Zhao Wei was the Reese Witherspoon of China, then she was censored by the Communist Party amid a clampdown of the country's entertainment industry. WSJ: She directed award-winning films, sold millions of records as a pop singer and built a large following on social media, amassing 86 million fans on Weibo, China's Twitter -like microblogging site. She also made a fortune as an investor in Chinese technology and entertainment companies. Today, the 45-year-old star has been erased from the Chinese internet. Searches for her name on the country's biggest video-streaming sites come up blank. Her projects, including the wildly popular TV series "My Fair Princess," have been removed. Anyone looking up her acclaimed film "So Young" on China's equivalent of Wikipedia wouldn't know she was the director; the field now reads "---."

Ms. Zhao's online disappearance on Aug. 26 came at the onset of a broader clampdown on the country's entertainment industry as the Communist Party attempts to halt what it sees as a rise in unhealthy celebrity culture. The Chinese government hasn't publicly stated what prompted this sudden change to her status, raising questions among fans and observers about how far it is willing to go against her and other celebrities, and why. The mystery also has sparked open speculation about what, if anything, she might have done wrong. "Zhao Wei is like a poster child for what the Communist Party sees as what's wrong with celebrity culture in China," said Stanley Rosen, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in Chinese films and politics. "It's a demonstration that no one, no matter how wealthy or popular, is too big to pursue." In Zhao Wei's case, he added, the lack of explanation "will certainly make other celebrities extremely cautious and proactive in embracing regime goals."

Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: A new "massive" undersea transatlantic communications cable has been brought ashore on a beach in Cornwall. The Google data cable, called Grace Hopper, was landed in Bude on Tuesday. Once operational, it would have the capacity to handle "17.5 million people streaming 4K video concurrently," Google bosses said. The cable has been laid between New York in the United States, Bilbao in Spain and Bude over several months, and is expected to be operational in 2022. It was part of a "new generation" of lines that "connect continents along the ocean floor with an additional layer of security beyond what's available over the public internet," Google said. The tech giant has named it Grace Hopper after the American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. It is about 7,000km (4,350 miles) long and is the company's fourth privately-owned undersea data cable, which transport 98% of international internet traffic around the world.

While the pandemic supercharged streaming, a few people decided to swim against the current and go back to the familiar format of VHS. It isn't the easiest of hobbies. From a report: VCR players haven't been in production within the last five years, and using the player on a current smart TV requires an expensive customized setup of several devices. Looking for a recent film on VHS format? It's likely you'll only find films from the 1980s and 90s, direct-to-VHS specials and home videos. That hasn't stopped die-hards. A small community of VHS fanatics has sprung up around the country, trading tapes and tips on how to watch. Much of it is organized around small boxes where people can drop off or pick up tapes. The "Free Blockbuster" boxes started in Los Angeles and spread. There are VHS tape trading events and auctions.

In the late 1990s, Hollywood studios began selling films on DVDs and VHS rentals lost their grip on home viewings. Blu-ray took over in the early 2000s. By 2010 Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection. To try to re-create a bit of the video-store experience, Brian Morrison started Free Blockbuster in 2019. The group turns former newspaper boxes into free little libraries of movies. VHS die-hards hope the effort encourages the exchange of home entertainment with strangers in their neighborhood. A film fan who worked at various video stores throughout his teenage years, Mr. Morrison, 37, stocked his first Free Blockbuster box in Los Angeles with old VHS tapes, hoping to create community around film watching.

Though DVDs and videogames showed up later in some boxes, he says VHS tapes were the more interesting draw for Free Blockbuster users. Mr. Morrison connects tape fanatics in different places, who maintain their own boxes. VHS tapes "aren't just DVDs' older cousins," Mr. Morrison says, "they're an art form in many ways." The 69 Free Blockbuster boxes, now located across the U.S. and in Canada and Australia, are maintained by a network of fans. Mr. Morrison said he received a request from Blockbuster, which is owned by Dish Network, last year that he change the name of his organization. He said he asked if the company would consider licensing out the name but hasn't heard back.

