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Crowd control and confetti cannons at the Overwatch Open
The studio is immaculate. Shiny black floors glisten under orange, blue and purple lights. A dozen people dressed in all black, wires dangling from their headphones to the battery packs at their waists, mill around, preparing massive hooded cameras, adjusting light fixtures, sweeping the floors and, way in the back on a raised platform, tweaking the appearance of the stage from behind multiscreen terminals. It's 9PM on a Friday night and everyone in the room is at work, but the air sizzles with chatter and excitement. The stage itself is impressive, with three massive, crisp screens alternating between the logo for the 2016 Overwatch Open and the competing teams' insignias. A cartoon rabbit head wearing goggles and a scar over one eye smirks down from the orange side, representing the European underdog team, Misfits. A stylized white "N" surrounded by a circle looms over the North American favorites, EnVyUs. Twelve young men -- some bearded, others clean-shaven -- sit in front of their respective screens at two long, curved banks of gaming PCs, getting in just a few more minutes of practice before the big game; just a few more kills, just a few more dodges and clicks and saves. The mood on the stage is deadly serious. Whoever wins tonight takes home $100,000, after all.
Twitter streams its first eSports tournament this weekend
Twitter is expanding beyond traditional stick-and-ball streams and moving into the lucrative eSports realm this weekend. As part of a partnership with Eleague and Turner Broadcasting, the microblogging service will air two days of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive play from Atlanta. The action starts today at 5pm Eastern with semi-finals. Eleague's end-of-season championship play starts Saturday afternoon at 4 Eastern with two teams going head to head in a best-of-three series.
TBS is giving 'Overwatch' its own $300,000 tournament
Esports are taking over mainstream broadcast networks as an Overwatch tournament is coming to TBS.
A smart toothbrush just won Intel's maker-themed reality show
Last month, Intel the tried to make inventors cool. The company brought tinkering into prime time with the debut of America's Greatest Makers, a reality TV competition on TBS where 24 teams of inventors have been competing for a $1 million prize. Intel's involvement means two things. For starters, CEO Brian Krzanich is one of the main panelists. Also, to even qualify for the competition, all of these projects had to incorporate Intel's button-sized Curie module, which was designed to power the coming wave of connected objects.
The internet of ratings: How makers became hip enough for reality TV
Technology wasn't always hip, and neither was Intel. The company, known for most of its 48-year history as the leader in PC chips, has in recent years branched out into more cutting-edge areas. That includes mobile, drones, robots and an assortment of wearables running the gamut from a high-tech paintball helmet to an augmented-reality hard hat. Now, in a sign of the times, Intel is joining forces with Mark Burnett, the man behind Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice and The Voice, to bring you a reality show about inventors. America's Greatest Makers, which premieres April 5th on TBS, follows 24 teams competing for a $1 million prize. Though the show follows a format similar to other reality contests, complete with auditions (pitches), guest judges and elimination rounds, the panelists are generally friendlier. Think: the NBA's Kenny Smith and celebrity dealmaker Carol Roth, not a Simon Cowell or Gordon Ramsay.
Time Warner fights Netflix by offering TV seasons on-demand
Time Warner isn't shy about its disdain for online-only video services like Netflix, which threaten its revenue from old-school TV providers. However, it's not just going to sit around and gripe -- it's planning to do something about it. The media giant's channels are asking studios to grant them rights to offer full seasons of shows through cable and satellite companies' on-demand services. The hope, as you might have gathered, is that you'll stick to your expensive TV subscription knowing that you can marathon whole seasons like you can on Netflix, Hulu and other services that are friendly to cord cutters.
TBS will broadcast eSports in 2016
From 2016 TBS won't just show Conan and Big Bang Theory re-runs, as the channel has revealed that it's launching its own eSports league. Turner Broadcasting has signed a deal to broadcast bouts of Counter Strike: Global Offensive, which'll air on Friday nights for 20 weeks of the year. At this early stage, details are thin on the ground, except to say that qualifying rounds for the main events will be streamed online. Successful teams will then be handed a ticket to TBS HQ in Atlanta where the live show will be recorded.
Hulu's Turner deal gives it Adventure Time, Venture Bros. and more
Hulu is about to be your go-to destination to catch up on the adventures of the Venture Bros. and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The streaming service announced a deal with Turner Broadcasting that adds Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, TBS and TNT titles to its library on May 1. The animation-heavy agreement brings Adventure Time, Dexter's Laboratory, Robot Chicken, Black Jesus, NTSF:SD:SUV and other shows from Cartoon Network. TNT dramas The Last Ship and Murder in the First will eventually be followed by additional shows from TNT and TBS. Kid-friendly Cartoon Network shows will be available ad-free in the Hulu Kids section. The service recently secured ratings juggernaut CSI and animated series South Park to help it compete against Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.
