 Coming up on DTNS we are all still at CES because CES is everywhere and we have all the big chip announcements from AMD Intel and Nvidia. There's a Sony car and Robert Herron and Patrick Dortner here to help us wrap our heads around all the home theater announcements and what it means for us. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday January 12th 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane and that's you Patrick. I'm sorry. If you look online nine of our rundown it says Patrick Norton goes next. Last time I was on I was told not to speak and now I'm anyhow from St. Louis, Missouri. I'm Patrick Norton and from beautiful California. Robert Herron sitting right here and I'm the show's producer Roger Chen. Hey you know when you're live from the CES show floor it's it's stuff like that's bound to happen. It's totally fine. We were just talking about apples literally apples the fruit on good day internet. If you want to hear that a lot of other nostalgic conversations about childhoods and other things become a member at patreon.com slash dtns. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. It's a no but guys sorry but true. This morning surrounded by friends and developers flash said goodbye to the world. It was born January 1st 1996 as macromedia flash with support for vectors motion even some bitmaps in 2005 it began a relationship with adobe rose to prominence as the power behind video and entertainment on the web a lack of mobile support led to flashes decline and an eventual fade into obscurity apple announced adobe rather announced it would pull support after a final update in december although i'm not sure apples bummed out about that adobe flash was 25 and will be missed just take a moment we'll miss you what's app issued a clarification of its privacy policy change set to take effect february 8th the change requires all users to agree to a policy that lets businesses store whatsapp chat logs on facebook servers that that's all it does whatsapp says that it doesn't keep its own logs of who people message that wasn't clear originally uh it doesn't share contacts with facebook and it doesn't see your location data and it has never been able to see your messages because it's end to end encrypted uh you may still not love it but if you don't love it don't love it for what it's actually doing atnt announced it will merge its atnt tv now streaming service into the atnt tv service that relies on an android set top box now after the merger of the two services customers won't be required to use the streaming box but it will still be offered the new combined service will also have no required contracts and packages will start at $70 per month the number of patents granted in the us in 2020 was about flat declining by less than 1 percent uh but patent applications rose 5 percent for shadowing a return to the normal yearly rise in patents that we see IBM led the way in 2020 with 9130 new patents received samsung took second place in patents received and continues to hold the largest patent number overall with 80,577 patents IBM is number two in holding patents with 38,541 the fastest growing technology on this year's list according to the ifi claims patent service was computer systems based on biological models so that kind of ai up 67 percent last year the number one was hybrid plant creation it wasn't even a tech thing uh so we had a little change this year netflix has been busy the company released a slate of movie releases for 2021 with 70 titles more than disney and warner brothers combined also an average of more than one new movie per week really for the whole year they include directorial debuts by lin manuel moranda and hallie barry and netflix may yet acquire films throughout the year which would increase the list even further tim burners lee's inrupt which uses the solid technology to let you control your personal data has signed britain's national health service the bbc and the government of flanders belgium as its pilot customers with in reps implementation of solid the nhs will let you keep all your medical records in one place under your control and then you decide which doctors and service providers get to access which parts of your record and when they add things to your record that goes in one place that is under your control all right that's the non ces news now the ces news tcl is showing off rollable prototypes keyword here prototypes one mobile design has an ammo led rollable although kind of more expandable than rollable screen which can extend a 6.7 inch display up to 7.8 inches it's less than 10 millimeters thick with a three millimeter bend radius another we briefly mentioned yesterday as an extendable display concept that unrolls on two sides like a scroll and is even thinner at point one eight millimeters very thin tcl says don't worry it's going to bring an actual real actual foldable flexible product to market this year but did not specify what it would be gm announced a new delivery oriented business unit called bright drop and its first two electric delivery vehicles the ev 600 is an all wheel drive electric van with 250 mile range 600 cubic feet of space for cargo and up to 2200 pounds that it can carry features an auto locking door interior motion detection location tracking battery management and incident reporting the second vehicle the ep1 is an electric pallet it has a 23 cubic foot of space that can carry up to 200 pounds it'll have remote locking and unlocking location tracking and battery status as well the container is lockable with a modular shelving system it's really meant to carry items from the van in delivery situations bright drop will also offer a cloud platform to