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You’ll soon be able to use the one-app streaming experience Disney is creating between Disney+ and Hulu. On today’s earnings call, CEO Bob Iger announced that the beta version of Hulu on Disney+ will be available in December. The full launch is expected in early spring, though Iger cautioned the company may not see the full benefits of the one-stop shop until 2025. The beta version will allow parents to setup profiles and content controls to ensure viewing remains age appropriate. Disney says a key reason for the beta is to give parents time to do this setup since the library of Hulu content significantly adds to the streaming options.

Disney announced in May that it planned to bring Hulu content into Disney+ before the end of 2023. The company has been clear that both apps will still be available as standalone options. What’s more, Disney said it would purchase Comcast’s remaining stake in Hulu last week, so the entertainment giant will be the sole owner of that service when the deal closes sometime next year. A combined app should be useful to bundle subscribers who are paying for both services in return for a discount on the monthly rate.

Disney added almost seven million Disney+ core subscribers is the fourth quarter of its 2023 fiscal year. The company says that streaming service now counts 112 million total customers. It increased the ad-free price in October and announced a crackdown on password sharing would begin in 2024. Given the higher margins, thanks in part to higher subscription fees across both Disney+ and ESPN+, Disney says it’s still on track for its streaming business to be profitable by this time next year. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-merged-disney-and-hulu-app-launches-in-beta-next-month-220306792.html?src=rss 

There’s a moment, a little over a minute into the announce video, where Chroma Console finally starts to make sense. Up until that point it seems like a really excellent, but rather straightforward multi-effect pedal. And if you’re familiar with Hologram Electronics at all, you know the company doesn’t really do “straightforward.”

It starts small. After introducing you to the four different effect modules — Character, Movement, Diffusion and Texture — a hand cranks a knob while someone plays the drums and this doubled phasing tape effect comes out of the speakers. Interesting. Then some text on the screen lets you know that, hey, you can rearrange the effect modules. So if you want everything to feed into the fuzz mode of Character, you can do that.

Then at the 1:37 mark of the video, we’re introduced to Gestures. It’s basically the same sort of motion controls and automation that you’ll find on many modern synths, except this is a guitar pedal. Instead of having to be glued to an expression pedal or implement some complicated MIDI setup, you can just press a button and turn some knobs. This allows you to crank the distortion of only part of a riff, or have pitch shifted sparkles erupt at regular intervals. This sort of simplified automation is all but unheard of on a guitar pedal. 

The four modules themselves are pretty versatile, though. Each of them has five different modes, for a total of 20 effects. Character is where you’ll find overdrive, fuzz, compression and swell effects to shape your tone. Movement, unsurprisingly, is where modulation like doubling, vibrato, phaser and tremolo live. Diffusion is for time based effects, like delay and echo, including some with that trademark Hologram glitchy weirdness. And Texture is like a dash of finishing salt on your tone, here are filters, compressors and tap emulators.

There’s also a master Drift effect which introduces hints of randomness and instability. Plus Capture, which does dual (but very similar) roles as an infinite sustainer or a looper with up to 30 seconds of record time. 

Hologram Electronics made sure to outfit Chroma Console with all manner of useful features beyond the effects, too. It’s got stereo ins and outs, MIDI over 5-pin DIN and USB-C, expression pedal input and 80 user presets. The two foot switches are also assignable, so you can turn off only specific effects without getting down on your knees. 

The whole thing seems like a unique take on what appears at first glance to be a pretty simple multi-effect pedal. Chroma Console is available now direct from Hologram Electronics for $399, though quantities are limited. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chroma-console-is-hologram-electronics-unique-take-on-a-multi-effect-pedal-221501285.html?src=rss 

The Overwatch League (OWL) appears to be no more after six seasons. A Blizzard spokesperson told Engadget that “We are transitioning from the Overwatch League and evolving competitive Overwatch in a new direction.” That’s not to say the publisher is pulling out of Overwatch esports altogether. “We are grateful to everyone who made OWL possible and remain focused on building our vision of a revitalized esports program,” the statement read. “We are excited to share details with you all in the near future.”

In July, Activision Blizzard laid off around 50 esports staff and revealed that, after the 2023 season, OWL team owners would hold a vote to determine whether they’d continue with the league. Activision Blizzard said that if teams opted out, it would pay each of them a termination fee of $6 million. Blizzard has not said whether the vote has taken place and, if so, what the results were.

However, earlier on Wednesday, the owner of OWL team Toronto Defiant confirmed it was leaving the league. OverActive Media said it had ended its team participation agreement, and that it would receive a $6 million termination payment from Activision Blizzard. The company plans to stay involved in Overwatch esports.

“As we transition into the next phase of Overwatch esports, we look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead,” Adam Adamou, cofounder and CEO of OverActive Media, said in a statement. “We are eager to share more about our vision for Toronto Defiant and our plans to return to Overwatch esports. We expect more information to come on this front soon.”

The Defiant are the second team to leave OWL. The Chengdu Hunters did not participate in the 2023 season after Overwatch 2 and other Blizzard games were shut down in China. The team confirmed partway through the year that it was departing from OWL.

