HBO is about to lose 5M customers, and it isn’t concerned | Hacker News Reader

HBO is about to lose 5M customers, and it isn’t concerned

bloomberg.com

61 pointslxm127 comments

“It’s important for us to own the customer,” Forssell told me last week. “If the viewer is in the app, we can tailor the home page to them. We can tailor what they show them next. We can respond to that in real time.”

Not sure I agree with this since I can not recall a single instance where I have wanted to watch anything that has been suggested to me. All platforms have a limited amount of good stuff that I will happily search for and a huge amount of junk that I am simply not interested in.

Managing individual subscriptions is a real pain and I would prefer to find everything I need on one platform thanks.

I believe this behaviour is endemic to companies trying to morph into a "tech company" with MBAs leading the charge.

> Customer intimacy. Modern tech companies collect, store, organize, and analyze years of user data. This data is virtual gold, as it enables companies to run targeted ads and personalize the customer experience. The key difference between a customer walking into a Walmart supercenter and Amazon's online store is that Amazon instantaneously reorganizes the whole store (layout, displays, product offerings, etc.) in a way that's tailormade for that customer.

https://archive.is/wK1bC (why wework is not a tech company, hbr.org, 2019)

https://archive.is/G7rSR (why zomato.com is a tech company, hbr.org, 2021)

The irony there is I have never ever bought anything because Amazon recommended it.

Amazon is better than Walmart because you can search for and buy what you want when you want and have it show up the next day, and the prices are generally good enough.

Reviews are a nice touch, but those just need to be “good enough” to differentiate cheap chinese crap.

It’s not rocket science.

Bezos at one time mentioned that 35% of all Amazons sales came from recommendations. That’s not an insignificant number.

But, are those recommendations based on what you're looking at? I could definitely see users purchasing one of the recommended items if they come to the site with an item in mind, but not necessarily a brand.

I often come to Amazon and search for something like "washers" and skim through the "recommended" items until I find a pack that's a good value. But from an attribution standpoint, that sale is more the result of "browsing the aisle" than a recommendation. It's not like they recommended hairspray, which i bought in addition to the thing I came there to buy.

Agreed. I think highly contextualized recommendations are the most helpful.

As another example, I frequently find the "often purchased together" section to be very helpful. That might be the only recommendation system that I've ever used more than once.

I would say that's an example of recommendations working. However, in my personal experience, I rarely find "general" recommendations helpful.

I wonder what specifically Bezos meant? Similarly, I often search for something specific and see "sponsored" results that are what I was searching for, with the same item right below it as part of the organic search results. Or, I'll browse for items, then come back to purchase it later seeing it under "recently viewed." Do those count? If so, I purchase recommended things all the time. If not, I don't think I've ever bought something they organically offered on their main page with 20 years of purchase and browsing history.

Looking at the recommendations right now, they're not very good. Maybe I'm a hard sell? Sure, sidewalk chalk. You might run out of that and want more. Stuff to rekey your lock. I needed that when I bought my house a few years ago...I'm not sure why I would need that now. An air conditioner support bracket. I bought one last year much earlier in the summer.

The entire isle was constructed on the fly just for you, including all the items you "compared", and their prices, and the thing you eventually "picked".

Tech companies play this game as well. This has always been a core part of Netflix's pitch: our recommendations will keep users tied to the platform and also reduce the cost to acquire IP as we can always find something the user is interested in.

I used to believe their pitch. However, it doesn't seem like it ended up working. People hear about a show and want to watch that specific show. The recommendations only do so much.

Interesting. I would disagree. They've shifted from supremely niche recommendations ("British murder mysteries during wwII") to everyone watching the entirety tiger king within the same 2 wk period and a coarse grain search for british titles not even providing an exhaustive list.

If anything they have taken recommendations and remade them in their own image/strategy/goals rather than our personalized watching behavior. Great examples continue to be Bridgerton, the Office which then had a meme-based resurgence, that one with Kevin Spacey, etc.

I just think they don't really care.

They care about retention, but they've realized that content >> discoverability for that.

People will find out about content. What they will not do is watch bad content, no matter how specifically and accurately it speaks to them.

You're agreeing with me. When they were serving up niche recommendations it was an intentional business decision. If they could convince people to watch niche things, it reduces their IP costs as those things are cheaper to license and they're also in a stronger bargaining position as they don't need any one specific show.

What happened is consumers didn't agree. People wanted to watch the Office, not another feel-good comedy Netflix recommended. That forced Netflix to abandon their original strategy and spend a lot more on content.

Gold is knowing what the customer wants/needs because then you can actually sell them something. But I doubt any amount of "data" will be able to figure that out.

