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Of all the streaming services Iāve tried, Iād say that Max and Apple (ugh, I feel so dirty even writing this) TV are the best for me. That said, I havenāt tried the likes of Shudder or Peacock.
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I found Apple to be very good. Not a huge catalogue, but what there is, is of high quality.
Is Max an HBO thing?
I was listening to the Richard Osman podcast, and he said that the big growth area for streaming are the āfree with adsā type services, things like Pluto and Roku. Essentially, these are replacing the linear broadcast channels.
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Yeah, it got rebranded from HBO Max to Max (decision obviously made by lords of marketing and invention). The library is great, though, and I think that itās even better if you use it with VPN, so you can access the library of other regions/countries.
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I donāt think I can get it in Germany, although they do seem to have the big HBO series on Sky Deutschland.
You guys have cancelled Netflix at just the wrong time.
Started Kaos this morning - Iām only three episodes in (there are eight in total), but so far it has been absolutely bloody brilliant.
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I still have it until 10.09.2024 so there is a chance we could watch that. Or, add it to a wishlist and, when there is enough, subscribe for a month and watch it like buggery.
I think the last time we cancelled Netflix, the must have thing was Squid Game. I subscribed for a year and was supposed to cancel after that, but someone was always watching āsomethingā. After we finished Vikings: Valhalla, the cancel button was engaged!
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VPN is key for non-us users. Warner Bros has only recently started to build out a direct to consumer platform outside of the US so has a lot of its content locked up in licensing deals with other platforms like Sky in the UK
Whatās interesting about Max is that, at least for now, they are not blocking any VPN providers, at least not that I know. On the other hand, Amazon and Netflix stamp down pretty heavily on them.
From a tech perspective it is an absolutely dogshit app. They are so far behind in terms of usability and reliability, and are so short on cash that Iād imagine this is a gap they leave unaddressed for a long time. I donāt get how they got themselves into this situation with such a rushed out product as they were very early into the market with DTC streaming apps about a decade ago so I dont get how this one can be so much worse than their older generations ones.
Regarding the reliability, it doesnāt play well with Roku tvs and users frequently find the app freezing or even crashing if you ask it to do things like rewind, or use the back button. One issue I have is films routinely start with the wrong aspect ratio that cuts off about half the screen. You cannot solve it by adjusting your settings and the only thing that works is exiting the film and then restarting, but you have to let it run long enough before exiting that the app registers it has started so it presents the restart button because that is the only way to reset the settings. tās a real tightrope though as occasionally trying that many actions in succession will make the app give up and shut itself down 
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I use it on Android TV (or Google TV if one prefers), got myself a bargain Xiaomi 2nd gen. box when it was released. Hardware is great but the software is disastrous, I canāt believe that Google advertise it but donāt put any real effort into developing it.
I get the impression that attitude trickles down to apps of even the big players like Tidal (an absolutely disastrous app on Google TV). That said, Iām not too disappointed by Max app - especially not after using Amazon Prime Video for a whileā¦ Now, that is a poorly designed UI.
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Amazon Prime have recently redesigned. Itās far from perfect but it is a definite improvement.
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Next Weekā¦
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OMITB and Rings of Power both came back this week as well 
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Rings of power so far is slow and a tad boring imo ( third episode almost finished )
FFS I havent finished The Acolyte yet.
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yep,
started last night, really enjoyingā¦
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I know Iām late but finished The Acolyte last night. I honestly thought it was ok. I dont know what peoples āconcernsā with it are.
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saw two episodes of Rings of Power.
Itās okay as a fanfiction of Tolkienās works.
Anyone watched the whole Power Universe?