Yamaha’s new YHT-4970U Home Theater in a Box makes a pretty direct argument against spending $700 on another soundbar. The system bundles Yamaha’s new RX300A AV receiver with a matched 5.1-channel speaker package, speaker wire, and a subwoofer cable, giving first-time home theater buyers a real AVR-based surround system in one box.

No, it will not be as clean or idiot-proof as a soundbar. You will have to run wires. You will have to place speakers. Civilization may survive. The payoff is discrete surround channels, a real receiver at the center of the system, and an upgrade path that most soundbars simply do not offer at this price point.

The RX300A AVR

The RX300A AV receiver included with the YHT-4970U updates the look of Yamaha’s previous entry-level design, moving away from the older RX-V385, which originally arrived in 2018. The new front panel is cleaner and less crowded, with fewer visible buttons and simpler labeling, while still keeping the core controls easy to find. It is not a radical redesign, but it does make the receiver look more current and easier to understand for buyers who may be setting up an AVR-based system for the first time.

The RX300A includes an Anti‑Resonance Technology (A.R.T.) Wedge. This is a center-mounted “fifth foot” from Yamaha’s flagship AVENTAGE series that helps reduce vibration and improve stability, supporting cleaner, more accurate sound reproduction.

The incorporation of HDMI 2.1 supports high‑performance video sources, including 4K/120Hz and 8K/60Hz pass-through, along with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ for improved contrast, color accuracy, and detail. Gaming‑focused features, such as Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), help ensure smooth, responsive gameplay when paired with modern consoles.

Room Correction

The RX300A  provides a setup microphone that enables automatic room correction for the YHT-4970U system by measuring room acoustics and speaker behavior. This allows the receiver to optimize sound performance for the listening environment. An on-screen setup guide further simplifies installation by walking users through connections and configuration step by step.

Sound Setting Simplicity

The RX300A also includes Yamaha’s Scene buttons, which let users store and recall common settings with a single press. Each Scene can be assigned to an input, sound program, and related playback settings, making it easier to jump between TV, movies, music, and gaming without digging through menus every time. It is a practical feature for an entry-level home theater system because it reduces setup friction and keeps the receiver from feeling like homework with speaker terminals.

The RX300A supports Dolby Atmos in two ways. If you run speaker wires to the rear of your room and place speakers there for 5.1 channels, the receiver can add virtual height effects to simulate sound coming from above you. If instead, you want real height channels or you don’t want to run wires to the back of the room, you can configure the receiver for height channels and mount those extra speakers on the ceiling or high on the front or side wall for discrete height effects. This would be a real 3.1.2-channel Dolby Atmos system, with the receiver creating virtual rear channel effects. Note that Yamaha calls this a “3.2.2-channel” configuration, because there is a second subwoofer output on the receiver that could can use if you have a second sub.

And while the RX300A does not natively decode DTS:X, it does support DTS Virtual:X, which is designed to create a more spacious height effect from DTS soundtracks without requiring physical height speakers. That distinction matters. Real height channel decoding and real height speakers will deliver the more convincing immersive sound experience, while virtual processing is the compromise for rooms where adding more speakers is not practical. Useful? Yes. Ideal? Nope. But keep in mind, people, this is an entry level receiver so it can’t do everything.

For wireless connectivity, Bluetooth Multipoint allows two devices (such as a smartphone and tablet) to remain paired simultaneously, making it easy to switch between sources without reconnecting. The RX300A can also be used with Bluetooth headphones or speakers. 

The Speakers and Subwoofer

The RX300A is the control center of the YHT-4970U, but Yamaha also includes the rest of the basic 5.1-channel speaker package in the box. The system comes with two compact front speakers, two compact surround speakers, a compact center channel speaker, and an 8-inch, 50-watt powered subwoofer, with the speakers and subwoofer connecting to the receiver using standard speaker wire and audio cable connections.

Pro Tip #1: The package includes one powered subwoofer, but the RX300A provides two subwoofer outputs, so a second subwoofer can be added later if the room or your bass addiction demands backup.