>> with MBAs leading the charge.

So at what point on the MBA path does a person get forced into removing the logic part of the their brain?

MBA's seems to make decisions that are using an alien form that non-MBA's can not seem to understand, and perceive as illogical.....

Because MBAs will always hold two items in tension: profit and user desire.

If these two items are out of whack, an MBA will always favor profit and that too in incredibly creative, often marketing-based ways that rethink the business model. They will convince the user of what they need the user to believe to make the largest possible profit.

ICs often think of profit and user needs/desire but they usually hunt for a place where it overlaps and if it doesn't, they'll hunt again. Profit is demanded for value/convenience to the customer but it is often a 1:1 relationship.

I believe this behaviour is endemic to companies trying to morph into a "tech company" with MBAs leading the charge.

They're also going to pocket Amazon's fee.

> Not sure I agree with this since I can not recall a single instance where I have wanted to watch anything that has been suggested to me.

Does this tell you that:

• HBO is wrong

• You're not representative of either their user base or the user base they want

• You don't remember the times your browsing behavior was influenced by suggestions because you like believing you're not influenced by suggestions

Here's a fun test: try to think of what you watched that was not suggested to you one way or another. Think of what it would even mean.

The vast majority of the shows I watch I have found by searching for keywords I'm interested in, or actors who I enjoy watching, so I can come up with a pretty long list of shows I watched that were never suggested to me in one way or another.

You type a keyword... somewhere? On Google maybe? And then what? Pick the first movie listed? What about actors? Do you watch all of their movies? In random order? Do you do it chronologically? Why?

The only way you could watch movies without it being the result of a suggestion would be if you had a random list of movies (preferably of all movies ever made) and picked at random in it. I think it's safe to assume you're not doing that, so you're being suggested movies.

On the other hand, I can honestly not think of a single show or movie that hasn't been suggested to me in one way or another. I may search for a specific show or movie, but that is either something I have already watched, or I saw an ad for somewhere along the line.

we need to define what "suggseted to you" means. if you are browsing a list called "Films we think you might like", that's obviously a suggestion. however, if you're browsing a list of "Action & Adventure", you need to know how the titles in that list were added. is it recent titles in that genre, is it titles that are currently trending, or is it titles that have the same actor/director/plots as other titles you have been watching?

the only way to really know that it wasn't some sort of algorithmic detection is if you 100% absolutely positively never browse and only watch a movie directly from the search feature.

Right. As soon as some form of curation occurs you're being suggested something. What the parent might be trying to say if I steel man it is that he's still making a choice between the options that he's being suggested. Which, yes he is, but you're still making a choice between suggested options. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Suggested by a friend or by a reviewer who suggestions I have enjoyed in the past seems far removed from the ML suggestions from Amazon, Netflix, or YouTube.

HBO's goals and a user's goals are fundamentally not aligned.

They're tailoring their home page to increase the metrics they track and to make more money. They're not doing it altruistically to make me happier or to solve a problem I have.

HBO's goal is to make HBO more profitable. The user base they want, one which shares that goal, is nonexistent, there are only users who have a goal of being entertained and have varying levels of tolerance for HBO's antics to achieve that goal.

How are they fundamentally not aligned? To me it seems like they are fairly well aligned. Not perfectly, but close. What are they doing that doesn't help a user with their goal of being entertained?

The user's goal is to be entertained. The way they make money is by getting you to continue your subscription. You will only continue that subscription is if you are entertained. So their goal is to entertain you enough to keep the subscription.

Sure they will produce new content and advertise it to you ahead of time such that you might keep the subscription for another month. But it only works if that content is interesting to you, so they still need to make content that is interesting.

I guess the content they are producing is aligned at groups of users, and not any one individual user. So if you are far from the targeted groups, then the goals are not as well aligned. But their goal is still to suggest the content in their library that you will be interested in to continue to stay subscribed.

See my example above. I subscribe to HBO Max. I click to watch something. HBO Max won’t show it to me. It shows me a profile picker to pick among all one profiles I have, the same one profile I’ve always had, and always will have.

Why? To capture new profiles from people who break into subscribers’ homes to surreptitiously watch HBO Max? How often does that happen relative to me wanting to watch, like always, as myself, like always?

I'm not saying HBO is wrong, but I do believe most marketing departments find their managers easier to manipulate than their customers.

"Advertising doesn't work on me!"

If this is true, congrats. You are the .000001%. It works on people really well in the broad scope. It makes them gobs and gobs of money.

Does it though? When's the last time it worked on you?

I did buy something based off an instagram ad. I also would rather have ads that are meaningful than be shown some useless ads.

