The teaser trailer for Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker has been viewed 13,665,350 times since its release Friday.

Collider reminds us that while George Lucas oversaw the original Star Wars trilogy and worked on its prequel trilogy, the final three movies in the franchise had moved ahead without direct involvement from the 74-year-old director: To recap, Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, setting Kathleen Kennedy as the new head of Lucasfilm and handing over his treatments for Episode VII, Episode VIII, and Episode IX -- the final three films in his Skywalker saga. Kennedy and J.J. Abrams reportedly threw out much of what Lucas handed over (much to the Star Wars director's chagrin) in favor of charting their own path, and Lucas has been pretty mum on the new direction of Star Wars under Disney thus far -- save for high praise heaped on Rogue One and a visit to the set of Solo after Ron Howard took over the director's chair.

But it appears everything has come full circle, as Abrams revealed at Star Wars Celebration in an interview with IGN that when he signed on to direct Star Wars 9, he consulted Lucas before beginning work on the script. "This movie had a very, very specific challenge, which was to take eight films and give an ending to three trilogies, and so we had to look at, what is the bigger story? We had conversations amongst ourselves, we met with George Lucas before writing the script," Abrams revealed...

Having seen the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer, this makes sense. The film looks to be leaning heavily on the original trilogy given the inclusion of that medal, the Death Star, and of course the return of Emperor Palpatine. And given Abrams' comments here, it sounds like he was very strongly thinking about Star Wars 9 as a conclusion to the entire Star Wars saga.
After that conclusion, Disney CEO Bob Iger says, "There are movies in development, but we have not announced them. We will take a pause, some time, and reset because the Skywalker saga comes to an end with this ninth movie.

"There will be other Stars Wars movies, but there will be a bit of a hiatus."

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will not be nominated for re-election at the company's 2019 annual stockholders meetings, Facebook said on Friday. CNBC reports: Hastings has served on the board of the social media company since 2011. The company said it will also not be re-nominating Erskine Bowles the president emeritus of the University of North Carolina, and it will instead nominate Peggy Alford, PayPal senior vice president of core markets. The addition of Alford, an African-American woman, comes as Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies strive for the inclusion of more women and minorities in their boards and throughout their workforces.

Hastings departure had been talked about for some time due to Facebook's growing interest in video services, according to Andrew Ross Sorkin. In 2017, Facebook launched Watch, its video streaming service, and last year, the company released IGTV, its Instagram video streaming app. Hastings' departure comes about three years after he got into a tussle with fellow board member Peter Thiel over their political leanings. In an August 2016 email, Hastings told Thiel that he planned to dock his performance review over his endorsement of then Republican Presidential-nominee Donald Trump, according to a New York Times report.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In its annual Theatrical Home Entertainment Market Environment report, the Motion Picture Association of America described an immensely sharp drop-off of physical media sales over the past five years. According to the data, which was obtained from DEG and IHS Markit, global sales of video disc formats (which in this context means DVD, Blu-ray, and UltraHD Blu-ray) were $25.2 billion in 2014 but only $13.1 in 2018. That's a drop in the ballpark of 50 percent.

Don't expect 8K Blu-rays or other emerging quality-focused formats to turn the tide, either. Market data published by Forbes showed that the aging, low-definition DVD format still accounts for 57.9 percent of physical media sales, and 4K Blu-rays are only 5.3 percent. With drops that sharp, you'd expect apocalyptic financials for companies making and distributing movies. However, while there are certainly losers in this trend, the overall industry actually grew over the same period. Home entertainment spending grew 16 percent in 2018 thanks to surges in consumer spending on digital video services from players like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. The report says that subscriptions to online streaming services grew 27 percent globally to 613.3 million in 2018, surpassing cable subscriptions (at 556 million) for the first time ever. "However, cable still drives more overall revenue than streaming -- it was the highest revenue platform in 2018, with $118 billion globally," Ars notes.

Disney has announced that its highly anticipated new streaming service, Disney+, will launch in the U.S. on November 12 with a price of $6.99 per month. Variety has more details: The subscription VOD service represents Disney's next major foray into the video-streaming wars. By pricing it well below Netflix, the Mouse House is betting it can rapidly drive up Disney+ customer base with a melange of content that appeals to multiple demographics, including movies and TV shows from its Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and Disney brands.

