It caught us a bit off guard, but the transition from HBO Spain to HBO Max after the summer of 2021 we saw it as good news. Or at least, we were very naive thinking that the disastrous spanish platform it would finally take a step back and acquire the seriousness of HBO Global. HBO Max promised to be a very different product. Its name gave rise to confusion, but basically, it was a much more complete service with warnermedia behind. If the HBO brand was kept, it was simply for marketing reasons. However, a few months have passed, and the HBO Max service still not a big deal in Spain.
HBO Bad. What’s going on?
Some of the questions that arise for HBO Max users already have answers. has obtained them Anthony Married (@timelapses), who has published an extensive thread on twitter explaining point by point some of the most serious problems that we find in the video on demand platform.
The platform is still not global
Apparently, Who’s behind HBO Max continues being HBO Nordic. This would go to show that HBO Max is the same dog with a different collar. Technically, the future plans of the Americans is to globalize the platform, but today, things are run by them.
HBO Max is currently managed by the “European parent company”, HBO Nordic. The copies are the ones they (the Nordics) have, many times coming from an HDTV broadcast, with the audio in Spanish added.
Come on, the masters from the US are not coming
– Antonio Casado (@timelapses) January 13, 2022
The Masters do not come from the USA
Here comes the girl. Apparently, what HBO Nordic receives on many occasions are broadcasts in HDTV quality to which the Audio. This would come to explain too many things, starting with the excessive compression that the videos of the HBO platform have, both in the past and now. Do you remember that episode from the final season of Game of Thrones that it looked all black? There it was a combination of bad lighting with excessive compression, but nowadays, many series suffer from this phenomenon. The dark planes in the HBO series they are seen almost in Minecraft quality, something that takes many of us completely out of the immersion.
Why is there content without subtitles?
You are watching a series and it has subtitles in Spanish. You advance to the next episode and that’s it no subtitles. Is there any logical and rational explanation for that? This is what happens from chapter 6 of Station Eleven, for example. Well, blame it, again, on HBO Nordic. Apparently, only what is already transcribed in the Nordic copy is translated. However, they are giving priority to this problem, because they know that many users will not hesitate to unsubscribe from HBO Max if the series they are interested in does not have subtitles in their language.
Pan & Scan
Apparently, many users buy a fat TV of more than 50 inches and feel offended when two black bars to fit the panoramic format of the series or movie that is playing. That’s wasting TV! Right now I’m complaining to HBO!
Well, HBO prefers to agree with those poor devils without audiovisual culture and loads the widescreen format (and cuts the ends, that is, we lose information) only because a group of people with little knowledge of cinema complain. Wouldn’t it be more logical upload both versions and that each one reproduces what they want?
no 25fps
In the US, HBO Max is not limited to 25 frames per second. And here, it is technically an Internet streaming service, detached from the linear tv services. Well, for HBO Max in Europe, it is not. According to them, HBO Max is equivalent to an ‘Internet’ version of linear TV. That not only means that we will not see products at more than 25 frames per second, but that we will doubtfully be able to enjoy more complex compression algorithms that they solve some of the great problems of HBO Max in our country, such as the excessive compression of the videos.
