Cricket match streaming has been the prime driver of new users for streaming platforms in India.
By securing numerous cricket rights, Disney and Reliance have left rival services with limited content options to attract fans.
“The 2023-27 IPL broadcasting now sit under the JV – Viacom 18 has digital streaming rights (won for US$2.9bn) while Star has TV broadcasting rights for US$2.8bn.
Combined with about 8% of the TV market that Viacom18 assumes in India, the merged operations — which will feature some 120 TV channels — will command about 49% of the broadcasting market.
In a statement Wednesday, Disney and Reliance said they will reach 750 million users in India with the merged entity.
The Displace wireless TV, that sticks to walls, plans new models and new AI featuresAt CES 2023 a startup hardware company called Displace launched the 55-inch ‘Display Flex’, a “wireless” $3,000 4K OLED TV which sticks to walls without a traditional mounting.
To begin with, the new ‘Display Mini’ will be a smaller 27 inch TV and designed for a kitchen or bathroom space.
The Displace devices will also have a Thermal camera built-in that has potential health applications (like reading your body heat maps to detect inflammation etc.
While most consumers are fine with a traditional TV setup, it’s businesses that need to be able to mount a TV on a wall, or even a window, as Displace is capable of doing.
And should that fail, the screen will gradually lower itself using a zipline – like a spider walking down a web – from the wall.
BLKFAM considers its platform the first and only Black-owned and Black-focused family streaming service.
The company’s goal is to serve Black audiences who often feel misrepresented/underrepresented in mainstream media even though it’s the demographic that watches the most TV.
According to Nielsen, Black audiences consume over 81 hours of media on a weekly basis.
BLKFAM aims to release content that “entertains, educates, and celebrates Black American family-friendly content,” the company wrote in its press release.
BLKFAM is now available on Amazon Prime Video Channels, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, YouTube TV, Samsung Smart TVs, Vizio, LG, and iOS and Android devices.
Apple today is continuing its investment in sports and subscriptions business with the launch of a new app for iPhone users, Apple Sports.
While the app itself is free to use, it can help Apple direct customers to its other subscription offerings in live sports, via its Apple TV app where users can watch live games from Apple and their other apps.
Last year it also began offering the MLS Season Pass through the Apple TV app, for $14.99 per month or $99 per season.
Sports can help Apple to grow its services revenue, which hit a record of $22.3 billion in the fourth quarter, encompassing areas of Apple’s business including Apple TV+, Apple Music, iCloud, the App Store, advertising and more.
Apple TV+ subscribers can add MLS Season Pass at a discounted rate of $12.99 per month or $79 per season.
YouTube is changing the design for creators’ channels on the big screen, the comapny announced today.
The update is rolling out to all creators today, but may take a few weeks to appear to all viewers, the comapny told TechCrunch.
The changes impact the channel pages on TV only, it noted.
Creators will likely respond positively to changes that help boost their subscriber numbers and better showcase their content on the big screen.
The company is in competition with traditional TV and streamers like Netflix on TVs, but also with newcomers like TikTok, which launched its own TV app in late 2021.
Nielsen today released its January report on viewing usage across linear TV and streaming, which revealed that YouTube is once again the overall top streaming service in the U.S., with 8.6% of viewing on television screens.
The new data points to YouTube’s dominance in the TV streaming arena and marks 12 consecutive months of the platform being in the top spot.
HopeScope, a creator who reviews viral products, notably saw a 172% jump in TV watch time in 2023.
YouTube has reached a few other milestones in recent months, including the 100 million users who pay for YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.
Additionally, YouTube TV now has more than 8 million subscribers and YouTube Shorts recently achieved over 70 billion daily views.
Media streamer Plex’s long-delayed plans to launch a marketplace for TV and movie rentals are finally being realized after multiple false starts.
The media startup originally announced its plan to expand its streaming service to include rentals just ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic, which impacted launch plans alongside other technical concerns.
Then, at CES a year ago, Plex said the rentals market was due for a second-quarter launch.
With those headaches behind it, the rentals service is finally nearing launch — for real this time, Plex says.
In addition to the TVOD store, the report noted Plex’s plans for the year ahead included a redesign and additional social features, too.
Netflix isn’t planning on releasing a dedicated app for the Apple Vision Pro, nor will the company modify its iPad version to run on the headset.
Instead, users will have to resort to the web version, meaning they can’t access features like downloading titles for offline viewing.
“Our members will be able to enjoy Netflix on the web browser on the Vision Pro, similar to how our members can enjoy Netflix on Macs,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement provided to TechCrunch.
One user wrote:Mixed reality headsets are still niche products and Netflix likely believes the Vision Pro won’t be a huge hit with customers – at least not right away — especially given the outrageous price point ($3,500).
The Apple Vision Pro will be available for purchase on February 2 and will include the ability to download and stream movies and TV shows from popular services like Disney+, Apple TV+, Max, Discovery+, Paramount+, Prime Video, Peacock, Pluto TV and Tubi, among others.
T9 — the old text input from our trusty Nokia phones from the 1990s — is one of those throwbacks.
Direction 9 is a startup that is eager to introduce it to your television, so you can use the directional pad on your remote to enter text.
They showed it off at CES, and… I’d be extremely surprised if it ever makes much headway.
You have to focus up and down, and you can’t do blind typing,” explains Leon Chang, founder at Direction 9.
It seems unlikely that they’d be willing to add 20-50% to its cost just to add a new text input as a feature.
But the company will be the first to support Matter Casting, the video- and audio-beaming feature of the Matter smart home standard, on its smart displays and smart TVs, Amazon announced this morning at CES 2024.
Once Matter casting comes to Amazon’s Prime Video app for Android and iOS, users will be able to cast content to supported Amazon devices — starting with the Echo Show 15 — by tapping the new dedicated Matter Casting button.
Beyond the Echo Show 15, Amazon says that Matter Casting support will arrive on Fire TVs including smart TVs from Panasonic with Fire TV built in, and — on the app side — Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, Starz and ZDF later this year.
Tellingly, Google announced this week that its casting tech, Chromecast, will be built into all of LG’s new TVs — but gave no mention of Matter Casting.
The Matter Casting spec — which was developed with major input from Amazon — can accomplish more than casting, in theory.