UK ISP Sky Broadband is monitoring the IP addresses of servers suspected of streaming pirated content to subscribers and supplying that data to an anti-piracy company working with the Premier League. That inside knowledge is then processed and used to create blocklists used by the country's leading ISPs, to prevent subscribers from watching pirated events. An anonymous reader shares the report from Torrent Freak: In recent weeks, an anonymous source shared a small trove of information relating to the systems used to find, positively identity, and then ultimately block pirate streams at ISPs. According to the documents, the module related to the Premier League work is codenamed 'RedBeard.' The activity appears to start during the week football matches or PPV events take place. A set of scripts at anti-piracy company Friend MTS are tasked with producing lists of IP addresses that are suspected of being connected to copyright infringement. These addresses are subsequently dumped to Amazon S3 buckets and the data is used by ISPs to block access to infringing video streams, the documents indicate. During actual event scanning, content is either manually or fingerprint matched, with IP addresses extracted from DNS information related to hostnames in media URLs, load balancers, and servers hosting Electronic Program Guides (EPG), all of which are used by unlicensed IPTV services.

The big question then is how the Premier League's anti-piracy partner discovers the initial server IP addresses that it subsequently puts forward for ISP blocking. According to documents reviewed by TF, information comes from three sources -- the anti-piracy company's regular monitoring (which identifies IP addresses and their /24 range), manually entered IP addresses (IP addresses and ports), and a third, potentially more intriguing source -- ISPs themselves. The document revealing this information is not dated but other documents in the batch reference dates in 2021. At the time of publishing date, the document indicates that ISP cooperation is currently limited to Sky Broadband only. TorrentFreak asked Friend MTS if that remains the case or whether additional ISPs are now involved. It appears that instead of monitoring customer IP addresses, Sky is compiling data on which IP addresses subscribers are pulling most data from during (and potentially before) match or event times. Sky then uploads the highest-trafficked IP addresses along with the port the traffic is streamed on to the S3 bucket mentioned above, every five minutes. It is then accessed by the anti-piracy company which, every five minutes, extracts the IP, bandwidth rate, and the port number that bandwidth is on. At the time of the document's publication, the Sky 'Top Talker' threshold for the Premier League's 'RedBeard' module was 100mbps. The IP address information provided by the ISP that exceeds this limit then appears to be cross-referenced by IP address and port number with data obtained during game week scanning at Friend MTS. It is then processed accordingly. Torrent Freak goes on to note that the Premier League is "seeking cooperation from additional ISPs too."

"In summary, it appears that Sky subscribers aren't being directly monitored per se, but the servers they draw most bandwidth from are being noted by Sky and that data is being forwarded for anti-piracy enforcement," the report adds. "This means that Sky subscribers' piracy habits are directly providing information to support Premier League, Matchroom Boxing, and Queensbury Promotions blocking efforts."

Netflix is testing out its first stab at mobile gaming within its own app at no extra cost, bringing two pre-existing Stranger Things games to its Android app -- but only in Poland. From a report: The two games available in Poland -- Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3 -- have been available for years off Netflix's app, having been released through a licensing partnership in 2017 and 2019 to coincide with the second and third seasons of the hit retro-supernatural show. Last month, Netflix confirmed it plans to expand into video games, starting with ad-free games for mobile devices like phones and tablets available on its existing service at no added cost to subscribers. With broad ambitions to ultimately widen even to console games for Xbox and PlayStation, it represents its biggest expansion into a new kind of entertainment since Netflix started streaming in 2007 and released its first original show in 2012.

The nation's six biggest names in the business (which Leichtman Research says accounts for about 95% of the market) collectively lost a little over 1.1 million customers during the three-month stretch ending in June, slowing down Q1's cord-cutting pace of more than 1.5 million, but continuing the bigger-picture cord-cutting cadence that's been a problem for the industry since 2014. Fool.com reports: AT&T led the way with its loss of 443,000 subscribers as its flagship platform DirecTV undergoes the major disruption of changing ownership hands, although the satellite-based service was bleeding customers well before the sale of DirecTV was even considered. No outfit gained subscribers, though, even including the better-established cable television brands like Comcast's Xfinity and Charter Communications' Spectrum. [...] Market research company eMarketer estimates the number of conventional cable customers in the U.S. will continue to slide at least through 2024 when the number of non-pay-TV households is likely to eclipse the number of pay-TV households.

