At the E3 Expo in Los Angeles this week, Nintendo unveiled its new Wii U console and Wii U Gamepad. According to Nintendo: “at its core, Wii U changes gaming, how you interact with your gaming friends, and it changes the way you enjoy your TV.”
Nintendo’s Reggie Fils Aime announced during the keynote that new partners will provide content to the Wii U, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and YouTube.
The Gamepad features a pressure-sensitive touchscreen and directional pad. It will also include an NFC reader/writer and a gyroscope/accelerometer, as noted earlier by ETCentric. The new controller enables viewing of multiple screens — on the TV and the Wii U Gamepad.
This two-screen group play gaming experience could be the prototype for a new in-theater gaming and socializing experience. It could also create a new category of “third location” places in competition with Starbucks and other coffee shops.
“The company is also introducing MiiVerse, which Nintendo refers to as a Main Street for gamers,” reports TechCrunch. “Each of your friends will be displayed there in avatar form, and you’ll be able to share screen images, send text messages, and display your recent scores within the bubble hovering above your Mii.”
The Wii U is expected for a holiday release. No pricing information was provided.
HBO continues to add more devices and platforms that support its HBO GO service. The latest to get the app is the Amazon Kindle Fire.
Now owners of the Fire who pay for the traditional HBO cable service also have access to the content digitally. The free HBO GO app allows users to access all of the network’s original programming, along with licensed movies.
“For HBO, the latest app release is just part of a larger strategy of getting on as many devices as possible, enabling subscribers HBO GO from tablets and mobile devices, as well as on streaming boxes and connected TVs, and last but not least, on PCs through their Web browsers,” reports TechCrunch.
“By doing so, HBO hopes to give viewers a reason to keep paying for the cable network on top of their basic cable subscriptions.”
Boxee has launched Cloudee, its new cloud storage solution. The company is currently offering the service as a free beta app for the iPhone.
Cloudee allows users to privately share videos without posting them on YouTube or other sites.
“For a while now, it’s been painful to get our personal videos to the TV screen — our Road Trips, Boxee Meetups, family videos with our kids,” explains Avner Ronen, founder and CEO of Boxee. “Some of these videos were on our phones, others on our laptop or network storage, and the ones we really wanted to see were always taken by our friends.”
“Already a de facto leader in the cloud computing space, Apple offers a similar service through its iCloud photostream service, which the company is expected to relaunch shortly,” reports MediaPost. “As with Apple customers, however, Cloudee is not insisting that its users sync their devices to gain access across multiple platforms.”
Boxee plans to launch a future paid version of its cloud service featuring unlimited video storage. Subscribers will have access to their video content via a Boxee Box or any browser.
Just two months following the release of its new Excite tablets, Toshiba has unveiled its summer lineup of ultrabooks, featuring three new devices.
Expected to hit shelves by June/July for under $1,000 is the updated Portege Z935 and the new low-cost Satellite U845. However, it’s Toshiba’s super widescreen Satellite U845W drawing the initial buzz.
Set for a July 15 release at $1,000 and up, the U845W runs the latest Intel Core processors and touts a 500GB hard drive, up to 8GB of RAM, a 1792 x 768 display, and a 32GB or 256GB solid-state drive.
“Instead of a standard widescreen, Toshiba has built this guy with an extremely widescreen, with a full 21:9 aspect ratio; the world’s first laptop with a screen wide enough to fully display a fully widescreen film,” reports Digital Trends. “We found watching movie trailers and other video to be quite enjoyable on the 14.4-inch super widescreen, which has large speakers on either side, which provide louder sound than I’ve ever heard from a laptop.”
The Satellite U845W includes an Ethernet port, SD card slot, HDMI port and three USB 3.0 ports.
“Toshiba is also positioning this as a multitasker’s dream laptop,” notes the post. “New software lets you easily create Window layouts and snap windows into new formations and grids. We’re not sure why Windows doesn’t already have these features, but we like them.”
At the Society for Information Display’s Display Week show in Boston this week, Corning unveiled Willow Glass — a strong and flexible glass that the company plans to use for OLED and LCD displays in smartphones and other wireless devices.
Corning claims the new technology will enable devices that are lighter, thinner and possibly less expensive to manufacture.
“Corning expects Willow Glass will eventually lead substrates to be manufactured ‘roll-to-roll’ instead of ‘sheet-to-sheet’ — similar to how newspapers are printed,” explains Engadget.
The cousin to Corning’s Gorilla Glass, the new ultra-thin glass can withstand heat up to 930 degrees Fahrenheit, and could potentially lead to the production of curved displays that could be wrapped around a device or structure.
