Original NVIDIA Shield Android TV now receiving essential Nougat update

The 2015 Shield TV is getting a big update.

The original NVIDIA Shield Android TV is receiving its Shield Experience 5.0 update as we speak, bringing it to par with the updated (and improved) 2017 model.

But because 2015 version of the set-top box share largely the same internals as the new one, NVIDIA has boosted its functionality through an update to Android TV based on Nougat.

These are the major improvements:

• Amazon Video in 4K HDR
• NVIDIA Games app replaces the SHIELD Hub (consolidation)
• Improvements to GeForce NOW
• In-home GameStream gets a 4K HDR upgrade
• New games for Shield
• Nest support
• New apps like Twitter, NFL, Comedy Central
• Android 7.0 Nougat with picture-in-picture, recent apps, and update settings menu

More: Your original NVIDIA Shield Android TV isn’t being left behind

NVIDIA Shield Android TV

• Read our Shield Android TV review
• The latest Shield Android TV news
• Join the forum discussion
• Complete Shield Android TV specs

Amazon

Which Samsung Gear VR should I buy?

Picking the Gear VR that is best for you doesn’t have to be a difficult decision.

Samsung’s Gear VR has been around for two years now, delivering great VR content wherever you happen to be. If you’ve been waiting to pick up a headset, and you’ve decided on the Gear VR then you have some options available to you.

That’s why we’ve put together the Pros and Cons of the different models so that you can easily make the decision that is right for you.

Read more at VR Heads!

This $15 Bluetooth speaker is a great addition to any shower

Right now you can grab VicTsing’s Bluetooth shower speaker for just $15 with coupon code 4EV2GK7C, a savings of $7. This speaker is a great option for anyone looking for something durable and waterproof thanks to its silicon casing that allows it to be shock, dust, and waterproof. Featuring a built-in mic, you could use it for phone calls as well as music playback, making it even more versatile. Inside it has a 5W speaker for nice loud sound quality, and with more than 4,500 reviews at Amazon, it maintains a 4.3-star rating!

Odds are this price won’t last very long, so if you are looking for an affordable Bluetooth speaker that both looks great and is waterproof act quick! Remember to use coupon code 4EV2GK7C for the full savings.

See at Amazon

Mark Zuckerberg will testify in Oculus VR lawsuit this week

Mark Zuckerberg is heading to a Dallas court to testify in an ongoing lawsuit filed against Oculus, the VR company Facebook purchased for $2.3 billion. ZeniMax, the parent company of Doom developer id Software, claims that Oculus CTO John Carmack took its intellectual property when he left the company in 2013. Zuckerberg will testify in the suit tomorrow (January 17th), and Oculus co-founder (and noted recluse) Palmer Luckey is also set to testify later in the week.

ZeniMax is seeking $2 billion in damages, nearly the amount that Facebook paid for Oculus. The company claims that Facebook purchased Oculus with “full awareness” that John Carmack, a “singularly experienced” employee, stole the tech. During opening remarks, a lawyer called it “one of the biggest technology heists ever.”

We’re disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise, or patience to build.

In a revised 2016 complaint, ZeniMax also said Carmack “copied thousands of documents from a computer at ZeniMax to a USB storage device,” and that he returned to take a “customized tool” for creating VR systems.

Facebook says the claims are without merit, and has previously argued that ZeniMax filed the suit as a “transparent attempt” to profit from the $2.3 billion dollar transaction. An Oculus spokesman told Business Insider “we’re disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise, or patience to build.”

With all that in the background, it’ll be interesting to see how the case unfolds, as it may reveal previously unknown details around the development of the Rift headset. ZeniMax lawyers will reportedly ask Carmack, Luckey and other employees about how Facebook acquired Oculus, details of how the headset was invented and more. The $2 billion wouldn’t make much of a dent in Facebook’s moneybags, but we imagine that it doesn’t want any lingering questions around its integrity.

