Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: This week Marvel released an epic three-minute trailer hyping December's releases of Spider-Man: No Way Home. "It comes after the initial trailer, which focused on the movie's multiversal villains, broke YouTube records over the summer," CNET reported Tuesday (racking up 355.5 million views in its first 24 hours).

But then one more universe collided...

Basically, some internet wise guys re-edited the trailer, splicing its audio over clips from the Fox Kids' 1994 cartoon series Spider-Man. (Opening credits here.) "This has no right being this good," argues CNET — especially since the actual movie's trailer arrived "amidst a ludicrous amount of fanfare and hype."

But it's all oddly appropriate, since CNET notes the upcoming movie features five sinister villains from nearly 20 years of Spider-Man movies, reaching back to the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield era ("likely spurred on by the events of the Disney Plus Loki series.")

So maybe it's fitting that it was also invaded by the television cartoon universe...

An anonymous reader writes: Haven't seen discussion on movie and TV shows recommendations on Slashdot of late. Could the fellow readers share some movies and TV shows and documentaries from this year that they really liked watching?

Softening the blow of a monthly price hike, Disney is offering subscribers to Hulu's live TV service access to Disney+ and ESPN+ at no extra charge. From a report: Beginning on December 21, the Hulu + Live TV package will cost $5 more each month. It will go up to $70 with the ad-supported tier of Hulu's on-demand service and $76 with the ad-free Hulu. Notifications to subscribers have just gone out this morning. The new bundle builds on success the company has had with its combined offering of Disney+, ESPN+ and on-demand Hulu. That trio was announced in mid-2019, just before the record-setting launch of Disney+ and has helped ESPN+ and Hulu to continue consistent growth.

A service's guts, the engineering behind the app itself, are the foundation of any streamer's success, and Netflix has spent the last 10 years building out an expansive server network called Open Connect in order to avoid many modern streaming headaches. From a report: It's the thing that's allowed Netflix to serve up a far more reliable experience than its competitors and not falter when some 111 million users tuned in to Squid Game during its earliest weeks on the service. "One of the reasons why Netflix is the leader in this market and has the number of subs they do [...] is something that pretty much everybody outside of the technical part of this industry underestimates, and that is Open Connect," Dan Rayburn, a media streaming expert and principal analyst with Frost & Sullivan, tells The Verge. "How many times has Netflix had a problem with their streaming service over the last 10 years?"

Certainly not as many as HBO Max, that's for sure. Open Connect was created because Netflix "knew that we needed to build some level of infrastructure technology that would sustain the anticipated traffic that we knew success would look like," Gina Haspilaire, Netflix's vice president of Open Connect, tells me. "We felt we were going to be successful, and we knew that the internet at the time was not built to sustain the level of traffic that would be required globally." Nobody wants to sit down to watch a movie only to have their app crash or buffer for an eternity. What Netflix had the foresight to understand was that if it was going to maintain a certain level of quality, it would have to build a distribution system itself.

Open Connect is Netflix's in-house content distribution network specifically built to deliver its TV shows and movies. Started in 2012, the program involves Netflix giving internet service providers physical appliances that allow them to localize traffic. These appliances store copies of Netflix content to create less strain on networks by eliminating the number of channels that content has to pass through to reach the user trying to play it. Most major streaming services rely on third-party content delivery networks (CDNs) to pass along their videos, which is why Netflix's server network is so unique. Without a system like Open Connect or a third-party CDN in place, a request for content by an ISP has to "go through a peering point and maybe transit four or five other networks until it gets to the origin, or the place that holds the content," Will Law, chief architect of media engineering at Akamai, a major content delivery network, tells The Verge. Not only does that slow down delivery, but it's expensive since ISPs may have to pay to access that content. To avoid the traffic and fees, Netflix ships copies of its content to its own servers ahead of time. That also helps to prevent Netflix traffic from choking network demand during peak hours of streaming.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Winamp is getting closer to release with a redesigned website, logo, and a new beta signup allowing users to soon test the upcoming version of the media player. Before we streamed our music, users would rip their albums or download MP3s to listen on their computer using media players. One of the most popular media players to play MP3s was Winamp, with its retro skins and animated visualizers that moved along with the music you were playing. However, Winamp had not seen any further development after its version 5.5 release in 2007.

