ipad – Page 253 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

MGM and Universal commit to Dolby’s HDR imaging tech

Over the past year, Dolby’s worked hard to convince many of the major movie studios and streaming services that its HDR imaging technology is the one worth backing. Netflix, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures are already on board, but today they’ve been joined by MGM Studios and Universal Pictures, after the studios confirmed they’ll deliver “new release and catalog titles” that have been mastered in Dolby Vision. High dynamic range (HDR), if you’re not already aware, transforms the way you see HD and 4K media. The technology doesn’t change the number of pixels your TV works with, it just makes them do more. Dolby Vision, for example, delivers increased brightness, better light-to-dark contrast and colors that the company says have been seen before on a TV. As with many new digital technologies, the uptake of HDR could be impacted by a battle over competing standards. The UHD Alliance is tackling the issue, though, and has issued specifications for what it considers to be a ‘premium’ 4K TV . Any set that meets the required resolution, color depth and brightness and black levels will be issued with a sticker that proves it can deliver the best possible experience from your Ultra HD Blu-rays or 4K streams from Netflix and Amazon. Dolby is also working to get TV makers on board, recently announcing that it will feature on Vizio’s latest range of 4K TVs. The company is also working with Roku to incorporate the technology into future 4K Roku TVs, regardless of who they’re made by. Source: Dolby

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MGM and Universal commit to Dolby’s HDR imaging tech

Razer’s gaming Ultrabook lets you bring your own video card

If you’re a gamer, you don’t have it easy when buying laptops: you may want a sleek, lightweight Ultrabook when you’re traveling, but you also want the big, powerful desktop replacement when you’re home. What to do? Razer thinks you can have both. It’s launching the Blade Stealth , a 12.5-inch ultraportable with some proper gaming cred. Its centerpiece is an optional Thunderbolt 3 -powered dock, the Core (below), that lets you use most any modern desktop graphics card when integrated video won’t cut it — if you just have to play Battlefront at max detail with a GeForce GTX 980 Ti , you can. It has Ethernet and four USB 3.0 ports, too, so you only need to plug in one cable to get all your usual peripherals. It’s still a solid machine even if you’re more interested in Facebook than Far Cry . The base $999 Blade Stealth begins with a dual-core 2.5GHz Core i7, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB solid-state drive and a quad HD (2, 560 x 1, 440) screen. It’s light at 2.75 pounds, and you’ll even see Razer’s multi-hued Chroma lighting on the keyboard. Spring for higher-end models (which top out at $1, 599) and you’ll score up to a 4K display and 512GB of flash storage. The Blade Stealth ships this month, and you can get it at Microsoft Stores in February if you need to see it in person. However, the Core doesn’t have either a ship date or a price. That makes it a real wildcard: if it’s expensive or takes forever to ship, the combo won’t be quite so alluring. Nonetheless, this may be your best shot at a best-of-both-worlds laptop. Source: Razer

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Razer’s gaming Ultrabook lets you bring your own video card

PlayStation Now just got 40-plus new PS3 games

Sony announced the addition of more than 40 PS3 games to its Now service, bringing the total number of available PS3 games to 300, 100 of which are PS3 exclusives . Additionally, Sony’s offering a pretty steep discount on the Now service itself for the holidays — $100 for a full year’s subscription . That’s more than half off what they normally charge. The discount offer runs through Monday, January 11th. [Image Credit: Getty]

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PlayStation Now just got 40-plus new PS3 games

