10 ms·

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

61 points by prostoalex 5y ago

cable2600 5y ago
Isn't HBO owned by AT&T?
- bluejay2 5y ago
  Yes, currently, but they are in the process of being sold (along with rest of Time Warner Media) to Discovery Inc.
  - jt2190 5y ago
    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-and-discovery-assets-to-create-a-new-standalone-company.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/17/att-to-combine-warnermedia-a...
phyc 5y ago
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
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
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.
- drewg123 5y ago
  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.
  - brundolf 5y ago
    I would reverse the descriptions. Prime Video is possibly the worst piece of software I've ever used; HBO Now (Go?) is only mediocre
    - bdcravens 5y ago
      The Disney Plus app on Fire is also very buggy.
      - drewg123 5y ago
        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.
        bdcravens 5y ago
        I assume it's using the same codebase for all Android versions. Haven't tried it on an Apple TV.
    - drewg123 5y ago
      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.
      - brundolf 5y ago
pm90 5y 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.
- JackFr 5y ago
  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.
  - 7thaccount 5y ago
    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).
    - handrous 5y ago
      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).
      - 7thaccount 5y ago
        I see my issues on both Roku and through a separate smart TV, so I'm not convinced that is it.
        5y ago
akiselev 5y ago
> “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.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  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:>
dazc 5y ago
“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.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  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 https://archive.is/wK1bC (why wework is not a tech company, hbr.org, 2019) https://archive.is/G7rSR https://archive.is/G7rSR (why zomato.com is a tech company, hbr.org, 2021)
  - rottencupcakes 5y ago
    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.
    - gogopuppygogo 5y ago
      Bezos at one time mentioned that 35% of all Amazons sales came from recommendations. That’s not an insignificant number.
chairmanwow1 5y ago
Netflix has by far the best streaming experience, but I suffer through HBO’s subpar website for their content.
- javier123454321 5y ago
  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.
  - mousepilot 5y ago
    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.
jasonhansel 5y ago
So: will HBO max ever add Linux support, or are we still out of (legal) options?
- kgwxd 5y ago
  I use it through Firefox on Linux. Do they have an official desktop app or something?
  - jasonhansel 5y ago
    Last time I tried in FF it wasn't supported. It sounds like it's changed, and I stand corrected.
- dylan604 5y ago
  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.
- dralley 5y ago
  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.
Grakel 5y ago
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.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Does anyone else have better suggestions? I don’t find Netflix great, but the others still require tons of browsing too.
  - throwawaycuriou 5y ago
    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.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      To me it is a bit different with Netflix as I have already paid for the product. They aren’t upselling me or anything.
      - throwawaycuriou 5y ago
        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.
        5y ago
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
The fragmentation and exclusivity of media/streaming companies just makes piracy more and more worth it.
- throwawaycuriou 5y ago
  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.
- pingpongchef 5y ago
  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
- y-c-o-m-b 5y ago
  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.
bengale 5y ago
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.
crazygringo 5y ago
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.
cupcake-unicorn 5y ago
"Own the customer"? And that's worth the revenue from 5 million? Really creepy.
WorldMaker 5y ago
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.)

61 points by prostoalex 5y ago

cable2600 5y ago

Isn't HBO owned by AT&T?

bluejay2 5y ago
Yes, currently, but they are in the process of being sold (along with rest of Time Warner Media) to Discovery Inc.
- jt2190 5y ago
  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-and-discovery-assets-to-create-a-new-standalone-company.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/17/att-to-combine-warnermedia-a...

phyc 5y ago

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

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

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.

drewg123 5y ago
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.
- brundolf 5y ago
  I would reverse the descriptions. Prime Video is possibly the worst piece of software I've ever used; HBO Now (Go?) is only mediocre
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    The Disney Plus app on Fire is also very buggy.
    - drewg123 5y ago
      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.
      - bdcravens 5y ago
        I assume it's using the same codebase for all Android versions. Haven't tried it on an Apple TV.
  - drewg123 5y ago
    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.
    - brundolf 5y ago

pm90 5y 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.

JackFr 5y ago
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.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  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).
  - handrous 5y ago
    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).
    - 7thaccount 5y ago
      I see my issues on both Roku and through a separate smart TV, so I'm not convinced that is it.
      - 5y ago

akiselev 5y ago

> “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.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
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:>

dazc 5y ago

“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.

ignoramous 5y ago
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 https://archive.is/wK1bC (why wework is not a tech company, hbr.org, 2019) https://archive.is/G7rSR https://archive.is/G7rSR (why zomato.com is a tech company, hbr.org, 2021)
- rottencupcakes 5y ago
  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.
  - gogopuppygogo 5y ago
    Bezos at one time mentioned that 35% of all Amazons sales came from recommendations. That’s not an insignificant number.

chairmanwow1 5y ago

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

javier123454321 5y ago
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.
- mousepilot 5y ago
  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.

jasonhansel 5y ago

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

kgwxd 5y ago
I use it through Firefox on Linux. Do they have an official desktop app or something?
- jasonhansel 5y ago
  Last time I tried in FF it wasn't supported. It sounds like it's changed, and I stand corrected.
dylan604 5y ago
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.
dralley 5y ago
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.

Grakel 5y ago

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.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Does anyone else have better suggestions? I don’t find Netflix great, but the others still require tons of browsing too.
- throwawaycuriou 5y ago
  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.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    To me it is a bit different with Netflix as I have already paid for the product. They aren’t upselling me or anything.
    - throwawaycuriou 5y ago
      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.
      - 5y ago

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

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

throwawaycuriou 5y ago
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.
pingpongchef 5y ago
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
y-c-o-m-b 5y ago
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.

bengale 5y ago

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.

crazygringo 5y ago

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.

cupcake-unicorn 5y ago

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

WorldMaker 5y ago

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.)