HBO Max might be out in the UK, but I'm watching its shows a different way

It was a long old wait for HBO Max here in the UK, and there were certainly times in the past decade when I found it pretty much unbelievable that we still didn't have basically the most famous prestige TV platform in the world as a standalone service. Sky's deals with HBO probably delayed the process, but now it's here, and that means a whole heap of temptation to add another subscription to the roster.

In most meaningful ways, I'm exactly the target market for HBO Max's launch; I'm pretentious enough to believe that I have actual taste in TV, so I don't want the sort of reality TV served up by some other streamers, and there are enough gaps in my viewing history to ensure that some of HBO's historic older shows are still on my to-watch list.

Still, as it stands, I'm just not able to justify the subscription to myself, and one big reason is that I'm still in the middle of a slow viewing of one of HBO's finest ever productions, The Wire, through a very different means.

I'm watching the show on Blu-ray, on a box set I think I was gifted almost a decade ago for a birthday or Christmas – and what a gift it was, though I didn't know it at the time. Streaming might have completely overtaken discs in terms of immediate convenience, but as other T3 staffers and I have persistently pointed out, it cannot match physical media for quality.

The Wire is a fascinating show for a heap of reasons, including its unrelenting quality, but it also bridges some fascinating times in TV production. It's easy to forget that the first season originally aired in square format, and only went widescreen from Season 2 onwards.

So, this is a show that's now old enough to perhaps make people question whether the quality of its video bitrate really matters that much, which is a classic misconception about the point of physical media, in my view.

It's more about the persistent ownership (I doubt this will be the only time I watch The Wire in my life) and the reliability of the delivery method. No internet outage can interrupt my viewing sessions, nor can any adverts – there's no ad-included tier that I can step down to, to mitigate monthly costs.

Of course, it helps that Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays almost inevitably end up looking and sounding lusher, crisper and clearer than even the 4K tiers of most streaming services, especially on a good TV and sound system. Since I upgraded from my PS5 Pro to the Panasonic DP-UB820 player, I've also been revelling in its HDR10 and Dolby Vision capabilities.

Still, it's pretty likely that at some point I'll cave and get a month of HBO Max to see how the service holds up in the UK. I get most of the HBO shows I'm interested in through Now, so the field of options I'd be getting access to isn't that huge, but the canny inclusion of exclusive access to The Pitt really does entice me quite nicely.

I can't do that until I finish The Wire, though, and finishing The Wire means getting into its fourth season rather than watching movies of an evening – there are some dominoes I need to line up for it all to happen. Luckily, I'm having a great time pretty much regardless of which bit I'm tackling.