Samsung was among the consumer electronics giants incorporating AI into their products to make smart TVs even smarter. (Media Play News staff photo)
Evolving with the Home Entertainment Business
January 11, 2024
Walking the show floor at CES never gets old.
Every year, there is a new array of technological marvels on display as well as the proverbial “shiny new toy” that captivates everyone’s attention — and then either fades away (3D), has its moment in the sun (VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc), or becomes part of everyday life (flat-screen TVs, smart everything).
This year, the buzz is about artificial intelligence, or AI, in which machines essentially “learn” to mimic the human mind, and the mind’s reasoning process, in solving problems and making decisions and even predictions. This one’s going to stick and integrate itself into virtually every aspect of our lives. Some predict AI will one day find a cure for cancer.
On the home entertainment front, CE manufacturers such as Hisense are enabling AI into their TVs to recognize scene content and adjust clarity, brightness and color tone accordingly. It takes the term “smart TV” to a whole new level.
The one constant at CES over all these years has been change. There’s always something new, something different, something unusual. And while a good percentage of the products shown, or talked about, at CES never make it to market, it’s good to float these ideas and have these conversations. Innovation will never go out of style.
As we begin our seventh year as Media Play News, we’re also changing, innovating and evolving with the home entertainment business, a broad term that encompasses both streaming and the traditional transactional model.
Believing launch and release dates are every bit as important as news about when deals are signed, we are now covering announcements about new streaming and FAST channels as comprehensively as we’ve been covering new transactional digital and disc releases. We want you to know exactly when you can start streaming that hot new Netflix series everyone’s talking about, or when that Warner Bros. Pictures theatrical blockbuster is making its debut on Max.
Last November, we published our second annual “40 Most Important People in Streaming” feature, a subjective listing of the executives we believe are not just winning at streaming, but leading it to the next level.
In our most recent “Women in Home Entertainment” feature, published in October, we shone the editorial spotlight not just on leaders from the studios and major streamers, but also tech giants such as Microsoft and Google, as well as innovative companies such as Premiere Digital, Whip Media, Vizio and others.
We have expanded our market research section to include all the different ways consumers watch movies or shows on demand. We are by no means giving up our legacy disc sales and rental charts — we believe physical media remains a very important part of the business. But as the only entertainment publication to focus exclusively on the distribution of content to the home, as well as the nuts and bolts of content sales and licensing, we need to be as inclusive as we can, treating all channels with the appropriate level of diligence and respect.
And in recognition of the fact that a growing number of our readers want to read our news in all formats 24/7, we are ramping up our social media activity with the hiring of a new social media marketing director, who is charged with making sure all our news is constantly appearing on all major platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, with the language and visuals that the next generation expects.
We haven’t yet turned to AI to write news stories or reviews — we’re still relying on a talented team of writers, editors and journalists who know this business inside and out.
But I have brought on a virtual assistant to help me out with phone calls, which I still make from time to time.
You might have heard of her: They call her “Siri.”