TVs offer us an escape from the real world. After a long day, sometimes there’s nothing more relaxing than turning on your TV, tuning into your favorite program, and unplugging from the realities around you.

But what happens when divisive, potentially offensive messaging infiltrates that escape? Even with streaming services making it easy to watch TV commercial-free, it can still be difficult for TV viewers to avoid ads with these sorts of messages.

That’s especially the case with budget brands, which may even force controversial ads onto TVs when they’re idle, making users pay for low-priced TVs in unexpected, and sometimes troubling, ways.

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QLED TV manufacturers have dug themselves into a hole.

After years of companies promising that their quantum dot light-emitting diode TVs use quantum dots (QDs) to boost color, some industry watchers and consumers have recently started questioning whether QLED TVs use QDs at all. Lawsuits have been filed, accusing companies like TCL of using misleading language about whether their QLED TVs actually use QDs.

In this article, we'll break down why new conspiracy theories about QLED TVs are probably overblown. We'll also explore why misleading marketing from TV brands is responsible for customer doubt and how it all sets a bad precedent for the future of high-end displays, including OLED TVs and monitors.

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VMware is suing the US arm of industrial giant AG Siemens. The Broadcom company claims that Siemens outed itself by revealing to VMware that it downloaded and distributed multiple copies of VMware products without buying a license.

VMware filed the lawsuit (PDF) on March 21 in the US District Court for the District of Delaware, as spotted by The Register.

In the complaint, VMware says that it has had a Master Software License and Service Agreement with Siemens since November 28, 2012. The virtualization company claims that in September, Siemens sent VMware a purchase order for maintenance and support services. Siemens was reportedly looking to exercise a previously agreed-upon option for a one-year renewal of support services. However, the list of VMware technology that Siemens was seeking support for "included a large number of products for which [VMware] had no record of Siemens AG purchasing a license," the complaint says.

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Infinite Reality, a media, ecommerce, and marketing company focused on 3D and AI-powered experiences, has entered an agreement to acquired Napster. That means that the brand originally launched in 1999 as a peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing service is set to be reborn again. This time, new owners are reshaping the brand into one focused on marketing musicians in the metaverse.

Infinite announced today a definitive agreement to buy Napster for $207 million. The Norwalk, Connecticut-based company plans to turn Napster into a “social music platform that prioritizes active fan engagement over passive listening, allowing artists to connect with, own, and monetize the relationship with their fans." Jon Vlassopulos, who became Napster CEO in 2022, will continue with his role at the brand.

Since 2016, Napster has been operating as a (legal) streaming service. It claims to have over 110 million high-fidelity tracks, with some supporting lossless audio. Napster subscribers can also listen offline and watch music videos. The service currently starts at $11 per month.

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Netflix announced today that it has started offering HDR movies and shows in the HDR10+ format.

Since December 2014, when season 1 of Marco Polo debuted, Netflix has supported the HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats. Like Dolby Vision, HDR10+ is a more advanced form of HDR that uses dynamic metadata fine-tuned to specific content. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision let creatives set how each frame looks, enabling a final result that should have more detail and look closer to how the content's creators intended. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are especially impactful when watching HDR content on lower-priced HDR TVs that could suffer from poor black levels and other performance gaps.

You have to subscribe to Netflix's Premium ad-free plan to stream content in HDR and 4K resolution. The plan is $25 per month, compared to $18 per month for the Standard ad-free plan that limits users to 1080p resolution.

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The Apple TV+ streaming service “is losing more than $1 billion annually,” according to The Information today.

The report also claimed that Apple TV+’s subscriber count reached “around 45 million” in 2024, citing the two anonymous sources.

Ars reached out to Apple for comment on the accuracy of The Information’s report and will update this article if we hear back.

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Discord’s mobile app will have video ads starting in June, the company announced today. The initial pilot for the video ads, which Discord calls Video Quests on Mobile, will offer advertisers the ability to “showcase trailers, make impactful announcements, and highlight premium content” to users, Discord said.

Discord was a proudly ad-free platform until March 2024, when it introduced ads to its desktop and console apps. Those ads offer Discord users rewards for PC games if they play certain games or get people to watch a stream of their gameplay through Discord. Discord followed up with Video Quests, which let developers show Discord users video ads, like trailers and announcements of new seasons and downloadable content. Discord users see prompts for both types of ads on the bottom-left side of their screen and can choose to expand or ignore them.

Discord users can also opt out of personalized promotions and “hide an in-app promotion for a specific Quest or game you’re not interested in,” Discord said.

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A United States District Court for the Northern District of California judge has signed off on a settlement agreement between HP and its customers, who sued the company for issuing firmware updates that prevented their printers from working with non-HP ink and toner.