As was noted, though, people aren't spending less time in front of their television sets. They're just watching in a different way. Streaming is quickly becoming the preferred way of consuming video. [...] Last quarter, streaming services of all ilks added on the order of 44.7 million active users/subscribers. Take that number with a grain of salt for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which is it's a worldwide number and not just a U.S. figure. The other reason to not read too much into this number is it requires multiple streaming services to fully replace a canceled cable package. Recent data from Parks Associates indicates around half the U.S. households that have cut the cord now pay for four or more streaming options. Still, in that the United States remains the key market for most of these streaming brands -- like Disney+, Discovery+, Pluto TV, and HBO Max -- it's difficult to not connect the clear demise of conventional cable television with popularization of streaming alternatives.

Salesforce is the latest tech giant to venture into video streaming with the launch of a new service aimed at business professionals called Salesforce+, the company's chief marketing officer Sarah Franklin tells Axios. From the report: The service is part of a greater effort to transition Salesforce's marketing approach from paid customer acquisition to owned and operated media. Franklin says the hope is that the content will help people refine their skills, while also creating an emotional connection to Salesforce, driving users to "want to use our products and want to engage more with us." Salesforce+, which will debut globally during Salesforce's annual mega-conference Dreamforce in September, is a free service that will feature original programming from Salesforce and eventually, content created by its clients. The content will be available on-demand 24/7, but it will also feature live event programming, starting with Dreamforce.

Fandango has revealed that Vudu is merging with its parent company's own streaming service, FandangoNow, to form a single platform that'll take on Vudu's name. The change comes more than a year after it purchased the streaming platform from Walmart. New submitter echopulse writes: The new Vudu service will have more than 200,00 movies and TV shows available to buy, and many for free with ads. It will also be the official movie store for Roku devices, replacing the FandangoNow store. If you have a Fandango account, you can move your movies over to the new service by going to FandangoNow.com

One of Amazon's most anticipated originals to date, a yet-unnamed Lord of the Rings original series, will officially debut on Prime Video on Friday, September 2nd, 2022. The Verge reports: Along with a premiere date, Amazon Studios released an official first image from the forthcoming series, which will be set in Middle-earth's Second Age. The series will take place thousands of years before the events chronicled in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, and it will follow characters "both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth."

The image release is tied to the series's production wrap after filming in New Zealand. Fans quickly speculated that the series will be set in Valinor, as the image depicts what appear to be the Two Trees. The untitled project is a huge investment by Amazon in its Prime Video streaming service. The series's first season alone reportedly cost around $465 million to produce. For context about what a massive creative undertaking this series has been for Amazon Studios, the final season of Game of Thrones was reported to have cost as much as $15 million per episode (though its budget was originally around $5 million per episode).

When the 150,000-member "megachurch" Hillsong opened a branch in Atlanta, its pastor Sam Collier says Facebook suggested using it to explore how churches can "go further farther on Facebook..." reports the New York Times: He is partnering with Facebook, he said, "to directly impact and help churches navigate and reach the consumer better."

"Consumer isn't the right word," he said, correcting himself. "Reach the parishioner better."
Facebook's involvement with churches has been intense: For months Facebook developers met weekly with Hillsong and explored what the church would look like on Facebook and what apps they might create for financial giving, video capability or livestreaming. When it came time for Hillsong's grand opening in June, the church issued a news release saying it was "partnering with Facebook" and began streaming its services exclusively on the platform.

Beyond that, Mr. Collier could not share many specifics — he had signed a nondisclosure agreement...

"Together we are discovering what the future of the church could be on Facebook..."

[Facebook] has been cultivating partnerships with a wide range of faith communities over the past few years, from individual congregations to large denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ. Now, after the coronavirus pandemic pushed religious groups to explore new ways to operate, Facebook sees even greater strategic opportunity to draw highly engaged users onto its platform. The company aims to become the virtual home for religious community, and wants churches, mosques, synagogues and others to embed their religious life into its platform, from hosting worship services and socializing more casually to soliciting money. It is developing new products, including audio and prayer sharing, aimed at faith groups...

