Hasta La Gadget!

With football and new TV series premieres, we’re ready to call it officially fall. Keep an eye out for brand news shows like NBC’s Go On and The New Normal, as well as returning favorites like Glee on Fox and the various talent show competitions. Look below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames.

Monday Night Football
Football is back, and it’s Monday night, so you know what that means. Hank Williams Jr. is no longer a part of the festivities but the action hasn’t changes. We’ve got a doubleheader lined up with Bengals/Ravens followed by Raiders/Chargers, so wrap up those bedtime stories and get in front of the TV.

Sons of Anarchy
It may not rise to the level of Breaking Bad or Justified but Sons of Anarchy is one of our other favorite cable TV series, and its new season gets started this week. SAMCRO is dealing with conflict from within and, judging from the previews, out side the club as well. We’ll see how the addition of Jimmy Smits to the cast affects this show.
(September 11th, FX, 10PM)

Weeds
At long last, the Showtime series comes to an end this weekend. Some might say it should’ve wrapped up a couple of seasons ago, but if you’re still following the Botwin clan and their assortment of friends, enemies and drug-dealing associates it’s time to say goodbye.
(September 16th, Showtime, 10PM)

Continue reading Must See HDTV (September 10th – 16th)

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

Must See HDTV (September 10th – 16th) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yes, we know Android is holding steady at about 52 percent of US smartphone market share. What’s interesting is just who’s driving growth as a whole. According to Nielsen, 58 percent of American teens between 13 and 17 now have a smartphone — that’s a big jump from 36 percent a year earlier and a sign that the youngest owners have a significant sway over where the market is going. Not that young adults don’t have an impact. Although the 25-to-34 crowd isn’t making as big a comparative leap, its smartphone ownership has climbed from 59 percent to a dominating 74 percent in the same space of time.

No matter how much youth set the pace, it’s clear Android is still having an effect. Among the US smartphone buyers Nielsen tracked in the three months leading up to July, 58.6 percent went Google’s direction. Most of that gain came from BlackBerry owners switching allegiances, which doesn’t bode well when RIM is counting on existing owners to fuel BlackBerry 10 demand. We’d be careful about citing a one-point shrink in iPhone sales as a shift in the balance of power, however — while it could be part of a trend, it could also represent the habitual lull in Apple’s sales during the weeks before a major iPhone introduction.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Nielsen: more than half of US teens now own smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s in a name? Quite a bit, if you ask the Rural Cellular Association. It’s becoming the Competitive Carriers Association to reflect a membership shift from smaller providers that often serve the countryside to a much more urbane roster that includes Clearwire, Sprint and T-Mobile, on top of grown-up existing members. Not surprisingly given the advocacy group’s recent bedfellows, the name switch also emphasizes the attempt to resist a consolidation of power in US telecom — CCA membership is limited to carriers with under 80 million subscribers, which conveniently excludes heavyweights AT&T and Verizon. Although rebranding is a symbolic gesture first and foremost, the group is no doubt hoping the name will make its intentions clearer the next time a big spectrum swap rolls around.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

Rural Cellular Association rebrands as Competitive Carriers Association, mirrors its move to the big city originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Movies encoded in UltraViolet’s Common File Format represent just one of multiple takes on paid internet video — what’s to make them stand out? The answer might just be Dolby Digital Plus audio encoding, which should be a staple feature of CFF from now on. A newly ready development kit lets producers feed the multichannel sound to hardware and apps that can recognize it, including web-based avenues like Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming, Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming and MPEG’s DASH. Just in case a few devices fall through the cracks, Dolby is talking directly with digital production firms like castLabs, Digital Rapids and Elemental Technologies to make sure the audio codec’s implementation truly spans platforms. We don’t know how soon movies will take advantage of the upgrade, but the Dolby addition lends weight to a fledgling format that might have as fierce a battle in home theaters as it does on PCs and tablets.

Continue reading UltraViolet movie format to use Dolby Digital Plus encoding, keep sound thumping across platforms

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

UltraViolet movie format to use Dolby Digital Plus encoding, keep sound thumping across platforms originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 11:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Continue reading Refresh Roundup: week of September 3rd, 2012

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile

Refresh Roundup: week of September 3rd, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Sep 2012 21:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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