TechStuff Visits CES 2014

in the Milky Way. It's where lots of different electronics companies come together to show off the stuff what they have and some of the stuff what they do not have yet but think it might be pretty cool perhaps in the future. Yeah. So one thing I want to say right at the very top of this show is that some of the stuff you see it's c S. I know a lot of our listeners probably have never been to a ce S. You probably because it's a

professional organization. Yep, it's it's it's industry to be either media or a buyer for a company or etcetera, or an exhibitor of some sort. Industry associate is what some of them are called, UM, which I think is the most vaguely defined of all the different groups. But anyway, it's a place where they'll show off stuff, not just the stuff that's coming out. They'll show off stuff that has already been out but maybe hasn't hit widespread notice yet.

Or maybe it's stuff that you've heard about for a few months but you haven't had a chance to actually see or get your hands on it. So some of the things that I actually have in my list of stuff that I saw and personally experienced while it's c e S. If you've been paying really close attention to the tech news, you'll be like, well, I am pretty sure I heard about that in the spring of Why are you talking about now? Well, I'm talking about now because now is when I finally got my grip a

little hands on it. So now, when I went to ce S, I was specifically going in my capacity as host of another show called Forward Thinking. Right, So if you guys have not checked out Forward Thinking, you should go do that. We also have an audio podcast, and uh, not only am I on that audio podcast, but Lauren you're on that audio podcast too. That is extremely correct. Also joining us on that podcast is Mr Joe McCormick,

who is a writer for the video series. Yes, he's one of the In fact, I would call him the

head writer. Yes, And so I went there kind of looking at technologies that I thought were sort of in that vein bringing the future into the present, which meant that I didn't spend as much time looking at a lot of the technologies that really dominate some of the main floors at c S well, although also I would argue that some of the main technologies that dominate the floors of CEES are things that we have seen so frequently and just add infinitem that it gets to a

point where it's like, I don't care about your four K television or your new smartphone or your new tablet. If it doesn't if it doesn't do something different, why why am I looking at? And even the break dancing stuff is getting a little old, folks, let me tell you, um no, but you know you're totally right right, Like you'll hear that after every CES about a I think the day after c e S is over, you hear all the journalists lamenting like where was all the cool

stuff now? Not that four K televisions aren't cool, they are gorgeous, but you know when Here's the other thing is that you know, you go to five or six enormous booths. These boots are dominated by these four K televisions that are everywhere and every kind of shape and size that you can imagine. Some of them are even flexible.

We'll talk about one of those. Um they are, uh, they're really cool when you see them, but after you see a few of them, it feels like you're just seeing the same thing repeatedly, and it doesn't really matter which uh manufacturer you start with. And this isn't to say that all four K televisions are equal, but just that after you've seen a few, it feels like you're

seeing the same thing as place after place. So let me let me explain to you guys before we go into some of the specifics of the technology that I saw, what it is kind of like to go to a c E S. It sounds like like a calming spa that you go to to sort of collect yourself. And well, let me let me shatter the illusions you have, Lauren. First of all, so the main hallways at CEES are at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which has three point

one million square feet of exhibition space. So lots of space. Right that, that area is divided into three main halls. You have the South Hall, which actually has two floors, both of which are huge. You have the Central Hall that happens to be where all the really big name manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic, LG, Samsung, those are all in the Central Hall, I think. You have the North Hall, which is mostly automotive tech and then some other stuff.

But beyond that you also have space at the l v h which is now called the Las Vegas Hotel, used to be the last Vegas Hilton, so they've got a bunch of booths there. A lot of them are international booths, but they have other stuff there as well. Then you have the Venetian and the Sands Expo Center.

At the Venetian itself, within the towers, you have a lot of the audio uh manufacturers, because it turns out that showing your super high fidelity audio system in the middle of a noisy convention hall doesn't necessarily give a person a real sense of what it's capable of doing, so there are a lot of them that will have a suite at the Venetian. Then you have the Sands Expo Center, which is another convention center that has uh it had the let's see that one had the Eureka

Park area. Wearable tech was there or they actually call it fashion tech, which that was fun, had fun there, and then robotics. There was some robotics stuff there as well. So anyway, it's it's so what you're saying is that this is spread out throughout basically the entirety of Las Vegas,

at least the Strip. Well yeah, yeah, there's other parts of Las Vegas than the Strip, I'm aware, um, but yeah, but the Strip itself is dominated and if you even if you are talking about all the different exhibition space. After hours, there are lots of meetings and parties. I didn't go to. I went to one meet up slash party thing. It was the Discovery Digital Slash Revision three meet up because I'm part of that, so I went to that, but I didn't really go to any of

the other parties this time. I did go to some of the press events, but those were really to give you an opportunity to see some of the smaller companies that otherwise you might overlook because you're, you know, waiting between two booths that are the size of your house. You might miss the one that's the size of a cubicle. Sure, And and just to give you an idea of the scope of the number of people that go every year. UM total attendance last year was a hundred and fifty

two thousand, seven hundred and fifty nine people. Yeah, I would I would suspect that for two thousand fourteen was probably about the same. Those are the jections that I've seen. I've seen projections around. Yeah, it doesn't. It didn't feel like it was more crowded to me, So I felt like and most it was probably, you know, around the same number. So let's talk about some of the stuff I actually saw and some of the stuff I didn't see but happened at CES. Because here's the thing. As

one person, it is impossible to see everything. You're just not going to and and next year I'm hoping to be able to to go and help him out with that. That was sweet. If one of us could cover, like even if we're talking about still covering major sections, like one of us takes of the Nation and the other one takes the Las Vegas Convention Center, that's still means seeing a lot more than we would otherwise because you know, having one person to do all of it is really difficult.