The partnerships reveal how Big Tech and religion are converging far beyond simply moving services to the internet. Facebook is shaping the future of religious experience itself, as it has done for political and social life... The collaborations raise not only practical questions, but also philosophical and moral ones... There are privacy worries too, as people share some of their most intimate life details with their spiritual communities. The potential for Facebook to gather valuable user information creates "enormous" concerns, said Sarah Lane Ritchie, a lecturer in theology and science at the University of Edinburgh...

"Corporations are not worried about moral codes," she said. "I don't think we know yet all the ways in which this marriage between Big Tech and the church will play out." Last month Facebook held a summit "which resembled a religious service," the Times reports, at which Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said churches were a natural fit for Facebook "because fundamentally both are about connection."

But the article also notes the 6-million member Church of God in Christ "received early access to several of Facebook's monetization features," testing paid subscriptions for exclusive church content, as well as real-time donations during services. But "Leaders decided against a third feature: advertisements during video streams."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this week, I bought a month of Starz for a fraction of its typical asking price. Instead of paying $9 per month, I paid $3.24. Then I added a subscription to Spotify for $3.49, and a Disney Plus subscription for just $3. All told, my bill comes to about $10 per month for $28 worth of services. Those cut-rate subscriptions come courtesy of Together Price, a service that lets people rent out access to a share of their digital subscriptions. In exchange for a cut of each transaction, Together Price essentially serves as a marketplace for organized password sharing. The service, which started five years ago in Europe and has 80,000 paying customers, just launched in the U.S. last week.

While Together Price isn't the first service to make password sharing easier, it's definitely the most brazen. Still, CEO Marco Taddei insists that the service is legal and that it technically honors each subscription's terms of use. He also believes the service is helping companies retain users that they'd otherwise lose. "We are targeting the very specific audience that needs to share," he says. "If [subscription providers] are not going to allow them do so so, they are going to drop the subscriptions." After signing up for Together Price, you can browse a "network" of users offering to share their subscriptions. Most major streaming video and music services are available, including Netflix, Spotify, Disney Plus, HBO Max, and Hulu, but sharing isn't limited to media. Some users are also peddling subscriptions to software tools such as Canva Pro and Surfshark VPN, and the site lets you set up custom subscriptions for pretty much anything by listing the service name, price, and sharing rules. For each service, you send a request to the subscription owner and submit credit card information to Together Price. Once the owner accepts the request, Together Price processes the payment, and you're allowed into a group where you can view login details and chat with the other members.

Nvidia's Shield TVs are some of the best streaming video boxes on the market, but following a recent update to Android TV, Shield TV users are starting to see ads on their home screen and they aren't happy about it. From a report: The latest update to Android TV on Shield TV devices began rolling out earlier this month and featured a small UI redesign that added large banner images to Android TV's home screen, similar to what you get when using Google TV devices like the Chromecast with Google TV. Now technically, Google calls these banner images "recommendations," as they are regularly updated and rotated to help users find new streaming content Google thinks they might enjoy. However, a number of Shield TV users consider these images to be advertisements (especially when they recommend shows on services users aren't even subscribed to), and as such, have taken to showing their displeasure with the recent update by review bombing the listing for the Android TV Home app, which now has a one-star rating across more than 800 reviews.

Earlier this week, Netflix announced that it is planning an expansion into video games and has hired a former EA and Facebook executive to lead the effort. Now, according to a recent datamine, the streaming giant may be forming a partnership with PlayStation to bring some of the biggest PlayStation brands to Netflix. IGN reports: Reported by VGC, dataminer Steve Moser appears to have uncovered PlayStation brand imagery and content in the Netflix app code. Moser shared the information via a tweet, including images of both the Ghost of Tsushima box art and some PS5 controllers. It's unclear exactly what this means for Netflix, but if there is a burgeoning partnership between Netflix and PlayStation, it could see Ghost of Tsushima content come to the streaming service in some form.

