Sony Acquires Cinemersive Labs to Level Up PS5 Pro Rendering - DTNS 5240

0:00This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. taking care of your eyes shouldn't be a hassle that's why warby parker is a one-stop shop for all your vision needs our prescription glasses and sunglasses are expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable stop by a nearby store or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations did we mention we offer eye exams and take vision insurance too for everything you need to see head to your nearest warby parker store or visit warby parker.com today that's WarbyParker.com.

1:06This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, April 3rd, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand. Today, SOTY Interactive Entertainment bought Cinemersive Labs to level up PS5 Pro's game rendering. Ooh, what does that mean? Well, we'll talk about it. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Jen Cutter. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story.

1:32All right, Sony Interactive Entertainment, which is a mouthful in itself, I'm realizing. I just want to say Sony, but that's wrong, has acquired UK-based Cinemersive Labs, which is a startup that uses custom AI tools to turn standard 2D photos and videos into 3D volumes, volumetric data. The CineMersive team will join Sony's visual computing group. They're going to help with its next-gen rendering and its visual technology. The core product from the CineMersive Labs team, at least at this stage, is a VR app called Parallax that lets users view Parallax photos in lifelike, three-dimensional scenes using standard smartphones and stereo lens cameras.

2:20So that's kind of the foundational layer of what they've been working on, how that will fit into Sony and its work on the PS5 Pro remains to be seen. But I mean, we have some clues. Sony says this is part of a larger machine learning strategy that already uses or rather includes PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or you may see it referred to as PSSR, on the PS5 Pro. that renders at lower resolutions and then uses AI upscaling to hit 4K. And by doing that, it frees up performance headroom, right? Well, in fact, along those lines, Sony also just shipped a new update to PSSR a few days ago that is accessible on Assassin's Creed Shadows on the PS5 Pro.

3:07And there it's sharpening pixels, it's stabilizing images, reducing visual artifacts, that sort of stuff. it's definitely an upgraded improvement with the PSSR. So one could imagine, or at least I would imagine, that maybe this technology feeds into PSSR as a technology. I'm curious to know your thoughts. You're definitely more of a gamer than I am these days. What are you thinking, Jen? Well, I've been asked about this, but several years ago when PlayStation were more affordable, I bought the disc version of the original PlayStation, so I have not been able to see this myself just in videos from Digital Foundry and such.

3:50This kind of ties into the whole NVIDIA issue that we covered on this show a couple days ago where it's like, oh, is this inventing pixels and stuff? Right. But this stuff seems a little less extreme, let's say. uh it's like okay here's more hair here's whiter teeth kind of thing uh but i kind of love the whole parallax thing because like i was first introduced to the term parallax back on the like super nintendo when like backgrounds scrolled differently so it looked uh looked more cool when you were running and i don't know why reading this i remembered uh do you remember like the binocular type things like the view master where you stuck in like a film yeah i'm thinking like oh, 2D photos to 3D volumes.

4:36Is that like how you could look at the View Master? It's just like the View Master, Jen. That's the perfect analogy. They should make one and sell one. Yeah, hey. I mean, you know, this is totally off topic, but there was a View Master update, I don't know how many years ago, when VR on mobile phones was a thing. And you could get it for your Android device and slot your smartphone in there. and it was like shaped like a Viewmaster. Anyways, total side change. There was some innovation in Viewmaster. That's all I'm saying. I totally agree. You were kind of comparing this to the NVIDIA news from a few weeks ago.

