 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Andrew Bradley, Dale Mulcahy and Matt Zaglin. Coming up on DTNS, Robert Herron tells you what you need to know about TVs going into the holiday shopping season, plus our 3D TVs about to make a comeback. Somebody thinks so. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, November 21st, 2022 at Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redmond, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Joining us host of A.V. Excel, Robert Herron. Welcome back to the show, Robert. Hey, always a pleasure. How are you guys? We're doing better now that you're here. Nice. I'm glad to be here. It's good to have you. Let's get right into it with the quick hits. Twitter began reinstating previously banned accounts, including former President Trump, Jordan Peterson, Kathy Griffin, Yay, who was the artist formerly known as Kanye West, and the Babylon Bee. CEO Elon Musk previously said that the platform would not reinstate banned users until there was a clear process for doing so, using a content moderation council, but has decided to begin the process sooner. Musk also indicated on Twitter that he would not reinstate the account of Alex Jones at this time, although his previous... I mean, start talking about previous things and all that. You got a whole can of worms there, right? Yeah. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission released its updated national broadband map. This shows location level information about broadband services rather than census block data, which is what they previously collected. Users can also submit challenges to information on the map, including directly from the FCC's speed test apps. You can be doing a speed test and saying, hey, this is not what you say I should be getting. ISPs must work directly with any challenger of map accuracy on services or remove the location from being served on the map. On Sunday, Disney chair Susan Arnold announced that Bob Chapek was leaving the job of CEO of Disney and being replaced by his predecessor, Bob Iger. Chapek took over as CEO of Disney on February 25, 2020. So not that long ago, 71-year-old Iger stayed around as an advisor and executive chairman until December 31, 2021, when he began his retirement. However, in June, Disney extended Chapek's contract until 2025. But a few weeks ago, the company announced that Disney Plus had lost $1.5 billion. Iger has now agreed to resume his role as Disney CEO for two years while he looks for a successor. Now, does the successor have to be named Bob still? That's my question. Very good question time. Thank you. NASA's Orion spacecraft completed its first flyby of the Moon within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. As part of its mission, Orion will next enter into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That'll happen on November 25. And remember, there's nobody in the capsule, so nobody was looking down, going, I'm so close, I could just jump out. It's all automatic. This will see the spacecraft orbit up to 90,000 kilometers away, letting NASA engineers test its guidance, navigation, communication, and power systems in deep space. Because they would like to send it to Mars someday. The chip maker TSMC confirmed it will build chips using its N3, 3 nanometer technology, at its factory, currently under construction in Arizona. The FAB is scheduled to begin production in 2024. TSMC said 3 nanometer production at the site will be its second production phase, initially focused on 5 nanometer chips, although it cautioned its schedule is not yet finalized. The company is to begin 3 nanometer production at other FABs in volume by the end of 2022. Its rival, Samsung, began 3 nanometer chip production back in June. Go TSMC. Foldable displays are kind of normal now. They were once a concept and now they're a regular, if expensive option for phones. If past CESs are any indication, we're probably going to start seeing rollable displays and stuff before too long. So what's next? LG Display has a track record of showing off the newest display trend a month or so before CES. And LG Display recently showed off its stretchable display technology. Like a stretch Armstrong, but for displays. LG displays 12 inch free form display that can be stretched 20%. So it can go from 12 to a 14 inch size. LG sees this as a further step to truly flexible displays. It uses sub 40 micrometer micro LEDs. So you use micro LED technology for admitting the display circuits that are shaped like springs and a silicon substrate similar to contact lenses so that the stuff that everything is on is bendable. Flexible displays could be useful in things with irregular surfaces like wearables, like a bracelet or clothing. If you wanted to put a display maybe on some professional clothing, show meters or radiation levels, who knows. Indeed, but LG Display isn't just making unconventional displays. It's also announced some interesting audio tech. It's thin actuator sound solution is designed to be installed inside cars while remaining invisible. Basically an improvement over bulky conventional speaker systems that you might want in your car, but you know, they show up. The panel it showed off with it was a tent of an inch thick and weighed 1.4 ounces. Seems like it could be, I don't know, crammed almost anywhere inside a car. In place of voice coils and magnets it uses film like exciters that bounce off display panels and other materials. The tech isn't totally new here. It's just making a step towards practicality. So when he's working on similar technology and LG Display showed off thin speakers and OLED panels back at CES in 2017. Robert, I know you cover the stuff. What do you make of this whole idea of speakers and cars that you don't see? I think it's going to be great if this is something maybe similar or even related to what they did with their OLED television demonstrations where they had actuators behind the screen, so to speak, that would vibrate the screen in such a way