Hulu raises its subscription prices today

Today, October 10, Hulu raised its subscription prices. Announced in August, the Disney-owned streaming service, as well as ESPN+ and Disney+, are all getting price hikes. Hulu is increasing its ad-supported plan from $6.99 to $7.99 per month. Its ad-free plan now costs $14.99 per month instead of

AI music generators could be a boon for artists — but also problematic

It was only five years ago that electronic punk band YACHT entered the recording studio with a daunting task: They would train an AI on 14 years of their music, then synthesize the results into the album “Chain Tripping.” “I'm not interested in being a reactionary,” YACHT member and tec

Meta Quest 2 gets exclusive VR series 'Scream Park' from entertainment studio BlackBox TV

Premiering on October 8, entertainment studio BlackBox TV is releasing a short-form series exclusive to Meta Quest TV and in Meta Horizon Worlds with the Meta Quest 2 headset. The 360° VR experience “Scream Park” takes users on a virtual reality horror rollercoaster ride just in time for spook

The Mario movie trailer is as cursed as we hoped

Nintendo shared the first trailer for the anticipated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” an animated adventure featuring some deeply meme-worthy casting. With Chris Pratt as Mario and Jack Black as Bowser, fans were excited to see just how unhinged this film would be. More than 600,000 view

Peacock grows its paid subscriber base to 15 million after pulling back shows from Hulu

NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell revealed in a CNBC interview that Peacock added more than 2 million paid subscribers in the third quarter, bringing the total to over 15 million. The recent growth shows the streaming service is recovering from its slowdown at the end of the second quarter when Peacock s

Spotify acquires content moderation tech company Kinzen to address platform safety issues

Spotify this morning announced it’s acquiring Dublin, Ireland-based content moderation tech company Kinzen, which had been working in partnership with the streamer since 2020. Deal terms were not disclosed. At Spotify, Kinzen’s technology will be put to use to help the company better mo

Disney+ and Star+ relaunch as native apps on PlayStation 5 for users to stream in 4K

Disney+ today relaunched as a native app on PlayStation 5 (PS5) consoles, which now supports PS5 capabilities like 4K HDR (High-Dynamic Range) streaming. The company also relaunched Star+, Disney+’s streaming service for Latin American subscribers. PS5 users experienced various issues with th

Spotify releases a new exclusive podcast hosted by Kim Kardashian

Today, Spotify released the first two episodes of the new original podcast “Kim Kardashian's The System: The Case of Kevin Keith,” narrated by reality TV star Kim K and true-crime producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi. The series will be available worldwide and is free for all Spotify listeners.

Meta plans hiring freeze, NASA shoots an asteroid, and Elon’s texts about Twitter are made public

Hi all! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly sum up some of the most read technewss stories from the past seven days. The goal? Even when you’re swamped, a quick skim of WiR on Saturday morning should give you a pretty good understanding of what happened in tech th

ByteDance’s Pico debuts its Meta Oculus rival, but challenges remain

When ByteDance bought the Chinese VR headset maker Pico a year ago, the message it sent was clear: It was betting that the immersive device would be where future generations spend most of their time consuming digital content. It’s a marriage reminiscent of Meta’s acquisition of Oculus b

YouTube TV users can now subscribe to standalone networks without a base plan

YouTube TV launched a new option that allows subscribers to purchase add-ons without subscribing to the full channel offering in the service’s Base plan. With this new à la carte plan, subscribers can access more than 20 add-on channels, from Showtime and HBO Max to NBA League Pass, MLB.TV a

Meta’s Make-A-Video AI achieves a new, nightmarish state of the art

Meta’s researchers have made a significant leap in the AI art-generation field with Make-A-Video, the creatively named new technique for — you guessed it — making a video out of nothing but a text prompt. The results are impressive and varied, and all, with no exceptions, slightly creepy.

Roku will now work with Nielsen to track cross-media viewership

Today, Nielsen announced that Roku plans to enable four-screen measurement across desktop, mobile, connected TV and traditional TV. This is the first time Roku will use the digital methodology, Nielsen One, the data measurement firm's cross-media measurement tool, which launches next year. In t

Streaming service Epix will get a face-lift and relaunch as MGM+ in 2023

On the same day that Lionsgate renamed Starzplay to Lionsgate+, MGM's Epix announced it would also get a “+” in its brand title. Epix, the ad-free streaming service, announced today that it will relaunch as MGM+ in early 2023. While the new name is hardly original, mainly the plus sign, the