“Corning Willow Glass is formulated to perform exceptionally well for electronic components such as touch sensors, as well as leveraging glass’s natural hermetic properties as a seal for OLED displays and other moisture and oxygen-sensitive technologies,” notes the press release.
In addition to CE devices such as smartphones and tablets, the technology may be used for other applications including solar cells and lighting.
The Engadget post includes the Corning press release and a brief video demo.
The International Telecommunications Union has agreed to a new draft recommendation on tech details for Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV).
Interestingly, the ITU has agreed on a draft recommendation for two resolutions — 3840 x 2160 and 7680 x 4320.
“The resolutions will be called 4K and 8K,” reports SlashGear. “The 4K standard will have a resolution of 8-megapixels with the 8K version getting 32-megapixels.”
There is no timetable for the commercial release of UHDTV, but the post suggests it may not take too long, considering the recent decline of global TV sales and slow adoption of 3D TV.
“However, it could take much longer for broadcasters to adopt higher-resolution programming,” notes SlashGear. “The first place to see higher-resolution images would likely be from movies on Blu-ray or other formats.”
According to a recent press release from the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the organization has “announced the approval of the ATSC NRT (Non-Real-Time) Content Delivery standard, a backwards-compatible enhancement to digital TV broadcasting that provides a framework for the delivery of a broad range of exciting new services. The new ATSC NRT standard is designated as A/103.”
Delivery of non-real-time services via A/103 will “allow broadcasters to deliver file-based content, including programs and clips, information for emergency alerts and even commercial applications such as digital signage.”
The new broadcast standard will support terrestrial transmission and mobile DTV receivers.
“ATSC’s new NRT standard gives broadcasters the capability to deliver all types of file-based content to consumers,” explains ATSC President Mark Richer. “Using broadcast television, programmers will be able to send content that a viewer may watch at their convenience.”
The release cites several anticipated applications for NRT services including: “Push Video-On-Demand (content ranging from short-form video clips to feature length movies); news, information and weather services; personalized TV channels; music distribution; [and] reference information on a wide range of topics.”
“This will make broadcast more competitive with satellite, cable and Internet services,” notes ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld.
Early reviews for Microsoft’s Windows 8 are trickling in, and Business Insider notes they are so far “extremely negative.” Will Windows 8 become the next Vista?
“In my time with Windows 8, I’ve felt almost totally at sea — confused, paralyzed, angry, and ultimately resigned to the pain of having to alter the way I do most of my work,” writes Farhad Manjoo for Slate.
“Windows 8 looks to me to be an unmitigated disaster that could decidedly hurt the company and its future… The real problem is that it is both unusable and annoying,” notes John Dvorak for Marketwatch.
“I still think it’s needlessly confusing and hard to use… I’ve spoken to other people who have been testing Windows 8 for months,” adds analyst Matt Rosoff. “A lot of them found it puzzling like I did, and it’s getting worse, not better, with each beta update.”
If consumers agree with these evaluations, they may just put off upgrading their systems or switch to a Mac or iPad. The article notes that this could be disastrous for Microsoft and possibly mark the beginning of the end for Windows dominance.
“It’s dangerous to predict the decline of Windows. People have been doing it for years and it’s amounted to nothing. Microsoft is a powerful, resilient company,” comments Business Insider. “However, if ever there was a time when it was ready to fall, that time is now. Apple is at the top of its game. And, if the critics are even half-right, Microsoft is at the bottom of its game.”
By 2016, Cisco estimates that annual global IP traffic will grow from 369 exabytes in 2011 to 1.3 zettabytes (equal to a trillion gigabytes).
Similarly, the number of devices will grow from 10.3 billion in 2011 to 18.9 billion in 2016. This amounts to some 2.5 connections for each person on earth!
There will be 3.4 billion Internet users in 2016 amounting to 45 percent of the world’s population. Broadband speeds will increase from 9mbps to 34mbps.
Average global IP traffic is estimated to reach 150 petabytes/hour. Cisco says this is equivalent to 278 million people streaming an HD movie.
Consumer video is a major growth driver with Internet video users almost doubling to 1.5 billion by 2016. The amount of video will increase to 1.2 million video minutes over the Internet every second.
While PCs accounted for 94 percent of consumer Internet traffic in 2011, this will fall to 81 percent with the increased use of tablets, smartphones and TVs.
Customers will be able to buy Samsung’s Galaxy S III from any of the four major carriers and U.S. Cellular later this month. The phone will cost $199.
According to AllThingsD, “Samsung’s Galaxy S phones have traditionally provided the iPhone with its closest sales rival” and the newest phone plans to challenge the iPhone with its introduction of S Voice, a voice recognition system meant to operate similarly to iPhone’s Siri.
