Well this clears everything up.

Having to configure settings all over again on every single device pissed me off, especially since the new app didn’t even have subtitles customization of any kind. As someone who uses subtitles for almost all viewing, nothing turns me off of a streaming service faster than being stuck with shitty black bars and gigantic blocky text by default and being unable to change it.

And for fuck’s sake, nobody likes video previews with sound, and you can take your credit-skipping autoplay and shove it up your corporate ass.

I sign into “max” now and get bombarded on the home screen with basic cable reality show trash, and every time that happens it just makes me want to use it less. The only thing keeping me coming back is the occasional Soderbergh project and an as-of-yet still decent catalogue of movies, though even that has dropped off noticeably.

I would drop my subscription if it wasn’t bundled into my phone plan.

For me it’s because of Cinemax - ie Skinemax - which used to be associated with the softcore porn they’d play late at night.

It always mystified me that HBO Max was even able to use that name since it was so evocative of another premium cable network.