Trending about Cord Cutters

A specific button sequence on your Roku remote opens a live Wi-Fi diagnostics screen that isn't documented in the Roku support pages reviewed for this guide. It surfaces wireless readings that may help explain buffering: signal-to-noise ratio, signal strength, packet error rate, and the exact Wi-Fi channel your device is using. In one outlet's own test, repositioning the router and TV after checking this screen improved a signal reading from -58 dBm to -40 dBm (MakeUseOf).

Audible announced three new AI-powered listening features on October 1, but only one of them, Character Guide, was confirmed live when the beta opened. The other two features announced that day, Interactive Stories and Visual Explorer, are still marked "coming soon" or "rolling out this fall," not live.

Buying a TV with the IMAX Enhanced badge doesn't automatically make every movie look bigger or sound better. What you get depends on the title, streaming service and hardware in the playback chain.

Turning off Roku's automatic content recognition system took investigators at The Markup 11 to 24 clicks. That click count applies specifically to Roku's ACR setting on Roku TVs, the feature built into Roku's television hardware rather than its streaming sticks (The Markup, 2023). Even after finding it, disabling ACR doesn't answer the bigger question most people actually have: how to stop Roku from tracking what you watch across every app you open. This guide walks through the Roku privacy...

Pay TV has been losing subscribers for years, but analysts at MoffettNathanson now see a possible floor. The firm projects the US pay-TV market could stabilize at more than 50 million subscribers by 2030, down from roughly 62 million today.

Amazon recently unveiled the new Fire TV Stick 4K, priced at $59.99 and replacing both the outgoing Fire TV Stick 4K Select and the 4K Plus in one move. It's now shipping in the US, Canada, and several other markets, and Amazon is running a launch promotion that drops the price to $30 for the upcoming Prime Big Deal Days.

Anyone who shares a Spotify account with a child knows the drill: play nursery rhymes or an animated-movie soundtrack often enough, and suddenly those songs start influencing recommendations.

Paramount Skydance is the name of the corporate entity acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. It is not an announced streaming brand, and there is no confirmed HBO Max and Paramount Plus merger into a single app, according to a Paramount SEC filing from earlier this year. That distinction matters because online chatter has treated "Paramount Skydance" as a future consumer app name, when the filing uses it only to identify the company buying Warner Bros. Discovery.

A Plex stream that stutters doesn't always mean the server needs more muscle. These Plex tips and tricks are built around one diagnostic habit: checking whether buffering comes from your network, a forced transcode, or an undersized server before you spend a dollar fixing a problem that isn't there. Someone who adds RAM or jumps to 2.5-gigabit Ethernet the moment buffering starts may be solving the wrong problem entirely, because the right fix depends on whether the bottleneck is CPU-bound...

If you're trying to pin down LG Smart TV software update support years, the sources reviewed do not identify one support period covering every LG TV. The most concrete, sourced commitment comes from a specific 2024 initiative called the webOS Re:New program, and it names particular models rather than LG's whole lineup.

Vurt, a vertical video streaming app built around short, serialized microdramas, recently launched dedicated apps for Apple TV and Android TV, bringing its phone-shaped 9:16 video to a wide-screen TV. The company says the apps unlock a catalog of 3,500 episodes across more than 100 shows, and that its user base has grown from 10,000 people at its March launch to 675,000, though those figures come from Vurt itself rather than independent tracking.

Nidal Hasan, convicted for the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting, is scheduled to die by firing squad on December 3, 2026, at 2 p.m. ET. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said he wants that execution made public, and an unnamed Pentagon official told reporters it will be livestreamed, according to The Verge.

Warner Bros. Discovery yesterday began testing HBO Max Shorts with a limited group of U.S. iPhone users: a vertically scrollable feed of scenes, trailers, and bonus clips drawn entirely from the existing HBO Max library. The feature is not original programming. It is existing content reformatted for vertical mobile playback, designed to pull subscribers from a 30-second clip into a full episode or series. Broader availability across devices and markets is planned, with no timeline attached.

Roku plans to let US users try Roku Labs experimental features before anyone else gets them, Android Authority reported. The company describes the program as loosely modeled on Google Labs: opt in, test features the Roku team is still building, and send feedback that Roku says "may" shape what ships next. Roku Labs isn't live yet, but Android Authority says it will be accessible directly from the Roku Home Screen; Roku has not given a specific launch date beyond 'available soon.'

Warner Bros. Discovery this week launched two new mobile features for HBO Max subscribers in the U.S.: a swipeable vertical Shorts feed and a conversational AI search tool called Ask HBO Max. Both are built around the same problem too many choices, not enough watching and neither is available to all subscribers yet.

If you need to know how to clear cache on Roku TV, the fastest method is a restart triggered by a hidden remote sequence: Home × 5, Up × 1, Rewind × 2, Fast Forward × 2. Your screen goes dark for 15 to 30 seconds, then comes back. Done.