monitor and delivery operations the ep1 pallet will be available early this year while the vans will arrive in early 2022 though fedex is receiving the first bright drop vans later this year after participating in tests which saw fedex deliveries rise 25 percent while using the vans and reducing physical strain on the drivers bright drop will compete with companies like canoe amazon and rivian are working together on an ev van and the uk's arrival has a contract with ups so it's a booming space right now dolby announced a tool called dolby voice for pc's designed to remove unwanted background noise and echoes on calls also auto adjust audio level so if a voice volume is low or mic is kind of weird it ends up being more consistent if a conference call app offers stereo audio dolby says it can separate multiple voices to make them clearer and more natural sounding dolby voice for pc's claims it can also improve speech recognition intelligent intelligibility for voice assistance lenovo's think pad x1 carbon and x1 yoga laptops are among the first pc's to use dolby voice oh did you mention lenovo uh lenovo announced a bunch of stuff the think pad x1 titanium yoga a 0.4 inch thick 2 in 1 laptop that the company says is its thinnest think pad ever running 11th gen intel processors weighing two and a half pounds available later in january at $1899 lenovo also announced the think pad x12 detachable a 12.3 inch tablet with a detachable backlit keyboard that's less than nine millimeters thick and two and a half pounds with the keyboard attached also uses intel 11th gen processors certified with mil spec a 10g for shocks and temp and spills arriving later in january for $1149 both those laptops include 5g but that's not all lenovo also introduced the think pad plus gen 2 with a 12 inch e ink panel on the lid uh they did this last year this new one increases the resolution to 2560 by 1600 adds multi touch that works with a stylus also comes with a wireless charging mat the laptop can go 15 hours on a charge or 24 hours if you just use the e ink screen that's coming q1 of $1549 and lenovo announced several laptops running the new rise in 5000 processors we're going to talk about in a bit including the thinkbook 14 p gen 2 and thinkbook 16 p and a whole lineup of legion gaming laptops the new uh five new legion laptops all come with rise in 5000 processors and rtx 30 series gpu's the flagship legion 7 laptop starts at 1669 99 with an estimated june 2021 release date and a 4.2 pound legion slim 7 a thinner version comes in may with three models in the legion 5 series shipping in march well not to be done by announcements at cece sir announced the predator triton 300 se gaming laptop which is at 17.9 millimeter thick running on intel's new 5 gigahertz i7 11 375 h processor and envidia's new rtx 30 60 gpu it has an all new metal design bit of a departure from what it looked like in the past with a 14 inch f hd panel and a 144 hertz refresh rate starting at $1399 and shipping in february acer's nitro 5 gaming laptops in either 15.6 or 17 inch versions will support intel 11 11th gen core h35 series processors or amd's rise in 5000 series cpu's with an option to upgrade up to envidia's rtx 30 80 the nitro 5 comes to the us for 749 99 it's a hundred dollars more if you want the 17 inch version and the company also announced two budget laptops the aspire 7 and the aspire 5 both with amd rise in 5000 series chips the aspire 7 starts at $749 the aspire 5 starts at 549 so pretty affordable there available in europe the middle east and africa starting in february and china gets the aspire 5 this month just a few more things to announce before we talk about the other big announcements uh razor announced a new blade 15 and pro 17 laptop with support for the new rtx 30 series gp is from envidia each model has 1080p 1440p uh and the 15 advanced and uh pro 17 offer 4k displays models all run the 10th gen intel h series chips razor blade 15 starts 1700 bucks blade pro 17 goes for 2300 bucks available for preorder january 12th the uk based startup lasso loop recycling announced that it's working on a prototype recycling container that looks like a dishwasher with a vertical slot of depositing items to recycle sensors can then scan those items as you drop them in non recyclable items will be ejected back to you hopefully not too hard while recyclable materials will be steam cleaned to remove leftover food or labels or other substances and then ground down for reuse when the appliances storage is full you use the app to order collection the materials are taken directly to manufacturers that cuts out recycling plants and lasso says that the prototype should be completed later in q1 but according to ceo aldous hicks a final product might not be ready until 2033 so it's going to take a while with a projected cost of around 3500 dollars all right we've got a chip announcement from samsung one of many at ces uh the latest mobile processor the accent was 2100 5g first chip with integrated 5g from samsung sub six gigahertz and millimeter wave samsung claims the eight core processor is 10 percent better and 20 percent lower at power usage compared to the xnose 990 it uses three arm cortex a 78 four arm cortex a five and a custom arm cortex x1 core it's paired with the molly g 78 mp14 gpu and new tricor neural processing unit no word on what devices would get the new chip but i'm guessing one that samsung will announce soon will probably have it the japanese health startup quantum operation demoed a prototype wearable that it claims can accurately measure blood sugar from the wrist without breaking the skin the device uses a small spectrometer to measure blood sugar it also packs in