At launch, Disney+ will include 7,500 episodes, including from 25 original series; 400 library movie titles; and 100 recent theatrical films releases, according to Agnes Chu, senior VP of content, Disney+. That includes exclusive rights to all 30 seasons of "The Simpsons," which Disney obtained through the acquisition of 21st Century Fox. In year five of Disney+, the company expects to have an annual production slate of some 50 originals, Chu said. Disney+ will be an ad-free service, supported solely by subscription fees. It's going to have a wide platform footprint, spanning game consoles, smart TVs and connected streaming devices, including Roku and PlayStation 4, said Michael Paull, president of Disney Streaming Services (formerly BAMTech). "After Disney+'s initial North American launch in the fourth quarter of 2019, the service will roll out to Europe, Latin America and Asia as Disney's international rights return to the company from licensees," the report adds. Kevin Mayer, chairman of Disney's Direct-to-Customer and International business segment, also said that the company will "likely" offer a discounted bundle combining Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu.

All of Disney+'s content will be available to download for offline viewing and will be available in 4K. Some of the content subscribers will have access to includes all of the Star Wars films, 250 hours of NatGeo content, and hundreds of episodes from Disney Channel shows as well as a brand-new "Phineas and Ferb" movie.

Freshly Exhumed writes: RCMP officers spotted a man driving with earbuds plugged into his iPhone. The phone was not in his hands nor on his lap, was not playing music or video, and the driver was not using it to talk to someone or navigate. The battery was, in fact, completely dead. Nonetheless, a judge has ruled that "by plugging the earbud wire into the iPhone, the defendant had enlarged the device, such that it included not only the iPhone (proper) but also attached speaker or earbuds," he wrote. "Since the earbuds were part of the electronic device and since the earbuds were in the defendant's ears, it necessarily follows that the defendant was holding the device (or part of the device) in a position in which it could be used, i.e. his ears." On the question of the battery, the judge said he relied on a 2015 precedent set in a Canadian provincial court, which says that holding an electronic device in a position where it could be used constitutes an offense, even if it is temporarily not working.

T-Mobile today unveiled a new name for its Layer3 TV internet television service -- TVision Home -- with enhanced features, and announced a deal with Amazon to add Prime Video to the service later in 2019. From a report: TVision Home will be available starting April 14 in eight markets (the same areas Layer3 TV has already been available): Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Longmont, Colo. It's not a skinny bundle: TVision Home starts at $90 per month, which includes more than 150 channels, local broadcast stations and regional sports networks, as well as 15,000 VOD titles. Premium TV packages like HBO and Showtime are extra. In addition, TVision Home users must pay a $10 monthly set-top fee per connected TV. (Actually, the regular price of TVision Home for non-T-Mobile wireless customers is $99.99 per month, but the carrier is including a $9.99-per-month discount to all new subs for a limited time.)

YouTube TV isn't immune to the latest wave of rate hikes plaguing the streaming world. From a report: The Google-owned service has announced that it's raising the base monthly price to $50 ($55 if you subscribe directly through an Apple TV), effective immediately for new subscribers and from May 13th onward for existing customers. You'll at least get something for your trouble, though, as YouTube TV will finally offer a host of additional channels.

You now have access to eight Discovery channels that include the original as well as Animal Planet, Food Network, HGTV, Investigation Discovery, MotorTrend, TLC and Travel Channel. Oprah Winfrey's OWN channel is coming later in 2019, and Epix's movie-oriented channel is available today if you're willing to spend extra.

Developer and blogger Guilherme Rambo, writing for 9to5Mac: Fellow developer Steve Troughton-Smith recently expressed confidence about some evidence found indicating that Apple is working on new Music, Podcasts, and perhaps Books apps for macOS, to join the new TV app. I've been able to independently confirm that this is true. On top of that, I've been able to confirm with sources familiar with the development of the next major version of macOS -- likely 10.15 -- that the system will include standalone Music, Podcasts, and TV apps, but it will also include a major redesign of the Books app.

