Simon van Velthooven is retiring after a unique career that traversed sports and was a key man in Team NZ’s revolution that inspired three Cup wins. Read...

Just a little more than a month after the top exec for HBO Max mused that the service is “way underpriced,” the streamer is following through with a price hike for each of its three tiers.  Starting today for new subscribers, the price of HBO Max Premium will go up to $22.99, a $2-a-month increase, while the annual rate for Premium will rise to $229.99, up $20 a year. The step-down HBO Max Standard plan is also getting a price hike to $18.49 a month, up $1.50/month, with the annual Standard price going up to $184.99, a $15 annual increase. Finally, HBO Max Basic with Ads is now $10.99, up a dollar a month, while the annual rate for that plan is getting hiked to $109.99 a year, up $10 annually.  Existing HBO Max monthly subscribers will see the price increases take effect on their next bills after November 20, 2025, while current subscribers on annual plans will stick with the previous rate until their plans expire, according to Variety.  HBO Max’s Premium tier gives you four simultaneous 4K UHD streams with Dolby Atmos when available, plus up to 100 downloads at a time. The Standard plan serves up two 1080p streams with 30 downloads at once, while Basic with Ads offers two ad-supported 1080p streams without the downloads.    It’s been roughly 16 months since the last time HBO Max raised its prices. At that time—when HBO Max will still being called just “Max”—both the ad-free tiers got price hikes, but the with-ads tier remained unchanged. While the latest HBO Max price hike arrived without warning for new customers, the top executive for the streamer telegraphed the move last month.  “The fact that this is quality—and that’s true across our company, motion picture, TV production and streaming quality—we all think that gives us a chance to raise [the] price,” Warner Bros. Discover CEO David Zaslav said at the time. “We think we’re way underpriced. We’re going to take our time.”    Apparently, Zaslav’s promise to “take our time” meant only a little more than a month.  HBO Max has seen plenty of changes since its previous price hike back in June 2024. First came the decision in February to pare back the offers of HBO Max’s with-ads tier, with subscribers to the plan losing access to the Bleacher Report Sports add-on as well as streaming CNN content.  Then came the name change from “Max” back to HBO Max, which happened this past summer. The move effectively undid Warner Bros. Discovery’s ill-advised “Max” rebranding of the service, which only lasted a couple of years.  Finally, HBO Max Standard and Premium subscribers learned they would also lose access to streaming CNN news starting November 17, thereby making way for the launch (or re-launch) next week of a new CNN streaming service. Read...

Outdoor and sports retailer Torpedo7 will become an online-only store by the end of February. Read...

The 22-year-old earned the extension after being named the NBA`s most improved player while finishing as the runner-up as defensive player of the year last season. Read...

The country’s first ever sports school will open its doors next year, giving football and rugby athletes a place to study while pursuing a professional sports career. Read...

Apple TV+—er, I meant Apple TV—isn’t often bundled with other streamers, but Apple has just teamed up with Peacock to offer their respective services together, for less.  Starting later this month, the Apple TV and Peacock Bundle will get you both Apple TV and Peacock Premium (the latter being Peacock’s ad-supported tier) for $14.99 a month, nearly a $9-a-month savings versus signing up for the two services separately.  If you want to skip the ads, you can get Apple TV and Peacock Premium Plus for $19.99 a month, for close to a $14/month savings compared to signing up for the two streamers individually.  Already signed up for Apple TV via the Apple One bundle? No sweat. Apple One subscribers on the Family and Premier plans will be able to sign up for Peacock Premium Plus at a 35-percent discount.  The Apple TV and Peacock Bundle will debut on October 20, and you can sign up for the bundle on the Apple TV or Peacock websites or mobile apps once the offer goes live.  Starting on the bundle’s launch date, existing Apple TV and Peacock subscribers will be able to sample each other’s content. Apple TV users, for example, will get access to three episodes each of Law & Order, Bel-Air, Twisted Metal, Love Island Games, Happy’s Place, The Hunting Party, and Real Housewives of Miami on Peacock, while Peacock subscribers will be able to stream three episodes of Apple TV’s Stick, Slow Horses, Silo, The Buccaneers, Foundation, Palm Royale, and Prehistoric Planet.  Besides its catalog of TV shows, Peacock offers live sports, including Sunday Night Football, while Apple TV hosts Friday Night Baseball during the regular MLB season. Before now, practically the only bundle that included Apple TV was Apple’s own Apple One bundle, which offers access to Apple Music, Apple Fitness+, Apple Arcade, and iCloud+.  Apple TV is also available in Comcast’s StreamerSaver add-on, which boasts Peacock with ads, Netflix Basic with ads, and Apple TV for $15 a month, provided you’re an Xfinity Internet subscriber.  Besides just changing its name from Apple TV+ to simply Apple TV, Apple’s streaming service recently foisted a price hike on subscribers, raising the price from $9.99 a month to $12.99/month, a 30-percent increase. That price hike went into effect August 21.  T-Mobile subscribers on certain plans can get Apple TV included in the price of their smartphone service. Read...

