HBO: How’s it Broken so Often
If you rely on this app for downloads as I did then it’s not worth $15 a month. This app has constant glitches and bugs. I go out fishing so I rely on downloading shows or movies to watch while I’m gone because I don’t have service. There have been multiple times when I don’t have service that I can’t even access my downloads. When I was able to access them after 5-15 minutes they would not play at all, just a black screen. Another ridiculous feature is you are limited to 30 downloads! Netflix which is cheaper never has these problems and allows unlimited downloads. Another ridiculous and stupid feature, once you start watching a DL it is only available for 24 hrs. After using this app it is clear why Netflix is destroying the competition and have been for years. Who cares how big your catalog is if your app doesn’t function properly. There are times where I have service and still get play back errors to the point I have to close the app and reopen it multiple times. It feels like the app designers for HBmax are my parents, the people that couldn’t turn on a desktop computer when I was a kid! This app is VERY UNRELIABLE and I’m sick of reporting constant issues. I shouldn’t have to explain to app engineers how to build a properly functioning app.
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The app keeps getting annoying problems
As I have said in the past the content is good in this service. But once again the app keeps having annoying problems. On my iPad every time I download movies to watch offline the app doesn’t play the downloaded content because according to the app I have no connection. The whole point of having movies on the Downloaded section is to watch them offline not have to look for a wifi spot to be able to play it. Its ridiculous. The app on the Apple tv is very slow. It used to be faster but now when you open the app not only you have to wait for the logo to go away, you have to wait another loading before choosing the profile you want to use, then when you go to search a movie is another loading time you have to wait. The pop ups in the middle of the menu whenever something new gets released is also a problem. Im paying for the premium “no ads” subscription, I should get an option to remove add pop ups on the menu and completely remove the first movie ad thats about to get released not just get a skip button at the beginning of a movie. Having a skip button doesn’t mean no ads. Thats falls advertisement.
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That's All She Wrote Folks!
The new CEO of Warner Brothers is working on making HBOMAX into a wasteland. We now have a crass capitalist messing with the crown jewel of entertainment. He has shut down productions, shopped out catalog content with more on the chopping block, then removing them from HBOMAX altogether. His goal is to merge his bargain basement programming from Discovery + with HBOMAX. News flash ... if he thinks the customers of Discovery + are going to pay higher prices to watch HBOMAX content he is smokin' something. If he thinks HBOMAX customers are going to be thrilled about less content and the addition of reality shows he's got rocks in his head. His visions of grandeur are going to be short lived. What he will see is a lot of churn from both sides. Additionally, more than likely, the quality of shows on HBOMAX will suffer as he tries to cut costs and create shows that his Discovery + clientele will be drawn to. Discovery plus customers will reject the rebranding because of price and content that requires mental effort to understand. The difference in those customer bases is like trying to mix oil and water. To be this out of touch with the type of consumers who frequent these services is astounding to say the least. In this years Emmys, HBO/HBOMAX won 38 times, the most of any network. Programming on Discovery + won ... zip! In short, this is like trying to meld 'The Inquirer' with 'The Washington Post' .... not the mark of a CEO genius.
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Paid for a year subscription, doesn’t work, can’t get a refund?
I love the catalog on HBOmax, as it just has so much to offer. However, I’m incredibly frustrated with this platform and their incompetent customer service. I made an account, and purchased the yearly subscription, which amounted to $105. I log in on my device to stream, but a message pops up saying the title I wanted to watch was unavailable with my current subscription. So I go to my account settings in the app and it says I have no active subscription, after I JUST shelled out over a hundred dollars. The app then asks me who my provider is, even though I don’t have one. I contact customer service for a refund and they say they cannot locate my account. I send screenshots and records of my purchase made to HBO, and they keep asking me for alternate emails and zip codes that may be associated with my account and payment method. I have not heard back from HBO, and I don’t think I’ll be getting my money back. DO BETTER HBO!!!!!!!
Update: i have tried contacting HBO support to receive a refund for my UNUSABLE SERVICE and have jumped through multiple hoops, provided them the SAME information a million times and I still have heard nothing from them. HBO support team is utterly USELESS and completely incompetent.
Update: i have tried contacting HBO support to receive a refund for my UNUSABLE SERVICE and have jumped through multiple hoops, provided them the SAME information a million times and I still have heard nothing from them. HBO support team is utterly USELESS and completely incompetent.
