The State of Streaming with Scott Mantz - TMO Show 2024-07-26

Entertainment journalist, film critic, and avid content consumer Scott Mantz joins host Ken Ray for an in-depth discussion on video streaming today. Are production costs getting too high? Is Apple TV+ doing what Apple wants it to do? Can all of today’s streaming services survive? And can one movie or TV show be a break out hit given all of the titles being produced? Plus – Scott and Ken talk Star Trek… because they cannot help themselves.

Video Piracy Site 'Popcorn Time' Shuts Down

Popcorn Time, a popular piracy website for movies and TV shows that once put Netflix on alert, has shut down.

On Tuesday, the group behind the app emailed reporters declaring its end. A goodbye note posted by Popcorn Time, with an illustration of a bag of movie-theater popcorn with X marks for eyes, proclaims “R.I.P.” at the top of the page. The site also contains a chart of interest over time measured in online searches for the app, similar to the one Netflix sent to investors in 2015.

The H.266 Video Codec is Coming. Here’s What it Promises

The next codec for video compression is H.266, or Versatile Video Codec (VVC). It promises up to 50% better compression than H.265, or High-Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC).

The JVET decided to build H.266 (VVC) for applications beyond video streaming. The standard has support for beaming 4K to 8K videos seamlessly, along with support for 360-degree videos. This could be useful in VR and AR applications.

Bross mentioned that H.266 is designed in such a way that that you can access different regions of a frame directly in the bitstream. So a video streaming service could choose to streams regions that are not very important in the scence in a lower resolution to save bandwidth.

OnlyFans Launches Streaming App Without Nudity

OnlyFans is a platform that lets people subscribe to their favorite creators, similar to other services like Patreon. It launched a streaming app and it won’t feature the NSFW content the platform has become known for.

OFTV provides a super convenient way for fans to watch content from favorite creators. There’s no adult content on OFTV. Because it’s not being monetized and there’s no direct impact on creators’ earnings, we are able to be in the app store.

App Store: OFTV