Year: 2019

Media software maker Plex is preparing to take on The Roku Channel and Amazon Prime Video Channels, possibly as soon as this year. The company is in discussions with rights holders and content providers, with a focus on bringing free, ad-supported movies to the Plex platform – similar to how The Roku Channel got its start. It’s also talking to premium networks and content providers about offering their programming and subscriptions through Plex.

The talks follow the company’s recent partnership with music service TIDAL.

By working with TIDAL to sell bundled subscriptions to its streaming music service along with the Plex Pass subscription, Plex had to build certain transactional capabilities into its platform that it didn’t have before. That has paved the way for Plex to expand its subscription offerings to include new partners in the future.

“Now we have the ability to sell other services and bundles,” noted Plex co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Scott Olechowski, in a discussion this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “We’re bundling a Plex Pass with TIDAL. That took a little bit of backend work,” he continued. “You can imagine a bunch of different premium [content] that comes together in a single or multiple bundles, potentially.”

In Plex, content is organized not by source but by type – like music, movies, TV, etc. So when Plex rolls out premium content and subscriptions, it would show its users what sort of movies they have access to based on their subscriptions within the app’s movies tab. The same goes for TV and so on.

Premium content is only one area of interest for Plex going forward. It’s also looking to offer ad-supported content – like ad-supported movies.

As Plex expanded beyond organizing personal media collections to offer access other media – like podcasts, news, and web series, for example – it built out its ad tech platform, too. Today, Plex serves ads in its streaming news and web series, and is now capable of doing so for ad-supported movies.

“We have the ad integration that we didn’t have before. That wasn’t there a year and a half ago,” Olechowski pointed out.

“I think, from a commerce perspective, we’ll have ad-supported, we’ll have free obviously, and we’ll have subscriptions. And I think we would like this year to launch transaction [capabilities] as well, just as an option for certain types of content,” he said.

Plex isn’t ready to launch these new offerings yet, to be clear. It needs to work on the DRM portion and the transactional components for one-off purchases before it’s able to finalize deals with content providers or launch features for the Plex user base.

However, that could be coming as soon as this year, Plex believes.

“We have a bunch of conversations that make it potentially possible in 2019,” Olechowski said.

Beyond the technical considerations, there are also larger issues Plex needs to figure out before these products would launch to users – like which deals make sense for Plex, how will the offerings be bundled together, how the economics will work, and more.

“Now, it’s really a question of what’s the right order of battle, given the conversations we’re having with content providers who are all super excited about getting content into Plex,” added Plex CEO Keith Valory. “We can’t do it all at once,” he said.

While Plex doesn’t have deals to announce at this time, it’s confident it will get them done.

“The market is heading in this direction,” said Valory. “People realize there are too many services, too many silos. There’s just too much. It’s just madness. So if there’s a way to get in front of these users – and do it in a way that they love it – they want to be part of that,” he said.

Just imagine, a pair of noise-canceling headphones without a smart assistant on-board. What is this, 2017? Thankfully, Sony used its CES press conference today to announce that it’s finally addressing its well-received WH-1000XM3’s lack of Alexa.

The headphones will be getting Amazon’s smart assistant via a firmware update at some point during the first quarter of this year. Tapping a button will trigger Alexa, who can perform a variety of different media playback tasks, like playing music, changing tracks, along with more standard smart assistant fare, including connected home device control.

Along with the WH-1000XM3, the firmware update will also work with their predecessor, the WH-1000XM2, as well as the WH-1000X in-ear model. It seems our long national nightmare of not having Alexa on every single gadget is finally drawing to a close. 

In a new deal Toyota, AT&T and KDDI are bringing 4g connectivity to Toyota and Lexus vehicles. This will start with the 2020 model year vehicles that are slated to hit dealers in late 2019.

Previously, Toyota worked with Verizon to offer a similar connectivity package to vehicle owners. The deal today, however, seems to be focused on bringing even more connectivity services to Toyotas and Lexus vehicles.

