Samsung jumps into Ultra HD Blu-ray, as Fox provides the movies
Today Samsung is the first company to announce an Ultra HD Blu-ray player, taking the lead in 4K and HDR video. Following up on its big Ultra HD push at CES and the movie streaming/download tech that has arrived in the months since, Samsung is ready to push super high resolution movies (four times the resolution of Blu-ray, and 64 times as many colors) on discs too. There’s not much detail available on its new player, although we expect it will cost less than the $1,000 price its first Blu-ray player commanded nearly a decade ago and it should launch early next year. Joining the tech company on its IFA 2015 stage are Fox execs, with president Mike Dunn proclaiming the studio is committed to releasing its slate of upcoming movies in Ultra HD with HDR day-and-date with the Blu-ray and Digital HD releases. That includes Fantastic Four, Maze Runner, Kingsman: The Secret Service and more.
Samsung’s Ultra HD Blu-ray player is curved to match its TVs, and also includes a number of UHD streaming services. The other news today at IFA is that Samsung’s TVs will be the first ones getting a software update to support HDMI 2.0a, necessary to receive HDR info from the new Blu-ray players. As far as that UHD Alliance the tech industry and Hollywood are creating to push their new video standards, Fox CTO Hanno Basse said it has tripled in size, and hopes to share more details in “the coming months.”
Check out all the news from Berlin at our IFA 2015 hub.
Filed under:
Home Entertainment, HD, Samsung, Microsoft
Tags: 4K, Blu-ray, Fox, hdpostcross, HDR, IFA, IFA2015, microsoft, MikeDunn, samsung, SUHD, UltraHD, UltraHDBlu-ray
Philips improves upon its color-changing light strips
The idea behind Philips’ Hue Lightstrips was pretty neat: a line of LEDs that change color according to your whims, but suffered in the execution. After all, the hardware couldn’t offer white light, so you were forced to shut them down if you weren’t in the mood for a splash of color. Then there was the fact that the strips were only two meters long, making it pricey to run them down your dramatic entrance hall or under your kitchen cabinets. That’s why the firm has spent the last year working on an upgrade, so please be upstanding for the new Philips Hue Lightstrip… Plus.
With the second-generation hardware, the company has basically been ticking off each of these problems as they go. It can now offer tuneable white light between 2,000 and 6,500K, so you’ll now be able to use these as regular bulbs. Secondly, you can now extend the strips up to 10 meters by tacking on up to eight single-meter extensions to the two meter base unit. In addition, Philips has boosted the output of the bulbs themselves to 1,600 lumens — a far cry from the 120 lumens found in the original.
The first generation Lightstrip was cool, sure, but it wasn’t able to adequately replace the bulb hanging from the center of your ceiling. Now, perhaps you’ll be tempted to ditch your conventional setup and start sticking these along every alcove and baseboard in your home. If so, then the Lightstrip Plus will be available next month, with the two-meter unit (and power adapter) priced at $89.95 / €79.95, with subsequent one meter extensions costing you $29.95 / €24.95.
Filed under:
Misc
Tags: Hue, HueLightstrips, IFA2015, Lightstrips, LightstripsPlus, Philips, Plus
Sony Xperia Z5 UK pricing: that 4K display will cost you £699
With its mobile division not enjoying much success over the past couple of years, Sony knew it needed to wow consumers with its latest round of Xperia smartphones. Yesterday, the company hoped to do exactly that by unveiling the Xperia Z5, Xperia Z5 Compact and the Xperia Z5 Premium, the last of which being the world’s first 4K smartphone. So far, the only hint we’ve been given regarding pricing is that it “will reflect the premium quality” of the Xperia range, but today the Japanese phone maker has lifted the lid on what that pixel-rich screen will cost when it hits the UK.
Let’s start with Sony’s new flagship, the Xperia Z5 Premium. According to the company’s official website, unlocked black, gold or chrome models will set you back a cool £699. If 4K displays aren’t your thing, you’ll pay £100 less for the Xperia Z5 at £599, with the lower-specced Xperia Z5 Compact costing £549. That means Sony’s top two smartphones cost more than their iPhone 6 equivalents, although Apple is expected to unveil new hardware in the coming days.
It should be noted that while Sony has set its own pricing for the trio of new Xperia handsets, third-party retailers are already undercutting them. Clove, for instance, has priced pre-orders for the Xperia Z5 Premium at £629, the Xperia Z5 at £525 and the Xperia Z5 Compact at £439. If other retailers match Sony’s guide price, it’s going to be very tough for the company to improve its languishing sales, especially with increased competition from Apple, Samsung and increasingly powerful handsets from the likes of Motorola, OnePlus and even WileyFox.
