Amazon set to bid for Premier League streaming rights

When the English Football Association opens the bidding for Premier League broadcasting rights in February, it may see keen interest from a significant but not-so-unexpected source: Amazon. Bloomberg reports that the online retailer is preparing to bid for matches next month, likely providing traditional UK broadcasters Sky and BT with some much-needed competition over the next three years.

Should Amazon be successful, the Premier League (soccer) would be its biggest sporting deal, behind previous agreements to stream thursday night NFL matches and ATP tennis. However, with Sky and BT paying a combined £5.14 billion ($6.96 billion) for 168 live matches back in 2015, Amazon will likely need to spend big to acquire what it’s after.

Last month, Sky and BT announced that they would share their most popular channels, a move that may have been in preparation for interest from Amazon. Facebook has also been linked with the auction, although the social network remains quiet on its plans to expand further into sports.

Although Amazon is expected to bid for one of the smaller packages that will be made available for coverage of future Premier League seasons, there’s no word on whether the company will make streams available to audiences outside the UK. The English Football Association holds separate auctions for US and other global markets, maximizing its return in the process.

For Amazon, coverage of the world’s most popular football league will provide another incentive for consumers to sign up for or continue renewing their Prime subscription. If a docu-series on the pursuits of Manchester City wasn’t enough, access to between 20 and 32 matches (possibly more) from next season might seal the deal for football purists who have previously held out.

Source: Bloomberg

The Morning After: Friday, January 5th 2018

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

CES 2018 is nearly upon us. As members of our team make the trek to Las Vegas, you can sort through yesterday’s news highlights, like a device from U of M that could effectively treat tinnitus.

It could outsell the Wii U in just one year.Nintendo’s Switch is the fastest-selling US console ever

According to Nintendo, in the US the Switch is now the fastest-selling console ever. In just 10 months, it has moved 4.8 million units, breaking Nintendo’s own record of four million, set by the Wii. The next goal? Hitting 14 million sold worldwide in one year — and it’s already at 10 million.

We’ll see.Tesla says its Model 3 production nightmare is nearly over

Tesla says that it has spent the last three months addressing the “production bottlenecks” on the Model 3 line, and production will now rise sharply. From a slow start, the company believes it now has the capacity to knock out 1,000 Model 3s each week, and 2018 will see even bigger milestones.

With a dual-screen infotainment system.The Velar is a Land Rover for (rich) tech-lovers

Starting at $50,000, the new high-tech Range Rover — with a plethora of displays and features — keeps the driver and passengers connected while pampering them in plush seats and with enough room to drag your gear to the beach, mountains or even a certain festival in the desert.

But wait, there’s more…

• LG’s tiny 4K projector puts a 150-inch screen in any room
• TiVo opens its ‘next-gen’ platform to cable operators
• Apple discusses Spectre and Meltdown fixes on iOS, macOS and Safari
• Science has a solution for that constant ringing in your ear
• ‘Black Mirror’ predicted our dystopia. How does it evolve?
• Ex-NSA contractor will plead guilty to stealing 50TB of data

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Amazon Readies Bid for English Premier League Soccer Streaming Rights

Amazon could be preparing to bid next month for the rights to stream English Premier League soccer matches, if a report by Bloomberg this morning is anything to go by.

According to a source familiar with the matter, the digital giant sees the English Premier League as a huge opportunity to draw more people to its Prime membership service in the U.K. and convert occasional customers into more loyal shoppers.

Amazon has already bought video streaming rights for live sport including tennis and the National Football League, but the Premier League remains Europe’s most prized live sports broadcast asset and with a growing audience in the U.S., fits in perfectly with Amazon’s broader strategy to bring more sports content to its global customers.

The e-commerce giant recently tied up a deal to produce a documentary series with Manchester City, the current Premier League leaders, which previously increased speculation that it might next pursue live soccer rights. Currently Sky and BT Sport share the rights to the EPL, following an auction in 2015 that saw the broadcasters splash £5.1 billion ($6.9 billion) between them for three seasons.

The next auction in February will see seven packages being offered by the Premier League, varying from 32 matches to 20 matches each. Amazon could bid for one of the smaller packages for broadcasting in the U.K., according to Bloomberg. Auctions for streaming rights in other markets are usually held separately. Both Amazon and the Premier League declined to comment.

Back in September, Apple revealed its own aspirations for offering more live sports through Apple TV 4K, with a new sports section on the device and in the new TV app offering integration with channels like ESPN. But despite sports generally being seen as a big selling point for any set-top-box device, Apple’s offerings in the TV category remain skewed towards American audiences.