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Unbelievably buggy, especially for downloading content and playing it offline
This review is not about the content on HBO Max but about the app itself. This app is slow to respond and load which is a bit annoying. But it is unbelievably buggy and almost unusable when trying to download content. Once you manage to download your content without the app crashing or stalling out, trying to play your downloaded content often leads to an error about not having a connection. Isn’t that the point of downloading content… so you can play it offline….? This issue is particularly frustrating to have once you’re already somewhere out of cell range and thought you’d be able to watch something you downloaded only for it to require an internet connection. This seems to be an issue that HBO Max is aware of because they have a series of steps to go through to try and resolve the error on their website. But even that doesn’t work half the time. I’ve even tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app with no luck. Once in a blue moon the HBO Max gods smile upon you and you can watch your downloaded content. But holy — for one of the big streaming services to have an app this bad is mind boggling.
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Solid selection, but very glitchy at times
App is great when it decides to do what it’s supposed to. I download a lot of shows because of lack of service in some areas so I can still watch stuff on the app. Well often times I open the app and it will say “no service try again”, which of course It’s right I don’t have service but the problem is it gets stuck on that screen and won’t let me get to my downloads. Sometimes opening the app in airplane mode helps and sometimes it doesn’t. Also have issues with some of my downloads just disappearing from my downloads list, often times even episodes of shows I just downloaded the night before. Naturally it’s frustrating to go to use the app and watch a show I downloaded the night prior only to find that it’s not in my download list. I’ve even had it where a show wasn’t in the list and then after several times of shutting down the app, restarting my phone, and then all of a sudden some of the stuff I downloaded will all of a sudden appear. I constantly keep the app and my phone updated so I all I can gather is that the app is just very buggy. So like I’ve said the app is great when it decides to work. On a side note, not to be totally negative,when connected to wifi the app does seem to work as intended with no issues.
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Woe is the user who forgets how bad this app handles
I recently purchased a subscription, ad-free, for hbo Max because I had one last year and I remembered all the great shows it had to offer, on top of realizing young justice was on hbo max which I had never seen but it is an amazing animated series. The first season handled fine honestly, not many issues that I could notice. But the second season is where it took a turn for the worst. The episodes would freeze on frames, not just buffering as the audio would keep going and upon rewinding it would freeze on the same frame and unfreeze at the same time no matter what. This was faulty app design. But no matter I said, I’ll download the episodes and they’ll play much better. Oh how naive and arrogant I was. You see, Hbo max will completely crash if you attempt to queue more than one episode for downloading at a time in too quickly of a succession. This means queuing up a season of the show for downloading is out of the question, as once the app crashes the downloads fail and you have to try again only to have it crash. Again. So woe be the user who remembers the glory days of hbo max but forgets the horrendous mistakes of its creators. TLDR: amazing catalogue, terrible app design
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Your app is super annoying and buggy Contant is five star
Your Contant is five star but it brings it down to one star in a matter of moments because of the frustration of your app I just finally got logged back into my app when suddenly the next day the thing logged me out on its own and would not let me log back in again this is happened so many times it’s getting to be very annoying fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app fix your app is this repeat annoying you’re probably not even reading these reviews most likely but if you are your app is much more annoying than saying fix your app over and over again and stop logging people out every five minutes and stop locking people out so they have to reset their passwords over and over again if I could I’d report you to apple if I knew how and to AT&T which I still could not that I think they’ll probably do anything about it they’ll probably say they can’t do anything on their end. Again I say please fix your app everybody here seems to be having the same problem why don’t you listen to them read your reviews increase your customer service by fixing your app
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Thoroughly broken apps & utterly inept customer service
I’m not sure any elaboration is necessary but in case you want it: App failures run the gamut, from full crashes to any function you can think of “working” one day, completely wasting your time again the next, and back again whenever. Even when app functions are “working”, the app and all its functions are so poorly thought out it’s cumbersome to use at the best of times. The apps are so bad that if you make the mistake of contacting customer service they’ll quickly whine to you about how new they are so you should give them a break. HBO, the inventors of cable TV, who between HBO Go, Now, and Max have had well over a decade to give a hoot about creating a decent app and have so astoundingly failed to do so the only reasonable conclusion is that they just don’t care, that HBO wants you to give them a break because they’re the new kids on the block. But seriously, don’t even try contacting customer service if you wish to maintain sanity. Just cut and run. Anyone you speak with at any level is either ill-informed, ill-equipped, incapable, just doesn’t care, or any combination thereof.