The AT&T and KDDI deal will lean towards Toyota’s Global Communications Platform initiative the auto maker and Japanese communication giant KDDI formed in 2016. Under this banner, the companies are developing a future where vehicles are connected throughout the world. This deal puts AT&T as the carrier to connect vehicles in the U.S.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This is just the beginning. With this type of connected technology, we’ll be delivering new, convenient and predictive experiences to our customers,” said Steve Basra, Vice President, Toyota Motor North America. “This Global Communications Platform, together with Toyota’s Mobility Services Platform, will also help us drive and achieve our vision of Mobility for All.”

For drivers, feature will include remote car start through a smartphone app, remote diagnostics, and the ability to send navigation information from a smartphone to a vehicle’s navigation unit.

Disclosure: TechCrunch is a Verizon Media company.

It’s hard to get excited about bluetooth speakers. Believe me, I’ve tried. But damn if this isn’t a nice one. As someone who spent a good part of the last year traveling, I’ve been using the Harman/Kardon Traveler a bit, to make hotel rooms slightly more bearable.

The Lenovo 700 Ultraportable Bluetooth Speaker might end up finding its way into my bag, though. This thing is slick — and super thin at 11 millimeters. It’s got five buttons on the front for manual control and can take calls, which makes it a solid addition for business travelers.

It’s splash-proof, so you can stick it near the sink while you brush your teeth in the morning, and the battery should get up to eight hours on a charge. Unlike the Harman, though, it doesn’t double as a phone charger.

The speaker arrives in April priced at $150. Which is, admittedly, pricey as far as portable bluetooth speakers go.

Lenovo is announcing a ton of stuff this week at CES. Because, well, that’s what Lenovo does. Along with new gaming laptops and a ton of accesories, the company also refreshed its flagship notebook lines, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga.

Both models are thinner and lighter than their already thin and light predecessors — making them a pretty strong contender for the top premium Windows notebooks out there. And, as ever, they’re priced to match, starting at $1,710 and $1,930, respectively.

The X1 Carbon now weighs 2.5 pounds, with a 15 mm thin design and a woven carbon finish. There’s an 8th gen Intel Core processor inside, coupled with 8 or 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage.

The Carbon’s display is 14 inches with optional touch, and the speakers are Dolby Atmos-tuned, along with four far field mics built-in for voice. There’s also a healthy number of ports on board, including two USB, two thunderbolt 3s and a headphone jack.

Per the Yoga, the fourth generation of the convertible laptop is now 11 percent thinner than its predecessor, with thinner bezels and an overall smaller footprint. Like the Carbon, it sports 8th gen Intel Core processor, a 14 inch display and Dolby Atmos speakers. The laptop weighs a hair over three pounds and features an improved RGB and IR camera.

Both are shipping in June and, naturally, feature Lenovo’s familiar orange pointing stick.

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CES is, at best, a mixed bag on the food front. It’s certainly true that Las Vegas has a number of world class restaurants, but on most days, you’re either standing in impossibly long lines for terrible convention center fast food or fighting it out for some press center box lunch.

The folks at Impossible Burgers, however, were kind enough to hire Border Grill’s Mary Sue Milliken to help grill up its latest offering at Mandalay Bay in Vegas. The definition of technology is, admittedly, pretty broad at a show like this — so why not launch the latest upgrade to its meat-free burger at the show?

The latest version of the burger contains no meat (naturally), gluten, antibiotics or hormones. It has no cholesterol and about half the fat content of a beef burger, while offering equivalent iron and protein content, according to the company.

As for taste — well, this non-beef eater will believe it when he tries it. Impossible calls it “unprecedented.” I’m honestly not sure what that means in the context of a vegetarian hamburger, but thankfully our video producer Gregory will be on-hand to eat the thing and report back.

The burger will also be available in a number of high profile restaurants across the US starting tomorrow. Here’s the list:

·       Chef David Chang’s Momofuku Nishi (New York City)

·       Chef Traci Des Jardins’ Jardinière and School Night (San Francisco)

·       Chef Brad Farmerie’s Saxon + Parole (New York City)

·       Chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger’s Border Grill (California and Nevada)

·       Chef Danny Bowien’s Mission Chinese Food (New York City)

·       Chef Chris Cosentino’s Cockscomb (San Francisco) and Jackrabbit (Portland, Ore.)

