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Spotify Premium subscriptions include up to 15 hours of audiobook listening. But starting in April, the company will charge an extra $1 to $2 per month for the feature, Bloomberg reported today, citing anonymous “people familiar with the matter.” The reported price hike would be the second that Spotify customers have faced in nine months.

Currently, Spotify charges nothing for its free plan with ads, $5.99/month for students, $10.99/month for its Premium plan, $14.99/month for its Duo Premium plan for two users, and $16.99/month for its Family Premium plan with up to six users.

Bloomberg reported that individual plan prices will go up by approximately $1 per month, and multi-member plans will increase by $2 per month.

Heads up, Whovians! We've got a newly regenerated Fifteenth Doctor in Ncuti Gatwa and a new season of the long-running British sci-fi series Doctor Who on the way. Judging by the latest trailer, we're in for another wild ride of time-traveling hijinks, punctuated by an irresistibly charismatic Gatwa sporting some very colorful outfits with confident aplomb.

(Spoilers for most recent seasons and specials below.)

Look, I loved Jodie Whittaker's incarnation of the Doctor, but her tenure was hampered by the unavoidable fact that showrunner Chris Chibnall just didn't give her a lot of great material to work with. Among other issues, there was an unfortunate tendency toward didacticism and preachiness in the writing at the expense of genuine emotional resonance. While there were a number of notable episodes, and Chibnall gamely trotted out all the fan-favorite monsters and tropes, nothing ever fully captured the imagination in quite the same way as the show has always done at its best. Whittaker deserved better.

Enlarge / A promotional image for Sorry for Your Loss, which was a Facebook Watch original scripted series. (credit: Facebook)

Last April, Meta revealed that it would no longer support original shows, like Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk talk show, on Facebook Watch. Meta's streaming business that was once viewed as competition for the likes of YouTube and Netflix is effectively dead now; Facebook doesn't produce original series, and Facebook Watch is no longer available as a video-streaming app.

The streaming business' demise has seemed related to cost cuts at Meta that have also included layoffs. However, recently unsealed court documents in an antitrust suit against Meta [PDF] claim that Meta has squashed its streaming dreams in order to appease one of its biggest ad customers: Netflix.

Facebook allegedly gave Netflix creepy privileges

As spotted via Gizmodo, a letter was filed on April 14 in relation to a class-action antitrust suit that was filed by Meta customers, accusing Meta of anti-competitive practices that harm social media competition and consumers. The letter, made public Saturday, asks a court to have Reed Hastings, Netflix's founder and former CEO, respond to a subpoena for documents that plaintiffs claim are relevant to the case. The original complaint filed in December 2020 [PDF] doesn’t mention Netflix beyond stating that Facebook “secretly signed Whitelist and Data sharing agreements” with Netflix, along with “dozens” of other third-party app developers. The case is still ongoing.

It's been a long wait for the second season of HBO's House of the Dragon, in which House Targaryen descends into civil war over the heir to the Iron Throne. It's set to premiere in June, and HBO is ramping up its marketing with a rather clever twist: not one official trailer, but two, each presenting the perspective of one side in the bloody conflict. And we get to choose which trailer we'd like to view—although if you're like us, you'll elect to watch both.

(Spoilers for the first season below.)

As I've written previously, HBO's House of the Dragon debuted in 2022 with a solid, promising pilot episode, and the remainder of the season lived up to that initial promise. The series is set nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen's reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood, a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Galactic Republic and its Jedi masters symbolized the epitome of enlightenment and peace. Then came the inevitable downfall and outbreak of war as the Sith, who embraced the Dark Side of the Force, came to power. Star Wars: The Acolyte is a forthcoming new series on Disney+ that will explore those final days of the Republic as the seeds of its destruction were sown—and the streaming platform just dropped the first trailer.

The eight-episode series was created by Leslye Headland, who co-created Russian Doll with Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler. It's set at the end of the High Republic Era, about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace. Apparently Headland rather cheekily pitched The Acolyte as "Frozen meets Kill Bill," which is an intriguing combination. She drew on wuxia martial arts films for inspiration, much like George Lucas was originally inspired by Westerns and the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa.

(Some spoilers for the prequel trilogy below.)

Enlarge / "Trimming the Herbs," mapped above, is all that stands between "Team 0%" and its ultimate goal of clearing every Super Mario Maker level. (credit: Is SMM Beaten Yet?)

As of late 2017, there were almost 85,000 "uncleared" levels in the original Wii U Super Mario Maker (SMM)—levels that had never been beaten by anyone except for their original uploaders. As of this writing, a group of persistent players gathered under the banner of "Team 0%" has spent years narrowing the list of uncleared levels to a single entry—a devious, Super Mario World-styled Bob-omb bounce-and-throw gauntlet named "Trimming the Herbs" (the second-to-last uncleared level went down on Thursday, March 14, as noted on the excellent "Is SMM Beaten Yet?" tracker).

Given enough time, Team 0% would undoubtedly be able to bring down SMM's "final boss," as it were. But the collective effort to finally and completely "beat" SMM has an external deadline: April 8, the day Nintendo has announced that it plans to finally shut down the aging Wii U's gameplay servers.