How cable networks speed up shows to squeeze in more ads
If you're still watching cable, it turns out that channels like TBS and TNT are now speeding up syndicated programs, classics films and other shows by as much as 7 percent. We hadn't noticed it much ourselves, but the trend was spotted by Snopes and others thanks to a YouTube user who compared the same programs aired now and several years ago. A Seinfeld episode that originally ran 25 minutes was nearly 22 after the process, letting the broadcaster fit in about six extra spots. As the WSJ pointed out, ads now run an average of 15.8 minutes per hour on cable, and one unnamed cable exec said that "it's a way to keep the revenue from going down as much as the ratings."
Conan O'Brien takes a field trip to Minecraft
In a promo no doubt aimed at those lucrative younger demographics, talk show host Conan O'Brien transports his co-host, set and musical accompaniment to the wildly popular cubist sandbox known as Minecraft. [Image: Mojang/TBS]
Time Warner to begin live-streaming TNT and TBS channels starting this summer
Oh, how the times are a-changin'. Hot on the heels of ABC revealing its plans to start streaming live TV in some areas, Time Warner's now let it be known that it will be taking a similar route with its own TNT and TBS networks. According to the Los Angeles Times, Steve Koonin, head honcho of Turner Entertainment Networks, confirmed these online services are due to kick off this summer and will allow interested streamers to watch content "anytime, anywhere, on multiple devices." Just don't go thinking you can join the cord-cutting crowd, as you'll still need a proper cable subscription to enjoy TBS or TNT on the interwebs.
Daily iPad App: Leviathan Warships features sweet, turn-based boat warfare
First of all, go enjoy the wonderful trailer for this game. If you're not sold on Leviathan Warships (US$4.99 on the App Store) after watching that, then I'm not exactly sure what else you want. Leviathan Warships is a turn-based naval strategy game. Your job is to guide a series of ships through watery battlegrounds, leading them turn by turn against your opponents. The game is similar to Bungie's Crimson: Steam Pirates, in that you guide ships around by dragging them, but it's much more complicated. You can aim each ship's guns separately, upgrade your ships as you see fit and take on co-op and multiplayer battles in addition to the main campaign. The whole package is impressively thorough, and in that sense, the trailer is dead on. In fact, there might be a little bit too much here to play with. Those looking for a casual title will find Leviathan Warships overwhelming. But the $4.99 price is fitting -- enough to signify the game is substantial, but still cheap enough for anyone interested to jump right in. Leviathan Warships is highly recommended for sure.
Daily iPhone App: LostStar Tactics does turn-based strategy right
LostStar Tactics is a brand new game from developer James Pawliuk, and it features one of my favorite types of gameplay. It's a turn-based strategy RPG title, so the goal here is to take a series of characters through a run of battles, controlling their movement and actions from turn to turn. There's lots of fun depth and complexity here -- each character's action is controlled by a deck of cards, and leveling up and completing matches provides more actions and more cards to play with. The difficulty curve is well-done as well -- the game starts off very easy, but each level has quite a few difficulty levels to explore through, and there are lots of options for progression of your various troops. The interface can be a little confusing (and unfortunately this app is iPhone only for now, though it would really benefit from the iPad's larger screen, I think), but the game is a lot of fun, especially if you're a fan of turn-based strategy. LostStar Tactics is available for $1.99 right now.
Time Warner Cable brings ESPN, Fox and Turner sports live streaming to apps, website
The newly-available-on-Android live streaming feature of Time Warner Cable's TWC TV app (and TWCTV.com website) has just gotten a major content upgrade, adding many national and regional sports feeds. It looks like ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, MLB Network, NBA TV and NHL Network are available in most regions, along with the applicable Fox RSNs. The full lineup of areas and channels is in the press release after the break. Of course, if you'd like to keep telling your significant other sports channels haven't been added yet and they will need to watch their reality show on the tablet while you use the big HDTV, then we can all just pretend this never happened.
Tilt to Live devs return to iOS with accessible turn-based strategy in Outwitters
One Man Left is the two-person studio behind the very popular 2010 iOS release Tilt to Live -- and that's all the two developers have ever released so far. Alex Okafor and Adam Stewart are finally ready, however, to show off their brand new title, and I got to play with it briefly last week at GDC. The game is called Outwitters, and it's a strong right turn from the arcade frenzy action of Tilt to Live. Instead of bullets flying everywhere, Outwitters is turn-based strategy that takes place on a board of hexagons, with three different factions battling it out over time. Players can play as the Scallywags, the Feedback, or the Adorables, and each faction has a number of different units (including one faction-only unit each -- the Feedback, for example, have a floating brain that can turn units against their team) to pit up against each other on the game's various battlefields. Turn-based strategy is often overly complex, but Outwitters smartly keeps things quick and relatively easy. You're given a number of resource points per turn, and you can use those points to move around, attack, or summon new units to the board every time your turn comes around. Those points can be saved up over time (so you can save up for a special unit), and there are also special spots on the board which will grant you more points as you hold them, so conquering parts of the map will help out a lot. The gameplay itself is sort of similar to Robot Entertainment's recent release Hero Academy, and yes, One Man Left did do a little bit of forehead-slapping when Hero Academy arrived right in the middle of development on Outwitters. But the game is definitely different enough: The boards are bigger, and there's a fog of war, which means there's no "undo" option. In Hero Academy, you can try as many turns as you like before registering your moves, but in Outwitters, it's think first and then move for good. I played a little bit of the pass and play mode, but there is an extensive online component, with unranked and fully ranked play across a number of different leagues. One Man Left has really gone the extra mile for online play, so there will likely be no shortage of competitors to match yourself up against. Just like Starcraft 2's league system, you can start in the Fluffy League, and rank your way all the way up to the Super Titan League, so if you're into the game, you can play Outwitters for a long, long time. The title will be free to download, and then (similar again to Hero Academy) players will be able to pick up packs of maps and extra teams for an extra fee, or be able to just buy the whole shebang in one go. Outwitters seems excellent, and of course we'd expect nothing less than the makers of Tilt to Live. Turn-based strategy probably wouldn't have been my first guess when thinking about a followup from these guys, but nevertheless, I'm looking forward to the game's release in a few months.
