SyFy’s futuristic cop show ‘Halcyon’ will have 5 VR episodes

In the year 2058, virtual reality is so commonplace that big-city police have established a Virtual Reality Crimes Unit. In this branch, detective Julie Dover ends up investigating an incident that shouldn’t even be possible — a real-life murder that went down within virtual reality. This is the premise of SyFy’s new scripted series, Halcyon, which consists of 10 episodes that will air on SyFy’s television and web channels, plus five VR-only episodes set to debut on Oculus Rift.

You won’t need an Oculus Rift to follow Halcyon on the linear channels: SyFy will offer recaps of the VR episodes for those watching on the web and TV. Halcyon comes from Emmy award-winning studio Secret Location, which also crafted the Sleepy Hollow Virtual Reality Experience. BAFTA nominee Benjamin Arfmann is directing the show and it started production in Toronto just this month. There’s no word yet on when Halcyon will premiere.

“VR is being exposed to more and more people and with projects like Halcyon, we intend to help this immersive form of entertainment grow,” Secret Location President James Milward says in a press release.

HBO Now tallies 800,000 subscribers in 10 months since launch

A standalone HBO streaming service was supposedly what the masses were clamoring for. Well, it turns out “about 800,000” people were really interested. HBO CEO Richard Plepler revealed the figure during an earnings call for the network’s parent company Time Warner earlier today. He went on to say that the figure isn’t as bad as it sounds for the $15 a month service that debuted on Apple devices in April. Of course, HBO Now was exclusive to Cupertino’s gadgets for 90 days, which likely didn’t help keep the interest of viewers who had to wait until later in the summer to sign up. However, it’s not too much of a reach to expect the first numbers the company revealed to be at least a million subscriptions.

“I wouldn’t say only 800,000 subs,” Plepler explained. “We’re just getting started.”

He may be right. As Plepler noted today, HBO has original series from both Jon Stewart and Bill Simmons on tap for this year. What’s more, the return of Game of Thrones this spring is sure to help the subscriptions numbers a bit, especially for folks who don’t have cable or aren’t sharing a log-in. And there’s the fact that HBO Now still isn’t on Xbox or PlayStation, and both consoles are popular streaming devices for HBO Go. The network could also look to lure customers with exclusive content, which may include stuff from the likes of Stewart and Simmons.

Via: The Verge

Source: Recode

Sky Q goes on sale in the UK

Sky TV’s long overdue revamp has finally arrived. The new Sky Q service is available to order starting today, ushering in fresh hardware and a vastly improved UI. The basic box costs £42 per month and can record three shows simultaneously in 1080p — you can watch a fourth one live — on a 1TB hard drive. The Sky Q Silver box, meanwhile, is 4K ready and can capture up to four shows at once onto a 2TB drive, with the option to watch a fifth channel live. It costs £54 per month and supports up to four Sky Q Mini boxes, which cost £99 each, for multi-room viewing.

The upgraded boxes are welcome, but the real attraction here is the revamped software. The old Sky TV experience is terribly outdated — moving around the guide is slow, clunky and often confusing. Sky Q is a much-needed refresh that changes almost every aspect of the navigation — it no longer looks like a spreadsheet, with a vertical list for switching between sections and a heavy emphasis on bright, large images.

Sky Q can be bought online and over the phone right now. If you would rather walk into a store and talk to an expert, however, you’ll have to wait until February 12th before making the all-important upgrade.

Via: Sky (Press Release)

Source: Sky Q

How to stream Superbowl 50 on your Android device

The Superbowl. The number one sporting event in the United States of America. It’s also the only thing that I know of on TV, where the commercials are as hotly anticipated as the game itself. In this post, I will show you how to stream Superbowl 50 on your Android device.

This year CBS will be broadcasting the Superbowl live over-the-air and online streaming. This isn’t the first year that the event will be streamed online. In fact, last year more than 1.3 million viewers tuned to NBC online to watch the big game. In 2014, Fox had over 1.1 million streaming viewers.  It’s clear that the precedent has been set and we’ll be seeing future Superbowls streamed online as well.

In order to stream the Superbowl on your Android TV, Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, or Android-based tablet, all you need to do is download the CBS Sports app from Google Play or Amazon App Store. If you are using an Android-based phone, you can only stream it via the NFL mobile app, but unfortunately, it’s restricted to Verizon customers.

If you would like to stream it to your phone and you use another mobile service, other than Verizon, you can try streaming via their website, wcbssports.com. You may need to use a browser like Dolphin browser that will allow you to change your browser’s user agent to mimic a desktop or tablet.

You could also download Kodi media center and stream it through an unofficial 3rd party plugin. More information about that can be found in my post about how to turn a Fire TV stick into the ultimate media center.

