Google is the one feature that will make YouTube TV worth trying

Google itself is becoming a feature, and it’s what will make YouTube TV successful.

Responses to Google’s latest attempt to woo cable cutters with a YouTube-based streaming television service have been mixed, and for good reasons. Switching to a hardware approach turned out to be wildly successful, in fact the Google Cast API is the closest thing to an industry standard you can have today. But the real money is in services, especially a monthly subscription that keeps the flow of behavioral data flowing into Google’s servers.

YouTube TV is entering a market where three fierce competitors not only exist, but are delivering decent experiences. In order to make a dent in this space, YouTube is going to have to make it clear that Google itself is the feature people are buying. More importantly, its going to have to prove this killer feature is something the existing companies can’t offer.

Every software effort Google has made in the past to attract people that are only using the internet to watch TV, a list which includes Google TV and YouTube Red as bookends, have either failed or never materialized. The biggest reason for these failures so far have been a failure to compensate for the rigid television industry. Google TV tried to turn streaming websites into apps for your living room before those companies were ready to do so. Innovation in this industry doesn’t happen until content licenses are adjusted to very clearly state how that content can be used. Google tried to bypass those contracts with a clever technicality, and it backfired.

YouTube TV has a lot to prove, and a short time period to prove it.

YouTube TV is the exact opposite. This service is playing by all of the rules, which means Google needs to rely on more than just “hey, no one else is doing this well” to be successful. Fortunately, YouTube itself already does this really well in an abstract sort of way. The big things that make YouTube successful are storage, search (and, by extension, recommendations), and stability. These are the same features that make almost every Google service worth using. These are the Google features, and it’s not hard to see how they’ll be used to make YouTube TV stand out.

Unlimited “Cloud DVR” storage on your account, with recordings stored for up to nine months, is a huge way to compete with Sling TV, DirecTV Now, and PlayStation Vue. Currently, PlayStation Vue is the only service offering Cloud DVR, and only for 28 days. Sling TV is offering a beta version of Cloud DVR right now, and in this early test there’s a 100GB limit with features to delete your oldest recordings when you are close to your limit. YouTube TV can compete easily in this space, and it’ll cause the competition to match this feature over time.

Search and recommendations are going to be hugely important for YouTube TV to get right early, and the initial demos Google is offering of the service seem promising. Users will be able to search not only names of shows and actors, but also themes and genres. You can search for any show using time travel as a theme, and be set to receive recommendations when something new hits that list. Like any other Google service, your usage patterns will inform future offerings.

Stability may be the biggest feature for attracting existing cable cutters and informing anyone on the fence about removing cable from the house. YouTube is already great at delivering consistently good video at the best possible quality based on your internet connection, and has a proven record of success with live streaming events on YouTube itself. Applying that quality of service and stability to broadcast television will make it clear YouTube TV is able to offer a level of consistency the competition in this space frequently lacks.

While this matters somewhat less on the scale Google wants to reach with YouTube TV, integration with its own services is a big deal as well. YouTube TV is expected to launch with support for up to six family members per account, and will work out of the box with Google Home, Google Chromecast, and of course Android TV. YouTube TV has the potential to remind you with a notification when the next season of a show your friend emailed you about is going to start, or allow you to say “OK Google, record tonight’s episode of Chopped” without ever opening the app. That level of integration is unique, and something Google’s is well positioned to offer with YouTube TV.

YouTube TV has a lot to prove, and a short time period to prove it. This isn’t the cheapest service available, it’s not going to offer the most channels, and at least for now it doesn’t come pre-loaded on anything you connect to your television. YouTube TV will have to start strong and wield its Google features effectively in order to secure a permanent place in this new market, and so far it looks like all of the pieces are in place to do exactly that.

Oculus just slashed prices for the Rift headset and Touch controllers

You can now get a basic Oculus Rift setup at a price much more affordable than the HTC Vive VR package.

The company announced at GDC 2017 that it cut the price of its Rift headset and Touch motion controllers by $100 (about £80) each, making the cost of a complete system just $598. That makes the headset not only cheaper than the full HTC Vive setup but also only $100 more than the PlayStation VR. Keep in mind the Rift also requires a gaming PC that should cost around $1,000 or more.

Oculus said that anyone who purchased Touch at full price in the last 30 days will get a $50 Oculus Store credit. Previously, the Rift had a $599 (£499) price tag, while Touch was priced at $199 (£189). When combined with the cost of an extra $79 camera, the full platform was more expensive than the $799 HTC Vive, which comes with two Lighthouse tracking boxes and two handheld controllers. 