Your word in Zuckerberg's ear. I love seeing ads for things I actually want. I'd say they're less than 1% of all the ads I see though. For all the data these companies have on me, they don't seem to make great use of it.

It's brand recognition, not "I'm going to buy this product right now".

And the next time you need a product, you have a positive attachment to certain brands.

Not that i disagree, but it's funny to me that more people aren't paranoid of companies like i am. I expect _everyone_ to try and swindle me. No company loses anything, so every sale or v2 product i expect to be worse for me.

The only time i actually like ads and feel it "works on me" is when the product is a new area i have not previously seen before. Eg heated cups - i love my Ember. It sucks, but there's not much competition i'm aware of - so early ads were a dominated space. I eat those ads up if it's a product area i care about. (and i really love heated coffee lol)

It can be mutually beneficial too though. You get something, the company gets something.

Years ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a merino wool sneaker. It looked clean and minimalistic. I happened to enjoy wearing shoes without socks, so I clicked on the link and immediately bought a pair of Allbirds.

(Years later I read that Allbirds is part of the SV tech worker uniform.)

Also I definitely have clicked on those marketing email newsletters and made purchases based on those. In case I sound like a major consumer, I will mention that I managed to live in New Jersey for 8 years spending $1200 a month. That's rent, food, transportation, and impulse buys.

If you think of advertising as being "see ad -> buy thing", well, it may have worked on you if you needed that thing. That's not a crazy idea right? Advertising purely as a form of product discovery?

Then, beyond that, you can get into the stuff that uses observations about basic human psychology. It might be arrogance to consider yourself above human weakness. You are probably familiar with the strategy of brand awareness? All else being equal you are more likely to purchase a product that is familiar to you. If you see an advertisement for a product, even if you try to form a negative emotional attachment immediately, the emotional tenor will fade but the familiarity will remain.

I'm not going to say every form of advertising is effective, probably a lot of the web stuff that can be gamed is gamed and thus less effective, but I'd be cautious assuming it won't work on you (or anyone else for that matter).

There’s a big difference between online advertising and content recommendation engines. One can believe that the former works and that the latter does not; they’re not the same things.

Heck, there a huge variance in quality of recommendation engines. YouTube is clearly superior to say, Amazon Video.

Scores of corporations are perfecting the art of eking out just a few more views from a small segment of users while irritating the rest of the user base as much as possible without actually losing customers.

Most advertising/targeting doesn't work on most people most of the time, but we all have to endure it because it grabs just enough extra net revenue.

perhaps you are misconstruing the proportions here?

I suspect the vast majority of the users plonk down after work to look for a show. they are tired and they don't want to put a lot of effort into selecting the show or even paying attention to it. the suggestion will do. and the billion dollar provider staffed by high end experts has the analytics to back that up.

Meanwhile the noisy minority of users are seen complaining loudly about this or that feature not catering directly to them.

*I'm not trying to say you are that noisy minority btw, I only mean to evaluate the suggested premise of your comment.

This just makes it more obvious to me that I am not a normie. The idea of just turning on the tube and watching whatever is on would never occur to me. I’m either looking for things that match my admittedly non-mainstream tastes, or I’ll turn it off and read a book or play with one of my hobbies.

I believe advertising works on everyone; if it's really good, you just won't even be able to tell it's advertising or that it's 'working on you.'

Advertising comes in many flavours, and different flavours work for different people. E.g. I find that most tech-y people I know who say "advertising doesn't work on me" are very susceptible to the "laundry-list of features" type of advertising that tricks them into thinking they're being rational and objective about their decision process, while not questioning why they should care about any of those features.

For me, there's ads I actively enjoy watching. The old Cog[0] ad for the Honda Accord is one such case, as is the He-Man/Skeletor[1] ad for Money Supermarket (well, that and every other ad in that campaign). These work incredibly well on me as the brand awareness sort of marketing, and I'm sufficiently aware that I can correct for it — but I'm almost certainly unaware of my susceptibility to other sorts.

    0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PgTjhx1VLw

This is often assumed without actual data to back it. I remember seeing in HN (in the last few years) a link providing evidence that advertising didn't work in an instance where the company was sure it was working (for years). Sorry, my memory is not good enough to actually come up with the link, maybe someone else will remember...

Yeah and there are some many other choices at this point. I think a perfect startup would be a streaming manager. It creates unique passwords and handles the billing through virtual cards. You pick 6 streaming services and the system just rotates you through them, handling all the billing and cancelations. Binge watch the last year to catch-up and move on. FOMO is the other reason people have 5 services today and without the water cooler, you aren't even really not up to date.

