The Verge reports that WarnerMedia is getting rid of the HBO Go app in an attempt to reduce some of the confusion about which app is for which purpose. From the report: HBO Max is AT&T's new streaming service that lets you access the entire HBO library plus additional content like Cartoon Network shows and the Studio Ghibli movies. You can subscribe to HBO Max directly for a $14.99 monthly fee, but it's also offered for free from many cable providers if you subscribe to HBO, and it's free as part of some AT&T wireless, internet, or TV plans. A key thing to know is that HBO Max is really an expanded and rebranded version of HBO Now, the company's previous streaming-only service. On most platforms, like Apple TV, the HBO Now app was directly updated to become HBO Max.

Before HBO Max existed, cable subscribers could stream HBO shows using an app called HBO Go. WarnerMedia will be getting rid of that app (or "sunsetting" it, in WarnerMedia's language) from "primary platforms" as of July 31st. If you previously relied on HBO Go, many cable providers will already let you log in to HBO Max. You can see that full list here. That "primary platforms" language is important, because WarnerMedia still hasn't struck deals to bring HBO Max to Roku or Amazon streaming devices. On those platforms, WarnerMedia is not upgrading the HBO Now app to become HBO Max. Instead, it's rebranding to simply be "HBO," where it will still cost $14.99, even though you'll only be able to watch HBO content on it and not the expanded HBO Max catalog. This branding switch will be happening over the coming months, according to WarnerMedia.

The Internet Archive is a massive endeavor -- it's an online library aiming to "provide Universal Access to All Knowledge." It has digitized millions of web pages, movies, photos, recordings, software programs, and books that might otherwise be lost to history. But it's neither un-censorable nor outside the bounds of copyright law. And now open internet supporters are wondering how to save it before it disappears.

European police busted an illegal streaming ring that provided service to 2 million people and was so sophisticated that it had its own customer-service team. From a report: The criminal network operated for over five years and offered more than 40,000 channels, movies, documentaries and other content, according to European police coordination agency Europol. The scale of the operation shows how the big streaming platforms still struggle to deal with content theft as criminals find new ways to hack their anti-piracy systems. The group offered a technical assistance service and high standards of quality control, earning an estimated 15 million euros ($17 million) through PayPal payments, bank transfers and cryptocurrencies, the agency said. The threat to legal streaming may grow if Netflix, Walt Disney Co. and others gradually raise prices in coming years to capitalize on their fast-growing subscriber bases and viewers seek out cheaper, illegal alternatives.

Just like nearly everything else on the internet, streaming services are ruled by recommendation algorithms that are designed to predetermine what people want before they ask for it. WarnerMedia is trying to accomplish the opposite with HBO Max. From a report: The company's new streaming service, which will allow for three concurrent streams, is positing itself as a human-first platform -- the opposite of Netflix's strategy. As streaming becomes more of a centerpiece in people's homes and more platforms find their way to people's television sets, focusing on improving the actual curation system subscribers use is just as important as available content, Sarah Lyons, senior vice president of product experience, told The Verge. CNET adds: Like rivals Netflix and Disney Plus, HBO Max has a sprawling catalog of hit shows and movies, plus a big-budget slate of exclusive originals packed with stars. But HBO Max is the most expensive of the bunch. New subscribers can sign up and pay a simple $15 a month subscription after a week-long free trial, the same price HBO already charges for its linear channel on most pay-TV providers and for its preexisting standalone streaming service, HBO Now. But if you're already paying for HBO in some form, the amount you'll have to pay for Max now, or whether you have to pay anything extra at all... well, it's complicated. "The question is: Does your provider have to deal with us for Max and do you move over? That answer will be fairly simple, and then beyond that it gets a little more complicated," Andy Forssell, the general manager of WarnerMedia's streaming operation, said in an interview last week. "We've got really broad distribution, and ... midnight next Tuesday we'll be where we are -- not that that's an end point, if there any discussions undone." To entice you to give it a try, HBO Max has padded itself with more content than you'll find on either the regular HBO channel or HBO Now.

