video encoding Archives

AppWizard

September 7, 2026

Xbox Cloud Gaming Caps Hours: 15 for Ultimate [2026]

On September 3, 2026, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass subscribers will see a shift in cloud gaming access. Starting November 2026, unlimited cloud streaming will be replaced by a tiered hour bank system: 15 hours for Ultimate, 10 for Premium, and 5 for Essential subscribers. Once a subscriber exhausts their allotted hours, they must wait for the next billing cycle or purchase additional time. This change is the most significant since the beta launch of Xbox Cloud Gaming in 2019. The announcement was made on Xbox Wire, and the new structure is reflected on Xbox’s product pages. The new tiered system introduces a scarcity model, with every paid tier now having its own cloud gaming quota. Essential subscribers, who previously had no cloud access, will now receive 5 hours per month. The pricing for the Game Pass tiers is as follows: Ultimate at .99 for 15 hours, Premium at .99 for 10 hours, and Essential at .99 for 5 hours. The free ad-supported tier remains unchanged at 5 hours per month. Microsoft's rationale for the change is based on usage data indicating that most subscribers do not heavily utilize cloud streaming, coupled with the rising costs of operating cloud gaming services. The company has stated that additional hours can be purchased once a subscriber's monthly allotment is used up, although pricing details for these add-ons have not yet been disclosed. The new hour caps will take effect in November 2026, following a shorter notice period compared to NVIDIA's GeForce NOW service, which implemented a 100-hour monthly cap earlier in 2026. The response from gaming communities has been largely negative, with concerns about the limits falling short of typical usage patterns and conflicting with the marketing of Game Pass as offering unlimited access. The introduction of hour caps could impact Game Pass's subscriber base, particularly among those who rely on cloud gaming as their primary access point. Microsoft's internal usage data will determine the extent of this impact, as the company aims to control costs without raising subscription prices.

AppWizard

October 22, 2025

Meet the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, a new 24-core Arrow Lake refresh gaming CPU, according to this benchmark leak

Intel is set to release the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus gaming CPU, featuring 24 total cores (8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores) and a base clock of 3.7GHz, with a peak boost clock of approximately 5.5GHz. It utilizes the Intel Arrow Lake architecture and has a 36MB L3 cache, fitting into the Intel LGA1851 socket. The increase in core count compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K aims to enhance multi-threaded performance, although it may not immediately rank among the best gaming CPUs. Users with existing Intel Arrow Lake systems can upgrade without changing motherboards, requiring only a BIOS update.

AppWizard

October 1, 2025

A new Google Home app, redesigned for Gemini

Google has revamped the Google Home app to enhance speed, reliability, and completeness, aligning it with the capabilities of the Gemini assistant. The app now loads over 70% faster on select Android devices, with app crashes reduced by nearly 80%. Improvements in battery consumption and memory usage have also been made. Camera features have seen a 30% increase in live view loading speed and a 40% reduction in playback failures, with frame rates for historical footage exceeding six times previous performance. The app has received over 100 feature and performance enhancements in the past year. Additionally, the app now fully integrates Nest functionalities, supporting all Nest Thermostat models since 2015, smoke and carbon monoxide alerts from Nest Protect, and passcode management for the Nest x Yale Lock, while improving the control of earlier generations of Nest cameras and doorbells.

Winsage

November 20, 2024

“Windows 365 Link” is Microsoft’s $349 thin client for Windows in the cloud

Microsoft is launching the Windows 365 Link in April at a price of . The device is a compact black box designed to connect to the Windows 365 cloud service, rather than operating Windows locally. It features a user-friendly interface with a single USB-A port on the front and multiple connectivity options on the rear, including one USB-C 3.2 port, two USB-A ports, a full-size DisplayPort, a full-size HDMI port, an Ethernet port, and a power jack. The Windows 365 Link operates without a fan, is powered by an unspecified Intel processor, and includes 8GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It runs a streamlined version of Windows and supports dual 4K displays. The device includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless connectivity and is designed for efficient integration with desktop peripherals and network connections.

AppWizard

November 6, 2024

Valve just single-handedly upgraded content creation for PC gamers – Steam’s Game Recording feature is now available to all

Steam's Game Recording feature has transitioned from beta to full availability, allowing players to automatically capture gameplay in supported titles. Users can enable 'Background Recording' to capture the last 120 minutes of gameplay or use 'On Demand Recording' to manually start and stop recording. The feature utilizes the video encoding capabilities of AMD and Nvidia GPUs, with CPU fallback for those without dedicated graphics cards, which may affect performance. Steam's Game Recording includes various bitrate settings and simplifies the recording process for PC gamers by eliminating the need for external software. Valve has not yet introduced streaming capabilities, but successful integration could enhance its position in the gaming industry.

Winsage

October 9, 2024

Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 24.10 Performance For Intel Core Ultra 7 Lunar Lake Review

The ASUS Zenbook S 14, equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, was tested on both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.10 Linux. The device features 4 Performance cores and 4 Efficient cores, totaling 8 cores and threads, with a maximum turbo frequency of 4.8GHz and 16GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory. Benchmarks showed that while OpenJDK Java performance was consistent across both operating systems, Ubuntu 24.10 outperformed Windows 11 in multi-threaded tasks, such as Crafty and TSCP chess benchmarks, and in video encoding tasks with Kvazaar H.265 and SVT-AV1. Ubuntu also excelled in creative workloads and single-threaded benchmarks, demonstrating a 14% overall performance advantage over Windows 11. Despite Xe2 graphics performance being weaker on Linux, CPU performance remained strong.

Winsage

September 5, 2024

Microsoft’s WDDM 3.2 makes Windows 11 (24H2) video encoding even better with AV1 support

Microsoft is preparing to release the Windows 11 version 24H2 feature update, currently available for Copilot+ PCs and expected to roll out to more systems soon. The final testing and certification process for eligible systems began in May. This update introduces the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 3.2, which includes improved driver timeout detection and recovery (TDR) debugging to reduce display and graphics driver crashes. Additionally, WDDM 3.2 enhances Direct3D 12 video encoding by adding support for the AV1 codec, allowing for GPU-accelerated video encoding on Windows. This update extends the existing video-related framework to enable drivers to report AV1 video encoding support and capabilities, facilitating hardware acceleration for various applications, including IoT, cloud, media APIs, machine learning, and game streaming. Prior to Windows 11 version 21H2, Microsoft did not support hardware-accelerated encoding, but WDDM 3.0 introduced this capability.