So let's start with the four K televisions. So four K that's essentially talking about you know, ultra high definition, right, so it's not exactly four times the resolution of a ten A d P television, but essentially like the biggest issue with four K TVs right now, I mean, apart from the fact that they're still fairly expensive. Although I

think Visios announced a thousand dollar one. I think it's k TV, do not have the size information on it, but um, but being that they are the most popular TV manufacturer in the United States, this announcement supposedly has a bunch of other companies kind of scared. Yeah, because I mean, it wasn't that long ago that four k's were just prototypes and they were saying, when it comes to market, it's gonna be a ten thousand, twelve thousand

dollar television. Right Uh. Now, we're starting to see them get down in the one thousand to two thousand, five hundred dollar range for some of the quote unquote bargain brands, and then the more premium brands are probably closer to five thousand dollars, So still expensive, but at a thousand dollars. You're talking, you know, about something that is within the reach of a much larger potential audience. But here's the

caveat I would give all of you. Getting content for your four K television right now is a bit of a challenge. It is. Although Netflix had a really interesting announcement about that the show Did you hear about this? I did? I did? Netflix talked about streaming in four K? Yeah? Yeah, they They said that House of Cards Season two will definitely be streaming in four K, and that every original Netflix series from here on out is going to be

shot in four K UM. Furthermore, that Breaking Bad is going to be remastered and released for streaming in four K and UM. Basically after that, all of these smart TV companies on the show floor announced that they will be supporting a four K Netflix app in the future. And also we should point out that that a lot of these televisions can also upgrade and incoming image. Essentially, it's like interlacing. You're you're adding more pixels into it,

so you're artificially making it a higher definition picture. I will tell you that by looking at what you could certainly see the difference, like I've often said that between two K and four K, it's really hard for me to detect the difference. It's still true, but um, you can tell that's sharper. A four K television is definitely

sharper than say, an HDTV. It did, however, bring up some concerns which I very Cattalie talked about with a friend of mine who was looking at the TVs with me, where she and I were focusing on the makeup of the people on screen because you could see where it was clumping. Oh, Jonathan, why would you? Why would you do that when you yourself are filmed and aren't you

filmed in four K? For forward thinking, I am, and that's exactly why I was looking at it and pay because I was thinking, one day, the stuff I shoot could be on one of these screens, and this is what I'm going to look like. I'm just saying that maybe you shouldn't be catty about it, Cattie, not not about the person, but rather about the technology showing all the flaws. I'm saying, makeup karma, man, makeup car no, no no, no, no.

I totally get that. I totally get that. Like I I don't, I don't want to be able to see all the pores of a person. I don't blame the person for the pores. I blame the technology. Um So I'm a little bit freaked out by that too. I'm not sure that I need that much detail of realism when I'm watching. I don't know, can you are? Let me let me let me give you a title of a show, and I want you to imagine that title that show in ultra high definition. Okay, Real Housewives of Atlanta,

Real Housewives of Atlanta, ultra high definition. Can you imagine? I think I think we're going to need a replacement host. So anyway, that's that was one of those things where I can imagine it for certain things being incredible, like sports, forget it, sports sports. They had some sports footage showing on some of these TVs and it looked like you were on the field. I mean it was beautiful. And I'm not a big sports guy, but even I was

getting excited seeing this kind of thing. And uh and and you know, I don't know, like like really really visually arresting films, like I could picture getting pretty excited about watching like a Julie Tamar movie on fork or or giermol Pan's Labyrinth and four K would be amazing. Or if you're a ridiculous stener like me, like a David Cronenberg film, that sounds the whole good, terrifying, wonderful. When you have to clean the viscera off the screen

of your television, you know, it's truly aversive. Well. One of the TVs that I wanted to mention in particular was a Samsung eight five inch television that was bendable. They were they had a lead screen and it could bend, yeah, like bended the push of a button demand you could bend it. And the idea curve TVs, by the way, one of the big trends. Oh yeah, yeah, especially last year. I think that everyone was like, it's curved and people were like whatever, you know, how do I mount that

on my wall? Um? But the idea of the curved screen gives you a wider viewing angle, right, because that's one of the problems with the flat screens that you start getting off to the side a little bit. And if you're like me, like like my living room and kitchen are next to each other, and that it's a very wide kind of room. So if I'm in the

kitchen preparing something. I can see where the TV is, but I can't really see what's on it because of the angle I'm at curve TV, I would be able to see a little bit more, and so this one could actually go from flat to actual curve by pushing the button. And at first everyone thought this is just a pro type, it's just on display sea and then they announced that it was going to be on sale

later this year. Yeah, second half, So that's something that that might have been one of those things where they were judging the response on the show floor deciding whether or not to go forward, or it could have just been that we were playing coy the whole time. I don't know. So yeah, TV is huge obviously, so I wanted to get that all the way because that's that's the thing that you're going to see the most of if you were to walk into, say the central hall.

