Countless consumer electronics are shown at CES every year, but TVs are undeniably one of the biggest stars of the show. Samsung is no stranger to this, as its TVs always manage to grab a substantial portion of the spotlight. There is no doubt the company will have a handful of new TVs this year as well, but that is only one part of the entertainment products it plans to debut, as the company announced it will be showing three new Smart TV services at the show, all of which aim to help personalize your viewing experience.
“At Samsung, one of our top priorities is ensuring that we are closely in tune with what consumers want and need from their smart devices and electronics,” Samsung Electronics Visual Display Vice President Won Jin Lee said in a statement. “With that in mind, we continue to innovate our Smart TV offering in order to provide the content experiences that our customers have come to know and expect from Samsung.”
These three services — Music, Sports, and TV Plus — each focus on a unique part of the home entertainment world. The first, Music ties together music from eight different app partners, including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Napster, Deezer, Sirius XM, Vevo, Melon, and Bugs, but that’s not all. First, it can identify songs from live TV, but can also make recommendations based on your listening habits across all apps, which you will see in the preview section of Samsung’s Smart Hub interface.
Sports aims to make finding your favorite games easier. Instead of flipping from channel to channel, the Sports service gathers them all together in one place, letting you skip right to watching. At the same time, information like schedules, scores, and more will be displayed in the same place.
Earlier in 2016, Samsung introduced its TV Plus service and for CES, it is getting a major boost. The company partnered with FandangoNow to let you rent or buy more than 40,000 movies and TV shows, which even features new releases in 4K resolution with HDR (high-dynamic range).
Samsung Music will be launching in France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. TV Plus is already available in the U.S. and southeast Asia, and will be available in Europe beginning in April.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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