Month: October 2019

• 

  The Shield TV and Shield TV Pro. [credit: Nvidia ]

Nvidia's Shield TV line has been providing Android TV's best set-top boxes since the first model debuted in 2015. The Shield TVs have been basically the only high-end Android TV devices on the market for their entire runs, standing as a stark contrast to the no-name junk-boxes that typically dominate the Android TV product selection. After the first-generation launch in 2015 and a second-generation version in 2017, Nvidia is launching two new third-generation Nvidia Shield TVs today, right on schedule, in 2019. The new Shields are faster and have a new remote, and one of them comes in a new form factor!

There are two devices to look at: the $149.99 Nvidia Shield TV and $199.99 Nvidia Shield TV Pro. Like 2017's Shields, Nvidia doesn't append any version numbers to the Shields, so these will be the called "2019 Editions." The $200 Pro device is same set-top-box design that Nvidia has been using for years, with an upgraded Nvidia Tegra X1+ SoC, 3GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. The back, as usual, is loaded with ports: HDMI 2.0, two USB-A 3.0 ports, and, for serious streaming power, wired Gigabit ethernet. 16GB is not a ton of storage, but you can plug any mass-storage device you want into the USB 3.0 ports, be it a flash USB stick or full-on hard drive, or you can connect to network attached storage. The 2017 Pro had a $300 SKU with 500GB of onboard storage, but that was discontinued last year, and a "high storage" SKU is not available on the 2019 version.

The cheaper Nvidia Shield TV has this crazy new form factor—it's, uh, a tube? The cheaper Shield is just a cylinder, with HDMI and MicroSD on the top and wired Gigabit Ethernet and power on the bottom. The device seem too big and heavy to be a self-supporting dongle, so Nvidia's product literature shows it sitting on the floor behind your TV furniture. It's like an in-line computer: you plug HDMI from the TV into the top, then power and (optionally) Ethernet into the bottom, then toss it behind your TV and forget about it.

• 

  Apple AirPods Pro. [credit: Apple ]

Today, Apple published a surprise press release announcing the imminent arrival of AirPods Pro, the company's long-rumored, noise-canceling, in-ear headphones.

AirPods Pro will sync with Apple devices in exactly the same way as AirPods, and they will use the H1 chip found in the second-generation AirPods and some Beats headphones. The H1 is a successor to the W1, a chip that allowed for some creative workarounds for the limitations of Bluetooth for easier syncing with devices. H1 moves from Bluetooth 4.2 to Bluetooth 5, and it enables "Hey Siri" hands-free voice commands.

The new headphones will include an additional feature called "Adaptive EQ," which will tune low and mid frequencies to match the shape of your ear—similar to how speakers like the Sonos One scan the room and adapt their output accordingly.

Enlarge (credit: Robert Daly / Getty)

Lawmakers in Australia (like their counterparts in the United Kingdom) are looking for an effective way to limit kids' access to online pornography. Australia's Department of Home Affairs has a possible solution: face-recognition technology.

"Home Affairs is developing a Face Verification Service which matches a person’s photo against images used on one of their evidence of identity documents to help verify their identity," the government agency wrote in a recent regulatory filing. "This could assist in age verification, for example by preventing a minor from using their parent’s driver license to circumvent age verification controls."

Australia's government face-matching system has been years in the making. In 2016, the government announced that (in the words of CNET) "the first phase of its new biometric Face Verification Service (FVS) is up and running, giving a number of government departments and the Australian Federal Police the ability to share and match digital photos of faces."

Enlarge / An AT&T store in Chicago. (credit: Getty Images | jetcityimage)

AT&T lost more than 1.3 million TV customers in Q3 2019 as its nosedive in both the traditional pay-TV and online-streaming markets continued.

AT&T today reported a net loss of 1,163,000 customers in the premium TV category, which includes DirecTV satellite and U-verse wireline TV services. That number is slightly worse than the customer loss that AT&T warned investors was coming last month. AT&T today also reported a net loss of 195,000 customers of AT&T TV Now, the online streaming video service formerly known as DirecTV Now.

The latest losses leave AT&T with 20.4 million satellite-and-wireline TV subscribers and 1.1 million streaming subscribers. AT&T has lost nearly 5 million satellite-and-wireline TV customers since the end of 2016, when it had a total of 25.3 million subscribers in that category. AT&T has lost more than 700,000 streaming customers over the past year since hitting a peak of 1.86 million in Q3 2018.