5:14That was the DLSS 4 announcement. That involved AI generated frames over the top of those intentional game renders. Gamers, as you were kind of alluding to, did not care so much. They were kind of calling the improvements in air quotes AI slop because it was really just kind of like regenerating the graphics and how much is intentional versus just ai interpretation or whatever in this case cinemersive seems to focus more closely on 360 degree image generation that parallax correction that we're talking about as a camera moves in a scene so it's a little bit more isolated it can do things like reducing judder it can improve how a rendered scene looks as the viewpoint shifts so it's kind of comparable but i think in the sense of the nvidia comparison the dlss4 there's a lot more generation happening where it's like let's take this and let's interpret it that might be happening here as well if i'm understanding things but i think on a much more isolated scale it's not suddenly turning your entire image into a fully ai generated uh slot machine yeah no one has complained because like pss are like ps5 pro users have had experience with this by now and you have not heard the same kind of complaints.

6:32It's not redrawing faces into Instagram filters kind of thing. It is. I like that it's, minor is the wrong word because like going to 4K is not minor. It is an upgrade and yes, freeing up the processor for other things, faster load times. Like that's the one thing I wish I had a pro for is like i wouldn't oh i'm not opposed to faster low times uh that that would be something i like uh but yes the fact that this is more minor more again saying undetectable is a little a little overstating uh but uh it's not a thing that draws your attention away from the thing you do you play the game and you're playing the game and it's not a distraction and that might be one of the differences, right?

7:20Like everything by all accounts, what people were reacting to with DLSS for is it's unmistakable the amount of changes and the amount of difference it underwent from what, you know, what the rendering without it versus with it was, you can't just kind of like look at it and be like, oh, that was, that was a little improvement. I can abide by that. It's like, everything looks pretty different versus something like this. I guess we'll even find out like we we don't truly know exactly how this particular acquisition is going to feed into tools like pssr but um but you can imagine you know this is just another one of those steps to kind of improve things when i think about kind of where technology is right now and gaming and again i will just you know admit like i haven't i don't play these games as much as i used to so i might not be in tune and in lockstep with a lot of the gamer community that probably holds, you know, holds dear and close to the intentions of the game designers.

8:20But I have to imagine the technology and where it's at right now, this like AI upscaling thing, especially when you're talking about performance gains, this has to be the way that these things are heading. Maybe though they can do it in a way that isn't so all or nothing, you know, it isn't so in your face, it's like minor improvements but not let's redraw the entire screen well uh so a game like assassin's creed shadows is a thing that you can put uh let's say almost 100 hours in easy so if you out there have the ps5 pro and have played assassin creed shadows uh boot it up again let us know at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com i want to hear if you notice anything in the update or whether it just kind of feels the same.

9:06And if you like it, like if you do notice it, did it help or was it distracting? You know? Yeah. So DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. So let's send a thanks to Bella Orr, Erwin Sturr, Ken Hayes, and Philip Shane. Thank you so, so much. Thank you.

9:31This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive. So they set out to change that.

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10:33All right, there is more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. OpenAI is buying the Technology Business Programming Network, or TBPN, out of Los Angeles in a deal worth low hundreds of millions of dollars. The 11-person team, including co-hosts Jordi Hayes and John Coogan, will be brought in-house while keeping its content on air and, according to OpenAI, editorially independent. The TVPN network has become popular among founders and investors in Silicon Valley, with around 70 ,000 average viewers of The Daily Show. It was already on track to earn around$30 million in ad-based revenue this year.

11:14This move follows OpenAI project chief Fiji Simo's internal push for the team to focus on core products like ChatGPT and its coding tools. A few weeks ago, Simo urged staff not to get distracted by SideQuest. But that appears to be largely focused on new app and social products like Sora. We know what happened there. Here, Simo is positioning this as a way to use media talent to shape the conversation around AI with TBPN sitting in the strategy and global affairs org at the company. I think what I was immediately reminded of here, whether right or wrong, was, you know, other big tech media buyouts, right?

11:55We've got Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post. We've got Benioff, Mark Benioff, Salesforce buying Time. And there's other examples. But, I mean, clearly this is different, right? Like those other examples are huge, you know, full-fledged newsrooms. This is kind of a smaller content network, but a very popular one nonetheless. So, you know, very niche by comparison, but very influential. So, yeah, you couldn't have seen this one coming, right? No, it was so out of nowhere. I'm looking at the news today going, they did what? Yeah, totally. Again, in credit to 11-person teams, you can do a lot with 11 people.