Most people assume a TV without Bluetooth means a trip to the electronics store. It doesn't. Bluetooth has become mainstream in most televisions now, but that's only half the picture: plenty of older or specialty sets, like a favorite pair of wired headphones or a plasma TV still hanging on in the den, never got the feature and won't get it through a software update either, according to Wirecutter/NYT reporting from last month. Figuring out how to add Bluetooth to a TV without Bluetooth usually...

Spotify expanded its Playlist Notes feature yesterday so listeners can attach short written context to podcast episodes and audiobooks, not just songs, inside playlists they own or collaborate on (Spotify Newsroom, yesterday). The update also introduces a separate, more exclusive layer: Editor Notes, where Spotify's own curators explain why a track made the cut on flagship playlists (Spotify Newsroom, yesterday).

Since the October 29, 2025 closing, Disney has controlled a subsidiary that used to be a scrappy sports-streaming challenger: FuboTV. The Fubo Hulu Live TV deal folded Disney's Hulu + Live TV service into Fubo's corporate structure, creating a combined company with nearly 6 million subscribers overnight and, by UBS estimates cited in Disney's own announcement, the sixth-largest pay-TV provider in the country (Disney investor relations). It also handed Disney 70% of the combined entity's...

A friend texts a Spotify track link. You tap it on your phone, and instead of the song landing where you actually listen, you get Spotify's web player, a blank page, or nothing useful at all. For a YouTube Music listener, that link hasn't gotten the song any closer to playing where it should.

Spotify's Running Mode doesn't listen to your footsteps or track your pace the way the original Spotify Running feature did. That older feature used phone hardware to detect your cadence automatically before Spotify retired it in 2018 (The Verge, 2 months ago; Engadget, yesterday). Running Mode works differently: it builds a soundtrack around the BPM, duration, and music preferences you dial in before you start moving, rather than reacting to how fast you're actually running (The Verge, 2...

Spotify launched Fresh Finds Forward on Sept. 17, turning its decade-old Fresh Finds playlist brand into a 12-month support program for independent artists. The company says the program will support around 10,000 emerging artists each year.

If Netflix, Hulu, or another streaming service seems to be showing more commercials, there is data behind that impression. Ad minutes per hour across major US streaming services rose 18% between January and August 2026, according to Ampere Analysis.

Spotify began rolling out a beta feature called Taste Profile to Premium subscribers ages 18 and older in the United States on Sept. 23, letting listeners type plain-language notes that steer their Home feed.

Horror fans have an unusually crowded month ahead. Prime Video, Netflix, Peacock, and AMC+ all have new horror series arriving in October 2026, with four premieres landing within a little more than two weeks of each other.

Spotify just became the first streaming service wired into Meta's Muse AI agent, following Ticketmaster as the platform's earliest music-related connector, according to Music Ally. The Spotify Meta Muse integration lets users ask the agent to play tracks, save songs, and build playlists through conversation, per Android Authority's reporting on the rollout.

Audible buries a handful of useful features behind menu labels that don't always explain themselves clearly.

Some YouTube users say they no longer have to tap play at all. Opening the app is apparently enough to start a Short playing, according to a report from Android Authority published today. One user described a Short auto-launching through connected earphones and waking a sleeping partner, with no interaction involved beyond opening the app.

Roku began selling subscription bundles through Premium Subscriptions on Sept. 17, letting US and Mexico account holders combine two participating streaming services under one Roku subscription. Roku says the bundles can save subscribers up to 30% compared with buying the services separately.

Is Spotify shuffle actually random? That question is worth asking again because Spotify no longer runs one shuffle algorithm. Ten months ago, Spotify made Fewer Repeats the default shuffle experience for Premium subscribers, moving away from pure randomness because more randomness itself was producing more frequent repeats, Spotify's announcement explains.

Peacock's Premium Plus plan, the closest thing NBCUniversal offers to ad-free streaming, jumped from $16.99 to $19.99 a month today for new subscribers (The Verge; Android Authority). Existing subscribers won't feel it until their next billing date on or after Sept. 17. It's Peacock's fourth price increase in four years (Android Authority), and it raises an obvious question: what is the actual cost of ad-free streaming services per month for someone who wants to watch the major platforms...

On the ten biggest album releases measured by Spotify streams, US traffic fatalities averaged 139.1. On the surrounding comparison days, the average dropped to 120.9. That 18.2-death gap sits at the center of a music streaming traffic fatalities study built on an event-study comparison of release days against nearby control dates in an NBER working paper.

Disney sues FCC over ABC broadcast licenses in a fight that boils down to one contested question: is an early license review ordinary oversight, or retaliation wearing a bureaucrat's hat?

Is Disney Plus putting ads on ad-free plans? Not in the way most subscribers are picturing.

Google TV Freeplay now has 10,000 free movies and shows available to stream on demand, the first time the service has offered on-demand video since it launched. Google made the announcement on its blog yesterday, describing the addition as giving users "instant access to free entertainment." No subscription is required to watch.

Roku entered the OLED television market for the first time on September 1, 2026, with two new sets priced well below what LG and Samsung charge for comparable screens. The Roku Pro Series OLED TV starts at $999 for a 55-inch model and is available now, while the higher-end Roku Pro Series LX OLED TV starts at $1,299 and ships in October.