Tag Archives: Media

Your Plex account may have been compromised

Media, Media Center, TV,

Plex logoIf you are using your computer or other connected devices for your media and entertainment experiences. Plex is a media server platform and also a player, that has been in development that has been in development since 2008 and can work with Windows, MacOS, Linux and Free BSD, as well as on platforms such as Apple TV and Roku. 

If you’ve been using it, then be alert to the fact that Plex made an announcement today that it has uncovered unauthorized activity in the system that may have compromised user data. The service sent out an email to all users that begins by stating, “We want you to be aware of an incident involving your Plex account information yesterday.” 

While it’s a chilling start, Plex goes on to try and downplay the extent of just how much damage is involved. 

“We immediately began an investigation and it does appear that a third party was able to access a limited subset of data that includes emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords. Even though all account passwords that could have been accessed were hashed and secured in accordance with best practices, out of an abundance of caution we are requiring all Plex accounts to have their password reset.” 

The company stresses that credit card data was not stored with the databases that were compromised 

It’s up to each user where to go from here. By all means, change your password, but if you wish to play it on the cautious side, there are a number of popular open-source Plex alternatives available. 

Amazon continues to keep Fire TV on sale

Information, , ,

Amazon released Fire TV back in 2014, and it took off fairly quickly, becoming second behind only the Roku box. Since then, the television market has caught up to it, it’s no longer just Netflix and Hulu anymore. And now TV has mostly moved to the internet, with services like Sling, YouTube TV, Hulu TV and others. 

Prior to Black Friday, Amazon put its Fire TV Sticks on sale, but Thanksgiving week is well over with now. Amazon is keeping the devices at the sale price, slightly more than it was over Thanksgiving, but still a considerable discount. 

The base model, the Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, regularly $39.99 is currently $24.99; the Fire TV 4K with Alexa Voice Remote, which retails for $49.99, is currently $29.99 and the high-end Fire TV 4K Max, Wi-Fi 6, regularly $54.99, now $34.99. 

There is now word on how long the deal will last, so the sooner you grab it, the better off you are. After all, it can disappear any day now. 

New Tom Hanks movie to be released straight to Apple TV as an exclusive

Apple, Media, video, , , ,

I’m sure I don’t need to remind anyone of who Tom Hanks is. The man who gave us things like Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, Captain Phillips and Sully, just to name a few.

Now Hanks has a new movie and this release will be unique, but also a sign of the times we’re living in. With theaters closed Sony reached a deal with Apple TV to give it exclusive rights to the World War II submarine movie “Greyhound”

The movie had been slated for father’s day weekend, but Apple has given no date when they’ll begin showing it.

This is not the only movie going this route,  “Scoob” is now on Amazon Prime directly. And others have or will follow suit.

What will this do to the theater industry? It’s hard to say. It may recover when all of this passes, but will people return or will they become used to this new way of doing business? It will be interesting to see this play out.

In the meantime Sony has released a trailer which you can watch here

VLC patches multiple security flaws, two critical

Information, Security,

There are many options out there for media playback, we’ve come a long way since Windows Media Player and Quicktime.  Alternatives abound, and some of them quite compelling.

Take the Video Lan Client, better known to everyone as VLC, which is capable playing almost any format a user can throw at it. Like any software, however, there are always bugs, and sometimes security holes  that could allow bad things to happen to good people.

VLC is issuing a number of security fixes, 33 of them to be exact, designed to keep your system healthy. Two of these are considered critical, designed to patch an out-of-bound write vulnerability and a stack-buffer-overflow bug.

According ThreatPost “Details are scant on the two high-severity bugs and how they could be exploited. Impacted is VLC 3.0.7 and the EU-FOSSA release of the player, along with code tied to the upcoming 4.0 release of the player.”

The high number of patches comes on the heels of a new bug bounty program started by the European Commission on January 7, 2019.

The updates are being pushed out so users shouldn’t need to do anything except wait, and actually, you may already have it.

Sharing Fatigue

podcasting, Podcasts, Social Media, , ,

socialmediafatigueFor some time, something has been going on with me I’ve been struggling to explain. My motivation to share things via social media has been waning.

When podcasting came along in 2004, and social media was still in its infancy, my motivation to share was strong. For several years, I was creating and posting new content at a furious rate.

