 Coming up on DTNS, we're at CES. We're all at CES. You are as well, because CES is virtual. We have everything from a self-docking boat to transparent OLED screens and more. Let's start. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, January 11, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. From the Southern California, I'm the chef's producer of your game. It's OK. You can remember who you are later. We're at CES. It's like that. Joining us to talk about all this stuff, Chris Ashley, host of the SMR podcast. Good to have you back, Chris. Thank you, my friends. And as always, coming in for CES, Peter Wells, freelance journal. It's good to see you too. Good to see you, Tom. We were just actually talking about the virtual CES. We were talking about how it's different, what we remember, what we would normally be doing if we were there in person. Get that wider conversation on good day internet. Before we get to the CES news, though, let's start with a few other tech things you should know. Tencent announced that Nintendo shipped one million Switch consoles in China since launching in the country in December of 2019. According to analysts at NICO Partners, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One combined shipped fewer units over the same period. Nintendo expects to sell 24 million Switch consoles globally for its fiscal year ending in March. Nevada's Redwood materials opened up its enterprise electronics recycling to all consumers. Don't have to be part of an enterprise. Until now, the company has taken old electronics and batteries from companies, their main client being Panasonic. Then they extract things like cobalt, nickel, lithium, and sell those supplies back to companies like Panasonic. Redwood materials would like to expand that, taking in your batteries and electronics and even cables. A Recycle With Us tab has been added to redwoodmaterials.com with an email address to contact if you're interested. Baidu announced it has formed a strategic partnership with the automaker G. Lee to create an independent subsidiary focused on electric vehicle production. G. Lee will be responsible for actual manufacturing of the vehicles with Baidu supplying the software and the tech stack. Baidu has been in development mode on autonomous vehicle technology for several years, launching the Apollo Go Robo Taxi Service across 700 kilometers in Beijing last September. Researchers at Columbia Engineering's Creative Machines Lab have designed a robot that can predict another robot's intent, which is a capability similar to empathy. The robot was able to watch another robot move around between different colored circles and predict which circle it would go to next without knowing anything about that other robot's programming. It was correct, 98 out of 100 times. PC sales are strong, according to IDC, which announced 13% growth in PC sales in 2020 over 2019. Lenovo shipped the most PCs in 2020 followed by HP, Dell, Apple and Acer. Friday afternoon, Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of President Donald Trump for violation of its glorification of violence policy. Twitter cited two tweets. One that said, quote, American patriots will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form. And another that said the president would not be going to the inauguration on January 20th. Twitter said the posts were viewed in the context of how they were, in Twitter's words, being received and interpreted on and off Twitter. None of the tweets from the account are now accessible on Twitter. Twitter also restricted the president from creating new posts on the official US president account at POTUS. All right, we're not gonna talk much more about that, but we are gonna talk a little bit about Parler. Over the weekend, Google and Apple delisted the social network Parler from their app stores for violating app store rules. Both companies say that Parler, in their opinion, does not do enough to moderate violent content. In addition to the app store delistings, AWS Amazon Web Services told Parler that it noticed, quote, a steady increase in violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. Adding, it's clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. AWS terminated hosting of web services for Parler early Monday morning. Parler CEO John Matz told Fox News on Sunday, every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day. The social network will be down indefinitely as most companies that have server capacity to host Parler have declined to do so. Parler has filed a lawsuit against AWS for violation of section one of the Sherman Antitrust Act. They're arguing a type of collusion with Twitter, saying that AWS is doing this to help Twitter and for breach of contract for failure to give 30 day notice of termination. A researcher that goes by Donk underscore NB on Twitter told Gizmodo, she archived 99% of posts from Parler before it went offline. She crawled URLs and was able to obtain deleted and private posts and videos that still included GPS metadata. Most social networks stripped that out before they allow it to get posted. She also was able to obtain information about site