Over 60 IHG Hotels & Resorts now support streaming video over AirPlay to hotel room TVs. Photo: Apple/IHG
The long wait for easy access to AirPlay in hotel rooms is over. Sort of. Apple announced Thursday that a hotel chain is supporting the feature that allows iPhone and iPad users to wirelessly stream content to hotel TVs.
It’s a limited rollout, so travelers are left hoping there’ll be wider adoption.
Easy AirPlay to hotel TVs from iPhone or iPad
Way back At WWDC23 in June of last year, Apple promised to add support for AirPlay in hotel rooms to iOS 17. It wasn’t part of the initial release of this operating system, though, so users have had to wait.
No longer. Starting Thursday, guests staying at select properties from IHG Hotels & Resorts have access to AirPlay in their room.
Users scan a QR code on their room’s LG TV and securely connect to it with an iPhone or iPad. The wireless system can be used to stream shows and movies from Apple TV+ and other popular streaming services, listen to Apple Music or other platforms, view photos, practice a presentation, play games on Apple Arcade, or get a workout or meditation in with Apple Fitness+.
More than 60 IHG properties in North America (including ones in the U.S., Canada and Mexico) added support for AirPlay today, including Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, Hotel Indigo, Candlewood Suites, and InterContinental Hotels & Resorts. More are expected to be added in the future.
Apple has announced that iPhone and iPad users can wirelessly stream videos, music, and photos from their device to their hotel room TV via AirPlay at select IHG Hotels & Resorts properties in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico starting today, including select Kimpton, Hotel Indigo, Candlewood Suites, and InterContinental locations.
Apple says IHG has made AirPlay available at more than 60 hotels so far, and additional hotels will support the feature “in the coming months.”
The feature allows you to scan a unique QR code on the hotel room TV to establish an AirPlay connection, allowing you to wirelessly stream content from your iPhone or iPad to the TV. After the pairing process, your device will also automatically be connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi network. The device must be updated to iOS 17.3 or iPadOS 17.3 or later.
In addition to services like Apple TV+ and Apple Music, AirPlay on hotel room TVs works with Apple Arcade for gaming and Apple Fitness+ for workouts.
Apple emphasized the privacy and security of the AirPlay feature. When a guest checks out of the hotel, the company says their connection to the TV is erased, preventing future guests and hotel staff from accessing the user’s activity.
Apple first announced this feature at WWDC 2023 last June, in partnership with LG. Google already offers a similar Chromecast streaming feature on many hotel TVs that works with both iPhones and Android devices, so Apple has a lot of catching up to do on this front, but AirPlay support is certainly a useful addition for iPhone users.
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Sony just revealed its lineup of new TVs for 2024. While many boast interesting features that we’ll get into later, the biggest change is naming conventions. Sony TVs used to be named confusing strings of numbers and letters, but that’s all gone now. The names here are clean and simple. They all use Bravia, a long-time Sony moniker for televisions, and a single digit number.
The Bravia 3 is a standard 4K LED TV with dynamic HDR, upscaling technology and a 60Hz refresh rate. This is the most basic box within Sony’s lineup, but it still looks plenty capable. The company promises that it also uses eight percent less power than last year’s equivalent, which is always nice. The TV is available in sizes ranging from 43-inches all the way up to 85-inches, with prices going from $600 to $1,800.
Sony
Don’t ask what happened to Bravia 4, 5 and 6, because the next TV in the lineup is called the Bravia 7. This is a mini LED box with some neat tech, including a powerful updated processor and Sony’s proprietary Backlight Master Drive local dimming algorithm. The company says this allows it to feature 790 percent more dimming zones compared to last year’s similar X90L. The more dimming zones a TV has, the smaller each one will be. This leads to an increase in precision and a better contrast ratio.
It also uses less power than the X90L, to the tune of 15 percent, and boasts a new calibration mode primarily intended for Prime Video content. The Bravia 7 is available in sizes ranging from 55-inches to 85-inches, with prices fluctuating from $1,900 to $3,500.
The Bravia 8 is the company’s latest OLED model. The OLED panel ensures a “perfect black” response and the box includes the same calibration mode for Prime Video found with the Bravia 7. However, the most interesting aspects of this line have to do with size and form factor. The Bravia 8 is 31 percent thinner than last year’s equivalent model, with a slimmed down bezel. It should really pop when hung on a wall. There are only three sizes in this lineup, and the 55-inch model costs $2,000, the 65-inch version costs $3,400 and the 75-inch box costs a whopping $3,900.