Source: Business Insider

LG is very proud that the G6 doesn’t catch fire

What do you think the LG G6’s tentpole feature will be? The extra-tall display? The slicker, not-so-modular design? Nope. If you ask LG right now, it’s about… not blowing up. The company tells the Korea Herald that it will “significantly improve” the safety of the G6, no doubt in a bid to court jilted Galaxy Note 7 buyers worried about battery fires. It’s testing the phone more rigorously, including extreme heat and harsh drop tests. Also, the design will both spread out hot-running parts and use a heat pipe to disperse all that extra warmth. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, not quite.

Here’s the problem: a lot of what LG is doing isn’t exceptional. Remember, the Galaxy S7 also includes a heat pipe — LG is catching up, not breaking new ground. And isn’t a basic level of safety something that every phone should always have? It’s good to hear that the G6 should be reliable, but LG is really just trying to seize on Samsung’s misfortunes to sell more devices. We’re much more interested in the G6’s technological breakthroughs than its lack of explosions.

Source: Korea Herald

NVIDIA’s original Shield TV gets the new model’s smarts

Nvidia unveiled a new Shield TV box at CES, but the list of upgrades was pretty slim. It has a funky new controller, with a mesh of triangles peppering the grips, but otherwise it’s the same hardware with some extra software bells and whistles. If you have the older model, good news — today, you’re getting all those non-hardware additions too. They include a new foundation — Android 7.0 Nougat — and a bunch of new apps including Amazon Video, Twitter, the NFL, Comedy Central and Vimeo.

If you’re more interested in the gaming side, there’s also a new NVIDIA Games app, which supersedes the old SHIELD Hub portal. There you’ll find access to GeForce NOW titles, which can be streamed with the performance of a GTX 1080 graphics card, and your local ‘GameStream’ library with 4K and newly added HDR support. While not the most popular set-top box — NVIDIA’s cachet stops with the PC gaming crowd — it’s a competent and versatile bit of kit for people who prioritize games over TV.

Source: NVIDIA

LG G6 will use “heat pipes” to make sure the battery doesn’t explode

LG has said it is taking smartphone safety incredibly seriously, and while the company doesn’t explicitly say it’s because of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle, we all know it’s because of the Galaxy Note 7 debacle.

• LG G6: What’s the story so far?

Samsung hasn’t officially confirmed what caused the issues with the battery in its ill-fated phablet, but it’s thought to be because of poor heat management. LG has now detailed how the battery and heat management in the V20 smartphone works. While we can’t say for certain that the same technology will be used in the G6, given the fact we expect the G6 to be unveiled at MWC in just over a month, we can safely assume the same or similar technology will be used.

LG says the V20 employs copper heat pipes, which take the heat from the main processing unit and send it to other areas around the phone, but crucially will keep it away from the battery.

The battery itself has undergone intense testing that is more stringent that international standards, such as being pierced with sharp nails and being dropped from certain heights. LG also put the battery through what it calls an “accelerated life test”, where all aspects of a battery’s life are put to the extreme. Everything from temperature and humidity levels, to its waterproof and dustproof capabilities are all put through their paces, along with other smartphone components including the camera, fingerprint sensor and display. 

The LG G6 is expected to have a unibody design and no removable rear cover, which means no removable battery, so getting heat management sorted will be vital to its success.

• Mobile World Congress 2017: Smartphones, smartphones, smartphones to expect

Lee Seok-jong, head of LG Global Operations Group at LG Electronics, said, “As the number of consumers who want secure smartphones increase, we will significantly enhance the safety and quality standards of the next strategic smartphone. We will continue to do our best. “

Green-hot galaxies reveal clues to the ancient universe

Galaxies that emit a green glow make bitchin’ screen-savers, but they’re exceedingly rare in the actual universe. However, UCLA astronomers recently discovered that most, if not all early galaxies had a green hue due to their intense heat and special chemistry. “The discovery that young galaxies are so unexpectedly bright [with green light] … will dramatically change and improve the way that we study galaxy formation throughout the history of the universe,” said UCLA physics Professor Matthew Malkan in a statement.

Galaxies normally glow white, with slight variations in color. Galaxies with a lot of hydrogen gas, signalling young galaxies and star formation, can look slightly pink, for instance. Others with lots of cool red stars can have red, orange or yellow tints. Green galaxies are much rarer, because they require very specific conditions.