March Madness streams to more platforms in 2012, but not everything is free
Last year CBS and Turner Sports brought every game of the NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Tournament home in HD on four cable channels, and streaming for free to PCs and iOS devices. While the broadcast plans remain the same this year, if you want to stream the 41 games broadcast on cable networks then you'll need to subscribe to an affiliated TV provider (all the major guys except Time Warner) and log into the TNT, TBS, or TruTV website on your Windows PC or Mac. For the other 41 games broadcast on CBS, CBSSports.com is your (free) online resource. Live streaming on mobiles (over WiFi or 3G) has been extended to the Android platform for the first time, however after being offered for free last year the rebranded March Madness Live app will cost $3.99 this time around, which is still less than the $10 it cost in 2010. Check out the press release after the break for all the details on what's viewable where -- cord cutting sports fans will want to make some alternate arrangements.
Google TV apps for TNT, TBS leak out briefly, reveal authenticated streaming on the way
We're still waiting for Google TV products to officially get their big update with Honeycomb and access to the Android Market, but compatible apps are already leaking out. NewTeeVee points out a couple from TNT and TBS (which also allow Google TV streaming from their websites) that briefly appeared and will let pay-TV subscribers stream episodes directly over the internet, similar to the iOS apps both networks have already rolled out. Turner confirmed the existence of the TV Everywhere apps, while Google expressed its hope to see more authenticated apps like these and the existing HBO Go access on the platform, as opposed to simply ending up blocked. That's bad news for cord-cutters hoping for an online only machine, but with the majority of viewers still hooked into satellite, cable or IPTV it may be the only way to make Google TV a viable platform right now. All signs point to the update arriving at the end of this month, we should find out more about these apps and others like them then.
NBC, TNT and TBS iPad apps add full-length episodes, won't bring back Steve Carell
What's the point of dropping a few Benjamins on a tablet if you can't watch video on-the-go? Although much fuss has been made of Cupertino's reluctance to add Flash to its line of iOS devices, the kings of content (read: networks) are still scheming up ways to port the prime time eye candy to your portable slates. Shoring up that streaming divide are a trio of new apps from NBC, TNT and TBS that deliver full episodes of the networks' fodder to your iPad, albeit with some authentication required. Unlike other premium mobile video services, these three apps come free of charge. So, go ahead and hit up the source below to get your SVU to go.
Comcast, Time Warner deal ensures TNT, TBS shows for VOD & live streaming
Comcast announced live streaming to its iPad and (upcoming) Android Xfinity TV apps was not far off last month, and now it's announced a new long term deal with Time Warner that brings more content to all of its TV Everywhere-related efforts. That means shows from TNT, TBS, CNN, HLN, truTV, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim on Xfinity TV.com, cable VOD and mobile apps and the addition of live streaming video later this year as part of a larger agreement between Time Warner and Comcast. The keen eyed will notice that window of "a few weeks" for the debut of live streaming to iPads has expanded to simply "later this year," let's hope this doesn't slip while the company focuses on other balls in the air like its purchase of NBC, a potential new set-top box interface and apps for Smart TVs.
Netflix removing 'Add to DVD Queue' button from TV streamers, execs debate the company's future
Still mad over news that Netflix is removing the "Add to DVD Queue" button from media streamers? Then you're probably a commenter on the corporate blog but just in case you were wondering, it appears this doesn't apply to the mobile apps most of us manage our queues with when away from the official site, Netflix PR says it's just devices that connect to the TV. Curious decisions like this aside, The Hollywood Reporter recently ran a fun story describing what various Hollywood executives make of the company's chances. For its part the company plans to keep on expanding and adding more content, like the recent deal with ABC/Disney. TBS CEO Phil Kent made a thinly veiled threat to not license any content available on Netflix, while HDNet's Mark Cuban (who recently thought Netflix was set to implode) subscribes to the opposing camp's newsletter, saying Netflix is "absolutely a friend to producers and distributors -- they are found money that is monetizing library assets as DVD sales fall." What's your call?
