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HBO Max finally launches on LG smart TVs in the U.S.

LG TV owners in the U.S. are finally getting the HBO Max app added to their sets, LG and Warner Media announced today.

If you’re an LG TV owner who’s been frustrated by having to access HBO Max through a set-top box or another streaming device and not natively through the TV, then it’s your lucky day. Today LG Electronics USA and WarnerMedia announced that the HBO Max app is now available on LG smart TVs in the U.S.

After being made available to some LG television models in Latin America and the Caribbean in June, the HBO Max app can now be downloaded from the LG channel store to LG OLED TVs, LG QNED Mini-LED TVs, and LG NanoCell TVs made in the 2018-2021 model years and running webOS 4.0 and up.

The app can be opened with LG’s Magic Remote, either by navigating through webOS’s menu or by using the remote’s voice command feature and simply saying “HBO Max.” The addition rounds out LG’s streaming service apps, which have long included Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and others.

The WarnerMedia direct-to-consumer streaming service has been gaining traction since its launch in May of 2020 and now boasts more than 13,000 hours of content across HBO, Warner Bros., DC, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies, and more. Earlier in the pandemic year, Warner Bros. made headlines by announcing that they would release its entire 2021 movie slate simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max.

LG and Warner Media noted in their press release that the availability of the HBO Max app comes in time for viewers to stream The Suicide Squad, which debuts in theaters and on the service on August 5th and will be available in 4K UHD, HDR10, and Dolby Vision for 31 days.

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?