Tag Archive for: Streaming

The most loved and hated Peaky Blinders characters, according to you!

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Peaky Blinders Season 5 is almost here. Our friends over at musicMagpie have analysed over 4MILLION Tweets and found out which characters we all love and hate. Plus the one’s that we simply cannot stop talking about!

Who are Peaky Blinders most loved characters?

The internets favourite character is Charlie Strong! He got 65% joyous tweets, while Tommy Shelby came in 2nd place with a total of 58% joyous tweets.

  1. Charlie Strong – 65% joyous tweets
  2. Tommy Shelby – 58% joyous tweets
  3. Grace Shelby – 56% joyous tweets
  4. Curly – 56% joyous tweets
  5. Chester Campbell – 55% joyous tweets

Who are the most hated Peaky Blinders characters?

You don’t like Linda Shelby! She took the crown as the most hated character on twitter. She recieved 35% of angry tweets! While Polly Gray took the second spot with 18% of angry tweets.

  1. Linda Shelby – 35% angry tweets
  2. Polly Gray – 18% angry tweets
  3. Esme Shelby – 18% angry tweets
  4. Ada Thorne – 16% angry tweets
  5. Lizzie Shelby – 15% angry tweets

Who are the most talked about characters?

Tommy Shelby took top spot once again, with 158,526 tweets about him. Arthur Shelby Jr came in 2nd with 46,975 mentions.

  1. Tommy Shelby – 158,526 mentions
  2. Arthur Shelby Jr – 46,975 mentions
  3. Polly Gray – 30,422 mentions
  4. Grace Shelby – 29,718 mentions
  5. Alfie Solomons – 23,556 mentions

musicMagpie

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How to Kill an Hour (or five) as a Passenger

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Have you got a big summer holiday planned? Many of us will be spending our summers in this country, driving to a coastal destination to enjoy time on the beach with our friends and family. Even if you are travelling abroad, you might be either doing so by car or hiring a car at the airport. Summer holidays often include a lot of driving. 

This can have many advantages, the main one usually being that you have your car (or a car) for the duration of your trip. If you’ve bought a great car from Jagtechnic, why should you have to rely on public transport while you are on holiday? But, long drives can be boring, especially if you are a passenger. So, what can you do to pass the time on a long car journey?

 

Create a PlayList

Now, the music tends to be the driver’s domain, so it would be good if you could both come up with an agreed playlist. Spend some time setting it up before your trip, so you’ve got lots of fantastic tunes to listen to alone the way. 

 

Swat Up on Road Trip Games

There’s very little more old fashioned than a road trip game. In the days of portable DVD players and tablets, they’ve somewhat gone out of use. But, they can still be a fantastic way to pass the time. If you’ve got kids in the car, stick to the family classics like eye spy or red car. But, if it’s an adults-only road trip, a few adult road trip games could be great fun and have you laughing all the way. 

 

Take a Nap

If the driver doesn’t mind, try to get your head down for a short nap. Take a travel pillow and wear comfy clothes and you’ll soon nod off. If possible, take turns driving so that you both get a rest, but remember to make sure you are both insured to drive before you leave. 

 

Be The Navigator

Traditionally the passenger has always been the map man. The navigator, that’s armed with a map book and plans all of the stops and routes along the way. But, now we tend just to spend our time shouting at a sat nav. If you want something to do, buy a map book and get stuck in, turning the sat nav off first to avoid arguments. 

 

Look After the Driver

As the passenger, it should be your responsibility to take care of your driver. Sometimes, this will mean checking the map or finding a stop along the way. But, it can also mean opening a drinks bottle or sweet and even scratching an ear. Think of yourself less as passenger and more as drivers assistant. 

 

Take in the Sights

In our busy day to day lives, we so rarely get the chance to really look at the world around us. Use this time to take in the sights, to see what you can spot, and to pick out places that you’d like to come back to for a proper look. 

This your favourite Stranger Things Character?