admins. We got a lot of CES stuff to get to but we had to touch on this. It's a huge story. And Chris, I'll go to you first real quickly. What's your take on this? So two thoughts. One, hopefully that this situation educates people to understand that private companies have nothing to do with freedom of speech. So hopefully the bigger this gets and people start understanding they can do whatever they want. They own the platform until somebody makes it a utility. Go there. Secondly, a lot of these, there are claims that I just think are just hilarious because on one post, the CEO said, oh, we've got all these businesses clamoring for our business, so we'll be up within a week. And then right after that, he's like, nobody wants to do business with us. And you can't, it's just hilarious to me that they thought this was gonna go uncheck forever. Yeah, I was talking to some folks on Twitter over the weekend about this and really the remedy they would have would be an antitrust lawsuit, which is what they have done. I'm not sure that this particular antitrust lawsuit has a lot of chance of validity. It'd be really hard to show that Twitter and AWS were colluding. The 30-day notice of termination, I don't know what the contract is, but there are most contracts have an out that says you don't have to give 30-day notice if you violate particular terms. And I think that's what Amazon is saying. Peter, what do you think of this? Yeah, AWS, that little suit's not gonna survive at all because AWS does have many, many claims in its terms of service to say that they can kick you off for objectionable material. So I don't think, oh, and that's penny high. I don't think that they're gonna have much of a chance there. Yeah, really, really fascinating to watch from an outsider over the last week. Yeah, so I probably have time to have more to say on this. I'll probably touch on it on my editor's desk this week for patrons and I may make that available to everybody whether you're a patron or not because I know a lot of people have thoughts on this but we have a lot of CES stuff to get to. So if you wanna talk about it some more, join in the conversation on our Discord which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. Coming up next, tech news from CES. Well, LG display loves to show off concepts. Sometimes those concepts become actual products. Sometimes it takes years, but it happens. This year's big one is a 55-inch transparent OLED panel that can be lowered down into its own cabinet. The prototype is shown sitting at the foot of a bed, looks like a hotel room, where it can rise up to view videos without blocking the view of the TV that usually hangs on a wall opposite of the bed in a hotel room anyway. So strange use case, but it's a way to show off the transparency of the new screen. LG displays transparent OLED screens can achieve 40% transparency. The company says it can be moved around in a home that didn't have to sit at the foot of the bed. That's just a use case and might also be useful in restaurants or perhaps on public transportation. This is the first transparent OLED that LG made that's meant for the home. We've seen this kind of thing before, this is a product that's pretty consumer facing. It uses LG's cinematic sound OLED to produce audio from vibrations within the screen itself. That's also used on LG's other CES related prototype which is the 48-inch flexible OLED that can be curved for gaming and then flattened for watching TV. In perhaps more mundane but practical news, LG display will also build a 42-inch panel which could provide a cheaper option for folks who don't need a huge screen. And then an 83-inch OLED, which is pretty big, which seems destined for LG TVs as well as the Sony Bravia because LG makes the Bravia screens. Yeah, that demo video where they showed the TV still on the wall behind the transparent, I think it was meant to show that you could see through the transparent OLED and still see the TV behind it. It's such a weird example though. Yeah, like it's like. Yeah, it was weird. I tell you what. Because it's like, if it's really transparent then you're not gonna be looking through a TV into another TV, it's just a strange, it's, and it just looks, there's a weird floorboard on the bed. I don't know Chris, what do you think? If, so when I first read the story, I struggled to figure out who in the earth is gonna be using this. But the one use case that kind of hit me that I was like, you know what? Could be interesting. If this screen supports input, then instead of going to the restaurants and Home Depot and you see these big street plastics, glass walls that they have up now to limit the airflow between you and the cashier, if you could use that instead or either displaying your purchase or even ringing up your transaction, that would be pretty interesting. Other than that, I'm not sure yet. Every time that, you know, some TV show does future technology, they're always walking around with transparent devices, like, you know, on weeds and Westworld and things like that. And it's always struck me as like, that has to be the worst UI, the worst user experience you could have. Like I'd be constantly