In December 2020, Mobile Emergency Housing Corp. and a company called Performance Automotive & Tire Center filed a class-action complaint against HP [PDF], alleging that the company “wrongfully compels users of its printers to buy and use only HP ink and toner supplies by transmitting firmware updates without authorization to HP printers over the Internet that lock out its competitors’ ink and toner supply cartridges.” The complaint centered on a firmware update issued in November 2020; it sought a court ruling that HP’s actions broke the law, an injunction against the firmware updates, and monetary and punitive damages.

“HP’s firmware ‘updates’ act as malware—adding, deleting or altering code, diminishing the capabilities of HP printers, and rendering the competitors’ supply cartridges incompatible with HP printers,” the 2020 complaint reads.

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Users in the test group are unimpressed by the video ads, which play automatically. Customers say they will be eager to toss their Roku devices if the ads become permanent.

Owners of smart TVs and streaming sticks running Roku OS are already subject to video advertisements on the home screen. Now, Roku is testing what it might look like if it took things a step further and forced people to watch a video ad play before getting to the Roku OS home screen.

Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS’ home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: “I just turned on my Roku and got an ... ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen.” Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2. The ads have a close option, but some users appear to have not seen it.

When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out.

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Amazon is killing its “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” privacy feature on March 28 as the company aims to bolster Alexa+, its new subscription assistant.

If you're frustrated by some of your favorite apps pestering you to sign up for a subscription, some new data may help you empathize with their developers more. According to revenue data from "over 75,000" mobile apps, the vast majority have a hard time making $1,000 per month.

The data is detailed in RevenueCat's 2025 State of Subscription Apps report. RevenueCat makes a mobile app subscription tool kit and gathered the report's data from apps using its platform. The report covers "more than $10 billion in revenue across more than a billion transactions," and RevenueCat's customer base ranges from indie-sized teams to large publishers. Buffer, ChatGPT, FC Barcelona, Goodnotes, and Reuters are among the San Francisco-based firm's customer base.

Additionally, the report examines apps that rely primarily on in-app subscriptions, as well as those that only generate some revenue from subscriptions. All apps examined, though, actively generate subscription revenue and "meet a minimum threshold of installs or revenue (to ensure statistically meaningful findings," according to the report.

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Since Amazon announced plans for a generative AI version of Alexa, we were concerned about user privacy. With Alexa+ rolling out to Amazon Echo devices in the coming weeks, we’re getting a clearer view of the privacy concessions people will have to make to maximize usage of the AI voice assistant and avoid bricking functionality of already-purchased devices.

In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon’s cloud. Amazon apparently sent the email to users with “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” enabled on their Echo. Starting on March 28, recordings of every command spoken to the Alexa living in Echo speakers and smart displays will automatically be sent to Amazon and processed in the cloud.

Attempting to rationalize the change, Amazon’s email said:

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Reddit has shown a growing commitment to promoting ads on its platform, especially since going public a year ago. But in the interest of not completely alienating customers with incessant, irrelevant, or personally offensive ads, the social media company is giving users the ability to block advertisers for a year.

In a Reddit post last night, a Reddit employee known as cozy_sheets said that clicking “Hide” on an unwanted ad on Reddit will soon result in Reddit automatically hiding “future ads from that advertiser account for at least a year (you can re-hide the ad after that period of time).” The change will debut on the Reddit website and Reddit’s iOS and Android app throughout “the next several weeks,” according to the announcement.

Reddit didn't detail what limits it will use to ensure that users don't block every single advertiser for an ad-free Reddit. Some users have already reported seeing a daily limit for hiding ads, though.

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Sonos has canceled plans to release a streaming box, The Verge reported today. The audio company never publicly confirmed that it was making a streaming set-top box, but rumors of its impending release have been floating around since November 2023. With everything that both Sonos and streaming users have going on right now, though, a Sonos-branded rival to the Apple TV 4K wasn’t a good idea anyway.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman was the first to report on Sonos’ purported streaming ambitions. He reported that Sonos’ device would be a black box that cost $150 to $200.

At first glance, it seemed like a reasonable idea. Sonos was facing increased competition for wireless speakers from big names like Apple and Bose. Meanwhile, Sonos speaker sales growth had slowed down, making portfolio diversification seem like a prudent way to protect business.

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Vodafone, a British telecommunications firm, will withhold bonuses from employees who fail to comply with its return-to-office (RTO) policy, The Register reported this week.

