Google is partnering with National Public Radio to bring the broadcaster’s podcasts to YouTube. On Thursday, the two announced that more than 20 NPR shows, including Up First and Throughline, are now available on the platform. NPR is no stranger to YouTube. Its Tiny Desks concert series has been a hit on the platform for a few years now, with a recent Ludovico Einaudi performance amassing nearly 900,000 views and counting.

The addition of NPR podcasts comes just as YouTube recently added an Explore page dedicated to the format. While it’s only available to some people, the section highlights popular channels, episodes and playlists as well as categories and recommended shows. It may not explicitly market itself as a podcast platform, but both the page and its new partnership with NPR show YouTube getting serious about the medium.

Fans of The Expanse will have to wait about another year to play Deck Nine's interpretation of the popular sci-fi series. The studio, best known for its work on Life is Strange: True Colors, and Telltale Games shared a new behind-the-scenes gameplay trailer during Gamescom 2022 and revealed that the title would come out sometime in the summer of 2023. While not revelatory, the clip does show off something we hadn't seen before. The Expanse: A Telltale Series will feature sequences where you'll need to navigate zero-gravity environments. 

Set before the TV series, which concluded at the start of this year, the game stars Camina Drummer. After her introduction in the show's second season, Drummer, played by actress Cara Gee in both the TV series and upcoming game, went on to become a fan-favorite character over subsequent seasons. The Expanse is one of two new projects Telltale Games is working on after coming back from financial insolvency. In 2023, the studio also plans to release The Wolf Among Us 2. 

Google’s YouTube TV service could soon become more conducive to watching sports. According to Protocol, the company is developing a feature called Mosaic Mode that would allow subscribers to stream up to four live feeds simultaneously. Google reportedly discussed the feature during an event the company held last month for manufacturing partners.

Mosaic Mode is one of a few new updates Google is working on across the YouTube portfolio. Protocol reports smart TV owners can expect an improved YouTube Music experience in the coming months, as well as better Nest audio integration. Oh, and if you used the YouTube app for TVs as a refuge from Shorts, don’t expect that to last. Google reportedly told its partners it was working on bringing support for the video format to the YouTube smart TV app. Google did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment.

Allowing subscribers to watch four streams simultaneously would be a logical extension of Google’s recent partnership with the NBA and other investments the company has made to make YouTube TV more compelling to cord cutters.

After a 20-year drought, Dune fans suddenly have more than one game to look forward to playing. After announcing Dune: Spice Wars in 2021, Norwegian publisher Funcom revealed at this year's Gamescom that it's creating a new MMO set in Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi universe. The trailer the company shared during the event didn't showcase gameplay. 

Instead, we see a character, possibly the game's version of Paul Atreides, watch a sandworm devour a spice harvester while reciting Dune's famous "fear is the mind-killer" mantra, with the eventual title card promising an open-world survival experience. The game's Steam page provides a few more details about the project. Players will have the chance to explore the desert planet while in search of spice. You'll need to protect your harvester from opportunistic raiders and the occasional sandworm. Funcom did not announce a release date for Dune: Awakening, but the game's website invites fans to sign up for a forthcoming beta.

Gamescom 2022 opened with the reveal of Everywhere, a new game from Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies. "We want the community to build this. We want it to be their world. We want them to tell their stories in our game," Benzies said before sharing a trailer that seemed to show off two very different games.

At first, we see an experience that looks similar to Fortnite. There are multiple characters shooting, jumping and driving across different biomes, with an obvious metaverse-like social component built into gameplay. However, in the final third of the trailer, the game's art style changes and we're treated to more photo-realistic graphics. In an interview after the clip played, assistant game designer Adam Whiting didn't provide many other details about the project, but did say developer Build a Robot Boy hopes to release Everywhere sometime next year.  

Lightfall, Destiny 2's next expansion, will arrive on February 28th, Bungie announced today. First announced alongside 2020's Beyond Light expansion, the DLC will kick off the final arc of Destiny 2's Light and Darkness saga. Lightfall will pit you and your fellow Guardians against The Witness, a mysterious character Bungie introduced during the campaign of Destiny 2's current expansion, The Witch Queen. You'll have access to a new Darkness subclass dubbed the Strand (Hideo Kojima is probably calling his lawyers right about now). 

Many Strand skills will increase your character's movement abilities. Specifically, each class will have a way to grapple through the environment. The expansion will also introduce Neomuna, a secret neon metropolis found on Neptune. Along the way, there will be new weapons and armor for your character to collect, strikes to complete and challenging raids to overcome. Finding other Guardians to take on those challenges will be easier than ever. In 2023, Bungie will add an in-game fireteam finder, meaning you won't have to turn to websites like Destiny Tracker when you want to take on pinnacle content.     

Lightfall will be the first new Destiny 2 expansion since Sony bought Bungie for $3.6 billion at the start of this year. Xbox, PC and Stadia fans won't be left out of the experience, however. The DLC will be available on every platform where you can currently play Destiny 2. As of today, you can also buy the game on the Epic Games Store.    

