With BBC America set to premiere the original series Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency this fall, the network has packed its broadcast schedule with enticing shows to air leading up to it. Some of the highlights are a marathon of the original Star Trek TV series and episodes from the hit BBC limited series Sherlock.
The Star Trek marathon will feature uncut, digitally remastered HD versions of seasons 1 and 2 from Thursday, September 8, through Sunday, September 11. The timing isn’t just good for bringing eyes to the network before Dirk Gently debuts; the start of the marathon marks the 50th anniversary of the beloved sci-fi series’ premiere on NBC.
Sherlock will hit BBCA on October 1, airing one episode a week for three straight Saturdays. The episodes include A Scandal in Belgravia, The Hounds of Baskerville, and The Reichenbach Fall. The last of the three will air the week before the Dirk Gently premiere.
In addition to Sherlock and the Star Trek marathon, BBCA is also bringing viewers the first two seasons of AMC’s Into the Badlands and Humans on Saturdays. The former has already begun airing, and the latter will begin on September 30. The network tweeted the news, highlighting the exciting countdown to come.
Full-season runs of @IntoTheBadlands, @HumansAMC, and Season 2 of #Sherlock will air on Saturdays counting down to @DirkGentlyBBCA.
— BBC America (@BBCAMERICA) August 24, 2016
BBCA’s schedule means a lot of quality TV in the coming months, capped off by the premiere of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency at 9 p.m. ET/PT on October 22. The series, which stars Samuel Barnett and Elijah Wood, centers on the unlikely duo of eccentric detective Dirk Gently (played by Barnett) and loner Todd (Wood), who team up to solve the strange murder of a millionaire. It is based on the novel series of the same name by Douglas Adams and written and executive produced by Max Landis.
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?