Is HBO Max Broken? (avclub.com) 68
Last week, Apple TV users reported issues with HBO Max refusing to rewind, fast-forward, or pause content. According to The A.V. Club, the issue is still ongoing. From the report: Strangely enough, HBO Max's customer service Twitter account acknowledged the issue on June 4. They wrote to a Twitter user, "We're aware of this issue with our app on Apple TV and our team is working to find a solution as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience while we sort this out." HBO says "fixes coming," according to The Verge. Yesterday, the site's editor-in-chief tweeted about the issue to HBO Max's executive vice president and general manager Andy Forssell, who tweeted, "First priority is to deliver for users in addressing the issues, but in parallel we will also dive deep into that question." As of now, though, the company is still charging users for an app that won't let you rewind, say, that scene from Dumb & Dumber where Harry has diarrhea. This leads us to ask, where's the money going?
A new low (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Slashdot now a platform for customers of random services to whine about bad experience with the product or tech support?
Re:A new low (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Slashdot now a platform for customers of random services to whine about bad experience with the product or tech support?
It's a very odd post. Why should I care that fast-forward isn't working on a streaming app?
HBO has been notified and they will eventually fix it.
Or they won't, and some people will stop using their service.
Either way, don't care.
Re: A new low (Score:2)
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This is a very odd reply. Why should I care how this effects ~magzteel? Are we all to post how this impacts our lives? Magzteel will either accept this as a humorous jab or not. Either way, don't care.
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That's a moronic take, even to many other more marginal Slashdot "technology" posts.
Television has moved en masse to streaming technology. It's a subscription model. Vendors have been pushing buggy software and hiding behind disclaimers and some level of legal immunity for years. All of this seems entirely relevant when a streaming service's UI is shitty, the billing never stops and there's a bunch of crickets or finger pointing about why.
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... fast-forward isn't working on a streaming app?.
Shoot, fast-forward isn't a problem for me. It is starting of the dang movie/show I'm upset about. Barely works at all. If you do try to seek (RW/FF/PAUSE) in the stream, you're almost assuredly going to get an app crash. This has been occurring ever since the latest update that asked me to subscribe to HBO/HBO Max each and every time the app is started.
Interesting that this happens immediately after AT&T punts their problem to the Discovery channels. Don't know if Discovery programmers are the cau
Re: A new low (Score:2)
I never could understand why someone would pay for Apple TV then have to pay for the channels to go with it.
Re:A new low (Score:4, Informative)
Not only that, but the fix was out even before the summary was posted to Slashdot, so the issue was already moot: https://www.macrumors.com/2021... [macrumors.com]
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It could be HBO maxes problems stem from bad upstream proxies that don't work with their service. I had that happen with Netflix back in the day when the ISP I worked
Re:A new low [in advertising?] (Score:2)
Please define "your" and "logic", eh? Just joking, but the response looks pretty typical for these days.
I actually have a moderate interest in HBO for the sake of two news-ish programs, but it's mostly geographic as in the local currency and even credit cards ain't no good. At least that's what HBO keeps saying. So I just have to settle for the snippets.
Insofar as the snippets are funded by advertising, I'll throw out an old suggestion approach: User-selected advertising. As things stand, the ads are always
Pirate bay (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the thing about the pirate bay, it's not just free, it's also a better product.
If you download a video you get no DRM so you can sue any video player on any device and it never fucks up.
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Let me adjust that slightly
Here's the thing about . It's owned by self-entitled fuckwits who contribute nothing but think they have some sort of right to charge whatever they want.
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Funny, I see Amazon trucks and vans fueling up at the same gas stations as I do. And the roads are paid for with the per-gallon tax on that fuel.
Re: Pirate bay (Score:2)
Amazon doesn't pay to fuel those trucks; their customers do
FTFY
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I would be HIGHLY surprised if fuel taxes covered 100% of road construction and maintenance costs.
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If you don't like what something costs, that doesn't mean you're entitled to it for free.
Fully agreed. And this has bearing on my previous statement how?
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If you make something, whether it be a house, a car, a piece of jewelry, a hamburger, a song, a movie, or a painting you can charge whatever you want for it. If someone else finds the price too high, they must forgo having your product.
If the creators are 'contributing nothing' as you stupidly claim, why on earth do you want their product?
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If you make something, whether it be a house, a car, a piece of jewelry, a hamburger, a song, a movie, or a painting you can charge whatever you want for it. If someone else finds the price too high, they must forgo having your product.
If the creators are 'contributing nothing' as you stupidly claim, why on earth do you want their product?
I wonder how many of the folks who pirate content, who are all so self righteous rationalizing their reasons for so doing, want to bring out the pitchforks and torches if someone uses FOSS in a product without making the source code available. I'm sure they can come up with BS reasons why that is different.
From TFA: This leads us to ask, where's the money going?
Whoever said "there is no stupid question" never heard that asked.
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Unsurprisingly, the people drafting it were consumers of embedded devices, but producers of web solutions.. meaning they wanted something that would push procedures in other industries to cater to their desires as consumers but not force their own industry to do things that might impact their paychecks.
Flag as Inappropriate
Citation fucking needed.
This is RMS you're talking about who is nothing if not consistent about software.
