HBO Max launched to great fanfare on May 27, and even though it immediately came under fire for a number of missing titles (including The Dark Knight Trilogy), subscribers were mostly happy. The addition of the Harry Potter films helped, but there was something even more vital missing.
The service being unavailable on Amazon Fire and Roku devices infuriated many, but even more pressing was the lack of true 4K HDR picture quality and sound options like Dolby Atmos. They come as standard on streaming platforms like Disney+ and Netflix, so what's the deal with HBO Max?
Talking to The Verge, HBO Max head Tony Gonclaves said, "I’m not going to have a feature dialogue with you, but as somebody that likes to get close to the metal, I can tell you that there’s a lot of features and a lot of capabilities that we would have liked to launch with that we didn’t."
"It just comes down to a matter of priority and getting a product to market. When you’re asking about 4K and HDR and Atmos — not unimportant and definitely something on the roadmap. It had to be a deliberate choice of what to launch with and when. And those trade-offs happen daily. It’ll come. It wasn’t forgotten. I think it was just a deliberate prioritization."
It sounds like the priority for WarnerMedia was getting HBO Max in people's homes, even if it meant the service would be lacking key features in 2020. However, it's something they need to make a priority if they hope to keep paying subscribers.
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