Tag: Media

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Amazon’s IMDb Freedive rebrands to IMDb TV, adds new content and plans European expansion

Amazon-owned free streaming service, IMDb Freedive, is getting a new name, more content and is soon expanding to Europe, the company announced this morning. Originally launched in January, the service will now be known as IMDb TV — a name that’s a bit more catchy, but doesn’t convey the fact that the service includes both movies and TV shows.

It’s also not an alternative to live TV streaming services like Sling TV, YouTube TV, or Hulu with Live TV, for example, despite what the name may imply.

Instead, IMDb is most similar to something like Vudu’s Movies on Us or Roku’s free streaming hub, The Roku Channel, as it offers a selection of ad-supported free streaming content, too.

IMDb hasn’t confirmed how many titles are in its collection, but says the content selection has now been tripled thanks to new deals with Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Entertainment, and MGM Studios. This brings movies like Captain Fantastic and La La Land (July 1) to the service — the latter, marking the first time the Academy Award winner has been made available to an ad-supported streaming service.

In addition, IMDb is getting TV shows like Fringe, Kitchen Nightmares, Duck Dynasty, and The Bachelor, plus movies like Drive, Donnie Darko, Monster, Dances with Wolves, and, starting July 1, Sense and Sensibility, Draft Day, and A Knight’s Tale.

The newly rebranded service will also arrive in Europe later this year, but no exact launch date is being offered at this time.

“With IMDb TV, viewers have discovered TV the way it ought to be – a free collection of premium TV shows and movies available anytime,” said Mark Eamer, Vice President of IMDb TV, in a statement. “We deliver a top quality discovery experience that makes it easy to be entertained. With more titles than ever before coming to IMDb TV and our upcoming European expansion later this year, we’re excited for customers to tune in and enjoy all that IMDb TV has to offer, all at no cost,” he said.

Though IMDb operates independently from parent company Amazon, the service benefits from tight integration with Amazon’s line of Fire TV media player devices, which have over 34 million active users. In turn, Amazon Fire TV now has its own built-in free streaming content to rival The Roku Channel which ships on Roku’s media players and Roku OS-powered TVs.

Both Amazon and Roku are battling for users and to become the top media player in terms of market share. Amazon announced its 34 million actives for Fire TV in May, which topped Roku’s 29.1 million active “accounts” reported in Q1. Roku tried to explain that this didn’t mean Amazon led because a Roku account could support several household members — but that’s true for Amazon Fire TV “users,” too.

“Our Fire TV customers are always looking for compelling content at a great value. In fact, usage of free, ad-supported apps has increased by over 300 percent in the last year,” said Marc Whitten, Vice President of Fire TV, in a statement. “IMDb TV brings some of the best free content into the living room and we’re excited that our U.S. customers now have access to even more free TV shows and movies through the app and that customers in Europe can soon enjoy this great service on the biggest screen in their home,” he added.

IMDb TV is today available in the U.S. as a free channel within the Amazon Prime Video app and on Fire TV in the “Your Apps &  Channels” row. The service can also be launched through an Alexa Voice Remote or a paired Echo device by saying, “Alexa, go to IMDb TV.”

 

 

 

Posted on

Amazon’s IMDb Freedive rebrands to IMDb TV, adds new content and plans European expansion

Amazon-owned free streaming service, IMDb Freedive, is getting a new name, more content and is soon expanding to Europe, the company announced this morning. Originally launched in January, the service will now be known as IMDb TV — a name that’s a bit more catchy, but doesn’t convey the fact that the service includes both movies and TV shows.

It’s also not an alternative to live TV streaming services like Sling TV, YouTube TV, or Hulu with Live TV, for example, despite what the name may imply.

Instead, IMDb is most similar to something like Vudu’s Movies on Us or Roku’s free streaming hub, The Roku Channel, as it offers a selection of ad-supported free streaming content, too.

IMDb hasn’t confirmed how many titles are in its collection, but says the content selection has now been tripled thanks to new deals with Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Entertainment, and MGM Studios. This brings movies like Captain Fantastic and La La Land (July 1) to the service — the latter, marking the first time the Academy Award winner has been made available to an ad-supported streaming service.

In addition, IMDb is getting TV shows like Fringe, Kitchen Nightmares, Duck Dynasty, and The Bachelor, plus movies like Drive, Donnie Darko, Monster, Dances with Wolves, and, starting July 1, Sense and Sensibility, Draft Day, and A Knight’s Tale.

The newly rebranded service will also arrive in Europe later this year, but no exact launch date is being offered at this time.