>It’s important for us to own the customer

Outside of how evil this sounds, I've found that recommendation engines ultimately play against my own interests. It's possible that this ultimately my own fault based on what I watch. Realistically, I think there are multiple scenarios here:

- I watch some junk videos, and youtube suggests more videos like it.

- I enjoy junk videos by a single youtuber, and youtube expects that I want similar sorts of junk videos from many other youtubers. (when I do not)

- I enjoy junk videos of one narrow variety, but most people who enjoy those videos enjoy junk videos of a very wide variety. eg, I watch one retro games review channel, and so youtube thinks I want to watch whatever the most popular retro games review channel.

More perversely, I find that part of the feedback loop here is caused by the move from searching to browsing. That is, if I am shown a list of options (ie, if I am browsing) I tend to want to pick from the available options. The options are just based on what I've watched before, and so my tastes remain narrow over time. If I have to search for content, my mind wanders more, and I think more broadly about what content might be interesting to watch. This is nearly a creative process, and it broadens my horizons. Again, I think it would be perfectly fair to claim that this is really my fault, and not youtube's fault. But, it's very reminiscent of problems with junk food, or gambling, or any other vice. Just because the blame must lie with me does not mean that the company has created something good, which benefits people.

Having discovered this vice, I now do my best to avoid any product with a recommendation engine.

HBO are the same giant brains who, when a viewer clicks a show to watch, don’t play it. Instead they put a giant “who are you” and make you pick the profile you will watch with — even when there is only one profile and it’s the same profile you use every single time you’ve ever attempted to watch their content.

Honestly, the bigger problem to me is the HBO Max app is terrible. It constantly crashes and has all kinds of weird bugs. They're notorious for sending every customer an integration test email from a bogus domain.

If you're going to insist on being a software developer as well as a content producer, fine, but make good software. Otherwise, let the experts who are actually good at it provide the distribution platform and HBO sticks to what HBO is good at, which is producing content.

HBO may never have been as big as Netflix and Amazon, but as long as they had a multi-decade history of producing way better content and continued to do so, even if it was less content, they were going to remain relevant. They didn't need to eat the world. Being small but good is fine. But selling out to AT&T means they need to try and eat the world so whoever pushed the acquisition can justify it and get a bigger bonus.

This might be OK if the HBOmax app wasn't one of the worst apps out there for video streaming. On my top-of-the-line Roku it is horrible sluggish. Comically so.

I think advertising works slightly differently than what you think and what Forssell seems to be saying.

You see once a show (or a movie) advertised. It does not really register consciously with you (assuming you are used to this kind of advertisement, and largely ignore it). You might even see it a few times, but if someone asked which advertisements you saw, you may not recall it at all.

Now, a friend comes along and recommends you that same show / movie. You quite likely remember it, not consciously, but, eh, subconsciously(?). Your friend's comment is actually much more than a recommendation, it becomes reinforcement that you've encountered this show before, and it is likely popular and hence good (even if you consciously think popular things are not your thing).

Next time you come to the site, you might not be looking for your friend's recommendation, just something else. However, it might just so happen that this particular show is being advertised to you. Even if you were to click on it, you don't think the site was advertising it to you. Your friend did! It just happened to be there. Conveniently, you didn't even have to search for it.

Now, that single platform thing. I would love that, too. Better yet, if they would also be forced to keep historical movies and shows from 1900-2000 in their catalogue, kind of a public service. However, they would also own the incredibly powerful advertisement channel called "Shows you might like." Or your friend might like, but anyways.

Everybody loves to talk about Netflix's data advantage, knowing when people stop watching something, etc.

And yet Netflix's content and suggestions today are absolute and complete garbage. I used to be a big believer, now I'm not sure why I'm still a customer.

Does anyone else have better suggestions?

I don’t find Netflix great, but the others still require tons of browsing too.

That Netflix is even involved in the art of recommendations speaks to the challenge of monetizing independent voices.

I find it fascinating the desire that our storefronts be the place where optimal suggestions are found. It's anachronistic, as if we're still rolling up to chat with the mattress vendor at Sears. Last century's version of us would see an inherent conflict of interest and instead rely on newspapers, magazines, journalists, reviewers, editors, scholars for our discovery. But the revenue in those vocations is crushed and instead we're sheep among wolves.

To me it is a bit different with Netflix as I have already paid for the product.

They aren’t upselling me or anything.

You're right, my take hits a weak target. It's more relevant for say Amazon or Steam.

I find it stark that many folks browse digital stores, while I generally explore articles or videos of unaffiliated experts/curators. I'm still vulnerable to influence, but at least it's not the vendor itself.

