Month: September 2021

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Amazon’s Echo Show devices make it pretty easy to participate in video calls between friends and family members. But try doing that with a kid and see how long it takes for their attention to start wandering.

So Amazon designed a new device called the Amazon Glow that’s basically a video conferencing tool for kids with short attention spans. It has an 8 inch display and camera for video calls. But it also has a built-in projector for beaming interactive games, storybooks, or other visuals onto a flat surface in front of the device. First launched as a Day 1 Edition device last fall, the Amazon Glow is now available for purchase without an invitation.

Prices now start at $300, which represents a $50 increase, but I guess that’s the price you pay for not basically being a beta tester.

The Amazon Glow device comes with a 1-year subscription to Amazon Kids+ for access to a selection of games, eBooks, and “visual arts activities,” and for an extra $30 you can get set of 7 Tangram Bits, which are physical puzzle pieces kids can use to complete tasks on the projected display.

The Amazon Glow measures 14.2″ x 5.6″ x 5.4″ and has an 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel touchscreen LCD display, a 720p “profile camera” for video calls, and a 10W mono speaker. It supports WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0.

The projector creates a projected 19.2 inch touch-sensitive area thanks to a 720p projector camera which can monitor hand and finger motions.

If this seems like a product out of Amazon’s throw-things-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks department, that’s probably about right. Maybe the Amazon Glow will be the next big thing in kid-friendly tech for the home. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes the way of the Amazon Echo Look smart fashion camera device within the next few years.

The fact that it graduated from a Day 1 Edition device at all, though, suggests that Amazon figures there’s at least enough interest in this device to try selling it to folks who didn’t request an invite.

press releases (1)(2)

This article was first published September 28, 2022 and most recently updated March 29, 2022. 

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The Halo View will cost $79.99. (credit: Amazon)

Amazon continued its reach into health and fitness hardware today by announcing a health tracker coming out this winter. With a color display, the Halo View can compete with competitors like Fitbit by displaying real-time health metrics, including heart rate and blood oxygen levels.

The Halo View is Amazon's second Halo-branded fitness tracker. The Halo Band announced in 2020 offers similar features but doesn't have a screen. The Halo View stands out with a display made with AMOLED, a type of OLED known for even higher contrast and more flexibility. This display can show your sleep scores, track your workouts, and alert you with haptic feedback if you have a text or if you've gone too long since without moving around.

Amazon Halo Band in silver. (credit: Amazon)

The device works with the help of sensors, namely a skin-temperature sensor, accelerometer, and optical sensor for monitoring your heart rate and blood oxygen.

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Enlarge / What might the next Valve VR headset look like? Will it resemble the existing Valve Index, complete with a "frunk" and giant, hovering speakers? And will it ever launch at retail? Those details remain unclear, but our reporting suggests something that features Oculus Quest-like "standalone" operability. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Ars Technica)

What's in the future for VR headsets made by Valve, who launched the pricey, bulky, and impressive Valve Index in August 2019? The best information in the wild right now seems to be coming from Valve themselves—with datamining discoveries and patent applications adding up to something that looks like a brand-new Valve VR system with some form of built-in wireless functionality.

Sources familiar with matters at Valve have confirmed to Ars that information in the wild is legitimate—at least, in terms of products being made within Valve's headquarters, though not necessarily seeing retail launch.

A new, unclear "ism"

This week's information roundup comes courtesy of VR industry reporter and YouTube channel host Brad Lynch, who received a tip after tracking months of Valve patent applications. The tip came in the form of a code-named device, "Deckard," mentioned in SteamVR's publicly available branches from as far back as January. Ars can confirm the legitimacy of "Deckard" as a code-named device worked on inside of Valve's headquarters.

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The Microsoft Store first debuted with Windows 8, giving Microsoft’s desktop operating system an official app store for the first time. But many of the most popular Windows apps haven’t been available in that store for a variety of reasons.

With Windows 11 set to debut on October 5th, Microsoft is launching a brand new version of the Microsoft Store that will support a wider variety of apps (including Win32 desktop apps as well as Universal Windows Platform Apps and Progressive Web Apps). Users will also be able to install Android apps thanks to integration with the Amazon Appstore. And now Microsoft has revealed that the Microsoft Store supports other third-party app stores as well.

