Article

Sony PS4 Media Player media list

The PlayStation 4 is getting a media player | Engadget

From the horse’s mouth

Sony PlayStation

Blog Post

My Comments

A feature that has been considered missing from the Sony PlayStation 4 is the ability for it to be a media player whether working with media on an optical disk, USB storage or the DLNA Home Media Network. This was a feature that was baked in to the PlayStation 3 and was highly valued. It is also a feature that is part of the XBox One’s software and having media-playback abilities in a games console underscores the trend for these devices to be an “all-round” entertainment device that works with the large-screen TV.

This trend is underscored with the consoles having integrated Blu-Ray players along with such things as TV-tuner devices being available for the XBox One along with “front-end” software being available for the popular video-on-demand services like Netflix for these consoles. This appeal is underscored amongst young people who live in a small apartment or bungalow and have as their TV a small bargain-basement model without the full smart-TV functionality and they see these consoles adding all of the desired functionality.

Look for this in the PS4’s menu to download the Media Player

Sony received subsequent user feedback about what the PS4 could offer and one of the features that was called out by their customers as being of need was a media player. Now they have issued it as an app that can be downloaded from the PlayStation Store with an icon in the Content area of the PS4’s System Menu to invite you to download the software. This will work with content on USB storage or your DLNA-equipped NAS or computer.

It can handle most of the popular media codecs and file types as well as being able to run music files as background music. It should be available for download over the next few days so you can get the PS4 becoming more fully-fledged as a media centre.

Article

TuneIn – now to be ready for the car with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay

If you have Android Auto, you should get TuneIn Radio | Android Authority

TuneIn Radio adds real radio stations to CarPlay + Apple Watch controls | 9to5Mac

My Comments

The new smartphone platforms are working together with the TuneIn Radio app to bring Internet radio to the car.

Those of you who may have cottoned on to Spotify or similar online music services may have forgotten about what Internet radio is all about. This is where traditional radio broadcasters run an Internet stream that is effectively a simulcast of what you would hear on a radio that was tuned to that station. In some cases, it may be seen as the “new shortwave” because of the ability to listen to “out-of-area” radio like overseas stations.

The TuneIn Radio app which has been developed for just about all of the desktop and smartphone operating systems has been able to bring the joy of Internet radio to your laptop, smartphone or tablet in an easy-to-find manner. Here, you could be in Australia where commercial popular-music radio doesn’t excel on variety but you could listen to a station like Heart London, known for their large variety of pop music from the flare-flappin’ disco-infused 70s to new, on your smartphone.

In the early days of HomeNetworking01.info, I raised the concept of Internet radio in the car in response to a question a teenager who was about to get his driver’s licence raised when he heard an Iranian station on an Internet radio that I previously reviewed.  There have been some attempts by car-radio manufacturers and vehicle builders to achieve this goal as part of the connected car. Now TuneIn Radio had written in code to their iOS and Android apps to make it work tightly with the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in-dash infotainment platforms. For that matter, these platforms are available in an aftermarket form courtesy of Pioneer but Alpine and Kenwood are intending to roll their own versions of head units with these platforms out soon.

Owing to the nature of Internet radio, both these implementations wouldn’t provide the same kind of “few-control” experience associated with tuning for new local stations on the AM and FM bands with an ordinary car radio. Personally, I would prefer to have TuneIn Radio give drivers one-touch access to all their favourites whether through “paging” through each station in the favourites or a list of stations on the screen that they can touch. This can provide a similar experience to what most of us have experienced when “jabbing” the preset buttons on the car radio to find what one of our favourte stations comes up with.

At the moment, work will need to be done to allow mapping of hardware controls to CarPlay and Android Auto interfaces so that “up-down” and “numbered-preset” buttons on the dashboard or steering wheel can be of use with these interfaces. This will achieve support for tactile control of music apps using familiar car-audio interfaces.

At least what is coming through is that Internet radio, along with Spotify and similar services, is being valued as part of the connected car in many different ways.

Article

More of the Cotswolds to benefit from real broadband

UPD 1Gbps FTTP Broadband Coming to 6,495 Premises in Gloucestershire UK | ISPReview.co.uk

From the horse’s mouth

FasterShire public-private Internet partnership

Press Release

My Comments

The Cotswolds is an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty located south of the centre of England. Because of this characteristic underscored by the rolling hills and the villages that have their buildings built out of the local stonework, it is another of those country areas that attract people who want to move out of the city to the country. It also attracts an artisan culture with a fair bit of local arts and crafts going on.

