video

Sony has discontinued the PlayStation 2 in Japan, says a report, nearly 13 years after the device's introduction.

Famitsu broke the news that Sony halted Japanese production of PlayStation 2 hardware in its home country, but the blog also noted that the company plans to continue developing and selling games for the video game console. We've reached out to Sony Computer Entertainment America for more information about future PS2 plans in the U.S. -- check back later for a response. … Read more

VP9, the successor to Google's VP8 video compression technology at the center of a techno-political controversy, has made its first appearance outside Google's walls.

Google has built VP9 support into Chrome, though only in an early-stage version of the browser for developers. In another change, it also added support for the new Opus audio compression technology that's got the potential to improve voice communications and music streaming on the Internet.

VP9 and Opus are codecs, technology used to encode streams of data into compressed form then decode them later, enabling efficient use of limited network or storage … Read more

Snapchat and Poke videos shared with other people are supposed to go poof after a few seconds, but their vanishing act isn't working exactly as advertised.

Snapchat and Facebook's Poke apps are designed for folks who want to share photos and videos with their socially networked friends -- though only briefly. The appeal of both apps is that the photos and videos vanish after up to 10 seconds. That's supposed to mean you can send someone a potentially embarrassing or "sexty" clip of yourself, firm in the belief that it won't stick around for … Read more

Downloading videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and other sites is sort of the holy grail of free software. Many programs claim to do it, but only a select few can pull it off without hiccups. Video Clips falls firmly into the second category. It rarely works and when it does, it doesn't work well.

Trying to install Video Clips takes several minutes, as you have to decline no less than four programs that try to install with it. If you exit out of them, it often closes the installation process, making the program incredibly difficult to run. When it does … Read more

When I first read Rafe Needleman's tweet where he encouraged his iPhone to dance, I shrugged it off. Then I clicked on the cycloramic.com link in the tweet and watched one of the videos posted on the site. I shook my head in disbelief as I watched an iPhone 5 spin in a circle -- hands-free -- while standing on end. I was convinced there had to be some sort of special effects or movie magic going on. Obviously this was a prank. Right?

Boy was I wrong. So I followed the link to the App Store, forked … Read more

Your TV may be smart, but you're not making the most of that talent.

Facebook, Twitter, online shopping, Web browsing -- they're simply not getting much screen time on Internet-enabled TVs, according to a new report from NPD. It seems consumers prefer to engage in those activities on other devices.

"In general, these have failed to resonate with the audience, not least because there are better platforms, such as the PC, tablet, or smartphone, for such services," NPD's John Buffone wrote in a blog post today. "The one saving grace to date has been … Read more

The wildly popular "Gangnam Style" music video by Psy has gone where no YouTube video has gone before.

Earlier today, the official video surged past 1 billion views, making it the first clip on the site to ever hit that mark, and the latest in a long line of feats for the popular video.

Last month, "Gangnam Style" surpassed pop star Justin Bieber's "Baby" video to become the most popular YouTube upload of all time. Bieber's video, which at the time had 805 million views, was beaten in just five months. As … Read more

It's been a fun series of freebies this week! Free seasons of TV shows (now expired, alas), free movies from Vudu, a free membership to ShopRunner -- and today, to top it all off, some free software.

Before I tell you about it, I'm going to ask that you please read the instructions as I've outlined them below, as these giveaways always seem to trip up some readers. There's nothing complicated here, but if you don't pay attention, you'll end up e-mailing me about what a fake or scam or screw-up this is.

So. … Read more

The U.S. Senate has approved legislation to amend a 1988 law that would make it easier for people to share their video-viewing habits online should the Netflix-backed bill win President Obama's signature.

The Senate approved revisions this evening to the Video Privacy Protection Act to allow video rental companies to obtain consent from customers in order to share information about their viewing preferences on social networks. The 24-year-old law was enacted after a newspaper printed the video rental history of Judge Robert H. Bork during his Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Bork died yesterday at age 85, a day … Read more