Year: 2024

USB-C is great, but the ports can be fragile and vulnerable to damage. This breakaway accessory solves that issue, and it’s very affordable.

TCL is one of the top TV brands for some TV deals, and we’ve rounded up all of the best TCL TV deals worth shopping right now.

Disney just pulled a fast one. Star Wars movies and shows are typically announced years before being released, but the company just revealed a new TV program that premieres next month. Tales of the Empire is an animated show produced by Dave Filoni, the man who cut his teeth on cartoons like Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels before moving onto live action stuff like Ahsoka.

As the name suggests, this is something of a companion piece to 2022’s Tales of the Jedi. It’s an anthology series that spotlights different characters within the empire as they, uh, heroically try to defeat the nefarious rebels and bring order to the galaxy. You can expect appearances by many of your dark side faves, including Grand Admiral Thrawn, General Grievous and the Grand Inquisitor.

Just like how Tales of the Jedi put the spotlight on two characters, Ahsoka and Count Dooku, this new series will have its own duo to follow. There’s Morgan Elsbeth, a primary antagonist in Ahsoka and one episode of The Mandalorian, with the trailer indicating that Tales of the Empire will reveal how Thrawn and Elsbeth became besties. The show will also focus on Barriss Offee, a former Jedi Knight who fell to the dark side during the Clone Wars.

Despite being animated, the characters will be played by their live action actors. Lars Mikkelsen returns as Thrawn and Matthew Wood is once again portraying Grievous, the evil cyborg who is in dire need of some cough syrup. Diana Lee Inosanto is back as Elsbeth and Meredith Salenger is voicing Offee.

The show premieres on everyone’s favorite corporate-sponsored pseudo-holiday, May the Fourth, also known as May 4. All six episodes will be available to stream on Disney+ upon the release date. The live action Star Wars: Acolyte follows this with a premiere on June 4.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-new-series-of-star-wars-shorts-premieres-on-disney-next-month-190007395.html?src=rss

YouTube is hyping its exclusive Coachella streaming coverage, which starts next week. The headlining feature is the platform’s multiview experience (already familiar to sports fans) for the two-weekend festival. Our question from this announcement is, who wants to watch several different artists’ sets at the same time — when you can only listen to one?

The multiview experience will let you watch up to four stages simultaneously, letting you pick which one to hear: exactly how multiview works for March Madness, NFL games or any other sporting event. Here’s how YouTube pitches the feature: “Two of your favorite bands playing on different stages at the same time? No problem, multiview will have you and your friends covered to catch both sets at the same time via the YouTube app on TV at no additional cost.”

Maybe I’m of the wrong generation and have too long of an attention span, but who wants to watch an artist’s set without hearing it? That’s what will happen to the three stages you aren’t listening to. Wouldn’t it be better to… watch the one you’re hearing? And then catch up on the others on-demand when you can listen to them as well?

Sports multiview makes sense because there are scores to track and timeouts, halftimes and blowouts to divert your attention to another game. You don’t need to hear an NBA game to keep an eye on the ball. (Depending on the commentators, you may prefer not to listen to it.) It’s primarily a visual experience; the audio is secondary.

But music, even when played live with all the light shows, fog machines and dancing accompanying it, is still an auditory experience first and foremost. If multiple artists you like play at once, you still can’t (and wouldn’t want to) hear more than one simultaneously. In YouTube’s multiview, you pick one stage to hear and the rest to… watch them sing and dance on mute in a little box alongside three other muted performances. Yay?

It sounds like a solution looking for a problem — YouTube applying its existing tech (which, to be fair, works very well with sports) to a music festival. Never mind that it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Perplexed rants aside, YouTube will have six livestream feeds to bounce between (but, again, only four at once in multiview). That includes Sonora for the first weekend and Yuma for the second. This year’s headliners include Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat, No Doubt and Tyler, the Creator.

Between sets, YouTube will stream “special editorial content” from the artists onsite. Each day after the night’s final set, YouTube’s Coachella channel will repeat that day’s sets until the livestream returns the next day. That sounds like a better way to catch up on the sets you didn’t see live.

The event takes place in Indio, California, about 130 miles east of LA, from April 12 to 14 and April 19 to 21. You can tune in on YouTube’s Coachella channel.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/who-exactly-is-youtubes-multicam-coachella-stream-for-183744741.html?src=rss

It’s taken Razer a few extra months to get its latest 18-inch Blade laptop ready for primetime after we first saw it at CES. Those who have been waiting for the company’s latest chonkster can now order the 2024 edition of the Razor Blade 18, which starts at $3,099.

The base system comes with an i9-14900HX processor, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, Wi-Fi 7, a triple-fan cooling system and a six-speaker array with THX spatial audio support. On the GPU side, you can equip the laptop with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (the base model has a 4070 graphics card). In what Razer claims is a first for a laptop, there’s Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, but only if you opt for a 4080 or 4090 GPU.

Razer

The display is one of the big talking points for this laptop. It comes with a QHD+ 300Hz Mini-LED display as standard. If you want higher fidelity, you can opt for a 4K 200Hz screen. The company seems to have found an extra 35 hertz since CES, since it said at the time the Razer Blade 18 would have a 4K 165Hz display option. Razer claims that this display is a world first for a laptop and it’ll set you back an extra $1,700, far more than an equivalent standalone monitor would cost. You’ll also need to wait until later this summer for a model with a 4K 200Hz panel to ship, whereas you can snag one with the QHD+ display now.

We felt that last year’s model was very expensive for a fully kitted-out configuration and that’s the case again this time around. Still, if you need a big-screen, high-end laptop that can run just about any program or game you can throw at it, the latest Razer Blade 18 can be all yours if you have the cash to spare.

Razer

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-latest-razer-blade-18-is-now-available-to-order-180330999.html?src=rss

Release of latest Ubuntu beta was pushed by a week, prompting some users to think the stable version will be pushed back, too.