But let's move on. How about some of the more funky ones, because we had people actually right in and say, can you cover some of the strange tech that was out there? How about polarized contact lenses? Oh yeah, I saw that one in a vega. Yeah, it looks like if you were to look at the actual lens. They look like regular contact lenses. They're floating and solution, except

they have like a little silver disc. And it turns out that it's a polarized contact lens that you wear in in you pair it with a pair of augmented reality glasses. All right, this isn't polarization with the purpose of, for example, UM cutting down on UV light the way that a pair of polarized sunglasses would be UM. This is this is specifically for watching tech, allowing you to

focus on two different focal ranges simultaneously. So and and the way that it works I think, uh was that if you have a filters in these micro lenses, they can focus the display of a of a digital readout onto the center of your retina while focusing the ambient light that you're getting from the rest of the world on the surrounding area of your retina. That's exactly right. So let's say that I'm wearing these glasses and I'm looking,

you know, off in the distance. Let's say that you're you're thirty feet away from me, and you're waving to me, and at the same time, I've got my Twitter feed up because you know, I'm me, of course. So normally, the way it would work, let's say if it's with Google Glass, I would put my focus on the screen that is physically closer to my eye, but I would adjust so that it was looking at that focal length. You would be out of focus right right I. You would just be a blurb bouncing up an on waving,

and I wouldn't even know. I just be mildly distracted while I'm looking at all the replies of that funny thing I just tweeted. But with this approach, you would be in the same focal length. My brain would essentially say that if I were focusing on you, I could also at the same time focus on the stuff that was coming through on the Twitter feed. And uh, that's amazing.

So to be able to be able to focus on something that's literally right in front of your eye and something that's further like twenty feet away at the same time is kind of phenomenal. Yeah, and this is definitely in the research kind of stages right now. But the applications, I mean, this is the technology that could make augmented reality work. Yeah, yeah, if if if you want to have something that's not just a tiny little screen that

you have to look away from the world. Yeah, yeah, and that you can wear while you're driving or something like that. That's pretty neat. So I got to hold the contact lenses. They didn't let me put them on because they only had the one pair. Another big thing that was shown off, actually it's not big, it's mall. But another thing that was shown off quite a bit where the throw projectors. These are the ideas of, you know, a projector that you can put in a room that

will project against a wall or a screen. And they had a four that Some of them were really beautiful. Sony had a four K throw projector that you can put up right next to a wall. It was kind of like a little pyramid and it leaned back would project the display directly against the wall. You had put it in front of four K resolution. I think it's like thirty dollars, So you know, it's just a just a quick joint to the mortgage company to put a second mortgage on my house and I can get one

of these things. Um. But it was really kind of a neat idea. And of course these are the sort of technologies the prices will fall as manufacturing processes and improve and demand increases. Sure, I imagine that this will be a luxury item for a good period of time, because even pretty conventional projectors right now are still not pretty expective. Yeah, and you know that there's an obvious attraction to them because you're not limited to the size

of a television screen, even a big TV screen. You can go. You can go even bigger than the biggest TV screens that are conventionally available. And you don't have to figure out, how do I support this enormous piece of technology, because it's just rejection. Yeah. And and when you're I mean, at a certain point, you're you're cutting down. I would imagine on a little bit of the energy of running a a l ED or a LEAD. And furthermore, the components for an l D and O LEAD are

are not cheap all the time. That's true too, especially if you want to go to AMMA lead. If you go to m LAD, then you get talking serious cash. Uh. The Oculus Rift had a new prototype, yeah, the crystal

cove version. This one actually had on it some little sensors on the outside that allow a camera to help track your motions to make it even more precise, right, A separate camera that you that you mount somewhere in your room, and it's got a little the little motion tracker like stickers almost around the set kind of like you know, you're you're you've got uh like a golem

there on your eyes. And using that technology, it will let the wear um like like lean over a ledger, peer around a corner in its in the game world, right right, it gave even more points of articulation within the virtual world. Now. They were quick to say that the the consumer Oculus Rift may or may not ever use the same sort of technology, right, This is all in prototype still so and also there's no telling that this particular prototype is going to go to developers anytime soon.

Oh sure. Yeah. Um other features that this one had I read about and and led display, higher resolution um yeah yeah, high lower latency, lower latency, less motion blur um. Palmer Lucky said specifically about that that manufacturers have been starting to take him seriously since he you know, raised over seventy five million dollars in funding and funding over

the past year. So and that there and that that has helped him, um create some dedicated parts for this device as opposed to just hey, let's Hey, let's let's show did this talent into into this, so that that was pretty cool. And another headset. There are a couple of different headsets that were on display at CES, but the only other one that I personally got a chance to take a look at was a Sony headset. Oh yeah, they're wearable HDTV right yeah hmz T three q uh

just rolls off the tongue. So this this is not for gaming, you know. Oculus Rift is mainly for gaming virtual reality kind of approach, although they've talked about other potential applications, but that's the main focus, right, This one's not that way. The idea is that you're there as a passive observer for entertainment, So in other words, you're

watching movies and television on this thing. But but my movies are television that have been filmed with like a hundred and seventy degree field of view that you can kind of look around in. It's yeah, it's kind of designed. The idea is that sort of creates a representation of sitting in a movie theater looking at seventy five ft wide screen. So I imagine that you're saying, in the best seat in the house, there's no and sitting in front of you, but you're and you're viewing a mute

a movie. That's what it's supposed to be. That that's the experience that's supposed to be. Like. So as soon as I saw this, I thought, I wish I had this whenever I got on a plane, because I could drown the rest of that world out watch a movie. It's all right there. I can watch whatever I like.

I'm not worried about, you know, someone leaning over and watching my movie I bought, or putting their feet up on the back of your chair, or they might do that anyway, but at least I won't be aware of it, because I'll be lost in a fantasy world of some sort. I don't know what movie I would pick to be the first one. I'd want something really spectacular, though maybe Uh, there was a little independent film made back in nine seven that had some people running around with laser swords

that I might want to watch. But you know, i'd figure something out. Um, what about the pre O v R Body suit? Did you get a chance to see this? That's not one that I got a chance to look at. Tell me all about it, all right, So imagine that you have a Basically, it's a harness. It's a harness that even has arm straps that go down with sensors on your head, on your your torso, on your arms, uh,

and it is designed to sense all the motion. And it was being used in a game that they had shown off specifically at c e S that was a zombie survival game because zombies um and the way it worked was that it could track all your motions in real time, so it's a motion tracking suit that you're wearing.

