Hidden Gems of HBO Max

I just sent my Mom a Fire Stick so she can watch His Dark Materials.

Your welcome.

Grenn wrote:
Stele wrote:

App on PS5 today.

Roku tomorrow.

Christmas is saved.

The gift of Christmas Dune. Wonder Woman 1984

Dune was pushed back.

BadKen wrote:
Grenn wrote:
Stele wrote:

App on PS5 today.

Roku tomorrow.

Christmas is saved.

The gift of Christmas Dune. Wonder Woman 1984

Dune was pushed back. :(

To the 18th, I thought.

edit* Just checked. sh*t. At lease I saved $15.

Doom Patrol is fantastic. I don’t know if there are more seasons planned but I have been plowing through the first two seasons and loving it.

Edit - Season 3 was green lit this last September so yay!

Friends reunion?

FRIENDS REUNION?!?!

BTW, after the tales of Joss Whedon’s foul behavior during Justice League production, it’s kind of nice that we’ll have a Whedon-free version soon.

Stele wrote:

App on PS5 today.

Roku tomorrow.

Christmas is saved.

Nice! My Roku already had the HBO Max app--it looks like it auto updated the HBO app--and I was able to sign in using my Amazon account as I was subscribing to the HBO channel there.

I played around with it last night after finishing up Lovecraft Country--highly recommend--and came to the conclusion that the user experience of the HBO Max Roku app makes me pine for Amazon's user interface. Jesus, it's terrible.

I also found out after adding a bunch of things to my watchlist on HBO Max's website because the app was so cumbersome that the app watchlist will only display the last 25 or so that you added.

OG_slinger wrote:

Nice! My Roku already had the HBO Max app--it looks like it auto updated the HBO app--and I was able to sign in using my Amazon account as I was subscribing to the HBO channel there.

Oh that's good news. I haven't tried that yet. But Amazon was still showing HBO free trial last week so I was going to sign up there and see if it worked.

Probably enough stuff to pay for anyway but I might want to get Disney+ again to catch up on Mandalorian and get back to HBO when more movies release. I try not to subscribe to too many things at once. But I do want to see Wonder Woman.

If you want a great Roku UI, try the Reelgood app.

Also if you want a great app for finding where stuff is streaming, and tracking watchlists, and finding stuff to watch with a pretty good recommendation engine... try the Reelgood app.

My biggest beef with HBO Max (now that I’m finally enjoying stuff in 4K) is that nothing seems to be in UHD on the service. Apparently WW84 will be the first.

I finished Season One of Love Life and quite enjoyed it. It is not quite strong enough to be top tier level TV, but it is willing to dodge your expectations by just enough to be interesting. Once I realized this show was not going to do the most obvious thing, it set out to do what I thought of as the most obvious not-obvious thing, if that makes any sense. Definitely interested to see Season Two.

I also watched the first season of the Harley Quinn cartoon, which was great! I'd watched the first episode when I had a DCU subscription a while back, and it didn't grab me, but everyone here was right, it is good. However, it also inspired me to watch the Harley Quinn/Birds of Prey movie that's on HBO Max and which I had heard good things about and I thought it was pretty bad! Very much in line with Aquaman--sure, it's not as terrible as Batman v Superman/Justice League/Suicide Squad, but it's still not actually very good. It's visually inventive in spots, and I did rather enjoy the way Ewan McGregor set all his dials to 11 and went all-in on his choices, but it felt strangely boring for a movie that felt like it was trying to be totally off-the-wall. Unlike the Harley cartoon, the movie was much less successful in giving this sense of who she is and how she can be a criminal and a villain but also good and a hero. Harley's voice best illustrates the difference between these two for me: in the cartoon, Harley mostly talks like a normal person, and when she breaks out the original Harley voice with its "Mistah J"s and "puddin'"s and such, it's a deliberate affectation deployed to make a point; in the Harley movie, that's pretty much just how Margot Robbie talks, and it's just kind of weird and annoying.

BadKen wrote:

If you want a great Roku UI, try the Reelgood app.

Also if you want a great app for finding where stuff is streaming, and tracking watchlists, and finding stuff to watch with a pretty good recommendation engine... try the Reelgood app.

Reelgood app makes me look like a freeking genius to my family.

“Oh, there’s this really interesting thing that I want to watch, but I have no idea how to stream it.”

“Give me one second... ok... you can rent it on Amazon prime video for a buck!”

“Whaaahhh.... how did you know that?”

“I used the Reelgood app. I put it in your phone. You can use it anytime you want to find out where to stream a thing you want to watch.”

::crickets:: ::crickets::

I use Justwatch for basically the same thing.

RawkGWJ wrote:
BadKen wrote:

If you want a great Roku UI, try the Reelgood app.

Also if you want a great app for finding where stuff is streaming, and tracking watchlists, and finding stuff to watch with a pretty good recommendation engine... try the Reelgood app.

Reelgood app makes me look like a freeking genius to my family.

“Oh, there’s this really interesting thing that I want to watch, but I have no idea how to stream it.”

“Give me one second... ok... you can rent it on Amazon prime video for a buck!”

“Whaaahhh.... how did you know that?”

“I used the Reelgood app. I put it in your phone. You can use it anytime you want to find out where to stream a thing you want to watch.”

::crickets:: ::crickets::

MannishBoy wrote:

I use Justwatch for basically the same thing.