“With IMDb TV, viewers have discovered TV the way it ought to be – a free collection of premium TV shows and movies available anytime,” said Mark Eamer, Vice President of IMDb TV, in a statement. “We deliver a top quality discovery experience that makes it easy to be entertained. With more titles than ever before coming to IMDb TV and our upcoming European expansion later this year, we’re excited for customers to tune in and enjoy all that IMDb TV has to offer, all at no cost,” he said.

Though IMDb operates independently from parent company Amazon, the service benefits from tight integration with Amazon’s line of Fire TV media player devices, which have over 34 million active users. In turn, Amazon Fire TV now has its own built-in free streaming content to rival The Roku Channel which ships on Roku’s media players and Roku OS-powered TVs.

Both Amazon and Roku are battling for users and to become the top media player in terms of market share. Amazon announced its 34 million actives for Fire TV in May, which topped Roku’s 29.1 million active “accounts” reported in Q1. Roku tried to explain that this didn’t mean Amazon led because a Roku account could support several household members — but that’s true for Amazon Fire TV “users,” too.

“Our Fire TV customers are always looking for compelling content at a great value. In fact, usage of free, ad-supported apps has increased by over 300 percent in the last year,” said Marc Whitten, Vice President of Fire TV, in a statement. “IMDb TV brings some of the best free content into the living room and we’re excited that our U.S. customers now have access to even more free TV shows and movies through the app and that customers in Europe can soon enjoy this great service on the biggest screen in their home,” he added.

IMDb TV is today available in the U.S. as a free channel within the Amazon Prime Video app and on Fire TV in the “Your Apps &  Channels” row. The service can also be launched through an Alexa Voice Remote or a paired Echo device by saying, “Alexa, go to IMDb TV.”

 

 

 

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Comcast adds gaze control to its accessible remote software

The latest feature for Comcast’s X1 remote software makes the clicker more accessible to people who can’t click it the same as everyone else. People with physical disabilities will now be able to change the channel and do all the usual TV stuff using only their eyes.

TVs and cable boxes routinely have horrendous interfaces, making the most tech-savvy among us recoil in horror. And if it’s hard for an able-bodied person to do, it may well be impossible for someone who suffers from a condition like ALS, or has missing limbs or other motor impairments.

Voice control helps, as do other changes to the traditional 500-button remote we all struggled with for decades, but gaze control is now beginning to be widely accessible as well, and may prove an even better option.

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Comcast’s latest accessibility move — this is one area where the company seems to be genuinely motivated to help its customers — is to bring gaze control to its Xfinity X1 web remote. You load it up on a compatible computer or tablet, sync it with your cable box once, and then the web interface acts as your primary controller.

Users will be able to do pretty much all the everyday TV stuff using gaze: change channels, search and browse the guide, set and retrieve recordings, launch a live sport-tracking app, and call up and change accessibility options like closed captioning.

A short showing how one man finds the tech useful is worth a watch:

It’s amazing to think that among all the things Jimmy Curran has worked to make himself capable of in spite of his condition, changing the channel was not one of them. Perhaps there was some convoluted way of going about it, but it’s still an oversight on the part of TV interfaces that has limited accessibility for years.

Voice controls may also be more easily usable by people with conditions that affect their speech; Google is applying machine learning to the task with its Project Euphonia.

Users will need a gaze control setup of their own (this isn’t uncommon for folks with physical disabilities), after which they can direct the browser on it to xfin.tv/access, which will start the pairing process.

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Original Content podcast: ‘Black Mirror’ returns with one of its strongest seasons

Less than six months after releasing the disappointing interactive experiment “Bandersnatch,” Netflix’s science fiction anthology series “Black Mirror” is back with three traditionally-structured episodes.

On the latest installment of the Original Content podcast, we weigh in with our thoughts on the new season. We didn’t entirely agree on which episodes were strongest, but we agreed that there wasn’t a real misfire in the bunch.

Darrell and Jordan were most impressed the season opener, “Striking Vipers” — which uses a VR fighting game as a launching point for a thorny exploration of sexuality and friendship — while Anthony preferred “Smithereens,” in which the the driver with an Uber-style app takes a social media intern hostage. And we also had a good time with “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too,” which stars as Miley Cyrus as a pop star who’s merchandised as a friendly AI assistant.

Not all of the new episodes end happily, but in general, the show’s penchant for bleakness seems to have lifted (or perhaps it was simply channeled into “Bandersnatch”), leaving room for more emotional complexity. If we had any complaints, they had more to do with the relatively abbreviated season length, and with our skepticism about some of the show’s near-future technology.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you want to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:

0:00 Intro
1:33 “Black Mirror” spoiler-free review
31:00 Spoiler discussion