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The Witcher is on track to be Netflix’s biggest TV series of all-time

Several million people have tossed a coin to their Witcher, according to Netflix’s fourth quarter earnings report that just released on Tuesday (January 21).

According to a letter the streaming service sent to shareholders, some 76 million subscribers watched the first season of the show, making it one of the company’s most popular first seasons ever and, potentially, the service’s biggest show. The numbers are pretty astounding and put the show above some of the decade’s biggest series like Game of Thrones that had over 19 million people watch its final episode.

The catch here is that the numbers are being tabulated according to Netflix’s revised viewership system that counts two minutes of viewing – what Netflix is calling ‘an intentional choice’ – the same as watching 70% of an episode under its old measurement system, and are vastly different than the metrics Nielsen uses to measure shows like Game of Thrones.

That said, whatever system you’re using, the fact that 76 million subscribers chose to watch the series (even for two minutes) starring Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia is still pretty impressive. That’s more subscribers than its US-based competitor Hulu has, and seven times the amount of subscribers Disney Plus had two months ago.

Slow growth in the US, but big business abroad

Of course, The Witcher wasn’t the only new show last month. In the same brief, Netflix says that The Crown has garnered 73 million viewers total after its season debut and 6 Underground, a new film from director Michael Bay and starring Ryan Reynolds, had 83 million members tune in. The last part sounds pretty dubious, but again, viewers only had to watch it for more than two minutes for it to count.

The rest of Netflix’s shareholder letter isn’t all that interesting but there were a few standout stats that are worth calling attention to. For starters, Netflix is reporting that it brought in $20 billion in revenue in 2019 and it says it surpassed 100 million paid memberships outside of the US where it now has close to 70 million subscribers.

Netflix says it’s going to use the money generated to invest in new forms of content, pointing to Black Mirror Bandersnatch as an example of how it can ‘grow engagement and our storytelling capabilities’ in addition to previously announced titles like BoJack Horseman Season 6, Locke and Key and Ozark Season 3.

On the technology side of things, Netflix touted its mobile-only plans it rolled out in Malaysia, Indonesia and India, which it says it will bring to more countries in the coming year.

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Canon will release four full-frame cameras in 2020, new rumors suggest

When we said it’s going to be a rather busy year for Canon, we didn’t quite expect it to be this busy. According to a new report from Canon Rumors, a reliable camera leaks and news publication, the Japanese manufacturer is set to deliver a grand total of four new full-frame shooters this year.

That number can, of course, change as Canon Rumors arrived at this figure by piecing together information from “a few different sources […] mixed with a little bit of common-sense”.

One of those, however, is a given, with the EOS 1D X Mark III pro-level sports DSLR already announced and will be on shelves in February. The others, according to Canon Rumors’ roadmap, are full-frame mirrorless options.

Three is not a crowd

We’ve already heard plenty of rumors about Canon refreshing the EOS R range in 2020 with two more full-frame mirrorless snappers – the ultra-high res EOS Rs (that was all but confirmed by Canon execs last year) and the second iteration of the EOS R itself.

The EOS Rs (which is its unofficial name) is expected to be revealed during the CP+ photography and imaging show in February, while the EOS R Mark II is rumored to have a May 2020 launch date.

However, mystery still shrouds the EOS R Mark II camera. There are whispers of one Canon camera being a “sports/speed body, perhaps with a lower megapixel sensor” to give the Sony A7S range some competition, while there’s also talk of an entry-level and cheaper version of the EOS RP that has been unofficially dubbed the EOS Rm.

Whether these are two separate cameras – and thus taking the total body count of full-frame mirrorless snappers to three – or it’s just speculation with only one other shooter in the pipeline is anyone’s guess, but offering a cheaper version of the EOS RP might prove to be a good move for Canon. It might force Canon to make more affordable glass for the R mount as well, thus giving users the option to expand their full-frame mirrorless kit without burning a hole in their pocket.

That said, it’s only the start of 2020 and we’ll just have to wait patiently to see what the camera maker has in store for us.

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The Half-Life games are free on Steam for the next two months

Just in time for the release of Half-Life: Alyx in March, Valve is giving away copies of the original Half-Life games on Steam for the next two months.

The list of free games up for grabs includes the original Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and both expansions – Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

The only caveats here are the fact that you need to download the games through Steam – which, for most folks, isn’t a big deal – and you only have two months to claim the games. Once Half-Life: Alyx comes out in March, all the games will go back to their original price.

Click the links below to download the games for free:

Travel backwards (and forwards) in time with Gordon Freeman

So, why is Valve being so generous? Primarily to drum up interest for Half-Life: Alyx – its new VR game set before the events of Half-Life 2 and both Episodes.

