Archives for March 2013

The bbc iplayer will be launching soon on the windows phone

March 5, 2013 by

The bbc has posted today on it’s blog that it intends to launch the bbc iPlayer soon on the Windows phone.  This is great news for the users of the OS, the iPlayer has been on the other most popular OS’s bbc iplayer image v1such as Android and iOS for some time.  At the moment  users can access the iPlayer via the phones web browser, but when the new app is released it will provide Windows users with an option to access the iPlayer via the tile interface on the home screen. This will be most  welcomed by Windows users.

The BBC Future Media head of business development Cyrus Saihan sayin a blog post,: “We will be releasing a shortcut to BBC iPlayer in the near future which will be available in the Windows Phone Store, enabling the BBC iPlayer website to work on Windows Phone 7.5 and 8 via a live tile.

“This shortcut will wrap the BBC iPlayer mobile website together with our media player. Hopefully these and other developments will help to expand our online reach further.”

He also points out that: “Our latest figures show that over 650 different device types can access BBC iPlayer. Working with the industry in ways like this helps our digital services reach more of the UK’s online population and gives our audiences ever increasing ways to access BBC services.”

It was inevitable that the BBC would eventually support the OS, because the Windows OS is growing fast within the UK.  According to the popular website Digitalspy, it has grown by as much as 250% within the past year. They also claim that the OS has now over 6% of the UK market share and they say that it is set to grow further in the years to follow.

 

Filed Under: Microsoft Tagged With: , , ,

The Xbox 720 could be launched as early as April 26

March 2, 2013 by

The seems to be an increasing frequency of new rumours, reports and leaks, that seems to suggest that an official launch date of the Xbox 720 is not too far away. For example a website called pc-tablet says it could even be launched as early as April the 26th and they also claim that they could be partnering with EA who are a major games developer. This would certainly give Microsoft leverage within the gaming arena.

The new Xbox 720 is expected to get a major upgrade, rumours indicate that the consoles 7000 series graphics card that is made by AMD will get a major revision, which is based on its 28nm Graphics Core Next (GCN) Southern Islands tech.

According to unnamed sources on the VG247 website that the  graphics set up in the Xbox 720 is going to be “like two PCs taped together” which if that’s true will produce a better overall gaming experience.

The sources go on to say that the two GPUs in the Xbox 720 “aren’t structured as they are in a normal dual PC set-up,” with each chip working separately to draw different items simultaneously. This hardware configuration if true should also help further increase the overall performance of the hardware.

The enhanced graphic capabilities provided by the new graphics chip should be able to elevate the new Xbox to the level of the rumoured specs of the Sony PS4 which is also expected to contain AMD Southern Islands graphics as well as an AMD x86 CPU processor. However there are some other rumours on the VG247 website that suggest that the new Xbox will be slightly less powerful than the rumoured Ps4, but to compensate for this more ram will be used.

But there is an interesting fact that needs to be noted,  if you compare gaming consoles with the most advanced gaming pc’s they appear to be underwhelming and slightly out of date amd pc’s.

There are more rumours that suggest that Microsoft are planning something more ground breaking. These rumours come from a website called computerandvideogames that suggest that the new Xbox 720 is likely to come packed with a 16-core CPU, which would certainly add some much needed muscle to the maybe-possibly underpowered graphics card that is rumoured to be coming with this gaming device.

The new Xbox is also expected to come with blue ray and is likely to also come packed with dvr features.

If most of these rumours turn out to be true then we will be in for an super gaming and multimedia device that will have many more uses than just simply gaming.

 

 

 

 
Filed Under: Other tech news and developments Tagged With: , , , ,