This is Amazon’s first season exclusively streaming TNF for Prime subscribers, and I had really been hoping the company would spend the extra money to do it in 4K. Alas, an unnamed spox tells TV Answer Man it’s 1080p, although Sports Video Group has a deep dive on the production truck that says it’s 4K ready. Apple’s MLB games are in 1080p, too. What do we have to do for sports in 4K, people?
I love TubeFilter’s weekly breakdown of the top 50 most viewed YouTube channels — especially lately, because I keep looking at the percentage of channels that are primarily active on TikTok-clone Shorts. This week, 29 of the top 50 channels worldwide are primarily using Shorts, and a staggering 33 of the top 50 in the US.
The agency is floating a plan to have low-earth-orbit satellites (like Starlink) get de-orbited within five years of mission completion, instead of 25 years as the rule stands now.
[Fierce Wireless]
In true Apple fashion, the company built a new display system for the iPhone 14 Pro to make the edges of the island three times crisper than the rest of iOS, to make it feel more like hardware. Our full review goes into it!
Viewership was way down this season, and the recent changes — including more layoffs at HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery today — don’t seem to bode well for what’s been a very expensive show. That said, this season started strong and ended with a whimper, so maybe it’s all for the best.
Mark Bergen takes us inside the black box
Meta’s next-gen headset — which we’re expecting to see officially next month — was left behind in a hotel room, supposedly.
Globalstar was an also-ran in satellite services, but Apple has basically taken over the company without taking it over. Here’s analyst Tim Farrar in FierceWireless:
Yet getting the deal with Apple is still “pretty impressive,” he said. “It’s still very good to have gotten anything out of this because Globalstar has been languishing for years with revenues of not much more than $100 million a year and this is potentially going to nearly triple their revenues, so that’s a massive improvement in their satellite business,” Farrar said.