The new Books app will have a sidebar similar to the News app on the Mac, it will also feature a narrower title bar with different tabs for the Library, Book Store, and Audiobook Store. On the library tab, the sidebar will list the user's Books, Audiobooks, PDFs and other collections, including custom ones. The new Music, Podcasts, and TV apps will be made using Marzipan, Apple's new technology designed to facilitate the porting of iPad apps to the Mac without too many code changes. Further reading: Steven Troughton-Smith Thinks iTunes Breakup is Nigh (DaringFireball).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Chinese journalists and netizens recently found that Apple Music's Chinese streaming service censored a song by Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung that references the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, an extremely politically sensitive topic for the Chinese Communist Party. The incident's 30th anniversary is coming up in June. Sophie Richardson, the China Director at Human Rights Watch, called the reported move "spectacularly craven." The Tiananmen protests are emblematic of a larger pro-democracy movement in China that was snuffed out by the Beijing government. Thousands of protesters were killed, but the exact numbers have themselves been censored by Chinese government officials.

Apple Music has also reportedly censored Anthony Wong and Denise Ho, two pro-democracy singers. After being noticed by Chinese netizens, the removals were reported by the Hong Kong Free Press and The Stand, two Hong Kong-based news outlets. Taiwan News also reported the censorship of Cheung's "Ren Jian Dao." The music remains available on Apple Music's North American products. "By removing a song referring the Tiananmen Massacre, @apple is actively participating in the Chinese Communist Party's agenda of scrubbing the colossal violations it has committed against the Chinese people from collective memory and rewriting history," tweeted Yaqiu Wang, a Chinese researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Sony has unveiled a display that contains 16 times as many pixels as a 4K TV and 64 times as many as a regular 1080p high definition TV. "This will let viewers stand close to the unit -- which is longer than a bus -- without its image looking blurred," report the BBC. From the report: The 63ft by 17ft (19.2m by 5.4m) screen is currently being installed at a new research center that has been built for the Japanese cosmetics group Shiseido in the city of Yokohama, south of Tokyo. It is so large it will stretch between the first and second floors. The development was announced by Sony at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show, which is currently being held in Las Vegas.

Sony had previously designed a separate 16K display that went on show at Tokyo's Haneda Airport in 2014, but that looked like it was made up of dozens of smaller screens rather than presenting a single seamless picture. The new "super-size" installation has in fact been created out of several modular panels, but because they do not have bezels they can be fitted together without any visible gaps to create the impression of being a single screen. The innovation does not require a backlight, but goes much brighter than OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens while still delivering similar deep blacks. At present, however, the high manufacturing costs involved make it too expensive for widespread use.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In the past, Roku seemed to be more of a neutral platform compared with streaming media player rivals like Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV. The company gave everyone else's content equal footing through its add-on channels and in Roku search, as it had nothing of its own to promote. That's changing with the rollout of Roku OS 9.1, beginning today. The update adds a feature that automatically plays back The Roku Channel's movies and TV shows at times; another that better showcases the channel's free content in genre-focused searches; and one that introduces a new navigation menu with offers for other Roku products.

These features arrive alongside other changes, like a new guest mode and easier sign-in to subscriptions. Among the more innocuous changes are the new guest mode and automatic account linking. Roku in January first announced an "auto sign out mode," which allowed guests to sign into subscription channels using their own accounts instead of the Roku owner's credentials. And guests could specify when their credentials would expire on that device -- a useful feature in particular for Airbnb operators. Today, "auto sign out mode" is being rebranded as "guest mode," and can now be enabled or disabled on select devices. It also now allows Roku owners to sign out the guests themselves. With Automatic Account Link, Roku users won't have to re-enter their credentials when activating a new Roku player or Roku TV -- the subscription data will simply copy over from their existing account. Roku will also be promoting its own content and products to users. For example, when users search for "comedy" or "action," the content is displayed in a layout similar to Netflix with large image thumbnails and rows you scroll through horizontally. TechCrunch notes that while Netflix "lets you drill down into genres, Roku instead is organizing search results by whether the content is free, subscription, on-demand or 4K."

The second row of content points users to Roku's "free" ad-supported content. You can view the release notes for Roku OS 9.1 here.

Video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu don't appear to be negatively impacting the box office like many would assume. Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush, expects the U.S. box office will grow about 1% to $12 billion this year, setting another record.