Pro Tip #2: Because the RX300A uses standard passive speaker connections and powered subwoofer outputs, the included speakers are not a dead end. Owners can upgrade the front, center, surround speakers, or subwoofer later without replacing the entire system. That is one of the biggest advantages over most soundbar packages: the YHT-4970U starts as a complete system, but it does not have to stay frozen that way forever.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

The Yamaha YHT-4970U makes sense for buyers who want a real 5.1-channel AVR-based home theater system without buying every piece separately. It also offers a flexible configuration option to use front height speakers instead of surround speakers for Dolby Atmos, in case running wires to the back of your room is problematic. For $700, it delivers discrete speakers, a powered subwoofer, Bluetooth, HDMI connectivity, and a genuine upgrade path.

The limitations are clear. There is no discrete 5.1.2-channel option for Dolby Atmos. That would take 7 amplifier channels, where this only has 5. And the RX-300A receiver doesn’t support DTS:X decoding. But in today’s Dolby Atmos-heavy streaming and physical media ecosystems, this may not be that big a deal to most buyers. Also, the included speakers are likely the starting point, not the finish line. The good news is that the RX300A uses standard speaker and subwoofer connections, so owners can upgrade the speakers or add a second subwoofer later as budget and available space allow.

Who is it for? First-time home theater buyers, secondary rooms, and anyone who wants actual surround sound instead of another soundbar trying to do architectural drawings with DSP.

Pricing & Availability

• Yamaha YHT-4970U 5.1-Channel Home Theater in a Box – $699.95 (July 2026)
• Yamaha RX300A 5.2-Channel AVR – $399.95 (June 2026)

Related Reading:

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition isn’t terribly tough, especially if you know the team names of one certain state. The purple category is tricky, but what else is new? If you’re struggling with the puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Get better at something.

Green group hint: Beehive State.

Blue group hint: They led the team.

Purple group hint: Fore!

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Hone one’s skills.

Green group: Utah teams.

Blue group: Hall of Fame baseball managers.

Purple group: Starts with a golf scoring term.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is hone one’s skills. The four answers are exercise, practice, train and work out.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is Utah teams.  The four answers are Jazz, Mammoth, Royals and Utes.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Hall of Fame baseball managers. The four answers are  Leyland, Mack, Stengel and Weaver.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is starts with a golf scoring term. The four answers are Acela (ace), bogeyman (bogey), eagle-eyed (eagle) and paradise (par).

from the quite-a-pickle dept

I’ll let you all in on a little secret: I love pickles. Yes, let that statement spawn a million jokes in the comments; I don’t care. Pickles are great and the fresher the better. I began gardening specifically so that I could grow cucumbers, garlic, onion, and dill, just so I could make my own at home. And, because I investigate pickle brines the way a sommelier inspects a glass of red zinfandel from a freshly tapped cask, I’ve been to my share of pickle festivals.

So perhaps I’m in a slightly protective posture having come across an article about how one pickle festival in Canada, the Downtown Brandon International Pickle Fest, had to rebrand under threat from Picklefest Canada, which somehow has a trademark on the term “Pickle Fest”.

Aly Wowchuk, who is one of the organizers, said the trademark issue forced a name change — but not a change in spirit.

“It’s the same event, we have the same heart and soul, it just has a different name,” she told the Sun. “We were not sued … we received an email on behalf of Picklefest Canada’s lawyer about the use of ‘Pickle Fest.’ There was a lot of back and forth between lawyers about the use of the name, but ultimately, it was easier for us to move forward and change the name of the Brandon Pickle Fest event.”

This is the outcome of a point we’ve made for years and years: Trademark bullying happens because it generally works. And this is trademark bullying. As in the States, Canadian trademark law does include prohibitions on trademarking descriptive marks. Picklefest Canada is an organization with a trademark on its name and logo and it primarily, you guessed it, puts on pickle festivals. To that end, its trademark rights ought to be extremely limited. Limited, I would say, to its use of the term in overall branding and marketing iconography, as that can be described as original and creative.

But the idea that such a trademark could be wielded to prevent other people, groups, or municipalities from putting on their own pickle fests is plainly at odds with how trademarks are supposed to work. But when a small entity is bullied by a larger one, they often feel they have no choice but to rebrand.

Wowchuk said the new name, Brandon Brine Bash, was chosen in part to stand out in an increasingly crowded field of pickle-themed events.

“With the popularity of pickle festivals across Canada and internationally, almost every variation of ‘pickle party’ or ‘pickle palooza’ has been used,” she said. “We wanted something unique that included Brandon and was easy to find.”

The rebrand also required updates to the festival’s logo, created by local artist Alexander Matheson. While the iconic pickle design has been retained and modernized, references to “Pickle Fest” have been removed.