Parents share a roof but see little of teenagers who have adopted vampire schedules; "Sometimes, my dad just wants me to wake up for no reason." From a report: Paul Cancellieri wakes up most mornings around 6 a.m. He makes himself breakfast. Then he says good night to his 16-year-old son, Cole. Cole, a high-school junior in Wake Forest, N.C., is one of the American teens who have gone nocturnal in the Covid-19 pandemic. While some schools require students to log on to live classes, many others are instead assigning work for students to complete on their own. With no daytime commitments, some teens prefer to stay up all night and sleep days. Some watch movies or chat with friends on similar schedules. Others do homework without their folks hovering. "I feel more relaxed, honestly," said Zach Zimmerman, a high-school senior in Mansfield, Texas. That was in April, when he was in the habit of going to bed around 10 a.m. and waking up in the late afternoon.

This month, Zach started taking an online college class that starts at 1 p.m., forcing him back to daylight hours. "When my college classes are over," he said, "I'll probably go back." Some parents welcome the daytime peace and quiet. They say it isn't worth arguing over bedtimes when teens are stuck at home and have no compelling reason to rise early. Gabrielle Powell, a 17-year-old in Escondido, Calif., spends her nights on Snapchat and video calls with friends. She plows through TV shows like "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" and "All American," she said, and makes macaroni and cheese. Her post-dawn bedtime varies. She recently broke her routine for the Advanced Placement calculus exam, at the ungodly late 11 a.m. Gabrielle stayed awake the rest of the day before going to sleep, but she soon returned to the night shift.

The process to get unlicensed versions of movies, music and other content taken off the internet isn't working as intended and should be updated, the Copyright Office said in an expansive report Thursday. From a report: Updating that system would require an act of Congress, which can now look to the Copyright Office's conclusions as it considers legislating on the matter. In its report, the office found the system for notice and takedown of infringing materials is unbalanced and out of sync with Congress' intent when it established the process in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA includes liability protection for online companies whose users illegally upload copyrighted material if the online companies take down the material when they are notified by the rights-holder. Copyright holders have complained that this process doesn't proactively protect their intellectual property against online infringement, and the report appears to agree, concluding "Congress' original intended balance has been tilted askew."

Apple is acquiring older movies and shows for its TV+ streaming service, aiming to build a back catalog of content that can better stack up against the huge libraries available on Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. From a report: The company's video-programming executives have taken pitches from Hollywood studios about licensing older content for TV+ and have bought some shows and movies, according to people familiar with the matter. The move represents a subtle strategy shift for Apple TV+, which launched in November with a lineup of original programs. The company plans to keep TV+ focused on original shows, and hasn't yet acquired any huge franchises or blockbusters for its back catalog, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

Facebook and some of the world's largest telecom carriers including China Mobile are joining forces to build a giant sub-sea cable to help bring more reliable and faster internet across Africa. From a report: The cost of the project will be just under $1 billion, according to three people familiar with the project, who asking not to be identified as the budget hasn't been made public. The 37,000-kilometer (23,000 miles) long cable -- dubbed 2Africa -- will connect Europe to the Middle East and 16 African countries, according to a statement on Thursday. The undersea cable sector is experiencing a resurgence. During the 1990s dot-com boom, phone companies spent more than $20 billion laying fiber-optic lines under the oceans. Now tech giants, led by Facebook and Alphabet's Google, are behind about 80% of the recent investment in transatlantic cable, driven by demand for fast-data transfers used for streaming movies to social messaging.

Quibi, the streaming app veteran executive Jeffrey Katzenberg started with Meg Whitman a little more than a month ago -- and for which it raised $1.8 billion -- is off to a rough start. From a report: Downloads have been anemic, despite a lineup that includes producers and stars like Jennifer Lopez, LeBron James, Idris Elba, Steven Spielberg and Chrissy Teigen. The service, which offers entertainment and news programs in five- to 10-minute chunks, was designed to be watched on the go by people who are too busy to sit down and stream TV shows or movies. It came out when millions of people were not going anywhere because of stay-at-home orders across the country. "I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus," Mr. Katzenberg said in a video interview. "Everything. But we own it."

