According to a report from BuzzFeed, YouTube is developing a new 360-degree live video service. ‘Multiple sources’ informed the publication that the Alphabet-owned video streaming company is looking to expand its existing lineup of 360-degree and VR content by enabling live broadcasting.
Spotify recently added new Video and Audio Shows, and this week the update has been rolling out to Android users. It’s an interesting move for a streaming service that has long been dedicated to being the best at music (and it’s still the leader in this space by far), but I think this update will come as a delightful value-add for those that have shifted to using Spotify as their main avenue of media consumption…
Expand
Expanding
Close
According to a report this morning from The Wall Street Journal, Spotify is getting ready to finally launch its video content offerings. The rollout is set to start with the Android app getting video by the end of this week, but the iOS app is following suit by the end of next…
Expand
Expanding
Close
Following the keynote during CES 2016, we’re taking a closer look at the Huawei Mate 8. This is a beast of a phone with some pretty boss specifications and today we’re ding a brief unboxing and overview to see what it’s all about…
YouTube’s chief business officer Robert Kyncl took the stage today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to discuss the future of the video platform, its growth over recent years, and much more. Kyncl has been with YouTube since 2010, previously having a seven-year stint at Netflix. The executive oversees all business functions for YouTube, including sales, marketing, content, and general operations.
Huawei announced a lot of stuff yesterday. Press day at CES 2016 started with a huge press conference from Huawei, featuring the Mate 8, MediaPad M2, the Huawei Watch, and a gold Nexus 6P, and the day ended with Huawei’s Honor brand announcing the Honor 5X and the Honor Band Z1. It’s a lot to take in, and we’re only just now starting to dig in so that we can bring you full reviews for these products over the coming weeks. We did get some hands-on time with some of these devices yesterday and today, though, and you can find that video below…
Google introduced us to the holiday season last week with a humorous ad starring characters from The Simpsons, but now its robotics branch has given us a slightly more terrifying look at the future of this joyous time of year. Google’s Boston Dynamics robotics company has shared a video of a trio of robotic reindeer pulling a sleigh, and it’s grade A creepy.
360 degree video has taken off this year, and now yet another creation use of the technology is hitting YouTube. Just in time for the holidays, the White House has taken to YouTube to upload a 360 degree video tour of the decked out temporary residence and workplace of the President of the United States.
Beyond just being a 360 video that you can pan around, this video also offers 3D options for those that have a pair of classic 3D glasses laying around. Also, as with any 360 degree video on YouTube, you can also head over to your mobile device and pan around the video using your phone’s gyroscope. There’s also Google Cardboard support.
YouTube today has shared a new video on its YouTube For Business channel that highlights the advertising opportunities that exist on the platform. The video features the popular characters from the hit TV series The Simpsons and shows Lisa using YouTube advertising to help advertise Homer’s “Mr. Plow Snow Removal” business.
Many of Google’s internal projects go unannounced for a variety of reasons, but now we’ve uncovered one of them thanks to a year-old video hidden deep in the archive of a Silicon Valley filmmaker’s Vimeo account. Called Project Blackrock, this initiative from Google sought to make quadcopters autonomous with the help of a pair of cameras and a computer…
Facebook video sharing has been emerging over the past year as a serious competitor to YouTube. Last year, a report showed that more and more Facebook pages were uploading videos directly to the social network itself as opposed to uploading to YouTube and sharing the link. Despite these reports, however, YouTube views are staying strong this holiday season for one of the biggest cultural trends of the year: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Yahoo today released a new “Yahoo Video Guide” app for mobile devices that acts as one central location for users to find content from across a long list of competitive video services and networks.
The app allows users to search from one place and then offers links to buy or start streaming the content in other apps like Amazon, Netflix, HBO GO, and many others. So you’ll still need to be a subscriber, have the app downloaded, and or purchase the content once the Yahoo Video Guide app redirects you.
And while you can just search for something you’re looking for, the app also has a Mood Picker feature that lets users pick a from GIFs to search through curated lists.
Yahoo of course has its own Yahoo Screen app for mobile devices, but it also links to content on iTunes, Amazon Video, Hulu, Netflix, HBO GO, ABC, FOX, CBS, NBC, Xfinity, YouTube, A&E, BET, Cartoon Network, Cinemax, Comedy Central, Disney, Food Network, and others. In total it says it’s promoting over 30 video services through the new Video Guide app.
The Yahoo Video Guide Android app is available to download for free in the US.
We’re fast approaching the end of the year, and before we hit CES-season and look forward to some of the new devices hitting the market in 2016, it’s time to look back at some of the devices that won our hearts and impressed us during this year. First up, we’re starting with some of this year’s best budget phones…
Update: Just like the multiple account support that disappeared mere hours after it appeared, this awesome 3D Touch feature is now gone.
