television

Newly added soccer tournaments, smoother navigation among favorites and game-broadcast information come to the Apple Sports app in update 2.4, the iPhone giant said Monday. Each of the updates should help sports fans follow their favorite teams and leagues a little more easily.

Samsung has a new vertical TV made for social media browsing, a design the Korean electronics company says is aimed at millennials.

But will even the most voracious social media consumers pay $1,600 to get their fix on a bigger screen?

This week on The CultCast: Smart window blinds, smart plugs, smart lights, smart locks and now … the best televisions on the market. Apple just revealed big moves to bring HomeKit to all your favorite gadgets, and Cupertino is just getting started. In 2019, the smart HomeKit devices we’ve always wanted finally arrive. Plus: Tim Cook just let it slip — Apple’s got new services lined up for release this year, but what could they be? We think we might just know.

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The Apple TV may be set to get support for multiple users, based on a new rumor that claims to know details of upcoming tvOS 11 update.

Apple is expected to unveil its new tvOS 11 software during its 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference in June. According to the report, Apple TV users will be getting a lot of cool features to worth getting excited about.

Move over The Crown and Stranger Things! Apple is planning to enter the original TV shows and movies market, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal claims Apple has been in talks with “veteran producers” over the past few months about buying the rights to existing shows, and has also told them that it has plans to create its own programming — although those efforts are still in the early stages.

Justine Ezarik built a successful brand from her home by unboxing the latest Apple gadgets in front of a video camera and sharing her geeky tech enthusiasm with millions of YouTube followers.

Now the internet influencer known as iJustine will reach a new audience as she joins Arnold Schwarzenegger in the “Boardroom” as an adviser on The New Celebrity Apprentice.

Apple is making it a lot easier for Apple TV owners to find their favorite video content, with an all-new app called simply “TV” that puts everything in one place.

The new TV app debuted at an Apple event this morning that showcased how viewers will be able find new shows to watch as well as tune into live TV.

John Skipper, president of ESPN, talked quite a bit in an interview about the future of Apple TV and in particular, Apple’s plans for a streaming television service that may or may not include ESPN. He revealed that Apple is apparently having a hard time sorting out the details with programmers.

“We have ongoing conversations,” Skipper told The Wall Street Journal. “They have been frustrated by their ability to construct something which works for them with programmers. We continue to try to work with them.”

Grace Digital’s Voice Enhanced TV Speaker promises to enhance the sound of your television and potentially give it a volume boost. The sound was engineered with voices in mind because, more than anything when watching TV, dialogue is what you need to hear. As a bonus, a Bluetooth connection lets the speaker work with any Bluetooth-enabled computer or smartphone.

I hooked up Grace Digital’s Voice Enhanced TV Speaker to my television and gave it a whirl.

You’d feel better if you could slap your boss. But common sense, workplace rules and a little thing called your bills remind you to check your rage.

A developer and a musician have teamed up to give us an authority figure we can slap silly. Will Capt. James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise do?

Heroes Reborn reboots the 2006 NBC cult-hit Heroes with a whole new cast of characters, and some familiar faces, too.

While the original series ended up being awful after the fantastic first season, both due to the 2007/2008 writers’ strike and series creator Tim Kring’s distraction over the latter couple of seasons.

The big draw of that first season was ordinary people discovering their extraordinary powers, set in a comic-book inspired world just brimming with possibility. You really cared for these characters as they stumbled and fell trying to become heroes in the face of a world — and a super-villain, Sylar, masterfully played by not-yet-a-superstar Zachary Quinto.

Here’s hoping the new reboot will have original creator Kring working at the top of his form again; the new trailer (below) has me pretty excited that it’s true.

Nerds and geeks alike are satirized and celebrated in CBS’s hit television show The Big Bang Theory, which has aired since 2007.

The very same intelligent kids that the show lionizes will now have a chance to study science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects at UCLA, thanks to a new endowmnent from show co-creator Chuck Lorre and some of the cast and crew of the show.

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Maybe one of the recipients will become the next Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates.

This week: ok sure, Apple may have forever shelved plans for a proper television, but reports of a souped-up Apple TV debuting at WWDC will make you forget all that. Plus: the good stuff in Apple’s first Watch update; new Macbook Pros and iMacs get faster specs and bigger price tags; and Steve Jobs teaches bad actors a lesson they shan’t forget.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Squarespace 7 is live, and it’s their biggest update in years. Now building a beautiful website is faster and easier than ever. Learn more at Squarespace.com/seven and use code “CultCast” at checkout for 10% off any order.

Show notes ahead!

You know nothin’, Jon Snow. Especially how much more full of shifting alliances and intrigue The Wars of the Roses was than your epic television series is able to show. Game of Thrones superfans may already know that 15th-century England inspired much of the structure of George R. R. Martin’s overarching book series, but having it all laid out — lovely animations and visuals to support the historical information — is our first exposure to that fact.