Quibi fell out of the list of the 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps in the United States a week after it went live on April 6. It is now ranked No. 125, behind the game app Knock'em All and the language-learning app Duolingo, according to the analytics firm Sensor Tower. Even with a free 90-day trial, the app has been installed by only 2.9 million customers, according to Sensor Tower. Quibi says the figure is more like 3.5 million. Of those who have installed the app, the company says 1.3 million are active users. Mr. Katzenberg expressed disappointment with those numbers. "Is it the avalanche of people that we wanted and were going for out of launch?" he said. "The answer is no. It's not up to what we wanted. It's not close to what we wanted." So nobody wants to use a short-form video app right now, except an increasingly growing number of people who are hooked to TikTok. Nobody wants to spend money on a service, but Quibi is free for first three months. Yeah, it's the coronavirus.

Facebook trained a new chatbat with 1.5 billion examples of human exchanges from reddit, claiming it's able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality. The BBC reports: The social media giant said 49% of people preferred interactions with the chatbot [named "Blender"], compared with another human. But experts say training the artificial intelligence (AI) using a platform such as Reddit has its drawbacks. Numerous issues arose during longer conversations. Blender would sometimes respond with offensive language, and at other times it would make up facts altogether. Researchers said they hoped further models would address some of these issues.

Facebook also compared Blender's performance with the latest version of Google's own chatbot, Meena. It showed people two sets of conversations, one made with Blender and the other with Meena. Conversations included a wide range of topics including movies, music and veganism. Facebook said that 67% of respondents thought Blender sounded more human than Meena. "We achieved this milestone through a new chatbot recipe that includes improved decoding techniques, novel blending of skills, and a model with 9.4 billion parameters, which is 3.6x more than the largest existing system. This is the first chatbot to blend a diverse set of conversational skills together in one system. Building a truly intelligent dialogue agent that can chat like a human remains one of the largest open challenges in AI today."

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced Disney to postpone the release of its biggest movies, including Mulan and Black Widow, but will those movies actually end up heading straight to a streaming or digital-on-demand platform if the coronavirus pandemic drags on even longer? From a report: Disney says it might consider sending some major movies straight to streaming on a "case-by-case" basis. On Tuesday, Disney held its Q2 2020 earnings call for investors, with CEO Bob Chapek, CFO Christine McCarthy, and executive chairman Bob Iger in attendance (remotely) to give statements and take questions. [...] In the Q&A section of the call, investors asked if Disney had considered a "premium streaming" release for its postponed movies, like Mulan, Black Widow, and The Eternals. With the pandemic forcing theaters to close and people to say at home, is Disney willing to forgo theaters and instead release movies on digital platforms, as some studios have (i.e.: Trolls World Tour)? CEO Bob Chapek said it's a maybe.

Star Wars Day "is getting a virtual convention," reports Movieweb. Reedpop, the organization behind New York Comic-Con and Star Wars Celebration have put the convention together... The two-day event is called An Online Revelry: May the 4th Be With You and Revenge of the 5th celebration. Star Wars fans can expect all kinds of activities to take part in, right from the comfort of their own homes. This is in addition to Disney+ launching their behind-the-scenes docuseries on The Mandalorian, along with The Rise of Skywalker streaming premiere.

