HBO’s new streaming service, Max, crashed on Tuesday, its very first day in service, reports say. The new service has replaced the cable giant’s previous offering, HBO Max, but customers reported being unable to connect to the service, ABC News reported.
HBO told the media that the issues were addressed and the service was back to running as normal by late Tuesday morning.
“You must always anticipate issues on a tech rollout of this scale,” the spokesperson said, according to ABC. “We can share that only minor ones have emerged and were quickly remedied.”
The service is an expanded version of the previous iteration. Max has added eight times the number of movies that HBO Max offered. Shows are also delivered in 4K UHD, HBO told customers. According to advanced publicity, the service will offer more than 1,000 movies for streamers for between $9.99 and $19.99 a month.
“We understand the value of offering our users a cinematic playback experience and to that end, we’ve implemented more advanced technology workflows that allow us to release more 4K content in a faster, more efficient way,” Warner Bros. Discovery’s Sudheer Sirivara said on Monday. “Max will offer more than 1,000 films and episodes in 4K at launch, and we’ll be adding more every month as we move forward.”
HBO added that most current HBO Max subscribers will have their service automatically switched over to Max.
The expansion comes at the same time most streamers, studios, and entertainment companies are suffering through major cutbacks.
Disney has been engaged in several waves of layoffs to try and stabilize a budget that has been bleeding red for years. The Mouse House has also been struggling in the streaming space with its Disney+ still losing subscribers.
Fox News is also reeling from layoffs and just last week dumped its entire investigative unit.
Showtime and Paramount recently lopped MTV News off at the ankles, as well.
Also, Netflix dumped around 300 employees last year as the streaming world took a major downturn in the post pandemic era.
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