Sony
Finally, there’s the flagship Bravia 9. This is basically a souped-up version of the Bravia 7, as its another mini LED box. Sony says that the display technology is similar to what’s found in a mastering monitor, which is a lofty promise. It’s 50 percent brighter than last year’s X95L, which was already plenty bright, with a 325 percent increase in dimming zones.
There’s also a 20 percent reduction in power consumption when compared to the X95L and new beam tweeters for improved audio. The Bravia 9 features Sony’s proprietary Backlight Master Drive and the new Prime Video calibration feature. The 65-inch version of this TV costs $3,300, while the 85-inch model comes in at a jaw-dropping $5,500.
Sony made a special occasion of its 2024 TV launch, holding it at the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Los Angeles. At the event, attendees, myself included, were treated to demos of Foley effects and soundtrack mixing, plus other striking examples of behind-the-scenes movie magic that happens at the studio. Sony’s message was that the technology that goes into movie and TV creation via its studio and professional camera and display divisions trickles down into consumer products, and it was made loud and clear at the event.
The Sony Bravia 9 is the flagship model of the new Bravia series TVs, taking that crown from the Sony A95L OLED TV, which will continue in the lineup for 2024. Interestingly, the Bravia 9 is a mini-LED TV. That marks a change in direction for Sony, a brand that in the past had regularly positioned OLED as the most premium technology in its TV lineup.
Sony’s re-positioning of mini-LED at the top of the TV food chain results from two tech developments at the company. The first is the creation of the BVM-HX3110, a professional mastering monitor capable of 4,000 nits peak brightness. The BVM-HX3110 was introduced in late 2023, and replaces the BVM-HX310, a standard model for movie post-production that tops out at 1,000 nits peak brightness.
The backlight LED driver panel used in Sony’s Bravia 9 TVs. Those tiny black stripes are the mini-LED modules. (Image credit: Future)
The second development is XR Backlight Master Drive with High Peak Luminance, a new TV backlight technology used exclusively in the Sony Bravia 9 mini-LED TV. According to Sony, its next-gen backlight tech is responsible for a 50% brightness boost in the Bravia 9 over the company’s previous flagship mini-LED model, the Sony X95L, along with a 325% increase in local dimming zones – something it accomplishes through a new, highly miniaturized 22-bit LED driver.
Along with increasing the number of LED modules that can be positioned in a backlight, the new driver’s higher resolution (other TV makers use 10- or 12-bit drivers, according to Sony) in combination with advanced dimming control algorithms lets it display images with a greater level of refinement than previously available in the best TVs. And that’s where Sony’s demo of the new Bravia 9 TV I attended comes in.
Brightness refined
There were two components to Sony’s demonstration of the Bravia 9’s XR Backlight Master Drive with High Peak Luminance tech. The first was a comparison of the new Sony BVM-HX3110 monitor with the older BVM-HX310 using movie scenes mastered at 4,000 nits peak brightness. While most movies are mastered at 1,000 nits peak brightness, according to Sony that has mainly been a technology limitation – one now removed by the BVM-HX3110. When viewing the 4,000 nits footage on both monitors side by side, a clear increase in highlight detail on the new BVM-HX3110 made images look notably more dynamic.
Sony’s Bravia 9 mini-LED TV in a bright room setting. (Image credit: Future)
The second component was a stacked pair of Sony Bravia 9 TVs set alongside a stacked pair of Samsung QN90C TVs, that company’s flagship 2023 mini-LED model in the US. The TVs arrayed at the top had their LCD panels removed so we could see the “raw” mini-LED backlight (see pic at top). Viewing a series of video clips, the Sony’s backlight had notably higher “resolution” owing to the XR Backlight Master Drive’s more granular local dimming performance. It also had a punchier level of brightness that could be seen in images displayed on the normal, non-butchered versions of both TVs located below. That brightness made highlights pop more dramatically and colors look brighter and richer.
Equally impressive in the demo was the virtual absence of backlight blooming effects in the transitions between bright and dark parts of images on the Bravia 9. Backlight blooming is a common visual artifact with LED-based TVs, even ones that use mini-LED tech, and it’s a key reason why OLED TVs, which have panels with self-emissive pixels that generate their own light, have retained a picture quality advantage over LED TVs.
