Lowpass

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is a special edition of Lowpass, coming to you a couple days early. Next week, everything will be back to normal .... Some tech founders have rich parents. Others max out their credit cards or spend down their retirement accounts to make it through those first crucial months before they can actually raise any finding.

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: Users and developers are fighting back against bloated smart TV UIs, and the backlash against AI glasses is growing. A quick note: Next week’s newsletter will likely come to you a bit earlier in the week than usual. We’ll be back to the regular schedule the week after, and then take off the first week of August for a much-needed vacation.

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: AI is coming for microdramas. Have you ever watched a microdrama, perhaps while scrolling through your TikTok feed, and thought: This all looks kind of fake? Turns out you might be onto something – and it’s not just the constant cliffhangers, the overly dramatic expressions and the barely believable plot twists.

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: The beautiful game, and the state of VR gaming. Make sure to read my note about changes coming to Lowpass subscriptions below! The 2026 World Cup is breaking streaming records around the world: Brazil’s CazéTV YouTube livestream of that country’s opening game against Morocco surpassed 12 million concurrent viewers, a new milestone for YouTube.

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: Why Apple TV is different. Severance. Pachinko. Silo. Ted Lasso. Over the past couple of years, a number of Apple TV shows have become hits with audiences and critics alike. And yet, compared to the size of other subscription services, Apple TV still barely makes a dent.

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: AI in animation, and Supernatural’s future. A quick favor: I’m about to do some list cleaning in the coming weeks to weed out accounts that haven’t been actively reading this newsletter. Unfortunately, open rates alone aren’t a good indicator for this anymore. Can you do me a quick favor and click on a link (really, any link) in this week’s issue to let me know you’re still here?

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: Roku’s new home screen, and Meta’s upcoming AI glasses. Roughly 10 years ago, someone told me that Roku was making “cheap hardware to sell to Walmart customers in flyover states.” The remark was meant to be an insult, belittling a company that seemed to care more about hardware profit margins than design and innovation. Still, I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the years.

Every year, someone tells me that the world of smart TV operating systems is about to consolidate around two or three major players, similar to the way Apple and Google own the market for smart phone operating systems. And yet, year after year, there are few signs of that actually happening. Case in point: Omdia released a new forecast for the European TV OS market this week that has four companies with more than 10 percent market share by 2030, with two more arriving at five percent each.

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: YouTube gets into the FAST channels game, with a twist. When Coachella returns to YouTube next week, the music festival will be offering more than just live performances. Viewers will also be able to tune into something YouTube calls Stations — 24/7 linear streams preprogrammed with videos from artists performing at the festival, perfect for playing in the background or vegging out on the couch.

One day after announcing the wind-down of its Horizon Worlds metaverse platform on Quest headsets, Meta is changing course: CTO Andrew Bosworth revealed during an Instagram AMA Wednesday evening that the company will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR for the "foreseeable future.” Bosworth’s statements suggest that Horizon Worlds in VR will essentially be in a kind of maintenance mode. “The Horizon Unity Runtime Games, they’re not going to work on mobile, they will just work in VR.