TNT’s long run as an NBA broadcaster has ended, ushering in a new era of media rights that will reshape how fans watch the league. Starting with the 2025–26 season, the NBA’s national package is split among three partners: Disney (ABC/ESPN), NBC/Peacock, and Amazon Prime Video. That means cord-cutters still have plenty of options to watch marquee games, but keeping track of which platform carries which contest will take more effort than in the past. NBC/Peacock will present up to 100 regular-season games, highlighted by Tuesday night regional doubleheaders and a new Sunday-night showcase launching in January. Every game NBC airs will also stream live on Peacock, which will add its own exclusive Monday night games to the schedule. Amazon Prime Video has carved out a complementary package that includes 66 regular-season games, every Play-In Tournament matchup, select first- and second-round playoff games, and in certain years a share of the Conference Finals. Prime Video also holds exclusive rights to the Emirates NBA Cup knockout rounds, adding extra weight to its midseason coverage. Regional sports networks (RSNs) remain the toughest piece of the puzzle. These local channels still carry the majority of NBA games, yet many—such as Fox Sports, NBC Sports RSNs, YES Network, and Marquee Sports Network—are absent from the most popular streaming services due to unresolved carriage disputes. RSNs are even more important now with the Emirates NBA Cup, the league’s midseason tournament. Group play begins October 31 and the knockout rounds wrap up on December 16, with most games still shown on each team’s local network alongside selected national broadcasts. Whether you want to chase the Cup or simply follow your home team, the best approach is to find a service that carries your RSN and pair it with one of the national platforms. A handful of teams still have over-the-air arrangements, but those are increasingly rare. Here’s a guide to all your 2025–26 options when the season tips off on October 21. Over the air The Televes Bexia is a high-performance indoor TV antenna suited for homes in areas with strong- to medium-powered broadcast TV signals. In our tests, it was comparable to the best indoor antennas we’ve tested, including the Winegard Flatwave Amped.Martyn Williams/Foundry The good news is you can access ABC for free if you have an over-the-air TV antenna (you’ll find our top antenna picks here) and are within the radius of your local ABC affiliate’s broadcast tower. The bad news is the network is scheduled to air only about two dozen of this year’s nationally televised games. These, however, include some of the league’s marquee matchups, including five Christmas Day games. You can watch the remaining games with some combination of the following services. Streaming service options Sling TV Sling TV remains a flexible option for catching nationally televised NBA games. The Orange plan costs $45.99/month and includes ESPN and ESPN2, with NBA TV available through the Sports Extra add-on for $11. New subscribers often get the first month at a discounted rate (around ~$23). Sling has also rolled out a $4.99 Day Pass, which provides 24-hour access to its Orange channels, and you can add Sports Extra to that pass as well. DirectTV Stream You can get ESPN, ESPN2, and and NBA TV via DirectTV Stream‘s Choice plan for $89.99 per month. RSN availability varies by location, so you’ll need to enter your ZIP code during signup to see exactly which regional networks (if any) your package will carry. DirecTV Stream also includes your local NBC affiliate in most markets, so you’ll be able to catch NBC’s share of national NBA broadcasts, such as Tuesday doubleheaders and the Sunday-night showcase. But, as with other live TV services, you’ll still need a separate Peacock subscription to stream Peacock-exclusive Monday night games. Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV Both Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV give you access to ABC and ESPN/ESPN2 for a flat fee, but only YouTube TV offers NBA TV, giving it the edge for hoop heads. Hulu + Live TV costs $82.99 a month with ads or $95.99 a month with the No Ads plan (live broadcasts still carry commercials either way) and includes Hulu’s on-demand library, Disney+, and ESPN Select. YouTube TV charges $82.99 a month, discounted to $49.99 a month for the first two months. Both services carry your local NBC affiliate in most markets, which means you’ll be able to watch NBC’s slate of national NBA broadcasts, including Tuesday doubleheaders and the new Sunday-night showcase. However, you’ll need a separate subscription to catch Peacock-exclusive Monday night games. With just the one base channel package for each of these services, you don’t get the customizability of Sling TV or DirecTV Stream, so keep that in mind if you plan to use your subscription beyond basketball season. YouTube TV uses a small number of menu sections to make navigation easier.Martyn Williams/Foundry FuboTV FuboTV offers ABC and ESPN in its $79.99-per-month Pro package, and you get $20 off the first month. This