ecg and heart rate sensors and is able to display data within 20 seconds of being put on quantum expects to sell the devices to insurers and health care providers okay just four more of these quick ones before we get to like the intel in the amd stuff auto supplier active announced a new advanced driver assistance system available to manufacturers platform can scale from subcompacts to full-size sedans with only the need to scale the number of sensors as the vehicle changes size active claims that by using a pre validated platform automakers could save 20 to 30 percent in building level one through three autonomous vehicles compared to its previous solutions popsockets announced they'll be releasing magsafe compatible phone holders for the iphone 12 lineup starting with its popular pop grip a pop wallet plus is also planned that's a wallet case with a pop grip on the back there's also two mounts planned a multi surface mount and a mount specifically for a vehicle both of which will work with existing pop socket mounts the new pop grips will arrive in spring with the new mounts coming this summer razor announced its typical concepts got two of them to talk about project hazel is a n95 mask with rgb lights a transparent front cover so people can see your mouth and a built-in mic to amplify your voice that one has a shot of maybe becoming a real product but project brooklyn the gaming chair with a 60 inch curved OLED screen that folds into the seats back maybe not real uh it does have left and right pullout trays that can set at different heights that seems achievable but it's cool to look at not real yet tom yet asus announced a number of products as well it's ces after all you know everybody's got an announcement there's a 32 inch rog swift 4k 120 hertz gaming monitor with hdr 600 and hdmi 2.1 coming in q2 of this year the flow x 134 is a 13 inch ultra portable convertible with an amd rise in 9 at 59 80 hs chip an external nvidia g force rtx 30 80 gpu you can pre-order the bundle now on asus's site for 3200 us dollars and the rog zephyrus duo 15 se has a main 15.6 inch display a secondary 14.1 inch touchscreen that lifts up when you raise the lid on the laptop it can handle the latest amd and nvidia laptop chips starting at 2899 for pre-order now finally there's a there's the rog claim or two gaming keyboard with a detachable number pad and the rog gladius 3 wireless gaming mouse oh right names let's now talk about the big announcements at ces starting with intel boy it's been a tuesday or wednesday wherever you might be intel announced new processor families including 50 different processor variants coming this year 2021 intel expects 500 pcs to be introduced this year running on one of these new processors so let's meet them shall we the vpro platform has 27 variants aimed at thin and light business laptops among included security precautions as ai best based threat detection against ransomware and crypto mining plus intel control flow enforcement for attacks that usually evade software only solutions vpro promises at 23 faster productivity at processing over the competition like amd there's also the evo vpro which will combine security and manageability from the vpro with the evo mobility platform so look for this in a line of intel evo chromebooks patrick robert any thoughts on this before we keep going with intel stuff do not pay attention to what these strange people at apple of dawn get the magnificence we are bringing to you my people that's a good intel voice all right moving on there's the six new end series 10 nanometer intel silver and celeron processors targeted education systems they promise 35 percent better app performance and 78 percent better graphics performance then we've got the 11th gen intel core h series for what intel calls ultra portable gaming built on intel's tiger lake h 35 10 nanometer super fin architecture and process this allows gaming in 16 millimeter thick laptops with support for thunderbolt 4 z graphics and pc i e gen 4 with resizable bar the three models feature four core or eighth and a thread cpus with a 28 to 35 watt power draw the flagship is the intel core i7 special edition with up to five gigahertz turbo acer asus msi and vio all announced h 35 powered system so it's who intel is working with on this expect 42 gaming laptop designs to run on the h series with parts by march jsc 315 asked in the chat what's ultra portable ultra portable means it'll handle most games without giving you back pain well that's not that's not yeah that's actually accurate coming later in 2021 will be the 11th gen rocket lake s series desktop processors with 19 percent more instructions per cycle with the i9 11900k launching in q1 of this year finally until also demonstrated the 12th gen alder lake processors due in the second half of the year alder lake will be the first chip built on the enhanced version of the 10 nanometer super fin manufacturing technology combining new higher power cores with golden lake called golden lake with efficient grace month cores into a single product similar to arm's big little tech until intends to market alder lake for use in mobile devices laptops and desktops and if the sounds familiar now it's similar to apple's m1 chips until also announced it started production of the 10 nanometer xeon scalable processors for servers with volume ramp in q1 yeah man i there's a lot there the h series obviously the one that's going to show up in products that you're going to get but that 12th gen alder lake that they're teasing ahead that that is their attempt to say we can do what arm is doing for apple but with x86 and i will be very interested how that plays out yeah patrick what do you make of all