It’s too bad that a simple festival to celebrate one of man’s greatest inventions has to devolve in overly protective intellectual property bullshit. And it’s equally too bad that nobody has yet stood up to Big Pickle to get this nonsense trademark cancelled.

Filed Under: canada, picklefest, pickles, trademark

Companies: brandon brine bash, pickle fest, picklefest, picklefest canada

Racing fanatics who own Apple Vision Pro headsets can now enjoy a high-quality, mixed reality racing simulation experience, thanks to iRacing Connect, available starting Tuesday, provided that they own all other required hardware.

Of course, we already iRacing was coming to Apple Vision Pro, as Eddy Cue, Apple’s Services chief, already said as much in April. However, starting Tuesday, May 12, iRacing Connect is available for free in the App Store.

The experience blends a user’s racing rig with a virtual cockpit and aligns the physical steering wheel with the in-game one. It does this via technical integration of CloudXR.

According to an iRacing press release, physics calculations and high-fidelity graphic rendering are performed on PCs equipped with NVIDIA’s RTX GPU. Frames are encoded and shared wirelessly over Wi-Fi to iRacing Connect on visionOS.

“We’re thrilled to have worked with Apple and NVIDIA to bring iRacing to Apple Vision Pro,” said iRacing president Tony Gardner.

“With the ultra-high-resolution capabilities of Apple Vision Pro and the power of NVIDIA’s RTX GPU, this new spatial experience puts our users in the driver’s seat with a level of immersion and fidelity never before seen in sim racing.”

Those who wish to try out iRacing will need an Apple Vision Pro running visionOS 26.4, a PC with an Nvidia graphics card model 4070Ti+ or 5070Ti+ running driver version 580+, and a Wi-Fi 6+ enabled router capable of over 1000Mbps on the 5Ghz band.

Google killed the Chromebook. It took 15 years, but the company that invented the browser-as-operating-system has concluded that a browser is not enough. At the Android Show on Monday, Google unveiled Googlebook, a new category of premium laptops running Android with Gemini embedded at the operating system level. The devices will ship this autumn from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. ChromeOS is not being updated. It is being replaced.

The rebrand is not cosmetic. Googlebook runs on what Google internally calls Aluminium OS, a version of Android 17 rebuilt as a genuine desktop platform with a custom window manager, native multitasking, and Gemini woven into every interaction. There are no containers, no emulation layers, no compatibility modes. The operating system is Android. The apps are native. The AI is not an assistant sitting in a sidebar. It is the interface.

The cursor

The most revealing feature is called Magic Pointer. Built with Google’s DeepMind team, it turns the laptop cursor into a context-aware AI agent. Wiggle the cursor over a date in an email and Gemini offers to schedule a meeting. Point at two images and it composites them together. Select a paragraph and it summarises, translates, or rewrites. The cursor, the oldest interaction metaphor in personal computing, becomes a direct channel to a large language model that can see your screen and act on what it finds.

Magic Pointer is not a chatbot. It does not require a prompt. It reads the context of whatever the cursor touches and surfaces actions before the user asks for them. The distinction matters because it represents a different theory of how AI should enter personal computing. Apple embeds intelligence into individual applications. Microsoft puts Copilot in a panel beside the workspace. Google is putting Gemini inside the pointing device itself.

The second signature feature is Create your Widget, which lets users describe a custom widget in plain language and Gemini builds it on the spot, pulling data from Gmail, Calendar, web searches, and other Google services into a single personalised dashboard. The widgets are vibe-coded, generated by AI from a natural language description rather than selected from a catalogue. The user does not choose from what exists. The user describes what should exist and the machine builds it.

The unification

Googlebook solves a problem that has plagued Google for a decade. ChromeOS was a web-first operating system that ran Android apps inside a compatibility layer. The experience was functional but compromised. Android apps on Chromebooks ran in containers that could not access the file system natively, could not interact with desktop windows properly, and could not use hardware features the way they could on a phone. The platform had two souls and neither worked as well as it should have.

Aluminium OS eliminates the split. Android apps run natively on the laptop because the laptop runs Android. A feature called Cast my Apps lets users open any application from their Android phone on the Googlebook’s screen without downloading it. Quick Access provides direct access to phone files through the laptop’s file browser, with no manual transfers required. The phone and the laptop share an operating system, an app ecosystem, and an AI layer.