Edit: Don’t be fooled by “Warner Media responded to my review”. 100% of my dozens of attempts to resolve issues over the past months have proven that this company has absolutely no interest or ability to help in any way with any problem you might have
Edit: Don’t be fooled by “Warner Media responded to my review”. 100% of my dozens of attempts to resolve issues over the past months have proven that this company has absolutely no interest or ability to help in any way with any problem you might have
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Download to play later: Only in airplane mode?!
The latest update has broken a very basic and needed feature. If you download anything on wifi to watch later (to save your cell data), the only way you can view the download is by putting your phone in *airplane mode*. Even turning off wifi and cell data isn’t enough because the app complains you don’t have an internet connection to *stream* the *downloaded* video! Why do we have to render our phones useless in order to watch something specifically designed to be watched when we have limited (or only costly) internet access????
Edit: the response was a joke. It sent me to their help form. I got an email response offering to resolve “only allows playback of downloads on wifi to view later” and a link telling me how to download for later viewing. It then sent me over to chat help to resolve my issues trying to stream content. There was little response from the first ‘person’ about trying to stream on a different device. Then after explaining the issue yet again, a new ‘person’ came onto the chat and offered to help me stream my downloaded video while in airplane mode(??). Again, this last update has rendered the app useless. I hope playback is possible in future updates.
Edit: the response was a joke. It sent me to their help form. I got an email response offering to resolve “only allows playback of downloads on wifi to view later” and a link telling me how to download for later viewing. It then sent me over to chat help to resolve my issues trying to stream content. There was little response from the first ‘person’ about trying to stream on a different device. Then after explaining the issue yet again, a new ‘person’ came onto the chat and offered to help me stream my downloaded video while in airplane mode(??). Again, this last update has rendered the app useless. I hope playback is possible in future updates.
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Great content, problems with app
I’m streaming HBO Max on a Roku Ultra and agree with others that the app could use some improvement and is kind of buggy. For me, the sign in process was a problem. I changed my password and couldn’t sign out on my Roku, the button was in settings but it wouldn’t sign me out. I had to go to the app on my phone and remove the device manually. For a premium service such as this, it could use some improvement. It streams beautifully for me, but the navigation and other functions are a little behind the other streaming services.
The variety of content that you offer is very good, considering all the the hubs to the other services and new content on a regular basis. I think the price is fair compared to the other services; I signed up for an annual subscription of ad-free (actually a renewal) and got a little price break. I enjoy many shows and films, but got hooked on “The Gilded Age” and look forward to season 2. The new documentary on Arthur Ashe is excellent. If you could make some improvements to the app, this would be practically perfect.
The variety of content that you offer is very good, considering all the the hubs to the other services and new content on a regular basis. I think the price is fair compared to the other services; I signed up for an annual subscription of ad-free (actually a renewal) and got a little price break. I enjoy many shows and films, but got hooked on “The Gilded Age” and look forward to season 2. The new documentary on Arthur Ashe is excellent. If you could make some improvements to the app, this would be practically perfect.
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HBO reigns supreme
If the streaming services were in the military, then HBOMax would be the general of it all! First off I love the original movies and shows. 99% of the time it’s award winning in my opinion. The selection of movies they have is incredible, it’s not like most other services that give you a couple A movies and then the next 300 are low budget crappy movies. No HBO has a very wide range of of tier one movies for every genre and if you don’t want to watch a movie then have your pick at some of the greatest shows ever made. I have watched band of brothers about 17 times now along with my favorite Westworld and I love that you get this great service and not to mention same day releases of movies that are premiering in the theater with everything that I have mentioned before at a awesome price per month and I have had the service for 3 years now and it’s stayed the same so big congratulations to HBOMax for not jacking up the price like everything else is doing in the world. I would recommend this service to anyone who wants a great deal and awesome place to watch great shows and movies!!!
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Accessible but, AD is not updated regularly...