12:41Heck yeah. You get 11 really smart people, you know what, it works. I'm saying that on personal experience, as you well know. Yeah, I mean, I give them a lot of credit for what they've been able to build and the influence that they have. i mean 70 000 average viewers that isn't even like an insanely large number i think it's just that they they are so influent like the p the who those people are right it's kind of a a proof of you don't have to have millions upon millions you just have to know who your people are and you've got a very valuable company or entity or media um company whatever but this really does sound at least the way SEMO is positioning it, more of a like a corporate comms, like corporate communication asset sort of deal.

13:29So, you know, does this have influence over what the company does on its own lobbying efforts? Maybe. How does the content coming out of this, like if it's not specifically pro open AI, let's say, if it is truly editorial independent, how does OpenAI work with it so that it can influence the industry around AI, as SEMO has alluded to, without it seeming like they're putting their foot on the pedal towards themselves, if that makes sense. I don't know. It's a little rambling. They do a lot of interviews. So definitely there is some shaping that way, depending on how much pushback you get on the interviews there.

14:16But how much will it actually shape the content if your core listeners are already pro AI? You get a little bit of the preaching to the choir effect. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a really good point. Big thanks to TechZExplore in our subreddit for this next story. Google has released Gemma 4, its latest Gemma family model, as a fully open weight and open source LLM under the Apache 2.0 license. That means it can be freely modified, used commercially, redistributed with attribution. That's important. Gemma 4 was designed using the same research as Gemini 3. It's designed to run locally on, quote, billions of Android devices, but also supported, you know, laptop gpus devices like the raspberry pi and even directly in the browser using web gpu the new model brings advanced multi-step reasoning agentic workflow support which is really important right now multimodal abilities in audio and video and this is key it ships in a number of different configurations 2 billion 4 billion 26 billion and 31 billion parameter sizes with support up to the 256 ,000 token context window, all these numbers just to say this is a pretty, seemingly a very powerful family suite of models.

15:42And the real benefit here is that open license, right? And some people are kind of looking at this and thinking like, oh, so Google's, you know, in some ways kind of playing the Android playbook, but with these AI models, very powerful, very much designed to run locally and not to have to be online. So you could do a lot with that. And I don't know, I think that's pretty cool. Pretty interesting. I know, yeah. More people I know are willing to try it if it is locally, if they can sandbox it, if they can protect it. So yeah, I think this release is going to bring more people who were hesitant about it to that kind of ecosystem.

16:26And I think Google is counting on like, okay, well, like, there was your taste. You want to see what we can really do? You want to see? Oh, you like that taste? Yeah. And also, like, important to note, the prior Gemma releases were open, but I would say open-ish. They were open-weight. They were still bound by some pretty comparatively restrictive terms by comparison. So this Gemma 4, I think what a lot of people are really reacting to is it really does feel like a truly open model. Meta's played around with this with Llama, although Meta seems to be pulling away from the open AI model thing right now and going a little bit more closed.

17:06This is kind of Google, at least in this sense, going in the opposite direction. It's good to see that, especially with such a strong, like 31 billion parameters is a very dense model to be running locally. So I'll be curious to see what people do with it. And also thanks to Motang in our subreddit for this Reddit related story. Reddit is permanently deprecating our all and redirecting all links to users' personalized home feeds with its removal. Reddit has been experimenting with its removal since last year, first inside the Reddit app, the Reddit specific app, and then on desktop. In February, Reddit confirmed the decision to remove the feed for all users.

