Thursday, December 17, 2015

IT News Head Lines (Overclockers Club) 18/12/2015

Overclockers Club



Assassin's Creed Syndicate Review


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Battlefield 4 Receives Legacy Operations Update
DICE has announced a holiday update for Battlefield 4 entitled Legacy Operations that brings the Dragon Valley map from Battlefield 2 into the newer game. Gamers will now be able to take full advantage of destructible environments and the large area of the map makes it great for a "focus on vehicle play." The update also introduces some fixes for the game and will be available on all platforms.
Source: Legit Reviews


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Firefox Gets a 64-bit Version for Windows
In a move that I found to be quite surprising, Mozilla has released a 64-bit version of the Firefox web browser for Windows, a move that is surprising because I just assumed that it had already happened. Mac and Linux users have had a 64-bit version for a while, but it took until release 43 for it to come to Windows. The 64-bit build is for Windows 7 and up, and users of a current 32-bit version will have to download an all new copy rather than upgrading their current install. Users likely won't see much of a difference as "most of the big improvements happen behind the scenes, although the 64-bit version should be able to keep more tabs open without slowing as well as run web apps that require 64-bit support."
Source: PC World


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Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Takes Us Back to Where It All Began; Launches January 20, 2016
For the first time in quite some time, a new Homeworld game is on the way. Sure, we had Gearbox spruce up and release Homeworld 1 and 2 in both the classic and remastered forms, but this is the first new Homeworld game in some time. Developed by Blackbird Interactive (composed of veterans from the Homeworld and Company of Heroes franchises), Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a ground-based RTS prequel to the original game that shows us where everything started. Rachel S'Jet leads an expedition across this desert world to find an anomaly that just may save Kharak, but dangers hide behind the dunes. It's up to you to find this anomaly, with both land and air vehicles at your disposal. The topography of Kharak features huge dune seas, deep craters, and massive canyons, with it changing constantly and requiring how you approach it to change, too. Your choices in resource management, fleet composition, and technology research impacts your survival, as does whether you decide to confront your enemies head-on or ambush them and disrupt resource operations. The choice is yours.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak launches on January 20 and is available to pre-purchase now on Steam for $50, with each purchase netting you a free copy of Homeworld Remastered Collection, if you don't own it. If you do own HRC, then your pre-purchase of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is 20% off.
Source: YouTube and the Official Website


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Hardware Roundup: Wednesday, December 16, 2016, Edition
The middle of the week has arrived, bringing with it a couple of items for you to inspect. There is a review of the G.SKILL RIPJAWS MX780 RGB Laser Gaming Mouse, the company's first entry in the gaming mouse landscape and one that seems to hit all the right notes along the way. We also have a look at the Kingston HyperX Savage 128GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive, which offers blazing fast read and write speeds for a portable drive that just may pull double duty as a pocket SSD.
Keyboards/Mice

G.SKILL RIPJAWS MX780 RGB Laser Gaming Mouse @ Madshrimps
Storage/Hard Drives

Kingston HyperX Savage 128GB USB 3.1 Flash Drive @ ThinkComputers


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Netflix Describes New Per-Title Encode Optimization
Being one of the largest streaming platforms, serving people with various devices and Internet connections, Netflix has a lot to consider when it encodes titles. Back in 2010 when it started using h.264/AVC to encode its catalog, the company constructed a bitrate ladder for all of its videos, which based the video bitrate on the output resolution. For most content this ladder works fine, but because some content needs more or less data to be of high quality, Netflix has developed a per-title encoding approach.
Instead of applying a fixed bitrate ladder to every video, this approach constructs the ladder for each video. This means that relatively simple videos, like cartoons, will use lower bitrates than more complex videos, at a given resolution. In one example, this new approach found that a cartoon could be encoded at 1540 Kbps for 1080p resolution, while the older bitrate ladder was using 1750 Kbps for 480p. While the 480p video may have a higher bitrate, upscaling the video introduces in visible artifacting.
When it comes to video encoding, they are diminishing returns at high bitrates, as well as a precipitous drop at lower bitrates, with the optimal bitrate somewhere in the middle. Instead of using a fixed approach, this per-title optimization is meant to find that optimal point for each video, so Netflix can provide the best quality without unnecessarily high bitrates. You can check out the Netflix blog post for the graphs that demonstrate this point, and while it is a long post, it does a decent job explaining it.
Source: Netflix


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Available Tags:Firefox , Windows , Hardware

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