Now we need to see the pros/cons.... c'mon people I'm too lazy to do it myself.... (I have used Justwatch for years)

manta173 wrote:

Now we need to see the pros/cons.... c'mon people I'm too lazy to do it myself.... (I have used Justwatch for years)

Feature for feature they are pretty even. Reelgood tracks individual episodes of television shows though so you can mark your place over the course of a show. It also has notifications for when shows or movies come to your services. I prefer JustWatch's UI, and it’s my go to for quick web searches, but Reelgood is the better tracker imo.

I used to use Justwatch until I tried Reelgood. The "find a place to stream" functionality is pretty equivalent, but Reelgood has so much more.

ONE HOUR TO WW84

Well it seems I am now a part of this HBOmax crowd.

I finally started watching West Wing a couple months ago, knowing that it was leaving Netflix in December, and so really had no choice but to subscribe so I could continue watching it today. I decided to go for the 6-month special because there are other shows I'd like to watch or catch up on and it seems I can finally watch Game of Thrones and see what all the fuss is about there.

Just read that Batman The Animated Series and Batman Beyond are coming in January!

Now we just need Superman and Justice League.

ONE OF US
ONE OF US
ONE OF US

Original HBO series I have enjoyed:

Angels in America
Band of Brothers
Barry
A Black Lady Sketch Show
Carnivale
The Case Against Adnan Syed
Chernobyl
The Deuce
Euphoria
From the Earth to the Moon
Game of Thrones
Insecure
* John Adams
John from Cincinnati
Lovecraft Country
* McMillions
The Newsroom
The Outsider
Rome
* Sharp Objects
Silicon Valley
Six Feet Under
Tracey Ullman's Show
True Blood (guilty pleasure - it's a super trashy romance show with vampires and werewolves)
* Watchmen
WESTWORLD

* must-watch limited series I'd recommend to anyone

There are many others, some of which are on my watch list, and not all of those I liked are for everyone.

Shows that didn't quite hit for me include Big Little Lies (very popular, but I couldn't get into it), Avenue 5 (silly sci-fi), The Comeback (lacked ... je ne sais quoi), Curb Your Enthusiasm (I just don't like Larry David. Sue me.), Garfunkel and Oates (I like their songs more than their sketches), The Leftovers (started promising, but lost me after a few episodes), Veep (I guess I prefer my Julia Louis-Dreyfuss in smaller doses).

And now that I've typed all that up... IT'S WW84 TIME!!!

Baron Of Hell wrote:

My interest went from zero to ten at the mention of Michelle Gomez.

I know this comment is from two weeks ago, but having just recently blitzed through Doctor Who this got my attention.

PaladinTom wrote:

Just read that Batman The Animated Series and Batman Beyond are coming in January!

Now we just need Superman and Justice League.

Hell yeah. Batman Beyond- my favorite incarnation of the Batman franchise.

PaladinTom wrote:

Just read that Batman The Animated Series and Batman Beyond are coming in January!

Now we just need Superman and Justice League.

I probably should have known. But Amazon had a lightning deal day back in Oct or Nov where they had those sets for lowest price ever. I got both Batman series, and it included most of the movies, and Vudu HD copies of all of them.

Stele wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Nice! My Roku already had the HBO Max app--it looks like it auto updated the HBO app--and I was able to sign in using my Amazon account as I was subscribing to the HBO channel there.

Oh that's good news. I haven't tried that yet. But Amazon was still showing HBO free trial last week so I was going to sign up there and see if it worked.

Well of course that got removed before I could sign up. I posted on the 20th but probably was gone the 18th. Oh well, didn't expect free Wonder Woman. Still think I might sign up this way though, so I don't have to create another account and can just use Prime Video to login to HBOMax app on Roku.u

Stele wrote:
Stele wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Nice! My Roku already had the HBO Max app--it looks like it auto updated the HBO app--and I was able to sign in using my Amazon account as I was subscribing to the HBO channel there.

Oh that's good news. I haven't tried that yet. But Amazon was still showing HBO free trial last week so I was going to sign up there and see if it worked.

Well of course that got removed before I could sign up. I posted on the 20th but probably was gone the 18th. Oh well, didn't expect free Wonder Woman. Still think I might sign up this way though, so I don't have to create another account and can just use Prime Video to login to HBOMax app on Roku.u

Just keep in mind that the HBO channel through Prime will be going away "next year". I haven't seen an exact month or day said, but it's apparently part of the deal that allowed the HBO Max app on the Fire sticks. When whatever current contract Warner and Amazon have for the HBO channel expires, then it's going away because Warner wants to push Max subscribers.

So the girls (9 & 11) want to watch WW84 tonight. Is it age appropriate? I want to watch Soul and we are trying to decide what to watch.

Yeah kids can watch it but it is really boring for the first hour. Might not hold a kids attention.

SallyNasty wrote:

So the girls (9 & 11) want to watch WW84 tonight. Is it age appropriate? I want to watch Soul and we are trying to decide what to watch.

Violence is pretty cartoony with minimal blood and a motive to avoid killing. Still without quite the brutality of Batman violence. Implied sex but nothing past PG kissing happens on screen. Some of the mechanics of the bad guy are probably confusing, but kids probably don't care.

Honestly I would recommend Soul. It is the far superior movie.

But if the girls like Wonder Woman they’ll probably like WW84.

Wonder Woman 1984 never once felt like it was taking place in 1984.