Introducing Crave + Movies + HBO!

[RogersRoland]

Hey Community,

We got some great news!

Starting today, November 1, 2018, TMN/HBO has changed to Crave + Movies + HBO. What does this mean? It means users can now gain access to an additional 10K hours of additional on demand content.  Users get access to first-run Hollywood movies, current and past seasons of must-see HBO and Showtime series, ground-breaking Crave Originals and more. You can watch live and On Demand content through your digital box, or by streaming online through Rogers Anyplace TV, the Ignite TV app or the Crave website and the Crave app.

Current TMN/HBO subscribers now gain access to Crave at no extra cost.  Access to the app is free with a subscription to one of the Crave packages and with an active MyRogers profile. 

To learn more about this new exciting change and product pricing, check out the Crave site!

[BS]

Well, I had a chance to play with the new features.

A few comments - there are some expected growing pains - earlier in the day, I tried to log onto Crave on my android, and it couldn't log me in with a provider password for Rogers - no providers were present .

A few hours later, it now worked, the icons sometimes appear, sometimes don't, so I type Rogers into the search.

It is a bit confusing at the moment depending upon which way you decide to watch what would have once been TMN movies, which are now Movies portion of HBO + Movies + Crave.

On the on demand on the Nextbox, I went looking for Wonder Women - I could use the search, but as we all know, the search feature on the Nextbox is an extremely awkward tool.

I did find it under movies, A-Z and scrolled to the bottom.

Unfortunately, it did not tell me which was HD and which SD, and so I guessed - HD was typically the second one in the past - nope, it was the first one.  Guess I will be doing a bit of guessing to begin until I figure out which is which.  Hope it is consistent.

I find the whole layout of the movies ackward now - it used to be set into categories, with one nice feature of new HD and New SD and old HD and Old SD shows and you could then see what was new and then do a broader search.

Now there is no category for new shows, although some limited categories of drama, sci-fi and so forth.

I then went to Anyplace TV to see how that all looked - easier layout to work with.

Movies now has cagtegories of Featured movies, recently added, and the typcial groupings - nice on a touch screen and not bad on a mouse either.  Appears that these are all HD unless SD is only available.

Nice feature is that you can build a watch list - the crave on the box shows a tool for building a watch list with B and Fav, but it doesn not work - it has been here and there in on demand for 3 years, but has never worked.

So don't get excited to see that feature - it doesn't work, never has on the settop box.

The whole change over on the layout of TMN to Crave and Movies, where Movies on anyplace TV includes all movies now, not just TMN is a bit confusing to get used to, but I guess they will tinker with the best categorizing layout on the set top box as it is the traditional list, not poster art, with the poor search feature.

I then went to the Crave app itself, both on my android and Computer - neat thing to find - it works on firefox - come on Rogers and Comcast - get your act together on that one.

And because Crave has been licensed for casting on most devices from the beginning, you can broadcast all the Crave movie, HBO content if you want, where as it is not possible to do so on the Anyplace TV.

The app is very well developed, easy to use, has casting built in - don't know what is going on with the people reporting on issues with 4K apple TV, but suspect that will come - probably linked to the connection to Rogers login, like I ran into with the android app at first.

So, lots of options on how you may choose to work with the HBO + Movies + Crave content and how you decide to broadcast - me personally, I wm going to finally go out and by Chromecast for my TV and use the Crave App on my computer or my Laptop.  In a way, that is the first step in my possible journey to chord cutting, but that is another story.

Nice to see it come - guess Bell Media had a desire to push this content out through all providers and to rebrand TMN which was there network - and integrate it with Crave - makes sense - why have two Movie networks operating.

HBO is US based and they have the broadcast rights and they have included it in HBO TMN for a long time.

IThere is a good choice of mixes including adding Encore, Super Channel stations, Crave alone at 9.99 and a few other mixes, so much more choice.

As one last nice thing that has come from this Bell Media rebranding - for cord cutters - you can now get HBO online through Bell Media with the same HBO Movies, Crave offering as we get now in the Cable channel mix with TMN rebranded and included within the full Crave movies and Classic Crave options.  Up until now the absence of HBO online has held us back from jumpting.

Definitely, the whole media choices are changing fast with this change.

Others post what they learn.

[kfox203]

There are movies I see on the Crave app on my computer that I cannot find on the On Demand channel of my Netbox.  Dunkirk, Murder on Orient Express, Red Sparrow, Get Out are all movies that are absent from the On Demand channel.  Anyone else having this problem?