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Netflix details its HDR streaming lineup for this year

Netflix recently revealed it had rolled out support for high dynamic range video , starting with the first season of Marco Polo . This was the initial step in the company’s plan to go all in on that technology , which it believes is the perfect complement to 4K — something it’s been pushing since 2014 . By the end of 2016, the streaming service will have more than 150 hours of original programming in HDR, Netflix confirmed to Engadget. Of those, over 100 hours are expected to hit the platform in August, a figure that won’t be easy for competitors such as Amazon to match. While Marco Polo is the only show taking advantage of HDR (Dolby Vision, HDR10) right now, more content is going to follow suit in the next few months. That includes existing series like Bloodline , Daredevil , Jessica Jones and Chef’s Table , as well as The Ridiculous Six movie. Netflix will also feature HDR in the upcoming Luke Cage and The Defenders shows, plus The Do-Over film starring Adam Sandler and more. Here’s the full list, according to Netflix: A Series of Unfortunate Events Bloodline Chef’s Table Hibana Knights of Sidonia Marvel’s Daredevil Marvel’s Iron Fist Marvel’s Jessica Jones Marvel’s Luke Cage Marvel’s The Defenders The Do-Over The Ridiculous Six Unfortunately, there are no firm details on when these are scheduled to arrive. “Timing varies depending on the title, as we are in the process of remastering any existing TV shows and movies, ” a Netflix spokesperson said to Engadget. “It is also dependent on the title’s launch date. We don’t have any dates to confirm at this point in time.” But hey, at least you can be excited about all the HDR stuff that’s coming in the near future.

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Netflix details its HDR streaming lineup for this year

‘World of Warcraft’ keeps growing with ‘Legion’ in August

Blizzard will launch World of Warcraft ‘s sixth expansion, Legion , on August 30th, unleashing hordes of hellish beasts and fresh quests into the game world. Legion adds the Demon Hunter hero class, customizable artifact weapons and a new continent called the Broken Isles, among other updates. Pre-orders are live now in two flavors: the $50 Standard Edition or the $70 Digital Deluxe Edition, which includes an adorable demon dog as a pet, the Illidari Felstalker mount, and in-game goodies for Heroes of the Storm , StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 (all of which are Blizzard properties as well). Pre-ordering the Standard or Digital Deluxe versions of Legion grants players the ability to boost one character up to level 100 and early access to the Demon Hunter class. Plus, there’s one more way to give Blizzard your money: The $90 Collector’s Edition includes everything from the Digital Deluxe version plus a hardcover art book, a two-disc behind-the-scenes Blu-ray / DVD set, a CD soundtrack and a Legion mousepad. This bundle will be available at retail only. World of Warcraft is an MMO that debuted in 2004 and quickly evolved into one of the most popular video games in the world. It hit a player-count high in 2010 with 12 million subscribers, but that number fell to 10 million in 2014 and finally 5.5 million in September 2015. That’s still millions of players, but the decline has fueled whispers of WoW ‘s demise — something that Blizzard will surely try to silence with Legion . Starting in 2016, Blizzard will no longer report subscriber numbers for World of Warcraft , so we’ll have to rely on gut feelings going forward. Source: BusinessWire

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‘World of Warcraft’ keeps growing with ‘Legion’ in August

Windows 10 Anniversary Update: Google’s WebM and VP9 codecs coming to Edge

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update, due this summer, will expand the range of video and audio codecs that are supported by the Edge browser. Microsoft is adding the VP9 video codec, the Opus audio codec, and the WebM container format . VP9 and WebM are both spearheaded by Google. Google bought video codec company On2 in 2010 with the intent of opening up On2’s VP8 codec to serve as an open source, royalty-free alternative to the open but royalty-incurring H.264. Unfortunately, groups claiming to have patents that covered VP8 emerged. Google ultimately came to an agreement with those groups in 2013 to ensure the codec’s royalty-free status, but by then, H.264 was too firmly entrenched to displace. VP9 is a successor to VP8 that is more efficient and essential for the growing demand for 4K video. Along with Microsoft and others, Google has joined the Alliance for Open Media  to promote VP9’s development and try to ensure that it remains royalty-free. As with VP8 before it, VP9 is covered by patents, but the companies hope that they own all the relevant patents and hence are in a position to grant a royalty-free license. Microsoft announced in September 2015 that it was starting work on VP9 for Edge. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 Anniversary Update: Google’s WebM and VP9 codecs coming to Edge

