Author: Press Room
Looking at the evolution of TVs from dumb boxes to smart TVs, we’ve come a long way. We have also come a long way from the bulky CRT TVs to the standard backlight LCDs. Today, OLED TVs are the absolute standard and holy grail of home entertainment (there is a catch, though). It eliminates the use of backlight and utilizes self-illuminating pixels that deliver incredibly vibrant colors and deep blacks. But the looming threat of burn-in and panel degradation can make one feel like walking on eggshells. I had an OLED TV, which just couldn’t stand the test of time,…
Kodi has always been my go-to media player. However, for me, it’s always been a case of function over form. I never cared for its default skin, and those that I tried felt flat and uninspiring. It was only recently that I decided to revisit the Kodi repository to check out what’s new, and I was pleased to see that some good folks had been hard at work building some excellent skins to embellish the platform’s open-source architecture. A great skin does much more than change colors and fonts; it completely alters the Kodi experience, bringing new visual appeal to…
In 2011, NASA scientists met at the jet propulsion laboratory in California to do something very important: name the most and least scientifically plausible movies ever made, with the aim of nudging Hollywood towards doing a better job of depicting science. They decided that the most scientifically plausible movie ever made was Gattaca, the 1997 film about a future where gene editing had become commonplace. As for the least plausible, the choice was easy: 2012. Somewhat confusingly, 2012 came out in 2009; Sony really missed a branding opportunity there. It was about, simply, how the world would end in 2012…
It’s finally happened: ChatGPT has adverts. OpenAI is displaying adverts on ChatGPT’s free and Go tiers, and at the time of writing, they’re only being forced upon US subscribers. That’s the case for now, but it won’t be long until adverts are rolled out to more countries and more users—not forgetting that ChatGPT Go subscribers are still forking out a subscription fee. Thankfully, there are still numerous excellent ChatGPT alternatives out there that don’t splash adverts in your chat, and better still, deliver arguably better AI experiences than ChatGPT anyway. Confer Super-secret AI chatbot experience Confer is one of the…
Spotify is expanding its push into the book world with the launch of Audiobook Charts in the United States and the United Kingdom, introducing a new way for users to track the most popular and fast-rising titles on the platform. Spotify’s newly announced Charts funtions is similar to the service’s existing music and podcast rankings. Updated weekly, they highlight top audiobooks overall as well as leading titles across genres, with placements determined by listener engagement and consumption data. Spotify bets charts can turn browsing into listening Focuses on the platform strategy behind surfacing trending titles Credit: Spotify Available to both…
I’ve mostly lived in the Apple ecosystem, so CarPlay has always been my default in the car. My iPhone connects instantly. Everything looks familiar, and I don’t have to think much about it. It’s quite comfortable for me. But because my partner uses an Android phone, there are days when Android Auto ends up taking over the dashboard instead. That’s exactly where my mixed feelings began. The older version of Android Auto never fully won me over. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t feel polished or particularly cohesive. The layout felt slightly weird, and the experience wasn’t as fluid as…
Your TV has multiple HDMI ports for a reason. And no, it’s not just to give you more places to plug things in. In most cases, those identical-looking HDMI ports have different capabilities. Some are better suited for handling streaming and gaming, while others are more suited for audio devices, such as the soundbar. Now the thing is, even if you plug everything in without paying attention, your setup will work just fine. But you might not be getting the best your TV has to offer. That’s why you must understand how HDMI ports are different and how you can…
The good news is you don’t need a lab, a soldering station, or even the mythical spare keyboard and mouse to get real value out of a Raspberry Pi 3B+. With just a TV, HDMI cable, a micro-USB power device, an SD card, and a wired gamepad, you can knock out genuinely useful projects in a single weekend without turning your living room into a hacker cave. There is a very specific kind of guilt that comes from owning a perfectly functional Raspberry Pi that currently lives in a drawer doing absolutely nothing except quietly judging you. And yet… here…
If you’re in the mood to watch a detective show on Netflix, you have plenty of options, some of them extremely good. But there’s also a chaff amongst the wheat. Netflix is in the business of producing a lot of original content — the sheer volume is one of the best things about it, since you’ll never run out of things to watch — but a lot of that content can be on the trashy or unremarkable side. Sometimes, it pays to look beyond Netflix originals. There’s one detective show available to watch on Netflix right now that blows most…
When it comes to streaming devices, there are about four or five in the marketplace that have built up their brands well enough that the majority of people know about them. Google ceased production of its Chromecast lineup and replaced it with the Google TV Streamer. The NVIDIA Shield is another option for users, as is the Walmart Onn 4K Pro. But the three biggest players in the space are the Roku streaming devices, Apple TV 4K, and the Amazon Fire TV Stick. All of these products have different features that make them unique. All of them have also made…