Mini-LED mastered
Another picture quality comparison conducted by Sony at the event put the Bravia 9 alongside the Sony X95L and Samsung S95C, that company’s 2023 flagship QD-OLED model. The comparison also used Sony’s BVM-HX3110 displaying the same images as a reference point, and of the three TVs, the Bravia 9 most closely tracked the picture on the professional mastering monitor.
While Sony hasn’t revealed peak brightness specs for the Bravia 9 TV, its ability to accurately reproduce highlight and shadow details in movies mastered at 4,000 nits makes it a statement piece for HDR. As Sony’s new mastering monitor makes its way into more production facilities and movie directors and cinematographers start pushing the limits of what the format is capable of, any TV that can handle that will have an advantage.
Sony’s shift to mini-LED for its flagship TV signals its confidence in the tech, and with developments such as XR Backlight Master Drive, its ability to compete effectively with OLED. The 2024 crop of OLED TVs is turning out to be the brightest yet, with the new Samsung S95D measuring just under 1,800 nits peak brightness in our tests. But the new Samsung QN90D mini-LED model is even brighter, topping out at around 2,000 nits.
There’s only so much more that OLED makers can do to increase brightness beyond current levels, and the display tech may have hit its peak in the latest generation of TVs. And while we’ve yet to measure the Bravia 9, mini-LED is capable of higher brightness than OLED tech, and that’s something Sony clearly had in mind when planning its new flagship. In the future, we can expect to see movies with even wider dynamic range, and mini-LED with its high peak brightness capability will be well-positioned to handle it.
“It’s time to reintroduce HDR,” according to Sony’s chief distinguished engineer, Toshiyuki Ogura, who has been working with and developing HDR (high dynamic range) technology since its inception. Speaking at Sony’s home theater spring showcase in March, Ogura was referring in part to the company’s latest LED TV tech, which Sony hopes will help reshape the future of HDR and bring viewers closer to the intent of creators.
Through a whirlwind of demos across the sprawling Sony Pictures production lot, the event provided reviewers like me an unprecedented look behind the scenes, and behind the actual screens, of Sony’s new 2024 home theater creations. Highlights included Sony’s blazing new flagship mini LED TV—the Bravia A9—alongside three other new 2024 TVs that represent a subtly different approach over last year’s lineup.
We also got a peek at other new gear, from Sony’s updated soundbar fleet to its powerful new professional monitor, the HX3110, designed to set the standard for movie and TV mastering for years to come. Here are some first impressions of the latest from Sony Home Theater.
What’s in a Name?
Sony told us part of its goal this year was to streamline and simplify its 2024 home theater lineup. As part of that process, Sony’s best OLED and LED TVs will no longer be separated by their A-series and X-series naming conventions respectively. Instead, all of the new TVs—OLED and LED—will have the A-series moniker.
The new flagship A9 mini LED TV sits at the top of the new lineup, replacing last year’s X95L. Below that is the update of last year’s A80L OLED TV, now called the Bravia A8. Next is the Bravia A7, another new mini LED TV, and finally the cheapest of the new brood, the A3 LED TV. In a surprise move, Sony’s flagship A95L OLED TV (8/10, WIRED Recommends) won’t get an update, but will remain available as an A9 alternative.
I’m all for simpler names, but I’d argue the new system is actually more confusing for buyers, with no easy way to differentiate between OLED and LED. I even got the A7 mini LED and the A8 OLED TVs confused in one demo, naturally expecting the step-down LED TV to come directly after the A9 in the batting order. The A95L, meanwhile, seems adrift with no numeric connection.
While I can’t speak to Sony’s intent, the jumbling of the opposing panel technologies comes as the brand seems to be leaning away from its outsourced OLED TV panels and into the brightness wars with its housemade LED and mini LED panels. We’ll have to see how it all plays out—the new mini LED TVs look quite impressive so far—but I expect some head-scratching from shoppers this year.
The New Hotness
Sony’s latest mini LED TVs offer multiple improvements over last year, including increased brightness and more dimming zones for better backlight control. But before we saw the end result, Sony gave us a look behind the curtain to show that its new backlights are not only brighter, but also better at understanding content.