Upgrade your gaming experience for less. Oculus Rift + Touch is now only $598. https://t.co/61UwyPue2M pic.twitter.com/OtnVKQrafL

— Oculus (@oculus) March 1, 2017

Oculus has started to officially support cheaper PCs, such as the $499 Cyberpower machine. So, with the new price drop, former CEO Brendan Iribe explained that the most robust Oculus package, which involves the Rift, Touch, a PC, and at least three USB cameras (they’ve also been dropped to $59), should costs a little more than $1,000. But price isn’t the only thing preventing the Rift from full adoption.

The Oculus Rift tracking system still needs a dedicated virtual reality room in your home – and you’re tethered to a PC. Iribe said Oculus is looking at the future, next-generation versions of VR being more wireless-oriented, with wireless tracking and all. Its all-in-one prototype, called Santa Cruz, which appeared at last year’s Oculus Connect event, is still not ready for commercial production, however.

• Oculus Touch controllers: When can you buy them and for how much?

Oculus is also apparently working toward bundling the Rift headset with the Touch controllers. “We suspect the majority of people getting in now are getting in on Rift plus Touch,” Iribe said.

We contacted Oculus for UK prices and will update when we know more.

These are the Nintendo Switch games you’ll play after ‘Zelda’

When the dust settled on the Nintendo Switch’s reveal event, fans started to crunch the numbers, and they didn’t like what they found. Despite launching with a new Legend of Zelda game and padding out the spring and summer months with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2, the fledgling console’s launch lineup looked bleak. Today, they can breathe a sigh of relief: The company tells Engadget that more than 60 indie titles are heading to the eShop before the end of the year, and more than a few of them are Nintendo Switch exclusives. In fact, I played a bunch of them at Nintendo’s GDC 2017 software showcase. Spoiler alert: They’re all kind of great.

My full impressions of each game at the Nintendo Nindie event can be found in the gallery and video above, but on the whole, the event was a show of commitment, variety and quality. Pocket Rumble stood out as an 8-bit homage to fighting games and portable gaming, and it made a great case for the Switch’s local multiplayer, tabletop features. Blaster Master Zero expertly reimagines an NES classic, merging the best of the original game’s regional differences for a Nintendo Switch exclusive experience. There were games like Tumbleseed that challenged common gameplay conventions and others like Mr. Shifty that remixed old ones with new ideas. Every game at the showcase was fun, unique and creative. Nintendo says that’s the point.

“I think it’s important for us to respect and honor Nintendo fans by procuring original content and unique content from the start,” said Nintendo’s Damon Baker as the event started. He’s spent the past eight months on a new content curation team at Nintendo — a group tasked with making sure the Switch is consistently stocked with new titles every week that make the most of the console’s hybrid features. “We’re curating this content list over 2017,” he said. “We’re also rolling out content on a regular basis. We learned that lesson from the Wii U. We’re not launching with 32 titles on day one.”

The idea that the Wii U had too many games at launch isn’t novel, and Baker isn’t exaggerating with that figure either. With dozens of games available on the Wii U’s first day, early adopters on a budget inevitably had to choose between Nintendo’s own first-party game or the relative gamble of a day-one port from another console. The safe consumer choice may have led to worse third-party sales early on and worse third-party support later in the Wii U’s life cycle. A smaller Switch release avoids that possible issue and gives buyers a smaller, curated list of new games to focus on each week. And that is indeed the plan. “Every week, new games,” Baker said.

Nintendo already has enough indie developers signed on to keep that promise for the Switch’s first year, and the company is actively looking for more. “We’re still taking pitches and evaluating content on a case-by-case basis,” Baker said. “We’ve made DevKits quite affordable for developers.” It’s a smart sales strategy, one that might keep the Nintendo’s first-party titles from cannibalizing indie and third-party sales on Switch.

More importantly, these Nintendo Nindie releases serve to fill the big gaps between those major franchise releases: We may have Breath of the Wild at launch, but Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a month away, Splatoon 2 is an even longer wait and we won’t be playing Super Mario Odyssey until the holiday season. Those may be the games most buyers are buying the Switch for, but it’s this steady stream of strong indie titles that’s going to keep the new console feeling fresh in the meantime — and that’s a huge boon for what had otherwise looked to be a meager console launch.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from GDC 2017!

