Articles about Digital Media

We found out a while back that the NFL will not be renewing its DirecTV Sunday Ticket deal, after a years-long run. The top-viewed sports league has decided to move on and no longer require its viewers to get a satellite dish installed just to watch their favorite team in action. Instead, the NFL is moving on to something that it hopes will attract an even broader viewership. 

For a while, it seemed that Apple TV+ was the lead streaming candidate, but a new survey indicates that is no longer the case. According to The Streamable, Apple TV+ actually trails its major competitors in terms of viewer choice. 

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"Did you hear that? It’s probably nothing; I’ll go check." According to leading expert Chucky, this is a mistake too many people make. The best thing to do during this next week is to stay relatively safe in your home and tune into various modern-day sources to get your entertainment. 

It’s a great time to have various digital media services to get in the proper mood to send your kids out to soap mean Mr. Wilson’s windows, and then beg neighbors for food the very next night. 

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I've been asked how I wired my old house for home theater, so I've written down a quick guide of the steps to getting started. Yes, you could opt for a mesh router system to deliver Wi-Fi across all the floors of your home, but if, like me, you live somewhere where speeds are a little slower, then a wired connection will likely be preferable.

If you have new construction to work with then get this done along with electrics while the walls are open. Most likely if you're reading then then you’re dealing with existing construction and that complicates things, but it can be done. 

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Yeah, COVID-19 changed the world -- we all know this. But nothing changed more than office work environments. Even as the pandemic slowly fades away, many employees are still working from home, with no plans to ever return to a physical office. And so, videoconferencing is more crucial than ever before.

With all of that said, if your webcam is of poor quality, it can reflect on you negatively. Look, it may not be your fault, but a grainy video feed is akin to going into an in-person meeting with a big stain on your shirt. In other words, investing in a high-quality camera can be very impactful on your perceived job performance -- it could literally have an affect on other peoples' perception of you.

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I’ve mentioned before that I replaced my satellite service with Sling about six years ago. Since then it’s added a cloud DVR and recently upped the capacity of that to what I consider to finally be a reasonable amount of storage space.  It’s also added quite a few more channels in that time. There have been app updates as well, some welcome and some not so much. 

Now the service teases another update coming soon. A box popped up on my screen the other day announcing the change and promising an improved TV experience "soon". 

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There are far too many TV services online these days for me to even begin to name them. What started with novelties like Netflix and Hulu soon became no novelty at all, but a billion-dollar industry and live TV soon followed with things like Sling and YouTube TV. 

But don’t discount the lesser-known ones. Just because they’re free doesn’t mean they have less to offer. Sure, you may not get a first-run movie or original content, but what you do get is very much still worth it.

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The Universal Media Server Project has released Universal Media Server 10.0.0, a major new update of its open-source, cross-platform Java-based media server for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

The server, which works with a wide range of UPNP/DLNA-compatible devices from mobiles to smart TVs, gains significant improvements to its web and DLNA browsing interface, with the aim of providing more flexible and visually pleasing options for navigating the user’s content.

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If you’re in the market for new speakers then you have a lot of choices, but some brands stand out more than others. And one of those has two new models out today.

KEF is launching the LS50 Meta (pictured above on the left) and LS50 Wireless II (on the right), depending on whether you want to go for wired or wireless. It is nice to not have to string speaker wires, something we’ve probably all done many times.

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Tonight the National Basketball Association season officially kicks off with the Pelicans at the Jazz and the Clippers at the Lakers. Hopefully this will go smoother than the start of Major League Baseball season did for the Marlins, who have had 17 positive tests for coronavirus already.

You can debate if the last season is starting late, or the upcoming season is starting early -- the NBA would prefer you to believe it’s the season that would have ended months ago, and that’s how they’re billing it.

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With Coronavirus (COVID-19) continuing to spread and multiple US states reporting cases spiking thanks to an ill-timed reopening, we have little to do. Movie theaters, among many other businesses, are closed with no immediate plans to come back.

This has affected movie productions and studios, with films like Tenet and No Time to Die being delayed, and others, like Tom Hanks' new movie Greyhound being released straight to digital.

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As the holiday weekend kicks off things are going to be a bit different this year. For one, while it’s generally warm, it’s not swimming weather for most yet, and two, a lot of beaches are closed, although some have reopened with restrictions.

Nothing is stopping you from cooking out though, and if you want you can blast some music while doing so. Plenty of streaming services exist, but one, iHeartRadio, will be playing commercial-free music on many of its radio stations all weekend long.

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If the phrase "it really whips the llama's ass" means anything to you, you clearly remember the heady days of WinAmp. Now media server and management company Plex has come up with its own take on the classic software.

Called -- slightly uninspiringly -- Plexamp, the player is available for iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux. The company has also released a new app for managing Plex media servers: Plex Dash. This is great news for Plex users, but there's a slight catch in both cases.

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Eight years ago, approximately, I built my last media center computer. My family and I used it a lot, but it was in the era when set-top boxes were still mostly in the planning stages.

I did it fairly simply. I bought a used desktop model (a tower wouldn’t fit on a shelf) and began a partial remodel. I tried to do it fairly cheap. I opened up the case and increased the RAM, replaced the hard drive with a higher capacity, the video card with one that had component out, and the audio card with one that had SPDIF out. Both cards ran their output to the A/V receiver, then the signal was processed and carried out to the TV via HDMI and also went to the surround speakers.

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Earlier this month, Apple had a big product unveiling, where it showed off a new iPad, Apple Watch, and three new iPhone 11 models. You know what it didn't reveal? A new Apple TV. This was very surprising, as the company is planning to really push its upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service. You would think an upgraded device for Apple TV+ would make sense, but no, the company laid an egg in that regard.

Thankfully, Roku is happy to keep pushing the envelope and releasing new hardware. Following the previous announcement of the innovative Roku Soundbar, today, the company unveils upgrades to two of its most popular devices -- Roku Ultra and Roku Express. The Ultra is its top of the line device, while the Express is a budget offering for the masses.

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When, meteorologically speaking, the calendar hasn’t yet flipped to summer, it may be tough to switch your mind and consider an event that takes place in some distant future known as autumn.  But, hey, music has no season, right?

For the past several years internet music darling iHeartRadio has held a huge multi-day music festival in Las Vegas. 2019 will be no exception, and now the online giant is announcing some of the performers that are lined up for this go-around..

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