Join the Engadget HD Podcast live on Ustream at 9:30PM ET
It’s Tuesday, which is time for the Engadget HD Podcast and we hope you’ll join us for the live recording at 9:30PM. It finally happened, Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox One. We’ll discuss what that means for HD geeks, and perhaps even more importantly, how big a deal it is that streaming content to an Xbox no longer requires a subscription to Xbox Live Gold. Of course we’ll also talk a bit about net neutrality and some Netflix, before we get into other home theater and entertainment news. And finally we’ll finish up with what we’re watching this week. If you’ll be joining us, take a peek at the topics after the break and then get ready to participate in the live chat.
AT&T to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion
AT&T’s multibillion dollar DirecTV purchase could hinge on… football?
Comcast and TWC voted most-hated ISPs in America’s most-hated industry
FCC votes in favor of new Net Neutrality rules, leaves room for ‘fast lanes’
Virtual Joey app arrives with satellite TV for your PS3
Brazilians will see every blade of World Cup grass on outdoor 4K screens
Gadget Rewind 2007: Pioneer Kuro PDP-5080HD plasma
Sony’s $700 4K streaming box gets a much needed pre-order discount
Watch ‘Game of Thrones’ mysteries explained (or disproved) with science
Sailor Moon arrives on Hulu Plus in its full, uncensored glory
‘Halo 5: Guardians’ and live-action Halo TV show set for fall 2015 launch
Upcoming Xbox history show will let you ‘play TV’
Must See HDTV for the week of May 19th: Indy 500, Monaco GP and no Game of Thrones
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Oculus Rift is coming to… Chuck E. Cheese’s?
Sure, a spin in the ol’ ticket grabber machine on your birthday can be fun, but trying to capture the small pieces of paper as they whiz by your head? That’s a lot of work. Luckily, Chuck E. Cheese’s is offering a new, less physical way to reach prize station glory using Oculus Rift. The pizza party giant is offering a “Virtual Ticket Blaster Experience” at parties for the guest of honor that uses the VR headset to simulate the high-speed grabbing experience.
To play, kids will strap on Oculus Rift and collect virtual tickets by focusing a digital target on them. Oddly, the experience will still take place in the traditional chamber with paper versions blowing around – you just won’t grab them. Also worth noting, Oculus doesn’t recommend the headset being used by children under 10, and currently prohibits its use for commercial purposes. That said, a six-week test of the high-tech game is launching today in Dallas with expansions headed to Orlando and San Diego later this month. Our biggest worry about the technology? We won’t be able to grab tickets quite as fast, and will have to waste all our tokens on Skee-Ball to score that mammoth water gun.
Filed under: Gaming, Wearables
Via: Polygon
Source: PR Newswire
Chrome OS gets better organized with latest update
The Chromebook revolution is here and, naturally, Google is doing everything it can so that these devices keep improving even as time goes on. As such, the search giant today revealed some new things rolling out to Chrome OS laptops and desktops, including support for folders within the launcher and the ability to use hands-free voice commands (aka “OK, Google”) in English. What’s more, this new version of the OS, released through the Chrome stable channel, brings back the minimize button, with Google stating that it listened to your feedback and knew you really wanted the feature to be part of the window controls. Unfortunately, not all Chrome OS devices will get this — namely, the ASUS Chromebox and Samsung Series 3 Chromebox. Google didn’t say whether the update will ever come to the omitted Chromeboxes, but we’ll let you know if anything changes.
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Software, Google
Via: Android Central
Source: Google
The new HTC One appears to be getting a bigger, badder cousin
Rumors of a higher-end edition of the HTC One M8, the M8 Prime, have been difficult to pin down; we’ve seen little in the way of tangible evidence. However, things just got interesting. Frequent tipster @evleaks has posted what’s reportedly a 360-degree render of the Prime, showing off a design with a few big differences from the current model. The most obvious may be the camera — it’s conspicuously bigger than that of the regular One, and it even juts out from the back. The phone also has a flatter, One Max-like body with a different surface than the current handset. According to @evleaks, the cosmetic change may stem from the use of an unusual aluminum and liquid silicone hybrid that would be both strong and heat-absorbing.