Several other teams have been releasing players and others have suspended operations entirely amid OWL’s uncertain future. All of the Florida Mayhem’s players and staff went into free agency just 19 days after winning the 2023 OWL championship. On October 2, the day after the Grand Finals, Blizzard said it was “focusing on building our vision of a revitalized esports program.”

The writing has been on the wall for OWL for some time as the original vision of a global home-and-away league format never panned out. The first two seasons of OWL matches were held almost exclusively in a studio in California. Weeks after Blizzard started on its grand plan to run matches in each team’s city every week, it was forced to shift to an online-only format due to COVID-19 lockdowns. That prevented teams from pulling in much-sought-after live event revenue.

Viewership struggles, sponsors dropping out and the sexual harassment and discrimination scandal at Activision Blizzard may have played a factor in OWL’s demise as well. Although OWL broadcasts and matches were polished and entertaining, there were just too many factors playing against it.

The future of the professional Overwatch scene is unclear, but reports suggest that a return to a more open format could be next. According to esports reporter Jacob Wolf, Activision Blizzard has been in talks with Saudi Arabian state-owned ESL FACEIT Group for the latter to run the 2024 pro Overwatch season. In the meantime, a Blizzard-backed Overwatch 2 tournament that features regional prize pools of $50,000 and veteran OWL players is getting underway this weekend.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-overwatch-league-appears-to-be-over-210054506.html?src=rss 

YouTube is adding a new For You section to creator channels. The TikTok-like feature will be personalized to each visitor, recommending content from a channel based on each viewer’s watch history. The company’s support account on X posted (via The Verge) about the upcoming feature, which launches on November 20.

Creators can prepare for the For You section by confirming their options before its release date. You can toggle the feature’s availability and change its settings in YouTube Studio by selecting Customization > Layout and then checking each of the prompts under the For You section. It allows you to toggle whether full-length videos, shorts and livestreams are available for the feature.

The company had already teased the feature in a May video posted to its Creator Insider channel, a hub where YouTube employees have “direct conversations” with YouTubers. In that clip, product manager Ann Katrin Kuessner framed the feature as an alternative to the static home page. “You’re trying to find a configuration that is one-size-fits-all since the channel page looks the same today for every person that visits it,” Kuessner said, summarizing a problem creators face. She said the feature’s personalization “will be especially effective if your channel has multiple topics, languages, or content formats.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-will-soon-show-visitors-a-personalized-for-you-section-on-channel-pages-213402443.html?src=rss 

Cruise, General Motors’ driverless car subsidiary, will soon lay off employees. According to Forbes, the company’s CEO Kyle Vogt told staff of the decision in an all-hands meeting earlier this week. Cruise hasn’t yet decided who or how many people will lose their jobs, Vogt said, but promised to provide more details in the next three weeks. The company will also conduct internal “listening sessions”, and explore building websites detailing collisions Cruise cars are involved in, Forbes said.

The news comes on the heels of multiple crises facing the company since October after a Cruise robotaxi dragged a San Francisco pedestrian thrown into its path more than 20 feet before braking to a halt. That incident caused California’s DMV to revoke Cruise’s operating permit in the state. In a statement, the DMV said that Cruise’s vehicles “are not safe for the public’s operation”, and said that Cruise had “misrepresented” information relating to the safety of its autonomous vehicles.

Weeks after the incident, Cruise, which operated in San Francisco, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and Phoenix, fully paused its driverless operations. This week, General Motors recalled Cruise’s entire fleet of 950 robotaxis.

Other reports, based on Cruise’s internal safety documents, showed that the car’s algorithms had trouble identifying children, something that Cruise employees knew about.

On Wednesday, Cruise published a blog post responding to the recent events. The company said that it was looking to hire a Chief Safety Officer who would report directly to Vogt. Cruise will also hire a third-party law firm to review its response to the October incident. The firm, Quinn Emmanuel, is known for its work for Tesla and Elon Musk, CNBC noted.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cruise-is-reportedly-planning-to-lay-off-employees-after-weeks-of-crises-195546324.html?src=rss 

The Apple Watch Series 9 is only a few months old, but it’s already on sale. You can grab the smartwatch for $349 from Amazon or from Walmart as part of an early Black Friday deal. The standard price is $399, so that’s a savings of $50 or 13 percent. The discount only applies to the 41mm model but includes multiple band and color options. The larger 45mm model is also on sale, but for $379.

We admired the watch in our review, calling out many positive aspects. The newly-launched double tap feature is actually useful, the health and fitness tracking is as good as ever and the voice control options are on-point, thanks to having Siri on-board the actual watch. Previously, the watch interacted with your phone to call up Siri responses, so everything works much quicker now.

This opens up plenty of new use case scenarios for the watch. You can ask it all about various health metrics, fitness goals and even how long you slept. You can raise the watch to your mouth to activate the digital assistant or say “Hey Siri” as usual. We had a bit of trouble with the former, but a software update should patch that right up.

We dinged the battery life a bit, as the Series 9 peters out after around 12 to 18 hours of use, depending on what you’re doing with the watch. This is not a huge issue, but does impact the sleep-tracking features because when else are you supposed to charge it if it doesn’t last an entire day and night? Beyond that, the $400 price tag is a bit difficult to swallow, but this sale certainly puts a bandage on that issue.

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-apple-watch-series-9-drops-to-349-in-an-amazon-black-friday-deal-200224064.html?src=rss