The next three weeks will determine whether Team 0% can live up to its moniker or if this one final level will leave the team just short of its ultimate achievement. "I’d never think we would be this close to actually achieving this goal," Team 0% founder Jeffie told Ars Technica recently. "How often does a community of gamers do something like this?"

Amazon Prime Video has dropped the full official trailer for Fallout, the streaming platform's forthcoming post-apocalyptic sci-fi series. It's based on the bestselling role-playing gaming franchise set in a satirical, 1950s-style future post-nuclear apocalypse. There's plenty for gaming fans to be pleased about, judging by the trailer, but casting national treasure Walton Goggins (Justified) as a gunslinging Ghoul was quite simply a stroke of genius.

The first Fallout RPG was released in 1997, followed by several sequels and spinoffs. According to the game's lore, modern civilization is destroyed in 2077 by a global nuclear war between the US and China. Survivors live in various underground vaults (fallout shelters). Each iteration of the game takes place somewhere across a post-apocalyptic US metro area and features a Vault Dweller—someone born and raised underground—as the protagonist. The first game takes place in 2161 and features a Vault Dweller from Vault 13, deep in the mountains of Southern California. The Vault Dweller must complete various missions to save the residents of Vault 13, which takes said protagonist to in-world places like Junktown; a merchant city called the Hub; and Necropolis, filled with Ghouls, i.e., humans badly mutated by exposure to nuclear radiation.

The series was announced in July 2020, with Westworld writers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serving as executive producers. In January 2022, it was revealed that Nolan would direct the first three episodes but that two other writers—Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner—would be the showrunners. Todd Howard, who directed several games in the franchise, is also an executive producer and has said the series is not an adaptation of any particular game, but it is set within the same continuity. Per the official premise:

Enlarge / A promotional image for a Roku TV. (credit: Roku)

Roku customers are threatening to stop using, or to even dispose of, their low-priced TVs and streaming gadgets after the company appears to be locking devices for people who don't conform to the recently updated terms of service (ToS).

This month, users on Roku's support forums reported suddenly seeing a message when turning on their Roku TV or streaming device reading: "We've made an important update: We’ve updated our Dispute Resolution Terms. Select ‘Agree’ to agree to these updated Terms and to continue enjoying our products and services. Press * to view these updated Terms." A large button reading "Agree" follows. The pop-up doesn't offer a way to disagree, and users are unable to use their device unless they hit agree.

Customers have left pages of complaints on Roku's forum. One user going by "rickstanford" said they were "FURIOUS!!!!" and expressed interest in sending their reported six Roku devices back to the company since "apparently I don't own them despite spending hundreds of dollars on them."

The countdown continues for the hotly anticipated debut of 3 Body Problem, Netflix's eight-episode sci-fi series adapted from the award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first book in his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. Those attending the SXSW Film & Television Festival in Austin will get to see the series' world premiere tonight. The rest of us have to wait until later this month, but in the meantime, the streaming platform has released a final trailer.

(Some spoilers for the novel below.)

The 3-Body Problem's narrative is told in a nonlinear fashion, jumping between a young astrophysicist, Ye Wenjie, who witnesses her father being beaten to death by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and Ye's return to Tsinghua University as an established professor many years later. During the earlier timeline, Ye figures out a means of sending an interstellar message to possible extraterrestrial civilizations and receives a response from a planet called Trisolaris. (As its name implies, the planet has three suns, which wreak havoc on Trisolaris via unpredictable "chaotic periods"—hence the novel's title, which refers to a classic problem in celestial mechanics.) Despite being warned that the aliens intend to invade and conquer Earth, Ye responds to the message and invites them to do so, disillusioned by the state of the world.

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

The European Commission (EC) has sided with Spotify, fining Apple nearly $2 billion for abusive App Store restrictions on developers that it found violated antitrust laws by degrading music streaming apps (other than Apple Music) and spiking prices.

"Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app (‘anti-steering provisions')," the EC found.

"This is illegal under EU antitrust rules" and harms consumers "who cannot make informed and effective decisions on where and how to purchase music streaming subscriptions for use on their device," the EC said.

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Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global are no longer considering a merger that would have put the Max and Paramount+ streaming services under one corporate umbrella. Per a CNBC report today citing anonymous “people familiar with the matter," WBD and Paramount had been mulling a merger for “several months."

In December, reports started swirling about WBD and Paramount discussing a potential merger. Axios even reported that WBD CEO David Zaslav and Paramount CEO Bob Bakish met in person for “several hours” and that Zaslav also met with Shari Redstone, the owner of National Amusements Inc. (NAI), Paramount’s parent company. Now, CNBC reports that discussions between the media giants “cooled off this month.” Paramount and WBD haven’t commented.

When news of the potential merger dropped, it was unclear what sort of regulatory hurdles the media conglomerates might have faced if they tried becoming one. Combined, the companies would have had the second-biggest streaming business by subscriber count, trailing Netflix.

Enlarge / The Fire OS home screen advertising Ford. (credit: Bodhi Wire/YouTube)

Amazon has issued an update to Fire TV streaming devices and televisions that has broken apps that let users bypass the Fire OS home screen. The tech giant claims that its latest Fire OS update is about security but has refused to detail any potential security concerns.

