In the ongoing streaming wars, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has announced it will be rebranding its popular streaming service HBO Max to simply Max. This, according to the company, is to reflect the expansion of content that will be available on the platform.

Despite the platform dropping HBO from its name, WBD stresses that this does not mean that HBO content will be disappearing from the new Max service. To drive this point home, the promotional materials surrounding Max consist of the tagline “The One to Watch for HBO.”

Likewise, despite the service gaining more Discovery+ content as part of the rebrand, WBD will still be maintaining its Discovery+ streaming service.

WBD has also stated that as part of this rebranding, the company will be substantially reworking the user experience. The rebranding of HBO Max over to Max, along with the content, service, and UI updates will go live May 23, 2023.

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Upon its launch, Max will introduce a new service tier alongside its Ad-Lite and Ad-Free offerings. The new Max Ultimate Ad-Free will offer 4K content streaming as well as unlimited downloading of content for offline viewing. This newer service will be priced at $19.99 a month.

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The other services will be priced and structured similarly to HBO Max’s current services apart from 4K streaming being moved into its own separate tier.

WBD has also stated that with the rebranding will come a complete overhaul of the user interface. The company. Some of the newer features the company hinted at were new category tabs, genre pages, brand hubs, a cleaner My List function and a personalized recommendation section based on viewing history akin to Netflix.

Over the past year, HBO Max gained a considerable amount of attention over a myriad of cancelled projects. The service also drew heavy criticism from users due to the “purging” of HBO-specific content that occurred over the span of the past year as more non-HBO content was added to the service.

Additionally, WBD has stated that despite the blending of services, both the new Max streaming service and Discovery+ will continue to receive exclusive content for each.

Users that currently subscribe to HBO Max will be transferred over to the new service May 23, 2023 in a move that WBD assures will be “seamless.” All current user profiles, watchlists and viewing histories will carry over according to WBD.

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