An Online Revelry: May the 4th Be With You and Revenge of the 5th celebration will feature live-tweeting "movies and episodes of both Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, as well as Q&A sessions and discussions with writers and voice actors associated with the franchise... The event will take place across the many social media accounts of Reedpop, including "New York Comic Con, C2E2, BookCon, Emerald City Comic Con, and Florida SuperCon, on both Twitter and Facebook."
And USA Today reports on some other homegrown celebrations: On Monday starting at 12:01 a.m. PT/3:01 ET, LA's "Star Wars" bar Scum and Villainy Cantina is presenting a 24-hour livestream on Twitch featuring director Kevin Smith, movie historian Leonard Maltin, "Rise of Skywalker" actor Greg Grunberg and more. And that same day, Hollywood trainer Eric Fleishman is hosting a live online themed, costumed workout (4 ET/1 PT, registration required) featuring guest Matt Lanter (who voices Anakin Skywalker in "Clone Wars") and a live performance by Echosmith.
Meanwhile, one Ohio news site even resurrected their image of a homegrown Star Wars board game they'd created in 2005 to celebrate the release of Star Wars III: Return of the Sith.

And CNET just published an article complaining about how much they hated The Rise of Skywalker.

Trolls World Tour won't be the last major-studio release to bypass movie theatres altogether. An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian: Universal gets a greater cut of revenue from digital services than at the box office, which means the film has made the same amount of profit in its first three weeks as the first Trolls film did during its entire five-month run in U.S. cinemas.... "Universal has cast the first stone," said Jeff Bock, an analyst at research firm Exhibitor Relations. "This is exactly what the theatrical exhibition world had always feared -- proof that bypassing theatres could be a viable model of distribution for studios.

"Like it or not, the floodgates have opened. This is just the beginning, and the longer it takes for theatres to open on a worldwide scale, we're going to see the premium-video-on-demand schedule become more and more populated."

That schedule is now filling up. Universal announced last week that Judd Apatow's new comedy The King of Staten Island would scrap its planned cinema release on 19 June and premiere on-demand instead. And Warner Bros is doing the same with Scoob!, the first full-length animated Scooby-Doo film, which was meant to hit cinemas on 15 May...

The straight-to-digital strategy is only considered to be viable for mid- and lower-budget films forecast to earn at most a few hundred million at the global box office.

stikves writes: Given the highly-successful video on demand release of the recent "Trolls World Tour" movie, and the future plans to sidestep theaters for some content from Universal, AMC has struck back by blanket banning of all their content. "As a result, [NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell] noted that as 'soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats,' meaning some movies would continue with theatrical releases while others would go directly to digital retailers or possibly land on NBCUniversal's new streaming service, Peacock," reports The Verge. "The move led to a lengthy statement from AMC Theatres chair-CEO Adam Aron, who claimed that Shell's comments were 'unacceptable.' 'It is disappointing to us, but Jeff's comments as to Universal's unilateral actions and intentions have left us with no choice,' Aron wrote. 'Therefore, effectively immediately AMC will no longer play any Universal movies in any of our theatres in the United States, Europe or the Middle East.'"

The group behind the Oscars is relaxing the rules for this year's movies because of the coronavirus shutdown, allowing films that premiered on streaming platforms to compete for the industry's most-coveted prizes. From a report: The change applies only to movies that had a previously planned theatrical release and only for the upcoming 93rd Academy Awards, scheduled for Feb. 28. The old rules will be back once theaters reopen, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences said Tuesday. Rule changes for Oscars are rare, and the guidelines for competing have been the source of controversy as streaming platforms such as Netflix pour billions of dollars into feature films and seek to compete for top Hollywood awards. Normally, movies must premiere in a theater in Los Angeles County and show for seven consecutive days, playing at least three times a day, to be considered for Oscars, including best picture.

Nearly 16 years ago, Slashdot's original co-founder CmdrTaco posted that liberal film-maker Michael Moore had won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for a documentary about the Bush administration -- and noted later that Moore approved downloads of the film through networks like BitTorrent.

But now the 66-year-old filmmaker is offering free streaming on his YouTube channel for a 2019 film he'd backed called "Planet of the Humans." The film "reveals the heavy environmental impact of renewable energy and the problems with solar energy, wind energy and biogas, among other forms of power," writes Newsweek. "Instead, the documentary argues that the only way to save the planet is to stop the growth of the human population and reduce its consumption."