Users and app developers have reported that numerous apps that used to work with Fire TV devices for years have suddenly stopped working. As first reported by AFTVnews, the update has made apps unable to establish local Android Debug Bridge (ADB) connections and execute ADB commands with Fire TV devices. The update, Fire OS 7.6.6.9, affects several Fire OS-based TVs, including models from TCL, Toshiba, Hisense, and Amazon’s Fire TV Omni QLED Series. Other devices running the update include Amazon’s first Fire TV Stick 4K Max, the third-generation Fire TV Stick, as well as the third and second-generation Fire TV Cubes and the Fire TV Stick Lite.

A code excerpt shared with AFTVnews by what the publication described as an “affected app developer," which you can view here, shows a line of code indicating that Fire TVs would not be allowed to make ADB connections with a local device or app. As pointed out by AFTVnews, such apps have been used by Fire TV modders for abilities like clearing installed apps’ cache and using a different home screen than the Fire OS default. Other uses include advanced tweaks, like console emulators, as How-To Geek noted.

Enlarge / A scene from One Piece, one of the animes that Funimation has distributed. (credit: Zoro/YouTube)

Sony is making an effort to appease customers who will lose their entire Funimation digital libraries when the anime streaming service merges into Crunchyroll. Currently, though, the company's plan for giving disappointed customers "an appropriate value" for their erased digital copies isn't very accessible or clear.

Earlier this month, Sony-owned Funimation announced that customers' digital libraries would be unavailable starting on April 2. At that time, Funimation accounts will become Crunchyroll accounts. Sony acquired Crunchyroll in 2021, so some sort of merging of the services was expected. However, less expected was customers' lost access to online copies of beloved anime that they acquired through digital codes provided in purchased Funimation DVDs or Blu-rays. Funimation for years claimed that customers would be able to stream these copies “forever, but there are some restrictions.”

Rahul Purini, Crunchyroll's president, explained the decision while speaking to The Verge's latest Decoder podcast, noting that the feature was incorporated into the Funimation platform.

It's been two years since we had new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, which debuted in 2017. Now Paramount+ has dropped the official trailer for the fifth and final season of the spinoff series.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below.)

As previously reported, Sonequa Martin-Green plays Michael Burnham, an orphaned human raised on the planet Vulcan by none other than Sarek (James Frain) and his human wife, Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner)—aka, Spock's (Ethan Peck) parents. So, she is Spock's adoptive sister. As I've written previously, the S2 season-long arc involved the mysterious appearances of a "Red Angel" and a rogue Starfleet AI called Control that sought to wipe out all sentient life in the universe.

Enlarge (credit: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Fubo is suing Fox Corporation, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) over their plans to launch a unified sports streaming app. Fubo, a live sports streaming service that has business relationships with the three companies, claims the firms have engaged in anticompetitive practices for years, leading to higher prices for consumers.

In an attempt to understand how much potential the allegations have to derail the app's launch, Ars Technica read the 73-page sealed complaint and sought opinions from some antitrust experts. While some of Fubo's allegations could be hard to prove, Fubo isn't the only one concerned about the joint app's potential to make it hard for streaming services to compete fairly.

Fubo wants to kill ESPN, Fox, and WBD’s joint sports app

Earlier this month, Disney, which owns ESPN, WBD (whose sports channels include TBS and TNT), and Fox, which owns Fox broadcast stations and Fox Sports channels like FS1, announced plans to launch an equally owned live sports streaming app this fall. Pricing hasn’t been confirmed but is expected to be in the $30-to-$50-per-month range. Fubo, for comparison, starts at $80 per month for English-language channels.

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Brussels is to impose its first-ever fine on tech giant Apple for allegedly breaking EU law over access to its music streaming services, according to five people with direct knowledge of the long-running investigation.

The fine, which is in the region of €500 million and is expected to be announced early next month, is the culmination of a European Commission antitrust probe into whether Apple has used its own platform to favor its services over those of competitors.

The probe is investigating whether Apple blocked apps from informing iPhone users of cheaper alternatives to access music subscriptions outside the App Store. It was launched after music-streaming app Spotify made a formal complaint to regulators in 2019.

Enlarge (credit: Henri Leduc | Moment)

On Thursday, AMC notified subscribers of a proposed $8.3 million settlement that provides awards to an estimated 6 million subscribers of its six streaming services: AMC+, Shudder, Acorn TV, ALLBLK, SundanceNow, and HIDIVE.

The settlement comes in response to allegations that AMC illegally shared subscribers' viewing history with tech companies like Google, Facebook, and X (aka Twitter) in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).

Passed in 1988, the VPPA prohibits AMC and other video service providers from sharing "information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services from a video tape service provider." It was originally passed to protect individuals' right to private viewing habits, after a journalist published the mostly unrevealing video rental history of a judge, Robert Bork, who had been nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan.

Enlarge / Musician Benn Jordan, who performs under the alias The Flashbulb, successfully defended his music against streaming fraud allegations.

Last Friday, musician Benn Jordan assumed his phone was glitching when he tried to pull up one of his albums and couldn't find it on Spotify. Then he noticed all the notifications he'd gotten from fans asking why he'd removed his music on all the streaming platforms where his music could typically be found, including Apple Music, iTunes, Deezer, and YouTube Music.

