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In 2014, Adam Sandler signed a deal with Netflix to produce and star in four original movies that would premiere exclusively on the streaming service.

The first film, 'The Ridiculous Six,' appears to be a resounding success. In its first thirty days of release, the film has become the most watched movie in Netflix's history. Says Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos: "The Ridiculous Six, by way of example, in the first 30 days on Netflix it's been the most-watched movie in the history of Netflix. It's also enjoyed a spot at number one in every territory we operate in, and in many of them, it's still number one."

Sandler's film employs his usual gang including Terry Crews, Rob Schneider, David Spade and Jorge Garcia and is based in the Wild West.

While the film has been universally panned, and Netflix's figures don't include how many people actually watched the film all the way through, on the surface it seems that the deal has worked out for both.

Lenovo has confirmed today that the name Motorola will soon be gone from their devices.

The Chinese giant purchased Motorola's mobile division in 2014 from Google and they have been using the Motorola name for their smartphones rather the less well-known Lenovo name (at least in the U.S.).

That is changing now although Lenovo says it will continue to use the nickname "Moto" as well as the winged "M" logo.

For example, new phones will sell as the 'Lenovo Moto E' rather than 'Motorola Moto E.'

Microsoft has confirmed that it is indeed stopping support for Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 on January 12th, as previously announced.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 users will receive a notification inviting them to use IE 11 or the new Edge browser that comes default with Windows 10. In addition, the notice will come with a cumulative patch to cover any existing security flaws in the browsers.

Microsoft notes that the end of life means no "more security updates, non-security updates, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates."

If you upgrade, you won't have to worry about losing support for quite some time, as IE 11 and Edge have an end-of-life scheduled for 2020 at the very minimum.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen has confirmed that the new Android-powered Priv slider is on its way to T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint.

The phone launched last year, exclusive to AT&T, but that exclusivity period has run out.

Chen did not give a time frame for the phone's respective release dates, but T-Mobile CEO John Legere said the phone will be available online and in stores for $700 unlocked on January 26th.

"Things are starting to work," noted Chen when asked about sales. "We're generating cash, and we expect that to continue." Chen previously hinted that the company could leave the hardware market completely if they could not hit 5 million sales for the Priv for the fiscal year.

Now that the Oculus Rift is available for sale, industry analysts have piled with opinions on potential sales.

The majority of analysts believe sales in the first year will be in the low hundreds of thousands, which seems reasonable given the $599 price tag and the need for a mid-range computer and a high-end graphics card. A few analysts called for sales as high as one million.

Oculus founder Nate Mitchell confirmed the hardware is being sold at cost, so Facebook will not see any bottom line help (at least not in 2016).

Despite the slow start, analysts place the VR market with a projected value of $16 billion by 2020.

Oculus has announced the availability of the highly-anticipated Rift VR headset.

The headset sells for $599 and will begin shipping in 20 countries on March 28th. The device, which is being hailed as one of the most innovative experiences of the decade, will also include a headset (with mic and headphone), sensor and an Xbox One controller for your gaming needs.

Oculus is also including "Lucky's Tale" with each headset, the first VR platformer from developer Playful.

The company also introduced their new Oculus Remote, an 'input device we designed to make it simple and intuitive to navigate VR experiences.' The remote goes on sale later this year and Rift buyers get the first crack.

Of note, Oculus also released the necessary specs to be able to run the Rift, and they are on the higher end although you can likely build one for under $800:

Apple has announced today that customers spent $1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases in the App Store for the two weeks ended January 3rd, a record for both traffic and sales.

New Year's Day was the "biggest day in App Store history with customers spending over $144 million."

"The App Store had a holiday season for the record books. We are excited that our customers downloaded and enjoyed so many incredible apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, spending over $20 billion on the App Store last year alone," added Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "We're grateful to all the developers who have created the most innovative and exciting apps in the world for our customers. We can't wait for what's to come in 2016."

Netflix had today a press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in which they revealed major expansion in availability. Company CEO Reed Hastings announced that Netflix is now available around the world.

Hastings said that Netflix adds 130 new countries as of today and can be watched in 190 countries all over the world. The language selection is said to improve in the coming months and years but currently you have to rely on 15 languages available, including English, Spanish, French and Simplified (and Traditional) Chinese.