I thought this was really interesting. I wasn't really sold on it, mainly because I think now that we've reached a level of sophistication with camera technology like the Connect, I'm not entirely convinced that something like this is necessary for you to be able to have that kind of level of immersion. But you know, even if it's not necessary, there were some tricks that I think would be harder to pull off with a camera based system. So in one of the little videos, they show this guy who's

just very casually killing zombies off left and right. He picking up a Batwin nails in it, and he's got a handgun at one point after he's just blown up a bunch of zombies on a bridge. One zombie starts shuffling onto the screen to the character's left. All right, so here's the guy standing in space. He's looking at the screen. He sees that there's a zombie shuffling off

to his left. He raises his right arm, puts it behind his head, and then does the gun move so that his gun and this character on the screen pulls up, plots his gun behind his head and does it behind the head shot and kills the zombie. And at that point, I think, you know, maybe a camera would have trouble with having the right algorithm to track exactly where the arm is and to know that the arm is gone

behind the head. Right. Getting that level of specificity off of especially UM infrared related cameras, it's going to be a little bit difficult. UM And I don't think that that's the only I was doing a little bit of reading UM and I'm probably gonna do a blog post over on the aforementioned for thinking about this. A MEO arm band, which is a similar it's a more compact

device than this one. Sounds like um it's it's just a little stretchy bracelet that you can put on your forearm and uh, and so you could have it track very small motions like like like pretending to pull a trigger, uh that you didn't. You wouldn't have to make quite such a big gesture for a camera to pick up right right. Yeah, And there was a lot of motion tracking and eye tracking technology on display at ce S. I had a lot of fun looking at that stuff

and playing with that stuff. Um. I was really impressed with the fact that some of these companies have created algorithms that allow them to use even super cheap webcams as a connect like motion sensor. Now, so I was looking at one that it was built directly into a laptop. It was not a special webcam. All it was doing was running the motion tracking software. But you could do

connect like gestures and control stuff on the computer. So to me, it's really remarkable that we can even develop software that can overcome the limitations of the hard wear. And then you think, well, if you were able to, you know, do that software for hardware that specifically designed. Yeah, when when that was one of the companies I talked to specifically was talking about that. Let's talk a little bit about robots. I got to see a lot of different kinds of robots. Yeah, Parrot had a bunch of

new mini drowns out. Yeah, they had the little Sumo jumping robot. Uh yesh. Sumo robot is like a imagine imagine a sphere has wheels on either side, and part of the sphere, like the back of the sphere is a little elongated that's got a little stubby tail. The tail is just long enough so that when it tilts backward, like when it when it rotates back against its axis to the ground, so it can actually put push the stubby tail against the ground and jump and it jumps

like two ft high. They did Parrot did a a a display where they had this stage set up and every fifteen minutes or so they would do maybe even ten minutes or so, they would do a demonstration where the robots would roll out onto the stage, a couple would jump up on the stage. Of the stage itself was elevated more than a foot off the floor, so some of the robots would jump from the floor to

get up on the stage. A couple of would jump up onto neighboring drums, and then what they would do is they'd use the little tail to drum a rhythm, and meanwhile the flying Parrot robots, the little mini drums would come out and do a little choreographed maneuver all together, and it was all done to a song and it was really well done, very charming. So a Parrot, of course, is the the company that created the parrot a r drone, the one that has a camera you can control with

an iPhone. I remember the very first time I saw that, and it blew me away. And they're just continuing to build in this space. They do other stuff too, It's not just robotics, but that's probably the most visible thing.

It's the chance they do. But another robot that I got to see was there there's a company called Modular Robotics, and they build robots that are meant for kids to play with, where imagine building blocks, but the building blocks have within them all the components of a robot, and when you snap them together, they make those connections based upon the way you build them. So if you build them with some sort of actuating arm, they can move the actuating arm. You can put a sensor on them

so that they react to a specific change and stimuli. Yeah, and so if you like have a motion sensor and you move in front of it, it will move because of the actuators and the sensors you put on it and it all. It's completely modular, so you can build whatever kind of robot you want. I got to play with one that ended up being like a remote controlled vehicle that all the controls were on a tablet and they were done in slighter form, and it was a little difficult to get the hang of it first because

to control the left wheel uh and one. And if I wanted it to roll four word compared to where I was standing, because there was really no forward or backward on this petular device. But if I wanted to roll forward based upon where I was standing the left wheel, I'd have to slide the slider up. Right wheel, I have to slide the slider down so it would also turn in the right direction. And then if I reversed one of those, it would start spinning in a circle.

And then if I reverse both of them, I could make it roll backward right like if I may. If I made right go up and left go down, it would roll back toward me. Took some time for my brain to learn, but both of those were great examples of technology designed to uh to teach kids about engineering and technology and creativity. Uh. And that was a lot of fun. I honestly, I played with them quite a

bit and I had a lot of fun. Um. So, anyway, we've got a ton more stuff to talk about at CES, including some things that I didn't get to see, but we'll we'll touch on. But before we talk about all that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright, so we're back, uh and I'm really back, which is nice.

