There are so many video streaming services available at the moment that it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep track.
You’ve got your established big-hitters such as Netflix, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video dominating the crowded streaming-sphere, while recent years have seen plucky upstarts in the shape of Apple TV and Paramount Plus trying to muscle in on the action.
Then there are the more obscure or niche players, such as animation-focused Crunchyroll, free service Tubi and reality-heavy Peacock all picking up viewers where they can. Even ITV has its own platform, ITVX, which costs a not-insubstantial £6 a month if you want the Premium version. That's the price you pay to watch Love Island ad-free, I suppose.
Thank goodness music streaming doesn’t work in the same way. Imagine having to subscribe to Tidal to get all of your favourite hits from the 1960s, only to discover that The Beatles have signed an exclusive deal with Apple Music. Now that’s a dystopian future.
Content and choice abound like never before, so surely there’s no more space for another player in a market more crowded than a tin of salty sardines? Surely we’ve got enough streaming services to last a lifetime?
Why HBO Max?
Incorrect.
There’s still space in the tin for at least one more oily fish (metaphorically speaking), and it comes in the form of HBO Max, the dedicated platform of the feted network that, in many ways, carved the way for the prestige television boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
HBO Max arrived in the US back in 2020, but only landed on UK shores earlier this year, and the new service's accompanying sales pitch was hard to resist.
Despite my many failings, I’m not, in my own mind at least, an insatiable streaming fiend. I subscribe to the cheapest tier of Disney Plus (sorry, picture quality fans) and have Amazon Prime Video on hand as part of my overall Prime subscription.
I’ve dabbled with Netflix and a free trial of Paramount Plus, but in truth, I spend more time gaming or, say it quietly, in the great outdoors than I do bingeing quality content. I only really got Disney Plus for The Simpsons, and it was worth every penny.
Yet even with my relative streaming ambivalence and the clear saturation of a bursting market, the arrival of HBO Max couldn’t help but pique my interest. This is the network that gave the world The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood, alongside countless other prestige shows that have essentially helped to define the Western cultural landscape over the past 30 or so years.
The arrival in the UK of a dedicated platform for said shows, plus quite a lot more, is a big deal. I had to see what was what.
First impressions
Before you dive into the world of the Home Box Office, you’ll need to decide on which version of the service you’ll want to subscribe to.
As is the case with most major players these days, you’ve got a slightly bewildering array of tiers from which to choose, from a bare-bones, ads-included plan costing around £6 a month to a TNT Sports package offering football, rugby, tennis and more in Full HD quality for around £30 per month.
If you want the best quality, you’ll need to go Premium to get access to 4K UHD and Dolby Atmos sound. I’m only dipping my toe at the moment, so it’s the cheapo standard-with-ads tier for me. Don’t judge me; we’re in a de facto global recession.
The number of permutations is considerable, something you can take as a positive or a negative: more consumer choice, or too many options designed to confuse and befuddle you right out of the gate?
Once you’re in, it’s time to navigate your profile and see what’s what. And what’s what is quite a lot, if you follow my meaning. HBO Max is laid out like pretty much any other major rival, with an array of alluring picture tiles subdivided into rows grouped together by category.
There’s a desktop version and a companion app, both of which work in broadly the same fashion, with a spotlight on the best series at the top, and then lots of those categorical rows interspersed with genre-themed collections – the ‘World of Westeros’, for example, or all things Harry Potter.
A Maxed out catalogue
What’s gratifying about HBO Max is that it appears, like a perfectly risen soufflé, to have emerged fully formed from the metaphorical oven.
We’ve criticised newer services that were keen to catch up with the established pack for being a bit lean at the outset – Apple TV took a while before it felt like a fully fledged service with a stacked catalogue of content – but nothing about HBO’s effort feels sparse or half-baked.
Perhaps that’s no surprise given HBO’s longstanding history and the fact that the US platform has been around for a good while already.
Having Warner Brothers as your parent company doesn’t hurt, either. HBO Max is, as you’d expect, extremely well serviced in the TV department, housing perennial classics ranging from The Wire to The Last of Us, but Warner Bros.’ extensive movie catalogue means you won’t be solely bingeing on series without ever sitting down for a cosy film night.
