Gadgets
Could the Netgear Meural Canvas II Make me an Art Lover in Six Months?
The Meural Canvas II comes in two sizes. I bought the 21.5-inch variant, And there is also a larger 27-inch option. You also need to subscribe in order to receive updates to the art that is displayed on the Meural Canvas II and you can upload your own images as well.
Netgear Meural Canvas II price and specifications
The Netgear Meural Canvas II is available in two display sizes; 21.5-inch and 27-inch. Both of these come with 8GB of storage, of which 4GB is allocated for uploading your own art and photos to the frame. The Netgear Meural Canvas II didn’t show any lag or other issues in the last several months, so you shouldn’t experience any real issues.
The Netgear Meural Canvas II connects to the Internet using a built-in Wi-Fi connection, and connecting to the network is done using a an app to set up. Both displays operate at a 1920×1080 pixel resolution. This means that the smaller display looks a lot sharper.
It’s priced at $399.99 (just under Rs. 30,000) and costs a further $8.95 (just over Rs. 650) a month to stream the images. The larger display costs $599.95 (or just under Rs. 45,000) with the same subscription cost for streaming art.
The screen of the Netgear Meural Canvas II has a white border around it and a frame bordering that. It is aesthetically pleasing, but one thing I have not been able to get used to is the power cable that is visible. A regular frame would have no wires coming out of it and that is what gives away the magic of the device.
What’s it like to have the Meural Canvas II
The first thing that will strike you about the Meural Canvas II is the screen resolution. It is a 1080p full-HD display, and it has an ambient light sensor that adjusts the brightness automatically, giving the picture a natural feel. The art looks very realistic and the colours really pop on this display.
The ambient lighting sensor is common on phones and laptops, but it’s not something you typically see on a large screen like this one. On the Netgear Meural Canvas II, this really is exceptional as it blends in with the lighting in the house and is not jarring.
A swipe up motion brings up more information on the painting being displayed.
The interface of the Netgear Meural Canvas II is controlled by hand gestures that can change the paintings on the screen, or display more information using the built-in connection. For example, bringing up more information on a painting just requires a gesture upwards while changing the painting just requires moving your hand to the right or left.
The motion controls also let you bring up settings and choose between playlists. It did take some time to get familiar with these. But now, six months down the line, I find myself only using the companion app that comes with the frame to control it.
The Meural app is very convenient to use. The Netgear Meural Canvas II connects seamlessly to its app which acts as the art library for all the paintings or posters. Meural also keeps adding new art collections to the app, so you will keep seeing new things on your wall.
Did I become an art enthusiast with the Netgear Meural Canvas II?
Collecting art is a luxurious hobby and art lovers might find super value in these prices, but for an amateur art enthusiast, it is a steep price — especially with the subscription as an add on.
There is an exhaustive library to choose from and preset playlists too. Piet Mondrian’s Composition 2 looks crisp with the red, blue and yellow looking life-like. The brush strokes in these paintings show through as well and the canvas is impressive for art. You can choose from the classics, or different movements, and styles.
The Netgear Meural Canvas II can also display digital art, posters (it recently had a partnership with Marvel), and even moving patterns. My favourite playlist has come to be the ‘stump a curator’ one, because true to its name, it does have some rare finds.
I also started scheduling paintings for different times throughout the day, which is a nice feature to have on the app. The Netgear Meural Canvas II lets you upload your own pictures too, which means budding photographers have a canvas, quite literally, to showcase their work. The 16:9 ratio will have to be maintained though.
I also found myself using the canvas to display birthday messages for family members. Since the app allows you to upload your own pictures or art, I got a bit creative to create my own message posters to surprise everyone around.
The wire sticking out of the Netgear Meural Canvas II is the one thing that doesn’t fit the experience.
All-in-all, in six months with the Netgear Meural Canvas II, I found it was a great addition to the walls. The realistic reproduction of artwork is fascinating and you cannot get bored of the Canvas II with different Museums, artists and posters to choose from. The wire that sticks out is an eye sore though and the motion controls do lose their charm. However, if you’re keen to display ever changing art in your home, this is one of the easier, and more beautiful ways to do so.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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