Apple’s Vision Pro launches February 2 with pre-orders starting today. The mixed reality headset will have more than 150 3D movies available at launch, including content from Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video, as well as “immersive originals,” Apple says. While the company is positioning the $3,500 headset as “the ultimate entertainment device,” touting mind-blowing specs and a transformative experience, gaming currently drives an estimated 30 percent of immersive hardware revenue and non-gaming entertainment accounts for only 8 to 13 percent. Apple’s announcement focuses more on TV, movies, and sports than the Apple Arcade game hub. Continue reading Apple Pushes Immersive Entertainment for Vision Pro Headset

Amazon is rolling out Matter Casting, which lets customers cast directly from supported streaming apps on iOS and Android to Fire TV and Echo Show 15 devices. Viewers can begin watching a movie or browse for a Prime Video show on their phone, then cast it to a compatible Fire TV or Echo Show screen. Amazon called the CES announcement “an industry-first demonstration of implementing Matter Casting,” referring to the open-source Matter standard protocol for connectivity between smart home and IoT devices. Amazon is a founding member and active contributor to the Matter standard. Continue reading CES: Amazon Offers Casting from Prime Video App to Devices

Consumer Technology Association VP of Marketing & Communications Melissa Harrison moderated a CES discussion about the evolution of the connected TV (CTV) from the point of view of marketers. Hisense USA Senior VP of Brand Marketing David VanderWaal noted the pandemic’s impact on TV viewership. “In 2020, 47 percent of people reported watching movies on TVs; in 2023, it’s now 64 percent,” he noted. “More people want to have big screen entertainment.” At digital marketing firm The Trade Desk, Executive VP and CMO Ian Colley reported that 2023 was the “tipping point” for more people watching streaming rather than linear TV. Continue reading CES: Marketers on the Future of the Connected TV Ecosystem

Audiences are migrating from broadcasting to streaming, and Google just announced its decision to phase out third-party cookies. What’s a marketer to do? At CES, Disney, Pfizer and GroupM marketers discussed how they plan to evolve in a changing landscape. The Walt Disney Company’s Lisa Valentino emphasized the need for interoperability of data across platforms, with the consumer at the center. GroupM debuted its Ad Innovation Accelerator to “strategize and create scalable ad formats that are designed to be ubiquitous across ad-supported streaming environments.” Partners include BrightLine, Disney, KERV, NBCUniversal, Roku, Telly and YouTube. Continue reading CES: Marketers Shift Tactics in Streaming, Post-Cookie World

During a CES 2024 panel on “Amazon Streaming: Clay Tablets to Streaming TV — The Evolution of Storytelling,” moderator Carly Zipp, who is Amazon global director of brand marketing, asked panelists for their favorite stories, recounting that her son replaced her bedtime stories with ChatGPT. Lauren Anderson, Amazon Studios head of AVOD originals and unscripted programming, picked the story of Tracy Chapman’s song “Fast Car.” “It shows how stories can resonate through generations, genres, geographies, and ethnicities,” she said. For GroupM global CEO Christian Juhl, the stories of Hans Christian Andersen were formative in his childhood. Continue reading CES: Marketers Look at Evolution of Storytelling with AI Twist

LG Electronics’ CineBeam Qube projector weighs just 3.28 pounds, measures 5.3 x 3.1 inches, and doubles as a “stylish art object.” It packs a big picture punch, projecting in 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) for images measuring up to 120 inches. Its RGB laser light source delivers pictures the company says are sharp and clear, boasting a 450,000:1 contrast ratio and DCI-P3 color gamut coverage of up to 154 percent. The CineBeam Qube boasts an old-timey rotator handle reminiscent of crank projectors of yore. It’s also a home entertainment center, running on the LG webOS 6.0 platform, with access to streaming services including Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and YouTube. Continue reading CES: LG Unveils New Compact CineBeam Qube 4K Projector

Roku is following up the budget-priced, self-branded TV sets it introduced in January last year at CES with the more ambitious Roku Pro Series TV lineup debuting at next week’s CES 2024 and shipping later this spring. The 4K QLED Pro TVs will come in 55-inch, 65-inch, and 75-inch sizes retailing for under $1,500. Included are features like Mini LED local dimming for heightened contrast and deeper blacks. The Pro TVs also tap artificial intelligence for a Smart Picture feature that automatically adjusts picture and audio. The feature is scheduled to roll out to all Roku TVs this year. Continue reading Roku to Demo Its Pro Series TVs and Smart Picture AI at CES