like missing my tap targets and things like that. If you could combine that technology with another device, say like a medical device, you could literally, you have a transparent screen, like have it over a patient's body and it could just highlight areas of the body that you, the doctor or physician should be looking at. Like it's your arm, do you have a fracture? You know, you scan it over, it'd be kind of cool. I mean, what's really cool is the technology, not for me, not the TV itself, but the technology that went into it. Because if you could, if you could put it into other devices, then it becomes a lot more. Well, and I don't wanna let us stray too far from the story because transparent OLEDs are not new. LG making transparent OLEDs isn't new. They've made them before other companies make them. What is the CES news here is we're saying, or LG display is saying we could make these for the home. And so that's where it starts to break down. Because you guys are all right. Like there's great uses for this. Even though the restaurant use, when Sarah mentioned restaurant, I was like, oh, I can see that at like sushi shop, right? Where it can show you the different sushi things right in front of you, but you can still see through to see the sushi chef when you're at the counter. I don't know that I need this in my house. The only thing I was thinking, because again, yeah, the bed situation, just, it was just strange. Again, this is not something I'm gonna buy tomorrow, but I was like, yeah, I don't like the way this looks because the cabinet doesn't go away, right? So you've got the screen that can come up. It's like, ooh, nice and fancy, or it can come up partially like, okay, maybe it could be some sort of an interesting second screen for that TV that's behind you where you don't have to hold anything on your lap or you just kind of need a remote or whatever. But it has to go into a place. So even if you can wheel it around your house, it's like, well, now you have this sort of bulky piece of furniture, whether you're using it in the screen or not, I feel like we're getting somewhere. But yeah, I was really struggling to feel like, where would this really come any handy in my home? Yeah, maybe in the screen door. Yeah, I don't think they mean you could wheel it around from room to room all the time. It's more like, well, you could put it somewhere else. Right, it doesn't have to. It's not connected to the bed. But even then, like sunlight getting through, like I don't want to put a TV in my actual window. I won't be able to see any of the dark scenes. Like, I don't know, I don't know. It's good for a lot of things, I'm sure. And that's why you announced that it's CES to see what people want it for. So let us know, feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. All right, let's talk about LG Electronics. That's the company that makes phones and TVs and such different from LG Display. LG took the virtual CES label literally and used a virtual human named Ria Keem to promote some of his products during its announcements. Keem wore a hoodie that said Stay Punk Forever and talked about how she wished she could get back to traveling around the world, which was annoying to me because she's a virtual person. And so she is one of the few who could actually travel wherever she wants right now. Anyway, she transformed into an LG Chloe UVC robot that uses UV light to disinfect surfaces and carried on with the announcement. What else was in that announcement? Well, LG showed off its rollable phone again, which we learned last year at CES and it done rolls from a standard form factor to a tablet. The news this year is that it has a name, LG Rollable. Now, CNET's reporting that their sources say LG plans to release the phone later this year, but for now it's officially still just a concept. LG announced a new TV sound bar in all in one designs, actually several of them, the QP5 Eclair, 11.7 inches wide with dedicated Dolby Atmos speakers and a wireless subwoofer that's coming in June or July. The SP7 includes tuning by Meridian and DTS Virtual X as 140 watts and the high end SP119 and eight models come with Google and Amazon voice assistance and Chromecast and Airplay. LG also announced new OLED TVs, top of the line Z1 series now adds a 77 inch 8K model to the one we announced last year at CES, the 888 Winch one. The G1 series now includes the EVO panel. Those are panels that add a new layer of green for extra brightness. The remotes on the Z and G series now have dedicated buttons for Amazon and Google and LG voice assistance. And the C series added an 83 inch model and upgraded the processors. LG also has changed the name of its entry level series from the B1 series to the A1 series. A few other things in the TV line, a redesigned home screen for WebOS with personalized recommendations. Option to get the GCNA series with a tripod stand and game optimizer software now has one millisecond response time, low input lag and a lot of the models have four HDMI 2.1 ports. But speaking of games, LG confirmed that later this year some of its TVs will support the cloud gaming services Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now. The