In October 2018, after Winamp 5.8 was leaked online, the developers decided to publish the leaked version on their website Winamp.com to allow everyone to use it in all its nostalgic glory. Unfortunately, while Radionomy, the owners of Winamp, said they had big plans for Winamp, no further versions have been released since then. The only new Winamp development we have seen has been by the Winamp Community Update Project (WACUP) who released Preview version 1.0.20.7236 with bug fixes and improvements. You can sign up for a Winamp beta test here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." That's Netflix executive Ted Sarandos in 2013, shortly before his company made its jump into original content with House of Cards. And not just original content -- glossy big-budget content made by a famous director, featuring (at the time) a famous actor. HBO-style content. Even if you don't follow the media business closely, you probably know what happened after that: With House of Cards, Netflix proved, quite quickly, that it could make shows as good as the stuff the fabled pay TV network makes. And then Netflix started making a lot more stuff, and consumers liked that, too. And now Netflix is the company that every other media company wants to emulate -- and it's the chief reason every big media company is trying to decide whether it needs to buy or sell to every other big media company.

But it didn't have to go that way. In 2005, two years before Netflix got into the streaming business, some HBO executives were pushing the company to do the same thing. They wanted HBO to use the internet to sell subscriptions directly to consumers instead of wholesaling their product to the big cable TV distributors. A year later, after passing on that idea, HBO considered another move that would have rewritten media history: Some of its executives wanted HBO to buy Netflix, which at the time was a DVD rent-by-mail business worth around $1 billion. Netflix is now worth some $300 billion.

Tonight CNBC interviewed science fiction luminary Neal Stephenson about his new "geoengineering climate change thriller" — and about his coining of the original term "metaverse." Author Neal Stephenson shot to fame almost 30 years ago with the science-fiction novel "Snow Crash," which envisioned a future dominated by mega-corporations and organized crime, competing for dominance in both the real world and the "metaverse," a computer-generated world accessible through virtual reality headsets. Since then, he's written several more novels encompassing technology and history, including a trilogy set at the dawn of the scientific revolution, and has done work for various technology companies including Jeff Bezos' space travel company, Blue Origin, and augmented reality company Magic Leap.

His new novel, "Termination Shock," out November 16, focuses on the looming issue of our age — human-generated climate change, projecting a near future of extreme weather and social chaos. Against this setting, a maverick oilman decides to take matters into his own hands and builds the world's biggest gun to shoot canisters of sulfur dioxide into the air, echoing the effects of a volcanic eruption and temporarily cooling parts of the globe. Geopolitics, social media and Dutch royalty all play a part.

Stephenson acknowledges that geoengineering is a radical step, but suggests as the effects of climate change grow more destructive, the demand for radical solutions will grow.
In the interview Stephenson suggests one factor that might increase popular support for climate-change action: rising sea levels. "You can be as ideological as you want. But you can't argue with the fact that your house is full of water."

The interview also touches on how it was 1992 when Stephenson coined the word "metaverse," and now it's being claimed by major tech companies. "All I can do is kind of sit back and watch it in amazement," Stephenson tells CNBC: But, as many have noticed, "There's a pretty big gap between what Facebook is actually doing, like running Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram, and the visions that they're talking about for the metaverse."
Neil Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot readers back in 2004...

