Hasta La Gadget!

Have a third-gen Apple TV and an iDevice running iOS 7? If you’ve yet to set up Cupertino’s set-top box, you can do so now by simply touching your iPhone or iPad to the Apple TV. Okay, Apple’s take on Bump requires a few more steps than that; you’ll first need to enable Bluetooth on your iOS 7 device, then connect to the WiFi network you’ll use with the Apple TV. (Your machine also needs Apple TV software 6.0 or later.) Still, it sure beats the labor-intensive process of selecting letters on-screen with the included remote. Once you’ve tapped your iPhone to the set-top box, prompts should appear on both the phone and the TV screen, and you’re good to go. Give it a whirl for yourself — Apple’s directions are available via the first source link below.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile, Apple

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Via: TUAW

Source: Apple Support (1), Apple Support (2)

Valve announced Steam Machines today, a living room game console that launches at some point in 2014. The company also announced a hardware beta for its own version of the console; the beta starts this year. Today’s news is the second of three planned announcements this week meant to expand the company’s digital game distribution service, Steam. The company’s issuing just 300 hardware prototypes in 2013 — “free of charge, for testing” — and you can enter to become one of those lucky 300 through your existing Steam account (an “eligibility quest” was added to Steam’s quest page that will guide you through the process).

Valve says that a variety of “Steam Machines” — the new name for the company’s “Steambox,” a living room gaming console for playing PC games — will become available next year “made by different manufacturers,” including Valve itself. The hardware beta, which we first told you about many moons ago, only includes Valve’s version of the Steam Machine. All the machines will run SteamOS, the operating system that’ll power Valve’s big living room push (it was announced earlier this week). There aren’t any specs given for the various devices. Valve says that, since there will be a few different options, there’ll be “an array of specifications, price, and performance” when we learn more “soon.” It sounds like the 300 beta testers can share their experience with the rest of us, though, as Valve’s asking for loud, public feedback.

Apparently the beta will include “the nearly 3,000 games” that are available on Steam including the “hundreds already running natively on SteamOS.” Everything else is streamable, says Valve. In terms of using a mouse-and-keyboard setup in your living room, Valve says that’s an option, but “we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input.”

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD

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New hardware without a software refresh? Don’t make Jeff Bezos laugh. Today’s arrival of three new slates also marks the unveiling of the company’s latest tablet operating system. And this time, it even has a name. See, Amazon’s been using “Fire OS” internally to describe the software powering its tablet line, and now we get to use it as well, with the arrival of version 3.0. As ever, Bezos and Co. have based the OS on Android (Jelly Bean, this time out), with this year’s codename being “Mojito” — a move from candy names to sugary cocktails. The operating system will ship on the new HDX and HD devices. We weren’t able to confirm that it will roll out to older devices, but an Amazon rep we spoke with implied that there’s a good chance of that, given earlier precedents.

First thing’s first: there’s still no Google Play access. No surprise there, of course. After all, the company’s in the habit of subsidizing the cost of its hardware based on future content sales. Still, as ever, the company was quick to point out the speed with which its proprietary app store has grown in recent years. UI-wise, things look familiar. Content is still king, with the home screen built around a river of apps, games, movies, music, et cetera. The company did respond to customer concerns, however, by adding a more familiar grid-style layout that you can access with a swipe up, which should appease all you Android users out there. Swipe from the right, and you’ll see Quick Switch, which lets you switch between different recently used pieces of content.

Filed under: Tablets, Software, HD, Amazon

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RealNetworks is trying something a little different with its attempt at launching a cloud service in a very competitive market. It’s combined its upgraded player app with 2GBs of free cloud storage, allowing users to move videos across devices, stream or download them and beam them out to compatible TV sets (via Roku). The new service also means you can share “long videos” from your Android / iOS device to any other video-capable device, and the end-user won’t need to download an app to play it. This is possible through RealPlayer’s new ‘SurePlay’ tech, which auto-formats outgoing videos to the suit screen-size, available bandwidth and storage space of receiving devices. There’s no shortage of compatible hardware, either. Alongside apps Google’s mobile OS and iOS, videos can also be shared or viewed through Windows PCs, Roku TV units and, in fact, any device that can use a web browser. If 2GB sounds a little tight, subscription plans will start at $5 per month for 25GB, and up to $30 per month for 300GB, for those that really can’t stop sharing. We’ve added RealNetwork’s Consumer-facing Matrix (read: price chart) after the break.

Filed under: Internet, Software, HD, Mobile

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Gigabit internet access is all the rage these days, and C Spire is entirely willing to give in to peer pressure. It just announced an upcoming C Spire Fiber to the Home service that will supply 1Gbps internet access and IPTV to Mississippi residents sometime in 2014. Exactly where it arrives will depend on feedback, however. Much like Google, C Spire wants both municipal governments and residents to plead their case; the more vocal regions will get service first. Only local leaders can solicit C Spire at this stage, but everyone else will get their chance starting on September 30th.

Filed under: Networking, Internet, HD

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Source: C Spire