The future of Hollywood was reshaped in 1997 with the founding of Netflix, an innovative mail-order DVD rental business by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. Unlike traditional rentals, Netflix allowed subscribers to retain DVDs as long as they wanted but required returns before ordering more, allowing the company to collect uninterrupted subscription fees. By 2009, Netflix was shipping nearly a billion DVDs annually but had already set its sights on streaming. The transition to streaming, launched in 2007, faced initial challenges due to limited broadband availability but soon became popular, outpacing the DVD business and bringing Netflix millions of subscribers.
Netflix’s dominance drove traditional media giants to reevaluate their strategies. Disney, initially hesitant, eventually licensed its vast library to Netflix, contributing to the latter’s rise. However, by 2017, Disney pivoted to launch its own platform, Disney+, breaking its Netflix partnership and acquiring 21st Century Fox for content diversification. Disney’s decision sparked a broader industry shift as other studios also developed streaming services, aiming to retain full revenue from direct-to-consumer content instead of sharing it with theaters or traditional networks.
Disney+ quickly gained traction, especially during the pandemic, reaching millions of subscribers and temporarily boosting Disney’s stock. However, the reliance on streaming and subscriber growth strained Disney financially, with high operating costs and content expenses. Content exclusivity backfired, creating complexity for fans, particularly with interconnected Marvel shows, and contributing to user dissatisfaction. Additionally, Disney’s decision to release films like Black Widow simultaneously in theaters and on streaming led to backlash, lawsuits, and lost box office revenue, highlighting the downsides of simultaneous releases.
Facing ballooning expenses and subscriber attrition post-pandemic, Disney’s leadership returned to more traditional revenue models, emphasizing exclusive theater releases and licensing content to third parties. They also introduced cost-saving measures like job cuts and content reductions to stabilize financial losses. This shift echoes a partial return to pre-streaming industry norms as Disney and other studios explore “always-on” channels within their streaming platforms, aiming to balance direct consumer access with sustainable profit models.
Björn Ottosson proposed OKlch in 2020 to create a color space that can closely mimic how color is perceived by the human eye, predicting perceived lightness, chroma, and hue.
The OK in OKLCH stands for Optimal Color.
L: Lightness (the perceived brightness of the color)
C: Chroma (the intensity or saturation of the color)
H: Hue (the actual color, such as red, blue, green, etc.)
Motionity is an free and open source animation editor in the web. It’s a mix of After Effects and Canva, with powerful features like keyframing, masking, filters, and more, and integrations to browse for assets to easily drag and drop into your video.
Open Shading Language (OSL) is a small but rich language for programmable shading in advanced renderers and other applications, ideal for describing materials, lights, displacement, and pattern generation.
As the AI craze continues, even the microcomputer company Raspberry Pi plans to sell an AI chip. It’s integrated with Raspberry Pi’s camera software and can run AI-based applications like chatbots natively on the tiny computer.
Spectral sensitivity of eye is influenced by light intensity. And the light intensity determines the level of activity of cones cell and rod cell. This is the main characteristic of human vision. Sensitivity to individual colors, in other words, wavelengths of the light spectrum, is explained by the RGB (red-green-blue) theory. This theory assumed that there are three kinds of cones. It’s selectively sensitive to red (700-630 nm), green (560-500 nm), and blue (490-450 nm) light. And their mutual interaction allow to perceive all colors of the spectrum.
