The streaming landscape is growing at lightspeed, making it more important to know what each streaming video service offers and how it compares to the crowd. One of the latest services to be announced isHBO Max, which promises to offer more than 10,000 hours of content from Warner Bros., HBO, and various other movie studios and television networks under AT&T’s WarnerMedia banner.
Although the servicehas an official name and a launch dateof spring 2020, there’s still a lot we don’t know about HBO Max. Here are the biggest questions we have about this new Netflix challenger, and the answers we’ll need to get if we’re going to invest our hard-earned money on another streaming platform.
Thefirst, unconfirmed reportabout the cost of HBO Max arrived in June 2019, and indicated that WarnerMedia was planning to charge between $16 and $17 for its then-unnamed streaming service. Subsequent, official announcements from AT&T and WarnerMedia — including the announcement the — didn’t offer any confirmation of that price point.
With a wide range of subscription prices for the various streaming services available now and launching in the near future, it’s anyone’s guess at this point what HBO Max will end up costing. Given that HBO alone costs around $15 per month, there’s good reason to believe HBO Max will cost more than that — but in the current Wild West of streaming services, anything’s possible. If it does come in at just a couple dollars more per month, it’s going to be hard to resist for anyone already hooked on HBO.
How about 4K and HDR?
What happens to DC Universe?
With the announcement of HBO Max, WarnerMedia made its existing, recently launched DC Universe streaming service the superhero-sized elephant in the room.
How much TV will Max actually offer?
Giving the service the name “HBO Max” seems to suggest that HBO programming will be one of the basic elements the service will offer, but AT&T and WarnerMedia are in the unique position of having a massive list of TV properties at their disposal.
Along with HBO, WarnerMedia also owns Cinemax, TBS, TNT, and TruTV, as well as CNN, HLN, and a long list of other major and minor broadcast cable and premium TV networks. That’s a lot of TV content under one roof, and that pile of programming doesn’t even account for The CW and other networks that are jointly owned by WarnerMedia and other companies.
Will Max be WB’s home for DC films?
Streaming competitorDisney+has already announced plans to be the exclusive streaming source for many of theMarvel Studios and Lucasfilm projectsdown the road, so it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise for HBO Max to do the same with Warner Bros. Pictures movies.
Adeal set up with NBCUniversalseveral years ago will keep the Wizarding World projects off HBO Max until after 2025, but after that point, it’s anyone’s guess as to where Harry Potter and company will make their streaming home. The rest of the aforementioned frachises are entirely in the mix for HBO Max, though.
Making HBO Max the gatekeeper service for streaming access to these films ala Disney+ might be the boldest move that WarnerMedia could make — but like Disney+, it’s bound to force movie-loving cord-cutters to make some tough decisions about where to spend their money.