“The Galaxy S III runs the latest version of the Android operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich) and has a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD touchscreen and an eight-megapixel camera, as well as a front-facing 1.9-megapixel camera,” notes the article.
President of Samsung Telecommunications America Dale Sohn boasts that “Galaxy S III introduces new technological innovation and takes sharing to the next level.”
The Galaxy S III hit shelves in Europe last week. The international version runs on a quad-core processor, whereas the U.S. phone will include a dual-core processor.
Sony revealed its NEX-FS700U Full HD super slow motion camcorder at that NAB Show in April and since then has accepted nearly 1,000 pre-orders, according to one Sony executive.
The new camera, scheduled to be available in late June, is priced at around $10,000 and captures footage at up to 960 frames per second.
“The camcorder supports full HD quality at 120 and 240 frames per second in a 16 or 8 second burst mode respectively,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter. “Its 480 fps and 960 fps at reduced resolution are available.”
“The NEX-FS700U uses a new 4K Super 35 CMOS sensor, and Sony said it is planning a future firmware upgrade aimed at enabling the camera to output 4K bitstream data over 3G HD-SDI when used with an optional Sony 4K recorder,” notes Giardina.
Netflix upgraded its iOS app last week by improving upon some existing functionality and adding new features.
The streaming video service has updated the iPhone and iPad software by enlarging the scrub bar to make it easier to navigate through videos, enlarging the volume controls, and adding icons for switching between language choices.
Additionally, a “do not share” option is now available in the player for Facebook users who want to keep their video choices private.
CNET highlights the scrub bar update: “The bar itself is bigger and better, letting you more easily navigate to any section of your video. Thumbnails now appear above your finger on the scrub bar so you can travel to a specific scene of your favorite TV show or movie. You can also rewind 10 seconds at a time.”
According to the Netflix blog, the same features will soon be available for Android users.
Web designer Jake Caputo and coder Dominic Balasuriya teamed up to collect data on how much people would be willing to pay for access to a standalone HBO GO subscription.
After collecting over 2,000 data points in tweets, the consensus seemed that people would pay slightly over $12 per month for access to HBO programming and movie releases on tablets, phones, and connected TVs.
Caputo created the site takemymoneyhbo.com and Balasuriya wrote a script to analyze the data stream coming from tweets with the hashtag #takemymoneyhbo.
HBO currently makes $7 to $8 per subscriber per month.
TechCrunch speculates that even though HBO could hypothetically make more money per user by opening HBO GO access to everyone (currently users must have HBO through their cable provider to have access to the service), offering HBO GO without the cable tie-ins would not only anger cable companies, but would increase distribution and sales costs.
The Walt Disney Company already allows sports fans to watch ESPN on mobile devices using the WatchESPN app, and soon Disney Channel fans will experience the benefits of the TV Everywhere trend with a similar app that provides access to Disney Channel content on mobile devices.
“TV networks have been increasingly embracing TV Everywhere, the industry term for letting paying cable and satellite customers watch TV on mobile devices,” explains Ad Age. “The strategy is intended to make cable and satellite subscriptions more appealing and undermine the threat from streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.”
Disney will first offer the app to Comcast customers. CEO Bob Iger described the deal as “an important step because it delivers more value to the multichannel distributor and it delivers more value to the customer.”
The company plans to bring ABC Family and ABC to its streaming offerings in the future, reports Ad Age.
Two of Napster’s founders, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, introduced their newest project on Tuesday, a video chat site called Airtime.
It allows users to chat with Facebook friends or strangers using a webcam. “Users can search for chat partners based on their interests, shared social connections and location. Once connected, they can talk, type messages or even watch YouTube videos together,” explains The New York Times.
“The downside of all our interactions online is that they are constrained by the social graph,” notes Parker. “There is a gaping hole that exists. Facebook shrunk the world and constrained our interactions to the 500 people that you are connected to.”
Airtime was inspired in part by the chatting service Chatroulette, which randomly pairs people together online for video chats. But Airtime is taking precautions against some of the problems that users ran into on Chatroulette, namely the fact that many were paired up with chatters unclothed.
“To combat that, they have built in a number of systems, including facial-recognition software that sends up a flag if no faces are detected on camera, and a ranking system that scores people based on their interactions. People who are frequently ‘nexted,’ or passed over for another partner, will have a lower ranking than those who stay in lengthy chat sessions,” details the article.
Airtime has already attracted financial backers, raising close to $40 million in venture funding thus far.
At the E3 Expo in Los Angeles this week, Nintendo unveiled its new Wii U console and Wii U Gamepad. According to Nintendo: “at its core, Wii U changes gaming, how you interact with your gaming friends, and it changes the way you enjoy your TV.”