·       Chef Tal Ronnen’s Crossroads Kitchen (Los Angeles)

·       Chef Michael Symon’s B Spot burger restaurants (Ohio)

·       Chef Sarah Schafer’s Irving Street Kitchen (Portland, Ore.)

·       Chef Jeremy Kittelson’s Linger (Denver)

·       Chef Tony Priolo’s Maillard Tavern (Chicago)

·       Chefs Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette’s Little Donkey (Boston)

·       Hospitality entrepreneur Kyle Brechtel’s Copper Vine (New Orleans)

·       Chef Jennifer Carroll’s Spice Finch (Philadelphia)

·       Chef Pete Blohme’s Sunset Pointe (Fairhope, Alabama)

And here’s famous restaurant guy David Chang on the new burger, “Using animals to make protein is an ancient technology — it hasn’t changed in 10,000 years. It’s ripe for disruption, Impossible Foods’ new recipe represents a quantum leap forward for food tech. This new recipe is a game changer.”

The current version of the Impossible burger is available at 5,000 locations across the U.S.

As Comcast continues to hone its ambitions to be the hub around which our many connected devices and services revolve in your home, and Intel continues to build smaller, faster and more efficient chips, the two are announcing a key deal to give Comcast an edge over the likes of Amazon, Google and the field of other home broadband providers.

Today at CES — alongside new 9th generation chips, a new integrated, a hybrid “3D” chip in a new project called Lakefield, and its Ice Lake 10nm chips —  Intel said it would collaborate with Comcast on devices and services to enable super-fast broadband speeds of 10 Gigabits per second (a new priority for Intel) for its Xfinity broadband service, as well as in-home WiFi 6, aka 802.11ax, the newest, faster WiFi standard that requires less energy to work, and sits as an alternative to 5G for IoT connectivity.

In an interview earlier today, Tony Werner, the president of technology, product and “Xperience” at Comcast Cable, said this latest partnership — the two have worked on technologies and projects before — will see Intel providing Comcast with tech for its xFi advanced gateways to work with 8th generation Intel Core processors for PCs and other devices, which were launched in August last year. (Financial terms of this deal are not being disclosed at this time, the companies said.)

The tech will come by way of Intel’s Puma system on a chip — yes, the same one that saw a lot of controversy because of a bug that let malicious hackers massively slow down the performance of a modem running 5th, 6th and 7th generations of the chip (a firmware update ultimately fixed the flaw).

The first devices that will be able to work with the faster speeds are expected to be rolled out in 2019, while Comcast expects its first 10 Gig and WiFi 6 services will come in 2020 — just in time for the Olympics, which both companies happen to sponsor.

(To be specific, that’s service availability: it’s not clear how long it will take for consumers to want the faster speeds. Comcast rolled out 1 Gigabit Xfinity broadband in 2016 and Werner said the service now extends across 58 million people, but he declined to say how many of those are actually using the service.)

The opportunity that Comcast and Intel are hoping to connect with has to do with how we use the Internet today, and how that is expected to develop in the years ahead.

Many individuals and homes already have multiple connected devices beyond a phone and computer — that includes any number of “smart home” devices that you can control or monitor by way of an app as well as smart watches and more. According to estimates from Cisco, that figure is expected to balloon by 2022 to 13.4 connected devices on average per person.

Then there is what we’re doing with those devices: video and streaming are the name of the game today, and as speeds have started to get faster and more reliable, and devices have gotten better, people have come to expect more of these services, such as faster performance, better and more immersive video, and the ability to upload video (of yourself!) as much as to be able to stream down content.

“Look at the rise of gaming and e-sports, where players want to create content and stream with friends as much as play,” said Gregory Bryant, Intel SVP and GM of the Client Computing Group in an interview. “Those are the usage models and applications that need low latency and are becoming more mainstream.” He also pointed out that another big strain on home networks is the fact that multiple people may be doing multiple things simultaneously: it’s no longer about the family crowded around one TV set in the living room. “It’s about personal broadcasting,” he said.

Other content that would become more user-friendly with the faster network speeds includes 4K video, “volumetric” 3D video and other immersive content. 

