The latest video in my sponsored Mevo Multicam tutorial series looks at how the Mevo Multicam app allows the layering of multiple camera angles and graphical overlays all at the same time.
There are few apps that really show off what an iPad can do – this is one of them. During a livestream we managed to have four simultaneous camera angles up on screen at once along with overlayed graphics.
Enthusiast issues aside, the Apple TV remains one of the top streaming video players on the market. It’s the only TV box that bests the Nvidia Shield TV in performance, has a clean interface devoid of advertising, and integrates tightly with other Apple products and services like Airpods and iCloud Photo libraries. You can see my review of the 3rd generation unit here.
This new edition nudges the platform forward, featuring a more powerful (yet underutilized) A15 processor. While you’ll find a game or two on the platform like Oceanhorn 2 that can show off the prowess of the device, the game library is nowhere near as deep as a Nintendo Switch, Xbox or Playstation.
The new Apple TV is priced competitively vs. other streamers on the market, although Apple pulled the ethernet port out of the lower cost 64GB unit. You’ll need to go up to the 128GB model to get the port which is something I recommend for 4k streaming. The 64GB model also does not have support for the open Matter smarthome standard but the 128GB does.
It handles all of the streaming services I tried well although there does not appear to be any perceptible performance difference vs. the last two generations of the device. The Apple TV is one of the few boxes that can match content properly coming from most popular services, meaning it can switch your television’s display mode to match what the content requires. HDR, Dolby Vision and ATMOS are supported through most streaming apps (with the exception of lossless ATMOS as noted here). This new version also supports the emerging HDR10+ standard which was not available on the prior models.
Should you upgrade from a prior edition? I don’t think there’s enough here to warrant that. I am using the first generation Apple TV 4k now for most of my streaming from subscription services. I like its integration with my Airpods and photo library along with its proper content matching features. The 3rd generation box doesn’t feel much different even though it has a more powerful processor.
But if I were looking for a new box I’d definitely recommend picking up this 2022 version.
It looks like today is the day that Twitter rolled out blue check marks for anyone who pays for the $8 “Blue” tier of service. I got mine this afternoon.
There was some controversy earlier in the day as Twitter rolled out a two tier checkmark system that would give some people a white “official” checkmark to designate them as a VIP in addition to the blue one they paid for. But that was reversed by Musk later in the morning:
But it looks like Twitter is instead going to embed a description for why the checkmark is assigned to a user if you tap on it next to the username. So for example my check mark says that I’m verified because I’m paying.
But if I look at an official government account like @POTUS, it’ll indicate that “it’s notable in government, news, entertainment or another designated category.”
Is it worth paying $8 for just a checkmark? Definitely not. But I like the idea of treating every user equally insofar as how far their content gets pushed out by the algorithms. Twitter’s prior policies shut out smaller independent creators and put them at a disadvantage. The blue check marks could even choose to ignore non-blue check mark people further deepening their echo chamber.
If Musk is serious about leveling the playing field $8 a month to extend the reach of my content is fine by me – especially if my mainstream competitors are having to pay for it too.
But ultimately I hope they really work to improve the consumption experience for Blue subscribers. The edit button and extended video lengths are a nice bonus but I’d love to have a completely ad free experience and better tools for consuming and posting content.
Twitter is not the only social media platform I subscribe to. I get a lot of value out of YouTube Premium as it provides a completely ad-free experience along with the full YouTube Music library. And the channels I watch are compensated for every minute I watch.
I’m also paying for LinkedIn’s Premium tier that offers a lot of useful benefits and guess what? A gold badge too!
Stay tuned as I’ll be doing a video soon about the added features you get with the subscription now and what I’d like to see out of it in the future.
My latest video looks at how the new Apple TV 4k works with Plex.
The new box wasn’t out at the time I produced my Plex box shoot-out video that I published last week and lots of viewers asked if the new one would do any better. So this weekend I picked one up at a local Apple store to find out!
My testing methodology involves seeing how well a player can handle 4k Blu Ray ripped media. These video files are typically very high bit rate (some exceeding 100 megabits per second), are encoded with h.265 HEVC, and usually have a lossless audio track with Dolby TrueHD / ATMOS or DTS-X.
One of the problems the Apple TV historically has with Plex is that it internally transcodes all audio into lossless LPCM before passing it off to an audio receiver. While this doesn’t present much of a problem for the type of ATMOS content found on Netflix, Disney+, etc. it is an issue for Plex as the Apple TV’s internal encoder does not work with lossless audio found on Blu Ray media.