One reason is that Amazon does a great job in some categories. I buy my shoes on Amazon and they are by far the best pair I have ever owned. It is one of the first pairs of shoes I have owned where I can walk for hours and not get crazy callouses on my feet and be sore after.

A full read on why here (the slug doesn't represent the post very well)[0] but the summary is that other stores for selling shoes don't let me break down my search by detailed options, particularly width.

[0] https://gaiser.io/amazon-is-winning-as-everyone-else-isnt-tr...

So Amazon is amazing in some categories. We just notice when they drop the ball and have terrible results in other categories. We are so used to finding great stuff that it angers us when we cannot.

I never relied on Netflix's suggestions, yet still find Netflix interface superior to those of Disney+, Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime. To be honest, Amazon Prime is a mess.

Yeah its funny, because they used to have the most reliable system for finding new good content. Back when you could just sort by the number of stars as rated by other users and before they started manipulating that, it actually worked really well. If something was 4.5 stars, it was almost universally good. They innovated their way into their recommendation system being completely useless and unused by me. Now I just wait to get recommendations from other people I trust to act as a filter for me. I used to occasionally peruse the netflix original content because it was relatively good compared to average in the industry and often worth investigating, but I don't even do that now.

I wonder how much of this is due to the fact that initially the system really is mostly trained by your preference, but over time, it then becomes trained on your preference mediated by the algorithm, and then slowly you see a divergence of your actual preferences and what it suggests to you/you end up clicking on. Peter Norvig had a great lecture about this in the context of language translation, and how despite so much info being out there on the web, known "good" corpuses of data that were 100% human-made and guaranteed to not being the product of an algortihm (like official translations of UN documents) were still super useful.

My household keeps our Netflix subscription for an ever dwindling set of anchor shows, most of which are beginning to migrate onto network specific platforms. I wouldn’t be surprised if we cancel next year at some point.

Honestly it would be cheaper to just buy some of these shows on like iTunes at this rate.

To me it seems all platforms now ‘overmine’ (99); all recommended results from any of the major platforms who are supposed to have all data on me and have the best AI people in the world, consistently provide results I really would never entertain. I am not sure what the people who work in these recommendation algos are thinking they are improving but they seem to get worse and, as such, besides what I already listened, watched, bought etc, downright wrong. Netflix should know what I like but keeps recommending things anyone who knows me would know I would not watch on a deserted island even, while shows and movies that I find myself and like are never recommended. I find it weird. Hell, I have searched for exact titles that were not available in my region; when they became available they still did not recommend them. And most people I see online or know have the same experience. Maybe drop a bit of the ‘AI’ and put some trivial rules in so at least it hits once in a while.

Conjecture: their content and suggestions are garbage because they aren't allowing the data to drive their decisions independent of their ideological or public perception concerns.

After He-Man released I ended my subscription, just shy of being a 10 year customer.

Was there something about He-Man that influenced the decision?

Influenced, but I've been considering it for about a year. As the parent poster mentioned, I too am finding very little of the Netflix content enjoyable. Ahead of my first viewing of He-Man I made some mental predictions of plot directions I wouldn't like that they might do. All of my predictions happened in the first episode so I cut the cord.

> I used to be a big believer, now I'm not sure why I'm still a customer.

Agreed. Been with them since the early days (had the DVD service before that), and had only them (and Prime Video, but I rarely used it) until a couple years ago. At this point they're my least favorite streaming service I pay for, and first on the chopping-block when I pare things down soon. If they'd kept prices low, maybe I'd hold on to them, but the hikes even as the service (selection and UI) kept getting worse are just too much.

Agree. It and youtube have this same problem

-- If I log into your platform, and scroll past a recommendation 25 times in a row, then I'm NOT INTERESTED and DO NOT SHOW IT AGAIN.

Netflix has this huge catalog and it feels like it's only 100 crappy things because it only ever shows me 100 things.

Do you think it has to do with their shrinking content library, as the original holders/networks/studios went for their own game? I.e. instead of returning adequate and valuable results to match a wide choice, the goal is to pad lack of content with blurry low-quality results, as Netflix-produced content can only fill so much?

Working as designed: streaming services love when you keep paying the same price while actually consuming as little of their content as possible.

To be fair to Netflix, they don't have much to recommend that's worth watching in the first place.

I’ll be glad to see all of these go, I’m sick to death of seeing something I want to watch on Prime only to have my hopes dashed as they want me to sign up for HBO, Starz, The Great Courses (!) etc. subscriptions in the next menu.

