D-Link will unveil a new lineup of mesh Wi-Fi routers and mesh access points at CES next week, featuring built-in network security courtesy of McAfee. Each of the routers in the D-Link Exo product line will be based on the 802.11ac standard and will ship with five years of IoT protection for smart home devices, and two years of cloud-based McAfee antivirus for any laptop, computer, or mobile device that connects to the home network.

The routers will also have built-in parental controls that allow the home network admin to create custom user profiles for each member of the family and the devices they use, so that adults and older children won’t be limited to the lowest common denominator of access that gets assigned to the youngest. Parents will be able to choose from present content filters sorted by age, and they can create usage schedules to limit the amount of time children spend on the web.

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It’s great what a little competition will do. Ever since cord cutting became a genuine trend, TV networks and pay TV providers have scrambled to bring their channel bundles to the internet.

But with more competition comes more confusion. Between Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV, YouTube TV, FuboTV, and Philo, prospective cord-cutters who still want a bundle of traditional TV channels have a lot to consider before making the leap. And while these services tend to be cheaper and more flexible than cable, each comes with its own quirks and caveats.

We created this guide to make your decision easier. It compares the features of all the current TV streaming bundles, lists which devices each one supports, provides a full side-by-side channel list, and provides our bottom-line recommendations. It also shares the latest TV streaming news, and links to our in-depth reviews, where you can learn more about how each bundle works. 

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D-Link is expanding its mydlink smart home ecosystem, adding new indoor and outdoor smart plugs for lighting and small appliance control, as well as a battery-powered water sensor to detect leaks in your home before they can do serious damage.

All three devices are controlled via Wi-Fi, so they don’t require a smart-home hub to operate. And since they’re all compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, they can be controlled with voice commands, too. They’re also compatible with IFTTT (If This Then That, the free web-based service that enables a device or application to trigger an action in another product).

D-Link

Philo is a live TV streaming service borne from desperate times. Its main network backers—Discovery, Viacom, and AMC—have to varying degrees found themselves cast out of other streaming bundles, in large part because they don’t carry any sports programming. Rather than sit idly by, they’ve banded together to launch their own bundle, with no sports but a low price tag.

At $16 per month, Philo is one of the cheapest bundles of cable channels you can get over the internet today. If you’re into the reality TV fare that many of Philo’s channels focus on, it could be the only streaming service you need, but it also pairs nicely with other streaming services or with over-the-air broadcasts from an antenna.

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LG has announced that it will be shipping its first 8K UHD smart TVs this year—the Z9 OLED and the SM99 LCD TV. 8K UHD looks great, and though there’s practically no content currently available in that format, the 2020 Olympics will be broadcast in 8K UHD. I guess the company’s motto is “be prepared”. 

LG’s other OLED’s will also rev from 8 to 9 and take form as the W9, E9, and C9. The older B8 will remain in production and available through most of 2019. The major difference for 2019 is improved processing power, courtesy of the second-generation Alpha 9 chip. If LG removes the relatively few artifacts we’ve seen in the 2018 OLEDs, they’ll be untouchable. 

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Headphones are the ultimate tool for intimate listening experiences. Whether you’re listening on your phone, a digital audio player, a disc player, or even a PC or gaming console, when you’re ready to shut out the world and be one with your music, there is nothing better than a great set of cans. 

And you probably have multiples of them, since most every smart device and digital audio player comes with a pair; but it’s a safe bet that you’re really not satisfied with any of them. Comfortable high-quality headphones can transform your audio experiences ranging from listening to music and podcasts to watching TV shows and movies, .

Whether you prefer the isolation of in-ear headphones, the comfort of an over-the-ear model, the convenience of wireless, or you’re not sure which type is best for you, we’ll help you find the right ones at the right budget. We’ve listed our top picks up front. If you need more information to make a choice, we’ll provide that—and links to a bunch of our reviews—below.

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If one of your resolutions is to worry less in the new year, it might be time to invest in home security. And this Amazon deal can help: Today the Foscam R2 home security camera is on sale for $56Remove non-product link, down $29 from its list price of $85 and an all-time low.

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For cord-cutters, this is the year in which everything changes.

In 2019, we’ll see several new streaming services to compete with the likes of Netflix, major alterations to the live TV services that are aiming to replace cable, new ways to sift through an ever-larger array of streaming TV options, and perhaps some interesting new streaming devices. When the year is over, your options for cutting the cable TV cord will look a lot different than they do today.

Here’s what to expect in a wild year for streaming video:

New streaming services

Standalone streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime haven’t seen much new competition over the past few years, but that’ll change in 2019 with the arrival of several important new services.

