Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re a Netflix user who happens to be upgrading to Windows 8 today, then you’ll be pleased to know that the video streaming service has gone into detail about its Windows 8 app. Now available on the Windows 8 Store, the Netflix app lets you browse and watch content without actually going to the Netflix site, and it’s been engineered to work with both touch controls and the more traditional mouse and keyboard. Netflix director of product innovation Michael Spiegelman and engineering manager Matthew Trunell have even put together a little video that walks users through all of the new features of Netflix on Windows 8.

The Netflix Windows 8 app isn’t all that different from Netflix on other platforms, but there are few cool features that are worthy of a mention. For instance, Netflix has introduced a new feature called “Semantic Zoom,” which allows users to pinch and zoom out on the Home screen to see a broad overview of their recommendations. You can use Windows 8′s search function to find TV shows and movies within the Netflix app, and Netflix has also included a drop down ribbon at the top of the screen that you can use to get back to the Home screen or browse through the top 10, new releases, and genres. Have a look at the video below for more information on this new Netflix Windows 8 app.

Interestingly, Forbes is reporting that Netflix stock was trading up today after rumors of a potential Microsoft buyout hit the Internet. We’re not sure if Microsoft actually is planning to purchase Netflix, but the fact that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently stepped down from Microsoft’s board of directors has some people thinking that a deal is in the works. Whether or not that’s actually the case, Netflix’s stock is up this afternoon, ending the trading day up $8.07 and settling at $69.58.

That’s a pretty significant gain of 13.12%, so investors must be excited about something. It’s worth pointing out that in after hours trading, Netflix has lost a bit of what it gained during the day, dropping $0.78 or 1.12%, but even when you count that, Netflix still had a great day. The question now becomes – is Microsoft truly plotting a buyout, or is all that nothing more than speculation? Hopefully we’ll be finding out soon.

[via Netflix Blog]

Netflix details Windows 8 app as rumored Microsoft buyout leads to stock jump is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As the third quarter of 2012 comes to a close, companies have been announcing their Q3 2012 earnings for the past several days, and today Netflix posted up their earnings for all eyes to see. The streaming company boasted a growth of two million more subscribers during Q3, and earned $8 million in net income.

Netflix now has 29 million subscribers worldwide, with 25.1 million of which are located in the US. And aside from the $8 million that the company earned, they posted a global revenue of $905 million. However, their DVD business hasn’t been doing so well. The company reported a drop to 8.61 million subscribers from 9.24 million during last quarter.

Netflix says that its streaming members have watched over three billion hours of content combined (which includes the obsessive couple of hours that I spend streaming Parks and Rec on the weekends). TV shows, specifically, now account for about two-thirds of all streaming on Netflix. That isn’t too surprising considering that the service arguably has a better selection of TV shows than movies.

The company iterated that it wants to focus on original content, although that focus will involve some major expenses, but the company says that it believes “investment in originals is wise, and we will evaluate the performance of the slate next year to determine at what level we should fund additional original.”

Netflix posts up Q3 2012 earnings is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This Monday it became apparent that Amazon’s cloud services were knocked out in several sectors, this resulting in downtime for major websites and environments such as Reddit, Github, Minecraft, and Flipboard. Amazon has previously had similar events to these happen to their servers, with overheating and automatic shutdowns being blamed in those cases – now we’ve not quite got an official statement from the company even after a significant chunk of the day has passed. In other words – Reddit is down, it’s not just you.

Today’s outage appears to be centered around their EC2 operations with Amazon’s status for the area currently flipped to “performance issues.” This status does not include official word from Amazon as of yet, but the cards do not lie. The EC2 status as listed by Amazon’s own Amazon Web Services status listing have gone from “degraded performance” at 10:30 AM PDT to “new launches for EBS backed instances are failing” closer to 11:30 AM PDT.

