With the arrival next month of the new streaming service “Max” from Warner Bros. Discovery, the company is also promising a revamped product experience with an expanded feature set, improved recommendations, and better performance. The new service, which combines content from HBO Max and Discovery+ into one offering, will have an updated user interface delivered through a largely seamless transition for existing HBO Max subscribers across most platforms.
However, Discovery+ subscribers can continue watching in their standalone app if they wish, the company noted at today’s press event where it introduced the new service and its many upcoming originals, including a new Game of Thrones series.
Of particular note, the company has openly admitted that its current HBO Max service has some technical shortcomings that it is now looking to address with the move to Max.
“As we embarked on this journey 12 months ago, we thoroughly assessed our two streaming companies, as well as each’s technology and products. And we realized that while both were solid, they also each had significant shortcomings,” said JB Perette, CEO and president of global streaming and games, speaking to the assembled crowd.
“Basically, we had to do the basics much better,” he said, before turning his mea culpa into a strange form of praise by adding, “If we’ve gotten this far with some sub-optimal features and experiences, imagine for what we will do when we get more of it right!”
That’s certainly an interesting way to sell things, we’d say.
Perrette said the new Max service would address several key business objectives, including user engagement, retention, more regular viewers and easier, more personalized content discovery, to name a few.
While the company had announced an extensive lineup of new original programming earlier at the event, including new series such as Big Bang Theory and True Detective spin-offs, a live-action Harry Potter, DC Comics titles such as “The Penguin” and others, the exec also acknowledged that the product itself needs to try harder to surface its content for subscribers.
“HBO Max has some amazing in-depth content, but it’s largely untapped because we don’t make it easy enough to find,” he said. As an example of this problem, he noted that three-quarters of viewership came from the home screen alone, while on Discovery+, most of the usage came from other screens deeper in the app. In addition, four times as much content accounts for the majority of viewers on Discovery+ than on HBO Max.
Image Credits: Warner Bros. Discovery
It could be argued that this is due to the nature of the programming on the respective services, where the Discovery+ lifestyle content may lead to repeat viewing, perhaps compared to flagship series such as ‘Game of Thrones’ which are watched in real time, but not are necessarily the types of shows that are later rediscovered and then rewatched. However, the company is betting that product changes could improve these findability metrics.
For starters, the revamped app will feature a new content navigation menu at the top that will make it easier for consumers to find the series and movies, as well as the new releases they might want to watch. Throughout the app, the company promises streamlined categories, improved content detail pages, shortcuts, dedicated brand hubs, and themed content rails, to make the app easier to explore.
The HBO brand will continue to feature prominently in this new interface as well, but will be displayed alongside the company’s other top brands that will serve as gateways to their respective content.
There will also be genre hubs for diving into different types of content and a new shortcut that will let users save content to a list for later viewing.
For users at the new Ultimate Ad-Fre tier, the service will feature an extensive catalog of 4K UHD content, including shows like “Game of Thrones,” “The Last of Us,” “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings” ‘. ”, “The Dark Night” trilogy and others. This catalog will be expanded to include all Warner Bros. films released this year and in the future.
Image Credits: Warner Bros. Discovery
In addition, for the first time, individual user profiles offer more personalized experiences, recommending new things for users to watch based on their past habits and viewing habits, through things like “because you watched” recommendations, suggestions for what to watch next that appear when you finishing a series or film, and compelling hero images tailored to the end user. This personalized experience also extends beyond the homepage, so users will see tailored recommendations across the entire service.
A combination of machine learning and human editorial curation will help drive these recommendations, explains Perette.
Parents can configure their children’s profiles, including through the use of parental controls. While that’s not new, the revamped Max introduces a default kid profile for its new subscribers, with options for parents to set the profile to little kids, big kids, big kids plus, pre-teens, or teens — an expanded range of kid levels beyond that of some rival services, where the ‘kids’ experience is often aimed at younger school-aged children. This tends to frustrate older kids and teens when they outgrow cartoons and other “kids” content but aren’t yet old enough for more adult fare like much of what HBO has to offer.
Under the hood, the company touted other technology improvements focused on user retention, performance, and stability.
For example, Max will proactively alert customers about failed payments through on- and off-product notifications and messaging, including in-app alerts on connected TVs for the first time. It also added support for PayPal as another payment option and made it easier for its marketing teams to run promotional pricing without weeks of technical work.
Image Credits: Warner Bros. Discovery
The company also promised updates to its core architecture to deliver “faster, more reliable, and more efficient performance.” Among the changes, Max will offer a new login process for connected TVs where users don’t have to enter their credentials with their remote and a more reliable download experience.
“…We focused maniacally on app performance to get our customers to view their content as quickly as possible,” said Perette. “So app launch times, video launch times and overall navigation response times will be 20 to 30 percent faster depending on what device you’re using.”
The exec said HBO Max app customers will automatically update to Max on May 23 when the shift is made. Most platforms will update this automatically, but others will prompt users who open the HBO Max app to download the new Max app instead. It will then be just “two clicks” to continue watching, Perette noted, as usernames, passwords, profiles, viewing histories, viewing rails, and billing are transferred automatically. Discovery+ subscribers won’t be forced to transfer apps, but will be asked to try the new Max app at various times.
Image Credits: Warner Bros. Discovery
The new service offers three pricing tiers, starting at $9.99 per month for ad-supported, $15.99 per month to go ad-free, and $19.99 per month for ad-free viewing with 4K UHD and Dolby Atmos. The last two tiers also include offline downloads, but are limited to 30 or 100 downloads respectively. The top service also includes four simultaneous streams instead of just two.