services will come to all 2021 OLED QNED and NanoCell TVs with Stadia available in the second half of the year and GeForce Now to follow. Chris, I know you keep an eye on this sort of stuff. Do you have a take on that? Yeah, so let me start with the backwards. I don't know anybody that plays Google Stadia, not a single person in my circle. So, you know, including in the TV, I don't know about that. Now the one millisecond aspect for gaming, super interesting because anything you can do to increase response time, definitely gonna allow you to, you know, be a little bit more competitive. The rest of it is interesting. So I just recently started doing some more upgrades around the house, around home automation and getting more into Apple HomeKit and all that stuff. So the idea of putting the voice in the remote control, I don't like that. It should have built it into the TV because one thing I don't want is if I want to tell one of the clients something, I don't want to have to go pick up the remote to do. I just want to say it, you know, the way it works today in most youth cases. So that I think is a kind of a bit of a mess. But other than that, the TV sounds very interesting and the one millisecond portion of it, super interesting as well. But I'd like to see some more around home automation in these things. Peter, what about you? Well, add me to the people who don't own a Stadia, but also, yeah, look, I don't mind the remote for Google Assistant. I know LG used to make a big deal last year about the fact that they wanted their users to know when their device was listening to them or not. And so that was part of their selling point was, like, this is a choice that you're gonna make. So I can kind of see where they're coming from there. But yeah, no, I've got Google Assistant built into my soundbar and it's fantastic. I would highly recommend getting, if you've gone down that pathway of adding some more stuff. Hello, boy. Sorry, one second. Darrell, what were you gonna say? So a couple of things. First of all, I really want that G1 TV. Don't know exactly what the price is gonna be, but we were looking at something around like $30,000 for something comparable for the 88 inch, I think it was last year. So probably not happening until I save up a few more coins. The other thing, and this is a little one, the tripod stand, when you look at it in the mockups that I've seen, I'm like, oh yeah, that's kind of, it's very, it's trendy to kind of have those very thin, okay, you've got the little legs, you don't have this big old media cabinet under your TV type thing, but realistically, where is your cable management going? There's no way that you can have a stand like that that isn't gonna look like garbage unless then you throw a vase under the tripod stand and like hide all your cables. I don't get it. Yeah, wireless, wireless HDMI, I guess, I don't know. Now the phone is on a whole different level for me. Honestly, I find that these guys are going the wrong direction when it comes to these rollable phones and these flip phones, and I continually look to reduce my footprint when traveling and having these devices, I would much rather them shrink the technology into a watch and then allow me to just carry a tablet. And then before we started out with the watches being able to connect to the phone to add, those cell services and stuff like that, they should switch it around and allow the tablets to connect to the watch to allow the cell services and then allow me to use the tablet and then my device, having these little gadgets and holding out is just too many areas where something can go wrong and can break. And I would rather hold that thought Chris Ashley, there is more where that came from later in the show. It's not going to get better for you as far as that goes. Well, in the smart home appliances section of CES, Samsung, always a front runner. Right now we've got a family hub fridge. Looks pretty nice. Offers a large touchscreen with a cleaner UI than predecessors and the usual camera to see what's in the fridge, without having to open the door. 25 watt speakers, because you want to bump music out of your fridge and software for meal planning and also automated grocery ordering. But it's focused on things like meal planning, including a displayed calendar of planned meals, recipe storage, it can also provide guiding cooking instructions through its speakers. So you got to really want to use it, but if I suppose that's something that you want, then Samsung's trying to give it all to you. I mean, we've seen this fridge a million times, right? What's new is the software, and I think that's actually what it needed. More features that you don't know what to do with aren't going to sell these fridges, but telling me like, hey, it can actually help you cook, it can help you plan your meals and then order your ingredients through your groceries. All right, now you're starting to make something that's a little more compelling. I reckon more people have bought a Google Stadia than have ever bought a smart fridge in their lifetime. I cannot believe that they still make this product. Like just give it up