this stuff i you know it's it's kind of echoes what we talked about this time last year which is oh my goodness intel cares about processors again computer processors like the ones you find on your desktop or in your laptop or in your server center and this is just even more of that it's it's been kind of interesting you know what i mean like didn't hear any mentions about ai for drones or peculiar you know this is this is this is super hardcore like wow amd is doing a lot of stuff apple is doing a lot of stuff we need to really hammer that we're going to do some amazing stuff that improves performance i wait with bated breath i want to see i want to see benchmarks and see what these things do in the real world and availability all right let's talk amd first laptops with the new rd na2 architecture and new desktop gpu's with rd na2 will arrive in the first half of the year ceo lisa su showed dirt five running at 60 frames per second on ultra high settings at 1440p however the big announcement was the ryzen 5000 processor family for mobile meaning laptops mostly based on the 7 nanometers zen 3 architecture that is also found in the ryzen 5000 desktop chips so get in 5000 for laptops the h series from amd is meant for gaming and content creation and the u series from amd is for ultra portables all but one of the h series amd cpu's for high powered laptops have eight cores and 16 threads the flagship ryzen 9 5980 hs boosts up to 4.8 gigahertz and has 35 watt tdp there's also the hx chips a new h line for gaming the ryzen 9 5900 hx for example has 45 plus watts tdp and unlocked overclocking amd says it beat the core i9 10980 hk from intel by 37 percent overall 14 for single threaded performance as well as 21 on the 3d mark fire strikes physics benchmark the flagship of the ultra portable u series is an eight core 16 thread ryzen 7 5800 u that can boost up to 4.4 gigahertz using just 15 watts of power so it's the power of the 5000 without using up your battery that's because it's in an ultra portable amd says it out performs intel's core i7 1165 g7 1.23 times it also claims 17 and a half hours of general battery use in 21 hours for movie playback we'll see how that works out in practice amd also introduced a non x line of desktop chips the ryzen 7 5800 and ryzen 9 5900 with 65 watts tdp but still at that lower power amount for desktop anyway running eight and 12 cores these chips will be made available in pre-built systems though it doesn't look like they're going to sell them to you directly ceo lisa su also showed off amd's third gen epic server chip codename melon a test showed dual processors with 32 cores each with a 68 percent performance advantage over an intel zion gold 6258 r and pcs with ryzen 5000 mobile chips are expected to start arriving in february uh yeah the majority of this is about those h series and then a little bit about the u series but about those ryzen 5000 series chips i i i've just double checking now in stock i think i i i want to see availability i want to see parts that we can buy i want to see desktop ship i'm curious how many are we going to be available like i feel like the ultimate broken record for the last six months but i think that says something that your reaction to the intel chips was oh it's nice to see intel focusing again whereas your reaction to amd is i want these how hard is it going to be to get them yeah well i you know a friend of mine and i have both been trying to buy one of the 5000 series desktop processors since they launched and it was like they launched and they sold out and then there were you know some available for like a day in november and then there were some available for literally like a day in december i think you know if you know different do me a favor you know tweet at patrick norton and tell me where they're all going but you can you know you can buy pre-built it's like buying a 3000 series gpu if you have the coin you can spend the staggering amount on ebay um you can buy a pre-built system if you can actually find one but availability and all this stuff you know the we you know again we wait with fated breath if we can buy it i'll be excited robert you have any more thoughts on either amd or intel i'm just thrilled for ultra portable performance really because that's when i buy notebooks nowadays if i can get it under three pounds that's what i want it is fantastic be able to have something that does all of that i do not expect graphics at that size point but in terms of just having the power to do all the work i need to do in some cases well i have a brand new workstation now but prior to that my notebook was often outperforming my workstation using solid state storage technology along with a great intel processor in addition to their wi-fi and bluetooth connectivity which they they seem to keep updated pretty well so i'm thrilled there i am not a gaming notebook person per se but it's nice to have at least a chip that can do something with some oomph where i'm not totally just wrecking the the detail levels and everything like that when i want to do a little gaming on the road or or so to speak yeah it looks it looks to me like intel is it's still very focused on business which makes sense that's where they're going to sell a lot and amd is more widely focused on the consumer but you mentioned graphics robert and you can get some good graphics in your laptops now thanks to our next announcement nvidia announced the rtx 30 60 30 70 and 30 80 gpus for laptops nvidia says the 30 60 can do around 90 frames per second at 1080p with ultra settings uh they used fortnight as an example uh they think laptops with the 30 60 should start around 999 the 30 70 can do 90 frames per