Filed under:
Cellphones, Mobile, Sony
Tags: android, mobilepostcross, pricing, shop, sony, xperia, xperia z5, xperiaz5
Why the ants in this video kept crawling around an iPhone
Okay, what we’re seeing here (probably) isn’t a bizarre ant ritual passed down from generation to generation, hailing the iPhone as their new queen and overlord. The video’s description on YouTube claims the insects acted that way, because they were affected by the “electromagnetic wave of an incoming call.” University of New England associate professor Nigel Andrew agrees: “[They] have magnetic receptors in their antennae. If they’re travelling long distances they use magnetic cues from the earth to know if they are going north, east, south or west.”
However, Simon Robson (a social insect researcher) says ants are prone to crawling around in circles even without a gadget in the middle. Plus, it could be the result of losing the pheromone trail they need to follow the rest of the group. That’s just the way their species are wired, so we might merely be seeing ants being ants doing an ant-y thing. Whatever the real reason is, you can watch the insects worship swirl around the device below.
Filed under:
Misc, Mobile, Apple
Via:
Yahoo
Tags: ants, apple, iphone, mobilepostcross, mysteriousantritual
Philips Launches Brighter, Expandable ‘Hue Lightstrip Plus’
Philips today expanded its Hue lighting lineup with the launch of the Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus, which adds new white lighting options to the colorful mood lighting introduced with the original Philips Hue Lightstrip.
Like the first LightStrip, the new Lightstrip Plus is a two-meter LED-studded adhesive-backed strip that can be used behind televisions, under desks, and more, as mood lighting within the home. The new Lightstrip Plus is an enhanced version of the Lightstrip, adding brighter, tunable white light in addition to the 16 million color options of the original.
As an indirect source of light, Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus can be placed anywhere in the home to complement and enrich existing Philips Hue lights, delivering a uniformed color. Self-adhesive and easy to install, place along the bottom of a hallway choosing a beautiful shade of white light to create a sense of spaciousness; run along coving high up the walls of a room to wash the entire space with light instantly transforming its look and feel; or line along shelves and cabinets to add a stylish touch of ambience to match a mood or moment.
The Lightstrip Plus measures in at 1,600 lumens, and the new version allows multiple strips to be chained together to reach a length of up to 10 meters. As with the first version, the Lightstrip Plus can be cut and bent as needed to fit into any space, and it can be controlled alongside other Hue lights with the Hue app.
The Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus will be available for purchase in North America starting in October. It is priced at $89.95 for a two meter strip, with one meter extension strips available for $29.95.
Hands-on with the LG Watch Urbane Luxe: Android Wear, deluxe
The new Watch Urbane Luxe has a fancy name and comes in a fancy box. But is it fancy enough to justify a $1200 price tag?
At IFA 2015 in Berlin, we’ve met up with LG, who showed us the latest variant of their well-received Android Wear smartwatch series. The Watch Urbane Luxe takes what it’s pretty much a standard Watch Urbane, adds a coating of 23K gold, and an elegant alligator leather band, at a price tag that’s more than three times the regular version’s.
Developed in collaboration with the US-based Reeds Jewelers, the Urbane Luxe will be available exclusively in the US (at least for now) and only 500 units are set to go on sale. This is a very limited edition device, and LG and Reeds hope that the exclusivity will add some additional cachet to what is already a special piece of design. Each device features a serial number and comes in a nice lacquered wood box that does well to complement the Luxe itself.
Why 23K gold, you may ask? According to LG, 24K is just too soft to work as a resistant coating, so the gold is alloyed with a tiny proportion of other metals to give it strength. LG was keen to note that the Apple Watch is just 18K, though the Luxe is just coated with gold, not made of solid precious metal like Apple’s premium Apple Watch version.
The alligator band features a gold-plated “deployment clasp” invented by Cartier, which supposedly adds quite a bit to the smartwatch’s final price. The clasp looks interesting and it’s easy to adjust and use, once you figure out the mechanism, but truth be told, only watch aficionados will care about it for more than a few minutes.
Other than the revamped exterior, the Watch Urbane Luxe is the same device we’ve come to know: Android Wear running on a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor and 512MB of RAM, with a 1.3-inch P-OLED circular display with a 320 x 320 resolution and a 410 mAh.
The Watch Urbane Luxe is yet another experiment from a company that hasn’t been afraid to experiment with new ideas in the wearables department (just look at the webOS Watch Urbane LTE). It remains to be seen if the results of this experiment will warrant more adventures down the path of luxury from LG or its competitors.
Stay tuned for more IFA 2015 coverage!
Samsung’s next-gen SmartThings home hub goes on sale
The next generation of SmartThings hardware is now available after a lengthy delay. Samsung purchased the home automation company just over a year ago, but was optimistic when it said the next-gen hardware would arrive in April. The hub, sensors and app (available on iOS and Android) are now good to go, however, along with developer tools to get other companies on board. The new hub improves on the last version in a couple of key ways. It no longer needs an internet cloud connection to function, and can run autonomously for 10 hours on a battery if the power is cut.