But Jordan had not made any such decision. By the time night fell on Friday, the gravity of what had happened finally sank in, and he realized something was "very, very wrong."

For the past 17 years, Jordan has paid his digital distributor, TuneCore, thousands of dollars to manage his music on streaming platforms. Under his alias The Flashbulb, Jordan had released more than a dozen albums, reaching 1.9 million listeners on Spotify who added his songs to more than 300,000 playlists last year alone. In total, he had earned over $400,000 in sales since signing up for TuneCore in 2007.

Enlarge / Priyanka Chopra (left) and Richard Madden (right) in the Prime Video original series Citadel. (credit: Prime Video/YouTube)

Streaming services like Amazon Prime Video promote annual subscriptions as a way to save money. But long-term commitments to streaming companies that are in the throes of trying to determine how to maintain or achieve growth typically end up biting subscribers in the butt—and they're getting fed up.

As first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, a lawsuit seeking class-action certification [PDF] hit Amazon on February 9. The complaint centers on Amazon showing ads with Prime Video streams, which it started doing for US subscribers in January unless customers paid an extra $2.99/month. This approach differed from how other streaming services previously introduced ads: by launching a new subscription plan with ads and lower prices and encouraging subscribers to switch.

A problem with this approach, though, as per the lawsuit, is that it meant that people who signed up for an annual subscription to Prime Video before Amazon’s September 2023 announcement about ads already paid for a service that’s different from what they expected.

Enlarge / The Rings of Power... now in HDR10+ for ad-tier users. (credit: Prime Video)

On January 29, Amazon started showing ads to Prime Video subscribers in the US unless they pay an additional $2.99 per month. But this wasn't the only change to the service. Those who don't pay up also lose features; their accounts no longer support Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos.

As noticed by German tech outlet 4K Filme on Sunday, Prime Video users who choose to sit through ads can no longer use Dolby Vision or Atmos while streaming. Ad-tier subscribers are limited to HDR10+ and Dolby Digital 5.1.

4K Filme confirmed that this was the case on TVs from both LG and Sony; Forbes also confirmed the news using a TCL TV.

A shot from One Piece, one of the animes that Funimation made DVDs for. (credit: Crunchyroll: Inside Anime/YouTube)

How long is “forever”? When it comes to digital media, forever could be as close as a couple of months away.

Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers' digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2. For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming these digital copies of purchased movies and shows, but qualifying it: “forever, but there are some restrictions.”

Funimation’s parent company, Sony, bought rival anime streaming service Crunchyroll in 2021. Since then, it was suspected that Sony would merge the offerings together somehow. This week, we learned how, as Funimation announced that its app and website would close on April 2, and Funimation accounts will become Crunchyroll accounts. Most of Funimation’s catalog is already on Crunchyroll, Funimation’s announcement claimed.

Enlarge / Because sometimes your friend Tim, the one with all the legal media, is having server issues, but it's movie night and the popcorn is already made. (credit: Plex)

Plex, the media center largely known as a hub for TV and movies that you and your friends obtained one way or another, now lets you pay for movie rentals. It's both a convenient way to watch movies without having to hunt across multiple services, and yet another shift by Plex to be closer to the mainstream.

Plex's first set of available films is more than 1,000 titles, with some notable recent-run offerings: Barbie, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Wonka, PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, and so forth. As is typical of digital rentals, you have 30 days to start watching a movie and then 48 hours to finish it.

Prices at the moment range from $3.99 to $5.99. Conveniently, movies you rent on one platform can be played on any other. Even on Apple devices, or, as Plex puts it, "devices that don't allow direct rentals on their platform." Rentals are only available in the US, however.

Enlarge / Gleyber Torres, Aaron Judge, and Didi Gregorius playing for the Yankees in 2019, when Yankees games were easier to track down.

Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), and Fox plan to launch an app together this fall, the companies announced Tuesday. The unnamed app will unite the sports offerings of the three media conglomerates, including their reported 85 percent ownership of US sports rights. The app could simplify things for sports fans while signaling a bundled future for streaming services—which could ultimately prove good or bad for subscribers.

The new app will give subscribers access to ESPN+ and various linear channels that show live sports, including ABC, Fox, TNT, TBS, truTV, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, FS1, FS2, SECN, ACCN, and BTN. The companies' announcement promised access to "thousands of events" through the app, including from the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, and NHL, as well as PGA, Wimbledon, UFC, and Formula 1 events, the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, the FIFA World Cup, and college sports. An anonymous person "familiar with the matter" told Variety that the app won't make original content.

People will be able to bundle the sports app with Disney-owned streaming services Disney+ and Hulu, as well as with WBD's Max streaming app. The upcoming app will particularly target "those outside of the traditional pay TV bundle," the announcement said.

Enlarge / Selena Gomez and Martin Short on the set of Only Murders in the Building on February 14, 2022, in New York City.

Hulu and Disney+ subscribers have until March 14 to stop sharing their login information with people outside of their household. Disney-owned streaming services are the next to adopt the password-crackdown strategy that has helped Netflix add millions of subscribers.

An email sent from "The Hulu Team" to subscribers yesterday and viewed by Ars Technica tells customers that Hulu is "adding limitations on sharing your account outside of your household."