As a blind person, I have issues with lots of apps. I don't usually complain if it's not something I really want to use. I have video on demand and use this service. I also have the app on my telephone. It is very accessible. I am grateful for that. I am also grateful for an audio description section. The only issue I have with this is, it's not updated like everything else. If I go to the movie theater, watch a movie with audio description headphones. Shouldn't that also be on the HBO Max platform? If I watch a movie or Series on the HBO Max app and the show or movie has audio description, shouldm't that also be on my video on demand? If something is released from the beginning with audio description, how is it not on every platform that provides that entertainment? This is unacceptable. If A film company or production provides you audio description when they release art to the public on all platforms, why don't the platforms use it? Oh yeah. I forgot. Blind people don't watch TV or movies or do anything else to be productive citizens on this planet. I feel disrespected by platforms especially, when I talk to customer service or send an email with feedback and nothing ever changes. Do your job or I'll go somewhere else and take my money with me.t
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Works Fine for Me
I was surprised to see how low the rating was while updating the app recently (2.8 as of June 2022), and kinda feel compelled to provide a different perspective for folks. My experience with the HBO app has been totally fine, as in it does exactly what it’s supposed to and works just as well as any other streaming app I use. Just from a technical standpoint (not talking content), I read a lot about bugginess and slow loads on fast connections, but it works like a charm for me and has always been reliable. I’m using an iPhone 12 Mini with the latest iOS and good internet, not sure if that makes a difference. Given how solid HBO/Warner’s selection of shows and movies is (now I’m talking content), I wouldn’t want folks to miss out or not try it on their phones because they think the app’s gonna crash regularly. Or maybe it will for you, who knows, but I’ve been using it almost entirely on mobile for over a year and have had zero issues. Take it or leave - cheers!
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TERRIBLE Buffering to the Point Where You Can Never Watch Anything
I never write reviews, but I bought this on accident because unfortunately if you start the process of making an account, it charges you through the App Store, rather than asking you to put card information in on a later step. So I figured I’d try it out for at least a month, and in the couple days I’ve had it, I can almost never actually watch anything. Even when it says my wifi strength is strong and every other streaming service I have works perfectly fine, this one does not. I can barely ever get stuff to start and the few times I actually can, I can never even finish an entire episode before it starts buffering again and fails to play. This has happened on my phone and on my smart tv and it also has happened in more than one place on different wifi connections. My smart tv and iPhone are also both up-to-date and I’ve tried restarting both multiple times. I’ve had a little more luck watching on my phone, but it is still a pain and I would much rather watch off of my tv. It’s disappointing because they offer some really good movies and shows, but in my experience I can’t even watch them, and looking at a large portion of reviews, many people have experienced the same thing with HBO Max.
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Downloads
If I download an episode or movie, it says it will expire in 29 days. If I don’t watch it in a couple days, I have to renew it. The issue is that renewing doesn’t work majority of the time. This is a pain because I download stuff so I can watch when I get to areas without service. I shouldn’t have to check everyday to make sure it hasn’t expire 4 weeks early.
Edit: This is in response to the reply by the developer. It doesn’t matter what you have written on some website. I download a movie or a show and it says it will expire in 29 days. A few hours later it changes to start counting down from 72 hours or something like that. If it’s only good for 3 days, why say 29 days? That’s an issue on your end that needs to be fixed, not send me somewhere where it explains how it should be. The app should be right from the start. But then when I tell it to renew my download, it makes it look like it did by having the movie or show under my downloads and not grayed out or having the exclamation mark over the picture. So the renew feature also needs to be fixed. For giving me the runaround, I’m taking my rating down to one star. The next step, deleting and canceling my subscription.
Edit: This is in response to the reply by the developer. It doesn’t matter what you have written on some website. I download a movie or a show and it says it will expire in 29 days. A few hours later it changes to start counting down from 72 hours or something like that. If it’s only good for 3 days, why say 29 days? That’s an issue on your end that needs to be fixed, not send me somewhere where it explains how it should be. The app should be right from the start. But then when I tell it to renew my download, it makes it look like it did by having the movie or show under my downloads and not grayed out or having the exclamation mark over the picture. So the renew feature also needs to be fixed. For giving me the runaround, I’m taking my rating down to one star. The next step, deleting and canceling my subscription.
