An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed from Ars Technica's Scharon Harding: TVs offer us an escape from the real world. After a long day, sometimes there's nothing more relaxing than turning on your TV, tuning into your favorite program, and unplugging from the realities around you. But what happens when divisive, potentially offensive messaging infiltrates that escape? Even with streaming services making it easy to watch TV commercial-free, it can still be difficult for TV viewers to avoid ads with these sorts of messages. That's especially the case with budget brands, which may even force controversial ads onto TVs when they're idle, making users pay for low-priced TVs in unexpected, and sometimes troubling, ways. [...]

Buying a budget TV means accepting some trade-offs. Those trade-offs have historically been around things like image quality and feature sets. But companies like Vizio are also asking customers to accept questionable advertising decisions as they look to create new paths to ad revenue. Numerous factors are pushing TV OS operators deeper into advertising. Brands are struggling to grow profits as people buy new TVs less frequently. As the TV market gets more competitive, hardware is also selling for cheaper, with some companies selling TVs at a loss with hopes of making up for it with ad sales. There's concern that these market realities could detract from real TV innovation. And as the Secretary Noem ad reportedly shown to Vizio TV owners has highlighted, another concern is the lack of care around which ads are being shown to TV owners -- especially when all they want is simple "ambient background" noise.

Today, people can disable ambient mode settings that show ads. But with some TV brands showing poor judgment around where they sell and place ads, we wouldn't bank on companies maintaining these boundaries forever. If the industry can't find a way to balance corporate needs with appropriate advertising, people might turn off not only their TVs more often, but also unplug from those brands completely. Some of the worst offenders highlighted in the article include Vizio TVs' "Scenic Mode," which activates when the TV is idle and displays "relaxing, ambient content" accompanied by ads. Roku City takes a similar approach with its animated cityscape screensaver, saturated with brand logos and advertisements. Even Amazon Fire TV and premium brands like LG have adopted screensaver ads, showing that this intrusive trend isn't limited to budget models.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The post-Covid rebound of live events is all the more evidence that movie theaters are never coming back, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told Semafor in an interview at the Paley Center for Media Friday.

"Nearly every live thing has come back screaming," Sarandos said. "Broadway's breaking records right now, sporting events, concerts, all those things that we couldn't do during COVID are all back and bigger than ever. The theatrical box office is down 40 to 50% from pre-COVID, and this year is down 8% already, so the trend is not reversing. You've gotta look at that and say, 'What is the consumer trying to tell you?'"

Smart TV platforms are increasingly monitoring what appears on users' screens through Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, building detailed viewer profiles for targeted advertising.

Roku, which transitioned from a hardware company to an advertising powerhouse, reported $3.5 billion in annual ad revenue for 2024 -- representing 85% of its total income. The company has aggressively acquired ACR-related firms, with Roku-owned technology winning an Emmy in 2023 for advancements in the field.

According to market research firm Antenna, 43% of all streaming subscriptions in the United States were ad-supported by late 2024, showing the industry's shift toward advertising-based models. Most users unknowingly consent to this monitoring when setting up their devices. Though consumers can technically disable ACR in their TV settings, doing so often restricts functionality.

Fake movie trailers created with AI are proliferating across YouTube, with some garnering more views than official studio releases -- and Hollywood studios are quietly profiting from the phenomenon rather than shutting it down. Instead of enforcing copyright on these unauthorized videos, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony Pictures, and Paramount are claiming monetization rights, directing ad revenue from fake trailers for films like "Superman" and "Gladiator II" into studio coffers, according to a Deadline investigation published Friday.

YouTube channels like Screen Culture, which has amassed 1.4 billion views, merge official footage with AI-generated imagery to create convincing trailer mockups that frequently rank higher in search results than legitimate studio releases. "Monetizing unauthorized, unwanted, and subpar uses of human-centered IP is a race to the bottom," SAG-AFTRA told Deadline, condemning studios for profiting from content that exploits performers without permission.

Streaming platforms are increasingly indistinguishable to consumers despite high brand awareness, according to Hub Entertainment Research. The annual Evolution of Video Branding report shows major services like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and Max experiencing year-over-year declines in viewers' ability to articulate what makes each platform unique.

Fewer consumers (37% in 2025, down from 41% in 2023) report signing up for services to watch specific shows, while many can't correctly identify where signature programs like Game of Thrones or The Bear can be viewed. While 58% know Stranger Things streams on Netflix, less than half can properly place other major titles.

According to Convergence Research, an estimated 46% of Canadian households didn't have a TV subscription with a cable, satellite, or telecom-based provider in 2024. MobileSyrup reports: In its latest annual "Couch Potato" report (PDF) on the streaming market, the firm notes that this was a four per cent increase from 2023 and that the number is expected to continue to rise to 54 per cent by 2027. Convergence notes that this marks a greater shift towards subscription video on demand services (SVOD) like Netflix and Disney+. To that point, the firm found that Canadian streaming subscription revenue grew 15 per cent year-over-year to $4.2 billion in 2024. At the same time, linear TV subscription revenue dropped five per cent to around $6.5 billion.

Some other interesting findings from the report:
- The 10 leading streaming providers raised prices in Canada by an average of six percent last year
- Ad-enabled memberships are cost 39 percent less on average compared to ad-free options
- Canadians subscribe to an average of 2.6 streaming platforms per household

Infinite Reality, a 3D technology company, has acquired Napster for $207 million, the companies announced Tuesday. The deal aims to transform the once-notorious music sharing service into a metaverse platform.