Hulu's subscriber agreement, updated on January 25, now states that users "may not share your subscription outside of your household," with household being defined as the "collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein."

Enlarge / Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in the Netflix original series Ozark. (credit: Netflix/YouTube)

Netflix subscribers can expect more price hikes as the company looks to grow revenue in 2024. In its Q4 2023 letter to shareholders, Netflix also revealed plans to eliminate the cheapest ad-free plan available to users.

In the January 23 letter (PDF), Netflix said:

As we invest in and improve Netflix, we’ll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect those improvements, which in turn helps drive the positive flywheel of additional investment to further improve and grow our service.

The statement will be unsavory for frugal streamers who have recently endured price hikes from Netflix and other streaming services. In January 2022, Netflix increased the price of its Basic no-ads tier from $8.99 per month to $9.99/month. In October 2023, that same plan went up to $11.99/month. Meanwhile, Netflix's Premium ad-free plan increased from $17.99/month to $19.99/month in January 2022 and then to $22.99/month in October.

Enlarge / A bold jumping spider struggles to survive in New York City in A Real Bug's Life, narrated by Awkwafina. (credit: National Geographic/Jamie Thorpe)

Pixar's 1998 animated film A Bug's Life celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, and National Geographic decided to mark the occasion with a new science docuseries, A Real Bug's Life, narrated by Awkwafina. As with the Pixar film, the bugs (and adjacent creatures) are the main characters here, from cockroaches, monarch butterflies, and praying mantises to bees, spiders, and even hermit crabs. The 10 episodes tell their stories as they struggle to survive in their respective habitats, capturing entire ecosystems in the process: city streets, a farm, the rainforest, a Texas backyard, and the African savannah, for example.

The genesis for the docuseries lies in a rumored sequel to the original film. That inspired producer Bill Markham, among others, to pitch a documentary series on a real bug's life to National Geographic. "It was the quickest commission ever," Markham told Ars. "They said yes literally over a weekend. It was such a good idea, to film bugs in an entertaining family way with Pixar sensibilities." And thanks to the advent of new technologies, plus a couple of skilled "bug wranglers," the team captured the bug's-eye view of the world beautifully.

According to Director of Photography Nathan Small, long tube-like probe lenses enabled the camera crew to capture footage from inside tiny cracks and holes to better document the buggy behavior. They also made better use of macro lenses. "Before when we had macro lenses, they were all quite long, and the background would be really smooshy with everything out of focus," Small told Ars. "We tried to shoot everything from very low, very wide angles with lots of context, so you can experience the world from the point of view of the animal and see how it sits in its location, rather than just a smooshy background."

You know the premiere date for Netflix's live-action adaptation, Avatar: The Last Airbender, is drawing nigh because the streaming giant just released an official trailer featuring moments drawn from the original anime series and lots of snazzy element-bending action, plus several adorable shots of Appa. We have high hopes for this series.

As we reported previously, the original anime series was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. It was set in an Asian-inspired world where certain chosen individuals have the ability to telekinetically manipulate one of four elements (earth, air, water, and fire)—a practice known as "bending." Each generation, there is one Avatar who can bend all four elements and is thus responsible for maintaining harmony among the four elemental nations, as well as serving as a link between the physical and spirit worlds.

A 12-year-old Air Nomad boy named Aang is the current Avatar, but he hid in a state of suspended animation for a century because he was afraid of taking on that huge responsibility. Two Water Tribe siblings, Katara and Sokka, eventually revive Aang, who finds that the Fire Nation has wiped out most of the Air Nomads in his absence. Katara and Sokka join Aang, an airbender, on his quest to master bending each of the remaining three elements. Their mission is hampered by the banished Fire Nation Prince Zuko, who seeks to capture Aang to restore his honor with his father, Fire Lord Ozai, with the help of his uncle Iroh.

Enlarge / Santos Escobar and Joaquin Wilde at WWE Smackdown held at Barclay's Center on December 1, 2023, in Brooklyn, New York. (credit: Sportico via Getty)

Netflix has agreed to a $5 billion deal to screen World Wrestling Entertainment’s flagship Raw program over the next decade, in the group’s biggest foray so far into streaming live events.

The streaming service is betting that screening three live programs a week will allow it to capture the large and loyal fan base for a show that helped launch the careers of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena, and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

The deal, which starts in January 2025, will significantly expand Netflix’s use of the technology that is required to broadcast live sporting events.

Some people were not pleased when Netflix and other streaming platforms began making feature films. But in an industry in which smaller or medium films tend to be squeezed out in favor of big-budget fare, there's a solid argument to be made that Netflix and others could help fill that niche. That certainly seems to be the case with Netflix's forthcoming sci-fi film, Spaceman, judging by the official trailer. Adam Sandler stars as an astronaut who is not coping well with the isolation and disintegration of his marriage while on an eight-month solo mission and strikes up a friendship with a friendly alien space spider who wants to help him work through his emotional distress. Honestly, Netflix had us at friendly alien space spider.

(Some spoilers for the 2017 novel below.)