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Shure’s SE535 in-ear headphones sound great and are quite accurate, facilitating EQ  to suit just about anyone’s taste. But these puppies will set you back a minimum of $449—or between $499 and $599 if you choose one of the Bluetooth options (street prices are somewhat lower).

Shure sent its Bluetooth 4.1-equipped model SE535LTD+BT1 ($499 at Amazon), along with its RMCE-BT2 Bluetooth 5.0 upgrade module ($149 at Amazon). The optional module adds support for Qualcomm’s aptX and aptX HD codecs, which are generally thought to be sonically superior and more efficient than the SBC (subband codec) native Bluetooth uses.

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Ring is working on a couple of new security lights, according to a regulatory filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The filings, which were made on January 1, detail two unannounced products: the Ring Beams Spotlight and Ring Beams Wired Floodlight.

The Ring Beams Spotlight is a stand-alone security light that runs on four D-cell batteries. It appears to have a small motion sensor embedded under dual spotlights.

Federal Communications Commission

Later this year, Disney will launch its own standalone streaming service to take on Netflix—sort of.

The service, called Disney+, will offer plenty of movies and TV shows from the House of Mouse’s back catalog, along with original programming around hit franchises such as Star Wars and the Marvel universe. But unlike Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and whatever AT&T’s WarnerMedia is working on, Disney+ will focus more on family-friendly fare and probably won’t cost as much.

Here’s what we know (and don’t know) so far about the Disney+ streaming service:

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Bose ought to consider co-opting the popular marketing slogan “Have it your way” for its Soundbar 500, a $499 (street price) offering in the brand’s new smart speaker line.

Slim in proportions, but living large in performance, it’s ready to serve a variety of needs and aspirations with trendy Alexa voice activation, music streaming from both the cloud and via Bluetooth, and a flexible sonic nature adjustable with a big kitbag of equalization tools and add-on accessories. This is a speaker designed to please everyone from music-lovin’ kids and movie mavens to hard-of-hearing elders.

But first, a cautionary note. Like those TV manufacturers who crank up the brightness and contrast of their screens at the factory to achieve blinding illumination on showroom floors, Bose goes for the gusto with the Soundbar 500. In casual in-store comparisons, this new soundbar produced more high-frequency sonic sizzle than did Alexa voice-activated rivals from Sonos and Polk.

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Soundcast's $350 VG5 is a 17-inch tall outdoor speaker designed for beach parties and other audio mayhem in large outdoor spaces. Given one of those environments, where the VG5's sound has room to breathe and mix, most listeners will appreciate its sonic qualities. But it's not the speaker you want for smaller spaces or for quiet listening sessions. 

Design and specs

I've already mentioned the 17-inch height of the VG5. It's also a hefty 7.75-inches deep and across and weighs in at just under 12 pounds. Those dimensions mean there's plenty of breathing space for the 6-inch down-firing woofer and twin, side-firing 3-inch broad-frequency drivers. The VG5 is stereo, but also supports TWS, aka True Wireless Stereo, so it can act as one half of a wireless speaker pair with another speaker that supports that standard.

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You're not experiencing déjà vu. Eufy’s latest RoboVac offering, the RoboVac 30C, looks so familiar because it sports a nearly identical design to the Eufy RoboVac 11 and the Eufy RoboVac 30.

In fact, it’s essentially the RoboVac 30 with the addition of Wi-Fi connectivity and Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant compatibility. That puts it at the top of the RoboVac product line, though it still carries a humble price tag of just $300.

Like the RoboVac 30, the 30C uses three brushes—a roller brush for carpeting and two spinning side brushes for wall edges and corners—and it has 1500pa of suction. Two treads and a swivel wheel on the underside enable to traverse multiple types of floor surfaces. A 0.6-liter dustbin slots into the back of the robot vacuum.

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USB charging ports are showing up in all sorts of places, from your car’s dashboard to AC outlets in every room in your home. Gjemeni puts them—along with 110-volt AC receptacles—in the most useful places of all: Furniture.

Gjemeni shipped us its articulating couch to check out, but the company also offers a matching chair and an ottoman that can be paired with either piece. The $999 couch is outfitted with two USB charging ports and one 110-volt grounded AC outlet on each side of its backrest. The chair is priced at $599 and the ottoman, which doesn't have charging features, costs $299. You’ll need to plug a single cord into a grounded outlet on an adjacent wall to power everything. The articulated elements, in case you were wondering, are strictly mechanical and rely on your muscle power.

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LG’s says it’s raising the bar on soundbars. Next thing you know, they’ll be saying they have the best soundbars—bar none. 