So one of the things I got to see because Forward Thinking was the you know, that was the show that was representing Forward Thinking sponsors Toyota, Right, and Toyota actually sponsored all of Discovery Digital this year, which was great and it meant that I got to have some

really up close and personal encounters over at the Toyota booth. Yeah, and Toyota had a bunch of the main thing if you have watched the Foward Thinking videos that you will have noticed is that Jonathan got to see a bunch of prototypes of fuel cell technology, which was great, you know, to see a fuel cell vehicle design as well as

their their plan for fuel cells. Fuel cells, I mean This is an idea that's been around for more than a century, but it's been really hard to get that as a viable alternative to other types of car options, right. I mean, you've got electric cars and you've got gasoline cars. But the problem is is that as as a fuel, hydrogen or unbonded hydrogen is a little bit tricky to get ahold of, and so you've got some energy problems there, and and the the technology itself, the materials science involved

in it, has been catching up. Yeah. For one thing, the materials that you need to build a reliable hydrogen based fuel cell are expensive. You know, usually you have a very rare metal catalyst like platinum, and that's that makes the whole thing more expensive. But Toyota has been working really hard to reduce that. So that was kind of fun. I won't go into more detail because you can always go to forward Digging and watch the video

if you want to. Yeah, yeah, did you also get to see Toyota's Eye Road Did you did you hear anything about that? Yeah? The super crazy the little like miniature smart car. Oh yeah, I got to watch that drive. Oh man, it's this is a this is a three wheeled almost like like scooter or motorcycle kind of car. UM that goes up to about twenty eight miles per hour, can go thirty miles on a single charge, and it's

kind of like a fancy motorcycle. They're talking about using it in UM mostly in other countries right now as a just really great, you know, inner city transportation method that has a really small physical and carbon footprint. Yeah, you could. You could park three of these in one regular car space. Really, I mean, it's there's that tiny. They had a circular area where there was a pedestal in the middle with one of these on the pedestal, and then every so often they would have someone drive

out in one and around the pedestal. I remember when I was watching them drive this around, thinking to myself that the guy who was driving it seemed to be not having the best time in the world, like it was. He had no expression on his face, like just just driving this thing, And I'm like, this looks like it is the most fun thing to drive has ever been invented. And I can't believe this guy doesn't have the biggest

grin in the world. And that's that's what I heard from people who got to test this thing out that it was a little bit precarious feeling, but also so much fun and so zippy. It was pretty exciting to watch. BMW also had a self driving car test and and they were doing this. They were letting folks take test drives in this automn made a car on a wet track with sharp curves and like basically at full tilt. Yeah,

something like signing a waiver before you go into an exhibit. Yeah, I'm not sure if I would have signed up for that one, but I'm fascinated that they did it. Yeah. Bosch, the company Bosch, which by the way, we should do an episode about Bosch at some point. There, hundred and twenty seven year old company. Um and they build a lot of the stuff that is making this autonomous cars and Internet of things of possibility. They actually sponsored the Gold Lot, which is was adjacent to the North Hall.

That was where a lot of the actual car demos were taking place where you could see them being driven around, including autonomous driving. So that was really cool too. Uh. One of the other things I saw, I saw a lot of these Actually it's a little thing called a steam box. Um. Yeah, steam boxes. They're finally a thing. Yeah yeah, yeah, now that we definitely need to do a full episode on those down they're actually out. Yeah, so yeah, there were some you know, I I go

back and forth on steam Boxes. I think it's a neat idea. I think there's also some big limitations, but I'll save all that for a steam Box episode. I'll just say that if it's a Linux based operating system that's running open g L and most of the games in on Steam are direct X games that depend upon Windows, I wonder how big the library is gonna be for actual Steam os that but that will be a discussion will have in another episode. Yeah, there was also the razor. Christine,

did you see this thing? Oh yeah, this is the modular PC and and okay, modular PCs have happened before, but this is using PC I express to wirelessly connect and sink modules and and like like like the GPU, the solid state drive, the CPU, the RAM, the power supply. Yeah, so just imagine imagine a tower that has slots in it and you have cartridges. Essentially, it's what they look like. The cartridges represent the different aspects of the computer, like

it's GPU or its memory or whatever. And then you slide those in, and so since it's modular, if you want to upgrade, you take one out and you replace it with the new one. Really interesting approach, cool design. If some people say it kind of like a tree, other people said it's just like a weird tower thing. The one two things I would I would give as caveats to this is that one Razors is mainly being shown as a gaming computer. I would imagine it's going

to come at a premium price. I would imagine they haven't announced that price as of the recording of this podcast, which probably means that it's really high. Yeah, plus plus. Again, it will depend upon the configuration you design, right. But the other thing is that you're limited because even though it's modular, it's limited to the modules designed for that computer. Right.

It's not like you can just go to uh, you know, your Fries Electronics or whatever and put whatever you want, and then you can't crack open the case, slide one card out and put another one in that you bought from some discount store. You're gonna have to get the module either from Raiser or from you know, some third party vendor. But I think that for a certain segment of PC gamers. That could be very attractive. Yes, it

could be. It could be, and you know, it may mean that it's not important to you, especially if you're someone who has lots of discretionary income, in which case send me money. Alright, So then let's talk about three D printers. Ah, yeah, I heard that was out in

for Oh Boy, maker Bot one of my favorites. Actually, I have to remember when I get home, I have a figurine printed by MakerBot that I have to bring to the office because that's Josh Clark's present from c e S. He gets he gets a little grouchy if I don't bring him back something. It has become a tradition that I bring him back something from c S every year. He's very gracious about it, he reminds me frequently, which has had to happen more this week because I

just haven't put in my bag yet. Anyway, three D printers maker Bot was out there big time. One of the coolest things they had. They introduced a brand new three D printer for the consumer that they called their Industrial Strength three D Printer, which allows you to print objects that are up to twelve inches by twelve inches by eighteen inches just huge for a three for for a concerned um cost about sixty for that. But again this is for someone let me maybe like small businesses.

