I subscribed to HBO Max this week because of the 50% off promotion, but I was disappointed with the lack of content in 4K HDR. Basically, only a few new releases and „classics“ support Ultra HD. Major movies, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Christopher Nolan’s Batman, are not available in 4K. Even relatively recent films like „Ocean’s 8“ and „Joker“, or platform exclusives like „Locked Down“, are not available in this format. I found this disappointing, since the ones I mentioned—and many others—already have 4K Blu-ray versions. I hope they add 4K support for these and more movies in the future.
But are some of those you mentioned available in 4K on another streaming service? Maybe the licensing is only for the regular HD version and there’s some restriction for 4K.
HBO Max is full of whys: why the bizarre subtitles, why the lack of content, why the lack of 4K, why the problem with credit cards, why the problem with authentication through TV providers, why the lack of an app on PS5 and Fire TV, why the watched issue on Chromecast. It’s incredible how amateur they are, I was amazed, and there are still people who say they’re going to kill Netflix—courage. What’s most curious is that they had a full year to test all this and they didn’t, and now they just keep making excuses on Twitter
I know, I thought the same thing! There was some crazy guy in another thread who commented, „HBO Max is the best streaming service in the world“ hahaha and it wasn’t even April Fools’…
I like the service, and I subscribed too, but they got off to a rough start… I know they’ll adjust and improve over time, just like any other service…
You can’t even expect much from a company that until recently was using HBO GO.
Jokes aside, it doesn’t even seem like a big company… I came from Disney+ and the feeling is they’re amateurs or a backyard business.
When they release a movie or series, they only announce the day, because they don’t have the balls to announce times.
Meanwhile, on Disney+, I woke up in the middle of the night just to watch the season finale of WandaVision.
Exactly, they have a catalog that could make a big difference, and I was excited, because after all it’s HBO, but it’s the most ridiculous thing ever made — even Record with that PlayPlus works better
That’s what irritates me: it’s a billion-dollar company but they don’t seem to understand anything about digital, and in the end it only proves what many know and won’t admit: Netflix is bigger in every way and runs even on a Galaxy Pocket with 2G
Netflix is still unbeatable when it comes to technology. It works well on any device and data consumption is low.
The only bad thing is that 4k is only available on the R$45.90 plan, which I think is steep.
In the early days of Netflix in the US, there was a CD for you to access the app on the PS2, which shows that from the start they understood the digital world.
Today, the difficulty in competing with Netflix isn’t having content, it’s being able to deliver it to the customer with a good experience. While they can’t manage that, they’re giving Netflix time to try and learn how to make good content.
As others have mentioned, HBO seems to be messing around. The subtitles are broken in the middle, creating two half-lines, and they appear in the middle of the screen, often right in front of the character’s face.
Another really annoying detail is when I want to exit a program to pick another one, I press the back button on the TV and it pauses the video; if I press it again, it plays. You have to do a “double click” for it to get the idea — ridiculous. I only tested it because it came as a “bonus” with Directv Go, which, by the way, is better than the HBO app.
In the end the thread turned into “the problems with HBO Max” and not “why is there so little 4K content”. 
Anyway, my guess for the thread’s original question is that maybe they lack the infrastructure to serve 4K content to all subscribers and/or they don’t yet have a solution for encoding movies in 4K for streaming (maybe they haven’t found a solution on the market and are working on their own encoder, who knows).
It could be a licensing issue as already mentioned, but since it was also pointed out that even their own productions aren’t available in 4K, I’m guessing lack of infrastructure is the main problem.
Right, I also think their prices are a bit off for a time when there’s so much cheap streaming, but in the end you pay for the accessibility and convenience of the service, because the first time you see “This content could not be played” on Prime, you realize that R$9.90 is way too little and you can’t even complain much.
I remember when they launched here in Brazil; back then it was still those damn 2GB data caps that every carrier had, and they already had that bizarre file size compression, so much so that I never saw 2GB allow you to watch so much stuff; they are impeccable in technology and their content is improving every day
Isn’t the lack of 4K a problem? It’s very strange for a company of this size not to have ‘infrastructure’, when anyone can subscribe to a cloud!
Not for everyone, but anyway, that’s not my point.
My point is that the topic was opened to discuss this specific problem, but nobody actually discussed it — they just jumped in pointing out all the other problems. 
Infrastructure includes not only the cloud system to deliver the content, but also the technology to encode (whatever people call it in Portuguese) the content in 4K efficiently and with acceptable quality.
Maybe they already use another company’s cloud service (very likely, actually), but they might be trying to develop a homegrown solution for the second point instead of buying/licensing a solution from other companies (either because no company has a solution that satisfies them or because the solution they want isn’t available).
I believe the issues mentioned above (spoiler: quite a few) can be explained by the fact that the service only arrived in Brazil two weeks ago. Okay, Warner is a multinational conglomerate that should have better infrastructure, but even so, it’s worth giving it a month to see if they get their act together.
I think she wasn’t that worried about infrastructure because, until a couple of weeks ago, HBO Max was only available in one country (the US), while its main competitors (Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+) are already available in half the world (and all three use AWS). Does anyone know if AT&T (WarnerMedia’s current owner) has its own cloud solution?
I was watching a movie in 4K, and my Fire Stick (which is running HBO Max through a workaround) didn’t work, so I went back to the HBO Max app on my Samsung TV.
The HBO Max app is so poorly made that it doesn’t even support the play/pause buttons on the remote.
So every time I try to use it, this pop-up appears asking me to use the navigation and enter buttons on the remote.
Just to add to my previous comment where I compared HBO Max to a backyard operation.