Lenovo says the Yoga 900s is the world’s thinnest convertible

It’s that time of year again: Lenovo whips out some impossibly thin and light laptop. Last CES it was a 1.7-pound notebook , and this year it’s the Yoga 900s, a half-inch-thick, 2.2-pound machine that Lenovo claims is the world’s thinnest convertible laptop. Indeed, I had a chance to handle it in person and it really is absurdly, impressively thin and light. (I know, we always say that. But still.) Before you get too excited, though, it appears that the 12-inch Yoga 900s is the spiritual successor to a machine that … we didn’t like very much. That would be last year’s Yoga 3 Pro , a super-slim model that ultimately got a lukewarm review on account of its sluggish performance and mediocre battery life. The new Yoga 900s is even thinner and lighter, but it too runs on Intel’s watered-down Core M processors, which makes me think the performance isn’t going to be better. Lenovo says the battery life will be longer (up to 10.5 hours), but that appears to be with a lower-resolution screen, not the QHD (2, 560 x 1, 440) option. One thing you’ll get here that you won’t on the Yoga 3 Pro: active pen support. That’s something you won’t even get on the recent Yoga 900 , Lenovo’s similar but higher-performing flagship machine. If you can do without the pen support, though, and don’t mind a little extra heft, you’ll get better performance from the current Yoga 900. Undeterred? The 900s lands in March for $1, 099 and up. That’s not the only impressively thin and light machine that Lenovo unveiled today. The company also took the wraps off a more mid-range notebook called the 710s, which keeps its weight (and price) down by forgoing a touchscreen. All told, the 13.3-inch system comes in at 2.6 pounds and half an inch thick. And though it tops out at a fairly middling 1080p screen resolution, it makes up for it with up to a sixth-gen Core i7 processor, Intel Iris graphics and a PCIe SSD. Expect that to ship in July (just in time for back-to-school season), priced from $799. I saved the least interesting for last. In addition to those two skinny laptops, Lenovo also announced the Ideapad 700, a beefier machine with either a 15- or 17.3-inch 1080p screen and up to a Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and optional discrete graphics (a 4GB NVIDIA X950M on the 15-incher and a 4GB X940M on the 17-inch version). Both are offered with up to 1TB in HDD or hybrid storage, or with a PCIe SSD (128GB or 256GB). As you’d expect for models this size, they’re not particularly light (5.1 and 5.9 pounds, respectively) and the battery life is relatively short: up to four hours. Look for those in June, starting at $799.

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Lenovo says the Yoga 900s is the world’s thinnest convertible

LG’s New 4K OLED TVs Are Just Four Credit Cards Thick

That silly scifi dream of invisible screens that magically display graphics is inching towards reality. Thanks to LG, the world can now lust after a television that looks like it’s nothing more than a pane of translucent glass—and a very thin pane of glass at that. Read more…

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LG’s New 4K OLED TVs Are Just Four Credit Cards Thick

Vuze camera shoots 3D VR video for under $1,000

You can already get affordable virtual reality cameras , and low-cost 3D cameras have existed for years. However, getting both in one package is another matter — it’s entirely possible to pay a five-digit price if you’re not careful. That’s where HumanEyes’ new Vuze camera (no, not that Vuze ) just might save the day. The UFO-like rig combines eight cameras to capture 3D VR footage for $899, or low enough that you can get one solely to make amateur Google Cardboard videos. It promises to be headache-free, too, between a new seamless image stitching technique and quick, near real-time processing. The gotcha? Vuze won’t ship until August, so you probably won’t be using it to document your summer vacation. It will ship with goggles, a selfie stick and a tripod, though, so you may well have everything you need to shoot and preview the VR footage you were hoping to get. Here’s hoping that this represents the start of a trend: it might not be long before VR creation is practical for just about anyone with a bit of cash and the willingness to dabble in a relatively new format. Source: HumanEyes Technologies

Intel, Warner sue over device that strips 4K copy protection

The media industry was more than a little alarmed when 4K bootlegs of Amazon and Netflix streams showed up this November. Weren’t these feeds supposed to be relatively safe from pirates? It’s no surprise, then, that they’re doing something about it. Intel (through its Digital Content Protection brand) and Warner Bros. are suing LegendSky for offering HDFury, a series of devices designed to strip HDCP copy protection from many sources, including streams. The two plaintiffs claim that HDFury violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention measures, making it all too easy to rip and share 4K video. They also allege that LegendSky is dishonest when it says it meets HDCP’s licensing requirements. LegendSky hasn’t said how it’s handling the lawsuit, although it may not have much success fighting back. As TorrentFreak notes, 4K stream rips started surfacing mere days after the first HDFury boxes started shipping. Even if Intel and Warner can’t draw a direct link between the two events, the timing certainly looks suspicious. And while HDCP is notorious for being a nuisance to legitimate viewers, it’s not very likely that people are buying HDFury solely to reclaim some convenience. As it stands, it wasn’t too hard to see this coming. With 4K Blu-ray movies on the way, Warner and other studios are no doubt eager to minimize the related piracy before it really takes off — streaming was just the tip of the iceberg. Source: TorrentFreak

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Intel, Warner sue over device that strips 4K copy protection