I love the range of consumer consumer costs for you, and I totally understand that is that is way less than an industrial three D printer of that size or yeah, like like if you look back two or three years, you're talking thirty thousand, forty thousand dollars to that. But yes,

still still a chunk of change. I mean, I'm not gonna say like it's cheap, but it was definitely impressive to see they had printed an entire like uh kind of like a space marine style helmet that you could actually put on your head because that's how big it was. It was all in one piece too. They didn't have to print it in pieces and put it together. It was all one piece. It's got a heated chamber, so it maintains structural stability while it's printing. It's really crazy.

And it also has connectivity with apps. So let's say that you start a print job and then you know, it tells you like it will give an estimated time of when that print job is going to be finished. It prints the resolution if you want to print the highest resolution, it's a hundred microns. So that's how thick each level is, which is pretty tiny. Right. So let's say you've wandered off and it suddenly runs out of the filament that's using. They'll send you a message saying

you need to reload the filament. You go and you reload the filament and it'll start the print job again, or it tells you that the print job is over. It'll send you in a push notification, especially if you need to send another print job to the printer. So yeah, kind of neat stuff. But they were not the only three D printer company there. There were lots of them. There was a whole section in the South Hall just for three D printing, and there was even a robot

rolling around the show floor. They had a three D printer on top of it. There's a robot with a three D printer printing out in three D as it rolled around. It was a little it was a little much. I also didn't put down here the the robot that was a grill cleaner. The grill cleaner robot. Yeah, so just imagine instead of it having wheels, it has these steel brushes that turn and it just rolls all over

the place on your grill and for your for your grill. Yeah, it gets all up in your grill and cleans it robotically. Lauren is shaking your head at me. Just you can take that down in your little bingo sheets. Okay. So also while I was there, there was an announcement from my favorite, uh smart watch company, Pebble. Yeah, did you see the announcement that they had They came out with Pebble Steel. Oh that was that was officially announced there, Okay. And I knew that it had been on the show

floor and that everyone was really impressed with it. And when I finally got around to looking up pictures of it, I was like, oh, this thing I want. Like previous previous Pebbles, I was like, that thing is aesthetic, but this I was like, no, I want to be wearing the Pebble Steel is the one that's it's meant to be more like a luxury watch. It's it's it's it's a steel or leather band or a combination of the two. It's got a really slick little gorilla glass display that

that the cases is steel. Um. It runs about two It's a little more expensive, but I think that they also had announcements about an app store and software update. Yep, so there's going to be more of a of a uh an ecosystem there. That's the word I wanted to say, ecosystem along with Pebble, which that'll be exciting because that'll go for all Pebble watches, not just the Pebble Steel. So if you're if you're wondering, does Jonathan plan on

getting a Pebble steel? Jonathan plans on getting a Pebble steel because sometimes you got a dress fancy that will go with the other three watches that I have on order that haven't arrived yet, one of which I did see. Another one at c S one that I had backed on. I can't remember if it was a Kicks. I think it was kick Star, and the other Kicks are Indigog but things Kickstarter called the CS t O one. C

S t O one is not a smart watch. It's a watch that's kind of like a steel cuff and it has e ink, right I remember you talking about super flat thin display, very pretty design. Uh. They actually had one at the ink booth, so I got to see one in person, and then they told me that it should be shipping pretty soon, so I hope that within a couple of weeks I'll finally have my wrist on one one on my wrist. I saw Mother when I was there, Right, Yeah, so what is what is this? Okay?

This is a Korean company, I believe, and it's supposed to be a replacement for your parents. Well, it's really supposed to help you monitor things in your home, but it's supposed to give you incredible flexibility to do that. So a lot of the data stuff we talk about are very specific to very particular items, and we'll talk about one of those in imediately following. Right, So let's say that you're talking about like your thermostat, and we're

gonna be talking about nest soon. Anyway, you collect all that data and you can analyze it, and that's really interesting, but you're limited. You know, you have to do that piecemeal, right. You have to go and buy the product that does the thing, and then you may not even be able to integrate that into the other systems you have, So that means you end up having forty different apps for all the stuff you're doing. The idea with Mother is that it becomes a unified base station that allows you

to monitor pretty much anything. And they have these little sensors that they call cookies now right now, and you can get them in a cookie jar. It's so cute. So these little cookies right now are motion sensors. But there's going to be more um functionality build into it over time. So let's say you attach one of these cookies to something specific, like your keys, and then you can consult mother whenever you can't find your keys, and

they'll tell you exactly where your keys are. Or you put that on one of the other examples they had, as they had one of these attach to a toothbrush so that you can learn whether or not your kids were brushing their teeth every night like they were supposed to. There was other toothbrush related technology, cal Calabree toothbrush. You know, I make a list of the stuff I have to absolutely see before I go to c E S. And Calabrie was on that list. So it says, uh, this

is a little tiny startup company. And I got to talk to the inventor of Calabrie is great. He's so enthusiastic, it's very genuine, is fun to chat with him. But calu Bree is a toothbrush that has very much a smart toothbrush. It's got sensors in it that can tell

its attitude, orientation, it's movement. And the idea is that you brush your teeth, you put the calu Brie toothbrush on its inductive charging stand, which is you know, it's way a lot of electric toothbrush is charged and then it will send information via bluetooth to your smartphone and you get a grade for how well you brush your teeth.

And it's based not only on the duration becase you're supposed to brush your teeth for about two minutes you know, each each time you brush your teeth, but also on the style, like how you brush your teeth. Are you brushing your teeth correctly, because it can tell from the orientation and the movement where a lot which quadrant of your mouth you are brushing, and so it gives you all this information and the idea is that you can improve your brushing technique uh each session and you get

a better grade. But it also means ultimately that if you do this and if if it works properly, and if you do it properly, you'll cut down on the time you spend in a dentist chair, which to me is awesome. So you know, I love this kind of technology because the first time you hear about it, you're like, that sounds ridiculous, and in an app connected toothbrushed that.

