HBO Max exec admits to the app’s early flaws

Viewers have lengthy complained concerning the early HBO Max app’s tendency to crash, and its lack of discoverability options. There have been numerous overhauls and fixes since then. Now we all know why. Seems that HBO Max launched its apps earlier than they had been prepared so as to sustain with its rivals. The app was “by no means supposed to go world” or to swimsuit the wants of a direct-to-consumer market, based on an interview that Sarah Lyons, HBO Max’s head of product expertise, gave Protocol. The community wished to construct an viewers first, after which repair the app’s flaws because the service scaled up.

Whereas Lyons admits that the early days of HBO Max had been rocky, she thinks the corporate made the precise choice. We’ve been altering out the engine of the airplane whereas we’re flying the airplane,” she stated. “I do suppose it was the precise choice to attempt to stability each,” stated Lyons.

HBO Max first launched its app in Could 2020, to hitch an already saturated streaming ecosystem that included Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+ and others. On the time, each HBO Go (the community’s on-demand app for cable subscribers) and HBO Now (the standalone app for cord-cutters) had been nonetheless obtainable, a undeniable fact that confused many subscribers. The community has since retired each apps.

Viewers have flocked to Reddit for the reason that app’s preliminary launch with complaints that spanned platforms and units. “We’ve been making an attempt to look at the Harry Potter motion pictures and actually each 15 min or so we get an ERROR message and should pressure shut the app. One other time it froze utterly. It’s absolute rubbish. I don’t have this drawback with another app or streaming service,” wrote one consumer in a thread on the r/HBOMax subreddit from January 2021 entitled “Why does this app suck so arduous?”

For a lot of viewers long-accustomed to superior suggestion algorithms on Netflix and different streaming platforms, it was arduous to get used to HBO Max’s lack of discoverability options. Lyons admitted that HBO Max wasn’t constructed with discovery in thoughts, and the app tried to handle this by placing each new present on the app’s dwelling web page. “You did not have to go discover something, as a result of no matter [show] you had been in search of was going to be on the high of the house web page,” stated Lyons.

Whereas Engadget’s early assessment of HBO Max detailed its flaws, we identified that it was nonetheless a “sensible wager” for the corporate. Since then, the service has made many enhancements, together with a brand new Apple TV app and updates to its apps for Roku, Ps, Android TV and others. However following a current $43 billion merger with Discovery, the most important change is but to come back. The plan is to merge each Discovery Plus and HBO Max into one unified platform.

HBO Max ended 2021 with 43.8 million subscribers, when mixed with the community’s cable subscribers of HBO who even have entry to the streaming service. It’ll quickly soak up at the very least one other 22 million subscribers from Discovery Plus. Whereas there may very well be extra bumps down the highway, viewers can at the very least be assured that HBO Max has extra expertise beneath its belt now.