already. Like stick an iPad to your fridge and be done with it. Like this is, it's such a pathetic, I don't know. I find them so strange, such a strange product that it's like, you know, getting a gold Apple watch. You know, what's the point? Like the software is going to be out of date in two years. Because it looks so cool, Peter. Yeah, focus on something else. I don't know, focus on getting a piece of glass that can be updated all the time rather than an entire fridge. I will say though, when I started playing around with the June oven back, gosh, almost a year ago for a Live With It segment, and that is not a fridge, but it's an oven that has a real nice smart panel and connects to apps. And there are a lot of things that I was like, this seems a little silly, but let's give it a whirl. And I still use it every day. And I look at my oven like, God, I wish my oven had something like this. That's just a little bit more intuitive, you know, with cameras and sensors. Once you have it, you're like, this isn't actually all bad. It can come in real handy, but again, you have to be dedicated to it. And if it's just going to be an expensive fridge that you don't use, then it's not worth it. You know, the one thing I would love for my kitchen, tech-wise, would be a barcode scanner. Just so that as I'm unloading my groceries into the pantry and into the fridge, I can just zap like what I've got. So I know at all times what ingredients I have on hand. But that's probably the oldest, widest thing I've said in a long time. I think these guys continually missed a mark on some of this stuff. And again, like stop trying to force everybody into your platform. I know it's where, you know, you've seen a lot of people in, but people already are not up taking your refrigerator as far as I've seen. And I recently, I looked at this thing for like 7.5 seconds and I was like, no, I'll just go with the regular. And honestly, I got a Samsung refrigerator and the best feature on it is the water because it goes into a container, a pitcher, as opposed to coming directly out into the glass. Best feature was the lowest tech piece of the whole thing. But, you know, if they had did something like where, you know, we can tie in your, this refrigerator with, you know, food, calorie counting applications like what is the one that's on the armor, on the armor butt. Anyway, it doesn't matter, I'll think of it in a second. But either, or if they tied in like, you know, the refrigerator or in food with like one of these existing meal prep services that can, you know, that would have been much more compelling than, oh yeah, we can tell you what you need. Most people don't even know how to cook. So what are you doing? You know, with this, you know, give them this. Oh, it's supposed to help. Well, real quick. Samsung also announced a Galaxy upcycling at home that lets people use older Galaxy smartphones as smart home devices. A software update lets users choose from functions like a baby monitor or an ambient light sensor for automatically turning on your smart lights and the like. The Jetbot 90 AI plus robot vacuum combines LiDAR sensors with cameras using Intel on device image recognition to identify objects down to five nanometers and then adjust how it cleans or avoids them. But Samsung did not stop at robot vacuums. No, sir. Samsung also showed an update to Bot Care which is a robotic assistant and companion. It was first seen at CES back in 2019. Samsung showed Bot Care automatically opening up a screen for a video call. That's just one option. The company also showed off Bot Handy meant to be an extension of you in the kitchen or the living room or anywhere else. You might need an extra hand in your home. The tall, thin, black and white robot has two large digital eyes. You might think it's cute. You might not with a single arm that can pivot like a shoulder or an elbow or a wrist shown picking up laundry or loading the dishwasher, setting the table, pouring wine, moves around on a rolling base kind of Johnny Five style. But we don't have a word on how close it is to production. So that's called the prototype for now. I mean, it's a prototype. This is great CES stuff. It's not coming to our house anytime soon. It looks like somebody put a giant PS5 on top of a Roomba. Although I will say as somebody who had a shoulder injury, which isn't like 100%, but like it was really bad like a month ago. This, you know, I'm like, oh, yeah, all of these things sound so great. Once you actually have any mobility issues, it's not just like, now I don't want to do my laundry. It's like actually really helpful. Right. You need somebody to pour that wine. You're right. I'm injured or not. I'm going to have my Reno. Yeah, I'm good with the robot waking me up and staring me with two glowing eyes. I'm cool on that. That's not going to his concern. But by far the coolest thing that I thought was the recycling of old phones, because as a guy and most I'm sure most people that listen to this podcast used to buy that new hotness every single year. I got a ton of phones laying around. And recently I bought a Raspberry Pi device to help with the home automation and being able