After nearly 10 million people watched the premiere of HBO’s House of the Dragon, Amazon wants to remind you it too has a high-fantasy series that’s coming out soon. On Tuesday, the company shared a new trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. More than anything, the clip is a showcase for the $465 million Amazon spent to produce the show’s first season.

Dialogue from characters like Galadriel and Elrond set the stage for the Second Age conflict that’s about to unfold, but it’s almost secondary to the spectacle of the visuals on display. Every scene oozes with the money that went in to create the show’s cinematography, costume design and CGI. The Rings of Power will borrow some elements from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. As the title makes clear, the series will recount the forging of the Rings of Power and Sauron’s return to Middle-earth. Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have outlined a five-season story. The first one will debut on September 2nd.

The Video Electronics Standards Associated (VESA) wants to make buying your next monitor or TV easier, and it’s doing so by introducing a new standard. I know what you’re thinking: between DisplayPort, DisplayHDR and AdaptiveSync, aren’t there already more VESA standards than anyone can keep track of? Well, yes, but the organization’s newest certification program may help demystify one of the more opaque aspects of buying a new display: motion clarity performance.

You probably have a good sense of the problem if you recently spent time researching your next monitor or TV purchase. Using gaming monitors as an example, many manufacturers claim their products feature 1ms gray-to-gray (GtG) pixel response times, yet they don’t handle motion blur to the same standard. One of the reasons for that is that manufacturers cherry-pick GtG results that make their monitors look better on paper.

VESA

Right now, one of the best ways to find a monitor or TV that won’t look blurry when gaming and watching video is to turn to outlets like Rtings and Hardware Unboxed. They’ve developed comprehensive testing methodologies to help you cut through all the marketing. You can also rest assured they probably have the Blur Busters UFO test set as their homepage.

In the future, the process may be less time-consuming thanks to VESA’s new Clear Motion Ratio Compliance Test Specification, or ClearMR for short. The standard introduces a tiered ranking system designed to communicate the ratio of clear to blurry pixels a screen will produce when displaying a fast-moving image. For instance, a monitor with a ClearMR 7000 badge would have a “Clear Motion Ratio” range of 65 to 75 times more clear pixels than blurry ones. According to VESA, there’s a “visually distinguishable change in clarity” between tiers, and the standard will encompass a variety of consumer displays, including those you can find on laptops and tablets.

"It is our goal that ClearMR will replace existing metrics that are used in advertisements for blur-based metrics that are solely based on time, like MPRT [motion picture response time],” Dale Stolitzka, senior principal researcher at Samsung Display and lead contributor to ClearMR, told ArsTechnica. “I would be perfectly happy if I didn't see that in advertisements anymore.”

Interestingly, when certifying displays that feature backlight strobing or black frame insertion, VESA will disable those features to “prevent unfair comparisons” with products that do not include them. The organization also plans to account for overdrive by limiting overshoot to under 20 percent. With today’s announcement, ClearMR also only applies to SDR displays, but the standard will eventually evolve to include HDR screens too.

The first batch of ClearMR-certified products comprises one HP monitor and 15 LG screens, including the 32GQ850 and 27GP850.

Since the launch of Google TV almost two years ago, Google has been busy adding new features to the platform – including, most recently, iOS support. So if you feel the company has neglected the product from a performance and stability standpoint, the latest Google TV update is for you.

To start, Google says new CPU and cache management optimizations will reduce the time it takes for the “For you” tab to load on startup. Similarly, navigating within a tab and switching between multiple ones should feel more responsive after installing the latest update. A faster Live tab should also result in you seeing less of Google TV’s loading animation. Google says switching to kids profiles will take less time as well. But best of all, the software will now use less RAM, leading to a smoother viewing experience.

If you’ve been using Google TV for a while, you’ll also appreciate the storage enhancements included in this latest update. Google has added a “Free up storage” option to the Setting menu to make it easier to clear the program’s cache and uninstall apps you’re not using. The feature is already available on Chromecast with Google TV and coming to smart TVs soon. The company has also made under-the-hood tweaks that should reduce the number of errors users see when attempting to install new apps. Lastly, there’s a new automated process that will free up space on your device so that you can install more apps.

Google has begun rolling out the above enhancements to users. If you don’t see them immediately, it may take them a few days to reach your device.

HBO has shared the first footage from its upcoming live-action adaptation of The Last of Us. In a trailer the streamer published on YouTube before the premiere of House of the Dragon, we see about 20 seconds of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie. Despite the short length of the clip, it's filled with moments fans will recognize. We see an exchange between Joel and Ellie that's lifted directly from the original game. There's even a flashback featuring Joel's biological daughter. The footage also offers a glimpse of Nick Offerman as Bill.

Expectations for the series are already riding high. In addition to a star-studded cast, Craig Mazin of Chernobyl fame is involved in the project as writer, creator and executive producer, as is the game's original creative director, Neil Druckmann. The series is expected to premiere in early 2023. The first season will feature 10 episodes.