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Great content/terrible app
The content this streaming app has already and is coming up with is phenomenal in all levels, which makes the following all the more painful. The app is slow, buggy, and glitchy. I can’t watch this app on my Vizio tv because it’s always freezing, glitchy and the audio desynchronizes. All of this at random times. I wish it was just certain shows, but unfortunately I haven’t found a movie or show in which it doesn’t happen. I used to think it was my internet or my tv, but it’s the only streaming app that gives me these problems. I wish it was only happening in my tv, but it also happens in all my devices, although in my phone and iPad it happens less. I end up hailing to download the shows in my phone or iPad to then watch them. However, the download doesn’t always work either; sometimes downloads have unexpected errors and I have to try 5 times to get a show or movie downloaded. I have some feedback about the interface too, but there’s no point in focusing on that until all of these bugs are fixed. Actually, there is one interface note that I don’t think should wait until the bugs are fixed, the fact that when you’re done watching an episode or movie and want to rewatch it, instead of starting over (because you’ve finished it) it goes back to where you left off in the credits. Really?
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App embarrassing for HBO brand
HBO has long been known for great content, but this app tarnishes their rep. There are so many issues I don’t know where to start. First off, it is extremely slow. This includes loading time but even just clicking any button takes about 10 seconds to do anything. For example, deleting a download takes forever and there is no indicator that it is doing something. Downloads are touchy. You can only download one show/episode at a time or they will fail. Then you can’t restart the download, you have to delete it, search for the show and try again. Several times I have tried to watch a download on a plane. If you aren’t connected to the internet you can get a message that you aren’t connected and it kicks you out of your logged in session. What is the point of downloads other than to watch offline? My last complaint is usability. Simple things like when you see shows you are currently watching there is no option to go to the landing page for the show. You can only resume the one you are watching. It is not a great experience to have to search for the show when the current episode is right there I front of you. When you compare the quality of the app to others this one falls way short.
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Terrible App! Quality Content
HBO clearly has big budget capabilities, but this app isn’t it. It’s so buggy. It crashes all the time. The main issue seems to be downloading shows. If you’re lucky, one show will download. The download will fail a few times, but eventually it gets there. But NEVER try to download two shows at once. It will crash for sure. After you get the one show to download, that’s it. Every other download will fail and/or crash the app. I haven’t tried downloading a movie because a 60 min show takes all my patience. Next you have the caching issue… every time you move from a screen back to the previous screen it has to reload the whole page again. And it’s not fast about it. And last, offline is a struggle, but once you get the app to come to terms with being offline, it will get the job done. However, it doesn’t seem to sync back to my HBO profile, so when I go back to my AppleTV, it doesn’t register that I’ve already watched a few shows of a series.
I need HBO iOS and AppleTV apps to be a lot better. Their app have always been terrible, but it’s gotten so bad that I’m now one of those people leaving a long ranting app review, screaming into the void, as if it’s going to help.
I need HBO iOS and AppleTV apps to be a lot better. Their app have always been terrible, but it’s gotten so bad that I’m now one of those people leaving a long ranting app review, screaming into the void, as if it’s going to help.
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Buggy, slow, poorly designed, screen-waster
Got a decent size iPhone? Good thing, cause this poorly designed app will waste about 30% of the screen by putting black bars on all four sides. They apparently took away full-screen mode at some point in the past year. Seems like it was intentional, since people have been complaining and they haven’t brought it back. I just rejoined, and the bad experience is making me think it will be a pay-for-a-month-and-out situation. Get your act together, HBO. Why throw all that money at making good content if your app dev team is going to chase away your subscribers?
Update: the Developer response only addresses my “feature request” for full screen. That is a “feature restore” after some bizarrely-bad decision to remove it. I’m not going to go fill out some form to get it back - this should be obvious.
Also, the app is objectively bad in many ways: slow, laggy, locks up randomly, crashes, poorly laid-out, odd controls, and so much more. No amount of feedback can help a team that would release such a bad app in the first place. They need to just look at other apps that work correctly, and do that.
My review here is just to give fair warning to anyone considering watching HBO on their iPhone that it will be an annoying experience. The developer shouldn’t need to read the details here to know they’ve got a mess on their hands.
Update: the Developer response only addresses my “feature request” for full screen. That is a “feature restore” after some bizarrely-bad decision to remove it. I’m not going to go fill out some form to get it back - this should be obvious.
Also, the app is objectively bad in many ways: slow, laggy, locks up randomly, crashes, poorly laid-out, odd controls, and so much more. No amount of feedback can help a team that would release such a bad app in the first place. They need to just look at other apps that work correctly, and do that.
My review here is just to give fair warning to anyone considering watching HBO on their iPhone that it will be an annoying experience. The developer shouldn’t need to read the details here to know they’ve got a mess on their hands.
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