While the imagery doesn’t reveal much about what’s inside the device, rumored specs have hinted that it wouldn’t strictly be a One Max sequel. It would be the most powerful HTC phone yet with a quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM and a 2,560 x 1,440 screen resolution, but its 5.5-inch display wouldn’t be quite so gargantuan as the 6-inch panel of the Max. That’s assuming the render and the hardware details are authentic in the first place, mind you. Although @evleaks has developed a reputation for mostly accurate scoops, we haven’t seen live shots or other details that would confirm what we’ve seen to date. If the Prime exists at all, it may not match up perfectly with what you see here.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Source: Evleaks
Virtual reality’s biggest enemy is bad virtual reality, says Oculus founder
Palmer Luckey can hardly take a step without being stopped for pictures, questions or just friendly handshakes. I’m not surprised; we’re at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Expo, and Luckey just closed a speculative panel on the future of VR. Here, he’s a celebrity, and with good reason — the Expo floor is littered with Oculus headgear, almost without competition. As we make our way to a more quiet area, Luckey tells me that his hardware isn’t enough. “What we have that’s impressing all these hardcore gamers and technology enthusiasts isn’t good enough to be a consumer product.”
“People don’t have experience with this technology,” he explains further. “When it arrives, it has to be good.” Nothing’s a sure thing, Luckey tells us, and a poor consumer launch could spoil the milk. “I think really bad VR is the only thing that can kill off VR. That’s why we’ve been so careful to say that ‘these are devkits, do not buy, do not buy!’” Luckey quickly corrects himself, saying that he doesn’t think that the Oculus DK2 couldn’t be a consumer product; he just wants VR to hit the consumer space with its best foot forward. It’s part of the reason Oculus decided to join Facebook.
“It lets us make the first version really, really good, and use a lot of custom components that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.” Without Facebook, he continued, Oculus might have been forced to release more expensive iterative headsets to fund the envisioned consumer model. “Maybe it doesn’t sell and we actually hurt the VR market overall because it wasn’t good enough.” Luckey is relieved its a scenario he didn’t have to live. “This [Facebook] lets us have as good of a shot as we’re ever going to have at making consumers believe in virtual reality.”
Staving off the danger of “bad VR” also makes Luckey reluctant to push for virtual reality hardware standards — it might stifle innovation. “If you talk to people who are actually doing things that are very novel and different from what we’re doing, most of them are not very pro-standard,” he explains. “The standard is going to end up being defined by whoever sells the most headsets, and it would not be a good thing for them if the standard is games that don’t include motion control, or games that require a very high field of view or that absolutely require position tracking.” It wouldn’t help Oculus much either. “If we were to lock into a standard now, what happens when we want to make big changes that vastly improve the performance of our device and requires a complete retooling of the SDK?” The hardware isn’t good enough to set a standard, he says, just like it isn’t good enough for consumers yet. Still, he admits that it’s good time to start thinking about what those standards might be. Eventually, the industry is going to need them.
In the meantime, Luckey is thinking about the Rift’s retail launch — if consumers are going to believe in VR, they need to have good experiences. That means games. “The biggest public challenge is going to be software. We’ve been talking a lot about how the Facebook deal gives confidence to content makers of all kinds, but people shouldn’t take that to mean there’s going to be this slam dunk of AAA content that’s going to be available at launch. It doesn’t mean that. Content takes a long time.” While Luckey says he expects a healthy pipeline of innovative software, he admits that making good games in VR is difficult. The platform’s first big hit might not be there at launch.
Before SVVR ended, I caught up with Sony’s Richard Marks — the man behind Project Morpheus. He too had his concerns about bad software hurting VR adoption. “There’s no AAA title yet,” he said “Most of the world asks ‘when will Call of Duty be on VR,’ but that’s not the right answer.” Hopefully, the VR community will figure out what is the right answer soon.
Bringing internet to the Amazon takes more than cables and laptops
Internet access is something most of us likely take for granted, but for portions of the developing world, reliable connectivity isn’t available. The New York Times recently cast its lens on an ultra-tiny Peruvian village and the struggle to install and maintain a solid communications system, chronicling the journey and hardships of maintaining telecommunications in the middle of the jungle. There, a a busted internet connection takes as much as a year-and-a-half to repair and One Laptop Per Child computers are charged via a series of car batteries. Despite the village being a world away, however, there are familiar arguments. The issue of not having enough laptops for everyone in the village (some 65 people) is countered by the argument that they serve as little more than entertainment or an anesthetic; if the village had a road, the kids could travel to bigger cities nearby and be inspired by the real world instead of cyberspace. It seems that some things don’t change regardless of where you live.