package also includes the regional sports networks NBC Sports Bay Area and NBC Sports California, which is great news if you’re a fan of the Kings, Warriors, Lakers, or Clippers. You can add NBA TV by purchasing the Sports Lite add-on for an additional $9.99 a month. FuboTV also carries local NBC affiliates in most markets, so you’ll be able to see NBC’s Tuesday night doubleheaders and Sunday-night showcase games. But as with other services, Peacock-exclusive Monday night games aren’t included. Fubo appeals to sports fans, and it includes NBA TV.Martyn Williams/Foundry Peacock Peacock is now a must-have for NBA fans under the league’s new media rights deal. A subscription costs $10.99 a month for the Premium plan or $16.99 a month for Premium Plus (with lighter ads and extra features). Peacock streams every NBA game that airs on NBC; plus, a package of exclusive Monday-night games. It will also carry NBC’s Tuesday night doubleheaders and the new Sunday-night showcase beginning in January, making it the only standalone service that delivers such a large share of the national schedule. ESPN ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer service launched this past summer, giving fans their first chance to watch the network’s full slate of games without a cable or live TV bundle. The service offers two tiers: Select, at $11.99 a month (or $119.99 a year) folds in the former ESPN+ library; Unlimited, at $29.99 a month (or $299.99 a year), adds live access to ESPN’s full lineup of channels along with ESPN on ABC broadcasts. Existing ESPN+ subscribers were migrated to the Select tier automatically. A launch bundle also offers Unlimited with Disney+ and Hulu for $29.99 a month for the first year. For NBA fans, that means every ESPN-televised game is now available as a standalone streaming option. Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video has also become a central player in the NBA’s new media landscape. A subscription to Amazon Prime, which includes Prime Video, costs $14.99 a month or $139 a year (Prime Video by itself is available for $8.99 a month). Under its 11-year agreement with the NBA, Prime Video will stream 66 regular-season games, including marquee Friday-night matchups and, beginning in January, Thursday-night doubleheaders once the NFL season wraps. It also holds exclusive rights to all Play-In Tournament games, the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup, and selected first- and second-round playoff contests, as well as a rotating share of the Conference Finals. NBA League Pass If you’re truly hardcore for the hardwood, you should consider a subscription to NBA League Pass, the league’s official streaming service. For $109.99 a year or $16.99 per month, you can watch every live out-of-market game that isn’t being broadcast nationally on one of the four networks we’ve mentioned. A League Pass subscription allows you to watch every game feed (home, away, mobile view, plus additional languages and camera angles) on your TV, computer, tablet, and smartphone. Games are available three hours after completion in the video archives. You also get anytime access to a curated selection of “classic” games. For $159.99 a year or $24.99 per month, you can upgrade to NBA League Pass Premium, which enables you to stream a game on three devices at once and watch all games commercial free. With an NBA League Pass subscription, you can stream live out-of-market games to your TV, computer, or mobile device.Martyn Williams/Foundry NBA Team Pass That’s a big investment if you only want to follow your favorite team. NBA Team Pass is a less-expensive alternative. For $89.99 a year, you get access to all your squad’s local broadcasts for both home and away games. The rub is that NBA blackout rules still apply. If you live in your team’s “home” market—a Warriors fan residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example—you still won’t be able to watch their games even with a Team Pass subscription (this goes for League Pass as well). Your team’s home market, however, isn’t necessarily defined by your town’s city limits. In the NBA’s own words, the league determines blackout zones “using zip code (if watching via a satellite television provider), a combination of zip code and cable system distribution territory (if watching via a cable television provider), or by the IP address associated with your internet connection or your mobile device’s GPS coordinates.” That means this isn’t a cord-cutting option for everyone. You can see which teams are not available in your area in the blackout section on this page when you choose your subscription. NBA streaming is still 50-50 ball Streaming live NBA games continues to be a mixed bag for cord-cutters. The availability of national broadcasts through streaming services gives you a courtside seat for some of the biggest matchups of the season. But local fanbases who want to follow their team continue to be left on the bench, for the most part. Until streaming options for regional sports networks become more widely available, you might want to dust off your radio. Read...

