MagicSpan

Twenty years ago, when photorealistic games were still just a faraway dream, companies like Square sent our imaginations soaring before we played, with big-budget intros and cutscenes. Long before Overwatch normalized the practice of releasing Pixar-quality animated shorts for each new character, Blizzard’s Diablo II and Capcom’s Onimusha 3 put us in the demon slaying mood with incredible mini-movies stretching to six minutes each.

But if you dare try watching these classics on a modern 4K TV or even a 1080p monitor, they’ll look like a pixelated mess. That’s where a YouTube channel named Upscale and machine learning comes in — making them look nearly as good as they did on your old CRT. Or perhaps even better. It just depends how well…

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Author: Sean Hollister

During the Robotech: The New Beginning panel at Comic-Con 2021, fans of the giant mech series had something to celebrate. The series is getting an HD release this September, and later this year, it will be available to stream on Funimation.

The collector’s edition of Robotech is a new 1080p HD transfer featuring 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound and exclusive collectibles and deluxe packaging. Details about what collectibles are included and what the packaging looks like are unknown at the time of this writing. This collector’s edition will be available to own on Blu-ray and digital on September 28.

Additionally, the HD remaster will also be coming to Funimation. A specific release date was not revealed, but it will be arriving this fall. After the announcement, the panel showed a video of a tour of the Harmony Gold USA vaults–the production company behind the series–where the masters of Robotech are displayed. You can take a look at that below.

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Author: Mat Elfring

Baseball has a sign stealing problem — or at least, a technological one, seeing how reading another team’s pitches is technically legal, but using Apple Watches or telephoto cameras and then suspiciously banging on trash cans is very much not. But soon the MLB may try fighting fire with fire: on August 3rd, it plans to begin testing an encrypted wireless communication device that replaces the traditional flash of fingers with button taps, according to ESPN.

The device, from a startup called PitchCom, will be tested in the Low-A West minor league first. As you’d expect from something that’s relaying extremely basic signals, it’s not a particularly complicated piece of kit: one wristband transmitter for the catcher with nine buttons to…

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Author: Sean Hollister

The Dexter revival will premiere on November 7 on Showtime, according to an announcement immediately following the show’s Comic-Con 2021 panel. An accompanying release otherwise tells us what all dutiful Dexter fans already know–this upcoming batch of 10 episodes picks up a decade after the previous season, and sees our antihero living under an assumed name in upstate New York.

As a trailer that aired at the very end of the panel makes abundantly clear–Dexter may have escaped his past, but it is starting to catch up to him. The release ominously says that “in the wake of unexpected events in this close-knit community, [Dexter’s] Dark Passenger beckons.” Check out the trailer first aired during the panel below, which Showtime also quickly tweeted out afterwards.

The preceding panel largely focused on how Dexter is coming back “because it deserved a better ending,” according to star Michael C. Hall himself. This sentiment was echoed, lockstep, by his co-star Julia Jones (The Mandalorian), and several executive producers. So, it looks like for the time being, all we can do is try to wait for a few more months for Dexter to come back.

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Author: David Wolinsky

After months of government bans on DJI drones, with lawmakers questioning whether the company was sending information to the Chinese government, the Pentagon has admitted that the drones being used might actually be safe (via The Hill), with a report saying that two “Government Edition” DJI drones are “recommended for use by government entities.”

However, on July 23rd, the Department of Defense released a statement on the report, saying that its release was “unauthorized,” and reiterating its position that DJI’s drones “pose potential threats to national security.” (via Reuters) It says that its policy around the drones is unchanged, and that there is an investigation into how the “inaccurate and uncoordinated” report was released.

L…

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Author: Mitchell Clark

The best and most unpredictable series in The CW’s Arrow-verse isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The cast and showrunner of Legends of Tomorrow came to Comic-Con to not only tease what will happen during the rest of Season 6 but share some very interesting information about Season 7.

First up, a trailer for the remainder of Season 6 was shared. It includes quite a bit of action, be it at bowling alleys in space, murder mystery weekends, or even the wedding of Sarah Lance (Caity Lotz) and Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan). It was also confirmed that Season 6 will be the end of John Constantine’s journey on Legends of Tomorrow, as that character will depart the Waverider for good. Now the big question is whether he’ll do it alive or not, based on the dark magic overtaking him in the trailer below.

Still, while Constantine may be leaving Legends, that’s not the case for the actor who portrays him. Showrunner Phil Klemmer revealed that Ryan will still be a series regular in Season 7, taking on a new original role. He will play Dr. Gwyn Davies, who is described as “an eccentric scientist from the early 20th century who might be the team’s only hope next season.”

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Author: Chris E. Hayner

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed Doctor Who to do something it hasn’t done in the modern era — dedicate an entire season to a single story. That’s the word from showrunner Chris Chibnall in a new Doctor Who panel at the online-only San Diego Comic-Con today. Oh, and did I mention we’re getting our very first fleeting glimpse at Series 13 in a teaser trailer? Hit that video play button above to watch it.

We’d learned last year that the new season would just be eight episodes long, but Chibnall says it pushed the BBC to go big: “The big thing that we’re going to be doing this year is it’s all one story, so every episode is one chapter in a bigger story,” he says.

More:

There were two ways you could go: we’re just going to do lots of tiny…

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Author: Sean Hollister

Doctor Who is coming back later this year for Season 13, with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor at the helm once again and if the trailer for the upcoming episodes shown during Comic-Con 2021 is any indication, this season is going to be massive and action-packed. It’ll also see a couple of new faces–including one you will surely recognize.

Game of Thrones star Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm) is joining the series for Season 13 and couldn’t be any more excited. “This is like a dream,” he said during the panel. This is like a real childhood dream to be a part of Doctor Who and even more so to be in Doctor Who with Jodie.” The two previously worked together on the first season of Broadchurch, alongside that show’s creator–and current Doctor Who showrunner–Chris Chibnall.

Also joining the cast is comedian John Bishop, who took part in the panel. He plays Dan Lewis, the newest addition to the Doctor’s TARDIS crew and will be traveling with the Doctor and her companion Yaz (Mandip Gill) throughout space and time.

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Author: Chris E. Hayner

When Amazon started cracking down on mobile electronics companies with shady reviewer programs, Aukey and Mpow were the first to get whacked — and yet Aukey is still selling at least three sets of wireless earbuds at the giant online retailer, The Verge has found.

Two weeks ago, I pointed out to Amazon PR that both Aukey and Mpow had seemingly found a way around their bans. Mpow had an “xMpow MFly” set of wireless Bluetooth headphones, and Aukey was selling several different sets under its “Key Series” sub-brand.

I’ve been watching their product pages ever since, and today I noticed that the xMpow MFly has disappeared. But Key Series is alive and well with three products. Aukey appears to be paying Amazon extra to promote them in…

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Author: Sean Hollister

When Valve and IGN revealed last Thursday that the new Steam Deck handheld will target 30Hz gameplay, not everyone was impressed with that low bar — but Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais has taken to Twitter to clarify his original comment, and reveal a new feature of the portable console.

First, he says 30 fps is more of a minimum bar than anything else:

“The ‘30 FPS target’ refers to the floor of what we consider playable in our performance testing; games we’ve tested and shown have consistently met and exceeded that bar so far,” he writes.

In other words, when Griffais said in that IGN video interview that “We haven’t really found something that we could throw at this device that it couldn’t…

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Author: Sean Hollister