Streaming

It can be really interesting to hear creators talk about how much money streaming studios like Netflix pour into their projects. But Scott Pilgrim Takes Off executive producer BenDavid Grabinski’s recent assertion to Empire magazine that the animated series would cost more than a “live-action” version of James Cameron’s Avatar raises more questions than it answers.

With Prehistoric Planet, Apple TV Plus showed that dinosaurs are a great fit for the classic nature doc format. Now Netflix is doing something similar. Life on Our Planet explores the rise and fall of animal dynasties over the years, which involves visualizing a number of extinct species — including dinos.

The show is executively produced by Steven Spielberg, narrated by Morgan Freeman, and starts streaming on October 25th.

Amazon’s smart displays now work with its new Fire TV Channels. These FAST offerings bring shows, live news, music videos, and sports from over 420 different providers to the Echo Show lineup.

I just tried it on the smallest Echo, the Show 5, and it started playing ABC News before I hopped over to America's Test Kitchen. Now, time for dinner.

You won’t have to listen for long to hear who it is.

Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul comes out on October 11th.

The new Alexa LLM will power a more conversational search experience on Fire TV.

Using the Alexa voice remote you can dig down through options on the myriad of streaming services and even ask it to narrow down choices based on random facts like “Which movie should have won an Oscar but didn’t?”

Now, who is making that call.

This Spanish-language film, titled Awareness, follows a teenager who uses his ability to project illusions into the minds of others to perform scams. But when a mysterious agency catches wind of his ability, he learns he’s not the only one with this power.

Awareness hits Amazon Prime Video on October 11th.

This time it’s Capcom’s hack-and-slash series Onimusha, which is being turned into an anime on Netflix. It starts streaming on November 2nd — and you can check the very melodramatic trailer below.

I’m firmly in the camp that says the evolution of music is always good. It’s through that lens I find stories like this one from The Wall Street Journal on Friday interesting.

It describes how music streaming has led to shortened songs, earlier choruses, longer albums, and cross-genre collabs. Much of the piece echoes things the hosts of Switched on Pop described in an interview with The Verge in 2019.

You can now watch two more major HBO series on Netflix. We already knew the Warner Bros. Discovery shows would be showing up on Netflix, but it’s still a big deal.

Prime Video’s — not Amazon Prime Video, they hate when you call it that — next sports documentary Bye Bye Barry is going to revisit the abrupt retirement of one of the NFL’s most incredible running backs, which he announced via a fax sent to the Wichita Eagle.

I’ve followed the examples of both Sanders and Calvin Johnson by leaving the Detroit Lions — and their one Super Bowl-era playoff win — behind in the interests of my mental and emotional well-being, but I’ll be watching this one.

You can watch the latest installment in the Fast and Furious franchise exclusively on Peacock starting today. But if you need to do some catching up, Peacock is also streaming Fast Five, Fast and Furious 6, and Fate of the Furious, while Furious 7 hits the service on October 1st.

After three seasons of getting viewers hot, bothered, and all worked up, Netflix’s Sex Education is finally coming to an end with its fourth season, which looks like it’s going go bring everyone back together for one last hurrah judging from its new full-length trailer.

The channel blackout that cut off an eventual US Open finalist from legitimately watching the tournament he was playing in appears likely to end before Monday Night Football kicks off tonight.

That’s according to CNBC’s David Faber, and the outlet has now confirmed it includes a “discounted wholesale price for subscribers for Disney streaming services, and an increase in marketplace, or subscriber fees, paid to Disney.” Also, there is no word on how this will impact the Hulu discount offer.

Update: And there it is, it’s over.