But then when you start thinking about you're like, wait, if does this mean that I spend less time with having a metal hook jabbed, you know, mercilessly into my gums repeatedly? I am on board, So I was really excited. There was another thing. Now, this is an example of something that had been introduced in and I had heard about it that I hadn't seen it. Texas Instruments had created a basketball that had something like sensors in it.

And what happens is when you throw this basketball, it collects all that information and sends it to an app, which then tells you what angle you made your throw, how hard you threw it, and you know, based upon where your throw went. Just when you watch and the information you get back, you start to learn how to

make better throws so that you get nothing. But net I did not try this because I knew that if I were to throw the basketball, it would just tell me I can see why you're always picked last, but I watched other people do it and it was it was cool because you would get, you know, feedback, and then the people working it were like, all right, so what that would mean is that you need to throw a higher arc that kind of stuff, and it was really cool to see how that that would help you

build muscle memory fast. The last thing I have on my list is inarguably the most important of all the things I saw while I was at c e S. What could that possibly be? Jonathan World Wrestling Entertainment had a press conference and if you can smell what the rock is cooking, They then announced, Sorry, anyone who knows me knows I am a I'm a rassling fan. He's he's a very big wrestling fan. Yeah, and I grew up in it in the Atlanta area, So I'm not

talking pro wrestling. I'm a rassling fan, okay. Georgia Championship Wrestling later on World Class Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling. We're talking like old school w W. E of course is the biggest name in the game of pro wrestling, and so they came to c S and I was curious to see what they were going to announce. I thought maybe it was going to be an app or something, but they really hit like hard. They said, what we're gonna do is offer up a digital network, which you

know has been in the work works for years. It was originally supposed to launch in two thousand twelve and has been delayed mull times. Lawrence amused it, how excited I'm getting about this. It's a digital network that will stream. It gives original programming that's related back to the stuff that w w E is doing. It also will have all of the pay per views. That's twelve pay per views per year. Uh. And it's a nine dollars um subscription per month. So you think, oh, ten dollars per month.

I don't know about that, but every single pay per view is like thirty bucks, you know, so you're already saving money. I don't know why you wouldn't go ahead and do this. Um. Also, they took a note from Netflix's book and they put it on everything. So Xbox three, six, TPS three, PS four, eventually the Xbox one. I think that'll be live in the summer online through w w E dot com. So you know, it's that strategy of make sure you put it wherever people watch stuff so

that they can watch it however they like. I I cannot profess to particularly caring anything about wrestling, but I do have to admit that this is an awesome, savvy business technology kind of concept to push out, and then if they're successful with it, then that could be a terrific business model for lots of other media company. I think. I think they're also like, the people who are really into pro wrestling probably are also people who are really

into things like video games. So being able to access this programming through your video game console, which means that you don't have to call up your cable carrier or use some weird thing in order to order a pay per view and have all that content available anytime you want is pretty phenomenal. They're also going to show older UH stuff that they have in their archives, so old WWF, and I could see this extending to other sports as well. Yeah, yeah, totally.

This is a it's an interesting model, and in fact, it is something that UFC has already done, so it's

similar to the UFC approach. So you know, we're getting into UH from real actual like martial mixed martial arts fighting into sports entertainment with w w E. But um, you know, I really, I genuinely was impressed by the savvy they were displaying and I could totally picture, like, for example, all of all of you crazy footballers out there, when when soccer season runs around, having something similar something

similar could be pretty popular. Now, there was some stuff at c e S that we have not mentioned that you're probably saying, why haven't you talked about that? And the main reason is because I wasn't. I didn't actually see it myself. But we can actually mention some of uh. Yeah, let's let's talk about the PlayStation now. So so, Sony had of course a huge presence at c S. At kas hear I, the CEO of Sony was there giving

the keynote. Yep, they Sony has uh on press day traditionally Sony has the final press event of the night. And then they also were the keynote for c S. That was something that up until last year was traditionally held by Microsoft. Microsoft was the company that would they would kind of kick off c e S and increasingly

strange ways. Um, but but then I'm not forget seeing Slash play live on stage because of a Guitar Hero face off between valmer And and Gates Microsoft about out of that entire thing starting last year and um and this year's from what I've heard, was a lot more um calm than perhaps it has been in a few years might have been. I didn't make it to either of the Sony events. I had conflicts on both of them.

But PlayStation now, for those who are wondering, this is something that they were announcing back when they first talked about the PlayStation four. It was not it was a feature that was not going to be ready upon launch, but they were saying, this is something we're gonna do. This is the part that addresses the problem of PlayStation

four not being backwards compatible with earlier PlayStation games. Right, this is going to be It's a service that will stream games for to the PS four, the PS three, the Vita, and also eventually smart TVs, tablets, and phones. So you'll be able to play PlayStation games on these various devices through streaming. So the actual game is running on a remote system and you are your controls are

are you know being uh. The information is being ferried back and forth between your controls and the remote system at the cloud system. So, uh, you know, it's a it's an interesting, uh solution to that problem because I mean, you know, gamers hate when something's not backwards compatible, because you know, anytime that you've purchased a thing and you say, oh, you can't play that on this new thing that you

just bought, it's like, but why not? Look, I know I haven't played Sonic the Hedgehog and years, but I might want to write, yeah, and I don't want to have to unhook something from my television set that's already at the max for all the inputs and then hook up an old system just to play this. So this is a way of addressing that. Now, we don't really have enough details there to say, you know exactly how this is gonna work. Is it gonna be a per