The TV maker released its latest earnings report on Tuesday and revealed that over the last three months, its Platform Plus segment that includes advertising and viewer data had a gross profit of $57.3 million. That's more than twice the amount of profit it made selling devices like TVs, which was $25.6 million, despite those device sales pulling in considerably more revenue. The Verge reports: When Vizio filed to go public, it described the difference between the two divisions. While Devices is easy to understand -- 4K TVs, soundbars, etc. -- Platform Plus is a little more complicated. It counts money made from selling ad placements on its TV homescreens, deals for the buttons on remotes, ads that run on streaming channels, its cut from subscriptions, and viewer data that it tracks and sells as part of the InScape program.

The company says shipments of its TVs fell to 1.4 million in 2021 compared to 2.1 million in 2020, a drop of 36 percent. CEO William Wang told investors on the call that he sees "pretty healthy inventory" going into the holiday season, so anyone planning to pick up a value-priced TV or soundbar should have some decent options available. That spike in Platform Plus revenue, which shot up 136 percent compared to last year, did a lot to help Vizio make up the difference as profits from TVs dipped compared to last year. Supply chain and logistics problems affecting many companies hit Vizio hard, too, but execs also said the company is working with its third-party partners to help find warehouse and trucking employees.

Where the numbers keep growing is in its number of active SmartCast accounts, which are now over 14 million, and how much money it makes from each user on average. That number has nearly doubled from last year, going from $10.44 to $19.89. On the call with investors and analysts, Vizio execs said 77 percent of that money comes directly from advertising, like the kind that runs on its WatchFree Plus package of streaming channels, a group that recently expanded with content targeting. The next biggest contributor is the money it makes selling Inscape data about what people are watching.

alaskana98 writes: In a recent GQ magazine interview with Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Department of Defense's "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)," he claims that the much publicized "Tic-Tac" UAPs observed by the U.S. Navy have been flying in our skies for many decades: "I have in my possession official U.S. government documentation that describes the exact same vehicle that we now call the Tic Tac [seen by the Nimitz pilots in 2004] being described in the early 1950s and early 1960s and performing in ways that, frankly, can outperform anything we have in our inventory."

He then goes on to state that he's even heard from pilots who suffered real-world health issues as a consequence of getting too close to the objects: "I've got to be careful, I can't speak too specifically, but one might imagine that you get a report from a pilot who says, "Lue, it's really weird. I was flying and I got close to this thing and I came back home and it was like I got a sunburn. I was red for four days." Well, that's a sign of radiation. That's not a sunburn; it's a radiation burn."

Perhaps most bizarre is a revelation that those who got closest to the UAPs experienced a form of time dilation: "'You know, Lue, it's really bizarre. It felt like I was there for only five minutes, but when I looked at my watch 30 minutes went by, but I only used five minutes' worth of fuel. How is that possible?' Well, there's a reason for that, we believe, and it probably has to do with warping of space time. And the closer you get to one of these vehicles, the more you may begin to experience space time relative to the vehicle and the environment."

As the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -- but if these claims can be corroborated with evidence it would suggest that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of information that has yet to be revealed on these things. Perhaps the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) will drive future efforts to get a better idea (PDF) of what this phenomenon actually is.

The world's largest music company has created a band of four virtual apes. Bloomberg reports: Universal Music, the home to top-selling musicians like Drake and Taylor Swift, is working with collector Jimmy McNelis to convert four of his NFTs into a band called Kingship. Kingship consists of four digital characters -- three bored apes and one mutant ape -- all part of an NFT collection known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The club is one of the most successful NFT stories of the past year; it gave anyone who bought one of the apes full commercial rights to use the image.

10:22PM, one of Universal's labels, has hired a team of crypto artists and animators to turn the two-dimensional apes into three-dimensional beings. The company will record music for Kingship that it releases on streaming services. The "band" will perform and participate in video games, virtual-reality applications and across the constellation of digital experiences known as the metaverse. "You can call it an NFT band, or think of them as characters," Celine Joshua, the head of 10:22, said in an interview this week. "The characters will come to life. The apes will come to life."