However, if Amazon chose to offer sports through its Prime Video app on Apple TV, it’s theoretically possible that U.K. owners of Apple’s set-top box could one day stream EPL matches to the device.

Tags: Amazon, United Kingdom, Amazon Prime
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Xiaomi Redmi 5A review: At Rs. 4,999, this phone is a steal

Xiaomi has been on a roll in markets like India and is steadily outranking well-entrenched market leaders like Samsung. The budget segment, the driving force in developing markets, is where Xiaomi has a strong portfolio.

Xiaomi offers value-for-money smartphones that boast of best-in-class specifications. In last three years in India, Xiaomi has launched several bestselling budget smartphones. The success has also meant Xiaomi going all in crowding the segment with multiple models at overlapping price points.

Early in 2017, Xiaomi launched the Redmi 4A, an entry-level smartphone for first-time smartphone buyers and those on a tight budget. The Redmi 5A is the next in the series, although you’d be hard-pressed to find any difference between the two. I used the Redmi 5A for a couple of weeks, and here are my thoughts on the device.

For this review, I took the low spec’d Indian variant of the Redmi 5A, the one with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, for a spin. In India, Xiaomi has discounted the price of the same to ₹4,999 ($78) from ₹5,999 for the first five million units to be sold, and since that’s the current price, my opinion of the phone is basis the discounted price.Show More

Design

The Redmi 5A looks just like any other entry-level Android smartphone and is not much of a departure from the Redmi 4A. It’s all plastic, although the faux metallic finish at the back makes for a fair design choice.

The smartphone sports chunky bezels at top and bottom, but since it only has a 5-inch display, it still is a compact phone that is comfortable to grip and in one-handed usage. The Redmi 5A weighs only 137 grams with a thickness of 8.35 mm, and definitely feels lighter than some of the other phones in the segment.

Display

Just like the Redmi 4A, the Redmi 5A too sports a 5-inch HD display with a pixel density of 296 ppi. For a budget smartphone, the display does a fair job. The images are sharp, and the text looks crisp enough. The viewing angles are great too.

The colors don’t really overwhelm you, but that’s understandable for a phone at this price. I like vivid and saturated displays, but you get what you pay for.

Performance

Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor, the Redmi 5A packs in 2 GB of RAM with 16 GB of internal storage. The higher spec’d variant, which I haven’t tested, comes with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB internal storage.

The Redmi 5A isn’t an upgrade from the 4A, as is evident in the choice of innards which are identical to the predecessor. But that’s okay since Xiaomi does well to balance cost and performance for this budget workhorse.

The Redmi 5A is a decent performer for everyday tasks but only for casual users, mind you. If you push it, you’d hit some lags or stuttering when you’re multitasking. You can play graphic-intensive games, but the performance isn’t that smooth. That’s expected in this price range, really. Xiaomi does well to squeeze in the best it can.

The 3,000 mAh battery lasts for a full day easily with heavy usage. The battery is slightly smaller than Redmi 4A (3,120 mAh), but for most users, over a day of battery life is pretty good.

Hardware

Unlike the hybrid tray setup that we saw on Redmi 4A and most Xiaomi smartphones in the past, the Redmi 5A offers a dedicated microSD card slot along with the ability to use two nano SIMs.

Like other Xiaomi devices, the Redmi 5A too packs in an IR emitter that allows you to use your smartphone as a remote to control household appliances. It’s a nifty addition, and while Xiaomi has backed it all along, it’s a shame we don’t see it far and wide in the market.

The Redmi 5A doesn’t sport a fingerprint scanner which is a fair omission for an entry-level smartphone.

Camera

When we look at the camera performance of the Redmi 5A, we’d have to keep its price in consideration. Till recently, most budget smartphones could only manage to offer a passable camera, but the Xiaomi line-up sometimes surprises with sub-₹10,000 devices that manage to take some good shots.

The 13 MP primary camera on the Redmi 5A is one of those. In bright daylight, I managed to take some great shots with good details and enough sharpness. The camera also manages to lock focus very quickly. The color reproduction is a hit-and-miss though – it’s mostly good in close-up shots.

In low light, there’s quite a drop in quality, but that’s expected. The camera can record 1080p videos that are strictly okay.

The 5 MP front shooter is weak and the aggressive beautification by default makes faces look extremely artificial.

Software

The Redmi 5A runs on MIUI 9, the latest version of company’s proprietary UI layer based on Android 7.1 Nougat. Xiaomi devices are notorious for not keeping up with the latest Android versions since the company instead focuses on MIUI upgrades over time.

MIUI 9 is one of the better Android skins out there and has a lot of fans. There’s evident attention to detail and the user experience is polished and quite cohesive. If you’ve used a Xiaomi phone in the past, MIUI is a comfortable territory for you. However, if this is your first one, getting comfortable with MIUI is not much of a task since it’s quite intuitive.

