HBO Max's conflict with Amazon and Roku, explained

Vulture

It's all about HBO Max wanting consumers to use its app, not Amazon Fire TV's or Roku's. "What’s likely going on is something analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners wrote about recently: WarnerMedia wants consumers to have to watch Max programming in the Max app, and not as part of the internal ecosystems platforms such as Roku and Amazon have created on their devices," explains Josef Adalian. "This isn’t some crazy demand by WarnerMedia, by the way: Netflix and Disney+ don’t let their shows slum around in other platforms’ unique universes. Sure, titles will show up in the Apple TV or Fire TV interfaces, but when you click to watch, you get taken to an outside app. I don’t know why Roku and Amazon are demanding HBO play by a different set of rules — if that is indeed what’s happening — but Greenfield thinks it’s because regular HBO has been okay with having its content disaggregated on those platforms."