Amazon Prime Video will exclusively stream live-action movies from Universal’s film studios about eight months after they hit theaters and four months after they stream exclusively on rival service Peacock first, according to a complex new licensing deal between Amazon and NBCUniversal announced Thursday. The deal joins others confirming how the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically …

YouTube‘s almighty recommendations surfaced most of the videos that a crowdsourced army of volunteers said they regretted watching, according to a study released Wednesday by Mozilla based on “regret” reports from YouTube users. Of the videos people said they regretted, 71% were recommended by YouTube’s artificial intelligence. YouTube also recommended people watch videos that it later removed for breaking its …

Netflix has upgraded mobile downloads for Android phones and tablets so that you can watch partially downloaded titles offline. The change — which means you can watch the portion of a movie or episode you successfully downloaded before you lost connectivity — is available for Android phones and tablets now, and Netflix is going to test it for iPhones and iPads in the …

Microsoft‘s own livestream of its Windows 11 event Thursday appeared to struggle soon after its launch, marred by buffering and other streaming disruptions for viewers watching the feed on the company’s own website.  Reports of problems accessing microsoft.com spiked as the event began at 8 a.m. P.T., according to Down Detector. About a half-hour into the company’s event, Microsoft posted …

Peacock — the partly free, partly paid streaming service from Comcast‘s NBCUniversal — is finally coming to Amazon’s Fire TV devices Thursday, more than a year after the app launched and one month before Peacock kicks off streaming the Olympics in the US.  Amazon teased the news earlier on Twitter with a reference to The Office, one of the marquee titles that …

Paramount Pluson Monday rolled out the new version of its ad-supported tier, which is a dollar cheaper per month but removes access to live CBS programming. It also offered a new extended free trial for either of its plans, giving people a month of free service rather than the standard week, starting Thursday.  The extended free period requires signing up …

Roku launched its first original TV show Thursday, a weekly what-to-watch program called Roku Recommends that highlights specific titles to stream across the channels and apps available on, well, Roku devices. It’s the first original production out of what the company is calling its Roku Brand Studio, and it also works as way to drum up some extra advertising revenue: The show has …

Paramount Plus’ tweaked version of its ad-supported tier — one that is a dollar cheaper per month than the current option but removes access to live CBS programming — will launch Monday, according to an FAQ on the streaming service’s help site.  Currently, Paramount Plus costs $10 a month or $100 annually to stream ad-free on a premium tier, or it’s $6 …

HBO Max gets that, for many HBO fans, the next best thing to zero ads is as few of them as possible. That’s why HBO Max With Ads — the cheaper, ad-supported tier of the streaming service that launched Wednesday — is aiming to serve fewer of them than anyone else: less than four minutes of ads per hour.  “HBO has previously been …

AT&T’s WarnerMedia division — home to streaming service HBO Max, the Warner Bros. movie studio and other big TV assets — will be renamed Warner Bros. Discovery when it’s spun out of the telecom company and merges with Discovery, known for reality shows and other unscripted programming on its cable networks and its own streaming service Discovery Plus.  The new company also plans for …