The film features appearances by everyone from Elon Musk and Al Gore to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Koch Brothers. (And it includes music from many artists including Radiohead and King Crimson.) In its description on YouTube, the film's director Jeff Gibbs argues that no amount of batteries will save us. "This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way — before it's too late.

Netflix beat its forecast for subscriber growth in the first quarter as consumers in many countries stayed at home due to the coronavirus pandemic and hunted for ways to entertain themselves. From a report: The streaming giant said Tuesday it added 15.8 million new paid subscribers [alternative source] around the world in the quarter, more than double the 7 million new subscribers it had predicted for the period. In the first quarter a year ago, Netflix added 9.6 million new subscribers globally. "Like other home entertainment services, we're seeing temporarily higher viewing and increased membership growth. In our case, this is offset by a sharply stronger US dollar, depressing our international revenue, resulting in revenue-as-forecast. We expect viewing to decline and membership growth to decelerate as home confinement ends, which we hope is soon," Netflix said in its letter to shareholders.

HBO Max, WarnerMedia's new streaming service combining HBO with Warner Bros. movies and Turner TV shows, will launch on May 27th, the company announced today. From a report: HBO Max's big selling point is being able to combine all of HBO's offerings on top of a slate of original titles that are exclusive to the app, classic Warner Bros. movies, and more. HBO Max will also be the exclusive home of Friends, which hasn't been streaming anywhere in the United States since it left Netflix on January 1st. (Although some of the service's exclusives, like the Friends reunion special, are facing delays following production issues caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.) The streaming service offers more to watch than HBO Now and HBO Go, and WarnerMedia and AT&T are hoping people who use both services will switch over to Max, the company's new crown jewel. Existing HBO subscribers on AT&T (approximately 10 million) and HBO Now direct billing subscribers will get HBO Max for free, the company previously announced. Customers who subscribe to AT&T's premium video, mobile, and broadband packages will be offered bundles with HBO Max at no additional cost. At a cost of $14.99 a month, HBO Max is the priciest of the entries in the so-called streaming wars.

Movie ticketing company Fandango has agreed to buy Walmart's on-demand video streaming service, Vudu, for an undisclosed sum. From a report: The video service today reaches over 100 million living room devices across the U.S. including smart TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, and other over-the-top streaming devices, as well as Windows 10 and Mac computers, and iOS and Android mobile devices. To date, the Vudu app on mobile has been installed over 14.5 million times. As a part of the agreement, Vudu will continue to power Walmart's digital movie and TV store on Walmart.com. In addition, Walmart says Vudu customers will have uninterrupted access to their Vudu library. They'll also continue to be able to use their Walmart login as well as their Walmart wallet to make purchases on Vudu, the retailer notes.

There's a scene in the 1984 Tom Hanks movie Splash "showing a brief glimpse of a naked butt..." notes the Verge, "but people watching the movie on Disney Plus are greeted with an entirely different version of the scene."

And the Verge sees a larger issue: Disney used CGI hair to cover actress Daryl Hannah's body. A Disney representative confirmed to The Verge that a "few scenes" from Splash were "slighted edited to remove nudity," but they did not specify when the edits were made...

Splash has found itself in the middle of an ongoing debate over media being altered in digital spaces. It's a debate that's raged for decades; fans were upset when George Lucas edited A New Hope, making it so Greedo shot first instead of Han. People bemoaned Lucas and 20th Century Fox for not releasing the original version of the film anywhere, either. The only legal versions of A New Hope that exist for people to buy, download, or stream today feature Greedo shooting first. It wasn't just that Lucas and Fox replaced the original scene with a slightly altered one, but the original also wasn't available to purchase when reprints were made...

"As physical media gives way to streaming, large corporations have greater and greater control over what we can and cannot see," Slate's Isaac Butler wrote on the issue. "This gives them unprecedented power to disappear bothersome work.

"Whether we agree with a particular instance of memory-holing or not, this practice is deeply troubling, its history even more so."