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If you make something, whether it be a house, a car, a piece of jewelry, a hamburger, a song, a movie, or a painting you can charge whatever you want for it. If someone else finds the price too high, they must forgo having your product.
If the creators are 'contributing nothing' as you stupidly claim, why on earth do you want their product?
I don't buy content I don't like the cost of and I don't pirate it either (disclosure: I don't pirate since napster when I was in college anyway, most of what I pirated then I've purchased). That doesn't mean I think the companies are any less thieves than people who use pirate bay.
Re: Pirate bay (Score:2)
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It's also for entirely reasonable fuckwits who actually want to get the product they paid for, rather than a hobbled version from companies trying to do an end run around the insane copyright laws they've already bought.
Re: Pirate bay (Score:3)
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It also randomly crashes. Often won't play the next episode. The on screen controls become unresponsive and unclickable, and everything just pauses the show.
My internet connection includes HBO Max with it at no extra charge, so I use it. But their interface on the web is broken in several ways.
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I think suing is what the content providers do to the pirates :D
You don't pay for the app, doofus. (Score:2)
---- This post brought to you by the word Doofus. Use it today! ----
Is Slashdot Broken ? (Score:5, Funny)
For the last five years, Slashdot users reported issues with Slashdot Editors refusing to proofread, fact-check, or correct content. According to CmdrTaco, the issue is still ongoing.
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Indeed. Where is all that ad revenue going?
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no worries, msmash tweeted - "First priority is to deliver for users in addressing the issues, but in parallel we will also dive deep into that question." so im sure all will be resolved soon.
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For the last five years, Slashdot users reported issues with Slashdot Editors refusing to proofread, fact-check, or correct content. According to CmdrTaco, the issue is still ongoing.
And I heard (over a bowl of hot grits) from Natalie Portman that Netcraft confirmed it.
Re:Well, of course it doesn't rewind (Score:5, Funny)
Fucking HBO Max charges me extra every month for not rewinding videos after I'm finished watching them.
dude you hit the jackpot! (Score:2)
dude you hit the jackpot!
An late fee and an rewind fee.
Really? (Score:2)
The correct question is:
Has Apple broken HBO Max on it's platform?
Re: Really? (Score:2)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not uncommon for players to allow the content to toggle certain features on and off. It was not uncommon for DVD players to disable skipping the upcomming features previews for example.
I can imagine some studio producing content and setting the permission mask to zero. Not understanding all the stuff that will break.
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Except in this case they admitted they tried to implement their own video player and fucked up and are reverting back to apples API to fix the damage.
It's happening with Roku hardware, too. (Score:5, Informative)
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I generally kind of like the HBO Max interface (use it mostly on Roku), at least from a design perspective. Its one of the few streaming services that seems like is willing to show me what they have, not just promote what they want and bury the rest in cesspool of crap titles. There's maybe a wee bit of excess promotion of some new content, but they have it otherwise well organized.
I do feel like the actual app performance has never been totally smooth. The UI can be sluggish and jerky, worse than other
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Re: It's happening with Roku hardware, too. (Score:2)
HBO MAX has not responded to my emails sent to their tech support team.
HBO only communicates via AN0M.
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Web site version is also crap.
make it work on Linux again! (Score:2)
make it work on Linux again!
Better late than never? (Score:3)
Incompatible widget (Score:2)
Looks like they had to use their own video player, but failed to check for proper integration. According to the following article they reverted to using the native player:
https://appleinsider.com/artic... [appleinsider.com]
buggy af (Score:2)
HBO Max is buggy on pretty much all platforms.
Based on what I've seen, it seems like they are much more focused on curation than user experience. Unlike Netflix or Amazon, which are obviously showing me things from an algorithm, HBO shows me something a bit more tailored. It's a better experience for finding new content.
But then I regularly see things like Chromecast disconnects, glacially slow 10 second skipping, videos that are missing the Play button, etc.
HBO is selling content on Max. Not a viewing expe
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If that were true, it would be wonderful and this story wouldn't exist. Peoples' players would just keep on playing the content. Or if you have a problem with this player, then just try that one. There are lots of great video players.
I think you got it backwards. HBO actually sells it as an app, not as a service. You have to use their viewing experience to access the service.
If HBO actually made a move toward selling content, that could be huge. They'r
"Where's the money going?" (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate this question so much. Ya, there are times where it's genuinely a good question-- the public sector for example. If a city is running a deficit for the year, then it's wise to ask, "Where's the money going?"
On the other hand, if there's a technical error on a website, "Where's the money going?" isn't a valid question. It's not like you can shove money into a slot and make technical problems go away. They're not going to hire 50 more programmers to stamp out a single bug.
A more appropriate question to ask is, "How complex is this bug?" But that doesn't really get so many clicks, does it?
Their stuff downloads just fine here. (Score:4, Funny)
The article has it wrong (Score:3)
People get a subscription service, and the app is used to make use of that subscription. The HBO Max app for Amazon FireTV and Android works fine, so this is just a, "Where's the Apple quality when testing apps?" situation. Again, the service itself is fine, but the AppleTV app has a problem.
Perportedly fixed now (Score:2)
i was suspecting browser war again last night (Score:2)