And the 4K consideration might be dictated by your hardware: If you don't have a 4K TV, you won't be able to watch movies and shows in 4K anyway. For people who only watch at home, downloads might not be such a big deal, but if you do any traveling, you'll start to miss the option. Two big detriments to the ad-supported plan: You lose the ability to download content to your phone or tablet to watch offline, and you won't have access to 4K content. Though the ads didn't bother me much, at $10 a month, HBO Max with Ads is still on the pricier side for a streaming service - Hulu's ad-supported plan is only $6 a month, Peacock has a free tier, and you can watch Netflix and Disney Plus with no ads for $9 and $8 and month, respectively. (You can see how many ad breaks a show or movie has by hitting the fast-forward button on your device - you'll see small breaks in the progress line, and if you try to skip ahead past one of those breaks, you'll have to watch those ads.)Įven for the movies with more ads, they did go by quickly compared to Hulu's ad-supported tier, which sometimes includes breaks up to 90 seconds long, and Peacock's, which promises about five minutes of ads per hour. The Friends reunion special had seven ad breaks over the course of its 1 hour, 45 minutes. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman 1984, Tenet and Oslo had no ad breaks at all. (I tried a few more kids' movies like Space Jam and Scooby Doo, but their ad breaks didn't have this, so maybe it's Potter-specific.) But that screen didn't appear on any of the other shows or movies I watched, except for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Before and after each ad break was a 5-second "be right back" animation, which I found to be an annoying time-waster. Movies were a bit more hit-or-miss: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone had nine ad breaks over its 2 hour, 32 minute running time, ranging from 30 seconds to one minute each. That's far less than you'd get on network TV. During episodes of Friends and The Nanny (both coming in at under 30 minutes), I saw one 15-second ad at the start, and had two more ad breaks for about 30 to 45 seconds each in between. The ad load was lightest with shorter comedies. In my tests, ads were relatively infrequent, but the number varied depending on what I watched. If you're used to watching live TV with commercials, or basic Hulu, the ad breaks on HBO Max with Ads won't be a big deal for you.
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