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An How To Kill An Hour favorite, Stranger Things is back for a 3rd season very very soon. Our friends at musicMagpie have compiled and analysed over 64 MILLION tweets based on Stranger Things. Why? Well to discover the internet’s most favoured characters!

Stranger Things’ most talked about characters

Eleven topped the list that of characters that fans couldn’t stop talking about with a total of 1,018,636 tweets discussing the young hero. Whilst Will Byers came in second place with 794,083 mentions.

  1. Eleven – 1,018,636 mentions
  2. Will Byers – 784,083 mentions
  3. Steve Harrington – 465,510 mentions
  4. Dustin Henderson – 385,663 mentions
  5. Mike Wheeler – 358,450 mentions

Stranger Things’ most loved characters

Lucas Sinclair came out on top here with 86% of tweets about him being joyous. Closely followed by Jim Hopper with 83% joyous tweets.

  1. Lucas Sinclair – 86% joy
  2. Jim Hopper – 83% joy
  3. Steve Harrington – 81% joy
  4. Jonathan Byers – 80% joy
  5. Joyce Byers – 78% joy

Stranger Things’ most popular power couples

In the first two seasons, a number of different couples, both romantic and platonic emerged and fans were quick off the mark to get behind their favourites.

Mike and Eleven generated the most talk online, with 143,931 tweets. However, it was a bromance between Dustin and Steve in season 2 which made fans the happiest. With an incredible 94% of the tweets sent about them being joyous.

Other points….

Fans were talking about Eleven’s snack of choice a lot too. Eggos got 70,592 mentions online, Steven’s hair got a lot of talk online too, in both season 1 and 2. It got a total of 17,061 tweets whilst 82% of which were joyous.

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Netflix Keeps Your Bandersnatch Choices

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Those Bandersnatch choices you made back in December. Well those choices were kept.
Michael Veale who is a technology policy researcher over at the University College London, did a little bit of digging and found out just what Netflix keep on you. Using the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – remember all those emails you got last year. That.  To figure out that they track your choices.
According to Motherboard, Veale requested the Bandersnatch data from Netflix, to ask why: “it’s collecting data, the categories they’re sorting data into, third parties it’s sharing the data with, and other information.” Then subsequently posting it on Twitter.
Netflix told Veale that the data it collected helped them to “improve this model of storytelling in the context of a show or movie” While this seems pretty reasonable, Veale still concluded that it’s an invasion of privacy. It’s important to note that Netflix didn’t tell him how long they’d keep a hold of the data either.
We encourage you to check out Veale’s short Twitter thread by clicking here! It’s a great read! Very eye opening!

Consent

Veale told Motherboard:
“If you asked me, they should really be using consent (which you should be able to refuse) or legitimate interests (meaning you can object to it) …..It was tricky, as I had to ask these questions specifically.
It’s unclear if this is included by default in requests to get your data from Netflix or not. I can tell you often this kind of specific data is not included when you ask for ‘all your data.
Knowing what ‘all your data’ is, and what the company’s definition of ‘all your data’ does not include, is most of the challenge.”
Very interesting indeed. While it seems that it’s pretty harmless data collection. We should at least be told if we want out data collected.

(Refinery29)

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Apple March 25th Streaming

Apple March 25th Streaming Event – Surprise?

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The Apple March 25th Streaming Event which many believe to be the birth of a long awaited video service. Which will be of a streaming service of some sort. However it may not be the typical Netflix type of subscription video service. But something else entirely different.

If rumours are to be believed it may be an enhanced version of the iTunes store and associated Tv app for the iPhone/iPad. The event is said to be more of an update to an already established service than the birth of a new one. The new updated platform will hold all of Apple’s Originals and the iTunes transactional video on demand service (movies, tv shows). Furthermore it will aggregate a broad range of third party tv and OTT video services. So things like HBO and of Showtime.

Strategy

The new service will not be available to non-Apple devices. But Apple is also opening iTunes video content for viewing on non Apple devices via Airplay 2, on third party smart Tv’s. Apple make more money via third party services than it does selling movies and tv shows through iTunes. According to Ovum, iTunes global market share fell from 70% in 2011 to 22% in 2018! Yet it’s share in global retail OTT video revenue share it’s increased from 5% in 2016 to 10% in 2018.

