Rest of the Day: PlayStation 4 Media Player Gets FLAC and More Support.
PlayStation 4 Media Player, an app that lets you play media directly on your PS4, is getting some welcome additions. The main goal of the update is to add support for VR videos, but there are some nice additional features as well. About this and much more in today’s news.
- FLAC playback is a nice little feature for those of you committed to a lossless audio format. Regular MP3 and AAC music files also supposedly sound better, thanks to Sony’s “DSEE HX ™ technology”, which improves compressed audio quality. As mentioned, the main purpose of the app is to prepare it for the PlayStation VR headset . It will be available tomorrow, October 13th. [PlayStation Blog]
- Google has made a strange 360-degree camera app called Sprayscape that creates unusual virtual collages. Do you record by “splattering” the picture? And it tracks your movement as you move your phone, but doesn’t merge the images? Of course, this is just a toy from Android Experiments . [Google]
- Amazon is set to open conventional grocery stores, according to The Wall Street Journal. Basically, it’s an extension of their Amazon Fresh service, which costs $ 299 a year to get groceries to your door, with or without delivery. Small convenience stores will offer perishable groceries as well as same day delivery options and will initially be exclusively for Fresh subscribers. (How does it work? Is there a bouncer at the door checking your subscription?) [WSJ]
- This American Life has a new tool called Shortcut that lets you share snippets from your favorite shows. It generates a small video with sound, which can then be posted to Twitter, Facebook, or wherever. Ira Glass explains: