Hasta La Gadget!

Word comes by way of The Wrap that PBS is slated to air the very first TED Talk produced for TV on April 16th, and it’ll feature Bill Gates, to boot. The special sets its sights on discussing education and will include the likes of educators Geoffrey Canada and Sir Ken Robinson alongside Microsoft’s co-founder. In advance of the broadcast, the program will be taped at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater on April 4th. There’s no word on whether tickets are up for grabs to attend the event, but we’d start searching for friends who know Gates if you’d prefer the live experience.

[Image credit: World Economic Forum, Flickr]

Filed under: Misc, Alt

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Via: The Verge

Source: The Wrap

It’s not hard to find a media app with some type of favorites system. It’s tougher to find one that lets us be very specific on just what a favorite can be. The new aTV Flash (black) 2.1 update, however, will let Apple TV modders be as exacting as they’d like: they can favorite individual videos, whole seasons and even broader search terms. Catch-up viewers get their own treat in the form of TV show playlists that simplify watching episodes back-to-back. A slew of further tweaks are inside, including iOS 6 support, so there’s every incentive to upgrade for those who rely on not-quite-official firmware for Apple’s living room hub.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Apple

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Source: Firecore

If you’ve been waiting for cable companies to offer a la carte options, you’ll be waiting a pretty long time. Following comments made by three cable company executives during a panel at CES 2013 last week, it appears as though such subscriptions as a la carte options will remain a fantasy for at least five years, and likely even longer.

Verizon, DISH, and Starz Media are all well aware that many subscribers would love to cut their cable bills down and choose only the channels they watch most often, rather than paying one huge bill for hundreds of channels that will go unwatched. However, Dave Shull of DISH says that, because of various costs, he doesn’t see that happening anytime soon.

Shull said that two companies alone account for about 50% of the DISH’s cost for content, one of them being Disney. If DISH were to unbundle the channels, the cost of the priciest channels would be spread across fewer subscribers, which would mean much higher prices. Shull mentions that mini-packages of related shows, such as sports and family programming, that subscribers can pay for on top of basic cable are about as close to a la carte cable as the industry will get for now.

The panelists acknowledged that the high cost of cable is driving some customers to cancel their service in favor of streaming options. However, John Penney of Starz Media says that these kinds of streaming services will never give customers access to premium content, because an $8 monthly subscription isn’t enough to cover the expense of licensing top shows.

However, this doesn’t mean that other companies aren’t working on similar solutions. Intel was rumored to be introducing their own cable and web TV options at CES, and while we didn’t hear anything about that during the show, it’s possible that it’s still in the making. Of course, Apple could also have something in the works as well. We know they’re rumored to out some new TV hardware, but it’s possible they could have more cable options coming to Apple TV in the future.

[via Tech News Daily]

Cable subscription models unlikely to change in next five years is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung has thrown its 85-inch S9000 Ultra HD television up for pre-order in Korea, though you’ll need deep pockets as well as a big living room in order to snap up the expensive next-gen-tech set. The first sets will be priced at a whopping 40 million Korean won – or around $37,867 – though Samsung will only be offering 77 units initially, to commemorate its seventh consecutive year as the number one TV sales performer worldwide.

Your money gets you a 3840 x 2160 LED backlit panel in a distinctive “easel” frame, which has 120W of speaker power integrated into the surrounding bar. Samsung will also have 95- and 110-inch versions for sale later in the year, though is yet to announce any pricing for the larger models.

Still, before you whip out your wallet, it’s worth remembering that there isn’t much to actually watch on your new Ultra HD behemoth. Even Samsung concedes that it’ll be 3-5 years before the technology gets anywhere near the mainstream, with upscaled 1080p content having to suffice until then.

Samsung S9000 Ultra HD eyes-on:

Despite the shortages of things to watch, we can see the S9000 becoming a popular item buy among those claiming cachet by their outlandish purchases, and as a halo product in Samsung’s TV range it certainly is eye-catching. For the rest of us, we’ll probable have to wait until Ultra HD sets become a little more conservative before jumping on the resolution bandwagon.

Want Samsung’s 85-inch Ultra HD TV? Check your pockets for $38k in change is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Haier had a pretty formidable booth here at CES, so naturally, we had to swing by and cast our eyeballs over anything and everything there. A wall of TVs greeted us, which turned out to be the company’s 2013 Roku-ready HDTVs and Android-packing smart models. Screens were everywhere, but there was also a table with some finger-friendly equipment like 9.7-, 7- and 5.3-inch HaiPads, as well as a Windows 8 laptop, touchscreen all-in-one and tab / laptop slider. The slider looked pretty nice, but all the aforementioned hardware was set up in Chinese, so we lost interest pretty quickly. A central hall booth wouldn’t be the same without a 4K TV, but not to worry, Haier had a couple on display — unfortunately, glare from all the other screens dotted around kind of dampened their impact.

What we were most interested in was all the prototype technologies on show, but all the Haier reps were from the US sales department, so not a soul could talk about the demonstrations. The eye-controlled TV we saw at IFA last year was getting quite a lot of attention, while the mind-controlled set we’ve also seen before was almost certainly playing a looping video to give the illusion something was happening. There were also several gesture-controlled models, but one wasn’t working and the other was hosting a very basic Kinect-type game. A ping-pong game played with a “Sensory Remote” was also up on one TV, but looked unresponsive and therefore, unfun. A multi-view demo using dual 3D specs did what it was supposed to, and a glasses-free 3D TV prototype showed nice depth as long as you were 12+ ft away (the camera can’t really replicate the effect, but there’s a quick video of it below anyway).

The booth also had a household section which we thought was safe to ignore, until a “wireless blender” caught the eye. “It’s just a blender with a battery in it, surely?” this editor asked. “No, there’s an inductive coil built into to the underside of the counter,” was the reply. Thus was our Haier experience at CES, and to revisit it through our eyes lens, check out the gallery below.

Kevin Wong contributed to this report.

Continue reading A look around Haier’s CES 2013 booth: HaiPads, plenty of panels and a wireless blender

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Displays, Household, Laptops, Tablets, HD

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