It appears like Apple’s aim would be to get people back into iTunes. With the help from their Apple Originals videos. According to Ovum, the Originals service will also be free to Apple device owners, the content may also be already pre installed in the new app! Consequently once people are using iTunes, Apple will encourage users to browse their TVOD service and to sign up for the third party streaming services.

Apple will look to take all the best bits from Netflix/Amazon and incorporate them into their service. For example the high end productions from Netflix (Apple Originals) aggregation of third-party services (such as Amazon Prime Channels) and the curation of the TVOD service (Amazon). With Apple’s closed wall ecosystem and a 600million Apple device user base and what you’d expect to be a user friendly interface, Apple may be in a strong position.

The Future

According to Ovum, hybrid services that the one Apple is rumoured to be launching will take 33% of subscription market share by 2023. While Netflix’s global market share will stabilise around the 20% mark and Amazon’s will slightly increase to 12%.

Apple look to be placing their bets on rather than building a rival to Netflix. To reimagine TV while incorporating the best of Netflix. It seems as though Apple will move into this strategy in to the 2020’s. With a TV world whereby consumers can build their own entertainment package from multiple on-demand services and linear channel services. Plus AVOD where it charges consumers a subscription for access while also carrying advertising. While 2010’s belonged to Netflix and streaming the forthcoming years may look very different.

Figure 1: Netflix, Amazon and other services in the USA, 2018-2023 (in millions)

 Apple March Event Streaming

Source: Ovum

Google Stadia: Netflix of Gaming?

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Google have announced an unveiled a brand new gaming platform. Which is very different to what Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are offering right now. It’s called Stadia and the games will be streamed to you via an internet browser. Which are said to be better than console quality! Stadia is said to work on existing desktops, laptops, tv’s and phones, said Phil Harrison VP and general manager of Google. Even the least powerful of PC’s can run Stadia!

The tech giant also revealed a controller for Stadia. It looks much like a regular console controller. Though it also has a Google Assistant button and a capture button to capture gaming and directly put it on YouTube.

Google Stadia Controllers

ID Software announced that Doom Eternal will be one of the first games on launch. Which will be in 2019 in the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Exactly when that is in 2019 is unknown. No pricing was announced either.

Stadia: How?

How can even smartphones, TV’s and not so powerful PC’s play these top end games? Well, because the games run elsewhere on Google’s own high end hardware. You connect to it via the internet, the hardware then does all the hard work and sends you a video feed of what you are playing back to you. Essentially.

However, other services such as ‘OnLive’ which tried this back in the day (2010-2015) and Nvidia’s GeForce Now where some have encountered lag. They suffered due to the difficulty of offering high end games via an internet connection. But the question remains is it their end or is it the consumers own internet?

Lag: A delay between an action being performed on a controller or keyboard and the action being replicated on screen.

Google have said that the controller will connect to the internet directly. Which will then communicate with their servers which will reduce the amount of lag that players may encounter.

Impressively (if they pull this off) Google will be able to offer games at 4K at 60FPS and up to 8K 120FPS in the future. (Who needs 8K?!?) The Stadia is also insanely powerful with a GPU of 10.7 GPU teraflops while Xbox One X the worlds most powerful console has 6 GPU teraflops and the PS4 pro has 4.2 GPU teraflops. Basically, it’s very very good.

(BBC)

Google Stadia: We have some questions.

All very impressive indeed although we have some questions:

  • Are the games like Netflix: Pay to play many games for 1 subscription fee
  • Or we have to buy our own games?
  • Can we download our games to play them offline?
  • How does multiplayer work?
  • Are the multiplayer lobbies/parties
  • Is there protection from hacking?
  • What happens when the internet goes down?
  • How will my games me kept secure
  • How many games are available?
  • Will all the AAA games be available at launch
  • Will the footage be flagged for copyright from Stadia’s own capture system from YouTube’s Copyright flagging software?

