Cordkillers 453 - Fiddler on the Solar Panel Roof

Netflix dropped a lot of news about their password sharing crackdown, ads, and gaming projects--what does that mean for you? Plus: is Amazon stirring the pot with dialogue-boosting audio tracks? All that and more on Cordkillers!

This week on It's Spoilerin' Time: Succession (405), Ted Lasso (306), Picard (310)

Next week: Succession (406), Ted Lasso (307), Miami Vice (405, "Child's Play")

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CordKillers: 453 - Fiddler on the Solar Panel Roof
Recorded: April 24 2023
Guest: None

Intro Video
Jewish Matchmaking

Primary Target
Netflix Adds 1.75 Million Subscribers in Q1, Its First Quarter Without Sub Guidance
Netflix to Expand Password Crackdown to U.S. in Q2 With Paid-Sharing Plans
Netflix delays its password-sharing crackdown to sometime before July
Netflix’s ad-supported plan is getting better resolution at no extra cost
Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos Estimates 2024 Content Spending Level, Weighs In On Film Strategy As Streaming Rivals Embrace Theatrical
Netflix CEOs Explain ‘Love Is Blind’ Livestream Error, Reveal 6.5 Million Viewers Watched
- Netflix announced their quarteryly earnings but among all the finances were a few things of interest to us, the viewers.
- Netflix added 1.75 million subscribers in Q1 +4.9% on the year (compared to 7.66 million in Q4 22)
- Total subs are now at 232.5 million.
- It raised paid subscribers in every market but one
- US Canada +100K
- EMEA +640K
- APAC +1.5 million
- Latin America -450K
- Netflix widened its lead on Disney+
- [[Disney+ reported 161.8 million in Feb. - down 2.4 million]]
- # Passwords and Paid Sharing
-The Password-sharing crackdown is coming to most of its markets by the end of July. (a delay from earlier plans to launch in US in Q1)
- While it does lead to higher cancellations at launch “as borrowers start to activate their own accounts and existing members add ‘extra member’ accounts, we see increased acquisition and revenue.”
- Canada's paid membership base is now larger than prior to the launch of paid sharing, and revenue growing faster than US. $7.99 CAD (around $5.97 USD) per month per person in Canada up to two people on Standard and Premium accounts.
[[Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain got the "buy an extra member" plan in Feb. Previously tested in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru]]
- Emphasized improvements to make sure you can access while traveling and in hotels etc.
- # Ad-supported plan
-Netflix makes more money per user on its ad supported plan than it does from Basic without ads plan.
- The ad-supported plan is getting improvements: 1080p video quality up from 720p and the ability to watch two streams at once. Coming to Canada and Spain, first then all 12 ad markets later this month
- 95% of content from paid plans is now in the ad-supported plan
- # Love is Blind Live Stream issue
- Netflix CEO Greg Peters "We’ve got the infrastructure. We had just a bug that we introduced, actually, when we implemented some changes to try to improve live-streaming performance after the last live broadcast, Chris Rock in March. We just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch ‘Love Is Blind.'”
- 6.5 million people watched it on demand
- He revealed that 90% of people watched Chris Rock special on demand, not live
- Netflix will stream the SAG Awards in 2024
Netflix nabs ex-Halo, Destiny creative director to lead new game franchise
Netflix to Shutter Legacy DVD-by-Mail Business
- Netflix continues to show signs it is serious about gaming. Joseph Staten, co-creator of Halo and Destiny, is now creative director for a AAA multiplatform original game at Netflix. Netflix previously said it has 16 titles in development in house, and around 70 in development with third parties.
- That may be Netflix's future but a part of its past is ending. Netflix announced its DVD by mail service will end September 29th this year.

How to Watch
Prime Video adds new Dialogue Boost feature to make voices easier to hear
Prime Video launches a new accessibility feature that makes it easier to hear dialogue in your favorite movies and series
- It can be hard to understand voices and dialogue in TV shows and movies for a lot of people. You can turn on captions or jack up the volume. And some folks have settings in their speakers that can help.
- Amazon wants to help in a way that gives its Prime Video service a competitive advantage. You can now turn on "Dialogue Boost" in select Prime Video shows in English.
- Amazon has used some algorithms and probably some machine learning (they just say "AI" ) to identify parts of shows where the dialogue might be hard to hear and then adapts the playback to make talking easier to hear. This is more precise than applying the same filter to a whole show or movie, like a speaker would have to do. Dialogue Boost has a medium and high option.
- Dialogue Boost option in dropdown menu for subtitles
- details and info page will indicate if dialogue boost is available. 
- Launching on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Harlem, as well as movies including The Big Sick, Beautiful Boy, and Being the Ricardos"

What to Watch
‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ first season 2 trailer promises Klingons and Kirk
- Paramount released a trailer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, coming June 15th. It features a look at some Klingons and a young Captain Kirk. 

