Netflix brings The Magic School Bus into the internet era with a new series

Netflix made a big push into educational video when it picked up Scholastic’s TV shows, and we now know that this effort has paid off — The Magic School Bus has been “remarkably popular,” Netflix tells the New York Times. It only makes sense, then, that the streaming media pioneer has just ordered a new take on Magic School Bus for its next original series. The 26-episode show, The Magic School Bus 360°, will modernize Ms. Frizzle’s science classes for kids who are now surrounded by technology; robots and wearables (such as a biometric suit) will play a part. Your little ones will have to wait until 2016 to start watching, but that patience may pay off if it fosters an early interest in computer science and other high-tech fields.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD

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Via: New York times, Time

Source: Scholastic

370-inch TV costs more than the mansion you’d need to house it

What will Panasonic make of this, then? The Japanese manufacturer’s enormous 152-inch 4K set has been superseded by a rival giant — the “Titan Zeus” — which is more than four times the size and triple the price. At a cost of £1 million sterling ($1.6 million), the Zeus also promises a full 4K resolution, but this time stretched out across a 370-inch (8m by 5m) panel that is said to be suitable for both indoor and outdoor domestic use. We can’t really comment on the design or image quality, however, because there are no photos or video showing the mythologically-confused TV in action. The company tells us this is because its first and only private customer for the Zeus has asked for their installation to be kept confidential. Then again, similar sets from Titan have been widely used at public events (such as the Xbox gathering shown above). You’ll also be able to see a second Zeus on show at the Cannes film festival this year, put up by Curb Media in order to display World Cup action at the size of an actual football goal.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Via: Pocket-lint

Your smart TV can be hacked over the air, but it’s not likely

It only makes sense that putting a TV online theoretically exposes it to hackers, but it’s now clear that those hacks don’t have to go through conventional internet pipelines. A team of Columbia University researchers has published details of a vulnerability in an interactive TV standard (HbbTV) that lets evildoers hijack your smart TV and other devices in your home network so long as you tune into a specific over-the-air digital channel. Attacks can run undetected in the background, and the nature of the broadcasts makes it difficult or impossible to trace the culprit. Reportedly, the only surefire remedies are to cut off broadcast-based web content altogether, monitor for unusual spikes in network activity or notify users when apps launch.

However, you shouldn’t fret about someone stealing your data just because you tuned into the Home Shopping Network. If you only watch shows over cable or satellite, this issue won’t affect you; as it stands, HbbTV hasn’t yet reached North America. It’s also difficult for would-be hackers to reach many people without signal amplifiers. Still, the security hole isn’t going to be very comforting to cord cutters who still want the benefits of an internet-connected TV set.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Via: Forbes

Source: Yossi Oren

Freeview planning to kill YouView with a new connected TV service

All’s fair in love and war, especially if you’re a major UK broadcaster. Once big investors in YouView, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have agreed plans to kill the service they helped create by doubling-down on Freeview. The three companies (joined by Sky and Arqiva) are attempting to secure the free-to-air service’s future by developing a new branded connected TV platform that will bring on-demand (or catch-up) content to Freeview for the first time. The five-year deal will see TV channels and on-demand apps like iPlayer, ITV Player and 4oD come as standard on smart TVs with internet connections. It deliberately goes against BT and TalkTalk, which have been accused of taking YouView’s free-to-air principles and turning it into a paid (and quite pricey, if you include the cost of the box) service. Given that Freeview is already widely supported, the Beeb et al. may find it easy to convince TV manufacturers to adopt a new connected variant. If they do, expect on-demand services to come embedded as standard in the near future.

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Source: Freeview

ITV channels come to Sky Go in time for the World Cup

It’s hard to sniff at Sky Go, the service that lets you watch live TV on computers and mobile devices when out of set-top box range. Free to Sky subscribers, its main weakness is a limited channel selection, which is slowly but surely being addressed through new agreements. Today, one such deal adds all of ITV’s channels to Sky Go, just shy of a year after Virgin Media brought the same selection to its equivalent TV Anywhere service. The new Sky-exclusive channel ITV Encore will also serve up both live TV and on-demand content through Go when it launches in early June. E!, Home and Lifetime are also set to be added to the service over the summer. Considering ITV will be broadcasting 34 World Cup games, the new channels have landed on Sky Go at an opportune time. If you don’t have Sky, though, remember you can still catch all that footy while out and about on ITV Player.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet

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Source: Sky

Cablevision gets better at letting you watch TV away from home

Whether it is on a smartphone, tablet or laptop, being able to watch live television outside your home network is pretty great. Cablevision, through the Optimum App, has been letting its cable customers do this for some time now, but it’s about to get much better. The service provider today announced that it is baking the “TV to Go” feature right into its Optimum App, allowing you to have access to over 100 channels even when you’re away from home. This includes both live and on-demand content, from networks such as beIN Sports, CNN, Disney, ESPN, NBC, NFL and a lot more — naturally, access to these will be determined by which Optimum TV package you pay for. The revamped Optimum App service is available now on the web, iOS, Android and Kindle Fire tablets.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Mobile

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Source: Cablevision