I like the channels option. This way, I get to use one mediocre video app with a decent CDN behind it, rather than a terrible app with a terrible CDN.

I would reverse the descriptions. Prime Video is possibly the worst piece of software I've ever used; HBO Now (Go?) is only mediocre

The Disney Plus app on Fire is also very buggy.

It seems to be buggy everywhere. I have the app on a Smart TV (LG 2019 OLED), and an Android TV (Nvidia Shield). One will often lock up, so we'll switch to the other. If I just had one device, I'd probably have just cancelled out of frustration.

I assume it's using the same codebase for all Android versions. Haven't tried it on an Apple TV.

Their app gives a vastly different experience on different platforms. On a smart tv, its a dumpster fire. Slow, laggy, horrible play delay. On Amazon branded Fire* devices, its far better. And I love the X-Ray feature -- that's something I wish Netflix had.

Gotcha. I've never owned a Fire device.

My primary experience with both services was when I wanted to watch Game of Thrones a couple years ago. My girlfriend had already bought it on Amazon so I used that app on our smart TV for the first season or two. Every single interaction (even moving the menu cursor) took 1-3 seconds to register. It was miserable.

I ended up subscribing to HBO and buying a PS4 media remote just so that I could stop using Amazon Video.

I had the same experience on a ~2011 smart TV. I was shocked when I subscribed to Netflix, and their app actually worked fine on that TV. Responsive, low play delay, etc.

X-Ray is a killer feature. I was just telling my wife how much I wished other platforms had it. We stop shows ALL THE TIME to go look up actors and such. X-Ray makes that just a pause operation. I wonder if there's some patent that's preventing other providers from having the same feature.

Further, I hate Amazon's interface for managing channels, let alone Prime Video (which is also terrible—shit-tier streaming services most people have never heard of manage to do better). Like almost everything else they make, the UI is wildly not to my taste. I signed up for one exactly once, to watch Twin Peaks: The Return. I'd never do it again. Figuring out how to subscribe was a pain(!), figuring out how to cancel was a pain, and of course the video UI is awful.

Apple TV does the same sort of channel thing. In general, I prefer the Prime Video app, as the playback interface has a 10s skip, and the video selection interface is less confusing.

I honestly wish there was an open source player like Kodi that could be used to play back all these services, and could be customized to not suck.

> I honestly wish there was an open source player like Kodi that could be used to play back all these services, and could be customized to not suck.

Heh, if there's a way to customize Kodi's UI to not suck, I've yet to find it after much trying, over many years. I think I may just disagree with some of the fundamentals of how they decided to make it work. My ideal would be a c. 2011 or 2012 Netflix UI, but fed by every source. Closest I've found to that is Jellyfin and piracy.

Thanks for letting me know about Jellyfin. I've been using Plex recently for video, and I hate it. It downright ignores files that it can't find metadata for, which drives me nuts. And I despise their push to login to use anything..

I run it in docker on my file-server machine, with an extremely lazy .sh file with always-restart enabled, so I just run once it and then it comes back up on reboot, too, nothing fancy, just manually change the version number on the image and restart it to upgrade once every few months. The built-in web interface is good, and though for a long time the Roku app was in a weird state where most videos would fail to play, it's mysteriously started working fine again, though I think it's still missing some features (collection browsing, as in grouping media as "the Jaws series" or "the MCU", notably, IIRC). Dunno how the other interfaces are, as those are the only ones I use. The Web UI is pretty good for correcting metadata guesses it gets wrong (a very capable, integrated, non-TV interface for managing media sources and metadata is something I really wish Kodi had). I haven't worked with it in a while but I think it's as easy as providing the correct TVDB or IMDB (or whatever) ID and letting it re-scrape that item.

Somewhere on my probably-won't-ever-get-to-it list of projects is writing a Retroarch "core" with a very basic Jellyfin media browser, using the existing Mplayer core (probably having to re-package and wrap it with mine) to play the streams. That'd be perfect.

Can you stream 4k to the browser on your computer with Prime yet?

The biggest reason I stopped using Prime was that content looked like crap on my 4k monitor due to some weird-ass DRM that doesn't even inhibit piracy, as proof by the fact that I just pirated the 4k version of the show I was watching instead.

Its interesting how different experiences are. I don't love Prime (I don't want to see the paid content, stop it) but it is still infinitely better than HBO Max. Which has to be the worst I have used across all platforms.

I think it all comes down to which platform you are using the app. I hear all the time that HBO Max is a junk app, yet I've had relatively no issues when comparing it to Peacock or Paramount apps. I happen to use an Apple TV 4k for all of the apps. Anecdotally, the people that have complained about the HBO Max app were not on the same device.