You can watch the updates yourself at Amazon’s Web Services update page while you wait for the web giants to come back – meanwhile we’ll be following along and updating you from SlashGear here as it happens as well. The current statuses surrounding North America, especially in the Eastern region of the states, let us know that Amazon is not only seeing outages in several areas, but that re-launching said services is currently a no-go.

If you have a peek at Outage Analyzer you’ll find that they’ve made it clear that Amazon’s outages have likely affected nearly 100 domains across North America up through Canada and Alaska as well as through the UK and surrounding countries. The outage remains open through the 3PM CST hour. This list of downed sites continues to grow with Airbnb, Heroku, and Netflix being added here right before this post is published – stay tuned!

UPDATE: 3:10 PM CST – Affected sites list grows – Pinterest, FastCompany, FourSquare added. Failures appear sporadic as some sites appear to be up and running intermittently while others remain down for the count.

UPDATE: 4:19 PM CST – Several sites (including Reddit) appear to be coming back up for air now here and there – of course heavy loads are expected due to the mass amounts of cat pictures that were waiting to be uploaded and viewed.

Reddit, Netflix, Flipboard taken down in Amazon cloud failure [UPDATES] is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Every TV maker trying to avoid total commoditization has a special trick to keep its designs unique and worth a higher price. For JVC, that trick is sound. It’s launching the BlackSapphire line of LCD-based 3D TVs with the 55-inch, edge LED-lit JLE55SP4400, whose signature is an unusually powerful built-in audio system: the 45W system and 3D processing supposedly produces surround sound without having to line the living room with extra speakers. Odds are that the set won’t provide much competition for dedicated speakers, although JVC is promising more integration beyond this with rare built-in SlingPlayer TV streaming, just in case there’s a Slingbox in another part of the home. The all-in strategy could make the inaugural BlackSapphire more of a bargain than it looks: that $1,300 you’ll pay when the screen ships this month might be all you need to start watching.

Continue reading JVC intros 55-inch BlackSapphire LCD TV with 45W virtual surround sound, SlingPlayer

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

JVC intros 55-inch BlackSapphire LCD TV with 45W virtual surround sound, SlingPlayer originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Boxee Box — that sucker had a ton of hype behind it, but things don’t always work out. After two years of fighting Roku, Apple TV and, to a lesser extent, Google TV for market share, Boxee has drastically rethought its approach. The $99 Boxee TV marks a new chapter for the company with a focus on live TV and a streamlined consumer experience. Baked right inside the matte plastic case is a dual tuner capable of pulling in unencrypted basic cable channels and over-the-air HD broadcasts. There’s a slick guide to help you navigate but, most importantly, the slimmed down software sports DVR functionality. The Boxee TV has no internal storage, however, instead all your recordings are stored online in a “No Limits” DVR. For $15 a month you’ll be able to save as many shows as you want and watch it on your TV or on your computer, tablet or phone through an HTML5 webapp. The DVR service will be rolled out to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington DC to start, with other markets set to come online in 2013.

The selection of apps is not quite as robust as it is on the legacy Boxee Box, but CEO Avner Ronen has settled on a quality over quantity approach. Netflix, VUDU, Pandora, YouTube and Vimeo will come preinstalled on the Boxee TV and other apps will follow. But we wouldn’t expect to see Know Your Meme or PornHub on there anytime soon. Some of the other losses are a little harder to swallow for fans of the original hardware. The move from Intel to a Broadcom SOC means the streaming options for locally stored media are much less robust. There’s DLNA support, but many other networking protocols have fallen by the wayside. The beloved QWERTY remote has also bitten the dust, replaced with a much simpler device that sports dedicated Netflix and Vudu buttons. Even the distinctive “sinking cube” design has been replaced with a basic rectangle that’s barely distinguishable from other settop boxes. You can sign up for more info at the Boxee site where you’ll also be able to preorder the Boxee TV ahead of its November 1st launch.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

Boxee TV delivers dual-tuners and cloud-based DVR for $99 November 1st originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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