What's In A Name? Meet Max

For some reason, the service originally known as HBO has never been satisfied with its name. It’s kind of odd because they are the original premium pay service. HBO started back on November 8th of 1972 to a massive audience of 672 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania. It aired a hockey game between the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks from Madison Square Garden. There is actually a plaque commemorating the launch event located at Public Square in downtown Wilkes-Barre. So, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, stop by and take a selfie with it.

From that initial hockey game, HBO became the original version of Home Box Office that many of us think of. Back then it aired mostly movies and an occasional comedy or concert special. In fact, HBO did not even go 24/7 until 1982. The next year, HBO started to produce its own programming such as "Not Necessarily the News” and "Inside the NFL”. In 1983, it produced its first made-for movie, "The Terry Fox Story”. By the 1990’s HBO was producing its own scripted shows such as "The Larry Sanders Show”, "Oz” and "Mr. Show With Bob and David”. That Bob guy was from Berwyn whose odd last name, Odenkirk, did not seem to hurt his career as he donned three other names (Jimmy McGill, Saul Goodman and Gene Takavic) in two iconic TV shows, "Breaking Bad” and "Better Call Saul”.

But I digress. By 1999, HBO had a couple of genuine homeruns on its hands with "The Sopranos” and "Sex in the City”. It seemed that everything that they touched turned to gold. That is until a series of new owners and CEOs couldn't help but to tinker – especially with its name. In fact, they've had three other names in just the past few years. First, they divided HBO into "HBO Go” and "HBO Now”. I’m not going to bother to get into the differences between those two. I’ll only say that one was a streaming service and the other was a cable channel which could also be streamed. Suffice it to say that all those names caused a great deal of confusion. There was so much confusion that just a couple of years after their cable/streaming mitosis, they scrapped "Now" and "Go" and reduced it back to one service - "HBO Max”. This could have been the final answer but, nope. New owner Warner Bros. Discovery decided that four names just weren’t enough so, let's meet "Max”.

Max hit the air on May 23rd, 2023, with new branding and graphics. Oh and also, some new programming. Its new slogan is, "The One to Watch”. So, what’s on that "one to watch" and what’s the difference between HBO Max and Max? I’m glad you asked. The fine folks at Max say that it's designed to be an enhanced streaming service (whatever that means). I think it means that Max will be a bigger service than HBO Max, which already was a pretty darn good streaming service. The product is sort of an HBO Max and Discovery+ (Discovery’s other streaming service) friends with benefits merger. Discovery+ will still be a thing on its own, but a lot of the Discovery+ programming will also be available now to Max subscribers – of course at a higher price than that of the still available Discovery+ service.

So, while HBO Max had HBO Originals, Max Originals, Warner Bros. films, DC Universe movies and shows such as "Peacemaker" and The Batman and Harry Potter movies — Max will have more. How much more? Well, Max will also offer content from HGTV, Food Network, Discovery Channel, ID, TLC and much more. So, for those of us who are current HBO Max subscribers, we get those friendly benefits. Think about all the best shows on HBO Max — from "Abbott Elementary" to "Succession", and from "Chernobyl" to "Station Eleven". It'll have all of those, as well as unscripted content from Discovery+, such as "Deadliest Catch", "90 Day Fiancé" and Magnolia Network programs such as "Fixer Upper."

It all sounds pretty good so far. Better yet, there will be no price increases for its ad supported ($9.99 a month) and its non-ad ($15.99 a month) tiers. Of course, they recently raised prices, so that was already baked in Max's cake. There is a new "Ultimate” tier price of $19.99 a month. For that, you get 4K streaming and Dolby Atmos sound, where those things are available. But buyer beware, there is still limited content available in those formats. So, for now, unless you have a great home theater setup and want to occasionally stream in 4K video and Dolby Atmos sound, the Ultimate price may ultimately prove to be too expensive.

So, what does this all mean to those of us who have been happily watching HBO, HBO Go, HBO Plus or HBO Max? Well, not that much except we do get some new programming options from the Discovery Streaming service with Max. So, that's good. A lot of people have asked me about usernames and passwords with the new service. They say that you should be able to use the same login credentials with Max as you have had with HBO Max. So, hopefully, you will have a seamless transition into what will be the final name for the streaming service formerly known as Home Box Office. Because at this point, there's really only one other option - a princely symbol.