“House of the Dragon”
Rush brings HBO Max to its knees
Paddy Considine as Viserys I Targaryen in House of the Dragon.
© Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved.
At the start of the “House of the Dragon” series, the streaming provider HBO Max’s app crashed in the USA. Many viewers looked in the tube.
“House of the Dragon” is the long-awaited sequel to the hit series “Game of Thrones”. German viewers can see the new fantasy series exclusively on Sky. The premiere episode is available on Sky Q and the renamed streaming service Wow (formerly Sky Ticket).
In the USA, the show is hosted by HBO and its streaming service HBO Max. There, the interest in the start of series production was naturally enormous. Apparently, so many viewers wanted to watch the new production right at the start time on Sunday evening yesterday that the streaming service’s app faced problems. In some cases, HBO Max crashed – and the fans looked in the tube.
“House of the Dragon” premiere: Problems primarily with Amazon’s Fire TV
As reported by the US industry magazine The Hollywood Reporterat least 3,000 viewers were initially unable to watch the opening episode of “House of the Dragon”. HBO Max customer support then advisedto close and restart the app. In an official statement, HBO said: “We are aware of a small number of users who are trying to connect using Fire TV devices and are encountering issues […].”
So far, HBO Max has not released any official figures on how many users were actually affected by the disruption. However, it’s not the first time the streaming service’s app has faced such problems. The finale of the miniseries “Mare of Easttown” with Kate Winslet (46) in May 2021 caused a similar crash – and the finale of the second “Euphoria” season also presented the HBO Max app with noticeable problems in February of this year . The new Warner Bros. Discovery leadership plans to retire the HBO Max app in the future. From the summer of 2023 there will be a new app for the combined streaming service from HBO Max and Discovery+, which will be based on the technically stronger application of Discovery+.