as to transform that into a complete speaker itself. Where you could literally transform every square inch of that speaker or of the screen surface itself into something that produced sound very effectively and convincingly. Now, if they could do this within a car, that would open up more spaces say like the headliner or the A pillars in terms of being able to put a effectively a thin film actuator right in there and basically have it produce sound convincingly. This does not sound like it's going to be something that will be producing a lot of bass response per se. So I'm sure they will be tuning that with a subwoofer, a separate subwoofer in effect. But if this can, and here's where I'm kind of curious, is this something that actually it sounds like it does require a surface to be adhered to to transform that surface into a speaker system. And I'm just kind of curious, does that require say a hollow cavity behind that space to make it sound better? I'd like to see some of the actual performance numbers in terms of what sort of sound output depending on the placement of speakers like these. And it's kind of early in the specs are nowhere to be seen yet. But car audio is important and it being able to put more speakers in more places without taking up really any more space. It sounds like a total win-win to me. Yeah, yeah, I think this is this. These are the questions that I expect them to answer either in their press release a week before CES, if not just at CES. Hopefully, right? I'm sure we're going to hear more about this. What do you think about those stretchable displays real quick? I wonder what the use case is going to be. This does not sound like something where I could suddenly have an umbrella that could fold and unfold and create the coolest umbrella ever. It sounds like like they mentioned it would be something that you could target for a specific say like in a car again where you have a corner where you want that whole corner of the trim to be a display. And you could easily flex it enough to make it fit properly without damaging the display. It's a cool demo and I don't think this is going to be anything like a roll up technology per se that they'll have other display technologies for that. But for laying basically offering to OEMs or whoever a way to maybe integrate a display into a space or a confined area that really wouldn't have been practical before. This could be the cool thing. Yeah, I like that. I like the wearables thing. I could see some interesting forms there too, possibly. Well, Wired's Omar L. Galaga wrote a story called It's Time to Make 3D TVs a Thing Again. If you're like, were they ever a thing? Well, 3D TVs were kind of the rage back at CES 2010. But they haven't really got on. And we've had a decade now. Folks didn't seem to want to pay a premium to use a feature. They've required you to wear special glasses so you constantly might lose them in the couch cushions. And you have to pay a lot to replace. There was a lot going on there. In 2017, LG and Sony stopped making 3D TVs. The conventional wisdom at the time was that the combination of cost and inconvenience was pretty much dooming the tech. Ah, we thought it was over until Galaga pointed out a report from A2Z market research predicting that the global 3D TV market will grow 25% between now and 2028. A2Z believes 3D TV will gain alongside VR, starting in research and education settings. And as manufacturing scales, costs will fall and glasses free 3D technologies will become available to consumers. That would at least address the problems of cost and convenience. Sure, but then, Tom, there's the content. 3D movies still show in theaters. The numbers have declined, though, and don't make up big box office numbers. People aren't clamoring to, you know, have that 3D experience when they go to the movies. So what would people want to watch, even if 3D TV was cheap and also easy to access? A2Z research manager, vibe of Dubai, told Wired he thinks that sports is where 3D could take off with consumers. Makes a lot of sense. It would be another step closer to feeling like you're on the game without the hassle of going to the stadium. But there's another hurdle. Yeah, you need the streaming service to show you the game in 3D. If the TV makers add the tech and content providers support the creation, streamers have to offer it to their customers. That means new encoding, new types of streams, new difficulties. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem because streamers likely won't want to pay to build up and support all of that without there being specific demand. Especially now that all those streamers are cutting costs, but the demand's not going to come unless somebody's providing the content. You need something that's going to generate consumer interest. There is a driver of 3D interest from 2010 that's coming back, Avatar. James Cameron's film came out in 2009 and drove a lot of interest in 3D. A lot of those 3D TVs showed Avatar as a way to demonstrate look. It's like the 3D experience you had in the theater, but at home and a sequel to Avatar is coming in December. That may or may not be the spark for a new 3D TV revolution. In fact, it's kind of not what A2Z is saying. But Robert, you lived through the boom and bust of 3D TVs. What do you think? Can 3D TV make a comeback? Absolutely not. It's a complete waste of time to be perfectly honest with you. It went away for a reason. And the 3D in home consumer environments does still exist in the form of many projectors that are available today. And those do require the big bulky infrared-driven glasses or radio-frequency-driven glasses that use liquid crystal shutters. I don't know anybody who's regularly watching this content even with the state-of-the-art projection setup you may have at home already. And like you said, the chicken and the egg problem, what content are you actually going to watch? I think it's far more important that content producers and creators are actually going more for