The European Commission is preparing to force Google to give rival AI assistants the same access to Android that Gemini receives, a ruling that could determine whether Googlebook’s deep Gemini integration becomes a competitive moat or a mandated open platform. The DMA decision is expected in July. Googlebook ships in the autumn. The regulatory timeline and the product timeline are on a collision course.

The market

Googlebook enters a laptop market that has been reshaped by two forces. The first is Apple’s MacBook Neo, a 599-dollar laptop running macOS on an A18 Pro chip derived from the iPhone, which brought Apple’s entry price below 600 dollars for the first time. The second is the Snapdragon X Elite, which gave Windows laptops competitive battery life and AI inference capabilities for the first time in years.

Google’s response is to abandon the low end entirely. Googlebook is positioned as a premium product with what Google describes as premium craftsmanship and materials. Every device will feature a Glowbar, an LED strip embedded in the keyboard deck that animates in response to Gemini’s activity. The company is not building a cheap laptop that happens to have AI. It is building an AI device that happens to be a laptop.

The pivot is striking because Chromebooks succeeded precisely by being cheap. Google is deploying Gemini to four million GM vehicles, embedding the same AI into cars, phones, wearables, and now laptops. The pattern is clear. Google does not want Gemini to be a product. It wants Gemini to be the intelligence layer that connects every screen in a user’s life. Googlebook is the desktop-sized piece of that strategy.

The education question

Chromebooks hold more than 60 per cent of the global education laptop market. The platform serves 38 million students in K-12 schools, and 93 per cent of US school districts plan Chromebook purchases this year. The installed base is enormous, the margins are thin, and the switching costs are low.

Google says existing Chromebooks will continue receiving security updates until their stated auto-update expiration dates. Some devices may qualify for an opt-in upgrade to the new platform. But the premium positioning of Googlebook raises an obvious question: what happens to the education market that made Chromebooks ubiquitous? A 200-dollar Chromebook for a fourth-grader and a premium Googlebook for a professional are different products for different buyers. Google has not announced pricing, but the emphasis on premium hardware suggests that the cheapest Googlebook will cost considerably more than the cheapest Chromebook.

Intel is previewing its next generation of AI PC processors at Computex 2026, betting that local AI inference on laptops is the next wave of chip demand. Googlebook’s Gemini integration is cloud-first, but the hardware partnerships with Intel’s competitors in the ARM ecosystem suggest that on-device AI processing will follow. The question of where the intelligence runs, on the device or in the cloud, will determine whether Googlebook works offline and how much it costs to operate at scale.

The strategy

Google’s laptop strategy has always been a distribution strategy for Google services. Chromebooks put Chrome, Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Search in front of hundreds of millions of users, particularly students, at the lowest possible hardware cost. The services generated the revenue. The hardware was the delivery mechanism.

Googlebook extends the same logic but changes the service being distributed. The service is no longer a suite of web applications. It is Gemini. The AI that reads your email, builds your widgets, summarises your documents, and anticipates your next action is the product. The laptop is the surface it runs on. The Android ecosystem, with its 3.6 billion active devices, is the network that feeds it context.

Apple has argued that AI will become as commonplace as word processing, a utility that disappears into the background of everyday computing. Google is making a different argument. Gemini on Googlebook is not in the background. It is the cursor. It is the widget. It is the interface between the user and the machine. Google is not making AI invisible. It is making AI the thing you interact with every time you touch the trackpad.

Apple’s AI rollout has already stumbled in China, where regulatory delays left Cupertino without its most important differentiator in its most competitive market. Google faces similar risks. Gemini’s deep integration into Googlebook means that any market where Gemini is restricted, whether by regulation, data sovereignty requirements, or competitive dynamics, is a market where the laptop’s core value proposition is diminished.