Comcast is now making Xumo Stream Boxes available to its Xfinity broadband customers. New customers can get one Xumo Box for a $15 activation fee and no monthly charge. Additional units will be billed at $5 per month, the company says. The Xumo Stream Box comes preloaded with hundreds of streaming apps. In addition to NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, popular favorites like Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube are on the menu. Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels are also packaged in, with 20 options from Xfinity Stream and more than 300 from Xumo Play. Continue reading Comcast Makes Its Xumo Boxes Available for One-Time Fee

Alphabet-owned Google, which announced the end of its Play Movies & TV app in October 2022, now has a plan for relocating the video content that users have purchased on the service. Starting January 17, customers will be able to access their past Play Movies & TV purchases as well as active rentals on YouTube, Android TV devices, Google TV devices and the Google TV mobile app (including the iOS version). “We are making some changes to simplify how you purchase new movies or access the movies and TV shows you’ve purchased through Google,” the company explained. Continue reading Google Will Relocate Play Movies & TV Purchases in January

Streaming platform OrkaTV has teamed with Comcast’s FreeWheel adtech firm on a product designed to help marketers reach target audiences for their advertising in the FAST sector. The partnership allows marketers using FreeWheel to access OrkaTV’s more than 3,500 free ad-supported streaming TV channels. The end result is expected to be “access to a more diverse pool of FAST ad inventory” that in turn helps drive up demand for inventory, according to the firms, which say the “more accurate contextual advertising targeting abilities” also raise the ante. Continue reading Comcast’s FreeWheel Teams with OrkaTV to Target FAST Ads

Netflix has completed a worldwide technology upgrade that improves video quality for Premium subscribers viewing 4K HDR titles. The move is being hailed as welcome news in the wake of a price hike to $22.99 from $19.99 for U.S. Premium customers. Netflix used the “dynamic optimization” video encoding method to implement an HDR variant of the company’s VMAF (Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion) quality metric. The new HDR-VMAF is the result of a collaboration between Netflix and Dolby Laboratories that employs “subjective tests with 4K HDR content using high-end OLED panels,” according to Netflix. Continue reading Netflix Uses Deep Learning to Optimize Streaming in 4K HDR

TikTok is further entrenching itself in music streaming with its new “Artist Account” toolbox that allows followers to play tunes, buy merchandise and access news and information. The new feature is designed to allow artists to promote their work and increase discoverability using such tools as an artist tag and new release highlights on discovery pages. TikTok describes the Artist Account as a “toolbox of features” to support promotion and “forge a closer relationship between artist and fan on TikTok.” Available to every music creator that has uploaded at least four songs, more than 70,000 accounts are eligible from the drop. Continue reading TikTok Adds ‘Artist Accounts’ to Help Boost Music Streaming

YouTube is following in Netflix’s footsteps as the latest streamer to expand into games. YouTube Premium subscribers on mobile and desktops will be able to access a suite of games it has branded “Playables.” A total of 37 mini-games can be found using the Explore tab for those who opt-in. Titles include “Angry Birds Showdown,” “Daily Solitaire,” “Brain Out,” and “Daily Crossword.” The streaming games don’t need to be downloaded or installed, but can be played directly from YouTube’s servers. YouTube says the games will initially be available through March 28, making the effort seem somewhat experimental. Continue reading YouTube Experiments with Streaming Video Game Playables

Bill Gates has published his thinking about the future of computing, and fascinatingly, it’s the same as his prediction from decades ago: agents. No mere bots — and certainly not anthropomorphized paperclips — agents (to Gates) will abstract almost all HCI to a natural language conversation with systems that have our permission to take meaningful actions. Gates makes a highly specific prediction: within five years, the very idea of an app itself will seem as outdated as a rotary phone dial does next to an iPhone. A conversational UI will sit on top of a language model that has access to as much of our private data as we wish to give it. Continue reading Bill Gates Imagines Agents as the Human-Computer Interface

SiriusXM will roll out a redesigned app and new logo to North America subscribers beginning on December 14, the company announced at its Next Generation event in New York City for industry and press. Along with the new look, the company will debut an updated pricing structure that includes a $9.99 per month Streaming All Access plan aimed at “a new generation of SiriusXM listeners,” the company explained. The new SiriusXM app will first be available in Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and on Amazon Fire devices, with additional platforms and features to come in early 2024. Continue reading SiriusXM Updates Streaming App, Introduces Budget Pricing