As you’ll see in the video the new player continues doing this LPCM encoding and therefore Plex has the same issues on this new box that it had on the older one. Plex is also having to transcode the audio before it sends it over to the Apple TV further complicating matters.
So the 2019 Nvidia Shield TV still remains the box to get for Plex enthusiasts as it supports passing both video and audio directly to a home theater receiver.
The Apple TV does though offer some benefits over its competitors when it comes to regular streaming and games which is a topic we’ll cover in my full review of the device later this week!
First, don’t forget to vote tomorrow (Tuesday, November 8) if you are in the United States! I found Vote411.org run by the non-partisan League of Women Voters to be an excellent resource for voting information.
This week we’re going to take a look at the new Apple TV, likely in two videos. I picked up the new one over the weekend and have already put it through its paces with Plex and general usability. You can watch me attempting to unbox it here. Spoiler alert – it’s not much different than the prior 4k models. I’ll be working on that device today.
Also this week will be a review of the new more expensive “iPad.” Apple used to call their entry level iPad just “iPad.” They still do that but they’re also selling the prior generation one at a lower price and still calling it “iPad.” I bet they’re sitting on a glut of excess inventory of that low-end device.
We’ll likely take a look at the new Roku smart home products that are really Wyze products in disguise. There are a few usability differences vs. the Wyze versions that we’ll cover once I get a few questions answered by the Roku folks. In the meantime you can see me unboxing them here.
I’m hoping to get caught up on reviewing a pile of laptops so look for a review of one of them too.
Finally I’m wrapping up two paid sponsorship projects, one for Mevo and the other for Synology. So you’ll probably see those videos this week or early next.
Stay tuned!
GPD has been making handheld PCs long before coveted Steam Deck hit the market. Their latest device, the GPD Win 4, is going to be launching soon on Indiegogo. We’ve looked at a lot of their PCs over the years, you can see them in my handheld device playlist here.
The Win 4 looks to be a lot smaller than Steam Deck yet should deliver better performance thanks to its Ryzen 6800U processor. There will be a version with 32GB of RAM and a 2TB NVME SSD. It has a 6″ 1080p display that can run at 40 or 60 hz that can be slid out to reveal a physical keyboard. Battery life will likely come in at around what the Steam Deck delivers so be sure to budget for some power banks for longer trips.
Also of note is that it will feature 40 gbps USB 4 ports that are Thunderbolt compatible for external GPUs and other high speed devices. The Win 4 will be running Windows 11 so it should be a good companion for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers who want to download games and take them on the road.
No pricing has been set yet but I expect this will likely cost more than Steam Deck if the prior editions are any indication. The Intel powered GPD Win 3 sold for $899 upon its release with an i7-1165G7 processor.
Via Michael Baylor on Twitter, it looks like Starlink is going to begin throttling users who consume more than 1TB of data transfers in a month.
Those who go beyond the allocation will be “depriortized” for the remainder of the month and will likely experience degraded connection speeds.
Here’s the notice Baylor received today:
Starlink will not run the bandwidth meter between 11pm and 7 am at the moment, so night owls should be ok for now.
It’ll be interesting to see how they’ll manage the continued growth of the service. I have a feeling this is just the beginning.
My latest laptop review is of the Lenovo Thinkbook 13s G4. You can watch it here.
I have been a big fan of the Thinkbook line of laptops – they are the middle ground between the Thinkpads and some of Lenovo’s consumer laptops. They are well built, perform well, and are competitively priced for the specifications.
This one is no exception. It’s very lightweight, coming in at 2.75 pounds or 1.25 kg, has a nice 13″ display, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and has a great keyboard. The only downside here is that the battery life isn’t so great coming in at around 6-7 hours in my testing.
But the performance is great – my loaner unit came with the base level i5 processor that delivers more than adequate performance for most tasks including light video editing. I do recommend going with the 16 gigabyte model over the base 8 GB configuration that was in our loaner unit – especially if you’re looking to play games or edit video.
Beyond the battery life there’s not much to complain about here – it’s another solid offering in the Thinkbook line. It’s nice to have something this small and light perform as well as it does.
As many of you know a good portion of my revenue comes in from affiliate links that I place on my videos. With “social shopping” becoming more of a thing we’re starting to see major retailers develop programs that are better integrating into social video platforms.
That’s why I was interested in Walmart’s new “Walmart Creator” program, especially after some of the success I have found on Amazon’s influencer program. That was until I tried signing up for Walmart’s effort.