Filed under: Wireless, Internet
Source: New York Times
Virtual Joey app arrives with satellite TV for your PS3
Dish Network earned one of our Best of CES trophies a few months ago for its Virtual Joey app, and now PS3 owners (with the satellite TV service and Hopper DVR) can try it out. Instead of plugging in yet another set-top box, just open up the app and watch live TV, video on-demand or recorded programs, all through your console. You can even control the experience with your regular Dish Network remote — all without changing inputs away from your gaming / Netflix / Blu-ray machine. A PS4 version is still waiting in the wings, which is fine if you prefer extending the life of older consoles. It should be available under the My Channels section on your PS3 right now, download it and see if you liked it as much as we did.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source: PlayStation Blog
Verizon Debuts XLTE, Doubling Bandwidth for iPhone 5s, 5c [iOS Blog]
Verizon yesterday introduced its XLTE service, doubling the LTE bandwidth in some select markets to improve peak speeds on a range of devices, including the iPhone 5s, the iPhone 5c, the iPad Air, and the Retina iPad mini.
XLTE is the name given to Verizon’s AWS spectrum, which the company initially purchased back in 2012. Akin to opening another lane on a congested freeway, XLTE will open up new bandwidth for those using an AWS-compatible device, which includes the iPhone 5s and the 5c, ultimately resulting in faster LTE speeds. XLTE simply refers to LTE on the AWS spectrum, with Verizon’s described speed increases resulting from more available bandwidth.
While not directly beneficial to users of older iPhones, XLTE does have the potential to result in increased bandwidth on the standard 700MHz spectrum used by those devices, as newer devices will automatically take advantage of the AWS spectrum.
XLTE delivers faster peak data speeds and a minimum of double the bandwidth to 4G LTE customers in high traffic areas in markets nationwide where AWS spectrum has been activated.
While XLTE network enhancements are invisible to the customer, the mobile experience is not. XLTE Ready devices automatically access both 700 MHz spectrum and the AWS spectrum in XLTE cities. Customers with 4G LTE devices operating solely on the 700 MHz spectrum in XLTE markets also benefit from the extra capacity created by XLTE Ready device traffic moving to the AWS spectrum.
XLTE is currently available in multiple cities across 44 different states, which can be found on Verizon’s website [PDF]. According to Verizon’s estimates, the newly available AWS spectrum will improve LTE speeds for approximately 35 percent of the active devices on its network.
It is important to note that XLTE is simply a marketing term for LTE on Verizon’s AWS spectrum rather than a new wireless standard. It is similar to AT&T’s move to call HSPA+ 4G back in 2012 in order to distinguish it from standard HSPA 3G speeds.
Verizon has also announced VoLTE — or Voice over LTE — which is set to roll out to its network later this year. VoLTE, much like AT&T’s HD Voice, will improve voice quality by allowing users to make calls over LTE.
Watch Game of Thrones’ mysteries explained (or disproved) with science
Sure, works of fiction are hardly subject the rules of science, but the folks behind It’s OK To Be Smart set out to explain many of the enigmas surrounding Game of Thrones. In the PBS digital short that awaits after the break, topics like the plausibility of Daenerys’ dragons, winters that last a decade, the origins of Valyrian steel and more are given real-world significance through the lens of scientific explanation. Also, it’s decided that the planet on which Westeros resides should be called Hodor — an honor of which he’s pretty deserving, if you ask me.
Source: It’s OK To Be Smart (YouTube)
Samsung Galaxy W to sport a 7″ screen?
We all know that Samsung like to throw everything the come up with out there for people to try, what sells they stick with and continue selling what doesn’t they simply discontinue. One good example of that is the Galaxy Note line, which was a huge revelation back when the first Galaxy Note device was launched, people grew to like in a short period of time. They’ve been trying to do the same thing ever since.
I believe you all remember Galaxy Mega, a midrange phablet device that Samsung introduced about a year ago. Well, this recent leak reminds us of that devices. If recent leak from SamMobile is to be believed, Samsung is going to release a Galaxy W phablet that looks like every other Galaxy device and is going to sport a 7″ screen. I’m going to give you a moment to read that last sentence one more time, and no, we didn’t make a mistake when we wrote 7″ screen. Apparently Samsung is trying to sell us a 7″ device and call it a phablet instead of a tablet, considering 7″ is small tablet category. This device should sport a 720p screen, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of storage expandable via microSD card and an 8MP camera. It should run Android 4.3 and not the latest iteration of Android 4.4 KitKat. A part of that Android 4.3 offering should be “Phoneblet UX” which will let you run 2 apps at once on your homescreen, although that just sounds like “Multi-Window” feature Samsung has been baking into their devices for a while now.
Maybe this device is a successor to Galaxy Mega and Galaxy W is just a codename, who knows. All we know is that this is going to be (if it ever sees the light of day) way too big for a smartphone or a phablet. The device should launch in South Korea as an SK Telecom exclusive, no word of it coming to Europe, U.S. or any other part of the world for that matter.
SOURCE: SamMobile
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