TVs might have gotten much less bulky in recent years, but most are still just big black screens. If you’ve been holding out for something a bit prettier, check out Amazon’s sale on Samsung’s QLED 4K The Frame LS03B Series. Most of the sizes are down to record lows, but the 75-inch model has the best deal thanks to a 37 percent discount. It’s still going to cost you a pretty penny, but the framed TV is down to $1,895 from $2,998 — a $1,103 savings.
Amy Skorheim
We’ve been big fans of Samsung’s frame TVs for some time and love not having to stare at a blank screen. This model has features such as an anti-reflection and matte display, so it doesn’t give itself away as a TV hiding along your actual artwork. You can display one of over 2,000 beautiful works from across the world, ranging from The Starry Night to The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. However, on top of the money you shelled out on the TV, there’s also a $6 monthly subscription to the Samsung Art Store. You can opt to add your own photos instead (just make sure they’re prepped for such a large format and don’t get all pixelated).
The Samsung Frame TV does include a slim wall mount and lets you customize the bezel’s type and color. Quality-wise, it’s a QLED 4K TV with Quantum HDR. If the size — or price — feels like too much, then check out other sizes, such as the 55-inch Samsung Frame TV. This model is down to $998 from $1,498 — a 33 percent discount and an all-time low price.
Samsung this weekend has the 27-inch ViewFinity S9 5K Smart Monitor at a steep discount, available for $899.99, down from $1,599.99. In addition to this $700 discount, you’ll find deals on 4K and 5K Samsung monitors, including the Smart Monitor M8, as well as storage, audio, TVs, smartphones, and home appliances.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Samsung. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Overall, the ViewFinity S9 5K Smart Monitor is at a very solid second-best price this weekend, just $50 higher compared to the previous record low price. This monitor has a matte display, modular 4K SlimFit camera, and support for Thunderbolt 4.
Samsung’s 27-inch Smart Monitor M8 is also being discounted during this sale, available for $399.99 in Warm White, down from $699.99. This is a 4K smart monitor with a design that looks similar to the iMac line, and it’s at another great second-best price during Samsung’s monitor sale.
Additionally, Samsung has quite a few more monitor and TV deals, which we’ve rounded up below. Anyone shopping for a Samsung smartphone or tablet can also find a few offers on the Galaxy AI-powered Galaxy Z Flip5, Galaxy Z Fold5, and Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra.
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We might only be a couple of weeks in to the 2024 TV hardware season, but it’s already looking set to be a transformative year for the once humble gogglebox. One where we could see the long-established best TV landscape transformed so much by a battle over brightness that a once-key premium TV technology may find itself fighting for survival.
This sounds like pretty apocalyptic talk, I realise, at a time when most AV fans (apart from a few middle aged CRT fans, maybe) would likely say that when it comes to TV technology, we’ve never had it so good. Intense rivalries between the world’s biggest manufacturers and, increasingly, competing technologies have propelled the TV world forward over the past 10 years at an unprecedented rate, leaving us spoilt for choice like never before.
This cheerful place of TV excellence we’ve arrived at, though, has been built around key principles that have remained more or less steady (there are always exceptions, of course) throughout this accelerated period of TV evolution. Namely that OLED TVs tend to be thought of as the premium option for serious movie fans who like to watch their TV in dark rooms, while LCD TVs appeal for their cheapness at the lower end of the market, and their much higher, living room friendly brightness at the premium end of the market. It’s this premium LCD market, though, that’s suddenly starting to feel squeezed.
QD-OLED: A big brightness boost
(Image credit: Future)
Exhibit A in this redrawn battle for TV supremacy comes, ironically, in the shape of the Samsung S95D OLED TVs. I’ve been lucky enough to spend a few days in the company of these flagship models from Samsung’s 2024 Quantum Dot OLED TV range, and I’m still reeling from what I witnessed. In particular, easily the most brightness I’ve ever seen from an OLED screen.
My own measurements recorded a light output over a small 2% white test area on the S95D of more than 2,100 nits, and nearly 1800 nits on a 10% test window. This latter measurement was up nearly 400 nits on Samsung’s previous flagship QD OLED TV, which itself tied for the brightest OLED TV ever with LG’s G3 series (a series which introduced new micro lens array technology to better focus the light output emerging from their WRGB OLED panels).
We don’t have exact figures yet on how the new LG G4 Micro Lens Array OLEDs might be shaping up, but we’ve seen enough of it to know that it is going to be brighter than the G3 was. As, almost certainly, will be other OLED TVs from other brands that use either Quantum Dot or micro lens array OLED technologies. Long gone are the days when it was exciting if an OLED TV hit 600 nits.