But most of all, how laggy will it be? People’s internet will need to be able to cope with the game, if there’s the slightest bit of lag it will put gamers off. Coupled with multiplayer games, if there’s double the lag, people will not want to use the service.

It’s an interesting time to be a gamer certainly as Microsoft have their cloud service in the works too with ‘Xcloud’ so is this the way gaming is heading or will it supplement good ol’ physical disks or downloads.

Pure StreamR

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We love our music here at How To Kill An Hour, so we’re always on the lookout for fantastic pieces of kit. One of which is portable speakers. We’re huge fans of Pure, so when we saw the Pure StreamR it was a speaker we just had to check out.

Upon taking it out of the box, we discovered it is a very small device. But it is hefty. It carries a bit of weight behind it and for good reason. The sound on this little device is very very impressive! It has a HUGE kick in the bass and we love that! It’s the perfect speaker to take out and about with you.

It’s portable so has Bluetooth streaming on it, so you can play all of your favourite music from Apple Music or Spotify. Furthermore, why not play your favorite podcasts while on the go? *cough cough*

Not only that the Pure StreamR has digital DAB radio built in as well as Alexa voice technology! Furthermore the speaker is 360 degrees, so wherever you’re sitting you will enjoy powerful, crystal clear sound. The StreamR is one of the few bluetooth speakers to offer Alexa too. The onboard microphone connects to the Pure Home App on your smartphone via bluetooth. Then it will connect to Alexa using Wifi or mobile data. Therefore allowing you to have access to Alexa, wherever you are! Ask her for the weather, your schedule or even play a playlist.

With the Pure Home App you can also customise your speaker settings and be notified of software updates. So you’ll never miss a beat!

Pure have also added an aux-in cable, so for those not wanting to use bluetooth, this is the speaker for you! The Aux cable also acts as an antenna for the digital radio! How cool is that?!

The sound fills the room and sounds just as good outdoors and with a 15 hour battery life, you simply cannot go wrong.

(Pure)

Pure Home app: Apple / Android

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The Best Devices for Streaming TV

The Best Devices for Streaming TV

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The Best Devices for Streaming TV

The Best Devices for Streaming TV

Streaming music, films and TV programs is the most popular way to view anything. High Street stores that sell CD’s and DVD’s are disappearing as streaming overtakes buying the physical items. There is more than one reason for this including the fact that they are cheaper to buy and instant, no matter what time of day or night you want to watch them. You can even stream things from other countries, although you may sometimes have to use a VPN to achieve this.

Just as an example, Netflix, which is one of the largest streaming platforms, has a library for each country. If you are a member of Netflix UK and want to watch something from Netflix US, you would need a VPN to fool Netflix into thinking that is where you are located.  Whatever platforms you are watching, what can be more important is the device you are using. Like with everything in this life, there are some that are better than others.

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K – Voted Best Overall

It seems that the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K is rated the best by the experts and by consumers who buy more of this item than any of the other streaming devices. It lets you view more than 500.000 movies, TV shows from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and HBO, watch live TV, stream music and access sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

It also features Amazon Alexa, which is capable of many things including helping you to choose what to view. Team this with a good laptop and you can stream good quality programs, films and music wherever you are. Laptops such as Lenovo ones, which are durable and reliable, are great for this purpose, but it could be that you have never owned this sort of device before. Then you may want some expert advice on laptop buying, and this is available online. Do your homework and you won’t be disappointed.

As well as streaming, owning a laptop means that you can play games, shop, handle banking transactions and do many other things while on the move.

Chromecast Ultra – Best For Smartphones

If you are looking for the best way to stream things on your smartphone, the Chromecast Ultra could be for you. It offers streaming in HD and HDR as well as 4K Ultra. It plugs into your TV’s HDMI port and will then work with iPhones, iPads and Android devices.

Among the things you can watch or listen to are more than 30 million songs, 200.00 movies and TV programs, sports, radio games and more. Chromecast users can also put websites or their smartphone screen onto their TV.