Moser suggests that the gaming section of Netflix currently has the codename 'Shark', and the placement of PlayStation IP within that suggests a collaborative approach. This wouldn't be the first major deal between Sony and Netflix, as the two companies agreed a deal earlier this year that means movies from Sony Pictures Entertainment will come to Netflix first after their theatrical run. [...] Given that many first-party PlayStation games are narrative-driven adventure games with a focus on cinematic stories, it makes sense to try and adopt games like Ghost of Tsushima and the last of us into movies and TV. Whilst PlayStation already has a games streaming service, PlayStation Now, it could also potentially be looking to push gaming content beyond the PlayStation console ecosystem, as Microsoft has done with Xbox Game Pass.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Netflix, marking its first big move beyond TV shows and films, is planning an expansion into video games and has hired a former Electronic Arts and Facebook executive to lead the effort. Mike Verdu will join Netflix as vice president of game development, reporting to Chief Operating Officer Greg Peters, the company said on Wednesday. Verdu was previously Facebook's vice president in charge of working with developers to bring games and other content to Oculus virtual-reality headsets. The idea is to offer video games on Netflix's streaming platform within the next year, according to a person familiar with the situation. The games will appear alongside current fare as a new programming genre -- similar to what Netflix did with documentaries or stand-up specials. The company doesn't currently plan to charge extra for the content, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, AT&T announced the end of data slowdowns for smartphone users who purchase "unlimited" data -- but the perk is only for customers who buy AT&T's most expensive mobile plan. AT&T will continue to sell two other "unlimited" plans that can be put into a slow lane. AT&T advertises three "unlimited" plans, each with different limits. The Unlimited Elite plan's advertised price is $85 per month for one line, while AT&T's "Unlimited Extra" plan is $75, and the "Unlimited Starter" plan is $65.

None of those plans come with unlimited data of the high-speed variety, but that will change this week. In a press release that says customers will soon be able to "stay in the fast lane with unlimited high-speed data," AT&T said that purchasers of the priciest plan "will now enjoy AT&T's high-speed data regardless of how much data they've used." AT&T said it will "start rolling out this enhancement this week and Elite customers everywhere will soon receive a text notifying them when the benefit has been added." While the change will be made with no extra fees for people who already buy the most expensive plan, other people will have to pay more to get onto the only plan with AT&T's new "fast lane" perk. [...] AT&T ending its data slowdowns entirely when customers pay more demonstrates, if it wasn't obvious already, that the limits aren't necessary for network-management purposes. Imposing different levels of data slowdowns is one of the methods AT&T and other carriers use to create product differentiation among plans that all nominally offer "unlimited" data but cost different amounts. Data service may still be fast enough to be usable when the limits are in place, but AT&T does not say what speeds customers should expect during slowdowns.

AT&T is also lifting the video-resolution cap on the Unlimited Elite plan, allowing 4K streaming instead of limiting videos to 480p ("DVD quality") or regular HD. Currently, Unlimited Elite uses what AT&T calls "Stream Saver" to limit videos to 480p but provides a toggle that lets customers turn off Stream Saver and watch in high definition. [...] AT&T is also increasing mobile-hotspot data from 30GB to 40GB on Unlimited Elite. [...] AT&T also provides a subscription to HBO Max with its Unlimited Elite plan and 5G access on all three unlimited plans.

"A human rights group that attracted millions of views on YouTube to testimonies from people who say their families have disappeared in China's Xinjiang region is moving its videos to little-known service Odysee after some were taken down by the Google-owned streaming giant, two sources told Reuters."

Long-time Slashdot reader sinij shares their report: Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights' channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China's Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years. On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube's guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after twelve of its videos had been reported for breaching its 'cyberbullying and harassment' policy. The channel's administrators had appealed the blocking of all twelve videos between April and June, with some reinstated — but YouTube did not provide an explanation as to why others were kept out of public view, the administrators told Reuters.

Following inquiries from Reuters as to why the channel was removed, YouTube restored it on June 18, explaining that it had received multiple so-called 'strikes' for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content... YouTube asked Atajurt to blur the IDs. But Atajurt is hesitant to comply, the channel's administrator said, concerned that doing so would jeopardize the trustworthiness of the videos. Fearing further blocking by YouTube, they decided to back up content to Odysee, a website built on a blockchain protocol called LBRY, designed to give creators more control. About 975 videos have been moved so far.

