Rebranding HBO Max Killed Some Android TV Remotes’ ‘HBO Max’ Button

(CTN News) – HBO Max was rebranded to Max that took place yesterday, which also saw the debut of the latest app that for some strange reason had the same name as HBO Max.

As a result of the HBO Max rebrand, some Android TV remotes have developed hilarious broken shortcut buttons as a result of the rebrand.

It is very common for streaming devices to come with remote controls that provide shortcuts to a variety of services, which on Android TV and Google TV generally includes Netflix and YouTube, and other services may be added in the future.

HBO Max, however, is one of the apps that occupied one of these slots on some devices.

A notable example of that was Walmart’s 2021 Android TV streaming box and dongle, which has long since been replaced with a new Google TV box that has a Paramount+ shortcut instead of the old Android TV box.

During the rebranding process, the old HBO Max app was thrown by the wayside, replaced by a pop-up ad that appears within the app on Android TV and Google TV, as shown in the photo below.

As swapping out the app isn’t that big of a deal for most people – at worst, it might mean juggling limited storage space – the result was that the HBO Max shortcut on remotes was broken as a result of this change.

That’s because the button is mapped specifically to open HBO app, so if you replace it, it leaves that inoperable, since it’s mapped specifically to open HBO Max app.

Several Android TV users on Reddit have reported that they have found a broken button following the forced update that was forced upon them.

This is probably going to be a short-lived issue, since the money paid for these button placements is a strong motivating factor for the company to make a quick fix to this problem.

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