Techstream

After twenty-five years, Netflix is ending its DVD-by-mail business. Will anyone wax poetic about its demise? We talk about the most surprising thing of all - that the DVD rental business still existed in 2023 - and we share fond memories of being able to sell still-wrapped pieces of outdated media. We also look at the other notable piece of Netflix news: the password-sharing crackdown is nigh.…

HBO Max is no longer called HBO Max. With all the options at their fingertips, the new idea Warner Bros. Discovery came up with was… Max. There are bigger problems in the TV and streaming space than what to name a new service, though. We discuss. Seth has run into more issues with technology that may or may not be artificial intelligence. Shelly talks about how to define intelligence and how…

The war between Elon Musk and journalists rages on, and Seth (as a broadcaster and journalist) is taking these attacks against the media personally. This episode is (once again) about Twitter as we (once again) try to make sense of the changes and decisions being made at Twitter HQ. We discuss Twitter and the anonymity business, the different forms of verification, and the confusion surrounding…

The time has come to celebrate our hundredth… and first… episode! Television is also celebrating its centennial, though it is turning 100 years old, not 100 weeks. Commemorating that occasion (as well as the past, present, and future of the medium) is the 2023 NAB Show (April 15-19 in Las Vegas, NV). The trade show, organized by the National Association of Broadcasters, has always been a…

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew spent last Thursday on Capitol Hill, getting grilled about the potential threat of TikTok to U.S. consumers. This episode of Techstream has Seth reflect on his time on The Hill, while Shelly remembers the time Mark Zuckerberg made the trip and proved how technologically clueless the politicians who grilled him proved to be. We talk about the hearing, the real issues facing…

Our last episode was pretty heavy, so this week marks a return to one of our favorite (and fairly light-hearted) topics: streaming TV! YouTube TV is raising its price from $65 to $72.99, citing the rising costs of content. We talk about how the streaming business model is totally different from the broadcast model, and why much of the power resides in the hands of the viewer. Shelly shares a few…

Techstream is back! While we were gone, Apple announced a new yellow iPhone and Bob Iger echoed a superhero sentiment Shelly once shared. We catch up on some quick news stories. Silicon Valley Bank had a rough week last week. The government came to the rescue and the FDIC guaranteed depositors will get their money back. We talk about what happened, the “self-fulfilling prophecy” at play, and the…

This episode of Techstream is a return to our origin story: a grab bag of top tech news! Last week, Pres. Biden gave Elon Musk a call as the United States wants to make all-electric vehicle (EV) charging stations universal in an effort to quell range anxiety and help improve the ability to quick-charge your EV. It is reminiscent of the EU forcing Apple to pivot from Lightning connectors to USB-C.…

Diamond Sports Group is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and may not make some annual payments they normally make to sports teams. How will this change the sports TV landscape? We have covered the intersection of professional sports and streaming television many times before, but the fallout from this could dynamically impact the way fans watch sports on TV and where the rights to these games…

OpenAI just announced the launch of ChatGPT, a paid tier for their popular language model. In this episode, we discuss the ways to help users get the most out of using ChatGPT, whether or not you are the type of person who might want to pony up twenty bucks a month, and the requisite bits of education you must bring to ChatGPT to use the tool to its fullest potential. We go toe-to-toe with…