Author: maxo9

What you need to know

• Disney+ is now available for general pre-order in the United States.
• It’s still $6.99 a month, or $69.99 a year.
• And you still have to wait until Nov. 12 to actually watch it.

If you just can’t wait for Nov. 12 to roll around and for Disney+ to officially launch, it’s now available for pre-order for folks in the United States.

And, well, that’s it. You don’t get anything extra. You don’t get a price break, like with the D23 promotion. But you do have the knowledge that you’ve subscribed to something and given Disney your credit card more than a month in advance. So there’s that.

More: How to sign up for Disney+

Note that this is only for Disney+, and that the ridiculously well-priced $12.99 bundle that includes Hulu and ESPN+ won’t be available until launch on Nov. 12.

Disney+ is the upcoming streaming home for all of Disney proper. Of course, that world has expanded by several orders of magnitude as Disney also owns Marvel and Star Wars, as well as Pixar and National Geographic.

What you need to know

• For the first time ever, Apple streamed its iPhone event on YouTube.
• The format proved to be a runaway hit with streamers.
• During the stream, the iPhone event got over 1.8 million streamers.

For the first time ever, Apple streamed its iPhone event live on YouTube. It normally locks it down to a stream held on its own site, and prior to 2018, it was only available on Safari browsers. It’s slowly loosened its restrictions with this year being the most readily available for people and they responded in kind.

The new format was an unsurprising hit, getting nearly 2 million streamers during the event. In total, the Apple event garnered over 1.8 million streamers at its peak.

Apple’s iPhone events always receive an unprecedented amount of attention, but now we are able to put into context just how much. In years past, in streaming the event through its own site, Apple didn’t disclose streaming numbers. YouTube, however, shows the number during the live stream, giving us a peek at Apple’s numbers.

They were quite impressive as intrigue around the iPhone 11 (and Apple’s other announcements) was at a fever pitch.

We appreciate Apple using new formats to make its events readily available. It makes it more convenient to keep up with all of its announcements. Besides YouTube, Apple has also embraced social media, offering to send people announcement tweets on Twitter as the event goes on.

Apple’s next event will likely take place in the next couple of months. We’re hoping it continues streaming its events on YouTube from here on out.

A pleasant surprise is greeting some YouTube TV subscribers this evening — free Showtime through Sept. 5. Flip on YouTube TV on any of your devices and you’ll be hit with a huge announcement telling you to check out YouTube TV from a computer (that’d be at tv.youtube.com to claim the free offer.

A couple clicks later, and you’ve got yourself 90 days or so of the premium network.

Note that if you’re taking advantage of YouTube TV’s multiple accounts (you can have as many as six) you’ll need to turn on that free offer individually on each account. At the end of the free period, the subscription will be canceled and you won’t be billed for more. If you cancel the trial during the three free months, that’s it — you won’t be able to start it back up again.

Here’s the official fine print:

Exclusive SHOWTIME® offer through 9/5/19

This SHOWTIME® promotion is only open to valid YouTube TV members in the United States. Promotional value of subscription(s) are non transferable, not for resale, not redeemable for cash, and non-refundable. YouTube TV offer is redeemable where YouTube TV is available.

Eligible participants will be contacted by YouTube TV and must take action in order to claim the offer. Eligible YouTube TV Family Managers will need to opt-in to add SHOWTIME® to their plan using Members Settings on a computer. Offer can be activated at anytime but is only valid until promotion ends on September 5, 2019, at which time all SHOWTIME® subscriptions will end. At the end of the offer period, SHOWTIME® will be automatically removed and members will not be automatically charged the standard SHOWTIME® subscription price. If members cancel their membership during this time, the offer will no longer be valid. Offer requires a Google account, a current form of payment and an active YouTube TV subscription. YouTube TV reserves the right to change or cancel the offer at any time.

NVIDIA’s ray tracing tech hasn’t gotten off to a great start, with just a few titles offering support for the technology. That’s all set to change, as NVIDIA has announced at GDC that it is teaming up with Unity and Unreal to integrate its ray tracing technology into both game engines. That’s a major win for the chip vendor as it tries to make ray tracing more accessible to developers.

Nearly 90% of PC games are developed on either Unity or Unreal, so the fact that ray tracing tech is baked into the game engines makes it that much easier for game studios to leverage the technology. The low uptick of ray tracing meant that sales of NVIDIA’s RTX cards have been lukewarm to say the least. With two of the biggest game engines throwing their weight behind the technology, that should change soon.

In fact, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang foreshadowed the announcement last month in an earnings call,

Probably one of the biggest stories that came out just last week is Unreal engine and Unity, both of the game engines, are going to incorporate RTX and ray tracing technology in the engine itself.

Ray tracing leads to much more realistic visuals in games as it simulates light bouncing off various surfaces. But the downside is that doing so requires a lot of processing power, and this is why RTX cards have dedicated cores to facilitate real-time ray tracing.

Unreal Engine 4.22 with ray tracing is in preview right now, and we should know more details about a final release shortly. Unity will offer “production-focused” real-time ray tracing integration in a new build that will go live on April 4.

Google has sent out invites for an event on March 19, where the search giant is expected to unveil more information about its cloud gaming service.

Dubbed Project Stream, the service is designed to make high-end gaming more accessible to consumers who don’t own a console or powerful gaming PC. If you have a decent internet connection and a machine that runs Chrome, then you’re good to go.

Looks like Google's finally going to show off what it's been doing with all that money it's spending on video games pic.twitter.com/3zAljY1WWh

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 19, 2019

Google briefly tested the service in beta last year, giving gamers access to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

Rumors about Google entering the gaming world surfaced at the beginning of last year, when a report claimed the search giant was developing a subscription-based service that could be accessed through a Google-made console.

Google’s Project Stream could go head-to-head with similar services from Sony and Nvidia, which offer access to AAA titles over the internet. Meanwhile, Amazon and Microsoft are also rumored to be working on video game streaming services, with releases expected later this year.

We’ll provide more details about Google’s service as they become available.VIA: ANDROIDCENTRAL