YouTube to join Netflix and Amazon with HDR video

With big-name TV makers and movie studios all pledging to support high dynamic range (HDR) technology , it was only be a matter of time until the world’s biggest online video platform got in on the action. According to Mashable , Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s Chief Business Officer, confirmed that the service will soon roll out support for HDR, allowing streamers to watch videos in a lot more detail. While HDR has become a buzzword, it’s likely to make a big difference to the way you watch TV and movies this year. In brief terms, HDR captures a wider range of contrast and brightness. The resulting images show greater detail in darker parts of the screen and highlights a wider range of colors, allowing you to pick out details that you may not have noticed before. What it does mean, though, is that you will need a compatible TV or display to view YouTube’s range of HDR videos the way they’re meant to be viewed. LG , Sony and Vizio will soon release new 4K sets with high dynamic range support built in and PC makers are following the trend. Netflix and Amazon are on board too, ensuring that streamers can also board the HDR bandwagon. Source: Mashable

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YouTube to join Netflix and Amazon with HDR video

Funimation is launching its own streaming anime service

Funimation announced on Thursday that it is partnering with Sony DADC to create its own ad-free Crunchyroll-style streaming platform, called FunimationNow . The new service will begin rolling out in February and complement the company’s existing streaming offerings through its website. It will be available through not only iOS, Android and Kindle apps as well as directly through the Apple or Amazon Fire TVs. Subscribers will have access to more than 400 titles from the studio’s expansive archive including full series of Dragon Ball Z, Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, One Piece, Tokyo Ghoul and Space Dandy . There’s no word yet on pricing. [Image Credit: Funimation]

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Funimation is launching its own streaming anime service

M. Night Shyamalan Is Bringing Back Tales From the Crypt

The iconic horror anthology series Tales From the Crypt is coming back to TV from one of our most polarizing filmmakers. M. Night Shyamalan will produce the reboot as part of new horror-centric block that’s coming to TNT. Read more…

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M. Night Shyamalan Is Bringing Back Tales From the Crypt

Amazon is selling its own processors now, too

Amazon’s come a long way since its humble beginnings as an online book store. It sells everything from groceries to its own Kindle and tablet hardware , runs streaming services complete with original shows , and has a huge cloud-computing business among other interests . And now Amazon’s started pushing its own line of processors, plunging its finger into yet another pie. You won’t find its ARM-based “Alpine” chips among the T-shirts and homeware on Amazon’s online store, of course. They are being sold directly to manufacturers and service providers through subsidiary Annapurna Labs , a chip designer Amazon acquired early last year. The Alpine chip range is intended for products like WiFi routers, storage devices and connected home products (internet of things things), with companies including ASUS, Netgear and Synology already counted as customers. As Bloomberg notes, the chips are also a good fit for data centers, but are more suited to storage and networking tasks, not high-performance servers where Intel reigns king. Apart from being an interesting milestone in Amazon’s campaign for world domination, it getting into the processor business will resonate little with us everyday consumers. But, when you finally commit to buying a smart home hub after comparing numerous Amazon reviews, that hardware may well turn up with an Amazon brain inside, too. Via: Bloomberg , The Verge Source: Annapurna Labs

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Amazon is selling its own processors now, too

Users Are Suing Fitbit Over Inaccurate Heart Monitors

Just days after its shares dropped a whopping 18% , Fitbit just took another big hit. The wearables company has been slapped with a class-action lawsuit alleging that its heart rate monitoring technology is inaccurate, and that the company is knowingly misleading users. Read more…

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Users Are Suing Fitbit Over Inaccurate Heart Monitors

Use These Secret Codes to Unlock Netflix’s Hidden Categories

Here’s a trick that’s been around for a while but may have passed you by: secret category codes added by Netflix engineers that can help you narrow down your on-demand video choices. From classic war movies to Brazilian dramas, here’s how to dig deeper into the Netflix library. Read more…

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Use These Secret Codes to Unlock Netflix’s Hidden Categories