Amazon affiliate pay changes are making websites nervous

If you’ve been around the web for long enough, you’ve probably noticed that some sites depend heavily on Amazon affiliate links to make money. Engadget uses them for product page “buy now” buttons, but there are some sites where they absolutely dominate — think The Wirecutter and others where store links are front and center. And today, Amazon made a change that’s bound to make some of those site owners anxious. In a mirror of changes made abroad, Amazon’s US division has switched to a system that gives an affiliate sales cut based on the category of product, rather than increasing the cut based on the volume of referrals. It’s not necessarily a disaster, but it could result in a loss of revenue for certain websites.

The main issue: the percentages vary wildly. You’ll take a hefty 10 percent cut from video game downloads and luxury beauty products, for example, but you’ll make just 1 percent from physical video games and 2 percent from TVs. There’s no longer a cap on income from PC products, though, so someone who buys a high-end laptop could make you more money even with the lower 2.5 percent cut. Naturally, the system gives you healthy cuts for Amazon hardware like Fire tablets and Echo speakers.

Amazon says this is to “simplify” its link system, and that its link partners will ultimately be better off. It may not cause that much pain in practice, for that matter. Affiliate management company GeniusLink tells The Verge that the European switch caused “some pain,” but that no one was jilted enough to stop doing business. Sites that sell either a wide variety of products or specialize in the most lucrative products aren’t likely to notice.

The issue, as you might guess, is that this could hurt bloggers, YouTube vloggers and others whose focus is on products that no longer bring in as much cash every time someone makes a purchase. Many will simply have to bite the bullet and take a loss, but others may be tempted to change their coverage to recover their profits. The move could dictate what newcomers decide to cover, too. This is ultimately a hard lesson about the risks of leaning heavily on one company for income, but that won’t be much comfort if your favorite blogger has to shift focus (or deliver a stronger sales pitch) to stick around.

Via: The Verge

Source: Amazon

Meizu fires back at Oppo with its own high-speed phone charging

Last year, Oppo rolled into Mobile World Congress with what seemed like the fastest battery charging tech in town. These days, the Chinese company was eager to show off its impressive, periscope-inspired smartphone camera, but Meizu was more than happy to pick up where Oppo left off. Now, in fairness, Meizu’s Super mCharge isn’t quite as fast as Oppo’s SuperVOOC solution, but it’s still damn fast. Specifically, it can take a 3,000mAh battery from zero to full in 20 minutes — and it might be a little safer, too.

The big deal here is that Super mCharge leans on the charge pump principle to juice up a smartphone, which makes for high efficiency (98 percent, compared to SuperVOOC’s 97 percent) and more restrained temperatures while charging. Meizu says the battery in question will top out at 102.2 Farenheit (39 Celsius), which, while warm, isn’t much warmer than the human body.

It’s also important to note that we’re not working with any old 3,000mAh cell either. The battery has been engineered to stay healthy for longer (Meizu says the cell can keep an 80 percent charge after 800 discharge cycles) and take on more current than traditional batteries, allowing it accept the full power load delivered by the big AC adapter and specialized USB cable.

As always, though, we’re going to have to wait to see this kind of high-speed charging in the wild. Meizu representatives here at the show declined to comment on when, exactly, the first Super mCharge phones would hit store shelves, but CEO Jack Wong is apparently targeting a 2018 release.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

Spotify is close to offering lossless-quality music

Tidal’s lossless-quality music streaming was its original selling point over big name rivals, but it might not have that advantage for much longer. Both The Verge sources and Reddit members have discovered that Spotify is prepping its own lossless offering, Spotify Hi-Fi. Much like with Tidal, paying $20 per month would give you audio befitting your premium headphones. There’s no word as to when Hi-Fi would arrive — Spotify isn’t commenting beyond acknowledging that it’s “always testing new products.” However, it certainly appears to be getting close.

A higher-quality tier makes sense for Spotify in more than a few ways. On top of negating one of Tidal’s advantages, it’d give listeners a reason to choose Spotify over Apple Music and other rivals that (currently) make do with lossy tracks. Also, this could be important in Spotify’s continuing struggle to turn a profit. It’s safe to say that it doesn’t cost twice as much to deliver higher-bitrate music, so converting even a fraction of Spotify’s 40 million-plus Premium customers to lossless could prove to be very lucrative.

Source: The Verge, Reddit (1), (2)

Microsoft plans to bring mixed reality to the Xbox in 2018

Last year, Microsoft revealed that it would be opening up its Windows Holographic Platform to other hardware manufacturers, and at CES, we got to take a look at a few different Windows VR headsets. At GDC 2017, Microsoft revealed yet more plans for its mixed reality platform. While its headsets are strictly for the PC for now, they would soon be coming to the Xbox — as well as Project Scorpio — in 2018.

