Pitt again.
HBO Max will also offer a shared viewing experience, one where you can create a combined shared account with other people you watch with, to improve the kind of recommendations each of you might individually see.
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With other streaming services, sharing an account can often lead to strange recommendations; HBO says it added the feature because of those concerns.
What shows and movies will it include?
Just days after a Studio Ghibli representative told reporters that the Japanese studio’s films would never come to streaming services, WarnerMedia announced that all 21 of Studio Ghibli’s animated features would stream exclusively on HBO Max.
That lineup includes family-friendly favorite My Neighbor Totoro, the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, and The Wind Rises. Most Ghibli films should be available on HBO Max at launch.
A July 2019 report indicated that HBO Max will have 10,000 hours of content at launch, including every episode of Friends (which leaves Netflix in 2020), as well as the entire runs of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Pretty Little Liars. In addition, HBO Max will be the only place where you can stream The Big Bang Theory and South Park, two exclusives that reportedly cost WarnerMedia over a billion and a half dollars cumulatively.
Greg Berlanti, who oversees the “Arrowverse” on The CW, will produce two new DC Comics shows for HBO Max: Green Lantern and an anthology series called Strange Adventures. The service will also be the exclusive streaming source for all new Warner Bros. dramas produced for The CW network, beginning with the fall 2019 season that features the premieres of Batwoman and another Riverdale spinoff, Katy Keene.
Apple TV+ vs HBO Max
Apple TV+ doesn’t have the same catalog of films and TV shows that HBO Max and Disney+ will launch with, so it’s instead focused on its limited series, but HBO Max is launching with more than 10,000 titles, including Max Originals, past WarnerMedia titles, and licensed series like the entire South Park catalog and the Studio Ghibli collection of animated films.
HBO’s new streaming service is aiming to have half of its programming targeted at young millennials, and the other half split between family entertainment and series targeted at adults.
Launching Date
On October 29, 2019, it was announced that HBO Max will be officially launched in May 2020.
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