Articles about Digital Media

There is no shortage of music services available to choose from and there really doesn’t seem to be a clear industry leader. Spotify is up there, but so is Apple Music. It really comes down to the features that each of us wants, the music selection and availability.

The latter is key for many people as not everything can be heard from every location in this great big world. If you reside in the UK, but plan to spend time in Kenya, for example, then you’ll want services that work in both countries.

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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 their infancy.

I did it fairly simply. I bought a used desktop model (a tower wouldn’t fit on a shelf in my cabinet) and began a partial remodel. I tried to do it fairly cheap. I opened up the case and replaced the RAM with more, swapped the hard drive for a higher capacity one, and replaced 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 where the signal was processed and carried out to the TV via HDMI.

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The entertainment industry and in particular streaming services is among the biggest targets of credential stuffing attacks according to a new report.

The study from digital delivery platform Akamai, unveiled at the NAB Cybersecurity and Content Protection Summit in Las Vegas this week, focuses on credential abuse attacks against online video and music streaming services.

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The Logitech Harmony remote is one of my favorite devices. It can control home theater equipment, and some can control home automation items like Nest products, lights and more.

Sometimes though, the remote can experience funny problems, which can be annoying. Don’t let it scare you away, it’s generally not serious and it doesn’t happen very often. You can fix it, it's just a matter of troubleshooting. The most common problem tends to be that you accidentally screwed things up by hitting a wrong button, so that’s what we’re going to look to fix here.

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Windows 7 is still a great operating system -- one that millions of people use every day. Understandably, Microsoft cannot support the OS forever, so it will stop doing so in less than a year. While I would urge many Windows 7 users to switch to a Linux-based operating system, Microsoft would rather these folks upgrade to Windows 10 instead. The problem? Many Windows 7 users purposely avoided the newest version of Windows due to overall bugginess and a perception of spying due to aggressive telemetry. Embarrassingly, Windows 10 -- initially released in 2015 as a free upgrade -- only recently overtook Windows 7 in marketshare. Yikes!

The right thing to do at this point, is to allow Windows 7 to function as it has until support runs out, right? I mean, why add stress to the lives of existing Windows 7 users? Sadly, Microsoft has a different idea. You see, the company has decided to purposely cripple both Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center on Windows 7, and Windows Media Center on 8.x. Microsoft will stop supplying metadata for media through these much-used programs. As you can guess, Windows Media Player on Windows 10 will continue to offer this capability. Hmm, I wonder why that is...

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Tomorrow is Cyber Monday, a modern addition to the holiday shopping season that originated from people returning to work after the long holiday weekend and, with access to a PC and fast internet, doing some shopping on the company’s time

The day has grown into a phenomenon and is expected to outperform Black Friday in 2018, with predictions ranging in the neighborhood of $7 billion in sales.

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As Thanksgiving day gets under way in the US, it’s time for reflection on what it is we are most grateful for. If your list doesn’t begin with family and friends, I urge you to rethink your priorities. Though that doesn’t mean you can’t be grateful about other things as well, from accomplishments in life to even inanimate objects.

We also should not forget that today most of us celebrate in a warm home with an abundance of food to choose from and, for those interested, some good sports to watch. I was trying to think out of the box for a bit and one of the non-traditional things that immediately occurred to me was the 3.5 years I have spent without my old satellite TV service. Cutting the cord saved money and, in some ways, provided more options.

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It’s getting to be that time of the year where people look to the tropics for an upcoming vacation. While some seem born for the snow, many feel the same about warm sunshine. One excellent location is Mexico, and it has many vastly different areas to explore.

However, if you have something more permanent south of the border -- a beach bungalow you invested in, or a full-time residence -- then your entertainment options just got a little better.

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If you weren’t already familiar with Sling TV then you’ve likely had an amusing introduction thanks to recent "Slingers" ads. If you’re still lost, Sling is a live TV service that provides many mainstream channels such as ESPN, CNN and an estimated 100 or so more. If there’s one you want and don’t currently get then there are addon packs you can choose from.

While Sling has been around since early 2015, it still has some growing pains. None, at least so far, have been game changers, more minor annoyances than glaring mistakes.

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Plex continues to evolve, and the latest addition to the media player is the ability to download subtitles from within the software. This will come as great news for anyone who has battled with subtitle websites, and greatly simplifies the process of adding them to your media collection.

But as well as adding this option, Plex has also announced that it is sunsetting three features -- namely Watch Later, Cloud Sync and (perhaps surprisingly) support for plugins.

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It's commonly assumed that the internet and electronic communication is making people less able to concentrate and leading to shorter attention spans.

But a new study from presentation platform Prezi finds that in fact attention spans may not be shrinking, rather they are evolving to be more selective.

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If you are a regular reader of BetaNews, you may have noticed that many of our licensed images come from Shutterstock. That online service is wildly popular, thanks to its massive collection of images and other media. Quite frankly, it is a joy to use -- both its website and mobile apps are top notch.

Today, the company reaches an incredible milestone -- a 15th birthday! Yes, the site was founded on this day way back in 2003. To celebrate, Shutterstock has released 15 digital posters -- one for each year the company has been in business. Each poster commemorates an important event that happened in that year. This includes some important tech-related moments, such as the launch of Facebook and the release of the first-ever iPhone. Not to mention, who can forget Pokémon Go -- a game that made augmented reality mainstream.

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The pro-cycling season is well underway. Things kicked off early with the Tour Down Under way back in January, but now it ramps up with the Spring Classics. The most well-known of those is Paris-Roubaix, better known as "The Hell of the North". The cobblestones that lead through the forests can be deadly, especially when wet.

That race commences April 8, and if you don't get TV coverage, fear not. There's a way you can watch the action and possibly a bit of carnage, although we hope there is none of that this time. NBC Sports Gold will be carrying the race online.

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Kodi is excellent software. I mean, an open source and cross-platform media center -- what's not to love? Hell, it can even be used to emulate classic video games! And even though I don't do it, I know it is popular with the piracy crowd, thanks to easy-to-install add-ons that allow free streaming of paid content. I'm not judging -- I know many of y'all are hurting financially, so do what you've got to. I prefer to just watch movies when they come on TBS, TNT, and the like, but I digress.

The next version of Kodi is called "Leia," and it is currently under development. With that said, you can run pre-release versions now with great success. If you are waiting for an official "stable" version of Kodi 18, however, you are probably wondering how the development is going. Well, according to a new blog post from the developers, everything is coming along swimmingly. In fact, they have shared some details and statistics about version 18. Some particularly interesting aspects? Kodi 18 will get Google Assistant support for Android and the ability to handle 8K video.

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In the world of media playing software, VLC is a perennial favorite -- and with good reason. This open source tool is one of the most feature-packed players out there, and it has just received a huge and long-awaited upgrade with the release of VLC 3.0 'Vetinari'.

Many software releases are described as being major or significant, but VLC 3.0 really is a huge release -- it's a truly massive update from its predecessor. Available for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, Chromebooks and Windows Phone, just about everyone can take advantage of the power of this incredible player.

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