Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Voice Chat’

Dolby keeps pushing high-quality sound into new frontiers

When I watched James Cameron’s Avatar movie, I noticed how the three-dimensional sound really popped and made the movie seem more immersive and realistic.

That’s music to the ears at Dolby Laboratories, which is trying to get its cool sound technologies into all sorts of digital entertainment devices. At the Consumer Electronics Show, where everything focuses a little too much on visual entertainment, Dolby has a lot of reminders about the importance of sound.

The company is getting its technologies into web-connected TVs, Blu-ray movie players, PCs, smartphones, set-top boxes and game consoles. It’s part of a campaign dubbed Dolby Everywhere. Part of the effort is Dolby Volume, a technology adopted by Motorola and others that reduces the noise level of TV commercials so they’re not as jarring.

The company is also demonstrating Dolby Mobile to help make smartphones sound better, with richer sounds and cleaner, powerful bass sounds. Vudu, the set-top box maker, is using Dolby Digital Plus to deliver 5.1 surround sound for its service on a variety of TVs. More than 2,000 TV models from 19 TV makers use Dolby Digital Plus. More than 50 set-top boxes from 26 manufacturers also use it. Dolby has also launched surround sound voice chat for online games, dubbed Dolby Axon. Those are just some of the various Dolby technologies on display at the show.

If there’s competition for Dolby, it isn’t anything on a grand scale. Rather, it’s that users who0 are using things like phones, games, and other devices haven’t learned to appreciate things like surround sound or higher quality. It’s Dolby’s job to teach them what they’re missing.

Read the whole story…

Possible PSN premium services detailed in leaked survey?

It’s hard to put too much credence in a survey. Not only is it easy to fake (although this one sounds fairly legit and has popped up elsewhere), but the questions posed could be purely theoretical. That caveat aside, there’s a bunch of very interesting stuff in this list of features we just got from someone who claims to have done a survey for Sony about its plans to charge for “premium” PlayStation Network content. The actual subscription costs flung around ranged from $20 to $60 a year, or alternatively $6 to $9 a month, and while some features might sound familiar to Xbox Live members, there’s plenty of innovative stuff here that we wouldn’t mind seeing pop up on either platform, including:

• Customer Service Priority Access
• Exclusive Experiences with Sony Brands
• Extended Console Warranty 3 Years
• Access to Beta Games
• Early Access to All Store Content
• Member Demo Sharing of Full Game
• Cross-game Voice Chat Access
• Full Title Trial – 1st Hour Is Free
• Token Wagering
• User-to-user Challenges
• Free Access to PSOne Classics, PSP Minis, and PS3/PSP Themes
• Discounts on Store Content
• Member Only In-game Content
• Trophy Alerts
• Cloud Storage Space for Games
• Online Music Service
• Online Music Video Service
• Automatic Downloads and Updates
• Loyalty Program Rewards
• Facebook Connectivity
• Catch-up TV
• Netflix Access Without Disc

What a mouthful! There are definitions of all these after the break, and while the survey seems to imply that not all of these would be available in whatever paid service Sony launches, we could imagine quite a few PS3 users (ourselves, for instance) shelling out cash for some of the perks listed — as long as they can swallow their Xbox Live Gold-deriding pride.

[Thanks, Christopher]

Continue reading Possible PSN premium services detailed in leaked survey?

Possible PSN premium services detailed in leaked survey? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

CrossOver Games releases version 8.1.0

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, Developer, Snow Leopard

The folks behind CrossOver Games sent us a note that version 8.1.0 of their software has come out, and it’s got some nice upgrades for Mac and Linux folks who prefer to run their games in Windows almost-emulators (it’s based on Wine, and as we all know, Wine Is Not an Emulator) rather than Boot Camping over to the real thing. We tried out CrossOver Games a while back, and found it lacking in almost everything but Steam games, but actually that’s OK, because lately Steam has a lot of games going on. Accordingly, this new version has support built-in for the brand new Left 4 Dead 2, as well as fixes for Steam’s voice chat, a few upgrades for WoW on Linux and Guild Wars, and a couple of changes to ensure compatibility with Snow Leopard. Sounds like a nice solid upgrade — owners of the software can grab it for free, or you can try out the app for yourself from their website.

In case you don’t have the app yet, CodeWeavers also let us know that they’re giving away a Linux rig that’s the “ultimate” in… wait for it… gaming. Yes, putting together a Linux rig for gaming is like putting a UFC fighter on a dance show, but we guess stranger things have happened. Anyway, CrossOver Games will definitely help you play at least a few games on the decked-out rig, if you want a shot at winning the thing, all you have to do is pick up the software before December 1st. They’ll pick a name out of a hat, and if it’s yours, there’ll be an awesome ‘nix box headed your way. Good luck with getting smooth fullscreen Flash video to work. We kid! You Linux guys make it so easy.

Oh wait, what’s that? Flash on the iPhone? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

TUAWCrossOver Games releases version 8.1.0 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…