Finally! Long story short. I cancelled after one month back in May when apparent that no deal was forthcoming. Fast forward to today. I logged in the HBO Max website on my p.c., resubscribed and got the 6 mo. 20% discount for $69.99. Then I turned on my Roku TV and after about one minute I noticed the old HBO app on home screen turned automatically into the HBO Max app icon. I clicked it and all went well from there; even my old original favorites list was still there. To check quality of the stream I clicked through three movies in my list and watched a minute or two. I can say for me anyway that the stream was excellent....contrast, color, skin tones, etc. Nothing in 4k until Wonder Woman and beyond, but the movies shot originally in 70 mm (HD for its time), looked superb, i.e. 2001 Space Odyssey, etc. I suspect Max is similar to other major streaming services such as Netflix, Prime, in that the bandwidth or bit rate is of the highest available for streaming provided you have a good connection ( I hardwire my tv connection for optimum bandwidth).
I'm a movie centric viewer and I find Max superior to all the other streaming services for quantity and quality of movies. A close second imo is The Criterion Channel, but the sweet thing about Max is that it carries dozens of some of the best Criterion Collection titles...Ingmar Bergman films for instance and many other great international titles. Max has some good documentaries too, really looking forward to the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos scandal. As for series I hear The Flight Attendant is good and will check it out. Very please that Roku and HBO Max finally did it.