However, in the past couple of years, the motivation I once felt has been on a sharp decline. I’ve been wondering, did something happen to cause me to stop caring? Was I running out of energy? What was the deal?

Lately, I’ve been toying with the theory that people have a fixed amount of sharing capacity, and once that is used up, the motivation drops off. To back this idea up, there have been plenty of people that had a large online presence that at some point simply seemed to run out of gas and ended up dropping off. This pattern seems to be common, whether it is with a large percentage of podcasters, or just people posting stuff on platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.

With me, motivation is everything. I find that if I am motivated to learn something and/or do something, I can bore right through to the center of whatever it is and make it happen. However, if I’m not motivated, I might as well forget it. I cannot force myself to do something that I lack natural interest in or motivation for.

So, this is the best answer I’ve come up with so far. I am currently tapped out when it comes to the motivation to create and share content online.

Will this lack of motivation to share continue? Would it return if I found myself in a different personal situation, such as when I retire? These are questions I currently have no answers for.

Amazon Fire TV

amazon, Android, Film, Home Theater, Kindle, Streaming, , , , , ,

Amazon Fire TVAfter weeks of speculation, Amazon has finally shown its hand in the set-top box game with the Fire TV. It’s a $99 box with a Bluetooth remote control that connects to your HD TV and shows Amazon content plus media from partners, including Netflix, Hulu, ESPN and Pandora.

Amazon Fire TV

Initially, this doesn’t sound terribly different from the Roku and Apple TV units, but when you get into the feature set, it’s pretty impressive. There’s voice search which helps you find the shows without the laborious letter selection that bedevils remote controls. ASAP is a predictive feature that pre-loads content so that shows start instantly without the buffering delay. WhisperSync synchronises watching and listening across multiple devices so you never lose a second, and X-Ray takes the movie experience further, showing film and character information on your second screen Kindle Fire HDX.

As you’d expect, the Fire TV is seamlessly integrated with Prime Instant Video, Amazon’s subscription streaming service, giving access to tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes. With Dolby Digital Plus, films and music will sound amazing and any media stored in Amazon’s Cloud Drive from photos to personal videos can be played through the Fire TV.

“Tiny box, huge specs, tons of content, incredible price—people are going to love Fire TV,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “Voice search that actually works means no more typing on an alphabet grid. Our exclusive new ASAP feature predicts the shows you’ll want to watch and gets them ready to stream instantly. And our open approach gives you not just Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video, but also Netflix, Hulu Plus, and more. On Fire TV you can watch Alpha House and House of Cards.”

Amazon are definitely taking the fight to the competition as the Fire TV is a mini powerhouse, with a quad-core processor and 2 GB RAM, which lets the unit double as a gaming unit with over 100 games available at launch. Already available are Minecraft, Monsters University, The Game of Life, The Walking Dead, NBA2K14, Asphalt 8, Riptide GP2, Despicable Me: Minion Rush and Amazon has signed up EA, Disney, Gameloft, Ubisoft, Telltale, Mojang, 2K, and Sega to bring their games to Fire TV.  To complement the gaming, there’s an additional game controller that will set you back a penny shy of $40. The controller connects via Bluetooth too and will run for up to 55 hours on AA batteries.

Simplistically, it’s a desktop version of the Kindle Fire tablets and sure enough, Fire TV runs the latest version of Fire OS “Mojito,” which is based on Android. This means that apps should be easily ported over to the Fire TV (and Kindle Fires).

The Kindle Fire TV is available now in the US. No news on international availability yet.

XBMC moves to Gotham beta 1

Media,

xbmc 11 beta home screenXBMC began life as Xbox Media Center, but the platform has come a long way since those early days. It’s become one of the hottest platform for HTPC enthusiasts, though it is far from the only one. Now XBMC is moving towards its latest release, announcing beta one of the new Gotham release.

“After a year of hard work, improvements and testing since the release of version 12.0, we are delighted to announce the Beta release of the upcoming XBMC 13.0, codenamed Gotham”, the company states.

New features include Android hardware decoding, Raspberry Pi  and Android speed improvements, stereoscopic 3D rendering, improved touchscreen support, improved UPnP capabilities, dramatic audio engine improvements, settings improvements, better subtitles and more capability for developers.

“If installing XBMC for friends or family, it is highly encouraged that you move the settings down to Beginner level”, the company warns.

It’s available now, but you don’t have to install it and, as it is a beta, you may not want it powering your home theater.