The 'Live' Section on Amazon Fire TV has been updated to include additional streaming services, namely OTT options like Sling TV, YouTube TV, and Hulu Live TV. Through this portal, users are able to find apps that provide access to live television content, building upon the on-demand services that largely dominate the streaming market. It may be a few days before users see all three services.
Amazon Prime Video has finally added a feature that has already been available on a number of competing platforms: user profiles. With these, multiple people in the same household can separate their viewing habits, preventing someone from having their personalized recommendations messed up when another person views their own favorite shows. The profiles are only rolling out on certain devices to start with.
Tablo has expanded its DVR product line with the new Quad and Dual models, offering cord-cutters who use an over-the-air TV antenna new options that feature built-in storage. These two new OTA DVR models feature up to four tuners and 1TB of data, offering ample space for recording multiple shows -- up to 700 hours of HD content if you opt for the highest storage option.
If you're like the average Netflix subscriber, you've likely started to watch some random show or movie, only to realize that you really don't want to watch it. You exit the show and continue to browse, but there's a problem -- every time you launch the app, that barely-watched and unwanted show reappears in your 'Continue Watching' row where you're forced to ignore it in favor of content you actually care about. That, finally, has changed.
Assuming you haven't been living under a rock for the past three weeks, then you likely know that Hamilton is now live on Disney+. Hamilton is one of those benchmark Broadway musicals, like Phantom of the Opera or Wicked, that changed the game and generated insane amounts of hype when it first premiered. And like those two shows, it's going to be a long, long time before we see Hamilton close on Broadway or stop touring.
Verizon is offering some of its customers free access to Hulu and Disney+, two of the three streaming services that Disney offers under its own Disney+ streaming bundle for $12.99/month. If someone signed up for Hulu and Disney+ as standalone services, they'd end up paying the same amount. Under this new Verizon promotion, however, the services are added to the subscriber's account at no extra cost.
YouTube TV subscribers are getting a mix of good and bad news today. The good is that YouTube TV is getting more channels and some new features. The bad, unfortunately, is that those new channels and features are coming at the cost of yet another price hike, and this is a big one.
Android has quite a number of forms but not all of those are treated equally. Android Auto almost feels like an afterthought but even Android TV sometimes has the image of being that red-headed stepchild. There is even some rumors that it will soon be replaced by a certain Google TV. Perhaps to reassure Android TV fans and users that it's still business as usual, Google is now rolling out the first Android 11 developer preview for the platform, just a few weeks after it rolled out the first beta for smartphones and tablets.
There's no question that Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated games of the year - probably even of the generation as a whole - so it should be no surprise to see the IP spread to other formats as well. Today, Netflix and CD Projekt Red announced that they're teaming up to make an original anime series set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. It won't be here for quite some time, but anime fans have reason to be excited.
LG today announced its new GX Gallery lineup of OLED TVs, which seems to be a successor to the "wallpaper" TVs it launched a few years back. The name of the game here seems to be minimalism - while the wallpaper TVs required the use of a separate sound bar, the GX Gallery TVs do not, leaving them free of extra hardware when they're mounted on a wall.
Slowly but surely, NBCUniversal has been announcing its launch plans for its streaming service, Peacock. Strangely, the company seems to be making these announcements on a platform-by-platform basis. Last month, it told us when we can expect Peacock on Apple and Xbox devices, and today we're learning that it will also be coming to various Google platforms as well.
Entertainment has become one of the biggest tools for keeping sane during these trying times but while many companies are aggressively pushing their streaming services, others still prefer owning the media they buy in physical form. That mostly means DVDs and Blu-ray discs which, of course, require appropriate devices to play them. But what if those devices all suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason? That's the rather eerie and frustrating situation that owners of Samsung Blu-ray players are now experiencing around the world with no answer or solution yet in sight.