Judging by the box-office numbers, most of Planet Earth saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens in theaters — but if you want to watch it again and again, you’ll need to get your hands on the home video version. The film won’t be available on Blu-ray/DVD until April 5, but if you just can’t wait until that date, we’ve got you covered.
Customers who purchase Star Wars: The Force Awakens in digital HD will be able to view the movie on Friday April 1, otherwise known as today. While we’ve been known to engage in a bit of April Foolin’ in the past, this is as real as it gets.
Four days before the release of the SD digital version and the physical Blu-ray/DVD, you can stream Star Wars right to your TV or other compatible device from Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, and several other platforms.
The download will run you $18 on Amazon, compatible with these devices, and $20 from most other sites. The digital version also includes plenty of extra goodies. Here’s the full list: The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey (documentary), The Story Awakens: The Table Read, Crafting Creatures, Building BB-8, Blueprint of a Battle: The Snow Fight, ILM: The Visual Magic of the Force, John Williams: The Seventh Symphony, Force for Change (profile of a charitable initiative), and a group of deleted scenes headlined by a digital exclusive called Tunnel Standoff.
All in all, the download checks in at 4 hours and 17 minutes, and the movie itself is just 2 hours and 17 minutes.
For those who prefer physical copies for the better resolution quality they offer, the Blu-ray ($20) and DVD ($18) versions will soon be available at retailers everywhere and are currently available for pre-order. If discs are dead to you, the early digital download is probably the best option, but the Blu-ray version of the film also includes a DVD and a digital download voucher. That said, waiting a few more days will pay off if you want the flexibility of having the movie in multiple formats.
Either way, the force is awakening on the small screen and no sales record is safe.
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?