“Half-Life: Alyx is set before the events of Half-Life 2 and the episodes, but the games share characters and story elements,” Valve said in a news post. “The Half-Life: Alyx team believes that the best way to enjoy the new game is to play through the old ones, especially Half-Life 2 and the episodes, so we want to make that as easy as possible.”

That said, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth as they say. With the right mods, all these games really hold up and are well-worth experiencing if you didn’t catch them the first time around in the early Aughts.

If you just want to play the latest game in the series, Half-Life: Alyx is due out in March and will be available for free with every Valve Index VR headset.

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Canonical now lets you host Android apps in the cloud

Canonical has announced a new platform called Anbox Cloud which containerizes workloads using Android as a guest operating system to enable enterprises to distribute applications from the cloud.

With Anbox Cloud, enterprises and service providers can deliver mobile applications more securely, at scale and independently of a device’s capabilities. Possible use cases for the Ubuntu maker’s new platform include cloud gaming, enterprise workplace applications, software testing and mobile device virtualization.

By providing developers with the ability to offload compute, storage and energy-intensive applications from x86 and Arm devices to the cloud, end users can can consume advanced workloads by streaming them directly to their device. Additionally Anbox Cloud provides developers with more control over performance and infrastructure costs while also giving them the flexibility to scale based on user demand.

Anbox Cloud

Director of product at Canonical, Stephan Fabel explained why the company decided to provide users with on-demand Android applications via the cloud in a press release announcing the new platform, saying:

“Driven by emerging 5G networks and edge computing, millions of users will benefit from access to ultra-rich, on-demand Android applications on a platform of their choice. Enterprises are now empowered to deliver high performance, high density computing to any device remotely, with reduced power consumption and in an economical manner.”

Enterprises can utilize Anbox Cloud to help accelerate their digital transformation initiatives by delivering workplace applications directly to employee’s devices in a way that maintains the assurance of data privacy and compliance. Organizations will also be able to reduce their internal application development costs by providing a single application that can be used across different form factors and operating systems.

Anbox Cloud can be hosted in the public cloud for infinite capacity, high reliability and elasticity or on a private cloud edge infrastructure where low latency and data privacy are a priority.

While Canonical has not yet announced an official release data for its new platform, interested users can sign up to request access to Anbox Cloud.

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4G isn’t dead yet: this chip will power non-5G phones in 2020

While 2020 is the year we finally get more 5G phones, we’re far from seeing the end of 4G handsets. Qualcomm introduced a trio of new chipsets that will likely ship in this year’s higher-end and mid range phones, proving there’s still plenty of market space for smartphones that don’t hook up to next-gen networks.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 720G, 662, and 460 are aimed at phones in India, though the chipmaker notes they’ll likely come in phones that arrive in the US, too, according to PocketNow.

The 720G (the G stands for gaming) is an octa-core chipset aimed at higher-end smartphones. Features include on-device AI (a privacy-focused priority for handsets from Samsung and others) and display resolution up to 2,520 x 1,080, along with 800Mbps top down speeds – still a respectable number, especially compared to the lower-band 5G networks.

The chipset also enables up to 192 MP photos, per the press release, which will account for the high-megapixel main lenses going into phones. While the Samsung Galaxy S20 won’t pack the Snapdragon 720G, it’s setting an example with its rumored 108MP main shooter.

The octa-core 662, on the other hand, has download speeds up to 390Mbps and supports triple-camera suites that shoot and save in the HEIF file format. The Snapdragon 460 is an improvement on the 450, which Qualcomm claims is 50% faster than its predecessor.

A 5G future – but still a 4G present

While cheaper chipsets are coming out with 5G capability, it’s still early days for 5G networks, which are still building out coverage in area, reliability, and speed.

Given that 5G phones have cost even more than their 4G counterparts, it makes sense that we’ll get another year of handsets that don’t need to hook up to 5G networks. For consumers who aren’t going to pay top-dollar anyway, there’s still a demand for phones that just work – on a well-tested and built-out network.

Still eager for super-fast speeds? Here’s our list of all the 5G phones out there

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Intel Tiger Lake release date, specs and news: all the details on Intel’s next 10nm chips

Intel has done a great job of keeping us waiting on big advancements to its processor architecture, but Tiger Lake could start to change that. The first generation of 10nm Core processors was effectively a no-show, and the second generation of 10nm with Intel Ice Lake processors only recently hit Ultrabooks, but stands out as more of an efficient alternative to the high performance Comet Lake processors that still come on Intel’s undying 14nm architecture.