If you’ve been using a Roku player or smart TV over the past year or so, you’ve probably noticed some big changes on the home screen. What used to be a straightforward grid for all your installed apps has now become a mishmash of menu options, shortcuts, and content recommendations. While you can still simplify the Roku home screen with some settings tweaks, the trend is clearly toward stuffing it with content that makes Roku money. So here’s my counterproposal: Instead of keeping up the pretense of a simple home screen, Roku should just toss it in favor of something more useful. In fact, Roku already has a perfectly good starting point lurking in a different part of its menu system. Roku’s What to Watch menu is a better home screen you access Roku’s What to Watch menu from the left-hand sidebar.Jared Newman / Foundry Click over to Roku’s left-hand sidebar menu and you’ll see a “What to Watch” section among the increasingly numerous options (which themselves are partially obscured nowadays by a banner ad). When Roku added the Watch to Watch section in 2022, it wasn’t all that useful. Mostly, it was just a way for Roku to recommend more ad-supported content, both from its own Roku Channel and other free, ad-supported streaming sources. Over time, though, What to Watch has improved in a few notable ways: The Continue Watching row lets you quickly resume what you’ve been watching from across different streaming services, including Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, and Peacock. You can bookmark movies and shows for later—either from search or other parts of Roku’s menu system—by adding them to a Save List that appears in the What to Watch menu as well. The Your Apps row at the top of the screen lets you jump directly into apps you’ve already installed on your Roku device. What we have, in other words, is a nearly complete menu system. From a single screen, you can launch apps, pick up where you left off, and discover new things to watch. It’s also arranged in a way that actually benefits users, with content they’re watching and saving prioritized over anything promotional. Roku’s Save List is a great feature, but saved items only appear in the What to Watch menu, not on your home screen.Jared Newman / Foundry If it were up to me, I would simply make this What to Watch menu the default Roku screen, perhaps fleshing it out with quick links to Roku’s live TV and Sports menus. The layout is very much in line with what most other streaming platforms offer today, although Roku’s version is simpler and cleaner than the likes of Google TV and Amazon Fire TV. Roku needn’t ditch the app grid entirely. Instead, it should give the What to Watch section an All Apps button at very front of the Your Apps row, and have it link to a straightforward list of apps, without all the cruft that Roku has been adding lately. By defaulting to a richer and more useful content hub, Roku can free up the app grid to serve its original purpose. Why won’t Roku do this? Everything you need in one place, including shows-in-progress, recent apps, and saved items.Jared Newman / Foundry Part of me was hoping Roku would announce this kind of home screen shake-up as part of its fall software announcements earlier this week. Instead, the company announced some more modest updates, including a new AI-powered voice assistant and a way to tune your home-screen recommendations. I’m not too surprised. The company tends to be conservative with software changes, and the app grid has always been a defining Roku feature. Throwing it out or making it less prominent might confuse some users and invite a backlash. Still, Roku could easily mitigate this by letting users choose their default home screen. Keep the app grid by default for existing users, but let those of us in the know switch to the What to Watch menu instead. Over time Roku could move new users over to the Watch to Watch menu and present a choice to existing users as they set up additional smart TVs or streaming players. Roku’s Home screen, now filled with junk.Jared Newman / Foundry It’s not as if the app grid is sacrosanct for Roku. The addition of recommendation tiles, genre-based menu options, and shortcuts show that Roku itself wants to get away from the app paradigm and make its home screen more content-forward. Doing so helps serve Roku’s business goals of upselling subscriptions through its billing system and promoting ad-supported content. But Roku already has a better version of that idea elsewhere in its menu system, one that’s also more useful for its users. With the What to Watch menu providing a better launch experience, Roku should stop patching up the home screen with Band-Aid measures and finally perform the necessary surgery. the best value in roku media streamers Roku Streaming Stick Plus Read our review Best Prices Today: $38.50 at Amazon And sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming TV insights. Read...