As technophiles coalesce around the idea of Web 3.0 -- a decentralized internet -- Joshua has jumped into the world of NFTs. That's how she met McNelis, one of the leading collectors. McNelis acquired hundreds of ape NFTs from Yuga Labs LLC, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and has a collection that he estimates is worth more than $100 million. He was an early buyer of Ethereum, a cryptocurrency. Joshua pitched him on the idea of creating a new group, and picked four characters that she thought would work as a band. That includes a golden ape, another of which just sold at Sotheby's for $3.4 million. Kingship's golden ape is valued at around $190,000 at current prices, according to offer data on OpenSea, the largest marketplace for NFTs.

MoviePass co-founder Stacy Spikes successfully bought back the company out of bankruptcy and wants to relaunch it next year. Insider reports: Spikes had placed a bid of an undisclosed amount to the trustee handling the bankruptcy of Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), the former parent company of MoviePass. "I can confirm that we acquired MoviePass out of bankruptcy on Wednesday," Spikes said in a statement to Insider. "We are thrilled to have it back and are exploring the possibility of relaunching soon. Our pursuit to reclaim the brand was encouraged by the continued interest from the moviegoing community. We believe, if done properly, theatrical subscription can play an instrumental role in lifting moviegoing attendance to new heights."

Spikes told Insider that since this summer, he'd been working on putting the money together to place a bid to get the company back. He said he made the offer last month. Though Spikes would not disclose the amount, he said his bid was lower than the $250,000 minimum the trustee set in 2020. Customer data and email addresses were not part of the sale, Spikes said. Spikes hopes to relaunch MoviePass sometime next year. A new site has been created for the relaunch, iwantmoviepass.com, and its logo will now feature a black background with white lettering, ditching its previous red background.

Spikes founded MoviePass with Hamet Watt in 2011, creating a service that let moviegoers see a certain number of movies a month in theaters for one monthly price. After struggling to stay afloat for years, in 2017 the company was bought by HMNY. HMNY was delisted from the Nasdaq in 2019 and both MoviePass and HMNY filed for bankruptcy in 2020. At the time of MoviePass' bankruptcy filing, it said it was under pending investigations by the FTC, SEC, four California district attorneys, and the New York attorney general. This June, Farnsworth and Lowe settled with the FTC and reached a $400,000 settlement with the California district attorneys.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Reuters: Unity will buy Weta Digital, a visual effects (VFX) studio known for its work in movies such as "Godzilla vs. Kong" and "Avatar" in a $1.63 billion cash-and-stock deal, the companies said on Tuesday. The deal would help Unity, which makes software for video games and animation, tap into Weta Digital's technology and talent to develop VFX tools and focus on metaverse opportunities.

Weta Digital was founded by film director Peter Jackson of "The Lord of the Rings" fame and has won several Academy and BAFTA Awards. It is known for its animated characters such as Gollum and Caesar from "Planet of the Apes." Unity, which made the software behind the popular mobile phone game Temple Run, will roll out tools for artists and developers across a number of industries, including film and gaming. [...] Weta Digital's Academy Award-winning VFX team will remain a standalone entity known as WetaFX, and is expected to become Unity's largest customer in the media and entertainment space, the companies said. Weta FX will license back the technologies and tools from Unity, sign an annual agreement worth $50 million and a contract for commercial services, they added.

This week, following successful tests on Android smartphones and tablets, Netflix has announced that it will bring AV1 to TVs. 9to5Google reports: In a blog post this week, Netflix confirms it will start using the AV1 codec on some TVs. AV1, which has been available since 2018, allows for the more efficient encoding and decoding of data for streaming, leading to higher quality for the end user and better use of bandwidth for providers. However, the codec relies on hardware support. To ensure that TVs using AV1 streams will provide a good experience, Netflix says it analyzes the steam to ensure the device is spec-compliant for AV1 decoding.

For the time being, Netflix isn't specifically announcing which devices will support AV1 outside of the Netflix app on Sony's PS4 Pro console. On other TVs, support is only specified as working on "a number of AV1 capable TVs." In theory, this should include a considerable number of Android TV models.

