As a critic for Digital Trends, a large part of my job is to watch countless TV shows every year. It’s a big reason why friends and family ask me what new or classic shows to watch. Is that latest Netflix show worth a binge? Is it worth going back and watching that classic sitcom from the ’90s?
With the holiday season now upon us, it’s even more important to know what TV shows you should devote your time and dollars to and which ones you shouldn’t. This year, Best Buy has some terrific Black Friday deals on new and classic TV shows like Friends and The Sopranos. The below Blu-ray sets have such low prices that it’s impossible for anyone to ignore them for too long.
The recent untimely passing of Friends star Matthew Perry a month ago served as a reminder of not only how well-liked the actor was, but just how beloved the series still is in 2023. The hit NBC show, which ran from 1994 to 2004, is still watched by millions worldwide via syndication and on the Max streaming service.
For those who want to physically own one of television’s greatest sitcoms, they’re in luck. The Friends Complete Series Blu-ray set, which contains all 10 seasons and 236 episodes of the hit show, is on sale for only $62. You can save nearly $40 and relive some of your favorite moments from the show that starred Perry, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc. Own it now and you can finally decide which episodes of Friends is the best.
Relax, I’m not recommending the awful 2021 Netflix live-action Cowboy Bebop remake, which died a very quick death due to scathing reviews and low streaming viewership. No, this four-disc Blu-ray set collects the original groundbreaking anime series that ran from 1998 to 1999 and inspired hordes of teenage boys to dress and act like Spike Spiegel. (I confess that I was one of those boys. I will not provide photographic evidence.)
Even though it’s well over two decades old, Cowboy Bebop still feels so modern, so stylishly with-it, that it will instantly make you seem cooler than you actually are if you gift it to someone. And at $32, it won’t break the bank. What else can give you status points at such a low price?
If you were to guess what the most popular show on both streaming and broadcast is, you’d probably answer with Stranger Things or some CBS comedy. You’d be wrong! The Paramount Network’s Yellowstone TV show, starring Kevin Costner as the patriarch of a Montana cattle ranch family at war with outside forces and each other, has proven to be massively popular across broadcast, cable, and streaming channels, which is a bit odd since it’s not really that fashionable to admit to watching it.
While Yellowstone is currently on hiatus during its fifth and final season, that hasn’t stopped Paramount from putting out an almost complete collection for home viewers who can’t get enough of the Dutton family. Yellowstone: The First Four Seasons assembles all the completed seasons for the first time, and is a good way to pass the time while the final season is still being filmed. The Blu-ray set is only $66, which is a small price to pay for such juicy, overwrought family drama.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?