Dune, John Wick, One Battle After Another, The Lord of the Rings trilogy; it's a really decent collection that spans a variety of genres and time periods. Let’s not forget that Warner Bros. also owns the rights to DC Comics, so an extensive catalogue of superhero fare – from The Dark Knight to Wonder Woman – scratches that particular itch.
It would take too long to list every one of the hundreds of movies ready to be plucked from HBO Max's digital shelves, but when you've got The Big Lebowski, the Indiana Jones series, most of Christopher Nolan's repertoire, Whiplash, Leon, The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption and countless other big hitters to brag about, you're in a pretty good place.
Mind the gaps
No one streaming platform can do it all, of course.
HBO’s fresh-faced competitor also grants access to a collection of shows from Adult Swim, the adult-oriented content ‘block’ of Cartoon Network which gave the world the likes of Rick and Morty, Robot Chicken and The Boondocks.
This sort of thing is very much up my street, but I’ve been slightly disappointed to discover that there are serious gaps in the Adult Swim catalogue that have left some of the channel’s more obscure gems to be omitted from the roster.
The inclusion of The Eric Andre Show, Metalocalypse, and Samurai Jack represents a huge boon, but where are the cult classics for proper nerds like me? Where are Sealab 2021, Frisky Dingo, Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law, The Venture Bros., and Space Ghost Coast to Coast? Where oh where is Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Where are the classics?
A dearth of niche cartoons for regressive geeks isn’t HBO Max’s only blind spot. There’s a distinct lack of trailblazing documentaries to be found, and while there are plenty of behind-the-scenes tie-ins tethered to flagship shows, such as The House That Dragons Built accompanying House of the Dragon and Finding Harry accompanying HBO’s headline-grabbing take on Harry Potter, great standalones feel harder to come by.
Grim true crime slogs and celebrity exposés abound, but if you want groundbreaking nature documentaries, it’s best to head over to the BBC iPlayer or seek out Disney Plus and its National Geographic license instead.
Usability bugs can also temper one’s affections for what remains an unquestionably deep and impressive service. It’s not happened to me too often, but there have been multiple user reports of bugs and glitches, or the service just freezing entirely, when using the dedicated mobile app or the desktop version.
Also note that if you're rocking a more basic subscription, you might not get immediate access to some of the newer movies that have come to HBO Max.
According to the official website, "customers who get the HBO Max Basic with Ads plan through their provider can purchase the HBO Max Standard with Ads Upgrade for £1 per month" to get earlier movie access. Yet another layer of confusion, then.
A whole new world
HBO Max isn't perfect – no video streaming service is – but it's pretty darned good.
The streaming catalogue is rich and extensive, the variety of content is impressive, the usability, for me at least, has been relatively seamless, and the price isn't prohibitive if you're willing to do without the luxuries of high-definition and Dolby Atmos sound. Dealbreakers for some, but for me, not huge issues.
The real treat of HBO Max has been discovering the shows and movies that were hitherto completely out of my reach. I grew up in a time when access to many of HBO's back catalogue required a subscription to Sky and the installation of an accompanying satellite dish, the latter of which wouldn't pick up a signal in my rural corner of leafy Hertfordshire.
Yet in this world of purely online streaming, having the door unlocked to the likes of Game of Thrones, The Wire, The Sopranos, Succession and Oz represents a major coup, while shows that were hitherto stranded on obscure sites, such as DC's Doom Patrol, can finally be enjoyed by a far more mainstream audience.
Fledgling services can often promise so much yet deliver so little, granting a fun but impermanent distraction before you scurry back to the comfort of more complete alternatives.
Yet with HBO Max, no such urge arises. This is a fully formed, remarkably comprehensive rival to the major players on the market, one that, if it can smooth out some usability issues and continue adding to its already impressive collection of content, could seriously trouble the biggest dogs on the block.
HBO Max is here to stay, and from what I've seen, Netflix, Disney and Amazon should be seriously worried.
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