Usually, HBO shows are impossible to watch unless you subscribe to HBO or to the streaming service Max. Variety is reporting, though, that regular cable subscribers will have the chance to check out two recent HBO hits in the coming weeks.
True Detective: Night Country, the most recent season of the popular crime anthology series, will begin airing on TNT on March 28. Hacks, an award-winning comedy that is exclusive to Max, will begin airing on TBS on April 3, airing the entirety of the show’s first three seasons in advance of the fourth season premiering on Max on April 10.
As is usually the case for content airing on those networks, episodes of both shows will be edited so that they meet broadcast standards.
This is not the first time that HBO has released content from its vault for use on cable networks, but it is the first time that they have done so with shows that either aired recently or are still airing. Channing Dungey, the CEO of Warner Bros. Television Group and US Networks, signaled that this might be the first in a broader series of experimentations designed to bring new subscribers to HBO and Max.
“We are excited to begin experimenting with new ways to utilize our incredible WB library and latest programming from our sister companies across our leading cable networks,” Dungey said. “With Hacks and True Detective: Night Country we have award-winning, fan favorites to entice our viewers on networks and a compelling reason for HBO/Max viewers to engage with TNT and TBS, all in a virtuous cycle for WBD that elevates all our platforms and amazing shows.”
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?