Amazon and Roku in standoff with HBO Max and Peacock

[Joe Hass]

A pox on the lot of them.

https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/hbo-max-peacock-roku-amazon-streaming-1234703977/

Sidebar: I have given up on Apple and will not be giving them another penny after a crazy situation involving poorly-integrated two-factor authentication. I'll shift everything over to Windows, Plex, Google Drive, and Android TV.

If you'd have told me ten years ago that I would completely abandon Apple, the company that made me into what I am today professionally, I'd have thought you were nuts. But here we are.

[Kevin M.]

I bought an Apple TV device a year or so ago but rarely used it. When I reconnected it, it signed me up for a free year of Apple’s streaming service. So knowing I’m putting my hand in the snake’s mouth, what happened with you and Apple?

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[Adam Bowie]

I really recommend the Nvidia Shield which is certainly more expensive than a Fire TV stick or a Roku stick, but has everything I want except Apple TV+. Really good quality and a nice remote. And if you get the Pro version, you can run Plex Server on it, keeping everything on a USB drive hanging off it, or on a NAS drive if you're like me.

I have the previous generation one, which is about three years old now, but still absolutely flies.

--

[Joe Hass]

Warning: This gets complicated, really fast, so hang on.

I abandoned iPhones after Apple effectively bricked my phone about eight years ago. I inadvertently did one too many iOS upgrades, which made it incompatible with the un-upgradeable version of iTunes on my no-longer-supported PowerPC iMac. Before that, I was all in on Apple. So I have everything tied to Apple except my phone, a Google Pixel (this is important). I have a Mac Mini, a MacBook Air, and two Apple TVs (3rd generation, not the latest, which is also important).

Apple sent me an email to get me to sign up for multi-factor authentication. I'm generally good with this (we'll pass the whole MFA on mobile insecurity issue for now), so I signed up.

Two weeks later, my six-year-old wanted to watch Despicable Me. My wife incorrectly thought it was not on Netflix. (We found out later she was wrong. Please do not ask me how I took it when I discovered she confused one of the sequels with the original. Also, everything I'm about to describe wouldn't have happened if she checked before this started.) I decided to blow the $4 on an iTunes rental.

Because I was upstairs where the Mac Mini was, so I figured it would be easy peasy to get it there and have it air on the downstairs Apple TV. Dropped the coin, went downstairs...and nothing's there.

To get iTunes streaming to work within a home network, you have to sign into the same Apple ID on all devices. So everything's supposed to be connected and signed up. I discover that due to inactivity, the Apple TV kept the acknowledgment of the account, but logged me out. I had to log back in.

No problem. Email in, look up the password to confirm, type it in, and...a cryptic error message came up.

I go back, try again...get the same cryptic error message: this time, my phone pings with a text from Apple with the MFA code.

Upstairs I go, where there's a new screen asking if I've logged in somewhere new. Which...I guess I was trying to? I accept it, and it gives me a new code.

I go back downstairs and try again, and there's that error message. This time I read it twice, and it says I have to do something weird with modifying my password to take into account the MFA.

I grab my MacBook Air, which now also has a couple of these "Are you trying to sign in?" messages. Now I realize the problem is with the MFA. So let's just shut that mother down and move on with our lives.

You can't.

Apple, in its infinite wisdom, decided that once you choose to sign up for MFA, you can never back out.

So I am now absolutely white-hot furious. I've invested a good 15 minutes into trying to get this damn movie to play. Remember: Apple loves to brag that everything works seamlessly. This is so very not seamless.

Here, after another five minutes lost, is what I figured out I was/am supposed to do.

1. Try logging in on my AppleTV.

2. It will error out and give me that cryptic error message. But it will fire the MFA.

3. I have to figure out which of the three devices (the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, or my Pixel) Apple sent the code.

4. Once I've found it, I'm to try logging in again, but to append the code to the end of my password. So if my password is "Qwerty12" and the code is 987654, I'm supposed to enter Qwerty12987654 for the password.

I am a very smart man who's spent his life in computers and the last 12 years in user experience design. This is psychotic.

I can't wrap this up well, but it breaks my heart that Apple went from being a company I loved with every fiber of my being to one I wouldn't give a plug nickel.  

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[PGage]

I have been streaming HBOMax on Fire Stick following instructions widely available online to work around this (Amazon is blocking the Max App, not the content). But even so I access it through the HBO Now App, not sure from this article if I will still be able to do this after July 31

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 3:01 PM Joe Hass <hassg...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Joe Hass]

Short answer: no; on July 31, the other apps are being shut down.

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[PGage]

I noticed that, but the original instructions I got seemed to suggest that we would still be able to access the Max content even without going through the HBO Now App, but not sure how to do that.

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[Ben Combee]

I have a HBO Max subscription directly with HBO -- I got the annual
deal before launch. I can use those credentials to log into HBO Now
on my Roku TVs.