I kid, but the news out of Korea preempts the upcoming CES in Las Vegas, where LG will show three new byproducts of its collaboration with the sound gurus from Meridian Audio: the SL10YG, SL9YG and SL8YG soundbars. We’ll have to wait until then to learn when exactly they’ll be available for purchase and how much they’ll cost, but here’s what we know now.

Meridian makes well-reviewed, high-end audiophile equipment, so the company helps in tuning the soundbar enclosures, as well as adding processing features such as Bass & Space, for increased bass response without needing to move a lot of air, and Image Elevation, for producing a wider and more immediate sound stage. Meridian’s Upmix for up-mixing two-channel audio to multiple channels is also incorporated. LG’s press materials don’t mention if the Meridian-developed MQA audio codec will be supported (Meridian has since spun MQA off as an independent entity).

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Whether you rent or own, you want the best security camera system for keeping an eye on your home while you’re gone. That used to entail signing on with a professional—and pricey—security service like ADT. But a boom in consumer-level smart-home tech is putting indoor and outdoor home surveillance into our own hands.

These close cousins of webcams require minimal installation and offer flexible setups and a range of security features. Indeed, the offerings vary widely by camera, and deciding what to buy gets more daunting as this category grows ever more crowded. But whether you’re looking for an easy way to check on your kids and pets, or a full-service sentinel to monitor for intruders, we’ll help find the right product for your needs.

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Staying in is the new going out, and it can be festive fun when you watch these filmic celebrations of the ends of years and the promises of new ones.

We have curated 12 of the best New Year's parties ever filmed: Terrific films ranging from the 1930s to the new century in a variety of different styles, from drunken free-for-alls to austere, bittersweet occasions.

Whether you're in the mood to laugh, or in a more self-reflective mood, there's something here for everyone to pop on this holiday weekend.

After the Thin Man

★★★★☆

(Rental: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, from $2.99)

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Wi-Fi cameras have made home surveillance easy, but what if you want to connect in some remote locale where Wi-Fi doesn’t reach? That’s where the Reolink Go comes in: This is a wireless security camera that uses 4G LTE connectivity rather than Wi-Fi. You can set it up pretty much anywhere you can receive cellular service—provided you’re within range of T-Mobile’s LTE network, that is—even if you’re otherwise off the grid.

Design

The Go is a bullet-style camera with Reolink’s typically durable construction. It is IP65 certified to be ingress protected against dust and projected jets of water, and it has an operating temperature of 14 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 to 55 degrees Celsius). A rubber sheath is included to further defend it against the elements.

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Think of 2018 as the eye of the storm for cord-cutting. Although cable and satellite TV subscriptions continued their steady downward spiral, we didn’t see many drastic changes in cord-cutting hardware, software, or services.

Bigger changes could come next year, with new streaming services from Disney, AT&T, Apple, and possibly NBC Universal, along with retooled live TV packages from the likes of Hulu and DirecTV Now. While we wait for the next wave of cord-cutting to arrive, let’s celebrate what was largely a year of refinement for our favorite cord-cutting devices and services. Here are TechHive’s third-annual cord-cutter awards:

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New owners of 4K TVs sometimes wonder if they need to buy a new HDMI cable to go with it. The very fast answer is: Probably not.

Here’s how to tell if the final call is a yes or a no.

HDMI cables explained

An HDMI cable is just a conduit between your TV and media device, be it DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD Blu-ray player; a media streamer; a video game console; or a PC. Different types of HDMI cables do exist, but their designations indicate how much data they can carry. (Spoiler: There’s really no such thing as a 4K HDMI cable.)

When pared down to the most basic information, the video resolution guidelines as set by the HDMI Forum Technical Working Group that defines the specification are:

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For the purpose of this review, let’s not judge ESPN+ on what it isn’t.

ESPN+, at least today, is not supposed to replace or otherwise threaten ESPN’s cable TV business. It offers hardly any of the same sports (no Monday Night Football), hit shows (no SportsCenter) or big personalities (no Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, for better or worse). At $5 per month, it even costs less than what cable providers pay per subscriber for ESPN proper.

So let’s instead judge ESPN+ on its own merits as a quirky offshoot of the regular cable channel. In this regard, ESPN+ doesn’t fail. It offers plenty of live sporting events and a trove of interesting sports-related programming, much of which feels deliberately, unapologetically niche. Still, ESPN+ would be better if it leaned even harder into that weirdness, playing up its unique identity instead of just feeling like ESPN’s leftovers.

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With cable and satellite TV subscriptions getting ridiculously expensive, more and more homes are ditching pricey pay TV and choosing free, over-the-air broadcasts. Digital TV typically provides between 20 and 60 channels depending on where you live, and can save you at least $1,000 a year, based on a typical pay TV subscription.

