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Google Fiber is officially coming to Austin, Texas

Hear that? It’s Austin, being weird enough to add yet another reason to live within its city limits. As rumored , Google Fiber will be rolling down to one of Texas’ most esteemed towns in the near future, joining the Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri metro as the only locales (so far) in the US of A offering the outfit’s Fiber-based TV, phone and 1Gbps broadband services. Mum’s the word on an exact rollout, but we’ll update this post as we learn more. Filed under: Internet , HD , Google Comments Source: Gig.U

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Google Fiber is officially coming to Austin, Texas

Netflix signs up The Matrix, Babylon 5 creators to develop a new sci-fi series: Sense8

Continuing its quest to sate subscribers’ appetites with a flow of original content, Netflix has announced a new original series, Sense8 . Due in late 2014, it’s being developed by the Wachowskis of The Matrix , V for Vendetta , Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer fame, as well as J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 . Details are thin, but the press release promises a gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted with a ten episode run for its first season. As it did with House of Cards , Arrested Development and other productions, Netflix is relying heavily on data from viewers to decide which programs to support. According to chief content officer Ted Sarandos, ” Andy and Lana Wachowski and Joe Straczynski are among the most imaginative writers and gifted visual storytellers of our time,” whose creations are very frequently viewed on the service. According to the creators themselves, they’ve sought to work together for a decade, and this idea started from a late night conversation about “the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us.” If that’s not enough for now, then t here are a few more details and quotes in the press release, which is included after the break. Filed under: Home Entertainment , HD Comments

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Netflix signs up The Matrix, Babylon 5 creators to develop a new sci-fi series: Sense8

Netflix Cloud Prize offers over $100,000 in rewards to cloud computing gurus

Netflix has a vested interest in fostering cloud computing — after all, that’s increasingly the company’s core business . Accordingly, it’s not going to just sit around and wait for a breakthrough. The subscription service is kicking off its Netflix Cloud Prize competition in the hopes that developers can move technology a little faster. Programmers who build upon Netflix’s open-source code before September 15th can win from a pool of $100,000 spread equally among 10 categories, ranging from performance improvements to what has to be our automatic favorite: “best new monkey .” Each winner also gets $5,000 in Amazon Web Services credit, flights to Las Vegas and a spot at Amazon’s user conference this November. The challenge won’t completely make up for the end to Netflix’s public API, but it does show that at least some tinkerers are welcome in the streaming video giant’s world. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments Source: Netflix (GitHub)

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Netflix Cloud Prize offers over $100,000 in rewards to cloud computing gurus

Redbox Instant exits private beta and launches to the public

Redbox Instant , the video-streaming service from Verizon, is launching to the public today. This launch follows a three-month closed beta test , and it comes about a month after the company’s announcement that the service would come to the Xbox 360 as a console launch exclusive. To jog your memory, Redbox Instant offers users unlimited access to some 4,000 movies in addition to four DVD rentals at $8 a month. Content partners include heavyweights like Warner Bros and Epix , the latter of which offers content from Viacom, MGM and Lions Gate Entertainment. Speaking to GigaOM , Redbox Instant CEO Shawn Strickland said his product’s focus remains movies — both physical and digital — which differs from Netflix’s TV-heavy library and emphasis on web content. Strickland also said that, while talk of any exclusive content is “really premature,” it could be an option down the road. In addition to offering Xbox 360 support, the service is open to iOS and Android users, along with those who own a Vizio, LG, Samsung or Google TV product. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD , Verizon Comments Via: GigaOM

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Redbox Instant exits private beta and launches to the public

Netflix changes its public API program by ending it, will no longer issue new dev keys

Once upon a time, Netflix was proud enough of its public API which enabled third-party services and apps to serve up its data and content in different ways that it opened a gallery to display them. Unfortunately, times have changed since 2009 — the old App Gallery is gone and now, so is public API access for new developers. A blog post indicates the API is now focused on supporting Netflix’s official clients on the many devices its customers use to stream movies, not hobbyist projects for managing ones queue or finding new movies to watch. While those already in place should still work since existing keys will remain active, the developer forums are being set to read-only, no new keys are being issued and new partners are no longer being accepted. The move is reminiscent of recent changes by Twitter , where as each company has grown it’s decided having control over the user experience through its own official apps outweighs allowing the community to build and extend access as it sees fit. We’re sad to see the program go, as many of these tools assisted Netflix members in ways the official website and apps either never did, or no longer do after the features were removed . Even though Netflix relies on its own secret sauce for recommendations, we’ve always found it hard to beat InstantWatcher’s curated lists (by year, Rotten Tomatoes rating, critic’s picks, titles most recently added by other users and more) to find a video, and FeedFliks was indispensable for monitoring exactly how valuable the service is until its features were cut down by API changes. They provided an edge the competition like Amazon Prime and Redbox couldn’t match, but we’ll have to wait and see if this change is noticed by enough subscribers to matter — we’ve seen how that can go . Filed under: Home Entertainment , HD Comments Via: TechCrunch Source: Netflix Developer Blog

