Not attacking you in particular, but I've always hated how we talk about "licensing restrictions" as if they're some kind of vague law of nature, like gravity. Oh, Studio X can't do Y... Because Licensing. "Licenses" are entirely conjured up by humans, and if there was an actual desire by the people who make decisions to change something, those people would find a way to make the "licensing restrictions" disappear. Reality is, the people making these decisions don't want to change things, at least not enough to go through the effort of changing and renegotiating the licenses. It's not "licensing restrictions" that is stopping them.

Same always comes up when we talk about why doesn't Company X open source their 20 year old video game software? Someone always chimes in to say "Well they don't because of 'licensing issues' with the source code." as if they were being stopped by a law of physics.

That would be amazing if we could watch both Netflix and HBO Max content at the price of one subscription. At least for me, these two platforms covers 95% of my video content needs.

Easy way to get rid of the few remaining "lifetime 50% discount" HBO Max subscriptions.

Hulu and Disney Plus have taken centuries in this endeavor. There's a lot of content licensed to Hulu that is not necessarily licensed to Disney Plus, though Disney Plus seems to be showing more Hulu content, but I assume it has to do with licensing.

They might make less money with one super subscription than two separate ones.

> wouldn't it make more sense to combine HBO Max and Netflix into a single app

I currently pay $20 something for Netflix every month and $10 for HBO Max a couple of months through the year when I’m binging a show from HBO. I as a consumer would prefer to keep it that way. I absolutely do not have the appetite to pay $30+ a month if the two are combined.

The thing is, HBO _the brand_ is the valuable thing.

Maybe we could come up with another ludicrous suite of names for HBO/HBO Go/HBO Max once it's merged with Netflix.