For one, you need a galaxy with supernovae to spawn oxygen formation. Then, you need stars that burn at around 50,000 degrees Kelvin, approaching temperatures of the hottest known stars in the universe. The hot stars can then ionize the oxygen clouds not just once, but twice, creating a green-glowing O++ “doubly-ionized” cloud in the green light spectrum.

Usually, those stars only exist in very small “dwarf galaxies,” with one of the most common types being “green pea galaxies.” J0925+1403 (above), spotted by the Hubble Telescope, is a green pea just a 20th the size of the Milky Way, for example. Scientists detected that it was ejecting ionized photons at never-before-seen intensities, approaching those of X-rays. Malkan believes that’s because young stars were hotter in galaxies that formed in the early universe.

Malkan and his team pored through the Subaru Deep Field, created by the 8.2 meter (27-foot) Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, and found that all the small galaxies were “surprisingly strong emitters” of green light. Furthermore, the early universe (under 2 billion years old and 70 times more dense than today) is made up mostly from such dwarf galaxies.

Luckily, future spacecraft like the James Webb Space Telescope (launching in 2018), and the WFIRST are equipped with O++ spectrum detectors. The aim is to spot very young galaxies forming their first stars and supernovae, and according to Malkan’s research, they’ll have plenty of targets to check. “Detecting and studying the intense green glow from the youngest galaxies now looks like our best opportunity for learning how the first galaxies evolved,” he said.

Via: Space.com

Source: UCLA (Doc)

Nintendo’s Switch doesn’t come with a charging Joy-Con grip

If you’re dead-set on owning a Nintendo Switch, you should probably start thinking about your charging setup. In addition to the main unit, you’ll need to keep the detachable “Joy-Con” controllers topped up, which could prove tricky if you’re playing the console exclusively at home. That’s because the Joy-Con Grip bundled with the Switch (shown above) doesn’t have any charging capabilities of its own. As Eurogamer reports, it’s basically just a plastic shell designed to keep the two Joy-Cons in place.

For TV-based players, that could be an issue. You’ll need to buy a separate Joy-Con Charging Grip, or be diligent about docking the tiny controllers in between gameplay sessions. If you forget from time to time, it shouldn’t be a problem — Nintendo is promising 20 hours on a single charge — but it’s worth keeping in mind so that you don’t have to cut an important Breath of the Wild session short. Alternative solutions include buying a Pro controller or stocking up on multiple Joy-Cons. I’ll be doing the latter so I can host some Mario Kart 8: Deluxe Edition tournaments anyway.

Source: Eurogamer

James Cameron producing history of sci-fi series for AMC

AMC is producing a six-part series on the history of science fiction in collaboration with one of its most prolific modern purveyors, James Cameron. Tentatively titled James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, it will examine the history of science fiction from the early days of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne to the pop-culture juggernaut it is today. “When I was a kid, I basically read any book with a spaceship on the cover and I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey many, many times,” Cameron said in a statement

Each episode will tackle a “big question” that humankind has pondered over the ages, AMC said. As part of that, it’ll dig into the genesis of beloved sci-fi films, TV shows, video games and books, and where they’re going in the future. The series will also feature Cameron and other notable sci-fi personalities debating “the merits, meanings and impacts of the films and novels that influenced them.”

Cameron added that he’s interested in not just the history of the genre, but how it informed and interacted with real science and space exploration. Speaking about Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, he said “I liked the special effects, but I really loved the ideas and the questions behind them: How will the world end? Will technology destroy us? What does it mean to be human?” He added that without early sci-fi writers like Verne and Wells, “there wouldn’t have been Ray Bradbury or Robert A. Heinlein, and without them, there wouldn’t be Lucas, Spielberg, Ridley Scott or me.”

AMC didn’t discuss any storylines or who notable guests would be, but the series should have science fiction fans salivating. Cameron is perhaps the ideal producer for the project, having produced sci-fi classics like Aliens and Terminator and being passionate about cinema technology. He’s also a strong science advocate, having explored the Mariana Trench in a submersible. He also produced a short documentary film on climate change.

Via: Deadline

Source: AMC