First it was called Freedive, then it was dubbed IMDb TV. Now, less than three years after launching its free ad-supported video-streaming service, Amazon is looking to rename it, The Information reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the situation. From a report: Amazon executives believe the existing name is too hard for people to pronounce, which hurts its popularity, said people familiar with the situation. Several alternatives have been tossed around in internal discussions, including Zon -- short for Amazon -- as well as Free TV and Free Streaming TV. The Zon idea was shot down but otherwise Amazon is yet to make a decision about the new name, the people said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Disney+'s next major app update, coming to all devices later this week, continues the service's latest efforts to please nitpicky A/V obsessors with a new screen ratio format meant to fill more of your HDTV screen in a way that filmmakers originally intended. "IMAX Digital" is coming to all devices that support Disney+ starting this Friday as part of the service's "Disney+ Day" promotion. This "17.1:9" format will land exclusively on 13 Marvel Studios films to start, and the move coincides with the streaming premiere of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings -- a film that skipped Disney's experiment with simultaneous launches in theaters and on Disney+ earlier this year. When a film switches to an IMAX Digital ratio, the usual black bars that signify a wider-screen 21:9 ratio will be reduced, adding approximately 26 percent more image to your HDTV, all framed as originally intended. The full list of IMAX Digital-compatible films coming to Disney+ later this week include: Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain America: Civil War, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Iron Man, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Thor: Ragnarok.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Last evening the web was alive with angry players who couldn't play their games due to an unexpected error. While the situation is still not completely clear, it appears that someone allowed a domain used by Denuvo's anti-piracy technology to expire, meaning that players of some big games couldn't enjoy what they had paid for. [...] According to Alex Buckland, the DRM provider for all of the affected games had let a key domain expire, rendering the system inoperable. Following the failure to renew, the domain then went into a grace period but when that expired too, it appears to have been removed from DNS records. This meant that the domain would not resolve to an IP address, effectively breaking the system.

To solve the problem, some users on Steam posted up tutorials for players to modify their Windows HOSTS file to point to the last known IP address for the domain. This appeared to do the trick but obviously, such drastic measures shouldn't be needed to play a game that has been legally purchased -- especially those that are single-player only.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: The Japanese video game company Sega announced Monday that it plans to "explore a strategic alliance" with Microsoft, which will see Sega build new games and overhaul its development process via Microsoft's Azure platform. The new alliance is part of a forward-focused initiative at Sega called "Super Game." According to a news release, Microsoft's Azure provides Sega with a "next-generation development platform" that Sega can customize to account for different styles of work and infrastructural changes. "SEGA has played such an iconic role in the gaming industry and has been a tremendous partner over the years," Microsoft CVP Sarah Bond said in a statement. "We look forward to working together as they explore new ways to create unique gaming experiences for the future using Microsoft cloud technologies. Together we will reimagine how games get built, hosted, and operated, with a goal of adding more value to players and Sega alike."

According to Sega, the key focuses behind Super Game are the keywords "Global," "Online," "Community," and "IP utilization." With 5G on its way to supercharge cloud gaming in many parts of the world, Sega is explicitly using Microsoft Azure in an attempt to anticipate and serve whatever the next trend might be. The name of the initiative follows up on information spotted in Sega's March 2021 financial presentation, where the company stated that its strategy included the creation of a Super Game within the next five years, defined as a title that "can be expanded globally." With IP utilization as one of the Super Game's hallmarks, it suggests that Sega plans to turn one of its tentpole franchises -- the same financial report mentioned Phantasy Star Online, Sonic the Hedgehog, Persona, Yakuza, and Total War as potential candidates -- to be made into a big-ticket service game. Whatever that ends up being, its development process will be powered by Microsoft Azure.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: 40 years ago the Rolling Stones released the song "Start Me Up" as part of their album Tattoo You. Then over the next four decades they built a reputation as a surprisingly tech-savvy band...

