SmartStream

Plex continues to improve and reinvent itself with the goal of becoming the one app that you turn to first for all streaming. Its most recent addition is Plex Discover (in public Beta). Plex Discover finds trending and popular shows on all of your subscription services.

On January 29th, Amazon started running ads with its video-on-demand Prime Video streaming service. As announced in September 2023, Prime subscribers must pay an extra $3 a month to watch ad-free.

Is short-form video the future of entertainment? Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chairman of Walt Disney studios, co-founder of DreamWorks Animation, and the brainchild behind Quibi (pronounced "kwibee"), thinks so. In case you haven’t heard, Quibi — short for “quick bites” — is an app built to deliver high-quality, short videos to your mobile phone for watching while you’re on the go and time is limited — like when you’re sitting in a waiting room or standing at a bus stop.

The Reelgood web app makes it easy to find something you want to watch by aggregating movies and TV shows across many streaming services.

In the past year, TVs and streaming services have upped their game adding HDR (high dynamic range) for a broader color display. Roku is keeping pace with the Roku Ultra ($130) that streams 4K video and supports the HDR10 format.

Over the last two years, social media has faced increased scrutiny for the information posted on its platforms. In response, Twitter and Facebook started either including links for more information on a subject or removing posts with false information. This past month, the same focus has turned to entertainment streaming platforms via Spotify.