What all this means is that there’s suddenly an army of OLED TVs starting to push well and truly into brightness territory that was once exclusively the domain of light living room-friendly premium LCD TVs. I’ve watched the Samsung S95D in a bright day lit room, and believe me: It remains very watchable indeed. Especially as this series also happens to feature a remarkably effective reflection-rejecting filter on the front of its screen.
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OLED closes the gap with LCD
(Image credit: Future)
The new-found brightness of OLED TVs joins their legendary contrast-enhancing self-emissive design, where every pixel in their screens produce its own light, rather than external backlighting having to be shared across many thousands of pixels as happens with all LCD TVs.
OLED TVs also more readily deliver realistic wide viewing angles than LCD TVs can. And while LCD TVs used to command an (on paper, at least) a brightness-based colour volume advantage, the pure RGB approach of Samsung’s Quantum Dot OLED approach and first impressions of a startling processing inspired colour saturation boost to LG’s new G4 OLED series suggest that this LCD colour volume advantage is also sliding away.
While the new OLED generation undermines premium LCD TVs’ traditional appeal, though, it’s not game over just yet. For instance, they still boast immunity to screen burn – an issue where prolonged exposure to static image elements can cause areas of the organic elements in OLED screens to fade faster than their neighbours, causing onscreen logos and the like to gradually leave a permanent image of themselves on the screen.
Here again, though, recent OLED panels seem to have seriously started to tackle their old burn-in nemesis, with reports of it occurring on relatively recent OLED TVs dwindling to almost nothing – despite the OLED panels also getting significantly brighter.
Premium LCD’s consistency issues
(Image credit: Future)
Another case in favour of premium LCD TVs is their potential brightness consistency. While OLED TVs can now get dramatically bright over a certain amount of their screen area, they still come up significantly short of premium LCDs with images that fill the whole screen with brightness.
Even the ‘light cannon’ Samsung S95D QD OLEDs can only hit around 330 nits of brightness with a full-screen white HDR test screen, while Samsung’s latest flagship LCD TV, the QE75QN900D, can muster almost twice as much luminance(639 nits) in the same conditions. So in theory, at least, premium LCD TVs have a better chance of delivering a more consistent bright HDR experience.
There’s a problem here too, though. Premium LCD TVs (which inevitably use local dimming systems these days) have consistency issues of their own. This can appear as blooming, where extraneous light spills out around bright objects when they appear against a dark backdrop, or it can appear in dimming down of small stand-out bright objects as the TV tries to avoid backlight blooming.
All the main LCD brands are consistently working to resolve these issues, including, especially, Sony, with new LCD backlight technology it showed off at this year’s CES. But no consumer TV yet has fully nailed it yet.
Keeping LCD relevant
(Image credit: Future)
This leaves trying to keep ahead of OLED with their brightness as perhaps the best or, at least, most obvious hope for premium LCD TVs to keep themselves relevant. Samsung seems to have grasped this, as you might have expected with a brand that ranges similarly priced premium LCD and OLED TVs in its range.
As we discovered in a recent hands on, Samsung’s QN90D is hitting 2000 nits on a 10% HDR window, while Samsung’s QN900D8K models are getting right up to more than 2400 nits (a big improvement on their predecessors, which got caught in the 2023 drama surrounding the introduction of unexpectedly harsh EU TV power consumption rules).
TCL has launched an LCD TV with 5000 nits of brightness to go with 5000 local dimming zones, while Hisense let the nits rip at the 2024 CES with a 110-inch screen capable of delivering a claimed 10,000 nits.
Sony, too, seems to understand the need for brightness speed with its LCD TVs – not just because that’s where the difference with OLED lies, either, but also based on a long-running philosophical belief that brightness is fundamentally important to delivering high dynamic range video convincingly. Sony’s debut 8K TVs remarkably punched up to 4000 nits way back in 2019, and nobody who saw it will quickly forget the 10,000-nit render of Gran Turismo playing on a prototype 8K LCD display on Sony’s 2018 CES stand.
Plus, as mentioned earlier, Sony also showed off a new ultra bright LCD backlight design with much more light control and power efficiency at 2024’s CES, which appears to be a potential consumer response to the new 4000-nit capable BVM-HX3110 mastering monitor Sony’s professional division rolled out at the end of 2023.