In 1994 they became the first major recording artists to broadcast live online using the experimental "Mbone" backbone/virtual network built on top of the Internet, and made one of their new songs available for download on an FTP site. In 1995 they licensed "Start Me Up" for an ad campaign promoting Microsoft's Windows 95 (the first version of Windows including a Start button). Now on the 40th anniversary of Tattoo You, the Rolling Stones have re-released the album with nine previously unreleased tracks from the same era, "recently completed and enhanced with additional vocals and guitar." And, according to Rolling Stone magazine, they've also collaborated with Boston Dynamics to recreate the "Start Me Up" music video "with the tech company's robot dogs....the first time Boston Dynamics have employed the technology to reenact a music video."

"Pout. Prance. Repeat," quips a headline at CNET. "Robo-dog Spot performs a rollicking Rolling Stones tribute..." noting there's also additional Spot robots standing in for the other members of the band. ("There's a Spot-Jagger, a Spot-Keith Richards, a Spot-Ronnie Wood and a Spot-Charlie Watts..." Though for some reason there's no robot for bassist Bill Wyman.)

It's being billed as a collaboration between Boston Dynamics and the Rolling Stones, and Friday the band's official Twitter account tweeted a highlight from the video — along with their reaction.

"Thank you to the Boston Dynamics team for making this happen."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: On October 23, 2001, Apple released the iPod -- a portable media player that promised to overshadow the clunky design and low storage capacity of MP3 players introduced in the mid-1990s. The iPod boasted the ability to "hold 1,000 songs in your pocket". Its personalized listening format revolutionized the way we consume music. And with more than 400 million units sold since its release, there's no doubt it was a success. Yet, two decades later, the digital music landscape continues to rapidly evolve.

The iPod expanded listening beyond the constraints of the home stereo system, allowing the user to plug into not only their headphones, but also their car radio, their computer at work, or their hi-fi system at home. It made it easier to entwine these disparate spaces into a single personalized soundtrack throughout the day. [...] The rise of touchscreen smartphones ultimately led to the iPod's downfall. Interestingly, the music app on the original iPhone was called "iPod." The iPod's functions were essentially reappropriated and absorbed into the iPhone. The iPhone was a flexible and multifunctional device: an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator all in one -- a computer in your pocket. And by making the development tools for their products freely available, Apple and Google allowed third-party developers to create apps for their new platforms in the thousands.

As of this year, mobile devices are responsible for 54.8% of web traffic worldwide. And while music piracy still exists, its influence has been significantly reduced by the arrival of streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube. These platforms have had a profound effect on how we engage with music as active and passive listeners. Spotify supports an online community-based approach to music sharing, with curated playlists. [...] As of February this year, more than 60,000 tracks were being uploaded to Spotify each day. The experience of listening to music will become increasingly immersive with time, and we'll only find more ways to seamlessly integrate it into our lives.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Oscar winning Dune screenwriter Eric Roth banged out the screenplay using the MS-DOS program Movie Master. Roth writes everything using the 30-year-old software. "I work on an old computer program that's not in existence anymore," Roth said in an interview in 2014. "It's half superstition and half fear of change." Roth wrote the screenplay for Dune in 2018 and explained he was still using Movie Master on a Barstool Sports podcast in 2020. That means Dune was written in an MS-DOS program.

In the video, he pulled up a DOS window in Windows XP and booted up Movie Master 3.09 on an ancient beige mechanical keyboard. "So now I'm in DOS. Nobody can get on the internet and get this," Roth said. "I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers and then I have to work through their computer because you can't even email mine or anything. You can't get to it except where it is. It has 40 pages and it runs out of memory." [...] Roth also said the 40 page limit helps him structure his screenplays."I like it because it makes acts," he said. "I realize if I hadn't said it in 40 pages I'm starting to get in trouble." Another writer to use MS-DOS is George RR Martin, notes Motherboard. He apparently used MS-DOS program WordStar "to slowly write ever single Game of Thrones book."