The short animated video, written by Alex Gendler and animated by Brett Underhill, even illustrates how Game of Thrones matches directly to historical facts with some fun Pop-Up Video-style flourishes. You’ll love it.

It’s not a bird. It’s not a plane. It’s not a man. It’s Supergirl.

Seeing Kara Zor-El finally embrace her amazing Kryptonian powers in this trailer for the upcoming CBS television series Supergirl is an eye-welling moment of pure awesomeness for men and women alike who appreciate the Super myths from DC Comics.

Watching her bumble her way through cheesy, flirty moments as the gopher for media conglomerate owner Cat Grant (played by Calista Flockhart) and giggling through her scenes with beefcake James Olson, however, is a cheesiness that rivals some of the worst of Smallville, so color us warily excited. Check out the trailer and make up your own mind.

What can he say? Kermit is attracted to pigs.

In the one-camera mockumentary style made popular by both versions of The Office, The Muppets are poised to take over ABC this year as they star in their first TV series since their original show back in the mid-1970s.

Take a look at this hilarious, witty trailer for the upcoming show, complete with an absent-minded Miss Piggy and a world-weary yet optimistic Kermit the Frog along with a cast of familiar and new characters.

The trailer pokes fun at the new format of the show along with the Muppets themselves–it’s worth a watch.

A lot of TV happens every day, and it’s understandable if you can’t watch all of it. Maybe you have a job or read or something. But now, the holidays have given you the gift of several days off with nothing to do but open presents, eat and watch television, so you might as well make up for lost time.

Here are five TV shows you should cram into your face like so much Christmas goose before you have to go back to work.

It’s time, Tru Believers, to watch the very last episode of HBO’s vampire romantic drama, True Blood.

Overall, this final episode is slow and sweetly-paced, funneling down from the crazy, too-many-characters and plot lines of the past several seasons to a gentle, musing (and ultimately narratively safe) tale of people trying to find themselves and growing up in the process.

Luckily, since this is TV, they all eventually do. Hoyt and Jessica, Jason and Bridgette, and — of course — Bill and Sookie all find their own version of a happy ending, with very few surprises along the way; it’s a very safe finish to seven seasons of fangbangery.

As always, spoilers ahead. So keep reading at your own peril.

The official BBC One Twitter account had a surprise for fans of its hit show Sherlock Wednesday with a tease that the oft-delayed series about a modern Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick John Watson will be returning.

"Miss me?" #Sherlock, the hit @BBCOne drama, will return for a Special, followed by a series of three new episodes. #221back

— BBC One (@BBCOne) July 2, 2014

As a huge fan of Vertigo Comics’ Hellblazer, about hard-bitten wise-cracking paranormal detective John Constantine, I’m warily excited about the upcoming TV series on NBC. Wary because of the totally off-base movie of the same name. Excited because, well, it looks like they got a bunch of things about the character and universe in which he lives “right.”

“I think as with the source material,” says series lead Matt Ryan in an interview with IGN, “there’s so much to draw from in terms of the character and the balance of humor and wit and dark and gritty. It’s great, because John has this kind of real sarcastic, ironic British wit. It’s funny, but at the same time it’s serious and dark and gritty. It’s got it all, I think.”

At first glance, the trailer (below) looks like the show creators understand more of the character than the 2005 movie starring Keanu Reeves ever did, including emo angels, a world-weary John Constantine and his famous trench coat.

Wil Wheaton gets his own show starting Tuesday, May 27, in which the uber-nerd best known for his portrayal of Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gordie in Stand By Me gets to wax rhapsodic about his favorite subject: geek culture.

Wheaton is no stranger to celebrity nor the science fiction genre, calling himself one of the Star Wars generation. “Science Fiction had the ability to be meaningful and socially relevant,” he says in a video interview on SyFy, “but in a way that flew under the radar of people not looking for that sort of commentary.”

His new show will have Wheaton in his fully nerd-hero persona, talking about what fantasy, science fiction, and horror genre movies, TV shows, and culture gets right (and ranting about what it gets wrong).

Here’s a teaser trailer to whet your appetite, below.

For telly addicts in the U.K., the free TVCatchup app for Android and iOS makes it easy for them to watch live TV channels while they’re on the go. But thanks to an ongoing legal dispute with a number of public service broadcasters, the app’s developers have been forced to pull popular feeds, including ITV and Channel 4.

Cable industry veteran and former CableLabs executive Jean-François Mulé became an engineering director at Apple last month, and he’s hard at work on “something big.” His appointment comes just weeks before Apple is expected to unveil its latest Apple TV, and at a time when the Cupertino company has been working hard to improve the $99 set-top box.

But is Mulé part of something a little more exciting?

The Hulu Plus apps for Android and iOS have today been updated with support for Google Chromecast. You’ll find a new ‘Cast’ button within the app that will stream your favorite shows to your television with the help of the $35 dongle.