But what about making sure that these people who live and work in the Cotswolds have access to real Internet service? This problem is being rectified by a partnership between Gigaclear and the FasterShire public-private Internet-service partnership to bring full fibre broadband to the villages of Guiting Power, Chedworth, Whelford, Bilbury and Icomb.

This was initially a British Telecom project which covered Phase 1 of the rollout but the Gigaclear partnership has underscored that BT can’t have a clear run of the Phase 2 contracts. It is based on Gigaclear’s track record with supplying some of the small villages around the Home Counties with a future-proof fibre-to-the-premises broadband service, something regular readers of HomeNetworking01.info will be familiar with. It will still complement British Telecom’s efforts in this locale and the goal will be to have the Internet service pass 6,450 premises in the Cotswolds area and will break FasterShire’s goal of 90% broadband coverage.

Geoffrey Clifton Brown, who is the local MP for Cotswolds established an election promise to cover his electorate with real broadband at the door for all of his constituents.

As well, the Gigaclear solution isn’t just about fibre to the premises but also about Internet services with a subscriber-level bandwidth of a Gigabit/second symmetrically this achieving a service that is effectively future-proof for these areas. This also caters for the increasing trend towards video-conferencing and cloud-based computing in both the home and business computing applications.

What I would like to see for Gigaclear to achieve is to provide FTTH not just to new areas but as a competing service for areas that have an FTTC setup provided by BT Openreach so that they can be able to benefit from the higher throughput.

Keep up the good work in providing city-business-grade broadband to rural communities, Gigaclear and FasterShire!

Article

Cube S OTT box from Canal+ | Advanced Television

Canal+ mise tout sur l’OTT avec son nouveau décodeur | Freenews.fr (French language / Langue française)

From the horse’s mouth

Technicolor (Thomson)

Press Release

My Comments

Most people who want to benefit from Canal+ in France were required to subscribe to this service via the telecommunications provider who would make it available via their existing décodeur equipment. This also depended on whether Canal+ had a direct partnership with their provider.

Now Canal+ is heading down the “over-the-top” route where they are able to provision their service via the Internet independently of whoever was the customer’s telecommunications provider.

This is based on a Technicolor-built DVB-T set-top box called the “Cube S” which can connect to the Internet via your Ethernet or Wi-Fi home network. It is primarily a small cube-shaped device that connects to your TV via a vacant HDMI or video input.

One of the advantages pitched by Canal+ is that the device is portable amongst locations and amongst carriers so you can keep your TV subscription even if someone offers a better broadband package than what you are on.  This is more so with a highly-competitive Internet-service market that is taking place in France where each provider races each other to provide the multi-play Internet service with the best value.

Canal+ could improve on this concept by offering the Cube S as a local PVR to record TV shows from free-to-air or their pay-TV service or work on “software-only” endpoints that are based around regular-computer, mobile or smart-TV platforms so that customers aren’t dependent on extra hardware to receive this service.

It is being seen as another way for a pay-TV provider to move away from an infrastructure-based model where a lot of money is tied up in their own infrastructure towards a model that is independent of that infrastructure. This also allows them to be sure that customers that aren’t in their infrastructure’s footprint can subscribe to the pay-TV service by virtue of their Internet provider.

Articles

Google Fiber Construction Begins in Salt Lake City | Broadband News And DSL Reports

Google Fiber Construction Begins in Nashville | Broadband News And DSL Reports

My Comments

AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and co are on notice in Nashville and Salt Lake City as Google gets work underway to bring fibre-driven next-generation Internet to the households’ doors in those cities. This is showing that they are coming good on their network expansion plans for their Google Fiber service.

With both these cities, Google reckons that the price for Internet service from their Google Fiber network will be similar to what has been called for Provo and Kansas City. This will typically be in the ballpark of US$70 / month for symmetrical Gigabit Internet service and US$130 / month for symmetrical Gigabit Internet plus pay-TV. They even offer a 6Mbps baseline Internet service for US$300 installation costs. Small businesses may end up with a business-grade symmetrical Gigabit service for US$100 / month.

As well, once Google has their Fiber footprint in a city, they also instigate community initiatives like computer literacy classes such as what they have done in Austin for that city’s public-housing communities. As well, situations do turn in the favour of customers when Google Fiber touches a city because there is real competition for residential and small-business Internet service.

I would reckon that Nashville and Salt Lake City are likely to see strong benefits from these rollouts with them becoming attractive to live or do business there along with properties that have this fibre-optic Internet service gaining value.