Instagram for iOS has had 3D Touch features for quite a while, but it looks like the Instagram team wanted to experiment with bringing some of these to Android as well. While the latest version for Android obviously doesn’t take advantage of force sensitive hardware (which doesn’t really exist of this side of the mobile space anyway), it does add a nifty new pop up for quickly liking, commenting, and sharing posts…
Meet the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium. Sony’s smartphone lineup is known for a couple of things that make it popular: incredible cameras and waterproof durability. And it’s safe to say that both of those boxes are checked here. But this time around, Sony added a new category: stupidly high resolution. The Z5 Premium packs the first 4K display on a smartphone, but is it all worth the hype?
With the consumer version of the Gear VR now available for purchase in stores, Samsung is ramping up what owners can do with their $100 purchase. Besides playing immersive games and watching Netflix in a faux home theater, users can now surf the web on their virtual reality headset…
In a clever new video, Motorola has proven — albeit while also advertising its Moto X — that we just can’t keep our hands off of our phones for as much as one minute. It’s perhaps not the most well-designed scientific experiment, but it’s interesting nonetheless the temptation we have to reach for our phones when they start buzzing, even in situations where we probably shouldn’t.
In this case, Motorola (or, more accurately, Ashton Kutcher) told unknowing victims that they were “running an experiment” that required them to keep their hands in two circles on a table. After they closed the door to leave the suspects in the room by themselves, they started sending notifications to their phones. As might be expected, the participants just couldn’t wait to check them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUZai-kGgA
A while back, we took a look at Samsung’s new Gear S2 smartwatch, which is probably the best oneswe’ve seen released in 2015. Well, Samsung actually made two versions of this watch. Meet the Gear S2 Classic and damn, does this thing look good…
Expand
Expanding
Close
This is the OnePlus X and in some ways, it’s the best budget smartphone you can buy, but allow me to elaborate. This is basically a OnePlus One packed inside of a smaller and more premium body, for less money. With that, you’re getting mostly the same specifications and performance, which makes it a big win in my book. But before we get into everything you need to know, let’s get the truly negative things I have to say out of the way…
As was widely rumored, T-Mobile has today announced at their UnCarrier X event that customers can now stream unlimited video from certain services without impacting their data caps. The new program is called Binge On (not all too different than the company’s previously-launched Music Freedom in principle), and the list of compatible services includes many favorites like ESPN, Netflix, HBO Now, and more. The company also announced new Simple Choice plans…
Expand
Expanding
Close
Meet the Blackberry Priv. And in case you’re curious, that stands for “Privilege of Privacy” thanks to its super strength data encryption. What makes this phone unique though comes from a couple of places. First off, it’s a BlackBerry phone running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop and second, that physical keyboard. But before you instantly dismiss this new smartphone, let’s take a look under the hood…
With YouTube video as the motivation, Chrome recently received some enhancements to make the video experience as smooth as possible across devices. Dubbed “Project Butter” (not that Project Butter), YouTube engineers worked together with Chrome engineers to make optimizations to video playback.
YouTube engineers walked us through their thought process with the optimizations in a blog post:
Your device’s screen redraws itself at a certain frame rate. Videos present frames at a certain rate. These rates are often not the same. At YouTube we commonly see videos authored at 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 48, 50, 59.94, and 60 frames per second (fps) and these videos are viewed on displays with different refresh rates – the most common being 50Hz (Europe) and 60Hz (USA)… For a video to be smooth we need to figure out the best, most regular way to display the frames – the best cadence. The ideal cadence is calculated as the ratio of the display rate to frame rate. For example, if we have a 60Hz display (a 1/60 second display interval) and a 30 fps clip, 60 / 30 == 2 which means each video frame should be displayed for two display intervals of total duration 2 * 1/60 second.
Using that math, the team was able to come up with an algorithm that will allow Chrome to auto adjust to the optimal settings based on the display and the quality of the video being streamed. The improvements were introduced with Chrome 44:
In Chrome 44, we re-architected the media and compositor pipelines to communicate carefully about the intent to generate and display. Additionally, we also improved which video frames to pick by using the optimal display count information. With these changes, Chrome 44 significantly improved on smoothness scores across all video frame rates and display refresh rates… Smooth like butter
YouTube has more on the enhancements for video in Chrome 44 in its blog post here.
Google’s original Project Butter debuted with the announcement of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, as an initiative to make the Android experience smoother and more user-friendly. For its purpose, the project was a success — Android 4.4 went on to become one of the most stable and beloved versions of Android yet, and was succeeded by Lollipop, a complete revamp that reinvented Android from the ground up.
As you may know, the current stable release of Chrome is version 46, and version 44 stable was released a few months ago.
Today we’re comparing the forth generation Apple TV to the NVIDIA Shield. These are quite possibly the two best set top boxes out right now. I won’t be going into every little detail here, but instead the things that are most important for myself. But before we get in-depth with either option, let’s take a look at specifications between the two…
This year Google decided to change things up a bit and release not one, but two new Nexus devices, with different builds, and different price points to satisfy a wider range of people. So there’s the LG-made Nexus 5X that starts at $379, which I recently reviewed, and then we have the Huawei-made Nexus 6P that starts at $499. These two options aren’t very far apart in terms of pricing, but the difference between them is pretty significant in a few areas…