So, cut that cable, ditch that dish, and join the 14 percent (and growing) of American households that are free from monthly bills for TV service.

Putting up an antenna is easy, but before you buy one you’ll need to figure out what channels are available where you live, how strong the signals are likely to be, and what direction they’re coming from. See TechHive’s guide to choosing an antenna to figure all that out.

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RCA has dabbled in outdoor home security with a couple of video doorbells and a floodlight camera. The unimaginatively named WiFi Camera Security System is its first stab at an indoor camera, and its kind of a mixed bag.

While some security camera manufacturers try to make their products less intrusive with small footprints and sleek modern designs, RCA makes no such concessions. The HSWIFI1 uses a chunky cup-style design for both the camera enclosure and its base. The latter has an antenna and a tail-like thermal sensor attached at the back, and the whole unit has a glossy black finish that easily collects fingerprints and smudges when handled.

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The Antennas Direct DB8e is a large outdoor antenna for reception of medium to very weak TV signals. In our tests it did a great job of pulling in distant stations with minimal interference.

The unusual shape comes from the antenna type: it's called a bow-tie antenna, because each of the pairs of elements looks like a bow tie. The design is supposed to make the antenna perform well over a broad range of frequencies, and we found that to be the case.

This antenna is intended for reception of UHF TV stations, which are probably the majority of signals in most cities. But in many places, stations can still be found on the VHF-High band and this antenna isn't tuned for that. So before you buy an antenna, read our guide to figuring out which stations you can receive where you live and whether they are UHF or VHF.

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The Antennas Direct 91XG is a large antenna, designed for reception of medium to very weak signals in the UHF broadcast band, a task it performs very well.

The 91XG looks like an old-school antenna and is best mounted on a mast on top of your house, because that’s where it will get the best signals. If you’re dealing with weak reception, you need an antenna as high as possible and as far from trees and other obstructions as you can get it.

Do your homework before you begin. Trying to receive weak or very weak TV signals is a bit of an art, so read TechHive’s guide to determining which TV stations you should realistically expect to receive in your location, and just how strong or weak their respective signals are.

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Every room in your house has them: power outlets, and they’re about as dumb as technology can be. To create a true smart home, you need to upgrade the way your wiring works, so that it can be controlled, managed, and monitored from afar.

You could hire an electrician to rip out your existing outlets and replace them with smart in-wall models, but there’s an easier, less-expensive way: Stick a smart plug in those outlets. They work just the way they sound: The outlet in the wall doesn’t change, you just configure the add-on plug using an app, connect it to your network, and use it to control whatever’s plugged into it.

Smart plugs are handy in all kinds of ways. Some models have built-in dimmers, so you can adjust the brightness of the lamp that’s plugged into them; others can power small appliances, such as a fan or space heater. Others can be scheduled, so you can make your home look lived in while you’re away on vacation, or so that you can limit the hours your kids can play video games or watch TV.

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If I was reviewing Anki’s Vector as just another smart speaker or Alexa-enabled device, it would be hard to recommend. It takes too long to answer, has a limited set of skills (and Skills), and often won’t respond to its wake word until the second or third attempt. But the thing is, even with all its flaws, Vector is just so darn likable.

When it’s not responding to your queries, Vector sleeps (and snores). He reacts to loud noises. He chirps and squeaks when he wants to be played with, and rolls around when bored. In short, Vector is the first smart device I’ve used that has a believable personality and curiosity about the human world it serves, and not just a friendly cadence and agreeable tone. 

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ConnectSense’s Smart Outlet has been one of my favorite picks for add-on smart outlets for a year now, thanks to its comparatively unobtrusive design and full array of features. The original Smart Outlet was an early HomeKit plug, featuring two independently controllable three-prong outlets, and it even sported a USB charging port on its side. My biggest complaint with the product was that it seemed always to be out of stock.

ConnectSense has now updated the original Smart Outlet in a few key ways. While the Smart Outlet 2 keeps the same size, shape, and design of the original product, the upgrade now supports Android instead of just iOS/HomeKit, and new hooks let it connect to Google Assistant and Alexa devices, too.

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Update 12/24: The Google Home Hub is still $99 at Target but the Google Home Mini bundle has expired.

The Google Home Hub is already a great deal at $149. While it’s not quite as full-featured as the second-generation of Amazon’s Echo Show, it’s still one of the best smart displays you can buy, with excellent smart home support, a compact design, and support for YouTube streaming. But today Target is making it more desirable than ever: The retailer has slashed the price of the Google Home Hub to $99, but that’s not all—you’ll also get two Google Home Minis for freeRemove non-product link. Some quick math reveals that this deal will save your whopping $149 on the full retail price of all three.

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