But at CES 2020, Intel gave plenty of attention to its upcoming Tiger Lake processors, so it’s time to start getting ready for the next generation of mobile processors. Especially because Intel will have its competition cut out for it with AMD Ryzen 4000 mobile processors, which verge on desktop performance.

Intel Tiger Lake — (Image credit: Intel)

Cut to the chase

What is it? Intel’s 10nm+ Core processor architecture
When is it out? Late 2020 at the soonest
How much is it? There may be no consumer-facing price

Intel Tiger Lake release date

Intel hasn’t confirmed a release date for Tiger Lake but if you listened closely at the Intel press conference from CES 2020, you may have heard mention of Tiger Lake units shipping to OEMs “this summer,” which means late Q2 or Q3.

If it’s shipping to OEMs then, that means it will come later on. So, it won’t be until the latter half of 2020, and could easily take until Q4 before laptops start shipping with Tiger Lake processors inside.

(Image credit: Intel)

Intel Tiger Lake price

We can’t expect to get individual pricing for Intel’s Tiger Lake processors because, for now anyway, they appear to be going straight to OEMs for laptop builds. That means the actual price of the chips will never really be paid by consumers.

We can guess they may end up in a similar ballpark to Intel Ice Lake chips, though. And, even if consumers aren’t buying those directly, Intel does supply some suggested pricing. Here are the prices Intel suggested for a range of Ice Lake processors when purchased in bulk:

Intel Core i7-1065G7: $426 (about £325, AU$620)
Intel Core i5-1035G7: $320 (about £245, AU$465)
Intel Core i3-1005G1: $281 (about £215, AU$410)

(Image credit: Intel)

Intel Tiger Lake specs

Intel’s Tiger Lake chips are described as 10nm+, though they’re Intel’s third iteration of a 10nm chip. It appears Intel doesn’t make much of its first 10nm Cannon Lake, which was as good as a phantom.

In any case, we expect Intel Tiger Lake to come with further refinements to the 10nm process used, which will likely allow for decent performance from a low base clock (somewhere in the ballpark of 1.0-1.2GHz), and extra headroom for boost clocks (over 4.0GHz for Core i7 models).

We’ll likely see dual-core and quad-core variants of the Intel Tiger Lake chips, but it’s not clear whether we’ll see any higher core counts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Some early leaked benchmarks shared by leaker @TUM_APISAK suggest a quad-core Tiger Lake chip can outperform a six-core Comet Lake chip, Wccftech reports. Intel claimed double-digit performance gains over previous generation chips. But, Tiger Lake will be going against AMD’s eight-core Ryzen mobile processors, and that match-up may be a different story.

Intel Corporation TigerLake U DDR4 SODIMM RVPhttps://t.co/NBUFE2dx5Ehttps://t.co/1TJf4E4S32January 8, 2020

There’s been some speculation that Tiger Lake processors would support a new generation of RAM, specifically LPDDR5. If that were the case, it would double transfers, reduce power consumption, and enable a “deep sleep” power-saving mode. But, given that DDR5 is just getting into the sampling phase, according to our friends at PCGamer, it’s likely Tiger Lake will be sticking to DDR4 unless it gets a Cannon Lake-style series of delays.

There are a few confirmed specs for Tiger Lake, though. For one, the chips will come with integrated Wi-Fi 6, giving them more advanced wireless connectivity. They also get integrated Thunderbolt 4, which offers the same 40Gbps bandwidth as Thunderbolt 3 and the new USB 4.0 standard, according to clarification from Intel to our mates at Tom’s Hardware.

Intel could also get some faster connections if Tiger Lake supports PCIe 4.0, as suggested by TechPowerUp. PCIe 4.0-support was expected to come alongside Comet Lake desktop processors, according to Tom’s Hardware, but Intel had issues getting it to work. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Tiger Lake architecture will run into similar difficulties. If Intel Introduces PCIe 4.0, it match what AMD is offering with its Zen 2 architecture, but ultimately wouldn’t change a whole lot for consumers if Tiger Lake never escapes the mobile processor space (though could be more beneficial in something like the Ghost Canyon NUC).

The Tiger Lake processors will also get support from AI and Intel Xe Graphics. That AI will optimize performance, and may have a special trick that can shift the balance of power to the CPU and GPU to give either a boost when needed.

We’ll keep this page updated as we learn more about Tiger Lake.

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Watch The Full Nerd talk about the RX 5600 XT review live!

Join The Full Nerd gang as they talk about the latest PC hardware topics. In today’s show we go over the recent price drops of Nvidia RTX 2060 GPUs and Brad’s review of AMD’s Radeon RTX 5600 XT. As always we will be answering your live questions so speak up in the chat.

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Join the PC related discussions and ask us questions on Discord.
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