17:45R-all has long been the source of a trending view of everything across Reddit, with limited filters to keep not-safe-for-work content out for users. R-popular will continue to surface trending content for users, while Reddit continues to decide how global feeds will work, especially for new users. Reddit is also including tighter teen privacy controls this month, meaning under 18 users can't have followers and will have hidden profiles. Yeah, it seems like this is really, you know, part of the big reason here is tightening down for younger users, making it a little bit more safe, making it a little bit more understandable, maybe veering more even further towards kind of home, not home, but per user customization.

18:30I guess I just don't really understand the difference between R-All and R-Popular, right? Because they're both kind of, like I imagine R-All wasn't just purely random. It wasn't random, but it was bigger across just a larger option of subreddits. It's pulling from a bigger pool than R-Popular. So I went to check to see if my account was affected by this. But because I am one of those people who still uses old Reddit, like, but you can access by like old.reddit, I still have it. So that still works in case you still want it. At least for now. But like, because, yeah, if I go to just my home feed, I'm sure you'll all be shocked, but like you'll find our hockey, the Maple Leafs subreddit with that season going great.

19:19And the PWHL, like it's all very hockey focused and Lego focused. and Toronto focused. So I do frequently check RL to see what's going on in the world because you will find more politics in RL than Rpopular, I would say. So I get a little bit more local takes on world news for various countries, which I found very helpful. Yeah, and it is interesting to me now that you say that and I recognize when I open the Reddit app on my phone, I'm probably looking at all. I don't know if I'm looking at all or popular by default, but I don't personally subscribe to any political subreddits. Yet, my feed always shows it right at the very top.

20:04So we're probably talking about the same thing. And, you know, of course, you know, I see something, I'm like, ooh, you know, and I read it, but I choose not to, like, follow the subreddit itself. So I wonder if I'll see a change here. But like you mentioned, it's a really good point. If you love your slash all and you don't want it to go anywhere, at least for now, you can go to old.reddit.com and you can go back in time. And it's still there. I just use it to avoid some overly customized feeds that mess with like the layout and have flashing banners and stuff. That's the only reason I use it.

20:39So, yeah. So if you're also trying to duck those things, that's the secret workaround. There it is. So you all out there, do you need a snazzy gift for a coworker or colleague? And yes, I'm going to say snazzy as long as you all get, let me get away with it. We have dozens of ideas at dailytechnewsshow.com slash store. You can pick up a mug, t-shirt or mouse pad with our DTNS logo. They are great gifts and more importantly for us, a great way to support the show. And you get something out of it too, of course.

21:15This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. If your eyes are the windows to your soul and your glasses are the windows to your eyes, then it's pretty important to find your perfect frames.

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22:18all right we have a bunch of headlines that are good to know might make you look smarter at the dinner table this weekend in a move likely no one will find shocking meta is considering cutting funding for its oversight board after 2028 according to platformer yeah i'm really surprised to see that headline but um here we are uh sam mobile spotted that google cast is now built into Samsung's next fleet of TVs, its 2026 TVs. It's also rolling out to select older Tizen models through A1 UI updates. So you'll get some Google Cast in your TV. In more Samsung news, Samsung opened orders for its 2026 Frame Pro and OLED TVs with new glare-free Neo QLED and brighter OLED HDR panels.

23:10There are 55 and 48 inch size options, a wall flush float layer design, and prices that start at$1 ,200 up to$6 ,500. Yeah, definitely related to stories there. For Samsung fans, get yourself some TVs. Sounds like some good stuff there. Thanks to R.W. Nash in the subreddit for flagging that Microsoft is force upgrade. This is probably important for some of you to know microsoft is going to force upgrade unmanaged windows 11 2 4 h2 home and pro editions to windows 11 2 5 h2 ahead of that support window ending on october 13th later this year obviously just keep them updated and secure but it's a forced update so you know be be aware that's coming apple insider has an interesting look at apple's only employee still there after 50 years.

