Month: June 2024
Redbox’s owner files for bankruptcy after repeatedly missing payments and payroll
A Redbox machine from 2015.
Redbox’s owner, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, filed for bankruptcy protection overnight. This comes at the tail end of a month in which the DVD rental company defaulted on loans, saw an order for its cars to be repossessed, and missed payroll for employees.
Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment informed employees of the filing late Friday, writing in an email seen by The Verge that it had filed for a debtor-in-possession loan — a way for companies that are reorganizing after filing for bankruptcy to secure additional working capital to meet payroll.
It’s a pressing matter for the company, as employees have been waiting for paychecks since June 21st. The company also promised to reinstate health insurance for his employees, which had lapsed in May.
However, it’s not certain that the company will be able to secure such a loan. Chicken Soup’s bankruptcy filing shows that the company owes money to a number of retailers including Walmart and Walgreens, as well as major Hollywood studios like Universal, Sony, Lionsgate and Warner Bros.
Other creditors include smaller studios, streaming platforms, and smart TV manufacturers, with the list of names including the BBC, Vizio, and Plex; Redbox and Chicken Soup-owned Crackle have been operating their own free, ad-supported streaming services on a variety of platforms. The company also owes money to its landlords, the vendor it rents its car fleet from, and others.
Chicken Soup took on $325 million in debt when it acquired Redbox in 2022 and has since been sued over a dozen times over unpaid bills. The company recently settled one of those lawsuits with NBCUniversal but promptly missed the first agreed-upon payment, leading to a court order to pay the entire $16.7 million balance. Altogether, Chicken Soup has $970 million in debt, according to the bankruptcy filing.
A Redbox machine from 2015.
Redbox’s owner, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, filed for bankruptcy protection overnight. This comes at the tail end of a month in which the DVD rental company defaulted on loans, saw an order for its cars to be repossessed, and missed payroll for employees.
Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment informed employees of the filing late Friday, writing in an email seen by The Verge that it had filed for a debtor-in-possession loan — a way for companies that are reorganizing after filing for bankruptcy to secure additional working capital to meet payroll.
It’s a pressing matter for the company, as employees have been waiting for paychecks since June 21st. The company also promised to reinstate health insurance for his employees, which had lapsed in May.
However, it’s not certain that the company will be able to secure such a loan. Chicken Soup’s bankruptcy filing shows that the company owes money to a number of retailers including Walmart and Walgreens, as well as major Hollywood studios like Universal, Sony, Lionsgate and Warner Bros.
Other creditors include smaller studios, streaming platforms, and smart TV manufacturers, with the list of names including the BBC, Vizio, and Plex; Redbox and Chicken Soup-owned Crackle have been operating their own free, ad-supported streaming services on a variety of platforms. The company also owes money to its landlords, the vendor it rents its car fleet from, and others.
Chicken Soup took on $325 million in debt when it acquired Redbox in 2022 and has since been sued over a dozen times over unpaid bills. The company recently settled one of those lawsuits with NBCUniversal but promptly missed the first agreed-upon payment, leading to a court order to pay the entire $16.7 million balance. Altogether, Chicken Soup has $970 million in debt, according to the bankruptcy filing.
The year so far in OLED TVs: the 4 best launches and what’s coming next
2024 has already proved to be a wild year for OLED TVs, so we’ve pulled together all the stories that you need to know.
It’s been a rollercoaster ride in the world of OLED TVs in 2024, and we’ve only just reached the year’s midway point. We’ve seen major releases from LG, Samsung and Sony, with a number already taking their place amongst the best TVs. But there has also been some surprising and, unfortunately, unwelcome news concerning what we expected to be some of the best OLED TVs.
Keeping up with the latest OLED TV news can be difficult, so we’ve compiled a list of all the major releases and reviews over the past six months. That list follows, along with our thoughts on OLED tech as it aims to maintain its place as arguably the most popular TV option.
The biggest OLED TV launches of 2024
The Samsung S95D is easily one of the best OLEDs of 2024 (Image credit: Future)
The Samsung S95D is one of the headline OLED TVs of 2024. Samsung’s flagship QD-OLED (a combination of brightness-enhancing QLED tech with a contrast-rich OLED panel) has taken what made its predecessor, the Samsung S95C, great – stunning picture, unbeatable gaming performance – but adds the company’s new OLED Glare Free tech to eliminate reflections. This worked incredibly well during our testing and the S95D earned every bit of its five-star review from us.
Next up is the LG C4. The C4’s predecessor, the LG C3, was a bit of a let-down in 2023, as it didn’t greatly improve on the fantastic LG C2 other than a modest brightness boost. The C4 thankfully changed this, exceeding 1,000 nits in brightness, improving HDR handling, and introducing a 144Hz refresh rate, making its 42-inch model ideal for PC gaming. It’s one of the strongest OLED TVs of 2024 so far and will provide tough competition in the mid-range.
The LG B3 was my personal dark horse OLED TV in 2023, so when LG unveiled its 2024 OLED TV lineup, several key specs for the new LG B4 series caught my eye: a new 48-inch model, four HDMI 2.1 ports and LG’s new Alpha 8 AI processor, which LG said would mimic the performance of the LG C3. That pretty much ticks all the boxes, and although we haven’t fully tested it yet, the B4 is my most anticipated OLED TV of 2024.
We haven’t forgotten about the LG G4, one of LG’s flagship OLEDs for 2024. From what we saw at CES 2024, it provided a significant brightness boost over its predecessor, the LG G3, and it features a 144Hz refresh rate and a new Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode (available on a large portion of LG’s 2024 TVs). It certainly looked as impressive as anticipated and we’re eager to test it out, though it doesn’t quite capture our imagination as much as the C4 and B4.