"Our takeaway is that Netflix and the expansion of [streaming video on demand] platforms will have minimal impact on box office given the vast supply of content, plenty of which is ideal for theatrical release (and most talent fiercely and contractually objects to a straight-to-streaming release)," Pachter wrote in a research note Monday. CNBC reports: Last year, the domestic box office had a record-breaking year, hauling in $11.9 billion, there was a 5% rise in the number of movie tickets sold, and 263 million people -- 75 percent of the population -- saw at least one movie in theaters. "Everyone has a kitchen, but everyone still goes out to eat," Charles Rivkin, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, said, quoting Sterling Bagby, the late co-founder of B&B Theatres, during a "State of the Industry" panel last week.

Rivkin said that with each new innovation in the entertainment industry, there has been worry that it will kill the movie industry. Talking pictures, technicolor movies, television, basic cable and smartphones were all seen as disruptors. "And yet we're still here," Rivkin said. "The theatrical and home entertainment sectors both grew strongly in 2018, and that's great news, because we are all part of the growth together," he said.

If you stream Netflix on your iPhone or iPad, the app will no longer support Apple AirPlay. A report adds: This means that you won't be able to cast shows on Netflix from your iOS device to your Apple TV. Netflix's note says AirPlay is "no longer supported" due to "technical limitations." "With AirPlay support rolling out to third-party devices, there isn't a way for us to distinguish between devices (what is an Apple TV vs. what isn't) or certify these experiences. Therefore, we have decided to discontinue Netflix AirPlay support to ensure our standard of quality for viewing is being met," a Netflix spokesperson said in an email.

An anonymous reader quotes the Motley Fool: Cord-cutting has been a massive thorn in the side of pay-TV distributors and television media companies for nearly a decade. After U.S. pay-TV subscribers peaked in 2010 at 105 million households, about 14 million homes have cut the cord, according to a report from Digital TV Research. The trend has only accelerated in recent years. 2018 saw nearly double the amount of cord-cutting over 2017, according to Leichtman Research.

But 2018 might've been the pay-TV industry's worst year for cord-cutting. The U.S. will lose fewer pay-TV subscribers this year than last, according to Digital TV Research. And the research firm suggests annual losses will continue to decline next decade.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: While Apple CEO Tim Cook may not be able to force schoolchildren to code, there's no law against Cook and Apple using Sesame Street to make preschoolers want to code. Among the original Apple TV+ shows Cook announced at Apple's March Event was Helpsters, an "incredible new preschool show" about coding from "the peeps at Sesame Workshop and Apple."

In a skit on stage at the Steve Jobs Theater [available on YouTube], a Helpster monster from the new show named "Cody" (get it!) explains to Big Bird, "See, coding fosters collaboration, critical-thinking skills, and is an essential language that every child can learn. By teaching preschoolers about coding, we are giving them the opportunity to change the world."
One site described Cody as "a sociopathic tech recruiter muppet," complaining that "Teaching kids about technology is fine. But this is just creepy." They also objected to the show's targeting of pre-schoolers.

"From a developmental point of view, most experts agree very young children should be working on figuring out how to share their toys, not thinking about how to program them."

"BBC Culture reports on DJ Denniz Pop (born Dagge Volle), who couldn't sing, play an instrument, or write a song but could mathematically craft a song from stitching together electronically programmed sounds and beats," writes Slashdot reader dryriver. "Pop was the musical brains behind acts ranging from the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Ace Of Base to Britney Spears, and trained Max Martin who wrote 22 Billbooard #1 hits for the likes of Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Katy Perry, P!nk, Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande and Maroon 5 using a technique called 'Melodic Math.'" From the report: In a basement in Stockholm's suburbs, Pop brought together an elite team of eight songwriters and producers for a new venture -- Cheiron Studios -- in 1992. Over the next eight years they would go on to sell hundreds of millions of records through the likes of Ace of Base, 5ive, Robyn, Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, *NSYNC and Britney Spears. The secret of their songwriting success was to marry the melody to the beat, not work against it, and to have a big chorus. The team at Cheiron followed Pop's example, experimenting in clubs across the capital with up to a hundred different versions of each new track -- meticulously documenting the combinations of beats and melodies that made the club crowds go wild. Through these experiments, an entirely new genre of music blossomed, one that seemed tailor-made for the age of manufactured boybands and girl groups. Having grown up in socialist Sweden, Pop's approach to writing music was almost utilitarian. Like so many Swedish success stories -- IKEA, H&M, Volvo and Spotify -- the Cheiron team wanted their product to appeal to the maximum amount of people, which in a country with a population of only nine million meant focusing outside the nation's borders. Pop designed his music to reflect the lives of the people who bought more music than anyone else -- American teenagers -- at least as far as he understood them from his basement in faraway Stockholm.

