TV, Movies & Home Theatre News - Page 1

On January 25, 2023, Adult Swim announced that Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland would no longer be voicing Rick or Morty, following a myriad of serious incriminating allegations that have since been dropped.

Dan Harmon (left) and Justin Roiland (right)

Roiland was accused of domestic battery, corporal injury, and false imprisonment by menace, fraud, violence, or deceit against his former girlfriend in 2020. These accusations led to Roiland being dropped by Adult Swim, and the show announcing that Rick and Morty would continue and that staff are still continuing to work on season 7.

Roiland's lawyer at the time this matter was on track to being dismissed by the district attorney's office, then in late March, California prosecutors dropped the charges against Roiland, citing "a lack of sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt".

Hollywood insider Jeff Sneider has revealed some exciting news on a recent episode of The Hot Mic podcast.

Sneider states that Universal Pictures is about to close a "big deal" that is soon about to be made public. After the recent global success of Universals The Super Mario Bros. Movie, It may come as no surprise that fellow video game giant The Legend of Zelda is now reportedly getting its time on the big screen.

Universal Pictures and Illumination are said to be spending a "pretty penny" on this upcoming blockbuster following the substantial box office revenue generated by the Super Mario Bros movie.

Apple announced that its Apple TV devices will soon be able to make and accept FaceTime calls for the first time when tvOS 17 ships later this year, but that's nothing. Now, it appears that Google is already working on allowing devices running its Android TV software to accept actual telephone calls as well.

That's according to a new report based on the Android TV 14 beta that is now available, with leaker Mishaal Rahman taking to Twitter to share the details.

According to that leak, there are already references to an option to enable call notifications as well as receive calls on an Android TV device. The text related to those options suggests that, when enabled, users will be able to receive calls from supported apps. It isn't clear what those supported apps will be, or what developers might need to do in order to make the feature work.

Apple announced the tvOS 17 update as part of the WWDC 2023 event on Monday, June 5. And while there were many more exciting things to talk about - we're looking at you, Vision Pro and 15-inch MacBook Air, the tvOS 17 update does have one notable improvement that some Apple TV owners have been crying out for for years now.

FaceTime on Apple TV - source: apple.com

That improvement wasn't actually called out by Apple during the event, but it was confirmed via a press release that was later published in the company's newsroom. The feature in question? Support for third-party VPNs which means that people will be able to connect to virtual private networks using their Apple TV for the first time.

Why is this such a big deal? Apple sells it as being a benefit to enterprise and education users who want to connect to their private networks, but the real improvement here is for those who use a VPN to access content that isn't normally available in their part of the world. A VPN makes that possible, but the lack of VPN app support on the Apple TV has so far made the set-top box useless in that regard.

Now that the WWDC 2023 opening keynote is over we can all take stock of what was just announced - and there's one tvOS 17 feature that is particularly interesting - support for FaceTime.

FaceTime has long been the go-to video calling option for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users but the Apple TV hasn't been able to get in on the act. The lack of a built-in camera is obviously an issue, but with the Mac able to use an iPhone as a webcam via Continuity Camera it was only a matter of time before the Apple TV was able to make use of the same feature. With tvOS 17, that time is now.

Apple announced the new FaceTime support as part of the larger tvOS 17 update, but the biggest change is certainly the video calling feature. Apple says that people will be able to start a call on something like an iPad or an iPhone and then seamlessly switch to the Apple TV when they want to take the call to the big screen.

Netflix is about to stop the thing that defined it as a company back in the early part of the 2000s - that is, sending out DVDs via the mail to its customers. Before it became the streaming giant that forever changed the media landscape, Netflix was all about offering customers a quick and easy way to get their hands-on the latest movies and DVD box sets of TV shows.

Stats for DVD.com, Netflix's DVD mail-order division. Image credit: Netflix.

Netflix has confirmed that September 29, 2023, will be the last day it sends out one of its red envelopes with a DVD inside. "It has been a true pleasure and honor to deliver movie nights to our wonderful members for 25 years," writes Netflix's DVD division in a Tweet. "Thank you for being part of this incredible journey, including this final season of red envelopes."

Netflix notes that since the company started as a DVD mail-order service 25 years ago, it has delivered over 5.2 billion DVDs in red envelopes to its customers - which is a pretty remarkable statistic. Netflix started its streaming service in 2007 when it slowly but surely took over in a big way.

Streaming video and now gaming service Netflix has announced that it's making some changes, starting with the fact that it will no longer send out plastic discs anymore.

Netflix might be the name on everyone's lips when it comes to streaming their favorite shows and movies in 2023, but back in the day, it was a company that posted DVDs out in the mail. For 25 years Netflix has sent people DVDs in the mail, but it says it's going to send its last ones on September 29, 2023.

The news came as part of the company's quarter shareholders' notes which included the news that the DVD.com website will be wound down. Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, also shared the news in a blog post on the Netflix website.

After months of rumors and waiting, Warner Bros. Discovery has finally announced what it intends to do with HBO Max, the streaming service that was home to a huge pile of top content. Turns out, it's killing HBO Max off.

Except, it's basically just renaming it. And it's keeping the same name, for the most part. Confused? You will be, especially if you try and figure out why anyone came to this decision.

Introducing Max, the streaming service formerly known as HBO Max. It would appear that someone deep inside Warner Bros. Discovery thought that HBO wasn't a strong brand name what with its stable of huge TV shows including Succession, Game of Thrones, The Last of Us, Westworld, and others. Really, why would you want to have anything to do with those duds?

To celebrate the upcoming Academy Awards for film, particularly the Best Visual Effects category, NVIDIA has posted an update outlining how some of the biggest spectacle-driven movies today incorporate NVIDIA RTX technologies. It states that all five nominated films incorporated NVIDIA tech while creating their impressive visual effects.

The five films are All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Top Gun: Maverick.

"For over a decade, filmmakers and VFX studios around the world have used NVIDIA technologies to power the most advanced, visually rich movies ever made," NVIDIA writes. And even though each frame of special effects heavy film goes through multiple renders and post-processing work with artists and technicians, things like real-time ray tracing, physics simulation, AI, and virtual production all use NVIDIA RTX hardware.

Netflix has started to roll out a change that could be a big deal for people who use subtitles and closed captions. The new feature allows those people to heavily customize what the on-screen text looks like, making it easier to read.

The new addition gives people plenty of options including the ability to choose from three different text sizes and four styles and colors of text. Combined, the new options give people plenty of scope to find a look that best suits their tastes as well as any specific accessibility needs they might have.

That doesn't mean that everything is rosy in the world of Netflix and subtitles, though. Some users report that they're watching content with subtitles that disappear off the bottom of the screen, something that's particularly problematic when watching on a projector with a fixed screen, for example. The position of the subtitles isn't something that this latest round of customizations allows people to change, unfortunately.