Will you be streaming or watching through traditional media outlets this year? Let us know in the comments below.

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Chris Chibnall is in charge of ‘Doctor Who,’ and it’s British TV’s fault

The news that Chris Chibnall was going to replace Steven Moffat as the man in charge of Doctor Who wasn’t one I relished hearing. After all, Chibnall lacks the pedigree of both his predecessors, and the episodes that he has written for the show have been underwhelming. His appointment makes plenty of sense when you look at it from the BBC’s perspective, but it also exposes a bitter truth about the state of the UK’s TV industry.

Doctor Who is one of the biggest shows on international television, commanding the attention of around 70 million people worldwide. It is one of the most expensive shows on British TV, with an annual budget of anything up to £15 million ($21 million). It’s easy to forget that its executive producer doesn’t just manage the creative elements of the show. They’ve also got to control the mechanism that ensures that it comes in on time and under budget, as well as pleasing a full percent of the planet’s population.

Such a demanding job requires a figure with a proven track record of being able to handle a job of this magnitude. The requirements mean that the BBC was looking for someone who was (probably) British and has been in charge of at least two mainstream TV shows. It doesn’t seem to matter what those shows were, although a passing familiarity with Doctor Who would probably come in handy. That narrows the field of eligible candidates down from “any good TV writer you’ve heard of” down to a select handful.

That rules out some of the more fan-friendly names that were thrown around, such as “heir apparent” Mark Gatiss. While undeniably talented, Gatiss would have had to give up his acting career to focus on the show, and has no experience at this level. The same goes for Peter Harness, who would have been an excellent choice but for the fact that he’s mostly written, but not produced, the shows he’s been involved with. Jamie Mathieson, similarly, is too much of a writer to be considered a useful candidate for taking the reigns of such a logistically complicated show.

In fact, the list of candidates that would have been suitable to take the Doctor Who job is sufficiently short that it’s possible to bullet-point them:

• Paul Abbott (Shameless, Reckless, Clocking Off and State of Play)
• Matthew Graham (The Last Train, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and, uh, Bonekickers)
• Toby Whithouse (Being Human, No Angels, The Game)
• Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax)
• Abi Morgan (The Hour, River)

By comparison, Chris Chibnall ticks all of the boxes with relative ease, having created and run smash-hit murder-mystery Broadchurch. The show’s international success was enough to see it remade as Gracepoint, which aired on Fox in 2014. Before that, he was also one of the driving forces of Law and Order: UK, a show that borrowed scripts from the NBC series, re-written for a local audience. He also has experience of working in a Doctor Who-lite environment, having been one of the producers of the wretched “adult” spin-off Torchwood.

“That narrows the field down from “any good TV writer you’ve heard of” to a select handful.

The fact that only one name, from a shortlist of six, was even considered suitable for taking on a show as gargantuan as Doctor Who says that the UK isn’t doing enough to foster talent. While our broadcasting is often winning plaudits in the international market, we’re not doing enough domestically to establish new voices. If we want to make sure that there’s a wider — and more palatable — set of options when Chibnall steps down, then British TV needs to start pushing its creative talents to excel, and fast.

Video license deal protects the future of 4K

The future of 4K video has been in doubt as of late. You see, the HEVC Advance group that’s licensing the H.265/HEVC video format (crucial to stuffing 4K into modern data pipes) wanted steep royalties seemingly everywhere, with no cap — even free services faced a small outlay. It was so pricey that tech giants started work on their own royalty-free format to avoid being on the hook. At last, though, HEVC Advance has seen the light: it’s offering a revamped licensing scheme. While it could still be costly for some, it’s inexpensive enough that it might safeguard the future of 4K content.

The new approach not only cuts rates by as much as half, but sets yearly caps between $2.5 million to $40 million per year, depending on the service or device type. Tech giants like Apple, Netflix or Samsung won’t lose a significant chunk of their profit just to handle 4K, in other words. Moreover, any content that’s completely free for viewers is now royalty-free. Public TV and ad-supported websites won’t have to worry about coughing up cash.

This won’t necessarily stop work on alternatives to HEVC, but it could prevent a lot of headaches with trying to create or switch to other 4K-friendly video standards, like Google’s VP9. You may see HEVC in many more places than it would have gone otherwise, especially on low-profit devices like budget smartphones. Also, it could prevent some current 4K TV sets from becoming paperweights. Many of them support HEVC video, but it’s less certain that they’ll play VP9 properly or at all, even with an update. So long as the format takes off at all, you’ll still be using that set when 4K is truly mainstream.

[Image credit: Jack Dempsey/Invision for LG/AP Images]

Via: Forbes

Source: HEVC Advance (PDF)