higher resolution and better color quality in terms of 4K formats and HDR and Dolby vision and things like that. Then they are, and they'd be wiser to spend their money in that arena rather than to be pushing it for a scenario that, yeah, you're... Glass is free 3D. I could see that being digital signage. Maybe to catch your eyes you're walking by a counter. But in terms of using that in the classroom or even in the home, I've seen the demos and they're okay. But I would rather have more pixels on the screen. I would rather have a push toward 8K as ridiculous as that practically is at this point. Considering your broadcasters right now for your favorite sports programming, it's so rare to see even 4K today. And here they are trying to push a 3D thing. No, no. Well, to be fair, they aren't. It's A-to-B research saying that they will soon. So I get on paper, this makes perfect sense. You find some enterprise level, you know, medical research facility that makes it. And then the fabrications start to become cheap. And then somebody finds a compelling reason to use it in entertainment. And then it becomes mass market. Maybe it's sports. I feel like what you're arguing though, Robert, is even in sports, people just don't care about 3D. Like it just doesn't matter as much as the picture just looking quality and looking good. One of my favorite use cases for 3D technology of years gone by was where you were using circular polarizers. So at least you didn't need powered glasses. They were really lightweight, really comfortable. And then you could do split viewing where two people could look at the same screen and see completely different things. Two separate feeds in either for gaming scenarios or for dual use scenarios where you and a friend or people just want to share a display with different content being displayed at the same time. That was one area where I felt that it could have expanded, but the cost associated with adding this technology to a modern TV again after it's gone away. I don't see the TV manufacturers going down that route. But if the cost goes down. It would have to be sponsored in some way, much the way like the reason you have certain buttons on your remote nowadays is because they're being paid to put them there. So if it's going to go that route. OK, so if we get rid of cost as a problem, if we get rid of having to have the glasses stuff, if it's like, hey, I can buy a TV for the same price that I would normally buy it, but it'll be able to show 3D. And the content streamers are showing me the World Cup in 3D. Do you think it catches on? That's very, that's a very wishful thinking scenario. I know. I agree. Perhaps. Perhaps. That would be saying there's a chance. Yes. Yes. If you put it that way, I'll say there's a chance. But it would have to be all that stuff. I know. And there's a lot of it really would. It really, really would. I'm much more compelled by higher quality broadcasts at this point in the transition to 4K broadcasting. If you look at the majority of sports programming even today, it barely looks 1080p to me a lot of it. There's so much room for improvement just in terms of how we receive video as it is right now, let alone trying to squeeze 3D back into the picture again. It's great for theaters. It works well in that environment. It used to be kind of a fun thing to play around with when certain streaming sources like I believe Netflix used to actually carry some 3D content. But I don't know. I'm going to go ask young people about people much younger than me to see if they would have any interest in it whatsoever. Because that used to be a popular thing on disc formats. So yeah. How would they ever tell us, Sarah? How could young people ever tell us if they want 3D TV? There's no way for them to get in touch with us. Tom, in fact, you're wrong. There is a really good way. And that would be our email address. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. If you have thoughts on 3D, whether or not it's doomed or whether or not it's going to flourish in the future, do let us know. And we appreciate it. Thank you in advance. It's holiday shopping time around the world. We had Singles Day, although apparently it was kind of a disappointing Singles Day. But still a lot of shopping happened. We have Black Friday coming up here at the end of this week. So of course, TV deals are top of mind from QLED to OLED and 4K to 8K. There are so many big screen TVs to choose from. Thankfully, Robert is here to help us narrow it down. Where should we begin? I think with the room environment that you find yourself typically watching TV in, bright room environments are going to be best served by a TV that can really deliver good light output and a colorful picture. And some of the very best technology I see out there for that very scenario is LCD technology. Samsung is one of the leaders in display technology for LCD displays. And one of my favorite TVs they have out right now is the QN90B. That TV can deliver a couple of thousand nits of light output, literally two or three times the light output of an equivalent sized LCD or an OLED style television. In this case, you're getting that excellent light output. You're getting the superb color quality from quantum dot display technology. The features built in in terms of streaming and because this is their premium 4K TV, you're getting a little extra oomph in the box itself for making that a great experience. They do have a 95B model that actually incorporates an external input box, which is something to consider depending on your particular needs for your home theater setup. But that's something to keep an eye on. It's also like I'm saying, I have an appreciation for the very large screen sizes right now, but everything I'm talking about is available in a range of screen sizes to pick from. And it's all going on sale as we speak. Now, as far as Samsung's best TV of the year, if money were no object, I'm going with their 8K 900B television. This thing is just beautiful. Probably