Directed by Johan Renck (Chernobyl, Breaking Bad), the film is based on the 2017 novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, by Jaroslav Kalfař. Kalfař has said he was inspired to write his novel after a childhood experience of becoming briefly separated from his grandfather while on a nighttime walk through the woods. The "perfect darkness, with nothing but the stars" made a strong impression, as did the silence and sense of loneliness. Spaceman of Bohemia started as a short story about an astronaut stranded in orbit as his wife filed for divorce and eventually became a novel that incorporated not just the theme of loneliness, but also Kalfař's formative experiences growing up in the Czech Republic.

Netflix debuted the official full trailer for 3 Body Problem at CES in Las Vegas today, an eight-episode sci-fi series adapted from the award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first book in his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The series was created by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones), and Alexander Woo (True Blood). CES attendees also had the opportunity to participate in a 3 Body Problem "immersive experience," intended to transport them "into the mysterious world of the series in a fun and experimental way."

(Some spoilers for the novel below.)

The novel began as serialized fiction in Science Fiction World in 2006 and received the Galaxy (Yinhe) Award for Chinese science fiction that same year. Liu published it as a standalone book in 2008. But it was Ken Liu's 2014 English translation for Tor Books—complete with informative footnotes to acquaint Western readers with the many references to Chinese history, particularly the Cultural Revolution—that rocketed The Three-Body Problem to international acclaim. Liu is also the author of two follow-up novels to complete the trilogy (The Dark Forest and Death's End), as well as The Wandering Earth—adapted into film in 2019—and Ball Lightning.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed shows that some might consider spoiler-y. The segment for The Great contains major reveals, so skip it if you haven't watched the latest season. (We'll give you a heads-up when we get there.)

Everything was coming up mystery in 2023, judging by our picks for Ars Technica's annual list of the best TV shows of the year. There's just something about the basic framework that seems to lend itself to television. Showrunners and studios have clearly concluded that genre mashups with a mystery at the center is a reliable winning formula, whether it's combined with science fiction (Silo, Bodies, Pluto), horror (Fall of the House of Usher), or comedy (Only Murders in the Building, The Afterparty). And there's clearly still plenty of room in the market for the classic police procedural (Dark Winds, Poker Face, Justified: City Primeval). Even many shows we loved that were not overt nods to the genre still had some kind of mystery at their core (Yellowjackets, Mrs. Davis), so one could argue it's almost a universal narrative framework.

Streaming platforms continue to lead, with Netflix, Apple TV+, and FX/Hulu dominating this year's list. But there are signs that the never-ending feast of new fare we've enjoyed for several years now might be leveling off a bit, as the Hollywood strikes took their toll and the inevitable reshuffling and consolidation continues. That would be great news for budgets strained by subscribing to multiple platforms, less so for those who have savored the explosion of sheer creativity during what might be remembered as a Golden Age of narrative storytelling on TV.

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The world’s largest traditional entertainment companies face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5 billion in the past year from the streaming services they built to compete with Netflix.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast and Paramount—US entertainment conglomerates that have been growing ever larger for decades—are facing pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses from their digital platforms.

Shari Redstone, Paramount’s billionaire controlling shareholder, has effectively put the company on the block in recent weeks. She has held talks about selling the Hollywood studio to Skydance, the production company behind Top Gun: Maverick, people familiar with the matter say.

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Amazon confirmed today in an email to Prime members that it will begin showing ads alongside its streaming Prime Video content starting January 29, 2024. The price will remain the same, but subscribers who don't wish to see any ads will have to pay an additional $2.99 per month on top of their monthly or yearly Amazon Prime subscription. The change was first reported back in September.

"Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements," Amazon wrote in an email sent to Amazon Prime subscribers. "This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership."

Subscribers who want to avoid ads can sign up for the extra monthly fee at the Prime Video website.

Enlarge / Media firms are looking for allies to help them take the coveted media throne. (credit: Warner Bros. Discovery)

The CEOs of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global discussed a potential merger on Tuesday, according to a report from Axios citing "multiple" anonymous sources. No formal talks are underway yet, according to The Wall Street Journal. But the discussions look like the start of consolidation discussions for the media industry during a tumultuous time of forced evolution.

On Wednesday, Axios reported that WBD head David Zaslav and Paramount head Bob Bakish met in Paramount's New York City headquarters for "several hours."

Zaslav and Shari Redstone, owner of Paramount's parent company National Amusements Inc (NAI), have also spoken, Axios claimed.

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Netflix, the streaming service that has been long criticized for a lack of transparency about how shows and films perform on its platform, will begin publishing a “comprehensive deep dive” into what its subscribers are watching twice a year.

Its first report, released on Tuesday, provided viewer data on more than 18,000 titles, representing a total of nearly 100 billion hours viewed, Netflix said. The Night Agent, a political thriller, was the most watched show on Netflix globally in the first half of 2023, with 812 million hours.

Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-chief executive, acknowledged on Tuesday that the company’s “lack of data and lack of transparency” had created an “environment of mistrust” in Hollywood.

Enlarge / Myth: You own the digital content you buy. (credit: MythBusters/YouTube)

If you purchased any Discovery shows from the PlayStation Store, Sony has some bad news for you to discover.

The company recently announced that all Discovery content purchased on the PlayStation Store will be erased before 2024. The brief notice, signed by the PlayStation Store, says:

As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library.