24:08Chris Espinoza, who joined the company at 14, to code for the Apple II. And yeah, you can read about everything he's been involved with and witnessed during his time there. And it's just a fascinating journey. Back in the days when you could get a job at Apple at 14 years old. That's so crazy. Another interesting read, since we're talking about interesting reads, go to the deep view and check out a little, not a little, an article about Anthropics Research into how LLMs map patterns to emotions that shape decisions in human-like ways within the model and how that can sometimes push them into areas of desperation and unethical behavior as a result, definitely worth checking out to understand a little bit deeper.

24:55A bipartisan House bill called the MATCH Act was introduced Thursday that aims to close loopholes in U.S. export controls by severely limiting sale of advanced chip-making equipment to China and other countries of concern. Researchers have disclosed three new Rohammer GPU exploits that let an unprivileged user on NVIDIA Ampere cards, so the RTX 3060, 6 ,000 corrupt GPU page tables and then escalate to full root control of the host CPU. And that's no bueno. That's no good. You don't want that. And Anthropic acquired AI biotech startup CoefficientBio for around$400 million in a move that will add its biotech workflow team into Anthropic's healthcare division.

25:48Interesting. Yep. Anthropics doing more in that health space right now and also doing a lot of leaking data. So I don't know. Those two realms actually probably should be nowhere near each other. Healthcare and leaking data, bad combination. We end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, Mel has some thoughts on why we saw the big jump in Linux users on Steam last month. Yeah, Tom and I talked about this yesterday. So Mel writes, Last month we saw a remarkable increase in reported Windows 10 and simplified Chinese language users on Steam. We've seen this happen before a few times, and this increase has vanished by the next month.

26:32My personal theory is that every so often a popular title is released on Steam but doesn't make it on Steam China due to censorship. So a lot of mainline Chinese use VPNs to get it from Steam proper, thus temporarily pumping Steam's global Windows and simplified Chinese stats. If we average two months back, this is from January to March, Windows goes from 94.62 % to 92.33%, minus 1.4 per month. Linux goes from 3.38 % to 5.33%, which is plus 0.97 per month. Mac OS goes from 2.01 % to 2.35 % plus 0.17 per month, which is not nearly as dramatic as the month-to-month minus 4.28 Windows plus 3.1 Linux and plus 1.19 Mac, but does still show a gradual trend away from Windows.

27:28Yeah, it's an apologies to folks listening because you're like, what are all these numbers? The general kind of gist here, if you're if, you know, we're reading it, we're looking at it, is that in all of these cases that Windows number drops and the others rise, making at least some sort of, I don't know, some sort of view that it possibly could be related between the two things. Yeah, it's an interesting hypothesis. Yeah, like SteamOS growth, obviously a huge contributor to the Linux side. And yeah, I talked to some game dev friends about this and they're like, yeah, we always notice like that, that pump up of the language when we have a simplified Chinese available at launch that, yeah, there'll be a good bump from, from that language choice that disappears after a month or two once, you know, they finish the game.

28:18They don't need the VPN anymore. They don't need it anymore. Yeah. Super smart though. Thank you for writing in, Mel. So what are you thinking about? Do you have some insight on a story or anything past, present, future? We want to hear it. Please share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. That's right. Thanks again to Mel for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business. All you got to do is become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people. Host, producer, writer Tom Merritt.

28:56Host, writer Jason Howell. Co-host Sarah Lane. Co-host Rob Dunwood. Co-host Jen Cutter. Producer Anthony Lemos. Producer Roger Chang. Editor Hammond Chamberlain. Editor Victor Bognat. Contributing producers Kevin Tech, Noel Cowell, and Brandon Richards. Science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans. Social media producer and moderator Zoe Detterding. Our mods, Beatmaster, WScottus1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadarama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. GadgetVirtuoso, and J.D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen. Music provided by Martin Bell and Dan Luters. Art by Len Peralta.

29:34Acast ad support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Bobby Wagner. And our guest this week, Dan Campos. And, of course, thanks to all our patrons who make this show possible.

29:55The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

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30:47It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.