Tag Archives: Engadget

Amazon’s Prime Music stores tracks on an SD card

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Amazon, Engadget

To help you conserve that limited storage space on your Android device, Amazon is letting you download Prime Music tracks to an SD card. If your go-to device has a slot for extra memory, you’ll be able to store music from Amazon’s streaming library for offline listening. – Billy Steele, Engadget

Spotify and New York Times board Virgin America planes

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Engadget

Virgin America has teamed up with Spotify and The New York Times to stream music and deliver news articles aboard its planes. If it’s new in-flight ViaSat WiFi connection can stream Netflix videos 35,000 feet in the air, then music files and news articles should be a cinch, right? We hope so, because Spotify will make its whole catalog accessible onboard Virgin America flights — the company claims it’s the first airline to offer the service — along with city-inspired mood playlists. – Mariella Moon, Engadget

Cablevision and Viacom settle their lawsuits over channel bundling

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Jin Lee/Bloomberg/Getty, Engadget

The two TV giants have settled their antitrust lawsuits with promises that they’re making “mutually beneficial business arrangements.” Neither side is saying what those arrangements are, however, and it’s not clear whether or not Cablevision is getting a better deal than what it had in 2012. This ruckus started because Cablevision didn’t like being forced to carry niche Viacom channels to get the big channels it wanted — this whole exercise would be pointless if the company didn’t get either a discount or more control. – Jon Fingas, Engadget

Facebook testing YouTube-like dedicated video hub

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Engadget

Facebook has been pushing video pretty hard lately and today is sharing its plans on making sure users have even more ways to watch tiny movies of their friends and from pages they follow. The most compelling of these experiments is a dedicated video tab that shows all the videos shared by folks and entities someone follows. It’s bit like a cross between Instagram and YouTube within the social networking company’s main app. […] Facebook is also testing a bunch of other video features. One of these is Suggested Videos, a YouTube-like way of surfacing videos that you might find interesting based on what you’re currently watching. It’s also testing a way for folks to watch while still having access to the rest of the newsfeed. – Roberto Baldwin, Engadget

Twitch would be nothing without its broadcasters and viewers, and the live streaming service is…

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Engadget

For the very Twitch-specific class of partner who does Twitch full time, and sometimes that’s four, six, eight hours of broadcasting a day, the interesting thing is soon you’re going to have features like playlists and VOD uploads. So hopefully, you’ll have an arsenal and quiver of tools for making content that will allow you to have a weekend. Because it’s absolutely true and we hear it from partners all the time; particularly when we started doing events like PAX and E3 where we would start bringing our partners out to the event. They were like, “I love you guys and I really want to do that stuff, but if I take two days off, I might lose X percentage of subscribers.” – Matt DiPietro, Twitch‘s via Timothy J. Seppala, Engadget

Paramount puts up 100+ films YouTube, streaming for free

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Paramount Film Vault, SlashGear

The set does include a wide range of films, from black and white classics, to science fiction, to westerns, It’s a wild mix of titles, some of which have been labeled as bombs, while others more or less enjoyed some level of success. You’ll see titles like the 50s’ Dark City starring Charlton Heston, or Dolph Lundgren’s portrayal of He-Man in the Masters of the Universe, or the 1955 “modern day” horror flick Rumplestilstkin. – JC Torres, Engadget

Sprint thinks its existing wireless spectrum is enough

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Engadget

[Sprint] just announced that it’s passing on the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming 600MHz auction after determining that its existing airwaves are “sufficient” for its future needs. […] However, passing on the auction is still a big gamble. Sprint is betting that there won’t be a big spike in demand that requires more spectrum than it has, or that the lack of 600MHz support won’t hobble compatibility or performance down the line. – Jon Fingas, Engadget

White House says broadband is a ‘Core Utility’ just like power and water

Posted on by Leave a comment

photo: Associated Press, Engadget

A recent report from the Broadband Opportunity Council (under the auspices of the Oval Office) described broadband connectivity as an “essential infrastructure for communities” that “has steadily shifted from an optional amenity to a core utility” on par with water, electricity and sewers. According to the report, which was headed by the chairs of the US departments of Agriculture and Commerce, 51 million Americans lack access to download speeds beyond 25 Mbps. That’s roughly a sixth of the national population. – Andrew Tarantola, Engadget
« Older Entries