second and 1440p and they think those laptops should start around $1299 and the 30 80 can do more than 100 frames per second at 1440p and if you have to ask i guess you can't afford it because they didn't put a price on that one first laptops 30 70 and 30 80 should start arriving january 26th with rtx 30 60 laptops coming later and vidya expects more than 70 rtx 30 series laptops coming from oems and vidya also announced rtx 30 60 for desktops for $329 so pretty cheap designed to replace the gtx 10 60 pascale cards 30 60 has 12 gigabytes of gddr 6 ram and the usual rtx apps and dlss support as well as resizable bar it's only behind the 30 60 ti and teraflops 13 shader versus 16.2 25 ray tracing versus 39.7 rtx 30 60 arrives late february worldwide now if you noticed resizable bar nvidia's uh optimization only on the 30 60 for now nvidia is launching support for it resizable bar if you don't know gives compatible cpu some direct access to video memory for performance games and vidya is working with amd and intel to bring it to a wide range of motherboards later this year so it's launching on the rtx 30 60 desktop we just mentioned but it's also coming in march to earlier rtx 30 series gpus through a v bios update intel's 11th gen h and s series processors and select 10th generation systems will support it as well uh which are you more excited about patrick the uh you know higher gpu nvidia in your laptop or the resizable bar a little bit of both the the seeing these seeing these chips come out in the laptops i think it's going to be amazing for gaming performance especially at those prices um you know i'm more excited about seeing the 30 60 ship because i want to be able to use a bunch of the rtx broadcast app which you can't use without an rtx card but rtx cards have been unobtainium not to hammer on that thing again so one of the things is like you know can they deliver them in volume in february you know some people are saying it's not going to be available in volume in may i'm just i'm i'm excited for the laptops i think that's going to be how a lot of people get next generation gaming performance at this point uh robert i'm excited by the resizable bar functionality that was recently added to my asus motherboard in my new workstation as a bios update and i applied that and if i can get my hands on a new graphics card with say up to 20 gigs of ram where i'm not always using that for gaming it would be nice to take advantage of that high speed ram with a compatible motherboard to see what that can really do for me with the variety of apps out there be it content creation and gaming of course but but if you're not using all that vram it seems like an awful waste where it just sits there idle most of the time and that's where yeah that's where the bar technology is really just uh something i'm i'm glad i have a motherboard that supports and i look forward to actually trying it out all right sarah tell us what sony's up to they didn't announce a chip there's got to be other stuff there is turns out tom's sony announced a virtual concert technology among other things but we'll start with that in a demonstration artist madison beer performed as a virtual avatar in virtual sony hall in new york in front of virtual fans you know we can't really have concerts anymore so this is a thing beer was in a studio wearing a vr suit to do the performance and a full madison beer concert will be accessible on playstation vr and oculus vr later this quarter i'm sure if it's a success we will see other artists following suit sony also showed off its air peak quad copter with sony's alpha mirrorless camera and ai image stabilization for filmmakers and includes two landing arms that lift up on takeoff the air peak will be available this spring if you're feeling creative might want to look at that and then remember sony's vision s car prototype from last year's ce s do was a prototype it is back still a prototype in a video shot by air peak on a private track and public roads in austria the vision s now has 40 sensors for 360 degree awareness and the video also shows a voice assistant gesture controls video game compatibility 5g connectivity and wireless software updates there's also an in cabin camera to identify who's in the car it can also use that to learn a driver's preferred temperature music driving routes among others the dashboard dashboard length display screen also has five plain card size titles in the center camera settings navigation music and video uh assumably also customizable and partners include bosh continental all-motive electro bit belay-o vodafone zf group here nvidia qualcomm and blackberry q and x so we got car parts we got software makers we got connectivity we've got autonomous systems it appears sony is making a car some kinds real yeah in fact magna stirs president announced that contract automobile manufacturers that it that it has will continue partnership with sony on the car and we've talked about that company and recent history on this show as well if you want to move on from cars to tv sets sony's got you covered there the company announced new bravia x r tv sets will let users stream movies in high quality through the bravia core platform sony's pure stream will stream sony pictures movies at eight 80 megabits per second that means u hd blu ray quality lossless streaming and users get a different number of credits based on the model of their tv that can be used for those movies kind of an interesting trend we're seeing i am excited the fact that they can do an 80 megabit stream if they can do that to anybody who can receive it that that is coming very very close to what you can do with the 4k u hd blu ray movie in terms of the