Roku seems to be on a recent roll of sorts, adding many new options, or channels, to its popular set-top box. But, this is an increasingly tough market with competition from Apple and Google, as well as smaller contenders like WD. So getting more deals is in the best interest of the company, but also benefits the customers. Now Roku announces Yahoo Screen.

What is Yahoo Screen? It's a video service that provides clips from top US comedy shows. You’ll find the best moments from such top-rated titles as Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, South Park and The Colbert Report.

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Last week in the UK, the announcement of the new budget for the country was closely watched as citizens kept an eye on whether they'll be paying more for beer and whether taxes are going up or down. There's a lot to talk about in George Osborne's 2014 budget, but this is not the place to discuss most of what it involves. One thing is of interest for technology enthusiasts, though. The cost of digital downloads -- meaning ebooks, music and apps -- could be set to rise as the chancellor (the guy holding the purse strings) closes a tax loophole.

At the moment, companies offering digital downloads are able to avoid paying taxes in the UK by routing them through another country where taxes are lower. This is not a new technique, and there is nothing illegal about it. It is a loophole that has been exploited for many years, but now plans are afoot to close it off. What is this likely to mean? Well, it should come as no surprise that, ultimately, it's probably going to lead to higher prices for people in the UK.

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Not a good week for Microsoft this week. Things kicked off as Mozilla shunned the Windows Store by opting to stop development of a modern version of Firefox and then things got a little awkward following the investigation of an employee involved in leaking information about Windows. The company then came under fire for accessing the email account of an individual, despite its claims that "Outlook and Hotmail email are and should be private".

There was better news as an LTE version of Surface 2 went on sale opening up a new income stream for the company and new mobile computing opportunities for customers. More good news for users came when OneNote was not only released for Mac, but also made free for all platforms. Mihaita wasn't overly impressed with the Mac version, though.

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Pat McGovern died this week at 76 in Palo Alto, totally surprising me because I didn’t even know he had been ill. Uncle Pat, as we called him, was the founder of Computerworld back in 1967 and the year before that research firm International Data Corp., started in his suburban Boston kitchen. Pat helped turn the computer business into an industry and employed a lot of people along the way including me. He was an exceptional person and I’d like to tell you why.

Pat ran a company that published about 200 computer magazines all over the world. Each December he traveled the globe to give holiday bonuses to every employee he could find. The bonuses were a meaningful amount of crisp cash money in an envelope that Pat would hold in his hand until he’d finished his little speech about how much he appreciated your work. And here’s the amazing part: he knew what we did. He read the magazine, whichever one it was, and knew your contribution to it. You’d get a smile and a handshake and 3-4 sentences about something you had written or done and then would come the envelope and Pat would be on to the next cube.

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The home theater environment continues to evolve. We have set-top boxes from the likes of Google, Apple and Roku, along with gaming consoles, Blu-ray players, DVRs and Smart TVs. All are capable, in one way or another, of getting more media into the home. But a move to consolidate through the TV would be welcome, at least to me.

One of the biggest forces behind-the-scenes in the Smart TV world is now Opera, which is frequently thought of in the web browser world. But the company has a thriving app store system for this, and it now announces adoption by RCA to release panels to the US market.

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Pandora is one of the grandfathers of the streaming music service, and it has remained one of the better deals among paid music apps. Granted, being a radio-only service limits the capability and, therefore, the potential price that can be charged, but many customers find that it's quite useful and all they really need.

Now Pandora is being forced to raise prices. Even though the increase is minimal, the service is making it as painless as possible for loyal customers -- in fact, completely painless. The current subscription cost for One (unlimited and ad-free) will rise from $3.99 to $4.99 per month beginning in May, but those who already have a One account need not worry, as things will not change for them.

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And so it begins. The price war in the cloud. There are few tech companies that would not like you to store all of your files in the cloud, and there are several big names vying for attention. The obvious contenders for the crown are Microsoft with SkyDrive (sorry, OneDrive), Dropbox and Google Drive -- of course there are plenty of others, but these are the names that trip readily off the tongue. As computer users we have become increasingly comfortable with the idea of storing files online; in fact we almost demand it. If an app or service does not offer cloud storage, there are instant complaints about the lack of between device syncing.