Intel’s next NUC will be a quad-core mini PC with Iris Pro and Thunderbolt 3

Andrew Cunningham The Broadwell NUC (left) and the new Skylake NUC (right). 4 more images in gallery Last night, Intel’s opening-day CES keynote focused mostly on wearables and Internet of Things things, the sort of forward-facing, maybe-useful, possibly-vaporware technology that characterizes CES. But in a small meeting this morning, we were able to get more information on less zeitgeist-y but more practical gadgets like the Compute Stick and the NUC mini desktops. The basic NUC boxes have been around for four generations now, so their Skylake refresh is predictable. They still use low-voltage U-series dual-core Core i3-6100U and i5-6260U CPUs like the ones you’d find in Ultrabooks. The i3 versions come with Intel HD 520 graphics, while the i5 boxes have Iris graphics—non-Pro Iris GPUs in the Skylake generation get 64MB of eDRAM cache to help add memory bandwidth, so graphics performance should be quite a bit better than the HD 6000 GPU in the equivalent Broadwell NUC. Intel has dropped the mini HDMI port on the back of the PC in favor of a full-size HDMI port, and it’s added an SD card reader on all models. Otherwise input and output is the same: four USB 3.0 ports (two on front, two on back, one yellow one that can charge devices when the NUC is powered off), a mini DisplayPort 1.2 port, gigabit Ethernet, and an IR receiver and a headphone jack on the front. The lids are still interchangeable, and they can connect to a USB header on the motherboard to extend the capabilities of the box. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s next NUC will be a quad-core mini PC with Iris Pro and Thunderbolt 3

Oculus Co-Founder Confirms The Rift Will Be Sold At Cost

 The Oculus Rift will be sold with a $599 retail price. And Oculus is taking a wash on the hardware. Oculus Co-Founder and VP of Product, Nate Mitchell, revealed to TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook earlier today that the company is selling the hardware at cost in an effort to kickstart the VR ecosystem. This is on top giving away 7, 000 Oculus Rift units to early Kickstarter backers. At $600, … Read More

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Oculus Co-Founder Confirms The Rift Will Be Sold At Cost

Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

Andrew Cunningham Intel’s new Compute Stick has a better-looking design. 7 more images in gallery Intel’s original Compute Stick  was an neat idea that ultimately wasn’t executed very well. Any system based on one of Intel’s Atom processors is going to be a little slow, but flaky wireless, inconsistent performance, and a clunky setup process all made it less appealing than it could have been. It had all of the hallmarks and rough edges of a first-generation product. Today Intel showed us its next-generation Compute Sticks, and it’s clear that the company is taking seriously the criticism of the first model. There are three new versions to talk about: the lowest end stick uses a Cherry Trail Atom CPU and is the closest relative to the first-generation Compute Stick. The other two use more powerful Skylake Core M processors—one has a Core m3-6Y30 processor, and another has a Core m5-6Y57 CPU with Intel’s vPro management features enabled. All three sticks share the same basic design. The first-generation stick used a bulky, glossy plastic housing that made it look and feel more like a reference design than an actual shipping product, but all three new models switch to a softer, curvier case that looks more refined. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

Snapchat closes its lens filter store despite decent sales

You probably wouldn’t give up hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue a month, but then you’re not Snapchat . The social app will close down its popular lens store this Friday after opening it just a couple of months ago. As a reminder, with the camera in selfie mode, you can add a variety of free or 99 cent filters that make you a snowball target (above) or let you puke out rainbows, for example. The company will let you keep the lenses you’ve already bought, of course, and will eventually offer many of the paid lenses for free. Snapchat told Business Insider that it shut down the store in order to focus on its advertising business, despite the fact that it was selling tens of thousands of filters per day. However, the company will still sell sponsored lenses to businesses like Beats for hundreds of thousands of dollars, reportedly. Snapchat has been trying to monetize its millions of users of late, but has run into to trouble due to a lack of data on how many people actually interact with the app. We’re sure the $10 billion company will figure it out, but in the meantime, if you want to get some lens filters, grab them by January 8th. Via: Business Insider Source: Snapchat

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Snapchat closes its lens filter store despite decent sales