Napster, launched in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, was the first major peer-to-peer file-sharing application before legal battles forced its closure in 2001. Since 2016, it has operated as a subscription streaming service. Infinite Reality plans to create virtual 3D spaces where music fans can experience concerts together and artists can sell merchandise.

LG is shutting down Art Lab, its NFT marketplace for TVs. From a report: In a notice posted to its website, LG says it has made the "difficult decision" to close the platform on June 17th. LG launched its Art Lab app during the NFT craze in 2022, billing it as a way to "buy, sell and enjoy high-quality digital artwork" from your TV. It added new digital art to the platform through "groundbreaking" NFT drops, which users could purchase by scanning a QR code to complete transactions through Wallypto, LG's crypto wallet app.

Streaming service provider Plex announced Wednesday its first price increase in a decade for its premium Plex Pass subscription, raising monthly rates to $6.99 from $4.99, yearly subscriptions to $69.99 from $39.99, and lifetime access to $249.99 from $119.99, effective April 29. The company is also making remote playback of personal media a paid feature, introducing a Remote Watch Pass subscription at $1.99 monthly or $19.99 annually for users who don't need full Plex Pass features, and removing its one-time mobile activation fee.

The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders, the company said.

Sony has developed a new TV display technology combining individual red, green, and blue LEDs for backlighting, potentially offering a middle ground between existing Mini LED and OLED panels. Dubbed "General RGB LED Backlight Technology," the system enables precise color control without sacrificing brightness, reaching 4000 cd/m2 -- matching Sony's professional reference monitors.

Unlike conventional Mini LED TVs that use arrays of blue LEDs, Sony's RGB implementation delivers significantly improved color accuracy and viewing angles. In side-by-side comparisons with Sony's premium Bravia 9 Mini LED TV, the RGB prototype displayed deeper color gradations and eliminated the characteristic bluish blooming effect around bright objects on dark backgrounds.

The technology isn't entirely novel, the Verge reports -- Sony released a Qualia TV with RGB backlighting in 2004 and demonstrated "Crystal LED" prototypes in 2012. Competitors including Hisense, TCL, and Samsung are developing similar systems. While the RGB LED prototype outshone Sony's QD-OLED A95L in brightness, differences in color reproduction were less pronounced. The technology appears particularly promising for larger displays in bright environments where OLED's limitations become apparent.

U.S. music streaming services surpassed 100 million subscribers in 2024 [PDF] while industry revenue hit a record $14.9 billion, up 4% from the previous year, according to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Physical media sales outpaced digital growth, with vinyl records increasing 7% to $1.4 billion, outselling CDs ($541 million) for the third consecutive year. Digital downloads plummeted 14.9%, now representing just 2% of industry revenue.

Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite attracting major talent and pouring massive resources into productions like "Red Notice," "The Gray Man" and now "The Electric State."

These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Broadband TV News: The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging the agency to establish a clear, industry-wide transition plan for the full deployment of Next Gen TV (ATSC 3.0). The proposal outlines a two-phased transition while modernizing regulatory requirements to support consumer access and innovation. [...] Under the plan, stations in the top 55 markets, covering 70% of the US population, would transition by February 2028, with all remaining full-power and Class A stations following in or before February 2030. The petition also calls for updates to FCC rules to ensure television reception devices support Next Gen TV, maintain existing MVPD carriage obligations and eliminate regulatory hurdles that could slow adoption. To clarify, ATSC 1.0 is the current standard for free over-the-air (OTA) TV. While ATSC 3.0 (also called NextGen TV) is its intended replacement, it's not backward-compatible, meaning consumers need new equipment to receive it. NAB's petition is to allow a complete shutdown of ATSC 1.0 to accelerate the transition to ATSC 3.0, meaning older TV setups relying on free OTA signals would stop working unless consumers upgrade their equipment. Their argument is that ATSC 3.0 adoption has been slow, and networks would benefit more from shifting away from OTA broadcasting entirely.

Reddit user bshensky argues that shutting down OTA TV would benefit large media corporations and harm independent stations. It's also worth noting that OTA TV operates on valuable spectrum, which could be repurposed for mobile broadband (this has happened before), benefiting cellular providers.

A new statistical analysis has identified the films audiences "love to hate," with Battlefield Earth, Morbius, Grease 2, and Cats topping the list of cinema's most detested productions. The study, published by data analyst Daniel Parris, examined review data from MovieLens to calculate both the percentage of one-star reviews and total disapproval magnitude for each release.

A common thread among these widely derided titles: many were adaptations of popular books or shows, or attempted to capitalize on once-beloved franchises. Adam Sandler leads the actors most frequently appearing in widely disliked films, followed by comedians and action stars who have starred in productions with high one-star review rates.

The research also reveals an industry trend toward increasing one-star reviews over time, with family-oriented fare and horror films receiving disproportionately negative ratings despite consistent box office profitability - suggesting studios have prioritized risk-averse, commercially viable projects over critical acclaim.

Netflix has deployed AI upscaling on the 1987-1993 sitcom "A Different World," resulting in significant visual artifacts documented by technology commentator Scott Hanselman. The AI processing, intended to enhance the original 360p footage for modern displays, has generated distortions resembling "lava lamp effects" on actors' bodies, improperly rendered mouths, and misshapen background objects including posters and tennis rackets. This marks Netflix's second controversial AI implementation in recent months, following December's AI-powered dubbing and mouth morphing on "La Palma."