MediaPortal 1.14.0 Release

Attached to this news you will find the final version of MediaPortal 1.14. With this release we offer a number of bug fixes and made some improvements. Scroll down to the ‘Full list of changes’ to read up on all of them! Highlights of this release Where the focus was on The focus for this release was on bug fixing. We notably kept consolidating our remote control HID handler. We fixed potential slow startup issues with offline share. We added a couple of features like the display of Radio EPG in the NowPlaying screen (when available) and the GUI auto-update in Videos, Music and Pictures sections when files and folders are created, renamed or changed. For a full list, see below. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for MP 1.14 Pre Release by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal You can review the complete change log for MP 1.14 Final Release by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MediaPortal 1.14.0 Final Release Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation Since we switched to .NET4 you need to make sure you have.NET4 installed on your computer (not needed if you are on Windows 8 because it comes with .NET4, but you  NEED the .NET 3.5 features enabled! ). Otherwise you are not able to install MediaPortal and the installer just quits.Download-Link:  Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Aside from that when doing a clean installation of the 1.14.0 Final Release there is nothing else to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from MP 1.2.0 Beta or later to 1.14.0 Final Release All MediaPortal 1.2.0 Beta installations can be upgraded to MP 1.14.0 Final Release without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.6.0 or earlier, then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.14.0 Final Release! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses. All plugins that work for the 1.7.1 HotFix release, should also work with the 1.14.0 Final Release.   Upgrading Extensions: The easiest way to upgrade your extensions is by launching the  MediaPortal Extension Installer , and let it check for updated versions. However this only works for extensions that use our MPEI system. If the author of the extension releases it as a stand alone installer, you must contact them for an updated version. General note about Upgrades Manually stop TV-Service! On some systems our installer is not able to update the TV-Server installation because its files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.14.0 Final Release we recommend that you manually stop the TV-Service and make sure, via Windows Task Manager  (enable the “all users” option),  that the TvService.exe process is really gone before starting to upgrade. Custom TV-Service properties If you manually changed the properties of the TV-Service  (like restart on error options) , then you must redo these changes after the upgrade. The installer is not able to save and restore your custom service properties when it installs the new version of the TV-Service.  Feedback Bugs If you think you found a bug then please post a detailed report in our  Bug Reports Forum .Make sure your report includes  all the required information . Incomplete reports will be removed to keep the forum clean.  Download Finally – the download. We hope that you took the time to read this release news entirely because it includes vital information about the major changes.   If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive  a small donation ! The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release! .::. Download – MediaPortal 1.14.0 Final Release .::. :: Post a Comment ::

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MediaPortal 1.14.0 Release

Hacker’s Account of How He Took Down Hacking Team’s Servers

An anonymous reader writes: FinFisher, the hacker that broke into Italian firm Hacking Team, has published a step-by-step account of how he carried out the attacks, what tools he used, and what he learned from scouting HackingTeam’s network. Published on PasteBin, the attack’s timeline reveals he entered their network through a zero-day exploit in an (unnamed) embedded device, accessed a MongoDB database that had no password, discovered backups in the database, found a BES admin password in the backups, and eventually got admin access to the Windows Domain Server. From here, it was easy to reach into their email server and steal all the company’s emails, and later access Git repos and steal the source code of their surveillance software. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker’s Account of How He Took Down Hacking Team’s Servers