Even as administrators were moving content, they received another series of automated messages from YouTube stating that the videos in question had been removed from public view, this time because of concerns that they may promote violent criminal organizations... Atajurt representatives fear pro-China groups who deny that human rights abuses exist in Xinjiang are using YouTube's reporting features to remove their content by reporting it en masse, triggering an automatic block. Representatives shared videos on WhatsApp and Telegram with Reuters which they said described how to report Atajurt's YouTube videos.
An activist working with the group told Reuters he's also faced offline challenges — including having his hard disks and cellphones confiscated multiple times in Kazakhstan.

This meant that the only place where they'd stored their entire video collection was YouTube.

Today, YouTube TV announced a 4K Plus add-on package with offline downloads, 5.1 Dolby audio, and features that make it easier to watch live sports. From a report: YouTube TV is already one of the pricier streaming services out there -- at $64.99 per month, you might not save much money by choosing YouTube in lieu of your cable service. Hulu + Live TV is priced the same, but offers a Disney+ and ESPN+ add-on for a total of $72.99 per month. But if you want to kick your video quality (and your monthly bill) up a notch, you can now enable 4K streaming for an extra $19.99 per month, bringing your grand total to $84.98 monthly.

The 4K Plus add-on package will also allow subscribers to download shows from DVR to watch offline -- currently, that's not possible on the standard $64.99 per month package. Meanwhile, the 5.1 Dolby audio capabilities will be a free addition for all YouTube TV members -- in a blog post, the company says this has been one of users' "biggest requests." The sports upgrades also come at no additional cost -- one new feature will let viewers jump to key plays and specific highlight moments when watching a DVR recording or trying to catch up live.

The Federal Trade Commission will be the agency to review Amazon's proposed acquisition of Hollywood studio MGM, Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, just as the commission gets a new chairwoman who has been critical of the online giant's expansion. From a report: Amazon last month announced its deal for MGM, which would boost its Prime Video streaming platform in a market that includes rivals such as Netflix and Walt Disney. MGM has a library of more than 4,000 films, including the James Bond franchise, and a TV catalog that includes "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Vikings." Companies doing sizable mergers have to submit their deals for government antitrust review. The FTC shares antitrust authority with the Justice Department, and the two agencies split up the work of reviewing proposed deals. The department has recently reviewed transactions involving video content, including Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox and AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, a deal the department unsuccessfully attempted to block in court.

Nielsen on Thursday announced that it had moved a step closer toward cracking one of the great questions of the modern entertainment world: How big, exactly, is streaming? From a report: Nielsen, the 98-year-old research firm that for decades has had an effective monopoly on measuring TV ratings in the United States, has a new metric that it says allows it to make an apples-to-apples comparison, on a percentage basis, of how many people are streaming shows and films on their TVs versus how many are watching traditional cable and broadcast channels. For the time being, Nielsen reports, people are spending more time watching TV the old-fashioned way -- but streaming is gaining fast.

On Thursday, the firm reported that 64 percent of the time American viewers used their television sets in May 2021 was spent watching network and cable TV, while they watched streaming services about 26 percent of the time. Another 9 percent of the time, they were using their TV screens for things like video games or watching programs or films they had saved on DVR. The streaming share is increasing rapidly. It stood at about 20 percent last year, Nielsen said; in 2019, it was about 14 percent. A Nielsen spokesman said that the firm anticipates the streaming share could go up to about 33 percent by the end of the year. Netflix and YouTube are the streaming leaders, the research firm said, with each capturing 6 percent of total TV time. They are trailed by Hulu (3 percent), Amazon (2 percent) and Disney+ (1 percent). Nielsen calls its new metric The Gauge. It comes in addition to its previous method of measuring how many people are watching streaming platforms, which relies on audio-recognition software included in Nielsen devices that are now in 38,000 households across the country. Both metrics measure only what is viewed on television screens and do not count what is watched on phones or laptops.

Google's Stadia is heading to new devices. On Monday the search giant announced that it will begin rolling out the cloud-based video game service to its Chromecast with Google TV streaming stick as well as a handful of other Android TV-powered televisions and devices on June 23. From a report: Those devices include: Hisense U7G, U8G and U9G Android TVs, Nvidia Shield TV and Shield TV Pro, Walmart's Onn FHD Streaming Stick and UHD Streaming Device, Philips 8215, 8505 and OLED 935/805 Android TVs, and Xiaomi Mi Box 3 and Mi Box 4.