"Today you are witnessing the birth of a new global Internet TV network," said Reed Hastings.

In 2016, Netflix will released 31 different new or returning original series, over 20 movies and documentaries, 30 kids series, and range of stand-up specials.

In keeping up with rivals, Panasonic has used CES to announce their first 4K Blu-ray player - set for release in 2016.

Panasonic has promised a U.S. release this year, following an extremely limited launch in Japan in November. In Japan, the player has a ridiculous price tag of $3300, but it is expected to sell for much less when it reaches our shores.

Sony and Warner Bros. have begun announcing 4K Blu-ray titles, discs which support both 4K and HDR, and will be released this year, as well.

Source:
Verge

Yahoo has shut down is video portal Yahoo Screen, two years after it was launched to tie together Yahoo's original and syndication programming.

The site was home to the last season of former NBC hit "Community," Sci-fi comedy "Other Space" and "Sin City Saints" as well as the home of the first live-streamed NFL broadcast from London and streaming concerts via a partnership with Live Nation. Screen also had channels in partnership with media giants like Viacom, who supplied clips from Comedy Central, for example.

Earlier this year, Yahoo took a massive $42 million writedown for its Screen division, with executives citing 'Community' specifically for not bringing in the ad money they expected it would. The company also struggled to make the content easily accessible on devices that consumers have become accustomed to using, such as consoles.

All of Yahoo Screen's 1000 hours of content have migrated to Yahoo's other sections.

As if it was ever really a question, we now have proof of how big a hit Star Wars Battlefront really is.

EA's blockbuster has sold about 12 million copies since its release in late November, generating over $600 million in revenue.

Gaming industry analyst Michael Pachter reported on the figures in a client note and its hard to fight the figures given that Battlefront was the third best-selling video game of the holiday season on Amazon, behind only Fallout 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.

The game has certainly been buoyed by the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which has cruised to $1.5 billion in sales in just 3 weeks.

Battlefront is available for PS4, Xbox One and PC and can be found at a discount to its $60 MSRP.

Source:
GameRant

Google has announced a fourth color option for the popular and powerful new Nexus 6P flagship: gold.

Just like its brothers in Aluminium, Graphite, or Frost the "Matte Gold" model will sell for $499 (32GB model) or $549 (64GB model). Unfortunately if you have large storage needs, the 128GB model is not available yet.

The Nexus 6P runs on stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow, has a 5.7-inch AMOLED display, 3GB RAM, a Snapdragon 810 processor under the hood, a USB-C connector, the Nexus Imprint fingerprint sensor, a large 3450 mAh battery and easily the best camera on an Android device, ever.

Check it out here: Google Play

Sony is back with a new Walkman music player for 2016: the newly announced Walkman A26.

The new device is a sequel to last year's A17, although the A26 is decidedly less high-end. The new device loses the touchscreen and has a stripped down UI (no more Android) although it can still handle hi-res audio formats like FLAC, AIFF, WAV, ALAC and standard MP3 and AAC.

Sony has also made the lineup more "colorful" adding grey, blue, red, purple, white and green.

Under the hood, Sony has left 32GB of internal storage (expandable to 128GB with microSD) and the company promises up to 30 hours of hi-res playback on a single charge.

Price and availability are currently unknown, but expect it to be cheaper than last year's touchscreen-touting A17.

Alongside the announcement of a few new powerful 4K HDR TVs, Sony also announced that their 4K TVs will allow consumers to buy and stream Sony Pictures movies in 4K quality.

The TVs have a new built-in app called Ultra that will tap into Sony Picture's catalog of around 50 titles in 4K. The first films are not great and include clunkers like After Earth and Salt, but there are some titles worth seeing in 4K like Elysium and Fury.

Reportedly, the app is built for Android TV, but it seems like it will only work on Sony Android TV sets at launch.

As of Monday, Sony has sold 35.9 million PlayStation 4 units, crushing its competition from Nintendo and Microsoft.

Notably, Sony says that figure is "sold through" and not just shipped, suggesting the console is not staying on retail shelves for long.

In addition, Sony says from November 22nd to January 2nd they sold 35 million PS4 games (digital and physical), a massive number even for the retail-heavy holiday season.