actual bit rate sony has had a long history of doing 4k streaming products including a product i still have but i don't know if it's even supported anymore but they were the one of the first to provide not only a streaming service with recent run movies but in the highest quality you could get matching what was available on disk at the time and it included a hard drive built in so you could actually buffer things out if your connection wasn't so hot here they're kind of implying that it's going to be a decent internet connection required before it will perform at its best so i'm curious to see if or what kind of buffering they may offer within that system be it just ram a bunch of ram or even a small hard drive or an ssd or something like that it's an interesting way to demo their technology to just build it into the tv's and say here yeah make good use of this tv we gave you here's some credits get some sony movies they were the they were one of the first to apply a game console directly to their tv's in terms of the old playstation gaming service that they used to offer on some of their premium models and as we've seen it see yes this week it's it is changing and new services are popping up to be integrated into the most popular tv's out there folks we know you got opinions a lot of you are like sony's not making a car tom come on talk about it go into our uh subreddit submit some stories and vote on of a daily tech news show dot reddit dot com uh and we are going to talk a little bit about home theater trends in just a second ces is always filled with home theater products but each year has a different blend there's always televisions though even virtually it's filled with televisions patrick what are we seeing oh my goodness uh one thing to think about is ces is way smaller this year than it was last year i believe there are 4500 exhibitors at ces uh 2020 ces 2021 it's more like 1900 exhibitors so many companies just aren't there a lot of companies that are are there aren't really showing anything new uh except for televisions and robert will tell you about all of the televisions i mean there were a lot of televisions yeah so without without just listing model numbers robert what what are what are some of the trends we're seeing in the technology amongst all these tv's well for the lcd televisions we're all familiar with they're switching to better and better backlighting systems in this case using mini led and in terms of just covering the back of the panel with tens of thousands of leds to create better zone control for local dimming as well as just improving the brightness many of the premium tv's are also offering now quantum dot technology for better color as well one of the cool things i'm seeing is that ai this year seems to be even more mature than it was last year last year it was mostly very targeted systems being used to improve video quality this year there's a big switch toward multi neural networks being used to process not only the video for everything from ak upscaling to excuse that light going out uh ak upscaling all the way to things like audio performance in terms of either 3d audio processing or just creating a situation where the tv can analyze the room it's in and correct the audio accordingly and make it sound even better uh for me it was also about the we've we've heard about rgb laser projectors quite a bit uh in the last couple of years but there's been no actual physical product in our hands that is even in the realm of affordability this year we're going to see a product from samsung and hisense both incorporating full rgb red blue and green lasers as the light source providing in excess of bt 2020 color the color standard for hdr video it actually exceeds the spec brightness has never been uh any better than it's getting right now and these products while still expensive are a fraction of what they would have been even a year or two ago that to me is the cool thing in terms of micro led where they're creating actual tile based technologies and we're all familiar with this with outdoor signage and other products like that large format displays those are becoming approaching consumer levels in terms of like what sony did with their crystal led modules in samsung with their starting with the wall last year now with integrated tv is that basically put all the panels together for you at specific sizes these are still very expensive but this is the first year where i've seen anybody and in this case sony actually declared that it's diy friendly in the sense of being able to integrate connect and set up these panels for if you are in the mood to create a 110 inch or or 24 foot screen for that matter it's all going to be good now everyone's interested in the OLED panels that is probably where all of the focus has been this year lg is the major manufacturer for most of the OLED TVs we see i am not seeing that change at least here in North America for 2021 what i am seeing though is a push toward increasing the brightness and i would say panasonic professional OLED panels based on lg panels were the first to really get this going last year through the use of a heat sink technology basically covering the back of the panel with aluminum that in essence helps it not only become brighter but they're also claiming that it improves longevity of the panel itself they're talking upwards of a thousand nits or greater and that's about a 25 increase over what we were seeing in 2021 for lg their premium panel for this year is going to be the g1 series that is where they're putting all of the new technology including a new OLED material that supposedly improves the color performance of red blue and green so the sub pixels being