But cloud storage does come at a cost. On the face of it, online storage is available free of charge. All of the big names -- and many of the smaller ones -- provide gigabytes, in varying quantities, of space gratis. But for cloud storage to be truly useful, everything needs to be stored there. The 5GB of free space from one provider is not to be sniffed at, but 5GB disappears very quickly. Opt to store all of your photos online, for instance, and the gigabytes will very quickly be eaten up.

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Windows RT/8 users rejoice: a Modern UI version of the fan-favorite VLC Media Player tool has just surfaced in the Windows App Store. VLC for Windows 8 Beta 0.2is currently available for Intel-based processors only, so users of WinRT tablets will need to wait until VideoLan is able to successfully compile an ARM version.

As the version number attests, VLC for Windows 8 is a very early public peek at running VLC on the Modern UI platform, and sadly it shows.

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"I'll be back". The line has become a classic in popular culture as the muscular movie hero so frequently uttered it, almost as if it was his calling card. Arnold Schwarzenegger has done a lot since those days, some he would be proud of, and also a bit that he likely isn't, but regardless, he made good on his promise. He's back.

A new video from the action star features a tank and lots of objects being crushed. In fact, the video is called "will it crush", perhaps playing off the popular "will it blend" series. Spoiler alert -- most objects in the path of a tank will, in fact, crush.

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I've certainly made no secret of my love for the Kindle product line -- I called the Kindle Fire HDX 7 the best product of 2013 after it replaced my 2012 HD model. I am also on record as being an Amazon Prime subscriber, primarily for the video service, and an Android user to boot. It all adds up nicely, but I am rehashing things you likely already know.

Recent rumors have been popping up around the internet, as these things tend to do, that Amazon will release its own set-top box. While that is unconfirmed -- though The Verge is already reporting a March release -- it is also logical. The company has a thriving streaming service that competes with Netflix, but there is more to it than just that.

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If there was ever anyone more qualified to talk about the web than Tim Berners-Lee, I would like to meet them. The man responsible for inventing the World Wide Web (a heavy burden for anyone to carry, I'm sure) joins us today in celebrating the 25th anniversary of the web.

But the big news isn't that Berners-Lee has been able to watch his baby grow up, go through a difficult teenage stage and flourish into adulthood, bringing us up to the quarter century the web has been with us. The real news is the inventor of the web calling for a "digital bill of rights".

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Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Live365... internet radio has become more normal to today's generation than that box which sat on the nightstand or kitchen counter when I was young. Now a new survey seems to show the correlation between age and the new way of listening to music.

Edison Research conducted a random phone survey, targeting users aged 12 and older and the results were rather emphatic. The numbers were collated for the 12 and up, 18-34 and 18-49 demographics and it seems many of you just may be listening to internet radio while you are reading my story.

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I'm not going to rehash all of the reasons Microsoft has to show concern over rival Chrome OS, but now Google is providing one more to add to that list. It's not major, and likely won't sway someone's decision towards a Chromebook, but it heaps another straw onto the camel's back.

The search giant is offering a 60-day free trial of its Google Music All Access, which normally costs users $9.99 per month -- or $7.99 if you got in very early, as I did.

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Mobile users are just getting around to upgrading their handsets to take advantage of 4G networks, but this simply is not fast enough. UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, spoke at CeBIT announcing that the country will join forces with Germany to develop the successor to 4G -- the uninspiringly-named 5G. The PM announced a deal with Germany which will help to push forward with the development of a mobile broadband network that will offer download speeds up to 1,000 times those currently available on 4G.

To put this kind of speed in perspective, as the Prime Minister explained, an 800MB movie (or any other type of file for that matter) could be download in a single second. One second. For the best part of a gig of data. On a mobile device. Who is going to say no to that? Ultimately, the adoption rate will be determined by the costs involved -- mobile tariffs, suitable handsets, data charges, and coverage -- but before any of this becomes an issue, 5G needs to be, well, invented really.

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Every month video streaming service Netflix trots out its results list for speed tests of US internet service providers, ranking each in descending order. There was a recent stir of controversy, as Comcast took a sudden nose-dive in the standings. This came, rather coincidentally, just before Netflix paid up for better service. In fairness, the deal was already in the works during the drop-off, so it was at best a negotiation tactic.

With that mess now in the rear-view mirror, Netflix announces it is expanding the list of ISPs that it plans to track and include on its monthly shame and fame list.

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