Tired of watching movies on your phone while in the car? Well, BMW may have the solution as it's revealed its 'Theatre Screen' at CES 2022 , which brings a huge, flip-down, widescreen display to its cars.
The BMW Theatre Screen is a massive 31-inch, ultra-wide display affixed to the roof of a car. Designed solely for the enjoyment of the rear-seat passengers, and spanning the entire width of the cabin, it folds down when required and flips back up when done. It's the biggest screen ever for those in the back of a car.
It boasts an 8K (8000 x 2000) resolution and can display content in a variety of aspect ratios including 16:9, 21:9 and 32:9 - the last one designed to give you a cinema-like experience.
Amazon Fire TV is built-in, giving viewers access to a wide range of streaming services. And with 128GB of local storage, you can pre-download movies and TV shows to watch when you're on the move. The Fire TV integration works in the same way as a Fire TV stick would in your home.
However, the Theatre Screen can also benefit from the vehicle's 5G connectivity, which means in areas of strong signal you'll be able to stream content live (and get updates for the Fire TV integration) while in motion.
Your 'private cinema lounge'
The screen is touch-enabled, but there are also touch controls on each of the rear doors, giving passengers a choice of how they want to interact with the display.
There's support for dual wired or wireless headphones too, allowing the rear-seat passengers to enjoy what’s on-screen, without disturbing the driver.
If you're parked up and don't fancy wearing headphones, the package also comes with a 4D Diamond surround sound system from Bowers & Wilkins
It's not just the display giving you that cinematic experience, however, as BMW's 'My Mode Theatre' setting will adjust the lighting and window blinds to give you a 'private cinema lounge'.
Is it safe?
Unsurprisingly, a screen that spans the width of the car and folds down from the roof will block the driver's view out the rear window.
While BMW could implement a digital rear view mirror, it's not something it's considering at this point. As far as BMW is concerned, the Theatre Screen won't be used at all times, and when it is in use the visibility out the back is no different to towing a trailer or caravan.
In a press briefing that TechRadar attended, a BMW spokesperson noted that the driver can still make use of the side mirrors and blind-spot indicators. Plus there will be a rear camera for reversing.
What's more, the driver can also control the Theatre Screen and will be able to fold it back up to the roof if required.
The Theatre Screen implementation BMW is showing off at CES 2022 is only a prototype, which means it's not available yet for consumers - but we're told it's very close to a production version.
We shouldn't have to wait too long before we start seeing Theatre Screen as an option on some BMW models.
Meta’s new AI supercomputer will create the backbone for the metaverse
Meta (née Facebook) has announced it is building its own AI supercomputer in support of its efforts to bring the metaverse to fruition.
The AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) is already up and running at reduced capacity. But once complete, Meta says the RSC will be the world’s fastest supercomputer of its kind.
The new machine will be used to train massive new speech recognition, language processing and computer vision models, which will underpin the company’s next generation of AI-driven applications.
A supercomputer for the metaverse
The fully-formed RSC will be powered by 16,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs, collected into compute nodes and hooked up using the latest InfiniBand interconnect fabric.
Meta is also partnering with PureStorage, whose high-performance FlashBlade and FlashArray technologies will help build out a storage system for the RSC capable of housing up to an exabyte of data (equal to one million TBs).
Early benchmarks show that RSC as it exists today is capable of outperforming Meta’s previous-generation AI infrastructure by roughly 20x across some workloads, a figure that will obviously rise once construction is completed later this year.
Meta researchers are already using the RSC to train large-scale natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision models much more quickly than previously possible. And in future, the company hopes to train models with upwards of one trillion parameters, which will go on to play a role in its metaverse product portfolio.
“We expect such a step function change in compute capability to enable us not only to create more accurate AI models for our existing services, but also to enable completely new user experiences, especially in the metaverse,” wrote Meta.
“Our long-term investments in self-supervised learning and in building next-generation AI infrastructure with RSC are helping create the foundational technologies that will power the metaverse and advance the broader AI community as well.”
Although the firm offered no specifics as to what these new metaverse experiences might look like, a similar sentiment was reiterated in a Facebook post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“The experiences we’re building for the metaverse require enormous compute power (quintillions of operations/second) and RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages and more,” he said.
Kyrgios & Kokkinakis vs Purcell & Ebdon live stream: how to watch Australian Open men's doubles final online
Love or loathe them, Nick Kyrgios and Thanis Kokkinakis have put doubles tennis on the map. Their brash, clownish style has worked the Melbourne crowd into riotous states and it's going to be a wild Saturday night at the Rod Laver Arena as they face fellow Aussies Max Purcell and Matt Ebden. Here's how to get a Kyrgios & Kokkinakis vs Purcell & Ebdon live stream wherever you are - including ways to watch Australian Open tennis absolutely FREE.
It's the first all-Aussie men's doubles final since 1980 and, to get here, these teams have had to beat a seeded pair at every stage of the tournament from the second round onwards, most notably top seeds Nikola Mektić and Mate Pavić, who fell to Kyrgios and Kokkinakis early on, and No.2 seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury, who Purcell and Ebden beat in straight sets in the semis.
Purcell has been in Kyrgios' and Kokkinakis' shoes before, reaching the Aussie Open final as a wildcard two years ago, while Ebden lifted the mixed doubles title here in 2013.
The Aussie crowd will doubtless be delighted at a guaranteed win but you'd be brave to bet against Kyrgios with that wall of noise at his back. This is going to be box office. Watch all the drama unfold by following a Kyrgios & Kokkinakis vs Purcell & Ebdon live stream at the Australian Open 2022 .
Watch a men's doubles final live stream for FREE
How to live stream Australian Open from outside your country
For broadcast and streaming details in more tennis-mad countries like the UK, US, Canada and New Zealand, just scroll down the page - everything you need to know is there, including estimated start times and broadcast details.
But if you try to watch your domestic coverage from anywhere outside your home country, you'll soon find a problem - geo-blocking. That's where the broadcaster prevents you from watching your usual feed from abroad. It's a common problem for sports fans all over the world.
By downloading and installing a VPN , you can effectively trick your computer into thinking that it's back at home.
Use a VPN to watch Australian Open from anywhere
US: Watch a men's doubles final live stream
Canada: Watch a men's doubles final live stream
UK: watch a men's doubles final live stream
New Zealand: watch a men's doubles final live stream