Roku is jumping onto the AI bandwagon with its next batch of software updates. In the months ahead, the company will add AI-powered voice search for its smart TVs and streaming players. While Roku’s existing voice search can find specific programs, actors, or genres, the upgrade will allow for more conversational queries, such as “What’s the Barbie movie about?” or “How scary is The Shining.” It will also support follow-up questions. Other forthcoming Roku features include a “What do you like to watch?” feature to tweak Roku’s home screen recommendations, live scores in the Sports section, and a search function in Roku’s live TV guide. Roku is also updating its recently-launched Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick Plus to support private listening through Bluetooth headphones and earbuds. TV-focused AI Unlike rivals Amazon and Google, Roku isn’t trying to launch an all-purpose AI that also happens to work on TVs. Roku doesn’t sell its own smart speakers, and users primarily interact with voice control through the mic button on Roku remotes. “Even in this case, with us evolving Roku voice to now answer entertainment Q&A, we are specializing in a TV-related solution only,” Amit Desai, Roku’s director of product and UX for voice and conversational AI, told reporters. He added that the feature will use a combination of in-house and commercial AI technology. Roku While it’s not yet clear what will happen if you ask about non-entertainment topics, Desai said Roku will tailor its responses for TV users, for instance by offering links to the shows being discussed along with related programming. Other streaming platforms haven’t quite nailed that experience. You can ask the same questions on a Google TV or Fire TV device, for instance, but you might get a voice-only response with no quick way to access the movie or show in question. (In Google’s case, that’s because it’s using completely different voice assistant technologies for conversation and navigation.) We’ve yet to see a live demo of Roku’s AI, but it could make for a less frustrating voice control experience if it works as advertised. More features to come Roku Along with Roku’s AI voice upgrade, the company announced a slew of other software features and some hardware news: “What do you like to watch?” This feature will present a series of movie and show tiles that users can mark with a thumbs up. Roku will automatically add suggestions to users’ Save Lists and tweak its home screen recommendations accordingly. Sports scores and reminders: Roku’s Sports section, which tracks upcoming live events from across different streaming services, will display scores (which can be hidden). Users can also set reminders that will trigger a notification in Roku’s mobile app. Roku Channel search: Roku will add a search button to its Live TV menu, with a search function in its live TV grid guide to follow. Trailer links: Trailers that you watch from Roku’s home screen will have quick links in the video player to add the program to your Save List or see where it’s available to watch. Mobile app updates: Roku’s iPhone and Android apps are getting some quick shortcuts for things like closed captions, sleep timers, the remote finder function. The app will also get links to sections such as TV Shows and Sports, along with an easier way to rate shows or mark them as watched. Roku More hardware: Walmart will soon sell a $198 portable projector from Vankyo with Roku’s software built-in. It looks pretty similar to the Aurzen model that launched on Amazon last month for $250 (but quickly dropped to $180 as of this writing). The company has also added Pioneer to its stable of brands building Roku TVs. Streaming Sticks add Bluetooth: It turns out that the Roku’s $30 Streaming Stick and $40 Streaming Stick Plus support Bluetooth after all. A software update will allow them to play TV audio through wireless headphones or earbuds. That’s one less reason to consider the $100 Roku Ultra instead. It’s unclear exactly when the new software features will arrive, other than in the “coming months.” The updates will likely trickle out to Roku TVs and streamers over time, making it tough to product when you’ll start seeing them on yours. Read...

Facing an uproar from grassroots sports and community clubs, the Government is looking to reverse a decision about online gambling. Read...