Hasta La Gadget!

Gaming giant Activision Blizzard announced it’s buying out most of majority shareholder Vivendi’s stake, at a total price of about $8.2 billion. Activision will pay about $5.83 billion in cash to Vivendi for 429 million shares, while an investment group led by CEO Bobby Kotick and co-chairman Brian Kelly will pick up 172 million shares for $2.34 billion, leaving Vivendi with 83 million shares, or about 12 percent of the company. The publisher of titles like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft (and Guitar Hero before it ran that into the ground), Activision reported $1.05 billion in net revenue for Q2 and raised its full-year revenue outlook slightly, although full results won’t be available until August 1st. As Joystiq mentions, Vivendi has been unsuccessfully trying to sell its part of the company for nearly a year, hopefully this transaction works out the best for everyone. By everyone, we mean people still waiting for StarCraft: Ghost.

Filed under: Gaming, HD

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Via: Joystiq

Source: Activision

If you were one of those who took a chance on M-Go when it entered the internet streaming arena in January, listen up: you have a new way to enjoy your flicks now that it’s rolling out an app for Vizio Smart TVs. This is the latest addition to the growing roster of compatible devices that you can use to rent / buy movies and TV shows on the subscription-free, pay-as-you-go service. Besides the new app, looks like M-Go’s also making an effort to stay true to its “people-friendliest” promise by revamping its website for easier navigation. These developments might make M-Go harder to dismiss for potential users despite many similar services out there, and who knows — if it continues to expand its offerings, more people could give it a second look in the future.

Filed under: Internet, HD

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Source: Vizio

C’est ne pas une fleshlight.

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Chromecast, the nifty $35 HDMI dongle from Google, was being offered alongside a free three months of Netflix promotion that had been offered on a limited basis. That promotion has already run out, with Google stating that the free service offer has been cancelled. Shortly after that, the Chromecast itself sold out entirely.

The Chromecast brings video streaming to one’s living room in a very small form factor, with the dongle being about the size of your average USB drive and plugging directly into the TV. With a price tag of only $35, the device already stood apart, but the Netflix promotion perhaps pushed it over the edge – three free months of service was a value of about $24, reducing the overall cost of the device to nearly nothing.

There was a very short period between the device’s announcement and the time it went live for sale on the Google Play Store. The shipping time was originally set for immediately, but switched over not too long after to a shipping time of 3 to 4 weeks. As our friends at Android Community noted, the Chromecast is now sold out at Google Play, as well as Best Buy and Amazon.

It is not surprising, then, that the Netflix promotion has already run out. Google told the LA Times in a statement, “Due to overwhelming demand for Chromecast devices since launch, the 3-month Netflix promotion (which was available in limited quantities) is no longer available.” It followed this up with confirmation that those who bought the device before the promotion ended will still be able to redeem their free Netflix service.

If you head over to your local Best Buy, you might still have luck grabbing one in person, but otherwise you’re looking at a few weeks of waiting, and you won’t be getting a Netflix promo code with it. Curious about the device, but not sure if it’s your thing? We have everything you need to know about it for you over in our SlashGear 101.

SOURCE: Android Community

Chromecast sells out as Google cancels Netflix promotion is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s Chromecast dongle has already blown through its supply of Netflix discount codes and now that they’re in the wild all sorts of people are taking a look at how the devices work. For example, CJ Heres of GTV Hacker points out a configuration file that appears to list testing apps for Chromecast. While most of the services named in the file are those already announced (Netflix, Revision3, Google Play Music, Pandora etc.) and other devs working on support for AOL On and Songza, there’s also an entry for HBO Go. Google told Wired yesterday streaming from the website should work out of the box, however other sites they mentioned will work, like Hulu and Rdio, are not listed in the file, so we may see official app support sooner rather than later.

DIYers may have other reasons to be interested however, as Leon Nicholls posted on Google+ about his findings on how the device works as a DIAL server. His tests suggested there is potential for controlling it from outside of Chrome based on how it responds to some commands. Hit the source links for more info, and let us know if you’ve found any other services that already work.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Google

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Source: Pastebin, Google Chromecast config (TXT), CJ Heres (Twitter), Leon Nicholls (Google+)