Can LCD deliver a brigher future?
(Image credit: TCL)
All these big numbers sounds pretty promising for premium LCD, to be fair. I personally love lots of brightness myself for HDR viewing too, for whatever that’s worth. But just as that mention of Sony’s new high-brightness mastering monitor maybe points to a bright, shining, OLED-duffing future, it also brings us to one final big problem: Creatives currently don’t seem to be embracing the sort of brightness premium LCD supporters are going to need to chase to retain an OLED ‘gap’.
I’ve met a few professional colourists in recent times who all seem more than content to work within 1000-nit limits (apart from maybe a brief sunlight bloom here or spotlight there). In which case, all those extra nits of brightness premium LCD TVs are chasing might not end up having much real-world value.
Obviously Sony hopes its new mastering monitor might start to shift the dial on filmmaker’s relationship with brightness. Especially when there are premium LCD TVs out there in the consumer world capable of handling all those nits. I hope that happens too, actually.
But until or unless that happens – and at best I predict it will be a pretty long process – premium LCD TVs look like they’re going to have to work harder than they ever have before to hold off the challenge of the OLEDs now starting to aggressively park their tanks on premium LCD’s brightness-based lawn.
Your LG TV could be the biggest security vulnerability in your home or your office, new research from Bitdefender has found.
The LG WebOS TV operating system’s versions 4 through 7 are seemingly riddled with security vulnerabilities that allow hackers to add themselves as a user, take over the device and exploit command injection vulnerabilities to their hearts delight.
Over 91,000 devices are exposed via their internet connection, despite the vulnerable service’s intended use being LAN access only.
Triple escalation of vulnerabilities
The first vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-6317, allows the hacker to skirt around the TV’s authorization mechanisms and by changing a single variable, add themselves as a user on the TV. Next, by abusing the vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-6318, the hacker can give themselves total access to the device paving the way for command injection.
By abusing two more vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2023-6319 and CVE-2023-6320, the hacker can either manipulate a music lyrics library to allow OS command injection, or the attacker can manipulate a specific API endpoint to inject authenticated commands.
A patch was released to address these vulnerabilities on March 22, being made available for the above models from April 10, so it is worth checking the OS system version of vulnerable LG TV devices to ensure the patch has been installed.
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Roku has released a line of TVs after first . These televisions are packed with tech, with the standout feature being Mini LED backlighting for better brightness and contrast. The 4K TVs also boast QLED panels, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and a responsive refresh rate of 120Hz. The company’s calling them the “ultimate TVs” for streaming.
To that end, the quad-core processor should allow for snappier menu navigation and for apps to launch quickly, so you can spend less time waiting on a load screen and more time binging Hulu’s Shogun while scarfing down a big bowl of popcorn. They’re also Wi-Fi 6 capable, which comes in handy when streaming 4K content.
On the audio side of things, the Pro Series models include side-firing Dolby Atmos speakers for a “wide, cinematic sound.” The TVs integrate nicely with wireless soundbars, speakers and subwoofers, in addition to wired variants. Each model also features Bluetooth for connecting wireless headphones, to prevent spoilers from seeping into every corner of the house. They come with a refreshed remote control that includes motion-activated backlit buttons, USB-C charging and new shortcut options.
The Pro Series TVs feature a new neural processing unit (NPU) that allows for some nifty OS features. Smart Picture Max uses AI to automatically adjust the best picture mode for a particular piece of content, refining the color, sharpness and motion as required. This carries over to brightness, which also automatically adjusts depending on room lighting.
While Smart Picture Max might be tied to the Pro Series line of TVs, due to the updated NPU, there are more OS features coming to all Roku panels. The company’s televisions will soon get something called Backdrops, which are basically just fancy screensavers pulled from a wide catalog of popular artwork or via uploaded images. This won’t exactly turn a Roku into a , but it’s a start.
Roku
Roku TVs are also getting deep integration with IMDB in a forthcoming OS update. This will provide data sourced from the site as you scroll through potential shows and movies to watch. Finally, the mobile app is receiving a comprehensive upgrade, complete with a streamlined design, better search and new content categories.
The Pro Series line is available now from Best Buy, Amazon and Walmart. Prices start at $900 for the 55-inch model and rise up to $1,700 for the chunky 75-inch version. There’s also a wall-mount kit available for $100.
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