Problems with Showtime Anytime via Charter

Showtime Anytime vs HBO Go

I am a recent Charter cable TV subscriber (although I have been a Charter internet subscriber for over a decade). I subscribe to HBO and Cinemax, which gives me the HBO Go and Max Go on-demand options, both which work flawlessly for me.

I also subscribe to Showtime, which gives me the Showtime Anytime on-demand option. This has been nothing but a headache so far.

Unlike the two Go apps, Showtime Anytime requires that you register before your Charter login will give you access to their premium content. This in and of itself is annoying, but what makes it far worse is that in all the places where they tell you about this registration requirement, they provide no hyperlink to aid you in figuring out where/what exactly they are asking for, and so far, I have never been able to login.

The login process, in short (detailed screenshots below), involves two different Showtime web sites (sho.com and showtimeanytime.com) which seem to be very loosely integrated at best, plus the authentication handoff to the charter web site, which upon successful authentication, returns me to the showtimeanytime.com domain only to inevitably be shown this error:

Error: The Primary Account holder for this account must register for Showtime Anytime first.

Charter Support

As best I can ascertain, via meager online resources and very poorly informed help from Charter support, the most important thing is that you use the Charter "HoH" (Head of Household) email address for logging into Showtime Anytime.

Here is the Charter support article about Showtime Anytime: www.myaccount.charter.com/customers/support.aspx?supportarticleid=3351

It is frustratingly vague about the Showtime-specific details. For example, it doesn't include any reference to the fact that you will be required to "register for Showtime Anytime", much less a link to the registration page, or other useful specifics.

In case you are trying to piece this together yourself, as best I can tell, where Showtime's error message refers to "Primary Account holder for this account", what they are referring to in Charter vernacular is the "HoH (Head of Household)" email account. This was a bit hard for me to figure out at first, because there is a completely different account used for billing purposes. The HoH account is a charter.net email address (this is the one you need). Your billing account logs you into charter.com (this is not what you want), although, confusingly enough, you can actually manage your Charter email accounts, including the HoH one, from the myaccount.charter.com interface

Two Separate Showtime Sites

Now comes the really frustrating part: trying to navigate the Showtime websites. As best I can tell, sho.com is managed by a completely separate team from the showtimeanytime.com team, and they essentially have no meaningful integration. This is evident from the first click on the sho.com homepage. If you click the link for Showtime Anytime, it takes you to a sho.com page, which contains the actual link to showtimeanytime.com. It's a bit disorienting at first, but okay. See following two screenshots:

Showtime Anytime Login

Okay, so here we are on showtimeanytime.com. If you click Log In here, it puts you through the same type of login process you may have come to expect from HBO Go. Essentially it asks you to pick your cable provider, and then it hands you off to your cable providers authentication portal, you authenticate, and if successful, you get redirected back to showtimeanytime.com. This actually all works exactly as you might expect. See the next four screenshots:

Error: Must Register for Showtime Anytime First

Once I have successfully authenticated on the Charter site, regardless of which browser or mobile client I use, I get the same vague error message shown here, along with a screenshot from Chrome on Mavericks, and the iOS 7 app.

Error: The Primary Account holder for this account must register for Showtime Anytime first.

Registration Mystery

As far as I can tell, I've jumped through all the correct registration hoops. I created several different accounts on the annoyingly long and intrusive Showtime registration page, and finally have settled on one that is based on my Charter HoH account, but all to no avail. I still always get the annoyingly ambiguous and unhelpful message from Showtime, "The Primary Account holder for this account must register for Showtime Anytime first."