MacRumors

Last October, Disney announced that its "Disney Movies Anywhere" service would be expanding to become simply "Movies Anywhere," allowing customers to collect all of their digital films into one centralized location. Previously, the digital retailers supporting the service were iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, VUDU, and Google Play, but today the latest retailer has joined: FandangoNOW.

FandangoNOW is the ticketing service company's video on-demand service, and now users who stream and purchase films on FandangoNOW will see their content piped to Movies Anywhere. This means that when using the Movies Anywhere app and website, FandangoNOW customers can access eligible digital movies from studios including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Walt Disney Studios (encompassing Disney, Pixar, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm), Twentieth Century Fox Film, Universal Pictures (including DreamWorks and Illumination Entertainment), and Warner Bros.

Once a FandangoNOW account is connected to Movies Anywhere, users can watch their redeemed digital films on multiple supported devices with Movies Anywhere apps, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, Amazon Fire devices, Android and Android TV, Chromecast, Roku, and on Mac and PC. According to Fandango CMO Adam Rockmore, a major advantage of FandangoNOW is having "one of the industry's largest collections of 4K Ultra HD movies," but as of yet the service doesn't have an app for Apple TV.

“At Fandango, we aim to deliver the best movie experience anytime and anywhere, throughout a movie’s entire life cycle — from theatrical to home entertainment and beyond,” said Fandango CMO, Adam Rockmore. “Since FandangoNOW’s launch in 2016, we’ve been hyper-focused on innovation, including building one of the industry’s largest collections of 4K Ultra HD movies and broadening our distribution on a wide variety of connected devices. Now, through our new relationship with Movies Anywhere, FandangoNOW customers will gain simple, streamlined access to their digital movies from Hollywood’s major film studios.”

Since its launch late last year, Disney stated that Movies Anywhere now provides access to a library of nearly 7,500 digital movies, and it has been used to store over 100 million movies to date. In addition to purchases made on connected digital retailers' stores, Movies Anywhere lets customers redeem digital codes that they find included in physical Blu-ray and DVD disc cases.

In celebration of the launch, FandangoNOW is offering two free films -- Ghostbusters (2017) and Ice Age -- when FandangoNOW is the first account a user connects to Movies Anywhere. This is part of Movie Anywhere's "5 Movies on Us" promotion, where the fist digital retailer linked nets you the previously mentioned films, and the second retailer linked provides you with an additional three free films: Big Hero 6, The LEGO Movie, and Jason Bourne.

Disney is also using the announcement as a promotion for today's digital release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, adding in a few new Star Wars themed profile picture options to the service. On the iTunes store on Apple TV, Disney is still the only major Hollywood studio not supporting 4K. It's believed that price is the reason behind the lack of support, because Apple is adamant about keeping 4K films equal to HD prices at $19.99, while Disney sells its films in 4K on apps like VUDU at a higher price of $24.99.

Facebook is set to launch a news section for its Watch platform and is testing different video partnerships with around 10 publishers, according to a report by Axios today.

Launched back in August, Watch is a section of Facebook in the U.S. for mobile and desktop that's designed to showcase TV shows exclusive to the social network. Along with serving as a platform for end users to watch shows, Watch is also meant to help creators and publishers find an audience for their content, build a community, and earn money.

The additional section would be the first standalone news product for national news in Watch. Previously news has been hosted on the platform mixed in with other publisher content through delivery mechanisms such as Instant Articles and Facebook Live.

Facebook is said to be testing a daily video feature for the upcoming news section that includes content from both "legacy and digital-first news publishers" and would run for at least a year, according to Axios' sources. Hosted content would be a minimum of three minutes, and Facebook plans to launch the feature this summer to test what works best.

Aside from Facebook's monetization goals, creating a news product that's native to the platform is part of an effort to promote content from vetted publishers, following last year's outbreak of "fake news" on the social network. Accusations that Facebook did little to halt the spread of misinformation on its platform hit the company's reputation among both users and publishers in 2017, and it has since been testing ways to guide readers to more credible sources of news.