As a creator you’re asked to link your social media accounts to the Walmart Creator website. No biggie. But my alarm bells went off when I got to the next screen where they ask for what is essentially full control of my YouTube channel. Have a look:
The first item provides them read-only access to your analytics. While you’re giving them all of your analytics data there’s not much damage they can do there. But the second item which allows them to “manage your YouTube account” is one no creator should grant to anyone outside their organization. Here’s what they’ll be able to do without your intervention with this permission enabled:
View and manage videos and playlists means exactly that: they could change your descriptions, thumbnails, playlists, probably even delete entire videos. You’re also giving them the ability to comment as you on your own videos and others.
This goes without saying but YOU SHOULD NEVER, EVER GIVE THIS ACCESS TO ANYONE, EVER. This makes the Walmart Creator platform a juicy target for hackers who could take control over who knows how many channels in one shot.
What’s worse is that Walmart’s not actually running it. You’ll notice that Activate Holding LLC is the company seeking this access, which is a subsidiary of Impact.com. Impact is an affiliate marketing technology provider that Walmart uses for their normal affiliate operations.
And the fun doesn’t stop with YouTube. Look at what they want from your Twitter account:
And for those of you building your brand on Facebook & Instagram you’ll find they require granting extensive management permissions to your accounts there too:
I don’t have a TikTok account but I’m sure they’re looking for the same level of control there too.
The worst part is the Walmart program is (at the moment) not much different vs. a standard affiliate program where you send people from social platforms to Walmart to make purchases. So if you’re already using affiliate links from them I don’t think being a part of this program is going to be much different unless they cut you a better deal.
But a point or two more commission is not worth turning over this much control to a third party IMHO.
My advice: hold off on this until they change these requirements. Otherwise you’re putting your accounts at significant risk for not much gain.
I have reached out to a number of Walmart and Impact executives via their LinkedIn profiles and have not heard back. I’ll update this post as I get more information or if things change.
Every couple of weeks I appear on WTIC-AM’s morning drive show “Brian and Company” here in Connecticut. This week host Brian Shactman & I talk about Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of Twitter and what it might mean for users whether they have a blue check mark or not! Listen here:
Elon’s erratic behavior aside I do think there are opportunities for independent creators if the playing field is leveled and a revenue sharing model is developed.
The commoditization of the “blue check mark” that created two tiers of users allowed the prior ownership to pick winners and losers. Contrast that to YouTube where every piece of content has the chance to be successful based on how well it holds a viewer’s interest.
Years ago one of my laptop reviews on YouTube got placed higher in search than the same product reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. That was empowering and indicative of YouTube’s desire to be focused on users and develop a culture of partnership with those who submit content to the platform.
Twitter doesn’t give the smaller voices that same opportunity. The verification process was never fair to anyone and often it was about who you knew at Twitter as opposed to a true measure of the credibility and quality.
Twitter will have a bumpy ride ahead. I think there’s some opportunity for independent voices but time will tell depending on how competently these changes are implemented and rolled out to users.
For this month’s sponsored Plex video we take a look at what options are out there for folks who stream high-end 4k content in the home from their personal Plex media server. While the server requirements are not steep for this sort of activity (you only need enough LAN bandwidth), there is great complexity in choosing the right player.
In the video we look at four popular video players: The Nvidia Shield TV Pro, Amazon Fire TV Cube Gen 3, Apple TV 4k and the Xbox. What I was testing for was each box’s ability to play a high bit rate 4k Blu Ray rip that contains Dolby Vision HDR video, lossless ATMOS or DT-S X sound, and can properly switch the television into 24p with the proper HDR mode selected.
As you’ll see in the video the NVidia Shield is still the reining champion for nearly 100% compatibility with most of the video formats Plex enthusiasts use. If Nvidia ever stops selling them it’ll be a disaster for the Plex community!
The Apple TV and Fire TV Cube are making progress but are not quite there. The big issue with both boxes is that they convert audio to LPCM in the background and there’s no way for the user to circumvent that for a direct feed to the receiver.
The Xbox is very close to becoming an alternative to the Shield. It does work with all lossless audio formats and supports HDR but it’s still not quite there when it comes to Dolby Vision. Given how solid everything is I don’t think it’ll be long until it’s up there with the Shield – and of course it has a great library of games too.
These videos are always fraught with danger for me as the technical weeds are deep and I like to keep things relatively simple. But so far from the comments it looks like I did ok on this one :).