Canonical announces Mir, a custom display server that will serve up future versions of Unity

The X Window Server has been serving Linux users faithfully for the better part of a decade. And Ubuntu has been using the standard-issue display server to push its GUI to monitors across the globe since its color scheme was more sludge than slick . Canonical originally planned to replace the aging X with another display server called Wayland, but the developers apparently couldn’t bend the compositing-friendly protocol to their cross-device whims. So, Mir was created. The goal for Mir is to easily scale from the TV, to the desktop, to tablets and phones while providing “efficient support for graphics co-processors.” That means Canonical is relying heavily on GPU acceleration, which will require the cooperation of manufacturers like NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and others. As part of the cross-form factor convergence, Unity will be getting a rewrite entirely in QT and QML (the current version uses a Nux-based shell on the desktop). The Unity Next project will incorporate several core components from the Ubuntu Touch interface, inching the Linux OS closer to its goal of a truly unified codebase. Mir should make its debut on the mobile variants of Ubuntu soon, with Canonical aiming to get the UI unified and stable in time for the next LTS in April of 2014. For some more technical details check out the source links. Filed under: Software , HD , Mobile Comments Via: OMG Ubuntu 1 , 2 Source: Ubuntu 1 , 2

CNN finally adds live TV streaming access to its Android phone app

While some of us try to avoid mainstream media and the accompanying Things You Should Be Afraid Of Today reporting, sometimes we need a place to go for 24/7 coverage of a disabled cruise ship, and CNN is always there. Now it’s there on Android too, after launching live streaming of both CNN and HLN on iOS back in 2011 a new update for its Android phone app has brought the feature (and the classic “This is CNN” greeting by James Earl Jones) to the platform. You’ll still need to be a subscriber to a participating cable TV service to actually watch the feed, but getting your dose of Anderson Cooper on the go is as simple as inputting your account details, and then you’re set. Feature parity — who doesn’t love it? (Android tablet owners, Windows 8 users, Symbian…) Filed under: Cellphones , Home Entertainment , HD , Mobile Comments Source: Google Play

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CNN finally adds live TV streaming access to its Android phone app

LG Display invests $655 million to expand OLED HDTV mass production next year

Sure, LG’s current 55-inch OLED HDTV is pretty pricey with a US MSRP of $12K, but that may start to change next year when panel supplier LG Display kicks its new 8G production line into full gear. LG Electronics holds a 38 percent stake in the company and although it supplies screens to many others as well, the next generation of 55EM9700s will likely be a large segment of the displays produced. Although LCD manufacturers ramped up 8G facilities capable of producing six 55-inch displays from one piece of glass in the late 2000s, oversupply caused prices to drop and manufacturing to slow down, including at LG Display . Now, new display technology is ramping up investment again, which will see this new line installed at its P9 plant in Paju, South Korea at a cost of 706 billion won ($655 million). Based on LG’s WRGB OLED evaporation process, it should be capable of working with as many as 26,000 input sheets per month once it’s up to full speed in the first half of 2014. Chief competitor Samsung showed off “production” OLED HDTVs last year and plenty of demo units at CES with a mid-year release planned, we’ll see if it manages to keep up before / if the tech goes mainstream. Filed under: Displays , Home Entertainment , HD , LG Comments

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LG Display invests $655 million to expand OLED HDTV mass production next year

WSJ: Sony will use Gaikai streaming tech to play PS3 games on the PS4

We’re just a few days away from Sony’s February 20th “see the future of” PlayStation event where we expect to see the next edition of its home console, and the rumor mill is buzzing. The latest one tonight comes from the Wall Street Journal , with a report that connects Sony’s $380 million purchase of cloud gaming service Gaikai last year with a method to provide backwards compatibility on the PlayStation 4. The WSJ reports Sony has been “investing heavily” in preparing Gaikai for an influx of PS4-equipped gamers, while also developing better cameras for its Move and the DualShock+touchpad controllers we’ve seen recently. What’s not revealed however, is any potential pricing plan, or whether cloud games will work users existing cloud saves. While buying fully digital copies of games we already own is less than appealing, if Sony can implement something like the abandoned UMD-to-PSP Go “good will” plan , then there may be benefits for all. In the last gen Sony used hardware, then software and then nothing at all for backwards compatible gaming, while Microsoft went all software — we’ll see how it balances out this time around. Filed under: Gaming , HD , Sony Comments Source: Wall Street Journal

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WSJ: Sony will use Gaikai streaming tech to play PS3 games on the PS4

Netflix and DreamWorks to launch original show for kids in December

While Netflix is trying to lure in the grown-ups with the launch of House of Cards , it’s not leaving kids without their own choice of original material. DreamWorks plans to follow up the July release of its animated movie Turbo with a Netflix-only series, Turbo FAST , in December. The episodes will arrive on the service roughly in line with DreamWorks’ 2013 slate of movies, including Turbo . Young viewers may well be happy, but Turbo FAST and the larger DreamWorks deal could be that much more satisfying for Netflix itself — they’re potential foils to Amazon’s multi-show plans that could keep some subscribing families from jumping ship. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments

Ken May

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