to use a phone instead of having to go out and buy a device like that to do these type of internet of things would have been fantastic use of technology. And so that is by far the most exciting thing I've heard so far. Yeah, it's nice of you not to do it yourself. All right, let's get to the TCL announcements. TCL announced Next Paper, NXT Paper, an 8.88 inch tablet that uses a full color reflective display with no backlight. So it's part E ink, but it's not E ink. It's LCD. TCL claims the 1440 by 1080 display reduces eye strain, is 65% more power efficient than a traditional LCD with better contrast than E ink. Tablet runs Android 10 and also includes an 8 megapixel rear facing and 5 megapixel front facing camera, 5,500 milliamp hour battery, Wi-Fi, 4G modem. The Next Paper ships, it has a date in April 2021 for 349 euros in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. Now I'm not a ton to say about this, but it's interesting to see an LCD that has the E paper type features to it. So you get some of those benefits of LCD, but also the power efficiency and the eye strain reduction of E paper. Interesting if they would be able to use this for like in-home learning in classes and stuff like, especially with what's going on right now. So you have to reduce, you know, just the black and white with the E ink view. You have the camera so you can have, you know, that interaction between the student and the teacher, but then it's perfectly lined up to do a book text and stuff like that. That's where I would see something like this and you know, it's kind of interesting. TCL announced its TCL wearable display will come out this year. It offers two full HD OLED displays for a 140 degree view and a small processor to run the screens drawing power from a USB-C connection. It's designed to be worn over your regular glasses. TCL says a US bundle will include a phone and content subscription. This is just like a wearable monitor for your phone basically. This is very cool. You know, at first when they started doing the whole Google glasses and stuff, like I certainly poo pooed it with everybody else, but you know, as you, you know, see other use cases, you know, museums, you know, put this little thing over top of your glasses and now you're getting extra information about the exhibits that you're looking at, you know, cheating on the test, you know, you're getting the answer right on your glasses. You know, why not? Secretly sending messages over WhatsApp. Yeah. TCL also said it will release at least five new phones this year and announced the TCL 25G and the 20SE. The 5G runs on the new Snapdragon 695G supporting sub six gigahertz 5G available in Italy now with a broader launch in early 2021 for 299 euros and the 20SE uses a Snapdragon 460 chipset, even cheaper at 149 euros. TCL also announced the Alto R1. It's first soundbar built on the wireless Roku TV ready spec. So with a TCL TV running Roku, you can hook this up much easier coming out later 2021. TV wise, TCL is launching its third generation mini LED backlighting. They're calling that OD zero. That is named zero because there are zero millimeters between the backlight layer and the LCD panel. TCL also announced 85 inch TVs and a QLED version with 120 Hertz HDMI input support and announced it will release a TV running the new Google TV operating system later this year. Any quick thoughts on the TVs? Yeah. I mean, I think we're gonna see a lot of mini LEDs this year and it seems like everyone that isn't LG are going to be saying that that is going to be the new standard, the new hotness when it comes to TV displays. So it'll be interesting to see how that actually pans out. Where I haven't seen any pricing yet for this TCL and I'd be really interested to see where these manufacturers are going to say mini LED fits in that price realm. Is it gonna be closer to the LCD side of things or is it gonna be closer to the high end premium QLED side? And here's the thing I was telling you to hold on for Chris Ashley. Prototype 17 inch rollable printed OLED display pulls open like a scroll. It's nice and compact. You just throw it in your bag like you would a little tube and then you open it up. You have a 17 inch rollable display. TCL thinks it might be useful for things like maps while you're out on a hike or Mike, because you need a 17 inch map on a hike. Top of the battery runs out. Could also be used in TVs, foldables and commercial displays. Hey, more power to them if they can get people to do this. But again, I could just imagine having this roll out and then all of a sudden the battery dies and you're just like, yeah, we're stuck. Again, I'm good. Shrink the technology, put it in something smaller, easy to carry and then allow me to use a tablet. I'm good. I mean, I love the idea of this. I just, and this is just because I've had so many things break. It's like anything that needs to be rolled regularly just sounds like something that's going to break easily. The first time you unroll it, the countdown begins. That's right. All right, let's run through some of the other interesting CES related announcements of which there were many. Tom Qualcomm is up. Qualcomm