The LG B4 is one of our most anticipated TVs of 2024 (Image credit: Future)
One of the biggest TV stories of 2024 has been Sony’s decision to move away from OLED as the panel technology of choice for its flagship 2024 TV, the Bravia 9, and instead opt for mini-LED. One of the main reasons for this is the company’s new BVM-HX3110 professional monitor, which can be used to master movies with up to 4,000 nits in brightness – something Sony believes only mini-LED can accommodate. Its decision paid off, as in our review of the Bravia 9, we were suitably impressed with its brightness, refined local dimming, and OLED-quality black levels and contrast. Sony OLED fans need not worry, however, as its 2024 TV lineup features the new Bravia 8 OLED (successor to the Sony A80L). Also, the Sony A95L QD-OLED will continue to be available.
Unfortunately, it’s not all been good news for OLED in 2024. The Samsung S90D, the eagerly anticipated successor to the Samsung S90C, TechRadar’s 2023 TV of the Year, has proved controversial due to reports of a ‘panel lottery’, something Samsung hasn’t denied. What the panel lottery means is you could pay QD-OLED-level prices but end up with a TV featuring either a QD-OLED or a standard ‘W-OLED’ panel. Furthering the blow, Samsung has confirmed that the S90D’s 42 and 48-inch models only come with a W-OLED panel.
More OLED TVs to look forward to in 2024
The Panasonic Z95A could be a real contender in the premium OLED category (Image credit: Future)
Although every major OLED brand has revealed their TV lineups for the year, models from Panasonic, Philips and Loewe, which are not available in the US, have yet to be released to the public. We haven’t had a chance to fully test any of these TVs, but have already seen some of them in action.
Panasonic’s stacked 2024 TV lineup features five OLED models in total. The new flagship Panasonic Z95A follows from 2023’s phenomenal Panasonic MZ2000, one of the best TVs for sound. It will still come with an MLA panel, but promises even higher brightness plus a 144Hz refresh rate for gaming. Panasonic’s OLEDs (and all of its TVs) will come with Amazon’s Fire TV smart TV platform, replacing the somewhat sluggish my Screen8.0, which I found to be the MZ2000’s biggest drawback when I reviewed it. The Z90A, one of my three most anticipated Panasonic TVs of 2024, will also feature an external ‘soundbar’ on its smaller 42-inch model. Could that finally be a 42-inch OLED rival to the LG C4?
Philips’ popular range of Ambilight TVs in 2023, including the brilliant Philips OLED808 and Philips OLED908, which made me feel like a kid at Christmas when I tested them, are hard acts to follow. But when Philips announced its 2024 TV lineup, it made headlines by claiming its flagship OLED+959 and OLED+909 would be the first OLED TVs to hit 3,000 nits – a brightness level rivaling mini-LED TVs. They will also feature 144Hz gaming and 5.1.2ch and 3.1ch speaker systems in the OLED+959 and OLED+90, respectively, in an attempt to rival the built-in audio prowess of Panasonic and Sony TVs.
Lastly, Loewe, whose TVs are as much about design as performance, is set to release its dr+ range of OLEDs (some of which are now available). These feature panels built in-house by Loewe with glass supplied by LG. Loewe will also release its Stellar range of OLEDs, which will cost significantly more than LG’s G4 OLED TV, but come with a concrete back and a mighty 200W sound system.
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Are ‘Immortal Stars’ Feasting on Dark Matter in the Milky Way’s Core?
“Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity,” writes Gizmodo, “according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources.”
The group of stars, known as S-cluster stars, is just three light-years from the center of the Milky Way (for reference, we are about 26,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy, which hosts a supermassive black hole at its core). The stars are surprisingly young for their galactic neighborhood, yet they don’t look like stars that simply migrated to this part of the Milky Way after forming in another location…
As reported by Space.com, the research team posits that these weird stars may be accreting dark matter, which they then use as fuel to keep burning. Since models estimate there is plenty of dark matter near the galaxy’s core, the stars are “forever young,” as study lead author Isabelle John, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology told Space.com. Effectively, the stars have a long, long way to go before they start running low on fuel. The team’s paper is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv, meaning it has not yet gone through the process of peer review.
Dark matter is only “seen” through its effects on other objects, the article points out — leading to lots of theories as to where it’s actually located. “Earlier this year, a different team of researchers proposed that neutron stars — extremely dense stellar remnants — could actually be a source of dark matter. Last July, yet another team suggested that the Webb Telescope had detected stars that were powered by dark matter.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
“Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity,” writes Gizmodo, “according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources.”
The group of stars, known as S-cluster stars, is just three light-years from the center of the Milky Way (for reference, we are about 26,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy, which hosts a supermassive black hole at its core). The stars are surprisingly young for their galactic neighborhood, yet they don’t look like stars that simply migrated to this part of the Milky Way after forming in another location…
As reported by Space.com, the research team posits that these weird stars may be accreting dark matter, which they then use as fuel to keep burning. Since models estimate there is plenty of dark matter near the galaxy’s core, the stars are “forever young,” as study lead author Isabelle John, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology told Space.com. Effectively, the stars have a long, long way to go before they start running low on fuel. The team’s paper is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv, meaning it has not yet gone through the process of peer review.
Dark matter is only “seen” through its effects on other objects, the article points out — leading to lots of theories as to where it’s actually located. “Earlier this year, a different team of researchers proposed that neutron stars — extremely dense stellar remnants — could actually be a source of dark matter. Last July, yet another team suggested that the Webb Telescope had detected stars that were powered by dark matter.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.