We sincerely thank you for your continued support.

PlayStation Network started selling TV shows and movies with 2008's PlayStation 3, and at the time you were allowed to transfer content to different Sony devices, Kotaku noted. That feature went away with the PlayStation 4. With the growth of streaming TV apps, many of which could be accessed through a PlayStation, the PlayStation Store stopped selling movies and TV shows in 2021.

Enlarge / Michael Keaton in The Flash, which is streaming on Max. (credit: YouTube/Warner Bros.)

Streaming services are on thin ice with many customers. With price hikes becoming a norm for streaming services, subscribers are reconsidering the value of streaming apps and whether subscriptions are worth the cost. In a bid to mollify disgruntled customers and make their packages seem more economical and simple, streaming services are bundling up.

Verizon announced today that its myPlan wireless phone customers will be able to get Netflix and Max, both with ads, for $10 per month total per phone line. Netflix with ads is usually $6.99 per month, while Max's ad tier is $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. That means Verizon customers can save up to $6.98 per month with the new bundle, which Verizon will begin offering on December 7.

The new offer joins two other deals that Verizon already offers that bundle its wireless service with TV streaming. One lets customers add ad-free Disney+ and Hulu and ESPN with ads for $10 per month per line. Another lets customers add Apple One, which includes Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and iCloud+, for $10 per month per line.

Netflix concluded its Geeked Week showcase yesterday with the release of the full trailer for director Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire. It's the first of two parts (with plans for a third film to make it a trilogy), and Snyder and the streaming giant hope the films will launch a new space opera franchise. There are already plans for a novelization of the film, a four-issue prequel comic, a narrative podcast, an animated series, and a four-player game for the Netflix gaming platform.

As we reported previously, years ago, director Zack Snyder had an idea for an epic Star Wars movie that he pitched to Lucasfilm. That project never panned out for a variety of reasons. But the idea continued to germinate until Netflix got on board. Apart from Star Wars, Snyder has said his influences include the films of Akira Kurosawa, especially Seven Samurai, and The Dirty Dozen. He has set his epic saga in a universe controlled by the ruthless and corrupt government of the Mother World (the Imperium) with an army led by one Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee). The rebel moon of the title is called Veldt.

Per the official premise:

Fresh off its critically acclaimed live-action adaptation of the hugely popular anime series One Piece, Netflix has released the first official teaser for yet another live-action adaptation: Avatar: The Last Airbender, based on the animated Nickelodeon TV series of the same name. As we've noted before, Netflix has a mixed track record for these anime adaptations, but if the teaser is any indication, The Last Airbender could join One Piece as another smashing success for the streaming platform.

(Some spoilers for the anime series below, but no major reveals.)

Created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the original anime series was set in an Asian-inspired world where certain chosen individuals have the ability to telekinetically manipulate one of four elements (earth, air, water, and fire)—a practice known as "bending." Each generation, there is one Avatar who can bend all four elements and is thus responsible for maintaining harmony among the four elemental nations, as well as being a link between the physical and spirit worlds.

Enlarge / Hulu content may do a not-so-secret-invasion of Disney+. (credit: Marvel)

An app combining the libraries of Disney+ and Hulu will launch in late March 2024, Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger said in a Q4 2023 earnings call on Wednesday night. The full app's release will follow the beta that launches in December.

Iger told investors that the beta will be available to US subscribers bundling their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions and will give "parents time to set up profiles and parental controls that work best for their families ahead of the official launch," as per a transcription from The Motley Fool.

We first learned that Disney was planning a combined Disney+ and Hulu app in May when Disney owned two-thirds of Hulu. At the time, Iger called the unified app a "local progression" of Disney's consumer portfolio that would streamline content, boost audience engagement, and impress advertisers. Disney also pointed to potential cheaper customer acquisition costs. Wednesday's update follows Disney's announcement last week that it's buying the last third of Hulu, giving Disney total ownership.

Enlarge / A non-Amazon TV displaying a fire. (credit: Getty)

People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements.

Charlotte Maines, Amazon's director of Fire TV advertising, monetization, and engagement, detailed the new types of ads that Amazon is selling on Fire TVs. In a StreamTV Insider report from November 1, Amazon said the new ads will allow advertisers to reach an average of 155 million unique monthly viewers.

Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display placement ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could jeopardize the TV-watching experience for owners.

Enlarge / House of the Dragon is one of the shows Max offers in 4K HDR. (credit: Warner Bros. Discovery)

Max subscribers who were grandfathered into the streaming company's cheapest ad-free plan are about to see their service get worse.

Those people who came to the Max service from HBO Max had access to 4K and HDR streams, as well as the ability to stream from three devices simultaneously, with their $15.99 per month plan. The plan hasn't been offered to new Max subscribers; you had to be grandfathered in.

The Verge reported today that Max has started emailing customers, informing them that they will no longer be able to access 4K or HDR streams and will be limited to streaming to two simultaneous devices at a time. The changes will happen "on or after" December 5, the publication said.

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The Walt Disney Company, which currently owns two-thirds of Hulu, is buying the remaining third from Comcast's NBCUniversal to "further [its] streaming objectives."