Editor’s Pick

What’s new in MIUI 9

While there’s a big camp of Android users that prefer stock Android experience, there are also fans of customized UI layers that several OEMs ship their phones with.

Xiaomi’s MIUI is one of the more popular …

That said, MIUI is not known as the lightest skin out there, and hence 2 GB RAM is just enough to get you going with almost half a gig of RAM free available at any point. The company claims, not incorrectly, that the latest iteration MIUI 9 improves performance, but it still cannot match what a similarly spec’d phone can manage with stock Android over time.

There are nifty tools and utilities baked in – most of them quite handy – including features like Second Space for privacy and Dual Apps to run a second instance of any apps and apps like Mi Remote to use in conjunction with the IR emitter and Mi Drop to transfer files between two smartphones. There’s also a security app which bundles a lot of maintenance and optimization tools.

Specifications

Gallery

Pricing and final thoughts

The base variant of Redmi 5A is an excellent value-for-money smartphone.

Xiaomi continues to impress with its budget smartphones, and although the Redmi 5A doesn’t offer anything extra than 4A, it is an excellent value-for-money smartphone at its original price of ₹5,999 ($94).

At the discounted price of ₹4,999 ($78), it is a steal, really. But like with all Xiaomi devices, availability will remain a challenge despite company’s major push in the offline market.

The 3 GB + 32 GB variant at ₹6,999 ($110) is a less compelling option as other Xiaomi devices like the Redmi 4 and Redmi Y1 Lite could be better options for most people at that price.

The Redmi 5A is a great option for first-time smartphone users and for anyone looking for a basic Android smartphone on a budget.

Camera+ App Update Adds Ability to Transfer Applied Edits Between Images

Camera+ received an update on Friday that brings a handful of welcome UI and workflow improvements, while fixing a number of issues reported by users of the popular long-running photo app for iPhone and iPad.

Although the latest v10.10.12 update of Camera+ focuses on enhancing reliability, there are a couple of notable additions to its feature set that are worth highlighting, the ability to copy and paste edits between images on the Lightbox being one of them.

To transfer complex applied edits to another photo, select the image on the Lightbox, long-tap the edit button, and then select Copy Edits. With your adjustments in the memory, simply select your target photo, long-tap Edit, and then select Paste Edits to apply them.

Compatible edits will be automatically applied to images with no issues, but it’s worth noting that things like Portrait mode will only make the jump if the destination photo was originally captured with depth information, which Camera+ has supported since October.

Meanwhile, long-time users of Camera+ may have noticed that the badge indicating the color space of a photo on the Info summary screen was missing for HEIF and TIFF formats. That’s no longer the case, with wider color space tags like DCI/P3 now displaying on the relevant images.

Additionally, users who like to shoot in RAW will be happy to learn that Camera+ now correctly honors the preference for saving the DNG representation independently of the JPEG/HEIF asset when saving to Camera Roll, although bear in mind that the in-app Lightbox always uses the combined representation.

Elsewhere, the editing screen has been improved for iPhone X displays, while a couple of blips when sharing to the Files app or WhatsApp have been ironed out. The update also includes optimized memory usage on iPhone 6 devices, especially when shooting TIFF and macro, while a handful of crashes have also been fixed.

Camera+ costs $2.99 for iPhone and $4.99 for iPad, and can be downloaded from the App Store. [Direct Link]

Tag: photography
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Jimmy Iovine is reportedly leaving Apple Music this year

One of the main reasons why Apple purchased Beats might leave the company this year. According to Hits Daily Double, Billboard and Bloomberg, Apple Music chief Jimmy Iovine is already preparing for his exit sometime in August after he gets his final payout from Cupertino’s $3 billion Beats purchase. Iovine, a famous producer and Interscope Records’ co-founder, created the audio company with Dr. Dre back in 2006. He headed Apple Music after Beats’ acquisition, but he has a long history working with the iPhone-maker and is often cited as one of the key players who made iTunes and the iPod possible.

Bloomberg says Iovine will most likely not stay even if he gets a juicy offer, as his plans for Apple Music often clash with other execs’, including services chief Eddy Cue’s. Cupertino’s streaming service gained 30 million subscribers under Iovine, and he was responsible for the video series Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke. He conjured up those shows in an effort to expand Music’s repertoire, since he believes it “needs to be more than a bunch of songs and a few playlists.” It’s unclear what Iovine plans to do after Apple and whether, at 64, he intends to retire if he truly does leave the company in August.

