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Digital media needs to grow beyond its Wild West roots
From games to books and TV shows, the quality of digital media is still wildly inconsistent
The media industry has always made occasional quality gaffes. Lack of continuity happens, rare bugs creep into games, etc. What's taking place now, though, few have noticed, but for me, it defies belief. Gaming tablets and streaming box owners, loyal fans of hit shows and familiar gaming franchises, did you know that the content on one store rarely matches another?
Three hidden Chrome OS 91 features you should enable right now
Quality of life improvements to your Chromebook
It's been a few days since Chrome OS 91 landed on Chromebooks, which introduced helpful features like Nearby Share and a competent media player. Following its release, we've been digging into the new update and uncovering even more that could improve your Chromebook experience. Here are three experimental but helpful features we've found that you can try right now.
Kodi 19.1 arrives with official Xbox support and a ton of bug fixes
It hasn't brought back any missing add-ons, though
It's been a few months since Kodi 19 was released to the public, its first significant update in over two years. Codenamed "Matrix," the app presented users with a switch away from Python 2 support for add-ons. That shift has left many popular extensions unsupported, with some fans even delaying upgrading to the new version. If you've made the plunge into Kodi 19, a major patch is out today that should help alleviate any lingering software issues you've found.
Verizon sells off its AOL and Yahoo media properties, including Engadget and TechCrunch
The company lost about four billion dollars after its media push failed
For the last few years, some of the web's most long-running tech media publications have been owned by a giant telecom company. Verizon bought AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in 2017, which meant that websites like Engadget and TechCrunch were under its new Verizon Media umbrella. Today Verizon announced that it's selling off Verizon Media to a holding company, Apollo Global Management. The new organization will go by the old Yahoo name.
Kodi 19 now available with improved decoding, UI tweaks, and substantial changes to add-ons
Not everyone is happy with the update
Kodi, formerly XBMC, is one of the most popular media center applications ever. It combines many media sources into one easy-to-navigate interface, with support for several operating systems (including Android). Over two years since the last release, Kodi 19 is now rolling out, but not everyone is happy with the upgrade.
Android 11 Beta 2 starts rolling out Quick Settings media controls
The feature first appeared in Developer Preview 1
Google has been experimenting with media controls in the Quick Settings panel ever since the first Android 11 Developer Preview. The feature was hidden at first, but it became an easily-accessible setting in Beta 1, and now it's enabled by default in Beta 2.
Plex launches its standalone music player and server management apps on Android
Both Plexamp and Plex Dash require a subscription
Plex started its own video streaming service not too long ago, but the platform remains dedicated to fans who value it for its core capabilities — managing and accessing their own media. To make life easier for these people, the company has introduced two new apps as part of its Labs program: Plexamp, meant to be the go-to destination to listen to your music, and Plex Dash, a mobile server management tool. The biggest caveat: You need the Plex Pass to use either.
AV1 is the hot new video codec on the block, offering around 30% better compression than Google's VP9 standard without a noticeable loss in picture quality. With Chrome and Android now supporting the format natively, many services have started to switch to it, and now Netflix is joining the fun.
Plex recently started an ad-supported, subscription-free video streaming service on its platform, accessible to anyone using the library manager. That's not the company's endgame, though. For 2020 and beyond, Plex is looking to add subscription channels, rentals, purchases, and deep links to content on other streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video.
Plex started off as a way for you to stream your own content to other devices, but the service has gradually evolved into a more complete media hub. The customizable 'Plex News' video feed was added in 2017, and integration with the Tidal music streaming service arrived in 2018. Now Plex will finally have content of its own, in the form of ad-supported movies and TV shows.
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- We're starting to see the new Google Home UI on our devices, which has only very slightly evolved from the screenshots we posted back in September. The pause button is now just a tad larger, and the volume card doesn't show any text. The most important change is the stop button, which has been replaced with one showing the cast device's name, and can be used to play content on another device.
When casting music, movies, series, or videos to a speaker or TV, the Google Home app conveniently lets you control it, even if you used another device to initiate playback. Although the interface was handy, it wasn't visual enough. Thankfully, Google is seemingly working on a revamped one for cast media control.
Yesterday, Plex announced some huge additions and changes to the music side of your media server. These were so important/awesome that I had to get this out to you in case you hadn't seen it yet. Among many things, Plex has added a deep integration with Tidal, some massive mobile player overhauls, an improved shuffle system, discoverability options, and more.
That spookiest of days, Halloween, is nearly upon us, and to celebrate, Google's running sales on all the creepy media you could possibly want. Right now, you can score some solid discounts on seasonally appropriate movies, books, and TV shows on Google Play.
It can be inconvenient to keep all your media stored locally, and there are plenty of cloud services that will save a few terabytes of data for a low monthly fee. Plex Cloud was designed to take advantage of that, offering a cloud-based server connection to stream your media. However, after pausing sign-ups earlier this year, Plex has announced the service will end on November 30th.
It was a big deal some years back when Plex added Chromecast support. Google's Chromecast platform has only gotten more useful since then, and now Plex's Chromecast UI is getting an overdue revamp. The new interface looks nicer, but it also comes with functional improvements like better slideshow support and subtitle resizing.
According to a report from The Information, Snap (of Snapchat fame) has recently laid off about two dozen people, most of which were in the content team. These firings seem to fit in line with the company's financial difficulties and overall attempts at consolidation, as well as the recent setbacks for the platform's original content.
Sling TV offers a compelling value for cord cutters who want to stream cable television channels without paying the hefty prices. One of its weaknesses was its all-live setup, which it addressed with the Cloud DVR "First Look" program. Initially limited to Fire devices, the company has now expanded access to the service to Android and Roku players.
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Kodi, perhaps better known by its former name XBMC, is one of the most popular media centers around. It's open source, cross-platform, and is endlessly extendable - what's not to love? Now Kodi 17, codenamed 'Krypton,' is live on the Play Store with thousands of new features and bug fixes.
So far Samsung's plus-sized Galaxy View tablet has been given a custom CNN news app and a sort of bulletin board photo app, both of which are exclusive to the device. But Samsung isn't finished yet. Today they published a third app that, if not exclusive to the 18.4-inch tablet itself, is certainly meant to be used exclusively with it. It's a remote control app that lets you operate pretty much every input on the device via a Bluetooth-connected Android phone.
After a nearly decade-long run, The Colbert Report is over. I know, Colbert Nation, this news is still sad half a year after the final episode. Stephen Colbert has decided to move on and will take over for David Letterman as the new host for CBS's The Late Show. And no, he won't be the satirical conservative that Americans all across the ideological spectrum found reason to love—though he will still be pretty goofy.