In another Watch development, last week Facebook and Major League Baseball announced a content agreement to stream 25 weekly MLB games on the social network starting in 2018. The games will be distributed over Facebook Watch as part of the MLB Live show Page, and the deal marks MLB's first digital-only distribution agreement, which was unanimously approved by 30 Major League Clubs.

United States President Donald Trump this afternoon issued an executive order blocking Broadcom from acquiring Qualcomm in a deal that would have been worth more than $117 billion, reports Bloomberg.

The president's order came following a recommendation from the Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) in the United States, despite Broadcom's efforts to save the proposed transaction over the course of the last few weeks. U.S officials believed Broadcom's acquisition of Qualcomm, which has been under investigation by the CFIUS, could threaten national security.

The CFIUS previously said that a Broadcom acquisition of Qualcomm could undermine Qualcomm's leadership in 5G wireless technology, allowing China's Huawei to become the dominant 5G provider in the world. Broadcom, a Singapore-based company, promised not to sell Qualcomm 5G assets, announced plans to redomicile in the United States, and pledged to invest billions in the United States, but that did not ease regulators' concerns.

"There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that Broadcom Ltd." by acquiring Qualcomm "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," Trump said in the order released Monday evening in Washington.

Trump also said that "any substantially equivalent merger, acquisition, or takeover, whether effected directly or indirectly, is also prohibited."

Broadcom first made an offer to acquire Qualcomm for $70 per share in cash and stock back in November of 2017, marking the proposal of the "largest technology acquisition ever, which Qualcomm turned down.

Qualcomm also turned down subsequent offers of $121 billion and $117 billion, and had not agreed to the acquisition at the time that it was blocked by Trump. Broadcom had been attempting to add merger-friendly individuals to Qualcomm's board, but today's order makes it clear that no merger or acquisition between the two companies will be allowed.

Broadcom may intend to fight the order as earlier today, the company said in a statement that U.S. national security concerns are not a risk as "Broadcom never plans to acquire Qualcomm before it completes redomiciliation.

Update: Broadcom released a statement following Trump's order: "Broadcom is reviewing the Order. Broadcom strongly disagrees that its proposed acquisition of Qualcomm raises any national security concerns."

Update 3/14: Broadcom has officially ended its bid for Qualcomm in the wake of Trump's executive order: "Although we are disappointed with this outcome, Broadcom will comply with the order."

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming watchOS 4.3 update to developers, one week after seeding the fourth beta and a three weeks after releasing watchOS 4.2.3, a minor update focusing on bug fixes.

Once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Apple Developer Center, the new watchOS beta can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General --> Software update.

To install the update, the Apple Watch needs to have at least 50 percent battery, it has to be placed on the charger, and it needs to be in range of the iPhone it's paired to.

watchOS 4.3 introduces support for Nightstand mode in portrait orientation, a feature that was previously only available when the watch was placed in landscape orientation. There's also a new charging animation when the Apple Watch is placed on the charger, a new app loading animation, your Activity data is now displayed on the Siri watch face, and the battery complication more accurately reports battery life.

In prior versions of watchOS, starting with watchOS 4, the Music app could only be used to control music playing on the watch itself. With the tvOS 11.3 beta installed, there's also an option to control music playing on the Apple TV with the watch.

Apple plans to release watchOS 4.3 to the public in the spring, and until then, it will be limited to developers. Apple offers public betas of tvOS, iOS, and macOS, but watchOS betas are not available for public beta testers because there's no way to revert to an earlier version of watchOS once an update is installed.

The price for Google's YouTube TV subscription service will be increasing to $40 per month for new subscribers starting tomorrow, up from the current price of $35 per month.

Google first warned potential subscribers about the new pricing for YouTube TV in February, and today is the last day to sign up at the current $35 per month price point. Existing subscribers will continue to be able to pay $35 per month for the service.

Introduced in April of 2017, YouTube TV is a live streaming television service designed to compete with services like Sling TV, Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Now, and Playstation Vue.

YouTube TV provides subscribers with access to TV shows on more than 40 channels, with participating networks that include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, the CW, Disney, ESPN, FX, USA, and dozens more.

