HBO Max delivers upgraded stable interface, a year ahead of Discovery+ combo
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HBO Max (NASDAQ:WBD) has wrapped up a technology upgrade meant to improve some rough user experiences, just days after its parent company promised an even bigger shift ahead.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has completed HBO Max's move to a new "tech stack," which looked to fix complaints of slow and problematic performance on the video platform. Those changes have been nearly a year in the works.
The current upgraded user experience is available on desktop and iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as Amazon Fire tablets, the company says - with new design and visual styling along with updated navigation.
Thursday's big earnings report from WBD, though, brought news that HBO Max would be combining with Discovery+ by summer 2023 in the United States - and another migration to favor Discovery's back-end operations.
That comes from the company's own presentations saying that Discovery+ has the better stack right now. "We recognize that both of our existing products have shortcomings. HBO Max has a competitive feature set but has had performance and customer issues. Discovery+ has best-in-class performance and consumer ratings, but more limited features. Our combined service will focus on delivering the best of both market-leading features with world-class performance," WBD's streaming chief JB Perrette said in Thursday's earnings call.