So they will be showing things that I already have on DVD or Bluray or that already are airing on other stations and I am supposed to be excited about it? And $14.95 a month?
I am sorry but HBO's glory days have long passed.
I was more excited about DISNEY +
Over the past year, HBO has substantially increased the number of hours of original programming they provide. It's not just new HBO Originals on Sunday night now, it's also Monday night. And then there's some stuff on Friday (Bill Mahr) too. HBO will continue to hold their current elevated level of original output going forward.
And then on top of that, HBO Max will offer a new line of "Max Originals" that will appeal to different demographics and viewing tastes (while still supposedly focusing on high quality) to complement the HBO Originals line-up. So HBO Max isn't just about adding reruns of Friends, Big Bang Theory and The West Wing to HBO. There will be 38 titles under the Max Originals banner in 2020, increasing to 50 titles in 2021, at which point the number of Max Originals will outnumber HBO Originals.
They didn't specifically say this in their event but various leaks over the past several months have indicated that current season originals from their TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network and CNN networks will also stream on HBO Max (similar to the way that current season shows from ABC, NBC and Fox stream on-demand from Hulu). It was even reported awhile back that some TNT and TBS series might debut first on HBO Max before airing on the linear network.
So HBO Max is kinda like combining HBO, plus a new second premium service (that tilts more toward younger and female viewers), plus current primetime content from Warner's basic cable channels, plus a library of full seasons of past TV series (both Warner's own stuff as well as series licensed from The BBC and elsewhere), plus a huge rotating movie library, spanning TCM-style classics like Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz, up through all the new films currently airing on HBO and Cinemax.
It's a LOT. I'm just waiting on them to announce, closer to launch, that HBO Max will be the exclusive way to watch new HBO Originals (plus Max Originals) in 4K HDR. If they want to compete head-to-head with Netflix (and they do), it's inevitable that they'll have to embrace that premium picture format. (It's overdue even now, IMO.) But I could see them refusing to stream 4K HDR in the HBO Go and HBO Now apps and reserving that feature for HBO Max and those cable operators who agree to distribute it instead of regular HBO.