Yesterday, Samsung surprised the technology world with two big announcements during their CES 2019 keynote: (A) Starting in Spring of 2019, Samsung smart TV sets would support Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol, which allows users of the TV sets who have iPhone, iPad, or Mac devices to stream what they’re seeing on their Apple device over to Samsung smart TV set via Wi-Fi. (B) iTunes is coming to Samsung smart TV sets. Owners of Samsung smart TVs will be able to stream Movies and TV shows they purchased via their Apple ID via an iTunes app on a Samsung device.

Sling TV really wants to be your favorite cord-cutting service. It’s spent the last couple of years getting itself on not just Roku, but FireTV and Apple TV (4th generation) for $20 a month with no contract, which is a pretty incredible feat in this Comcast, Time warner, Optimum world. The Meridian, Colorado-based company has been pushing interesting promotions all month long in celebration of SlingTV’s birthday month. What better way to “pull a hobbit” and give gifts for your b-day than to hook geeks up with content.

Last weekend, Sling TV gave their Blue and Orange users free access to HBO’s online content library just long enough for them to take in new series like Big Little Lies and Crashing. This weekend, Sling TV is opening up the Internet tubes to allow their subscribers unlimited access to STARZ, the premium cable network that brought us the smash hit time-traveling period drama, Outlander, based on the novels by author Diana Gabaldon. STARZ is also responsible for Black Sails, a period pirate drama for those looking for a bit more substance than the swashbucklers in Disney’s high-seas franchise.

AMC may stand for “American Movie Classics,” but they’ve been riding the horror genre bandwagon hard the last few years. Already the home of horror’s most successful series, The Walking Dead, and featuring Fearfest marathons during the Halloween season, it only made sense for AMC to push further with horror. In the late Spring they debuted their new streaming service, Shudder, available online at Shudder.com, and on ROKU and other devices. If you are a passionate horror junkie, gore hound, or even occasional genre dabbler, Shudder is worth the price of admission. The best compliment I can give Shudder is that browsing the channel on ROKU, I felt like I was back in the VHS video store days, scanning shelves up and down.

Nisekoi – False Love
Original creator: Naoshi Komi
Directed by: Akiyuku Shinbo, Naoyuki Tatsuwa
Character Design by: Nobuhiro Sugiyama
Produced by: Aniplex, Mainichi Broadcasting System, SHAFT
Voice cast: Kana Hanazawa, Kouki Ouchiyama, Nao Toyama, Kana Asumi, Mikako Komatsu, Takehito Koyasu, Yumi Uchiyama, Yuuki Kaji.
Air dates: Season 1 currently streaming on Crunchyroll
2nd season scheduled to start in Japan in April

How old were you when you were first in love? What promises did you make to the one you loved, and what value are they now? What is the nature of true love? Is it something wholly spontaneous, or can it be born of long association and bonds of mutual friendship and respect, even among seemingly implacable foes, or over long spans of time and space? When is love true, and when is it false? If more than one person can lay claim to it, which one holds the real key to your heart?

These are questions that poets, writers, and artists of every stripe have wrestled with ever since humans could first communicate, and often, our delving reveals more questions than answers. In the series Nisekoi – False Love, based on the manga by original creator Naoshi Komi, those questions get a new lease on life.

This week, Netflix & Apple are taking over TV, Facebook changes the rules, Windows will be free — even to pirates, and Nintendo‘s coming to Apple … and much much more.