Hasta La Gadget!

The CRTC is eager to shake the cobwebs from Canada’s TV regulations, many of which got their start before cable arrived, let alone Netflix or YouTube. Accordingly, it’s planning a round of consultations in the fall that will ask both the public and the industry what rules they want to change. Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais expects the discussion to center around the CRTC’s approach to internet content — some of the old licensing restrictions might not apply when it’s easier to both publish and watch online video. The agency isn’t likely to create a utopia full of cord cutting and à la carte TV subscriptions, but its recent attempts at fixing a broken cellular market give us hope that at least a few broadcasting policies could change for the better.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

Comments

Via: The Globe and Mail

Source: CRTC

If you’ve been thinking of adding speakers around the house but are loathe to run wires, Pure’s Jongo system is now available in North America, joining the likes of Sonos’ Play:3 in the wireless multi-room sound game. For now, it consists of the $129 Jongo A2, a WiFi- and Bluetooth-equipped bridge (at bottom) that spreads “perfectly synchronized” sound to different rooms, and the $199 Jongo S3 portable speaker (top left). The products will work on their own by receiving Bluetooth sound from your handheld device, together with other Pure devices like the Sensia 200D or with your existing sound system, thanks to digital and analog audio outputs on the A2. The Pure Connect iOS app coordinates the hardware and also lets you stream your local playlists, along with 15 million tracks from the Pure Music subscription service. You can deck out either product with the room-coordinating grilles (above) at $30 for the S3 and $20 for the A2, while a Jongo T6 100W flagship speaker will join the party later in the year at an undisclosed price. To see where to grab them, check the PR after the break.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Wireless, HD

Comments

Ask Netflix Vice President of Product Innovation Todd Yellin what makes the streaming giant special, and he’ll start telling you about algorithms, test groups and suggestion engines. “It’s the revolution of TV,” he explained to us at E3. “They used to send out a TV show and then they’d have no freaking idea who was watching it, how much they were watching … it was just Nielsen diaries.” A woefully inaccurate way to track content consumption, Yellin suggested. Netflix, on the other hand, can tell what folks are watching, when they are watching it, for how long and even on what device. Netflix uses all this information to offer users extremely specific suggestions and categories based on their recent use. The problem is, many families share a single account, and all their different tastes mix into a nonsensical mess. “You and your wife might have very different tastes,” Yellin explained. “Why can’t you have a profile, and she has a profile?” Separating the users on the family account would allow each user to get tailored suggestions based on their personal viewing experience. “We’re finally launching it this summer.”

Yellin pulled out an iPad, and showed the user-based sorting in action. It’s pretty simple: loading up the app offers the user a one touch choice between profiles, which then drops into that person’s tailored Netflix experience. Profiles can be aged locked, ensuring that profiles for children will only load up Netflix’s kid hub — fitting, since jumping between profiles is very similar to the firm’s existing parental control solution. All in all, it seemed to be a very lightweight and pain free experience. The feature might not be useful for every Netflix user, but it sounds like a boon for families with wildly different tastes in content.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD

Comments

SmartGlass is nothing new — it’s the second screen solution Microsoft introduced for its Xbox legions. But for the release of the Xbox One console, the company decided to update the experience and extend the functionality. Culling feedback from the many developers and gamers that have downloaded the app since its initial release, Microsoft came to some near unanimous conclusions: gamers use it as an Xbox Live controller and devs love its use of HTML and Java. So where to go from there? If you’ve been paying attention to any of the company’s E3 announcements, you’ll know that the newly updated SmartGlass app now includes support for in-game DLC purchases, gameplay assists and a DVR-like replay feature. We spent a little time sifting through the new app on the showfloor, so follow along for our initial thoughts.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, HD, Mobile, Microsoft

Comments

Nintendo’s Wii U may not be the main star of this year’s E3, but that doesn’t mean the company’s sitting this year out. Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Bayonetta 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD were just some of the titles that Nintendo’s showing off this week. We’ll direct you to our friends at Joystiq for more detailed impressions of Nintendo’s E3 2013 lineup, but we’ve got a quick run through the aforementioned quartet of titles — what we consider to be Nintendo’s biggest games at the big game show. Join us past the break for a video and our impressions.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Nintendo

Comments