As of early February, YouTube TV launched an Apple TV app, making the subscription service available on all Apple devices. YouTube TV is available in a wide range of locations across the United States.

Apple engineers are slated to join in on several discussions covering display technology and augmented/virtual reality at Display Week, which is set to take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 22 to May 25.

Apple's Cheng Chen, a director of Display Optics and Platform Technologies, will kick off the event chairing a keynote session that covers three discussions: "OLED Leading to the New Experience of Display," "Reactive Displays: Unlocking Next-Generation VR/AR Visuals with Eye Tracking," and "Blue LEDs and Transformative Electronics for Developing Sustainable Smart Society," with speakers Deqiang Zhang (CEO of Visionox), Douglas Lanman (Director of Computational Imaging at Oculus Research), and Hiroshi Amano (Director of the Center for Integrated Research of Future Electronics), respectively.

Engineers from Apple will also chair and co-chair a range of discussion sessions, outlined below:

• AR/VR I Display Systems
• OLED Driving and Compensation
• Micro-LED Epitaxial Semiconductor Materials & Manufacturing
• Image Processing (Display Electronics)
• Micro-LED Device Processing and Hetero-Integration
• Novel OLEDs
• Micro-LED System Integration and Applications
• Capacitive-Touch Displays
• Projection: Screen Technology
• QD Electroluminescence I
• Fingerprint Sensing and Optical Sensing Displays
• Color Gamut
• Enhancements to AR/VR

Apple engineers will also serve as moderators at two Monday seminars, including "SE-8: Artificial Intelligence: Image Recognition and Visual Understanding with Deep Learning Techniques" and "Quantum-Dot Displays: Advances and Outlook."

Apple has always been a notoriously secretive company, but over the course of the last several years, Apple has been loosening restrictions and allowing its engineers and researchers to publish papers and share their work in an effort to contribute to the research community. This decision also allows Apple to continue to attract top employees who might not otherwise join the company without being able to share their research.

The Display Week event is designed for and limited to professionals who are part of the display industry. It is hosted by the Society for Information Display and will be attended by many of the world's most prominent technology companies.

Apple Maps recently inked a deal with Ito World, which adds bike-sharing data to Apple Maps in more than 175 cities across 36 countries, reports TechCrunch.

The feature went live this morning, and Apple Maps users can now type "bike sharing" or a specific service name like GoBike into the search bar to get results for nearby bike sharing options.

Apple previously had some available bike-sharing data in a few cities in Apple Maps, but with the Ito World partnership, it's more widely available. Ito World has signed deals with dozens of companies to license bike sharing data.

Bike sharing information is somewhat limited at the current time, as all Apple Maps lists is the location of the bike sharing stop rather than information on available bikes or empty docks for dropping off a bike.

According to TechCrunch, Apple Maps supports a wide range of services like Citi Bike in New York City, Ford GoBike in San Francisco, Biketown in Portland, Santander Cycles in London, Bicing in Barcelona, BIXI in Montreal, and more.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming tvOS 11.3 update to developers for testing purposes, one week after seeding the fourth beta and three weeks after releasing the tvOS 11.2.6 update.

Designed for the fourth and fifth-generation Apple TV models, the tvOS 11.3 developer beta can be downloaded onto the Apple TV via a profile that's installed using Xcode and Apple Configurator.

Early tvOS 11.3 updates introduced support for AirPlay 2, allowing the Apple TV to be added to the Home app as part of a HomeKit setup and enabling multiple Apple TVs in separate rooms to play the same song, but that functionality was removed in tvOS 11.3 beta 3.

It is not yet clear if Apple plans to re-add AirPlay 2 features ahead of the release of tvOS 11.3, but it's a possibility because there are still several betas to go.

Other new features in tvOS 11.3 include enhancements to Match Content support, automatic frame rate switching on the fourth-generation Apple TV (a feature that was added to Apple TV 4K in a past tvOS update), and automatic mode switching for AirPlay video sessions.

Update: Apple has also made a new beta of tvOS 11.3 available to public beta testers.