As many outlets have picked up, our story this morning notes #JimmyIovine will exit @AppleMusic in August. https://t.co/fLiS4aW7me pic.twitter.com/0fSdtrq55j

— HITS Daily Double (@HITSDD) January 4, 2018

Via: Billboard, Bloomberg

Source: Hits Daily Double

The Nokia 6 is no longer an entry-level smartphone

Much like how HMD kicked off 2017 by bringing its first Android smartphone, the Nokia 6, to China, today it unveiled an updated model for the same region. Based on a similar aluminum unibody design, the most obvious changes on this second-gen Nokia 6 are the added colors on the chamfer, with the black version featuring copper highlights and the white version with rose gold. Similarly, the centered vertical camera bump has gained a shiny rim of the corresponding color. The old capacitive buttons below the 5.5-inch full HD IPS screen have also disappeared, with the rectangular fingerprint reader now residing on the back in a circular form.

In terms of specs, the most interesting part here is that this new Nokia 6 has swapped its entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 chipset for a much nicer Snapdragon 630 — the same piece of silicon inside the HTC U11 Life, Moto X4 and ASUS ZenFone 4 — along with faster LPDDR4 RAM (China still offers 4GB) to run Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box (Android 8.0 Oreo update due to arrive later). Similarly, it has finally ditched the micro-USB socket in favor of USB-C.

While the phone has gained a second microphone to support Nokia OZO Audio’s spatial audio capture, it’s lost its second speaker which potentially makes video viewing less fun, plus Nokia OZO Audio wasn’t that convincing when we tried it with the three microphones on the Nokia 8. On the flip side, there’s still a 3.5mm headphone jack for quickly plugging in other audio peripherals, or you can just go wireless with the Bluetooth 5.0 radio.

Everything else remains the same, especially the cameras: on the back there’s a 16-megapixel f/2.0 main imager with a 1 um sensor plus dual LED, and for selfies there’s a 8-megapixel f/2.0 front camera with a 1.12 um sensor plus 84-degree wide-angle capture. And yes, the Dual-Sight mode aka “bothie” mode introduced by the Nokia 8 is also supported here. Other tidbits include a 3,000 mAh battery, LTE Cat 4 radio, dual SIM slots and storage expansion via microSD card (though this takes up the second SIM slot).

Given the same 1,699 yuan price (about $260) for the 64GB version with 4GB of RAM, this new Nokia 6 is a tad more attractive than its predecessor. Better yet, there’s also a 32GB flavor priced at 1,499 yuan (about $230) for those with a tighter budget. There’s no word on when this model will arrive in other markets, but for now, folks in China can reserve one ahead of the January 10th launch, and they should receive their new phones well ahead of Chinese New Year.

Source: HMD Global (China)

Uber’s ex-CEO to sell nearly a third of his stake in the company

Uber’s big investment deal with SoftBank may place some limits on power held by co-founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick, but it will reportedly put a significant amount of cash in his pocket. Bloomberg and Reuters report that according to anonymous sources, Kalanick will reduce his stake in the company by a third, selling 2.9 percent of Uber’s shares for about $1.4 billion after leaving the company last year following a series of scandals. Meanwhile, new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi can focus on things like the case vs. Waymo over self-driving technology.

Source: Bloomberg, Reuters

Hulu is resurrecting ‘Animaniacs’ and streaming previous seasons

If you felt your inner child screaming with joy, there’s a reason: Hulu is resurrecting one of your favorite Saturday morning cartoons: Animaniacs. Steven Speilberg is returning to executive produce two brand-new seasons of the classic show, which will debut on the streaming service in 2020.

If that wasn’t enough, Hulu also got every episode of the original Animaniacs, as well as the spinoff Pinky and the Brain, its follow-up Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain and the entirety of Tiny Toon Adventures. As in, you can stream all of those now while you (and the rest of us) wait for the new seasons to drop. Hopefully those doses of nostalgia will make up for Hulu’s failure to also snag the sublime WB cartoon Freakazoid!

Apple discusses ‘Spectre’ and ‘Meltdown’ fixes on iOS, macOS

The recently disclosed bugs that affect so many modern CPUs are an issue on Apple platforms as well, and tonight the company explained how it’s dealing with them. In a new support page, Apple confirmed it has included “mitigations” for Meltdown in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2, while watchOS is unaffected. The other exploit, Spectre, it will address in a few days with an update to the Safari browser on macOS and iOS, with other fixes to follow.

According to Apple, its Meltdown updates have resulted in “no measurable reduction” in performance. As far as its still-unreleased Safari tweak, the company says that on Speedometer and ARES-6 benchmarks there’s no noticeable change in performance and a hit of less than 2.5 percent on the JetStream browser benchmark.

Source: Apple Support