Last week, Vodafone reminded employees of its RTO policy requiring workers to be in-office “2–3 times a week, or at least eight days a month," according to a memo viewed by The Register. The memo also reportedly detailed the consequences of failing to adhere to the policy, which sets a guideline for compliance by the end of the company's first fiscal quarter in July:

Employees who are not fully compliant with our hybrid working policy by the end of Q1 may be subject to disciplinary action in line with policy. Continued non-compliance with attendance expectations could result in a final written warning, which would mean individuals are not meeting the minimum performance standards and therefore would not be eligible for a bonus in 2026 or in subsequent years in which a final warning is given.

The strict policy comes as tech and other firms struggle to get employees to voluntarily return to offices. In desperation, some companies have resorted to tactics like tracking employee badge swipes and VPNs. Vodafone is looking to lure employees into the office by threatening their income, similar to Dell’s approach of making remote workers ineligible for promotions.

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HP, along with other printer brands, is infamous for issuing firmware updates that brick already-purchased printers that have tried to use third-party ink. In a new form of frustration, HP is now being accused of issuing a firmware update that broke customers’ laser printers—even though the devices are loaded with HP-brand toner.

The firmware update in question is version 20250209, which HP issued on March 4 for its LaserJet MFP M232-M237 models. Per HP, the update includes “security updates,” a “regulatory requirement update,” “general improvements and bug fixes,” and fixes for IPP Everywhere. Looking back to older updates’ fixes and changes, which the new update includes, doesn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. The older updates mention things like “fixed print quality to ensure borders are not cropped for certain document types,” and “improved firmware update and cartridge rejection experiences.” But there’s no mention of changes to how the printers use or read toner.

However, users have been reporting sudden problems using HP-brand toner in their M232–M237 series printers since their devices updated to 20250209. Users on HP’s support forum say they see Error Code 11 and the hardware’s toner light flashing when trying to print. Some said they’ve cleaned the contacts and reinstalled their toner but still can't print.

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Although digital media has surpassed physical media in popularity, there are still plenty of reasons for movie buffs and TV fans to hold onto, and even continue buying, DVDs. With physical media, owners are assured that they'll always be able to play their favorite titles, so long as they take care of their discs. While digital copies are sometimes abruptly ripped away from viewers, physical media owners don't have to worry about a corporation ruining their Friday night movie plans. At least, that's what we thought.

It turns out that if your DVD collection includes titles distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the home movie distribution arm of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), you may one day open up the box to find a case of DVD rot.

Recently, Chris Bumbray, editor-in-chief of movie news and reviews site JoBlo, detailed what would be a harrowing experience for any film collector. He said he recently tried to play his Passage to Marseille DVD, but “after about an hour, the disc simply stopped working.” He said “the same thing happened” with Across the Pacific. Bumbray bought a new DVD player but still wasn’t able to play his Desperate Journey disc. The latter case was especially alarming because, like a lot of classic films and shows, the title isn’t available as a digital copy.

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Creating new and exciting tech products requires thinking outside of the box. At this week's Mobile World Congress (MWC) conference in Barcelona, we got a peek at some of the research and development happening in the hopes of forging a functional gadget that people might actually want to buy one day.

While MWC is best known for its smartphone developments, we thought we'd break down the most intriguing, non-phone prototypes brought to the show for you. Since these are just concept devices, it's possible that you'll never see any of the following designs in real products. However, every technology described below is being demonstrated via a tangible proof of concept. And the companies involved—Samsung and Lenovo—both have histories of getting prototyped technologies into real gadgets.

Samsung’s briefcase-tablet

How many times must something repeat before it's considered a trend? We ask because Samsung Display this week demoed the third recent take we've seen on integrating computing devices into suitcases.

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Brother laser printers are popular recommendations for people seeking a printer with none of the nonsense. By nonsense, we mean printers suddenly bricking features, like scanning or printing, if users install third-party cartridges. Some printer firms outright block third-party toner and ink, despite customer blowback and lawsuits. Brother’s laser printers have historically worked fine with non-Brother accessories. A YouTube video posted this week, though, as well as older social media posts, claim that Brother has gone to the dark side and degraded laser printer functionality with third-party cartridges. Brother tells Ars that this isn’t true.

On March 3, YouTuber Louis Rossman posted a video saying that “Brother turns heel & becomes anti-consumer printer company.” The video, spotted by Tom’s Hardware, has 163,000 views as of this writing and seems to be based on a Reddit post from 2022. In that post, Reddit user 20Factorial said that firmware update W1.56 caused the automatic color registration feature to stop working on his Brother MFC-3750 when using third-party cartridges.

“With the colors not able to be aligned, the printer is effectively non-functional,” 20Factorial said. The Redditor went on to say that when asked, a Brother customer service agent confirmed that “the printer is non-functional without genuine toner.”

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