Paramount+ Greenlights ‘Star Trek: Section 31’ Film Starring Michelle Yeoh
- We finally got the word on Paramount's Star Trek Section 31 project starring Michelle Yeoh. It's going to be a movie not a series. Yeoh will still play the Philippa Georgiou character from Star Trek: Discovery. Production begins later this year.

‘Galaxy Quest’ TV Series in Early Development at Paramount+
- Variety's sources say Paramount is in the early stages of a TV series based on the movie Galaxy Quest. Amazon previously tried to develop a series.

Eyes On:
Brian: The Men Who Stare at Goats
On the Lookout: Picard 

Front Lines
YouTube TV rolling out improved picture quality for some, ‘major update’ for Apple TV
- A YouTube community manager posted on the YouTube TV subreddit that Multiview is now available to subscribers and that they are also eligible for $100 off NFL Sunday Ticket, regularly $349, through June 6th. YouTube TV v1.13 also fixes an Apple TV black screen startup issue, a 4K playback issue, and now supports HDR. YouTube TV also promises a bitrate increase for its 1080p content, though it's currently only being tested on devices with support for VP9 and high-speed internet. The Reddit post also mentions a 5.1 surround sound syncing issue that YouTube TV is preparing to fix.

Fire TV to Improve Live Channel Experience with DirecTV Integration
- FireTV will work with DirecTV to add live TV content to its live tab and guide options. You'll also be able to search for FireTV programs with your voice. Amazon plans to add similar integration for Peacock, Plex and HaystackTV as well.

Roku Vows To Reach Bigger Primetime Audiences Than Cable in Advertising Guarantee
- Roku is using its ability to run ads across its own FAST channels combined with ad deals it gets with companies that run apps on its services, to guarantee prime time audiences for advertisers that are bigger than cable. Roku says in tests it could reach an audience 15% bigger than prime time cable TV shows. Roku has 70 million accounts.

L.A. Movie Theaters Ready for a Big Comeback This Year With the Egyptian, Vista and Vidiots
- ArcLight’s former Culver City, California location is now open as the Culver after being taken over by Amazon, which has its L.A. offices nearby. It’s showing first-run movies and serving as a venue for premieres of Amazon properties like “Daisy Jones & the Six.”

Rakuten TV Launches New FAST Real and Crime Channels in Continental Europe and U.K.
Next ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Movie Gets Title
- The next Godzilla movie will be called Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Adam Winguard is directing with a premier date set for March 15, 2024.

‘Ted Lasso’ Star Hannah Waddingham to Lead Musical Holiday Special at Apple
- Hannah Waddington who plays Rebecca on Ted Lasso will host a holiday special for Apple TV+ called Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas

Disney+ had a TV series based on National Treasure. It has been canceled. 
Lionsgate is in development of a TV series based on the Twilight books. 

Dispatches from the front
As a professional audio engineer (20 years of live audio) I find it hilarious that Amazon is trying to fix things with AI when there are easier ways to skin that cat. 

When they're doing the final down mix they could record a separate audio track with the vocal stem raised 3 to 6 DB.  The vocal enhanced mix could just be yet another language like Chinese and Dutch with all of the other language options that are on Amazon already. When mixing for TV and movies they break everything down into stems so there will be a music stem, a sound effects stem, the dialogue stem.[...]It would be a matter of minutes to make a second mix with the dialogue boosted. 

Also as a professional audio engineer I can't tell you how many times the producer, the director, or whomever has told me no I want more music or more sound effects and they're often wrong. Don't always blame the sound engineer for it sounding terrible, we're just a cog in the machine. 

The best solution for the end user would be to have just the vocal track or stem separate so that you can turn it up and down however much you want to for your system if you're watching a movie late at night you can turn all the way up and then there's no sound effects or explosions to wake up your kids. 

I also use closed captioning all the time but it drives me nuts on comedy shows because often the captions give me the punchline before the joke has been delivered.  I'd love to be able to slide that captioning two or three seconds later.

Love the shows. 

- MattBatt

I loved hearing your (Brian's) discussion of discovering the wonder of live music. As someone who'd spend ALL his money on live concerts before I'd spend a dime on going to see a movie in a theatre again post-Covid (something I know you feel just as passionately about), it was wonderful to hear that experience through your eyes. Especially since pre-existing conditions have kept me from seeing all but one show since 2020! 

I definitely agree with the wonder of seeing a band you've never heard of, and then the comparison to recorded versions always pales. I have a few of those in my collection. But I will say that the clarity of the memory eventually fades, and I'm able to enjoy the recorded versions just fine in time. "

- Tim

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