Comcast has an obvious competitive drive to create faster and more efficient networks — consumers now have multiple choices for how to connect up their homes, not just in terms of who provides the hub, but also who provides the content that runs on the hub, who provides the connectivity to the hub, and even what kind of connectivity you might choose to use, including 5G or something else. But the deal is an important one for Intel, too.

Bryant said that while Intel works with a number of carrier partners to provide tech for their broadband gateways, this work with Comcast is the largest and most extensive example of that. At a time when Intel faces competition on a number of fronts from the likes of AMD, Nvidia and many others, securing a deal with a major carrier with equally major ambitions remains a lucrative way of not just generating revenues but also showing off what you are capable of doing for future customers.

I have an OtterBox case on my phone, mostly because my five month old loves to knock my phone out of my hands.

I also have a PopSocket on my phone, again, because my five month old loves to knock my phone out of my hands. It’s also nice to use the PopSocket as a little kickstand while I travel.

So when TC colleague Brian Heater sent this to me and said “this is made for you”, he… was very much right. Just announced at CES, it’s an OtterBox with a built-in PopSocket.

Called the “Otter + Pop” (because, come on, how could they not call it that) it’s designed to bring the perks of a PopSocket without the hump. When in use, it pops out just as you’d expect; when not, it folds into itself and goes almost completely flush with the case.

Don’t like the default look? It uses the same swappable face system as other PopSockets — “PopTops”, as they call them — so you can drop a new one on with just a quick twist. It’s only available for iPhones (7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, X, Xs) at the moment — no Android love, at least not yet.

The only downside I can think of: you can’t pick where the PopSocket goes. One of the nice aspects of the PopSocket is being able to pull it off/put it on over and over again, precisely adjusting where it sits until you’ve found a solid balance of comfort/thumb reach. Im sure they’ve got a good idea of where most people put’em on each phone — but if you like yours in a super particular spot, you’ll want to stick with the two-part solution.

The companies say the new case are going on sale immediately this spring, starting at $50 a… pop.

(Update: while the companies originally noted that they’d go on sale today, these cases won’t actually go on sale until sometime this spring)

My favorite mesh gear, Netgear’s Orbi, has gotten a considerable speed update. The new router, called the RBK50, supports Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax technology which will send gigabit wireless speeds from router to router in your mesh.

WiFi 6 is still new to the industry and there isn’t much support outside of specific hardware like this.

Performance of the industry leading Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi Systems is improved by adding 1024 QAM with a 4×4 Wi-Fi 6 backhaul, increasing the speeds, coverage and capacity of this dedicated wireless link between the Orbi router and satellites.

With an advanced Wi-Fi 6 networking SoC from Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Orbi with Wi-Fi 6 will support even higher performance simultaneous Wi-Fi streams, making it possible to deliver gigabit internet to far more devices and enable these gigabit internet homes to take advantage of new Wi-Fi 6 performance, which will be designed into the next generation of mobile and smart home devices.

The new routers will ship in Q3 2019 or later. No pricing is available yet.

Network gear maker D-Link just announced a 5G router that sends high-speed Wi-Fi through your house without cables. The router, called the DWR-2010, should allow users to get massive speeds over 5G networks without running cable. Don’t expect to pick this up at the local Best Buy, however, as the 5G router will probably ship from wireless service providers.

The DWR-2010 also offers customization options for service providers, making it suitable for deployment on a range of network configurations. The gateway features an embedded 5G NR (New Radio) NSA module and can operate on the sub-6 GHz or mmWave frequencies in 200 MHz (2 x 100 MHz) or 800 MHz (8 x 100 MHz) configurations. Complete with remote management (TR-069) and FOTA, the DWR-2010 provides hassle-free operation and a better customer experience.

D-Link also announced some new Exo mesh routers as well as a cute little mydlink devices including a smart switch and a weird little water sensor that will warn you when your water heater explodes. The Indoor Wi-Fi Smart Plug (DSP-W118) and Outdoor Wi-Fi Smart Plug (DSP-W320) will control your lights and appliances both indoors and out.

Expect these cool tools to hit stores in Q2 2019.