Thurrott Daily: November 5

Good morning. What else is happening today?

11/5/2015 8:07:01 AM

Microsoft Movies & TV app adds support for SRT subtitles

And the nice thing is, this is for both Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. Here’s what’s new in the latest app version.

• Support for SRT subtitle files
• An improved offline experience helps you quickly find your downloaded content for offline viewing
• Personal video folders now show thumbnails of content within the folder

Google engineer takes on makers of low-quality USB-C cables

Even though very few of us actually have PCs with USB-C ports, let alone any USB-C peripherals, the general consensus is that the world is moving in that direction. So it should come as no surprise that an engineer at Google who worked at two of that firm’s USB-C-based products, the Chromebook Pixel and Pixel C, has been testing USB-C cables and adapters, and has found many of them lacking. (Anyone who has purchased third-party Apple Lightning cables, for example, knows what I mean.) And he’s speaking out.

Benson Leung announced his intention to call out substandard USB-C cables and adapters on his Google+ page (I know, I know), and then followed that up with instructions for testing whether a a USB Type-A to Type-C cable, or a USB Type-B receptacle to Type-C adapter is spec compliant. (The bad news? This only works on Chromebook Pixel.) More to the point, he is reviewing USB-C cables and adapters on Amazon. So if you’re in the market for such a thing, I recommend checking his reviews first. Not surprisingly, most of the cables he’s reviewed so far do not meet the spec and are given low grades. Some are so bad they can even harm your PC.

Google Maps for iOS picks up spoken traffic alerts

It’s sort of amazing this took so long, but Google Maps for iOS just added support for spoken traffic alerts. The full changelist for version 4.12.0 is:

Easily add new and missing businesses from the sidebar

Spoken traffic alerts in Navigation tell you about congestion and incidents on your route and traffic descriptions give you a summary of traffic before you drive

You can download it now from the Apple Apps Store.

Cutting the Cord, Not the Cost

This is an interesting article from Bloomberg, but it shouldn’t be all that surprising that cutting cable and going with a high-speed Internet connection plus some combination of services will cost just as much, if not more. The good news? I bet a lot of people are simply paying for both right now anyway.

An average U.S. subscriber pays $95.97 a month and receives 194 channels but watches only about 17 channels. That’s 50¢ a channel and $5.65 per channel watched.

It’s cheaper to buy just the  Internet … But the savings of $54.83 can disappear fast [when you subscribe to just a few online services like Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime].