Forza Horizon 5 players now have access to in-game ray tracing and DLSS or FSR upscaling support on PC. The latest series 14 “Donut Media” update arrived yesterdayand it now allows Forza Horizon 5 players to enable ray tracing in free roam areas and races at ultra or extreme settings.

You’ll need a powerful PC to play with 4K extreme settings, but Playground Games has also added in Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology alongside AMD’s very latest FSR 2.2 support. Both upscaling technologies will take a 1080p image and upscale it to 4K, improving the performance in Forza Horizon 5.

If you have an Nvidia RTX card then DLSS support will be available, but Forza Horizon 5 isn’t using the latest DLSS 3 tech that’s only available on RTX 40-series cards. AMD’s latest FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.2 (FSR 2.2) support will work across most graphics cards from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.

“While we have nothing to share today regarding DLSS 3.0, the team looks forward to your feedback on the DLSS 2.4 implementation in Forza Horizon 5which can be enabled on all Nvidia RTX graphics cards to increase your performance at higher resolutions,” says Playground Games.

Forza Horizon 5 has long supported ray tracing but it was previously limited to the ForzaVista presentation mode for viewing cars within the game. You’ll now be able to see car reflections during races and free roam, and even “realistic

I think about Wordle way too much. My two-step strategy of beginning with TRAIN and then trying CLOSE as the second word got me to a near-100 winning streak before I blew it a month back, when I guessed VAULT instead of FAULT. Whoops. My FAULT.

So I went back to the Worldle drawing board, deciding I needed a three-starter-word strategy. Usually guessing TRAIN and CLOSE as my first two words gave me a decent number of accurate letters that I just needed to shuffle into the right spots. But sometimes it doesn’t. Then I’m staring blankly at a grid, with four guesses remaining and zero idea what to do.

TRAIN and CLOSE, my starter words, use all 10 of the 10 most commonly used letters in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, according to Reader’s Digest. That’s pretty good, I thought. But where do I go from there, if that gets me nothing? For a while, I tried WHELM, thinking that W, H, L and M were all good consonants to get out of the way. It worked OK, but not great. I was under-WHELMED.

Pumped about ‘UMPED’

But for the past month, I’ve been using this strategy:

1. First word…TRAIN
2. Second word…CLOSE (sometimes CLOSE gets me nothing, but those are big letters I can’t skip)
3. Third word…UMPED. Yes, “UMPED” is a word. I hate reusing the E, but UMPED gets me the last of the five main vowels, three big consonants, and does try the E in a spot

The galaxy far, far away is ever-expanding on Disney Plus. The streaming service’s latest Star Wars show is Andoran excellent prequel story that takes place five years before the events of Rogue One.

Ten of the 12 episodes are available now, and we’ll get one episode each Wednesday until Nov. 23.

Diego Luna returns as Cassian Andor, who plays a vital role as a spy in the early days of the Rebel Alliance against the totalitarian Galactic Empire. You can also stream composer Nicholas Britell’s moody soundtrack for the first eight episodes.

Andor episode release dates and times

Here’s the full schedule for Andor on Disney Plus, as confirmed by the official Star Wars Twitter account. New episodes generally drop at midnight PT (3 am ET/8 am GMT/5 pm AEST).

Is there a trailer?

Lucasfilm gave us several trailers ahead of the show’s release, with the latest coming at parent company Disney’s D23 Expo in early September. You can also check out a 9-minute preview (mostly scenes from episode 3) in Disney Plus.

Will Andor get a second season?

It sure will. Creator Tony Gilroy confirmed at May’s Star Wars Celebration Anaheim that the show will return for a 12-episode second season that leads directly into Rogue One. It’s unclear when season 2 will air, but it’ll probably hit Disney Plus in 2023 or 2024. Expect to hear more at Star Wars Celebration Europe next April.

This story is part of Gift Guideour year-round collection of the best gift ideas.

You might think that a brand-new 4K TV is the ultimate in home theater, but there are plenty of other devices and accessories that can help you capture that “at the movies” feeling. If you want to help a loved one reach that pinnacle of audio and video performance, we’ve collected the best gifts to upgrade a home theater. From a turntables you soundbar to a new pair of headphones or a streaming deviceyou don’t have to break the bank on a great gift.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Whether you’re buying for a cord-cutter or not, the Channel Master Flatenna offers a wealth of entertainment with no ongoing fees. Stick this stocking stuffer on a window and plug the cable into a tuner and they can be watching PBS in an instant.

Sarah Tew/CNET

It’s possible to spend hundreds of dollars on a video streaming device. Possible, but not necessary. With a list price of $40 (and currently $25 on sale), the Roku Express 4K Plus offers something for everybody — a huge range of apps and compatibility with video standards such as Dolby Vision and a 4K resolution. That it works so well for the money is a good kind of surprise.

You’re receiving price alerts for Roku Express 4K Plus (Black, 2021)

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The Audio-Technica AT-LP60X is the best budget turntable, hands down. It offers simple automatic operation and its sound quality is

Across the two decades since Harry Potter movies first hit cinemas, the Potterverse has increasing become a mixed bag (for more reasons than one).

The most recent chapters from the Fantastic Beasts movie series, based on a 2001 guide book about magical creatures in the Potterverse, have never really found their way. Despite a decently charming introduction in 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the next two entries — The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore — have both failed to capture the old magic.

Let’s rank the 11 movies in the Potterverse, including the Fantastic Beasts prequel flicks featuring adorkable Hufflepuff and famed magizoologist Newt Scamander.

Warner Bros. Pictures

11. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

JK Rowling popped her screenwriting cherry with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but her follow-up to that magical prequel seemed less experienced than the first. A big edit might have cut out the dense detail and plotting that seemed better placed within the pages of a book. It’s the lowest ranked Harry Potter movie of them all, not just here, but on Metacritic (the only one that matters), with a measly 52%. The biggest criticism? Sorry, I zoned out too much thinking about this movie to answer that question.

— Jennifer Bisset

Warner Bros.

10. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

The third Fantastic Beasts flick might be a slight improvement over its predecessor, but that isn’t saying much. The Secrets of Dumbledore