HBO Max, which days ago made headlines with its decision to temporarily remove Gone With The Wind from its offerings, is aware that the surfeit of avenues to watch their programming may be doing more harm than good. To that end, the network has announced that some changes are being made, and this may eventually mean creating a new password.
HBO (which stands for Home Box Office, in case you forgot) recently launched HBO Max to much fanfare and the delight of cinephiles who cheered its deep vault of classic films. Some did scratch their head, wondering if they already had the service, since they may have already used HBO Go and HBO Now.
So the new deal is this: after July 31, there will only be two services, HBO Max and the good ol’ fashion HBO that your grandpappy watched.
There is a transition strategy. The HBO Go app will be removed from primary platforms (e.g. smart TVs, mobile devices, streaming sticks) and users will be encouraged to sign up for HBO Max. Depending on which cable company provided you access to HBO Go will determine if you need to pay a different amount.
So far, this seems to be relatively painless. But it’s about to get screwy. HBO Max is not currently available on Roku or Amazon Fire Stick. This may change! We all always hope for change. Your brother-in-law might even pick up the check at dinner some day. But for now there is a workaround.
Enter HBO Now. For folks that already used this cable-free access to HBO programming, either on the aforementioned devices or the web app, it will still be an option. However, for appearances sake, it is being rebranded as simply HBO.
The “new” HBO app will likely not have the same deep bench that HBO Max has, but this is currently unconfirmed. Considering the cable giant dove into this enormous HBO Max initiative without realizing no one everyone would be perplexed, we shouldn’t expect too much information at once.
There is also another option. You can turn on the TV and watch whatever is playing on HBO. Or, you know, read a HBOok.
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