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[Joe Hass]

Okay, so I'm going to take a stab at this based on this article: https://help.hbonow.com/Answer/Detail/11, which is as clear as mud.

If you subscribe to HBO Max but use the HBO Now app, on August 1, your HBO Now app will become HBO. At that point, you'll be tied down to basically only the HBO stuff and not all the extras. To get all the extras, you'll have to use the HBO Max app, which is what's not on Roku or Amazon.

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[Jim Ellwanger]

And as far as I can tell, as of August 1, HBO subscribers on cable/satellite providers that don't have an HBO Max deal will lose their ability to stream HBO -- they won't be able to sign in to the HBO Max app, and I've seen no indication that the rebranded HBO app will allow TV provider logins. (Looking at the HBO Max provider list, the big two this affects seem to be Dish Network and Frontier -- my father is a FiOS subscriber in one of the areas where the latter took over from Verizon.)

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[David Risner]

The solution is Chromecast $30 – can get it same day at Target or Walmart. If you need 4K, get the Chromecast Ultra for $69. If you want to use wired networking instead of WiFi, Google has an adapter available for $15.

 

Very easy to use and setup. Works with both HBO Max and Peacock.

 

Only major streaming service it doesn’t seem to work with is Apple TV+ because, well, Apple. You can screencast to get around it but it’s not the best quality.

 

I have a Roku on one TV and the other is a FireTV. I have Chromecasts hooked up to both of them to fill in the holes. It’s less than ideal to have to have more than one streaming device, but it works.

--

[Joe Hass]

Speaking as someone who lives in the Google ecosystem and should be all in for it, recommending Chromecast is like someone asking for a computer recommendation and telling them to build a Raspberry Pi. It's technically a valid answer, but it doesn't work as practically as you'd hope.

As a set up: I'm as technically savvy as all get out, but my wife is not. We recently retired a Logi automated remote because it would occasionally dump her into a scenario she couldn't figure her way out of. And that's not acceptable for a remote control. I bought a nine-dollar Jasco three-in-one remote, made a job aid, and they're off and running.

When we had a Chromecast, since we have a large local library to stream, there just wasn't a good way to do it sveltely so she could confidently use it.

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[Joe Hass]

This is exactly what I have my eye on, and will almost certainly pull the trigger when the time comes. Great minds think alike, sir.

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[chi...@nc.rr.com]

I've had a Fire TV for a while now and just managed to side-load HBO Max on it. I have to wonder if there is a side-load option for Peacock yet.

-----------------------------------------

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[David Risner]

I taught my 73 year old mother-in-law how to use Chromecast. It wasn’t very difficult at all.

 

The nice part about it is you just have to set things up on your phone or tablet, and then you can watch it on the TV. You don’t have to go through an arcane login process on the TV.

 

She was more confused when the TV went out and we replaced it with a FireTV enabled TV. It took her quite some time to get how to use FireTV even with explaining it multiple times over the course of weeks.

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[Brad Beam]

From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of chi...@nc.rr.com
>

>I've had a Fire TV for a while now and just managed to side-load HBO Max on it. I have to wonder if there is a side-load option for Peacock yet.

 

On a totally bizarre tangent, buried in Peacock’s Terms of Service is a chocolate-cake recipe.

https://www.tvguide.com/news/theres-a-cake-recipe-hidden-in-peacocks-terms-of-use-so-we-baked-it/

 

_   _

|_>|_>  Brad Beam- Belle WV

|_>|_>  http://www.facebook.com/74bmw

[Tom Wolper]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 11:46 AM David Risner <da...@risner.org> wrote:

I taught my 73 year old mother-in-law how to use Chromecast. It wasn’t very difficult at all.

 

The nice part about it is you just have to set things up on your phone or tablet, and then you can watch it on the TV. You don’t have to go through an arcane login process on the TV.

 

She was more confused when the TV went out and we replaced it with a FireTV enabled TV. It took her quite some time to get how to use FireTV even with explaining it multiple times over the course of weeks.

I find the situation to be increasingly frustrating. There is an exploding number of streaming apps and a bunch of hardware build-ins and add-ons and you don't know which player you need for which service. Side loading apps works but doesn't help the situation for most of us. My setup is I have a Vizio TV and a Channelmaster OTA DVR with a Chromecast built in. Through the DVR I can't download the apps for Prime, Netflix, or Hulu because of some contract issue. I don't know if a stand alone Chromecast has that issue. My TV has those apps and even dedicated buttons on the remote but it won't hold a WiFi signal and video just hangs after playing for 10 seconds. I don't know if that's because the TV is cheap or it's obsolete and since it's useless I disconnected the WiFi so I'm not letting companies harvest data.

I could get a Shield but that's one more remote to find room for and one more plug for the power strip. This situation of new apps coming out and having to figure out not only do I want the content but do I have the right hardware or do I want to buy something new in order to play it frustrates the hell out of me.

