Before I get to my review of the release of Justice League, entirely directed by Zack Snyder, I have to cover something first as it will impact my view on the movie. The streaming service I watched it on. See, here in Australia, we don't have HBO Max. Our equivalent of Cable TV, Foxtel, has the distribution rights to HBO Max content for the next few years, including putting the content on it's streaming services. Binge was the version I chose to view it on. If people outside of Australia are looking to pay for Binge, I can tell you right now, don't waste your time. Even assuming they enable VPN's to work, the service is less to be desired.
Like my review of Disney+ back in December 2019, this review primarily focuses on the service itself, not the content on it. However, I will be referring to content on the service in examples of positives and negatives. A lot of the review focuses on the web browser version Binge. However, I've also looked at the Android app version for minor differences. I'll start with the main home screen. While it's not bad, clearly drawing inspiration from other Streaming platforms by grouping similar shows and movies together, the content presented is a bit skewed in terms of preference. Binge primarily markets itself as a home for more mature content, so while there is Kids Content on the service, it takes more digging to get to it than something like Disney+, where the Home Page has a mix of content at different age groups. Because of this, and the fact that Binge hasn't got any clearly defined way to set up content restrictions, I wouldn't recommend it for parents straight away if they want to turn it on, give their kids the remote and tell them "watch what you want while I work."
Finding content on the service is also more frustrating, then it needs to be. The Search Bar doesn't work logically. To give an example, in an attempt to find content supposedly on the service, Batman The Animated Series. I could search for "Batman" and get 36 results. But suppose I searched "Batman The Animated Series". In that case, I get 250 results, with content that supposedly fit the criteria, including Mr Bean, Green Lantern, Sex and the City, Animals, Joe Exotic: Tigers, Lies and Cover-ups, and To Catch a Serial Killer. If nothing matches the criteria, most search results would say "nothing matches the criteria", why would your search bar bring up random bits of content instead? With the lack of parental locks, this is a pretty serious issue.
"Timmy! Why are you watching Sex and the City?!"
"Binge told me it had Batman in it!"
Even the limited search of just "Batman" has oddities in it. Not to the same extent as the full title search, but I'm pretty sure if I'm searching Batman, I don't want to watch Scooby-Doo, Pawn Stars, or Shipping Wars.
Parental controls aren't the only thing missing from settings. The only thing there is if you want Closed Captions for content, which I do at least appreciate for accessibility. However, some settings are desperately needed, such as a more refined picture quality setting (Youtube's picture quality settings, for example). The main reason for this is that from personal experience, when using the service on my computer, when Binge bounces the picture quality from HD to SD, it locks it as SD for the rest of the video. This issue was highly frustrating during the Snyder Cut, as the lower quality meant that a lot of scenes became hard to watch. What made it even more frustrating was that at around the two and a half hour mark of watching the movie, I saw that Binge was using up a lot of my computer's memory trying to view the film. No other streaming service has this issue on my laptop, no other video platform has this issue on my laptop, and every other video platform knows that if I want to watch something in HD, I want to watch it in HD. The picture quality drop wasn't as big of an issue on my phone, as the video quality didn't noticeably drop when watching The Loony Toons Show. It looks to be an issue with the way the web browser version is designed and optimized.
Technical issues aside, how is the overall content? It's alright for the most part. The content is more in favour of lifestyle and drama entertainment. For someone like myself, it is nice to see a good chunk of Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon content on there. Still, there are some cases, such as Codename Kids Next Door, where only a few seasons are up, even though Foxtel has the distribution rights in Australia. One of the biggest reasons for this comes back to what I said in the opening paragraph. "Our equivalent of Cable TV, Foxtel, has the distribution rights to HBO Max content for the next few years, including putting the content on it's streaming services." The keyword there being services. Foxtel has four streaming services going here in Australia. Foxtel Go, Foxtel Now, Binge and Kayo Sports. Binge and Kayo Sports are the more traditional Streaming Services, with prices roughly in the range of other platforms like Netflix, Stan and Disney+ to match this. Foxtel Go is a service you can only get if you have a Foxtel subscription, which usually costs $139 a month for the whole package. Foxtel Now looks to be a "we want to have our cake and eat it too" with a subscription model that acts like their regular Subscription (where you pay for a base pack and then opt into extras). Still, it's a mainly digital service with an optional box to plug into your TV if it's not internet compatible. Without the box, it's $104 a month for everything. I wouldn't be surprised if Binge was a hodgepodge of all of Foxtel Now's bundles cut down to the bare minimum to try and get people to purchase Foxtel proper.
Because of all of this, do I recommend Binge? No, I don't. If you're looking for a cheap Foxtel, then I guess this is good value for money, thanks to the fact that it comes the closest to competing with other Streaming Services. But because Foxtel wants to keep people paying for its set-top boxes, keep paying for Cable, it doesn't have a chance in the long term, especially if or when HBO does decide to bring HBO Max properly to Australia. Foxtel, you can't have it both ways if you want to compete with the other services. Stop competing with yourself and commit one way or the other with how you want to distribute the content you have the rights too.
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