Olympics in 4K

Ladies and gentlemen, in case you haven’t noticed over the last couple of days, the 2016 Summer Olympic Games from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil began this week, and tonight is the night to catch the much-anticipated 4K Ultra HD coverage of the Opening Ceremonies in what is sure to be a spectacularly colorful affair – It is Rio, after all.

For those of you not lucky enough to be at the event in person, the next best thing is to catch the action in glorious 4K Ultra HD resolution from the NBC Network via supporting linear satellite TV channels on DirecTV and DISH and on a streaming TV app from Comcast cable on supporting Samsung and LG 4K Ultra HDTV models. Unfortunately, that won’t include others.

NBC has announced that it plans to present 83 hours of the event in 4K high-resolution video starting with the Opening Ceremonies August 5th (tonight and tomorrow morning) and running through August 21st.

NBC’s 4K Ultra HD productions are scheduled to include both the opening (tonight) and closing ceremonies, select events in swimming, track and field, judo, and basketball, plus the men’s soccer final. At least one event from the previous day’s competition will be shown in 4K Ultra HD every day.

Read more on the 4K Ultra HD Olympics coverage plans after the jump:

But for the sports events themselves, 4K fans will have to keep their heads in the sand for 24 hours if they don’t want the results of the event winners spoiled. There will be a one-day delay between when an event takes place and the time it airs on 4K telecasts in United States.

MSFT Changes Downgrade Policy (again!!)

Microsoft has hidden a new downgrade policy within the Windows 10 Anniversary Update: Once you’ve installed it, you’ll only have 10 days to downgrade to an earlier version or build, rather than the 31 days provided before.

Historically, Microsoft had given users a full month to roll back any updates, including upgrades to Windows 10. Supersite for Windows reported this week, however, that it was unable to downgrade to an earlier build after a 10-day limit had expired, though it wasn’t exactly clear what builds the limit applied to.

Applying the Anniversary Update triggers the new policy. According to Microsoft, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 8 or Windows 7, or whether you simply updated your PC from an earlier version of Windows 10. Once you’ve installed the Anniversary Update, you have 10 days to back out, not 31, before the AU becomes “permanent.”

“T]his new 10-day behavior is for all upgrades and updates to the Anniversary Update,” the representative said in an email.

Why this matters: Just when you thought Microsoft’s aggressive upgrade practices were over—remember all the nastiness about deceptive upgrade tactics?—it appears Microsoft is stealthily closing the Windows 10 escape hatch. Recent Windows 10 converts need to figure out when they upgraded to Windows 10, and whether they want to keep it, pronto. And if you upgraded to Windows 10 just so you could downgrade again? You may need to act fast.

Back To School Sales

It's that time of year again -- back-to-school -- when parents and CE retailers alike rejoice.

According to research released by The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), 59 percent of American consumers who plan to do back-to-school shopping intend to buy a technology product, an increase of 12 percentage points over last year.

CTA estimates $18.5 billion will be spent this year on back-to-school tech products/accessories in 2016, a 6.2 percent increase over last year.

Here are the top 10 back-to-school tech products consumers plan to buy this year:

1. Portable memory (71 percent)

2. Basic calculator (55 percent)

3. Headphones (52 percent)

4. Scientific/graphing calculator (51 percent)

5. Carrying or protective case (48 percent)

6. Laptop (44 percent)

7. Software for computer (39 percent)

8. External hard drive (23 percent)

9. Tablet (22 percent)

10. Product subscription service (22 percent)

Nintendo Sales

Nintendo Co. appears to be benefiting from Pokemon Go after all, just not in the way investors had originally thought.

The Kyoto-based company said last month it didn’t expect the app’s runaway success to have much direct effect on profits, but Pokemon Go seems to be casting a halo that is helping Nintendo’s other businesses. Shipments of Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, games for the 3DS handheld device, have more than doubled in Japan since the Pokemon smartphone app debuted in early July, according to data from gaming magazine Famitsu. The titles, which retail for about 4,600 yen ($45) each, have been available in Japan since late 2014. Weekly sales have almost reached 8,000 units, the publisher said, compared with 3,241 shipments during the first week of July.

GameStop Acquires Hundreds of AT&T Stores

GameStop Corp. acquired 507 AT&T wireless stores as part of a drive to diversify and reduce its dependence on sales of video games.

The stores are located in 26 states, with the biggest share in Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma, Tony Bartel, GameStop’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. He declined to reveal the purchase price but said it amounted to the bulk of the $475 million the Grapevine, Texas-based company raised in a debt offering this year.

“Video games are cyclical,” he added. “We said, ‘Let’s take our real estate experience and extra capital that we have and see if we can diversify.’ ”

GameStop, the largest independent retailer of video games, has been trying to add new businesses as more purchases of video games take place online. The company’s wireless retailing is on pace to produce $1 billion in annualized sales this year and profit of $85 million to $100 million, Bartel said.

The stores were acquired from three companies, Cellular World Corp., Midwest Cellular Inc. and Red Skye Wireless Inc. The deal expands the company’s AT&T wireless stores to 1,421, making GameStop the largest authorized AT&T Mobility retailer.

MSFT Phone Market Share

Microsoft Corp. is more than doubling an earlier job cut plan, part of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella’s move to pare the company’s smartphone ambitions.

Some 2,850 positions worldwide will be eliminated in fiscal 2017, the company said Thursday in a regulatory filing. That’s in addition to 1,850 job cuts, primarily in the smartphone hardware business and sales, announced in May.

Microsoft has already written off most of the value of its purchase of the handset business of Nokia Oyj in 2014 after that unit failed to make significant market share gains against Apple Inc.’s iPhones and Google’s Android operating system.

Windows phones had less than 1 percent of the global smartphone market in the first quarter, according to Gartner Inc. That compares with Android’s 84 percent and 15 percent for Apple’s iOS.

Huawei Expansion

Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier, plans to open 15,000 new retail stores around the world this year as it aims for a record-high shipment of smartphones and greater sales of premium-priced models.

“We are optimistic and confident about reaching our target shipment of 140 million smartphones this year,” Richard Yu Chengdong, the chief executive of Huawei’s consumer business group, said on Tuesday in Shenzhen.

That would mark a 30 per cent increase in smartphone shipments from 108 million units last year.

Unfazed by the lingering economic slowdown, Yu indicated the company’s retail store expansion would help its ability to reach more consumers and drive sales of its high-end smartphones priced in the US$500 to US$600 range.