So maybe some devices get the B-team devs (but that's just not fair blame/description), or certain devices have a much more difficult environment to dev for or worse, they are trying to use a single "HTML5" JS app for multiple devices that's not as good as a native app for the device. I've been part of an app dev for a specific hardware device where they state HTML5 app, but then force you to use a specific set of JS libraries for that device. each device has it's own hardware limitations that may not treat certain JS the same as another.

You like the UI on Apple TV 4K where since HBO Max uncoupled themselves, entering HBO app for HBO content pops up a “who is watching” ask every single time before letting the content play?

There’s no way these product managers are using their own apps from normal consumer devices. Somewhere around the 18th time you don’t get to see your show until after you re-specify the same singular profile, you’d surely realize this doesn’t make sense.

The who is watching is on netflix and prime as well. I do wish they would only present that if there are more than one profile, as it makes no sense if there's only one.

However, that matters much less as long as the app works after that. For other apps, seeking crashes the app. Other apps get stuck in loading after hitting play. Other apps crash when loading more content into a carousel. Some apps start with a crappy low quality stream, and eventually work up to a better stream (where Netflix/Prime/HBO seem to never start that low).

So yes, in my day-to-day usage, that "who's watching" is seen so rarely, it's not a big deal to me. It doesn't occur every time the app is launched.

Netflix and Prime do ask if you launch the app, but importantly do allow a deep link to the content that bypasses the whole “who the hell are you, total stranger?” step.

It’s that interstitial slam on the brakes, after your intent expressed by hitting play on a particular content, that makes no sense.

I've never seen this. What platform does this? On my AppleTV, it will do it on a fresh launch of the app, and that's it.

That reminds me of the worst programmed DVD I ever saw where every time you left a menu to play video, it would jump to another menu for you to choose language/subtitle settings. every. damn. time. I laughed my ass off at the incompetence.

>HBO Now (Go?)

Max :)

I have an older friend who is severely financially restricted, and who isn't very technically savvy. I bought him a Fire TV so he'd have a ton of free online options in addition to the OTA channels. More than a few times he's gotten confused by something he thought was free. I wish they had a "free only" display mode.

There’s a “free to me” slider in the UI. It will show you content that’s ad supported as well as anything that is covered by Prime.

Atleast Amazon has a decent amount of content. The Apple TV app feels like a scam. I don't think I've ever found watchable content if I didn't hear about the TV show through a review or a friend. It's a waste of time trying to browse.

If you open "prime video" app there is a section "free to me" in top menu bar.

Unfortunately, it also includes IMDBTv, that is loaded with ads, while technically also free

Netflix has by far the best streaming experience, but I suffer through HBO’s subpar website for their content.

I really love the hbo feature which will randomly stop working and force me to refresh the page. Especially when I'm in the middle of an episode.

I love HBO's selections, often I'll see content advertised as available on HBO and its def something I want to watch, so I'll go pick it up somewhere. Very good selections.

Haven't actually tried the service though.

> “It’s important for us to own the customer,” Forssell told me last week. “If the viewer is in the app, we can tailor the home page to them. We can tailor what they show them next. We can respond to that in real time.”

HBO isn't concerned because it didn't "own" those customers.

Pride before the fall and all that. I sometimes wonder if the executives understand the product they attempt to deliver. This is a paid service. Customer should be its center focus. Instead, I get corporate speak for 'I want to lock them in'. Well, tough noodles, because I don't want that.

I decided to watch Purge show the other week. Turned out I liked the premise so I decided to check the rest. They are all over the place. It is genuinely easier for me to order dvds from Amazon.

I find all the streaming wars very interesting if mildly aggravating. Frankly, it is going bring back piracy. Good job content providers:>

The fragmentation and exclusivity of media/streaming companies just makes piracy more and more worth it.

Indeed. And I don't want to pirate.

Startup idea: Tell us your friends and the services you subscribe to with family/friends sharing. We'll provide a password manager (or an API to your favorite password manager) to get rotating anonymous credentials that spread the cost evenly.

Long-term there was always going to be a marketplace process for piracy. As the pain/expense of legitimately acquiring content exceeds the pain/expense of acquiring it via other means, consumers will make choices that suit them. With Netflix we saw a sharp decline in the pain/expense for legitimacy so we saw a dip in piracy. Nothing magical about it

Yup, it's increasingly becoming the solution.

I have memberships to a handful of streaming services and yet somehow everything I've looked up to watch over the last month is not available on any of those services. Some of them are really old too; like the movie "Con Air" for example, but the only place I could find it was Amazon and it was only available to rent/buy.