Remember when Netflix used to be a DVD-by-mail company? Well, for 2.7 million subscribers in the US, it still is. From a report: The familiar red envelopes have been arriving in customers' mailboxes since 1998 and helped earn the company a healthy $212 million profit last year. Why are so many people still using this old-school service in the age of streaming? There are a number of reasons. Streaming Netflix video requires a lot of bandwidth -- so much so that Netflix consumes 15% of all US internet bandwidth, according to a 2018 industry report. But many rural areas of the country remain without broadband access. The Federal Communications Commission estimates 24 million Americans fall on the wrong side of this digital divide. The US Postal Service, however, can reach every ZIP code with those red envelopes. One such customer is Dana Palmateer, who lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

"Streaming movies was a no-go, so I just went with the disc service that Netflix offers," she says. "As all of us are doing it in these parts." But Netflix also has plenty of DVD customers in urban areas who prefer the service for its convenience and selection of movies, spokeswoman Annie Jung says. "People assume that our customers must either be super seniors or folks that live in the boonies with no internet access," she says. "Actually, our biggest hot spots are the coasts, like the Bay Area and New York." In 2017, the number of people who subscribed to Netflix's DVD subscription was about 4 million.

Google is testing a new "Pilot Program" that puts a row of advertisements on the Android TV home screen. XDA Developers, which was the first to report the program, says: "We're currently seeing reports that it has shown up in Sony smart TVs, the Mi Box 3 from Xiaomi, NVIDIA Shield TV, and others." Ars Technica reports: The advertising is a "Sponsored Channel" part of the "Android TV Core Services" app that ships with all Android TV devices. A "Channel" in Android TV parlance means an entire row of thumbnails in the UI will be dedicated to "sponsored" content. Google provided XDA Developers with a statement saying that yes, this is on purpose, but for now it's a "pilot program."

Sony has tersely worded a support page detailing the "Sponsored channel," too. There's no mention here of it being a pilot program. Sony's page, titled "A sponsored channel has suddenly appeared on my TV Home menu," says, "This change is included in the latest Android TV Launcher app (Home app) update. The purpose is to help you discover new apps and contents for your TV." Sony goes on to say, "This channel is managed by Google" and "the Sponsored channel cannot be customized." Sony basically could replace the entire page with a "Deal with it" sunglasses gif, and it would send the same message.

The Internet Archive has come to the rescue once again. The nonprofit digital library this week unveiled the MySpace Music Dragon Hoard, a collection of 490,000 MP3 files from 2008 to 2010 on the long-abandoned social media site. From a report: While the recovered tracks make up less than one percent of the music lost by some 14 million artists, it is still a sizable cache weighing in at 1.3TB. The lost songs were given to the Internet Archive by an "anonymous academic group" that had downloaded the music over a three year period to study. When the group learned of the data loss last month, it offered all it had to be preserved.

Last year, Google announced that YouTube Music would be the company's primary streaming service that would eventually replace Play Music. We have now learned that in anticipation of this change, Google will close the Google Play Artist Hub that musicians use to directly interact with the Play Store. 9to5Google reports: Smaller, indie artists that were not signed by labels could use the Google Play Artist Hub to manage their presence on the Play Store and upload/sell songs. In an email today, Google told these musicians that the Artist Hub is shutting down on April 30th. YouTube Music is cited as the reason by Google: "With the launch of YouTube Music last year, we eventually plan to replace Google Play Music with YouTube Music. In anticipation of this change, we are shutting down the Artist Hub."

This portal allowed smaller artists to directly interact with Google to see statistics, and get paid for streams/purchases. Musicians can still sell their content in the Play Store and have content available for streaming in Play Music, but must now sign-up with a third-party distributor to handle that entire process. At the end of this month, all existing songs and albums uploaded through the Google Play Artist Hub will "no longer appear in the Google Play Store or Google Play Music service (including the paid streaming and free radio service)." Artists that would still like to "make [their] music available for purchase/download" have to republish, with Google providing a list of "YouTube partners," including AWAL, Believe, CD Baby, DistroKid, Stem, and TuneCore.