Disney's announcement Wednesday said it's expecting to pay "approximately" $8.61 billion for the remaining 33 percent stake in Hulu. That figure is based on a 2019 valuation of Hulu, pegging the streaming service's value at $27.5 billion.

But Disney noted that it may pay more than $8.61 billion, pending an appraisal. Disney said it's unsure how long the appraisal process will take but expects to complete the deal in 2024.

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Streaming service subscribers haven't heard much good news lately. Save for content being shared across streaming services more freely, it seems any time Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, et cetera announce a change for subscribers, it's something negative. Lately streaming service news has been all about price hikes, the introduction of ads, getting tougher on password sharing, and even unreliable performance.

Today, there's a sliver of good-leaning news to share, as Netflix is tossing a couple of bones toward its ad-tier subscribers in the form of an ad-free episode for every three episodes watched, as well as downloadable content.

Announced via press release today, a year after Netflix launched its ad-supported tier for $6.99 per month, Netflix said that starting in Q1 2024, "after watching three consecutive episodes, [ad-tier] members will be presented with a fourth episode ad-free."

Enlarge / Fans watch a 49ers, Cardinals game on October 2. (credit: Getty)

When YouTube TV took over NFL Sunday Ticket, the key was ensuring that the experience was as good as it had been on DirecTV for the previous 29 years. For its initial seven Sundays, that was the case. But YouTube TV fumbled the ball this Sunday.

Users across social media reported suffering lag and long, repetitive buffering sessions with the streams throughout the day. There were nine NFL games playing on NFL Sunday Ticket yesterday. According to The Washington Post, subscribers were having problems "well into the second half of games."

YouTube acknowledged the problems via its TeamYouTube X account, saying, "If you're experiencing buffering issues on YouTube our team is aware and working on a fix. YouTube TV or NFL Sunday Ticket may also be impacted. we'll follow-up here once this has been resolved." However, the social media account hasn't provided an update as of this writing.

Enlarge / Apple TV's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation. (credit: YouTube/Apple TV+)

Apple announced monthly price hikes for several online services on Wednesday, including its catchall Apple One subscription service.

Apple TV+ will jump from $6.99 to $9.99 per month, while Apple Arcade will go from $4.99 to $6.99 monthly. Apple News+ used to cost $9.99 per month, but now it's $12.99.

Those three services are bundled alongside iCloud and (in the Premier tier) Fitness+ in Apple One, the company's pseudo-Amazon Prime all-in-one offering. That service will also increase in price. Individual plans will go from $16.95 to $19.95 monthly, family plans will go from $22.95 to $25.95, and Premier plans will now cost $37.95 instead of $32.95.

Enlarge / The Netflix logo at the entrance to Netflix Albuquerque Studios film and television production studio lot.

Having earned a 22 percent margin on $8.5 billion in revenue and picked up nearly 9 million customers from its crackdown on shared passwords, there's only one thing left for Netflix to do as it rounds out 2023: raise prices. The streaming giant will not, it turns out, be waiting for the actors' strike to end.

Starting today Netflix's non-HD, one-screen-at-a-time Basic plan will be $11.99 per month, up $2, or 16.7 percent, from the $9.99 price set during Netflix's last price increase in January 2022. The Standard package remains $15.49 per month, while the Premium plan, with 4K resolution and four screens, was bumped from $19.99 to $22.99 per month, about 13 percent. The "Standard with ads" plan remains at $6.99.

In its letter to shareholders for Q3 2023, Netflix states that adoption of ads-included plans grew 70 percent from Q2 to Q3, and that 30 percent of new signups are for ad-based plans. Making people pay for password-sharing also had a big impact, as the last quarter saw 8.8 million paid net subscriber additions versus the 2.4 million added the same quarter in 2022, due to "the roll out of paid sharing, strong, steady programming and the ongoing expansion of streaming globally." Netflix now stands at 247 million subscribers worldwide.

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Some of Netflix’s competitors are reversing a streaming war tactic by licensing their old TV shows and movies to the streamer—boosting its programming offerings but also potentially squeezing its profit margins, analysts say.

Netflix relied heavily on programming that it licensed from other companies when it launched its streaming service in 2007. But after Walt Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and the then-Time Warner launched their own streaming services, they pulled many of their shows from Netflix to avoid feeding a company that had grown into an arch-competitor.

With legacy media groups under pressure to produce streaming profits, however, licensing revenue is looking attractive again—even if it comes from Netflix. This summer, Warner Bros Discovery’s HBO network began licensing a handful of older shows to Netflix, including Insecure, Six Feet Under, Ballers, and Band of Brothers.

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"Netflix and chill" usually implies a cozy night in with a companion and no one else in your living room besides those on your TV screen. In 2025, the term could start taking on an opposite meaning, as Netflix opens physical stores with merchandise and activities inspired by its content.

Netflix House will debut in two undetermined cities in the US before expanding globally, Josh Simon, Netflix VP of consumer products, told Bloomberg yesterday. Netflix House will be the streaming company's first permanent retail location and will seek to promote fandom around its original programming.

Netflix didn't disclose many specifics about what customers will be able to do there beyond buying Stranger Things T-shirts (presumably) and other merch. By far the most exciting aspect teased is the potential for a real-life Squid Game obstacle course.