Articles

Opinion: With iOS 9, Apple Is On A Warpath For Google’s Users | Gizmodo

Apple’s other Android app will help you switch to iOS, “recycle” your Android for free | Android Authority

My Comments

Increasingly most operating-system vendors are reaching in to competing platforms either to allow your computing environment to be centred around their platform or simply to shift you over to their platform.

Microsoft was achieving this through supplying apps for Android and iOS to connect your smartphone or tablet to a Windows-10-centric computing environment.

On the other hand, Google and some Android smartphone vendors were developing apps that import data that exists on an iPhone or iPad to your Android device. Now Apple has written an Android app to simplify the process of moving over from Android to iOS.

But what Apple has done is not just export your contacts, messages, photos, music and videos from your Android device. Rather they have used this app to take an inventory of the apps you have installed on your Android phone and purchased from Google Play, correlate them with their iOS equivalents that are in the iTunes App Store and either install the free apps or add the paid apps to your iTunes App Store Wishlist so you can buy them there. Then they make you feel good by inviting you to hand your old Android phone to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store for recycling.

It is part of Apple’s effort to reach to the “opposing” platforms to bring them to their own platforms by using “halo” products and services which convey the positive image about the brand. In this case, it is all of the iOS devices that are Apple’s “halo products” and having these devices work with Windows or Macintosh regular computers courtesy of the iTunes program.  This same practice also ties in with the iTunes Store available on both these platforms along with the iOS platform and is leading to the Apple Music service, seen as an answer to Spotify, with the companion app being ported to Android.

This was also underscored with some Apple fanbois saying that they headed over to the Macintosh platform once they experienced Apple’s iPod, iPhone or iPad products and even them underscoring that people who use iOS devices as their mobile devices should jump over to the Macintosh platform for their regular-computing needs.

What we are seeing here is the existence of a highly-competitive marketplace affecting both the mobile and regular computing platforms with the platform vendors pulling out the stops to get people to switch. In some cases, it could become a reality where multi-platform computing will become the norm for sessile and mobile computing needs both at work and at home.

Article

Tado Smart Air-Conditioner Control in action

Tado Makes Your Dumb AC Smart | Tom’s Guide

Video

Previous Coverage

Tado Cooling brings the smart thermostat concept to the typical air conditioner

From the horse’s mouth

Tado

Smart AIr Conditioner Control

Product Page

To Buy

My Comments

Tado previously initiated a Kickstarter campaign to get the idea of a smart air-conditioner control device up and off the ground. Now this idea has successfully come to fruition and is available for regular sale.

The Tado Smart air-conditioner controller works with air-conditioners controlled by these devices

The device works like the newer smart thermostats but controls air-conditioners that are typically controlled by an infra-red remote control and adds network-based remote control along with the extras associated with it to these systems.

It answers a reality where there is a large number of these air-conditioners; whether in an integrated unit that installs through a wall or window, a portable unit or the more common ductless-split units; that are in service for a long time. Like with anything that is about maintaining comfort in the home, there is a resistance by most of us to substitute the existing unit unless it has broken down beyond repair or too uneconomical to use.

The Tado Smart Air-Conditioner controller is a white box with a white-LED dot-matrix display that serves as the user display. This has to be installed in line-of-sight of the air-conditioner unit because it substitutes the role of that remote control that the A/C depends on. As well, it connects to your home network (and Internet) via Wi-Fi wireless and also supports Bluetooth Smart for proximity detection.

As well, you install an app in your smartphone to turn it in to a control surface for this controller. But it is not just about setting your air-conditioner’s temperature, fan-speed and operating mode from your smartphone’s display but also about functionality like geo-fencing and IFTTT or HomeKit connectivity.

The geo-fencing, IFTTT and HomeKit functionality allow you to have the air-conditioner turned off when you actually leave or switch it on just before you get home so it is comfortable by the time you are there. As well, the Wi-Fi functionality that the Tado Smart A/C controller provides will also be a godsend to those of you who manage your holiday home or shopfront so you can get these places warm or cool by the time you arrive.

Tado are intending to release a multiple-AC function to this controller soon so as to to allow you to manage the growing reality of places with more than one air-conditioner. This will obviously handle the common situation where there is one unit per room but I would like to know whether this multiple-AC function can handle larger rooms heated or cooled by multiple air-conditioners.

What this shows is a Kickstarter project that satisfies a genuine need as is actually put to market in a real continual way. It is also about gaining more value out of existing equipment by enabling it for today’s expectations.