The good news is that you’ll have twice as many columns to read with next week’s newsletter, as I still plan to write another column for next Thursday. Apologies for the delay, and thanks for your patience!

While Netflix expects to bounce back next quarter with help from Stranger Things 3 and Orange is the New Black’s final season, the weak quarter was a reminder that Netflix isn’t bulletproof. Customers’ tolerance for price hikes may be lower than expected, and the company will have to increasingly rely on home run original series to grow, especially as it loses licensed shows such as Friends and The Office. Netflix isn’t in any grave danger, and the company insists that it won’t do anything desperate like getting into video ads, but the sledding’s only going to get tougher over the next year as Disney and HBO launch their own new streaming services.

New AirTV hardware: AirTV, the Dish subsidiary whose hardware integrates with Sling TV for live streaming, is out with a new Android TV box. The $80 AirTV Mini is a 4K HDR streaming device that launches directly into Sling TV and has a dedicated Sling control buttons on its remote. But unlike the two-year-old AirTV Player, the Mini doesn’t have USB ports for an over-the-air TV tuner. Instead, you’re supposed to use the Mini with AirTV’s networked tuner box, which can stream live or recorded over-the-air broadcasts into the stream app on other devices around the house. It’s a smaller and less expensive device, though, and it supposedly runs a much newer version of Android TV (9.0).

It’s nice to see AirTV come out with some new hardware, especially after last week’s column, though it’s still unclear to what extent Sling (and Dish) will get behind it from a promotional standpoint. When you visit the AirTV homepage, the Mini isn’t even fully visible in the product carousel until you scroll over to the right, and there’s no mention of the product on Sling’s website. In any case, I’m looking forward to reviewing the Mini in the near future.

HDHomeRun updates: If you have an HDHomeRun networked tuner, you may now download the official Roku app straight from the Roku Channel Store. Previously, you had to jump through some extra hoops to install the app as a private Roku channel. SIliconDust still considers this a beta app, and it doesn’t support HDHomeRun’s DVR service, but it works well enough for streaming live over-the-air channels from an HDHomeRun tuner.

HDHomeRun is also rolling out some interface updates for its apps. While they haven’t changed aesthetically, they do make navigation and DVR settings are a bit easier to understand. All of this is in service of HDHomeRun’s new Scribe Duo and Servio hardware, which let you record live TV without a separate PC, NAS box, or Nvidia Shield TV. I wasn’t a fan of HDHomeRun’s DVR experience when I reviewed it last year, but will give it another look once I get hands on the new hardware.