Netflix Remote

Netflix Remote



Roku Ultra – Most User-Friendly

This is a great choice for streaming fans looking for lots of features. The very user-friendly menu is easy to navigate. Just speak the name of a film, TV program, actor or director into the controller mobile app and it will search them out for you. It has a night mode that will tone down loud noises such as explosions, so that you can watch late at night without disturbing the rest of the household.

The Ultra supports both 4K and HD streaming and with ones of the largest selections of things to watch, it has to be well worth considering.

Apple TV 4 – Best Apple Streaming

Although not the cheapest, Apple TV 4 does have the polished interface that you would expect from an Apple product. It has voice search with Siri and an excellent selection of films, shows, music and anything else you want to view. What will put some people off buying this item is that you have to be part of the Apple ecosystem for it to work at its best.

A notable omission is Google play, but that should not really be a surprise with the Apple versus Android war.

TiVO Bolt OTA With Antenna

This device has been developed for consumers who do not have connects via cables to their TV. It is wireless with antenna so that you do not miss out in all the free programmes from the normal TV channels. It has a memory of 1YB that will let you record up to 150 hours of HD content and can also stream all the services such as Netflix and Hulu.

To benefit the most from this, you have to purchase the box and then pay for the TiVO services, but if you love live sport and network shows, this could be the solution for you. One of its biggest advantages is that you only need one device for everything, although the pricing may deter some people.

tv streaming

Tv Streaming Boost!

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This story is more US centric than most of the ones we feature here on How To Kill An Hour but it is a good insight into how people are consuming their Tv these days. It seems like a lot of people are turning to Tv streaming over traditional methods. There’s a lot more households whom are choosing to stream their favorite shows instead of watching them on cable. (US version of Sky)

Climbing Numbers

Comscore have released a new set of data that states that the number of people opting for Tv streaming in the United States has spiked by 58% to 4.9million people. 4.9 million people is a total of 5% of all US households that stream over Wi-Fi without traditional Tv’s headaches of ads and schedules.

Comscore looked at “pure play” systems that don’t offer their own original shows the same way that services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime do. Pure Players are things like Sling, DirectTv Now, Playstation Vue and YouTube Tv. A full 10% of streaming time across the US came from these services this past April. A 53% spike from the previous year.

According to analysts it’s not just the young who are using these streaming services. Older viewers are signing up in droves too! Only 21% of households using these services have a head under 35. An 8% drop according to Comscore.

If a household does have these services, Comscore adds that they’ll spend nearly half their time streaming programming from it. This past April each of those households streamed a total of 128hrs of content on average. Equal to on demand services like Netflix.

Overall the users using Tv streaming services spent twice as much time with those services when compared to those watching normal Tv.

(Verge)

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uefa champions league

Uefa Champions League Facebook Streaming!

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Facebook the social media giant are making giant moves in the video world. Facebook already have secured the rights to stream 2019/20 Premier League season of football in Asia in a £200M deal which was secured in July. This is leading on from Facebook’s previous foray into sports streaming. They’ve already live streamed MLS and La Liga matched previously. Consequently they are making more moves into making them more than just a social media giant. Facebook have secured the rights to stream the Uefa Champions League for free between 2018 and 2021.

While this sounds great and is a wonderful move in the right direction for the company, there is some limits. While this is groundbreaking Facebook will only broadcast 32 games per season. Yet the social media giant will share highlights and magazine programming each week.

Football fans in Latin America were able to view the UEFA Super Cup on August 15th and it will also include future Super Cups alongside the finals. Furthermore this deal will give Facebook Free-To-Air exclusivity, so you’ll need to pay for a TV service or similar to view. If you don’t have Facebook that is.

Facebook hired Eurosport chief Peter Hutton for this very reason, even if the deal isn’t as great as it looks on the outset. Yet it’s a step in the right direction. Facebook have successfully streamed live sports in the past and deals like this one prove that. Who would’ve thought you could watch sport on Facebook just 2-3 years ago. (Engadget)

Who knows, we may be seeing Premier League games or Uefa Champions League games in the UK on Facebook in the near future!?

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