Intel’s Apollo Lake chips promise slimmer, beefier budget PCs

Intel’s Atom-based processors have gotten much better at delivering a lot of bang for the buck , but there’s still little doubt that you’re using a low-cost system. PCs like HP’s Stream series still tend to be thick, carry a meager amount of RAM and rule out intensive tasks like 4K video. You might not have to make quite so many sacrifices going forward, though: Intel has offered a peek at Apollo Lake, a next-generation system-on-a-chip that promises to inject some life into the budget category. It’s not only more compact, but efficient enough that PC makers can afford to slim things down without as many compromises — they can use smaller batteries without hurting battery life, for instance. The more inclusive design (should also save several dollars (around $5-7) in parts that can be rolled into more RAM, better displays and similar upgrades. There’s more than size and cost savings, of course. Apollo Lake borrows the graphics technology from Intel’s Skylake architecture, which brings full hardware-based 4K video playback and an overall boost to visual performance. It’ll also help drag lower-cost computers into the modern era with richer support for technologies like USB-C . Intel isn’t yet revealing clock speeds, pricing and a few other key details for its new platform, but it’s promising Celeron- and Pentium-branded processors in the second half of 2016. They won’t make you forget about higher-end Core CPUs when they ship, but they might just raise the bar for computing — that starter laptop or tablet won’t be as likely to choke on basic duties. Via: AnandTech Source: Intel

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Intel’s Apollo Lake chips promise slimmer, beefier budget PCs

The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch

The Homebrew Special—looking a bit blurry, because I wanted to take a low-light shot to try to capture the disco glow. 2 more images in gallery After finally reaching the tipping point with off-the-shelf solutions that can’t match increasing speeds available, we recently took the plunge. Building a homebrew router  turned out to be a better proposition than we could’ve ever imagined. With nearly any speed metric we analyzed, our little DIY kit outpaced routers whether they were of the $90- or $250-variety. Naturally, many readers asked the obvious follow-up—”How exactly can we  put that together?” Today it’s time to finally pull back the curtain and offer that walkthrough. By taking a closer look at the actual build itself (hardware and software), the testing processes we used, and why we used them, hopefully any Ars readers of average technical abilities will be able to put together their own DIY speed machine. And the good news? Everything is as open source as it gets—the equipment, the processes, and the setup. If you want the DIY router we used, you can absolutely have it. This will be the guide to lead you, step-by-step. What is a router, anyway? At its most basic, a router is just a device that accepts packets on one interface and forwards them on to another interface that gets those packets closer to their eventual destination. That’s not what most of us are really thinking when we think of “a router” in the sense of something we’ll plug into our home or office to get to the Internet, though. What do we need to have before any homebrew device looks like a router? Read 66 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch

New Full Duplex Radio Chip Transmits and Receives Wireless Signals At Once

Wave723 writes: A new chip by Columbia University researchers uses a circulator made of silicon transistors to reroute signals and avoid interference from a transmitter and receiver that share the same antenna. This technology instantly doubles data capacity and could eventually be built into smartphones and tablets. The chip enables them to work around the principle of Lorentz Reciprocity, in which electromagnetic waves are thought to always travel along the same path both forward and backward. Traditionally, electronic devices required two antennas — a transmitter and receiver — that took turns or operated on different frequencies in order to exchange signals. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Full Duplex Radio Chip Transmits and Receives Wireless Signals At Once

Out-of-date apps put 3 million servers at risk of crypto ransomware infections

(credit: Dr F. Eugene Hester, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) More than 3 million Internet-accessible servers are at risk of being infected with crypto ransomware because they’re running vulnerable software, including out-of-date versions of Red Hat’s JBoss enterprise application , researchers from Cisco Systems said Friday. About 2,100 of those servers have already been compromised by webshells that give attackers persistent control over the machines, making it possible for them to be infected at any time, the Cisco researchers reported in a blog post . The compromised servers are connected to about 1,600 different IP addresses belonging to schools, governments, aviation companies, and other types of organizations. Some of the compromised servers belonged to school districts that were running the Destiny management system that many school libraries use to keep track of books and other assets. Cisco representatives notified officials at Destiny developer Follett Learning of the compromise, and the Follett officials said they fixed a security vulnerability in the program. Follett also told Cisco the updated Destiny software also scans computers for signs of infection and removes any identified backdoors. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Out-of-date apps put 3 million servers at risk of crypto ransomware infections

This tattoo-like display is made possible by a new ultra-thin protective ‘E-skin’

 It sounds like something out of Star Trek: a patch thinner than a band-aid that you slap on your arm and, within moments, it lights up with heart rate, blood sugar, and so on — then peels off a few days later. That’s the goal of work by researchers at the University of Tokyo. Read More

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This tattoo-like display is made possible by a new ultra-thin protective ‘E-skin’