The company says that “over the next few months,” the Epic Games Store and Amazon Appstore will both become available through the Microsoft Store, suggesting that neither will be there when Windows 11 first launches. But we already knew that Android app support wouldn’t be included in Windows 11 on day one anyway (Microsoft says it plans to begin rolling out Android app and game support to members of the Windows Insider preview program “soon”).

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from downloading the Epic Games Store or other app stores from their own websites. But using the Microsoft Store means that you can allow the store to handle automatic updates for all of your apps… including third-party app stores. It’s also nice to have a one-stop-shop for all the different things you might want to install on your PC, and while we’re not quite there yet, this move does bring us a little closer.

And the move also helps set Microsoft apart from some other companies (like Apple), which have rules against submitting app stores to their… app store.

The company also notes that its move to allow Win32 app developers to submit apps without rewriting them has led to a new wave of apps showing up in the Microsoft Store, including Discord, Zoom Cloud Meetings, Teamviewer, and LibreOffice. And the company no longer restricts web browsers to using the same browser engine as Edge, so Opera and Yandex have brought their apps to the Microsoft Store.

While the new store experience will roll out first with Windows 11, Microsoft says the updated Microsoft Store will also be available  for Windows 10 “in the coming months,” but it’s likely that some features (like support for Android apps) may remain Windows 11 exclusives.

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Pirate IPTV services are a problem for many entertainment companies since they tend to offer premium products at a knock-down price. For just a few dollars, euros or pounds per month, users are spoiled for choice with movies, TV shows, live TV and more just a click away.

One of the key concerns in Europe is the effect these services have on the TV market, especially live sports. To that end, entities such as England’s Premier League and Italy’s Serie A have applied for and won a series of court orders that compel the countries’ leading service providers to implement IP address blocking. The theory is that if pirate IPTV providers are less easy to use, people will migrate to legitimate services.

In Italy, Serie A has obtained several orders over the past year alone, In June 2020, for example, the Court of Rome handed down an order that required local Internet service providers to block 56 servers connected to the supply of pirate IPTV services in Italy and overseas.

Later that year, Cloudflare was required to block current and future domain names and IP addresses related to a specific pirate service, a ruling that was upheld on appeal.

Serie B Launches Own Blocking Campaign

Serie B (currently known as Serie BKT for sponsorship reasons) is the second-highest division in the Italian football system after Serie A. Its games are available via broadcasters including Sky Sport and DAZN but like its big brother Serie A, is also widely pirated on unlicensed platforms.

In an effort to mitigate the threat, Serie B is now pursuing a familiar legal strategy.

This morning the league reported success at the Court of Milan after the filing in recent days of a complaint centered on the activities of several as-yet-unnamed pirate IPTV providers. Serie B informed the Court that urgent action was required to prevent the continued unlawful distribution of its content online and to prevent further damage to its licensing deals with broadcasters and its commercial image overall.

The football league asked the Court to order the immediate blocking of “16 telematic addresses” relating to the pirate IPTV providers. The specifics of this phrase are yet to be made public but it’s understood that the infrastructures of many providers were targeted within the application. The Court of Milan was happy to oblige.

Yet Another ‘Dynamic’ Injunction

The history of site and IP address blocking has been plagued by the ability of pirate sites and services to quickly adapt to the new environment. When one IP address or domain is blocked by ISPs, switching to others is trivial. Serie B doesn’t want that to be the case here.

By obtaining a so-called ‘dynamic’ order from the Court, it now has greater flexibility to respond if the providers change the way they operate. New IP addresses and domains, for example, can be transmitted to ISPs for blocking, without the need for yet more legal action which is both expensive and time-consuming.

Serie B president Mauro Balata welcomed the granting of the blocking injunction.

“There is great satisfaction because of the serious damage suffered, the necessary protection of the product, and the role of exclusive licensees,” Balata said.

“For this I thank the Court of Milan but also our television partners who intervened in support of the application, building real teamwork required for the successful outcome of the appeal.”

The injunction will remain in place for the 2021/22 season and requires all major ISPs to implement blocking.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Pirate IPTV services are a problem for many entertainment companies since they tend to offer premium products at a knock-down price. For just a few dollars, euros or pounds per month, users are spoiled for choice with movies, TV shows, live TV and more just a click away.

One of the key concerns in Europe is the effect these services have on the TV market, especially live sports. To that end, entities such as England’s Premier League and Italy’s Serie A have applied for and won a series of court orders that compel the countries’ leading service providers to implement IP address blocking. The theory is that if pirate IPTV providers are less easy to use, people will migrate to legitimate services.