With a more powerful CPU, the new SmartThings Hub no longer needs cloud computing to handle video and sensor monitoring chores. That allowed Samsung to introduce a new “Smart Home Monitor” feature that will give users a continuous video livestream and trigger the system to record video following pre-programmed events. Those include things like the activation of motion sensors, or tripping of smoke, fire and leak detection devices. The Smart Home Monitor features will launch in beta, however.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/138101882
To control the system and see video feeds, users will get updated iOS or Android apps.They’ve been redesigned to help you arrange sensors and devices by room, and program actions like turning on lights, unlocking doors, turning off alarms, or combinations of all those things. SmartThings now supports around 200 devices, including Amazon’s Echo, and has announced new partners including Honeywell, Yale, D-Link, Bose and others. It also supports devices that use the Zigbee and Z-Wave standard. The SmartThings Hub is now available from Samsung and Amazon for $99, with sensors priced from $30 to $55. UK residents can also nab the hub at Currys PC World for £99, or a starter kit including the hub and several sensors for £199.
Filed under:
Household
Tags: cameras, D-Link, IFA2015, InternetOfThings, Samsung, Sensors, SmartHome, SmartThings
T-Mobile has no plans to carry the Sony Xperia Z5 line
Sony announced their new flagship lineup at IFA 2015 on Wednesday. Among them are the new Xperia Z5, Z5 Compact, and Z5 Premium. The lineup is notable for featuring one of the only flagships on the market with a screen smaller than 5″ (The Z5 Compact) and the first phone with a 4K screen (The Z5 premium). But if you were hoping to pick one of these up at T-Mobile, you may be out of luck.
Sony hasn’t been the most popular phone manufacturer in the United States partially due to lack of advertising but also because of a rocky relationship with carriers. We’ve seen a few releases on T-Mobile and one on Verizon Wireless but they’re far from the likes of Samsung, LG, and Apple who have people lining up on launch day to pick up their device. Hopes were high that T-Mobile would be carrying the Z5 lineup since Big Magenta carried the Sony Xperia Z3 and the Sony Xperia Z1 before that but it looks like that won’t be the case.
A spokesperson has told CNET that the country’s third largest carrier has no plans to carry the device. If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, things got a little more hazy for you too. Verizon was supposed to launch the Sony Xperia Z4v this summer. We haven’t seen it come out yet and now with the newest lineup announced it would appear that the Z4v would be obsolete by the time that it hit the shelves.
Sony releases their flagship on a roughly 6 month update cycle. This is somewhat normal in Asia but here in the States where 2 year contracts are still very much a thing, even though carriers appear to be doing away with them, it’s too fast for many to be comfortable with. Are you going to pick up a phone on a 2 year contract or agree to finance it over 2 years when there will be 3 or 4 revisions by the time you’re done paying on it?
Sony Mobile’s CEO recently said that they’ll never leave the mobile business. And that’s excellent news because they make fantastic hardware with near stock, or completely stock in some cases, Android but if they ever want to gain a foothold in the US, changes will need to be made.
The post T-Mobile has no plans to carry the Sony Xperia Z5 line appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Just add water and this squid-inspired plastic heals itself
While you’ve been busy scarfing down fried calamari rings, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have been doing something else with squid. Namely? Studying the cephalopod’s ring teeth for a way to create a material that heals when water’s present, much in the way that those tentacle-bound choppers do. The way the report spotted by Popular Science tells it, the researchers were able to reproduce the type of proteins found in the self-healing squid teeth and trigger bacteria to make it in a lab environment.
To test just how strong the new material was, the scientists formed the protein into the shape of a dog bone and cut it in two with a razor blade. After pressing the two segments back together, dousing them with a bit of water and applying pressure, the pieces fused and were still as strong compared to before they were cut. Like PopSci notes, this type of material could be used to coat things deep-sea internet cables or perhaps help biomedical devices have a longer lifespan, but is still a ways off from primetime. That and it still needs to be tested against shark bites, of course.
[Image credits: Getty/Jeff Rotman (lead), Demirel Lab/Penn State (lab photo)]
Via:
Popular Science
Source:
Penn State University, Nature
Tags: bacteria, nature, protein, science, SelfHealing, squid, squidteeth, UniversityOfPennsylvania, upenn
Watch Samsung’s IFA 2015 press event here!
Samsung presumably has spilled the beans on its new Galaxy Note phones already. And it has a new smartwatch. And a new tablet. But there’s a hall full of baying tech journalists. We’re sure Samsung has more to tell us. You can watch it all go down right here. The show starts here in an hour at 11AM CEST here in Berlin, which translates to an early bird 5AM ET. Get your Nespresso or Keurig pod at the ready, because it’s Samsung and it likely has a few things to talk about. You’ll be able to watch on UStream or Samsung’s YouTube channel.
Filed under:
Cellphones, Laptops, Wearables, Internet, HD, Mobile, Samsung
Tags: hdpostcross, ifa, ifa2015, livestream, mobilepostcross, samsung, video
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