Relatively speaking, this almost feels worse than the cable and video rental offerings we had two decades ago.

I’m fine with the decision except that their app sucks. It’s by far the worst streaming app. The iOS version is ok. Embedded versions like in PlayStation and TV just hang 100% of the time on suspend and resume. If they want to own the relationship they need to get their shit together.

100% agree. I switched from channels to HBO Max because my cellular carrier offered it for free, but the experience is absolutely awful. Constant buffering, not remembering what you’ve watched and difficulty finding things really detract.

HBO Max is almost unusable. It is so slow and buggy that on some days we literally could not watch something we wanted. The interface is also atrocious.

Netflix is good. Amazon Prime is pretty good. HBO Max is terrible. Hulu is kinda crappy. Paramount plus is okay (only use it for Star Trek).

Weird, must be platform-specific. HBO and Hulu are fine on Roku. In fact, after subscribing to a bunch more services than I used to (I was Netflix-only for a really long time) I'm probably going to cancel all but those two, because the UIs are pretty good (Amazon's lost me purely over their UI) and their selection crushes everyone else (for my tastes, anyway—these days I'd rank Netflix under Kanopy, which is free, in terms of which service I'd most want to keep).

I see my issues on both Roku and through a separate smart TV, so I'm not convinced that is it.

Guess I got lucky. I know there's some variability in performance of Roku devices, which can extend to stability of applications. I've got two nearly-identical but different-brand TVs with embedded Rokus, and the older TCL one is rock solid and snappy, but the newer one (Hisense brand) is laggy and everything crashes frequently on it.

Now that CBS ceded to Paramount Plus app, Paramount forgets to update Monday week day late night shows before Tuesday morning. Tuesday shows work on Wed AM, Wed shows on Thu AM, and so on, but not Monday shows on Tue AM.

This was all fine until Paramount opted out of some of the aggregated UI APIs.

Also, their language support is absolute garbage compared to Netflix. Most shows support multiple audio and subtitle languages, which is great for learning.

Don't sleep on the Prime app in the race to Worst.

The Prime app on iPad won't stream at high resolution. The only workaround I've found is to play in a Web browser on the iPad. The overall experience is worse than other streaming apps (but still better than HBO Max, obviously).

This will be interesting to watch. I don't use Amazon's "Channels", but I do currently bundle my HBO Max subscription with Hulu and watch some HBO (only) shows and movies through the Hulu app (though I still have to use the HBO Max app for most of their catalog). It would be irritating to me if HBO divorced from this Hulu deal as well, so I definitely appreciate those concerns here about the Amazon divorce.

From my understanding Hulu shares a lot more metrics data with HBO though, and these days isn't seen so much of a direct competitor and more of a partner. (Though that may change again soon as Disney continues to consolidate power over Hulu, I suppose.)

So: will HBO max ever add Linux support, or are we still out of (legal) options?

I use it through Firefox on Linux. Do they have an official desktop app or something?

Last time I tried in FF it wasn't supported. It sounds like it's changed, and I stand corrected.

The only people using Linux are servers in datacenters with no UI, so we don't need to worry about that. Next?

I wonder how many meetings have had that kind of conversation. I'd assume it is all about the DRM being supported or not.

HBO Max works fine for me on Linux. That didn't use to be the case, but for the past year or so, it works.

I have mostly held a position that the streaming market will eventually circle back to some sort of aggregator in the future, but I wonder if these types of moves will create hold outs from that potential product.

What's the ideal endgame here? What do they really _need_ the data for? IMO the "recommendations" angle is more geared towards peddling low-quality content onto viewers so I guess the vision is horrible productions of specifically tailored movies/shows.

Can't wait to see what films they start producing to appeal to whichever market segment I fall under

I hope this means they wont renew their agreement with Sky in the UK when that expires. I don’t want a Sky subscription but would like to sign up for HBO max over here.

Is it really losing them though?

Presumably some large proportion of them will sign up for HBO directly once they can no longer get HBO content through Amazon.

Most people who like HBO shows so much to pay for them, probably aren't going to be deterred by using a separate app. We're used to apps.

"Own the customer"? And that's worth the revenue from 5 million? Really creepy.

Isn't HBO owned by AT&T?

Yes, currently, but they are in the process of being sold (along with rest of Time Warner Media) to Discovery Inc.

Sorry to be pedantic, but that’s not quite correct:

> … The deal would create a new business, separate from AT&T… AT&T shareholders would receive stock representing 71% of the new company, while Discovery shareholders would own 29%… AT&T said Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav will lead the new company, which will have a new name announced in coming days.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/17/att-to-combine-warnermedia-a...

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