In Italy, Serie A has obtained several orders over the past year alone, In June 2020, for example, the Court of Rome handed down an order that required local Internet service providers to block 56 servers connected to the supply of pirate IPTV services in Italy and overseas.

Later that year, Cloudflare was required to block current and future domain names and IP addresses related to a specific pirate service, a ruling that was upheld on appeal.

Serie B Launches Own Blocking Campaign

Serie B (currently known as Serie BKT for sponsorship reasons) is the second-highest division in the Italian football system after Serie A. Its games are available via broadcasters including Sky Sport and DAZN but like its big brother Serie A, is also widely pirated on unlicensed platforms.

In an effort to mitigate the threat, Serie B is now pursuing a familiar legal strategy.

This morning the league reported success at the Court of Milan after the filing in recent days of a complaint centered on the activities of several as-yet-unnamed pirate IPTV providers. Serie B informed the Court that urgent action was required to prevent the continued unlawful distribution of its content online and to prevent further damage to its licensing deals with broadcasters and its commercial image overall.

The football league asked the Court to order the immediate blocking of “16 telematic addresses” relating to the pirate IPTV providers. The specifics of this phrase are yet to be made public but it’s understood that the infrastructures of many providers were targeted within the application. The Court of Milan was happy to oblige.

Yet Another ‘Dynamic’ Injunction

The history of site and IP address blocking has been plagued by the ability of pirate sites and services to quickly adapt to the new environment. When one IP address or domain is blocked by ISPs, switching to others is trivial. Serie B doesn’t want that to be the case here.

By obtaining a so-called ‘dynamic’ order from the Court, it now has greater flexibility to respond if the providers change the way they operate. New IP addresses and domains, for example, can be transmitted to ISPs for blocking, without the need for yet more legal action which is both expensive and time-consuming.

Serie B president Mauro Balata welcomed the granting of the blocking injunction.

“There is great satisfaction because of the serious damage suffered, the necessary protection of the product, and the role of exclusive licensees,” Balata said.

“For this I thank the Court of Milan but also our television partners who intervened in support of the application, building real teamwork required for the successful outcome of the appeal.”

The injunction will remain in place for the 2021/22 season and requires all major ISPs to implement blocking.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Enlarge / A giant peacock in front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | NBC)

NBCUniversal recently asked YouTube TV to bundle Peacock, the NBC streaming service that has apparently failed to get many paying subscribers. The Comcast-owned NBC wants the Google-owned YouTube TV to pay for Peacock as a condition of continuing to have access to NBC channels after the companies' current contract expires.

Google objected to the demand, and NBC is apparently willing to drop it. But a dispute over how much Google must pay NBC is still pending, and both sides have warned that YouTube TV subscribers could lose access to NBC channels.

NBC's Peacock demand came during an ongoing carriage dispute between NBC and YouTube TV, according to a blog post yesterday by investor research firm LightShed Partners. The existing carriage contract between YouTube TV and NBC expires on Thursday, and about 15 NBCUniversal channels would be dropped from YouTube TV if the companies don't strike a new deal in time.

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A year after introducing a flying security camera called the Ring Always Home Cam, Amazon is officially launching the security drome for home use as a Day 1 Edition device.

That means there’s limited quantities available and you’ll need to request an invitation for the chance to spend $250 on one. But it’s officially moving from a somewhat creepy concept to a somewhat creepy real thing.

The Ring Always Home Cam measures about 7.5″ x 7.5″ x 5.5″ and comes with a charging dock where the camera rests when it’s not making the rounds by flying around your home.

It has a 120 degree wide-angle camera that can record video in 1440 x 1440 resolution, and there’s an LED light that glows when recording in dark or dim environments.

Unlike a typical security camera, it isn’t limited to a single room or angle. Amazon says users can also set up to 50 different custom flight paths and choose when the camera will fly around the home to see what’s going on. And when used as part of a Ring security system, the drone can leave its dock if a contact or motion sensor in your home is tripped, in order to get a better look at what’s going on.

But if you envisioned a camera that constantly flying around your home, then you probably haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about drone battery life. The Ring Always Home Cam can only fly for up to 5 minutes before it needs to return to its charging base to recharge the battery.

Amazon says the Always Home Cam will only record while it’s flying – the camera makes noise while it flies, so it’s unlikely to sneak up on you, and the camera is blocked when it’s docked in its charging base.

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