game thing, is going to be a subscription thing? There are a lot of different opportunities here, and I bet that Sony is gonna play with a lot of different approaches in their various betas they come out. They're going to be in beta starting in February, I believe, and looking at a potential rollout towards the end of the summer. Other things I didn't see there was one of the things I heard got a big buzz was a wearable device called the Razor Nebu, which is do you read

anything about that one? So all right, so it's like a little uh, You're going to both love this and then when I get to one of the elements of it, you are going to be horrified. Excellent, Okay. So it's a wearable it's it looks like a bracelet. It's got like a little time piece on it. The way I was seeing it, everyone was wearing the time piece part on the inside of their risks, so I guess they're all nurses. Um. Anyway, it's an activity tracker, sleep tracker,

but it was an activity tracker. Then part of that might have been the biometrics of your pulse taking taken from the inside of the wrist, although although I don't know why the display would be there, because you could still have the display on the other side. The sensors could be on the inside that the display could be on the other anyway. Anyway, So here's the part that's gonna horrify you. But I think it's kind of awesome. So so the video they have that goes along with us.

It shows different use cases for this technology. So it's like the uh, the person who needs to get their notifications all the time, and if they get it on their risk for some reason, that makes it less distracting than if they were whipping out their phone every five seconds. Uh. There's the person who is not sleeping enough, so it's actually telling them, hey, you need to get some sleep.

Then there's the person who's the dude at the bar who totally wants to meet the chick at the bar but doesn't really know how to approach said chick at the bar. But both of them are wearing Razor neboos that have their personal preferences programmed into them, so it lets him know that she also likes sports and hiking, so he can go up and say, hey, I saw that you like sports and hiking. I also like sports

and hiking. And then if she thinks he's cute, she can actually send him a message on his wrist saying hey see you tomorrow. It's on the video. So, um, well that's I mean, I'm not as horrified as I could be by that. It would be. It's an opt in process, and I myself, being an incredibly awkward person, could see how it could be useful to have some um,

some pre information before starting a conversation. I think it would be awesome if you know, like you got information about the person like says it says something like for the guy that you you're you're seeing it, you're you're eyeing the dude at the bar, and the information coming back is saying things like, uh, you know, he likes the music you like, and he's he's into art and he's into uh to to kind of like cult films. And then meanwhile, the information that comes up on his

wrist is just saying, I'm so awkward. So but it's opt in, right, that's the approach. That's I actually think it's kind of neat idea. And that granted, I'm happily married and have been for for a long time, so I'm well removed from that scene and I have thankfully forgotten how awkward it can be. Um So that's not so much of uh selling point for me? Probably probably not, but but yes, it's best for everybody, trust me. I can imagine that would be a pretty good selling point

for for many people. And then the last thing I have on my list, although I granted you know, of course There's tons more stuff that we could talk about, but the Roku TV that was a big deal. The idea. Every year Roku has come to c e s and

really tried to push the envelope with new products. You know, they had that little dongle Roku that came out a while ago where it was essentially a full Roku system but on a thumb drive that you could hook up through a USB port on your on your or maybe it was h d my might have been an HDMI port on your on your television. I don't have one, so you know, I I have Roku too, and I bought Roku threes for my family because, uh, they're supposed to be really easy to use and have a lot

of different services on them. So they're now in the TV business actually building TVs with the Roku H technology built directly into the television. So that was, you know, another big game changer type approach, or at least they hope it will be a game changer. Will it will

remain to be seen whether or not it is. You know, Internet TV, that's one of those things that's been trying to make a real splash for several years now, and um, I think we're finally seeing interfaces that nail it largely in Part two, set top boxes like Roku or like the console systems that made it. Uh, you know, they had their own user interfaces that seemed to work a little better than some of the skinned stuff you would see on various television sets that we're supposed to be

smart TVs. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that also, um integration with smartphones has really helped out, Like like once we started having enough people with smartphones that were capable of running the kind of apps that were necessary to control these sort of things before us a remote like that.

Yeah too, when your phone becomes your remote, that also is really handy because you know, especially if you're using your phone for other stuff, like you know, you're playing everything Angry Birds while the dreamy boys of Supernatural are out there fighting the baddies, you know, just for example. Uh, that's totally not an example from my life, not not at all. I don't play angry Birds. I play plans versus zombies, so because it's the matic zombies, so you know,

there are no Angry Birds and Supernatural. Actually, I can't say that I haven't gotten all the way through them. I'm sure, there's gonna be an episode coming up, all right. So anyway, that kind of sums up my experience of C E S. I just thought it was an interesting show from the perspective of quirky future technologies that could potentially have a big impact either in the implementation has shown off at CES or in future implementations. To me,

it was a great show. No, no, I I think that this has been a pretty interesting spread of products. Of of course, many and and a lot of places where I got my information, being that I did not go or some of the excellent coverage from companies like Verge and gadget Uns was big. Also, of course, Revision three did a lot of coverage our buddies. Over Revision three, I had a chance to uh see them at work. Those people work hard, all of these people, every single

one we've mentioned so far. I mean they if you could see how quickly they turn around from one segment to the next, it's exhausting just to watch. I went there having to shoot three videos. There were other people there who are like, okay, this is shoot number seven. Oh and I just feel my eyes roll up into my head. Alright, guys, Well that wraps up our discussion of C E. S two thousand fourteen and the stuff

that I saw there. If you have any suggestions for future topics, maybe there's something that we talked about on this show that you think deserves its own episode, let us know. Send us an email our addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler or handle at all three locations. Is text stuff H. S. W and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it house work dot com x