Five years ago this week…
HBO Max was paying the price for building its streaming service on top of the legacy HBO Go and HBO Now platforms. After a troubled launch and mounting complaints over buffering and login problems, WarnerMedia promised to replace every CTV app within 4-5 months, with You.i TV‘s Engine One providing the underlying technology.
HBO Max and Discovery+ were merged onto a new technology stack in 2023, as WBD saw Discovery+’s underlying code as more robust and flexible, suggesting the 2021 app rebuild was only an interim fix.
Anthropic’s black hole:
Claude and MCP developer Anthropic has racked up a $42bn annual net loss ahead of its IPO, reportedly the biggest loss in history. The previous record was SpaceX at $4.9 billion. Anthropic’s 2025 revenue reached $4.6 billion against an $8 billion operating loss. Two customers, thought to be Microsoft and Google, accounted for 24% of revenue.
Cloudflare gets cosy with DT:
CDN provider Cloudflare has signed a deal with German operator Deutsche Telekom aimed at securing European digital infrastructure, giving Cloudflare additional reach while DT’s T-Systems gains access to Cloudflare’s connectivity. This comes as European customers demand assurances around security, resilience and sovereignty.
Sky X becomes WOW:
Sky Deutschland has rebranded its Austrian streaming service Sky X as WOW, bringing it into line with the established German brand. Existing Sky X customers will be migrated to the new service and can keep their existing login credentials.
Netflix wants incremental reach counted:
Danish audience measurement firm AudienceProject is giving Netflix access to additional cross-media tools to show advertisers reach and frequency across different channels and demonstrate its incremental contribution to campaigns. AudienceProject says its measurement across the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain found Netflix delivered an average 54% unique reach to TV among measured target audiences.
Spain’s satellite broadband boom:
Satellite broadband connections in Spain have increased almost tenfold in three years, from just over 10,000 at the end of 2022 to almost 100,000 at the end of 2025, according to the country’s competition regulator. Starlink has been the principal growth driver, but even so, satellite accounts for only around 0.5% of fixed broadband connections, thanks to Spain’s extensive fiber coverage.
beIN wants one audience number:
beIN Media Group has appointed Fifty5Blue to build and operate a unified audience measurement system across 24 MENA markets. The three-year agreement will combine return-path viewing data from connected set tops with streaming usage data, giving beIN a single view of audiences across satellite TV and OTT.
BBC asks whether linear is worth license fee:
The BBC’s Director-General has given his clearest indication yet that some linear TV channels could disappear as it redirects resources towards iPlayer. However, he criticized iPlayer for falling “way off the pace on technology” despite its strong start in streaming nearly two decades ago. The BBC is seeking around £500 million in savings, with up to 2,000 roles expected to be affected, including 180 from the BBC Media Tech division, which powers iPlayer and other online services.
Sunrise puts Meta glasses on telco bill:
Sunrise has become the first telco in Switzerland to offer Meta AI Glasses. The range of glasses offer live translation, visual recognition, hands-free calls and messaging, AI assistance, music and podcast playback, and the ability to capture and share first-person photos and video.
Mediaproxy throws AI, MoQ at monitoring:
Broadcast obedience specialist Mediaproxy is bringing new AI capabilities to its LogServer compliance platform at NAB Show New York, including intelligent event detection, automated reporting and expanded QoE monitoring. The company will also demonstrate Monwall Web, its browser-based multiviewer, which now supports LL-HLS and MoQ.
Synamedia helps Slovenia sell ads it couldn’t before:
Slovenia’s largest TV operator Telekom Slovenije is using video software provider Synamedia to regionalize advertising on international linear TV channels, allowing local advertisers to buy inventory that was previously inaccessible. The service, managed by the operator’s subsidiary TSmedia and using the Synamedia Iris ad regionalization technology, currently supports AMC and BBC, replacing international ad spots with local campaigns. Crucially, it works with the operator’s existing TV infrastructure, requiring no changes to viewer set tops.
BBM makes multiview on demand:
TVaas vendor Big Blue Marble has added live multiview channels to its Cloud Video Kit using AWS Elemental Dynamic Multiview. Multiple live feeds can be assembled into a single HLS or DASH stream on demand, allowing viewers to select and arrange feeds without the operator having to pre-render every possible layout. Costs therefore scale with the number of source streams rather than every combination a viewer might create.
Sky isn’t ditching dish just yet:
SES and Sky have extended their satellite partnership across the UK and Ireland into the next decade. Sky will continue using SES capacity at 28.2 degrees East to deliver TV services to millions of homes, extending a relationship that dates back to 1988. The renewal is another reminder that, despite Sky’s push towards streaming and other delivery methods, satellite remains a core part of the platform’s distribution mix.
CVC buys into CDN77:
Private equity firm CVC has taken a minority stake in independent CDN provider CDN77 in a deal reportedly valuing the Czech company at $1.9 billion. CDN77 operates more than 230 edge locations with 330 Tbps of capacity. The company says the new capital will support expansion beyond core content delivery into storage, edge compute and dedicated CPU/GPU infrastructure.
Telenet bundles HBO Max:
Belgian operator Telenet is allowing customers to subscribe to HBO Max directly through their monthly telecom bill, becoming the first Belgian telco to integrate the US streaming service into its billing platform.
Arqiva wants UK DTT to survive until 2044:
Broadcast technology firm Arqiva has proposed a managed switch-off of UK digital terrestrial TV in 2044, a decade later than the current statutory horizon of 2034. The transmission company estimates the longer transition could cut broadcaster transmission costs by up to 50% and energy consumption by around 40%, while still releasing spectrum from 2034.
ITV makes subtitles mandatory:
ITV will require closed-caption subtitling on every advertisement across its channels and the ITVX streaming service from January 2027. The mandate covers around 2,000 advertisers, including SMEs. ITV is introducing a low-cost subtitling service for smaller new-to-TV advertisers, supplementing its existing in-house production operation, which already produces around 1,000 ads a year at cost.
Sony patents tap-to-play:
A newly published Sony patent describes a PlayStation controller that could accept payment information from a credit card, gift card or smartphone simply by tapping it against the controller. The patent, filed in March 2025 and published in September 2026, envisages NFC or Bluetooth transferring payment information to the console and could extent to player-ID transfers, multiplayer-session joining and moving screenshots, video and chat information between devices.
Watermarking-CDN bolt-on:
AgileTV‘s CDN has integrated Friend MTS‘s server-side watermarking platform in a pre-integrated setup allowing operators using either company’s technology to deploy the other, with Friend MTS handling watermarking and piracy monitoring while AgileTV distributes watermarked streams. Individual subscriber accounts can be identified when pirated content surfaces, with configurable rules allowing operators to block sources in real time.