it has the killer specs. It has the wide viewing angle technology, the mini LED backlighting system. It costs a little bit more than most of your TVs out there. But the thing that really stands out to me for this particular set is its physical design. It has next to zero bezel around most of that screen and it just looks beautiful. Now, if those prices are just too much, and I fully understand that, there are some great additional options out there. TCL and Hisense are two companies I adore. TCL has an 85 inch 6 series, which is a new size for that particular series. You can think of their 6 series as a premium design and premium features with a good price. Like in this case, that 85 inch, we're looking at on the screen right there. That's about a thousand bucks less than the 4K Samsung equivalent. And it also provides not only gaming features, that quantum dot color, and it's just a beautiful option at prices that are way more affordable. Right now, that's even a few hundred dollars off as we speak. Again, Hisense on their side of the pricing point in a similar screen size would be the U8H. This is a fantastic TV in terms of absolute performance. It includes that 120 Hertz screen, the Dolby Vision support that a lot of people want for their premium streaming sources. It's also one of the brightest TVs you can currently buy, well in excess of 1500 nits of light output, at a great price, especially when you consider some of the larger screen sizes out there, if that's something you're looking to upgrade toward. Now, if again, if these are all still prices that are still pushing the budget way beyond what they should be, Hisense and TCL both have more affordable options. In the case of Hisense, they have a 5 series TV, which is wonderful for what it is, but its 60 Hertz display maybe isn't as bright, but it does have all the similar features, including a quantum dot color display. But the Hisense U7H is one to keep your eye on if you're really looking to save a little money. 120 Hertz panel, impressively bright, pushing a thousand nits of light output, which competes with the very best OLED televisions out there. And that's one you can just look at and say, you know what, I can get either the big screen or I can get a more affordable smaller screen, but I'm going to get great picture performance anyway out of it. Now, I would say if you have more of a dark room environment or room where light control is available, where you're not dealing with sunlight streaming in or just bright overhead lights and things like that, you really want to be looking at OLED televisions. And one of the most affordable out there really, or one of the best performing ones available today is the LG OLED EVO-C2 panel. This TV is fantastic in terms of not only its performance, this year for the C2 series, it has bumped up the absolute light output. I saw one the other day and it measured brighter than any of the other OLEDs I had measured previously in the C series. And it's available in 42 and 48 inch screen size options if you want to go a little bit smaller. However, if you have the money, go for the G2 panel. That is LG's best in class for 2022. And it's available all the way up to a whopping 97 inch screen size option. Oh my gosh, who even has a wall for an extra inch? Consider this though. That would outperform any projector that's doing a similar sized picture size. So if you were debating between like a high-end projector with the screen in a room where you're going to have some light interference, this is going to give you the contrast, light output and format support that's just going to blow your eyes out in a good way. I mean to the point where you don't need to bring your couch back as much? Totally. I think also for something like if you're talking the largest of screen sizes, that's more of a just to say we can do it for this year, especially the 97 inch given its price size. But if you get into the 83 or even the 77 inch screen sizes for either the C2 or the G2, you're looking at good value, especially with the deals that are currently online right now and through the holiday season. That's something to keep in mind. And honestly, one of the best TVs in terms of just absolute picture quality and if you're a little bit of a video display junkie, consider the quantum dot OLED technology that Samsung Display introduced. They have the Samsung electronics has the S95B, Sony has the A95K. Both of these use the exact same panel from Samsung Display. This incorporates OLED material, but with a quantum dot color converter for absolute color purity. That Sony A95K won the best TV in the most recent shootout for 2022. It is fantastic in terms of just absolute performance. One thing to keep in mind though with those quantum dot OLED televisions is that they're not using a polarizer on the front of the screen and they can be influenced by room lighting. So if you have a strong light source in the room, it can actually make the quantum particles glow when they shouldn't glow and it can actually degrade some of the absolute contrast in the picture a little bit. So be aware it's as much as I love those displays and that is cutting edge brand new technology for this year. It depends on the room environment and for that quantum dot OLED, it's also available only in a 55 and a 65 inch screen size, which may not be what you need. So keep that in mind. I think for 2023 we're going to see the quantum dot OLEDs from probably Sony and Samsung and hopefully others expand in terms of available screen sizes, at least bumping up into the 70s. And smaller than that perhaps we've seen that in the PC display side but we'll see if a TV actually pops up so to speak. Well this is great. If you have, no matter what kind of room you have, no matter what kind of budget you have, Robert's got an option for you. So go if you either listen back to this again or check out the show notes at DailyTechNewShow.com. A lot of folks are going to be watching soccer these days with the World