HBO Max in Spain and in the United States? Are there changes to the content? In the price? In the plans? We solve all these questions in the next paragraphs in case you want to compare the differences and similarities between countries.
HBO Max is owned by WarnerMedia and has been available in the United States since mid-2020 but did not arrive in Spain until the last quarter of 2021. What differences exist between countries if we want to hire it here or there?
Catalog by countries, why does it change?
Why does the catalog vary from one country to another? Mainly the catalog in one country or another depends on the licenses or properties that each platform has in one place, on the rights of the series and films. Although there are own contents that cannot change platforms, like the original series of HBO Max in addition to others like series produced by Warner, yes there are others whose licenses will depend on agreements, purchases or properties. HBO currently has WarnerMedia, which means that we can see content from Adult Swim, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, CNN, Crunchyroll, The CW, Hanna-Barbera, HBO, New Line Cinema, Rooster Teeth, TBS, TNT, TruTV and Warner Bros. Also, HBO Max’s own series that are available in Spain or all DC content if we are interested in superheroes like Batman, for example.
But there are also other chains owned by him in Spain, such as the Carton Network, which allows us to access a wide catalog of children’s content or licenses for other series such as The Big Bang Theory, Friends or South Park. But whether or not there is access to these contents will depend on whether or not it is already licensed in Spain. As we explained at the time: The size of the catalog will depend on what is already licensed in Spain . The luck is that many old movies and series do not have exclusive contracts, unlike what happens with more modern content. Therefore, the platform should not have much trouble making most of its content available to users.
Differences
Some of the differences we find are in the content, in the price to access the platform or in the number of plans that we can contract.
In contents
The best option to see what content is in each country is to use the Justwatch application. If you want to see the catalog in Spain, just go to HBOMax and access the different categories to see what series or movies there are. But we can also see it directly from this website by changing the country that we consult.
In the case of going to Justwatch.com/us, we can mark HBO Max as an on-demand service for series and videos that we want to see the content of. At the time of the consultation, there are around 3,032 titles in total and we can choose to filter by movies or television programs or see everything to know what titles are available in this country. In addition, we can use filters such as year of release, IMDb rating , types of content or genres, quality, age rating …
In Spain we can see the entire HBO catalog at justwatch.com/es/proveedor/hbo-max . At the time of the query, a total of 1,211 titles appear (less than half that in the United States, at least for the moment) and we can also choose whether to watch everything or just movies or just series. In addition, we can add the same filters: year of release, genres, classification, price …
We can do the same if we want to consult the catalog in any other country. According to the official website, HBO Max is available in the United States and certain US territories as well as in selected countries in Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean. In addition, in other countries such as: Åland Islands, Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Canary Islands, Cayman Islands, Ceuta, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica , Curaçao, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Madeira, Melilla, Mexico, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Spain, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Sweden,
We simply have to choose the country that interests us and find if it has a version in Justwatch in order to compare the catalog.
Releases, plans and price
Beyond content, there are other notable differences between Spain and the United States. The first thing is that here the price for access to the platform is much cheaper than there. The price in Spain is 8.99 euros per month but since its launch in Spain until November 30, an offer offered all users the possibility of paying only 4.49 euros per month forever. The price in the United States is more than three times higher: the plan is 14.99 euros per month in the United States or, which is the same, about 13.40 euros approximately.
Another difference is in the plans. The United States has a cheap plan that Spain does not. Here we can only access the “normal” HBO Max plan but in America there is an option that only pays $ 9.99 per month for a version with ads: four minutes of ad per hour are shown when we are watching a series or a movie. We explained it in a news item in June 2021: four minutes of ads per hour compared to the maximum for linear television, which is 12 minutes in total.
In addition to price and plans, another difference is in the premieres: in Spain premieres take a little longer than to reach the catalog in the United States and, as we can see in Justwatch, there are much more options to choose from if we open an account in America. than in our country. At least for now, although this may change once HBO Max starts shooting in our country and it has not only been operating as a streaming platform for just a few weeks.
View content from another country
If we want to see content from another country, we can do it through a VPN that is compatible with streaming playback. The first thing we have to make sure is that the VPN that we are going to use or that we are going to pay for has its headquarters or server in the country where we want to see the catalog. In addition, we have to make sure that the plan we hire does not have consumption limits or speed so that everything can be issued smoothly and without cuts. Although it will not only be as simple as looking for a compatible VPN but we must create an account in the corresponding country and that will imply that we must have a local card or some means of payment that is effective in this place.
Some recommended VPN options are ExpressVPN, for example, which has a 30-day money-back guarantee if it doesn’t work for this purpose, or has servers in almost 100 different countries and with more than 160 different locations . In addition, it offers unlimited bandwidth to connect to HBO Max in the United States or in any other country as long as we register and follow the steps.