[Adam Bowie]

I think that this is where the battle lines are being drawn in the "streaming wars." It's really about who gets what deal with what provider. I was listening to The Verge podcast earlier today, and they pointed out that Netflix has the whip hand. Whoever you are, Roku, Amazon, AN Other TV set manufacturer, you have to have Netflix available. Indeed Netflix probably want a dedicated button on your remote control. 

But HBO Max and Peacock aren't getting the same deals that Netflix has demanded (and got) or even Disney+. Roku wants to share Peacock's ad dollars; Amazon wants control over data and how things appear. It's a mess.

I can't see any way to get everything right now without having multiple devices. And that means a multiplicity of remote controls because that's where we are in 2020...

I mean some kind of regulation might be the answer but, ha ha ha ha ha 

Adam

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[PGage]

I agree the chaos is annoying. However, as of this writing I am able to stream everything through my very cheap Amazon Fire stick. Despite conversation here, still not sure if my “side loading” (that is the term I needed to know) of HBOMax will continue to work after 7/31. If not, I suspect it will be relatively temporary until they resolve their dispute, and I can still access HBOMAX directly on my IPad.  Also, Xfinity has sent us a message that sounds like we soon will be able to access via their cable.

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[Tom Wolper]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 9:12 AM Adam Bowie <ad...@adambowie.co.uk> wrote:

I think that this is where the battle lines are being drawn in the "streaming wars." It's really about who gets what deal with what provider. I was listening to The Verge podcast earlier today, and they pointed out that Netflix has the whip hand. Whoever you are, Roku, Amazon, AN Other TV set manufacturer, you have to have Netflix available. Indeed Netflix probably want a dedicated button on your remote control. 

But HBO Max and Peacock aren't getting the same deals that Netflix has demanded (and got) or even Disney+. Roku wants to share Peacock's ad dollars; Amazon wants control over data and how things appear. It's a mess.

I can't see any way to get everything right now without having multiple devices. And that means a multiplicity of remote controls because that's where we are in 2020...

I mean some kind of regulation might be the answer but, ha ha ha ha ha

There is an alternative to regulation which is business failure. A media company stops their streaming service because subscriptions fall when people can't get the app on their devices or device sales fall when people can't access their favorite services on them. Maybe there is a future like the smartphone. Once people carried around (or wore) a cell phone, a watch, an address book, a date planner, etc. Eventually the smartphone came along and consolidated all of those tools.

[Dave Sikula]

I'm glad the downloading worked for you. I've tried to install HBO Max onto my Fire Stick three times and come up empty each time.

Oh, well.

--Dave Sikula

On Tuesday, July 14, 2020 at 6:43:56 PM UTC-7, PGage wrote:

I have been streaming HBOMax on Fire Stick following instructions widely available online to work around this (Amazon is blocking the Max App, not the content). But even so I access it through the HBO Now App, not sure from this article if I will still be able to do this after July 31

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 3:01 PM Joe Hass <hassg...@gmail.com> wrote:

A pox on the lot of them.

https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/hbo-max-peacock-roku-amazon-streaming-1234703977/

Sidebar: I have given up on Apple and will not be giving them another penny after a crazy situation involving poorly-integrated two-factor authentication. I'll shift everything over to Windows, Plex, Google Drive, and Android TV.

If you'd have told me ten years ago that I would completely abandon Apple, the company that made me into what I am today professionally, I'd have thought you were nuts. But here we are.

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[PGage]

So today is August 1. The HBO Now App on my Fire TV has disappeared, replaced with an App Titled HBO, as Joe predicted. However, when I click on it, it still opens HBOMax, with all of their extra content (which I have a right to access via my HBO subscription on Xfinity). 

Now, this is what I was told would happen when I side loaded HBO Max, that the Max App itself would not not show on the Fire TV menu, but that I would still be able to access the Max content, once I registered  through my Cable provider. So far, on day one, it does seem possible to bypass Amazon’s black out on HBO Max. We shall see what happens as the month progresses.

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[daves...@gmail.com]

Hey there:

Can you send me the instructions you used to install HBO on your Fire Stick? I've tried it, but it's never worked. I wonder, though, if it's because I need to delete HBO from my Amazon apps.

Thanks,

Dave

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[PGage]

Yes, you do have to uninstall HBO Now first.

I followed the directions at this site: 

https://medium.com/@jamesfuthey/how-to-install-hbo-max-on-the-amazon-fire-tv-fire-tv-stick-or-4k-streaming-stick-4a8d3144b583

As I recall this was just one of several options that showed up after a search, I selected it because of all the screen shots that seemed well suited to someone as in-savvy as myself. I can’t warrant the provenance, and while it has worked for me, it’s possible ai am now streaming my own household to Vlad Putin.

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