It’s unclear yet on what this will actually look like — will there be an Xbox VR headset? — but it’s certainly implied. “We’re also excited to share that Windows Mixed Reality experiences will light up on other devices over time, beyond desktop and Microsoft HoloLens,” said the company in a statement. “Our plan is to bring mixed reality content to the Xbox One family of devices, including Project Scorpio, in 2018.”

Also at GDC, Microsoft showed off the Acer Windows Mixed Reality developer edition headset that it would be shipping to a few select developers starting this March (seen in the image above). It has two high-resolution displays at 1440 x 1440, a display refresh rate of up to 90 hertz, a 3.5mm jack for built-in audio support plus HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.0 for connecting to the computer. Like all of Microsoft’s mixed reality hardware, it also has inside-out tracking, which lets you have positional tracking without the need for external sensors.

As for when consumers will be able to get one, that would be some time this holiday season, which is also when headsets from ASUS, Dell and Lenovo will likely make their debut. We’ll likely learn more details about Microsoft’s mixed reality future at its Build conference this May and at E3 later this year.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from GDC 2017!

Source: Microsoft

Playing with shiny, mysterious blocks in ‘QUBE 2’

The original QUBE came out in 2012, making a name for itself as a clever spatial-puzzle game. Nearly five years later, the developers at Toxic Games have unveiled QUBE 2, a sequel that takes the best aspects of the original and throws them all in a beautiful new 3D environment.

The first thing that stands out in the QUBE 2 demo is the level of polish applied to the environment. It’s a gorgeous game. Set in a massive, bright laboratory type of building, players manipulate blue, green and red blocks, using them to solve puzzles strewn about the world. The blocks pop against stark white and black rooms, making the entire game resonate with light and color.

The puzzles themselves are challenging and thus satisfying to solve. Each block has a different function: Place a red square on the proper “block building” space and it creates a long rectangle; the green tool creates a solid block that can fall or fly when pushed by a fan; and the blue square is a launch pad, capable of flinging the protagonist and blocks alike across the landscapes.

Some of the gameplay in QUBE 2 will feel familiar to fans of the Portal franchise. A few of the puzzles involve placing blocks on pressure plates to open doorways or unveil staircases, and the ominous feeling of the lab adds a lovely layer of mystery to the entire game. However, this isn’t Portal. QUBE 2 limits the ways players can use each tool: You can’t simply pick up and move a green block wherever you’d like, for example. Instead, players have to use blue launch pads and red barrier blocks to make the rooms obey their will.

Even though Toxic Games has stripped down QUBE 2 to these three basic elements — red, green and blue blocks — the puzzle possibilities seem endless. Players will be able to see for themselves when QUBE 2 comes to PC, Mac and Linux this summer.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from GDC 2017!

Facebook’s video app lands on Apple TV

You no longer need to own a brand new Samsung TV to use Facebook’s video streaming app. Facebook Video has launched on the 4th-generation Apple TV, giving many more people an opportunity to watch social clips on the big screen. The interface clearly encourages you to sit back and relax — it’s divided into sections that automatically play videos back to back, such as those shared by your friends, recommended videos and live streams.

The app is also poised to come to Amazon’s Fire TV, Chromecast and other devices, so don’t fret if you don’t live in Apple’s ecosystem. However, you may have to get used to ads. The current experience is blissfully ad-free, but you may well see mid-roll promos in the future as Facebook makes a push toward longer, higher-quality (and thus more profitable) videos. And the app could be particularly important for Facebook’s live video ambitions now that it’s hoping to broadcast sports and other content that benefits from TV-sized viewing. In short, this could just be the start of something much bigger.

Source: Variety

Watch LG’s G6 wallpaper get assembled by hand

During my visit to LG’s headquarters in South Korea a few weeks ago, one surprising thing I learned was that the G6’s hero wallpaper — the one with a subtle “6” in it — was not a digital render, but was in fact a combination of paper, acrylic, paint and two months of patience.

In the official making-of video, you can see how some elements were cut to shape, sprayed with paint (with color guidance from Pantone) and eventually toyed around with different lighting plus positioning. All of this, of course, was done with the FullVision display’s 18:9 aspect ratio in mind, so the elements adhere to match the G6’s screen composition. The result is a vivid wallpaper with natural colors and varied textures.

But the work didn’t stop there. LG used different materials to assemble three more versions of the same layout, one for each optional UI theme to match the phone’s color: Ice Platinum, Astro Black or Mystic White. It’s no wonder this project alone took two long months. To be fair, though, this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen big companies spend far too long making a background: Google and Microsoft have both done similar in the past. Still, they all get marks for effort.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.