generated from a consistent color are going to be able to be brighter in addition to just delivering something that exceeds what was going on last year historically lg panels have had problems with the green in particular they weren't green enough and they explicitly mentioned this as being one of the performance improvements however lg this year is also drawn a line in the sand saying that the g1 is going to represent what's new and now they've added an a1 series for an entry level model that will bring pricing down as well as a new screen size they've announced a 42 inch panel at least lg displayed it lg electronics and others will have the option to integrate these into their into their designs but it should bring us back from say a 48 inch panel which was super popular last year to a 42 inch panel which may work better for more people on the upper end of it a lot of kitchen tv upgrades coming this year for people because in that smaller screen size there's just never been anything even remotely premium there's been some good televisions but there's been a good lcd flat panel and even an average OLED flat panel at this point is huge in terms of the image quality indeed and lg is also announced an 83 inch panel size which you will see at the premium for a variety of different manufacturers out there so there is a new super size the biggest OLED panel i've seen is still the z1 which is their 8k panel that goes all the way up to 88 inches pricing you know to be determined on all of that and when it comes to all of these tvs one thing i can tell you that's different for sure is the implementation of hdmi 2.1 in particular this year it seems to be that all the hiccups we saw with the introduction of this technology in 2020 have been resolved things like 4k 120 variable refresh rate auto low latency mode enhanced e arc or e arc itself all of those now are checkbox features on every premium tv if they're offering hdmi 2.1 and the panel is capable of 120 hertz they're going to offer all of the features they can for specifically gaming in particular and that's a good thing this should be the year where we have far fewer headaches particularly with like the graphics card driver updates of recent uh applying directly to the features of these tvs in addition to the new game consoles out there everybody's flagship tv is supporting it and i'm really really glad to see that we're also seeing a lot of oh no go ahead i would also say too that uh companies like tcl we talk about 8k panels in general and uh while that has been kind of a premium target for a long time tcl specifically announced that they're bringing their 8k series all the way down to their six series they have a brand new eight series which will feature an impressive mini led backlight with ten tens of thousands of leds illuminating that panel they have a new performance slash value series in the seven series but the six series is kind of that balance we've all become accustomed to where you get really good bang for the buck and they're claiming that they're going to have an 8k version of that six series sometime this year in addition to some 4k series panels also size wise there are plenty of 80 plus inch options this year at good pricing we will see uh from all of the manufacturers being able to produce an 80 plus inch panel doesn't seem to be the problem it's been for a long time uh at least at prices people are willing to pay and you combine that once you get above 80 inches i think that's where 8k really kind of comes into its own in terms of it it's kind of nice then because you get a more seamless looking picture even if you're really close to it man there's so much good stuff and it's good news about tv's at a ces this year folks if you want to know more about that and you want to know more about receivers and soundbars and headphones uh patrick and robert are always talking about it over on avxl uh let's wrap things up sarah who we're going to shout out today we are shouting out patrons at our master and grand master levels including ken haze tony glass and jeffrey zilx thank you all to our patrons and if you ever have feedback on anything we talk about on the show we'd love to hear it feedback at daily tech news show dot com thanks to patrick norton and robert harron i know you guys work together but patrick work if people find your work uh avxcel dot com just uh if you have a question for us email ask at avxl or tweet at patrick norton excellent robert harron thanks to you as well i really love it when you're on the show because i learned so much about tv's that i'm not going to buy but i still love them uh where people find your work as well uh hit me up on twitter at robert harron or visit my website harron fidelity dot com that's right post a lot of cool stuff folks we love our patrons uh and so if you stick with us uh we're going to give you some patreon loyalty rewards you can get a unique sticker mug t-shirt or hoodie every three months as long as you stay a patron at a certain level or above each one has unique art from len perelta featuring the dts seven-year anniversary logo there's mugs there's hoodies this mug that i'm holding in my hand right now has a illustration of roger you get that uh in the second quarter uh that you're a patron so go get the details patreon dot com slash dts everybody we are live monday through friday ces week rolls along and we'll be back tomorrow 4 30 p.m eastern 21 30 utc if you can join us live please do find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live we'll be back tomorrow with scott johnson and richard gunther this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com i 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