It’s not hard to find someone to talk Game of Thrones with, but new opinions are always nice. HBO’s new aftershow, After the Thrones, encourages the conversation by bringing viewers GoT recaps, in-depth analysis, and crazy theories, courtesy of hosts Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. To get fans hooked, HBO has made the first episode available for free on HBO.com, Facebook, and YouTube, with the free sampling set to expire on May 23.
The premium cable network promises a “lively, humorous, and sophisticated look” at the fantasy drama as it unfolds during season 6. Given the amount of twists and turns that routinely occur on Game of Thrones, the series is perfect for an aftershow. Viewers are always eager to dissect “the whos, the whats, the whens, the wheres, (and) the WTFs,” as Ryan calls them in the first After the Thrones episode.
Greenwald and Ryan jumped right into it in the aftershow’s premiere. Not surprisingly, the first issue addressed on After the Thrones (spoiler alert!) was Jon Snow (played by Kit Harington) — specifically, his death and whether or not he has a future on the show. Like many fans, Greenwald is adamant that the beloved character’s death is just temporary.
“To my mind, the important question is, how and when he is coming back,” says Greenwald in the episode. “Now, call me a member of the Faith Militant if you must, but I am a Jon Snow truther. I remain convinced that he will be back in some shape or form this season.”
The duo’s discussion continues from there, filling over half an hour. While many Game of Thrones fans spend at least that much time engaging in similar conversations weekly, what they don’t have is the ability to seamlessly integrate clips from the show into their conversation, along with an interactive map and other useful visual aids. (At least probably not. There are some serious die-hards out there.)
The GoT faithful won’t want to miss After the Thrones each week. It will be available on Mondays on HBO Now, HBO Go, and HBO On Demand, as well as via other affiliate portals.
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?