Netgear transforms your power plug into a fast WiFi hotspot

2016 is here, and the flying cars and hoverboards are disappointing , to say the least. Worse yet, we still can’t get a decent internet connection in our man cave, but Netgear is at least trying to solve that problem with a string of new devices for CES 2016. The most interesting is the PowerLine WiFi 1000 , a product the company claims is the first to marry gigabit powerline (aka HomePlug ) with 802.11ac WiFi. (The Devolo DLAN 1200+ also does the trick, but it’s only available in Europe.) The idea is to plug the base unit into an electrical plug and hook it up to your router, then plug the WiFi extender into another socket. You can then connect via 802.11ac WiFi in a remote room to your device of choice. That should help you avoid connection woes in remote sections of your house or behind walls. However, powerline connections often fail to work well in houses with “noisy” electrical setups and speeds are always much lower than the maximum specified. Nevertheless, it could may solve a problem dead spot in places where you can’t run an ethernet cable and WiFi extenders won’t do the trick. The Powerline WiFi 1000 Kit is now available in the US for $119.99. Speaking of WiFi range extenders, Netgear also launched the Nighthawk X4 AC2200 (2.2Gbps) and AC1900 (1.9Gbps), the first such devices to feature Multi-User MIMO tech. What that jargon means is that the extenders multitask by sending separate WiFi streams to each user so that everyone gets faster speeds with less waiting. Both devices have 802.11ac WiFi, Beamforming+ and four internal antennae that cover up to 10, 000 square feet. The units are now available in the US for $169.99 for the X4 AC2200 and $139.99 for the slightly slower AC1900. Netgear also unveiled the Nighthawk X4S AC2600 router , a mid-priced model aimed at the gaming and streaming set. The company said it built on its popular Nighthawk X4 AC2350 router by adding a bunch of new features like quad-stream architecture on both 2.4 and 5GHz bands, Multi-User MIMO and 160MHz bandwidth. The company claims that the latter feature will provide better support for upcoming smartphone tech. The other features, meanwhile, will let you connect more devices and stream faster with lower latency and higher bandwidth. Other features include a pair of USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA port to easily add storage to the device, which also functions as a smart hub. It’s also got VPN support for secure remote access and the MyMedia app for DLNA connectivity. The Nighthawk X4 AC2350 is now available at a suggested price of $269.99 in the US.

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Netgear transforms your power plug into a fast WiFi hotspot

Windows 95 on a Nintendo 3DS is as strange as you’d think

The trend of putting PC software on wholly impractical devices isn’t stopping with the new year, folks. GBATemp fan Shutterbug2000 has managed to get Windows 95 running on a New Nintendo 3DS XL thanks to both DOSbox emulation and some ingenuity. You won’t be doing a whole lot with this right now — Microsoft wasn’t designing for touchscreens and analog sticks two decades ago — but it really does work on a basic level. It looks more than a little odd, too, between the tiny desktop and the emulator status on the second screen. The real challenge may be to run any meaningful software beyond the operating system. As great as it would be to run classic Windows games on a modern handheld, it could be a long, long while before you’re doing much more than staring at the home screen. Even so, this because-I-can feat is pretty impressive… and it’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to a portable Microsoft gaming system . Via: NeoGAF , Kotaku Source: GBATemp.net

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Windows 95 on a Nintendo 3DS is as strange as you’d think

Now we can 3D print ceramics

Despite being able to build just about anything with 3D printing, until now items have been limited to polymer plastics, a handful of metals and glass . However, researchers at HRL Laboratories have announced a significant advancement in additive manufacturing: the ability to print ceramics . The trick, the HRL team figured out, was to not heat ceramic powder. Doing so generates too many microscopic flaws that can lead to cracks and fractures. Instead, the team developed a material they’re calling “preceramic polymers” that convert to ceramic when heated. Essentially, the HRL team prints out the 3D design using these preceramic polymers and then fires the resulting item (like in a kiln) to harden the material into ceramic. This material is compatible with stereolithography , a popular 3D printing method wherein a laser is used to solidify a liquid polymer. What’s more, the team figures it can print out a highly detailed and complex ceramic part 100 to 1000 times faster than conventional stereolithography by using an ultraviolet light and patterned masks. This advancement could prove a boon to the aerospace industry which already relies on ceramic components for everything from wing panels on planes to the internal mechanisms of orbital rockets. DARPA has awarded the team a development contract for an ablative ceramic aeroshell — essentially a heat shield for spacecraft as they enter an atmosphere — as HRL’s ceramics are reportedly 10 times stronger than the ceramic foam currently commercially available. [Image Credit: Getty] Source: MIT Tech Review

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Now we can 3D print ceramics