Fifteen years ago, Google bet that the browser was the operating system. That bet built a dominant position in education and a meaningful share of the consumer laptop market. Now Google is betting that AI is the operating system, that the intelligence layer matters more than the application layer, and that the company with the most context about a user’s life, across phone, car, watch, and laptop, will build the most useful computing experience. Googlebook is not a laptop. It is the argument that the device does not matter. The intelligence does.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stand Tuesday in Elon Musk’s trial against the company, testifying that Musk repeatedly sought control of OpenAI before leaving in 2018. Altman said he opposed putting AI “under the control of any one person,” while Musk’s lawyer used a pointed cross-examination to attack Altman’s trustworthiness. An anonymous reader shares updates from the testimony via the New York Times: Before Elon Musk left OpenAI in a power struggle in 2018, he wanted to merge the nonprofit artificial intelligence lab with Tesla, his electric car company. Mr. Musk and other OpenAI co-founders met several times to discuss the merger. OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, was even offered a seat on Tesla’s board of directors, according to a court document. But folding OpenAI into Tesla would have eliminated the lab’s nonprofit status, and that, Mr. Altman said on the witness stand on Tuesday, was something he wanted to avoid. […] “I believed that A.I. should not be under the control of any one person,” Mr. Altman said. […] Mr. Altman testified about his feud with Mr. Musk. He said he had become worried that Mr. Musk, who provided the early investment money for OpenAI, wanted to take control of the lab. He described what he called a “particularly harrowing moment” when his OpenAI co-founders asked Mr. Musk what would happen to his control of a potential for-profit when he died. Mr. Altman said Mr. Musk had replied that the control would pass to his children. “I was not comfortable with that,” Mr. Altman said. When Mr. Musk lost a power struggle for control of the lab, he left, forcing Mr. Altman to find another big financial backer in Microsoft.

But Mr. Altman ran into trouble in 2023 when OpenAI’s board fired him because, as several of its members have testified in the trial, it didn’t trust him. Steven Molo, Mr. Musk’s lead lawyer, homed in on Mr. Altman’s trustworthiness during an aggressive cross-examination. “Are you completely trustworthy?” Mr. Molo asked. “I believe so,” Mr. Altman answered. After questioning Mr. Altman’s trustworthiness for nearly 20 minutes, Mr. Molo turned to Mr. Altman’s relationship with Mr. Musk. Mr. Altman said that after he met Mr. Musk in the mid-2010s, Mr. Musk had occasionally expressed concern about the dangers of A.I. But Mr. Musk spent far more time saying he was worried that companies like Google would get ahead in A.I. development, Mr. Altman said. (Mr. Musk testified in the trial that he had wanted to create OpenAI to prevent Google from controlling the technology.)

Mr. Altman, the lawyer intimated, took advantage of Mr. Musk’s concerns and was never sincere about his own A.I. fears. “Are you a person who just tells people things they want to hear whether those things are true or not?” Mr. Molo asked. The lawyer also questioned whether Mr. Atman, who became a billionaire through years of tech investments, was self-dealing through OpenAI. Mr. Molo showed a list of Mr. Altman’s personal investments across a number of companies that stand to benefit from their association with OpenAI. They included Helion Energy, a start-up that has deals with Microsoft and OpenAI, and Cerebras, a chip maker in business with OpenAI. Mr. Molo asked if Mr. Altman, who is on OpenAI’s board as well as its chief executive, would ever fire himself. “I have no plans to do that,” Mr. Altman said.

OpenAI’s odd journey from nonprofit lab to what it is today — a well-funded, for-profit company that is still connected to a nonprofit called the OpenAI Foundation with an endowment that could be worth more than $130 billion — provided grist for Mr. Molo’s questions about Mr. Altman’s motivations. He implied that Mr. Altman could have continued to build OpenAI as a pure nonprofit. But the only way to build such a valuable charity was to raise billions through a for-profit venture, Mr. Altman responded. Still, the giant sums being raised appeared to upset Mr. Musk. In late 2022, according to court documents, Mr. Musk sent a text to Mr. Altman complaining that Microsoft was preparing to invest $10 billion in OpenAI. “This is a bait and switch,” Mr. Musk said at the time. But Mr. Altman, under questioning from his own lawyers, said: “Every step of the way, I have done my best to maximize the value of the nonprofit. I would point out that there are not a lot of historical examples of a nonprofit at this scale.” Before Altman took the stand, OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor continued his testimony that began on Monday. He said Elon Musk’s 2024 bid to buy the company’s assets appeared to conflict with his lawsuit and was rejected because the board did not believe OpenAI’s mission should be controlled by one person. “We did not feel like it was appropriate for one person to control our mission,” he said.

Recap:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman’s Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk’s Take On Startup’s History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company’s Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

When does a phone that’s barely left the shelves drop by nearly £50, and how long before that window closes for good?

The answer arrived less than two months into the Phone (4a) Pro’s life. Nothing’s boldest mid-ranger is now available for £449.10 instead of its usual £499, putting one of the most distinctive new Android handsets within considerably easier reach.