Cup happening on their TV. You might want to pay attention to the ball, right Sarah? Oh my gosh. So University of Lynchburg physics professor John Eric Goff knows more about soccer balls than I ever knew anybody knew. And talk to Ars Technica about the physics of the new soccer ball being used at the 2022 FIFA World Cup going on in Qatar. So every four years the World Cup introduces a new ball and every four years Goff analyzes that ball. Adidas has supplied the World Cup ball since 1970. This has been going on a long time. It was the same design until 2006 in Germany with a new ball called Team Geset. It replaced the 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal panels with 14 smooth synthetic panels that were thermally bonded together. They weren't stitched. This helped keep water out of the interior of the ball. Kind of worked out nicely. Then at the 2010 South Africa World Cup, Adidas shortened the seams, reduced the number of panels on the Jubbalani ball. Goff found that that ball was too smooth overall and had a higher drag coefficient than the 2006 Team Geset ball. Things continued. The World Cup balls for Brazil in 2014. The Brazuca. And Russia in 2018, the Tesla 18, both had six shaped panels. So you might say, all right, they've learned a lot. What the heck is happening with this year's ball? This year's ball is called the Al Rila. And Goff found that at lower speeds, the new ball only lets air hug the surface of the front half of the ball before going off on a laminar flow. At a higher speeds, the air flows back to the back of the ball before separating into chaotic swirls called turbulent flow. Anybody who is a physics major in our audience is going to be like, makes a lot of sense for the rest of us. Well, they're trying to make it better. They're trying to make it better for the soccer players, football players. Yeah, but is this ball faster or slower than the previous ones? That's what all of this is for, right? It's like, this ball is going to move slower. This ball is going to be easier to kick. Well, and I think what's interesting about this is it's not about, like, let's make the ball as fast as possible. That's not really the point of football. I'm calling it football. It's how does this ball, you know, with the obvious, let us say some of everybody playing with it, how does it make the game as pure as possible? And, you know, I'm not sure. I think we're still figuring that out. Well, it sounds like what Goff found, at least according to this technical article, is when airflow transitions from that turbulent to laminar that you were talking about, the drag rises. And so when the ball's in flight, like a big long kick, it'll slow down. So this ball is going to slow down in the air a little more. And that means players have to adjust to that, right? They're used to, oh, if you kick a ball, it's going to get down to the field in, you know, half a second. Well, this one might take three quarters of a second. You end up being offside because you overshot it or something. It's interesting. I'm surprised that the World Cup organization doesn't actually have specs to stipulate, like, how much the drag can be, in a sense, for the ball design. Especially since they seem to be changing the panel shapes and even how they're attached to one another. And that's definitely affecting the overall airflow around the ball. It almost seems like a crapshoot going into any particular World Cup in terms of, you may not be used to this particular characteristic of the ball as you kick it, especially on the longer kicks, I'm thinking. Or if you're into trick shots, or of course they are, but in a sense of, like, how that could affect it in terms of the designs as they change from, not year to year, per se, but it seems like they've changed a lot more than I've realized over the years in terms of just coming up with not only new looks for the ball, but how that influences their characteristics as they fly through the air, per se. Well, Robert Herron, you might not totally understand the physics of soccer, and you would be in good company if you didn't. But one thing you do know is how to talk tech. Let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. Well, I was going to say I'm still on Twitter if anybody else is still there. I'm still there. Me too. I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. Anyway, feel free to look me up at HerronFidelity.com. That's my business website where I take care of basically all the calibration needs throughout the greater Bay Area and around the world. Basically anywhere I'll be dragged to. I also have some good information on there about a lot of the products I talked about today in addition to just some general information about how you can get the most out of your TV right now with the remote control in your very hand. Never be afraid of the tech, folks. It's all good. And the cool thing about all of this TV stuff I talked about is that it gets better every year and there are better options at more prices that people can afford. So don't fear. And we're in that holiday shopping season. Fear not. You're going to get the best price ever right now. We couldn't do this show and have Robert on here to tell you all this great information if we didn't have Michael. Michael is our brand new boss. Yay, Michael. He just started back at his own Patreon. Thank you, Michael, for pitching in and supporting all those people who would love to support us but they just aren't in a position to. If you're the next Michael, head on over to patreon.com. Speaking of patrons, stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. We talk about all the things. But just a reminder, you can catch this show, DTNS is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. 2100 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back talking about AI and why some scientists aren't actually sure how it works. That will be with Andrea Jones-Roy. Don't miss it. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.