announced the 3D Sonic Sensor Gen2 in-screen ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, supposedly 50% faster than the previous version, covers 70% more area. That was the big complaint. It's now eight millimeters by eight millimeters, which is not quite the size of most fingerprints, but it's closer than the previous nine by four millimeters. Samsung will likely include it. They've included the previous version. So the next Galaxy S21 is expected to be announced on the 14th, we'll probably see it in that. However, most Android phones use optical in-screen fingerprint readers from Synaptics or maybe Goodix. An AR land Lenovo launched augmented reality glasses called Think Reality A3 for 3D visualization, also guided workflow, comes as a chunky set of glasses or in more durable industrial frames, depending on what you need it for. Running a Snapdragon XR1 system on a chip and can show up to five virtual 1080p displays at once, also has an eight megapixel camera for streaming, 1080p video, as well as a dual fisheye lens for room-scale tracking. The Think Reality A3 needs to be connected to a Windows PC or a Motorola smartphone with an 800 series or better Snapdragon processor in order to run it effectively. The smartphone-based model is meant for hands-free industrial uses and available in select markets worldwide in mid-2021. This and the TCL announcement about the wearable display make me think that we're seeing a trend here, right, of the wearable display as a replacement for multiple monitors. Be interesting. It's Microsoft, once again, way too early to the party, but in these limited use cases, I could definitely see some cool stuff with it, for sure. Speaking of Microsoft, Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 7 Plus running on 11th Gen Intel processors with optional LTE advanced. If you get the i5 models, not available in the i7 or the i3. All the models, though, include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, and Dolby Atmos stereo, up to 32 gigabytes of RAM and one terabyte of removable internal storage, up to that. Microsoft claims battery life of up to 15 hours with fast charging capabilities that would add 80% of capacity in one hour. The i5 and i7 versions include Intel Iris Z graphics. Prices range from $899 for the base model, up to $2,799 fully tricked out. Shipping starts January 15th to the US, followed by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Europe shortly thereafter. So not quite the Surface Pro 8 everybody was kind of looking for, but an upgrade of last year's model. Probably the most interesting thing that they mentioned on this release is the fact that the hard drive will be removable. That's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, and it's the same way they've done it on other Surface models in the past, right? It's really easy to remove it. They also didn't reduce the bezels because they say they want it to look standard to everybody else in your company that has an older Surface. OnePlus announced the OnePlus Band, which is a low-cost fitness wearable with a 1.1 inch OLED display that offers heart rate and blood oxygen saturation monitors, fitness and sleep tracking, and a two-week battery life. Pretty good, two weeks. Other features include the 13 exercise modes, IP68 rated for water and dust resistance, with it included a silicone watch strap. The OnePlus Band supports Android at launch with iOS support to be added sometime in the future, launching first in India on January 13th for 2,499 rupees, which is about 34 US dollars. A global release, not announced. All right, well, sounds good. I'm moving to get it. Western Digital announced a line of four terabyte solid state drives. That's not four one terabyte drives. They announced an entire line of drives that have four terabytes, starting at 680 dollars. The drives are compatible with the Xbox Series X, but don't get too excited. They don't work with Microsoft's Velocity architecture yet, meaning you can use them for the space, but you're not gonna get the higher speed riding in the seamless integration. The cheapest of the four terabyte drives is the $680 My Passport, with 1,050 megabyte per second read-write speed coming by the end of March. Top of the line is the $900 SanDisk Extreme Pro, with 2,000 megabyte per second read-write speeds coming at the end of February. Four terabyte drives. Amazing. Yeah, 680s, I don't know. I mean, four terabytes is- It's a four terabyte of hotness. Yeah, HP announced two, go ahead. I just, I love nerding out. That's one of the things that I miss the most about CES, is just going to like the South Hall and things like that and just nerding out at all of the weird stuff that you find down there. I mean, I don't know. Four terabytes, it will come in handy. I remember an old CES where I saw a gigabyte flash drive, or a thumb drive, and I was like, whoa. Oh, the first time I saw like a 512 gigabyte 6-tero drive, I was like, this is insane, I'll never use it. Yeah, those were the days. HP announced two models in its Dragonfly laptop family, the Dragonfly Max and Dragonfly G2. Both laptops offer a thin and light 13.3 inch design on the 11th gen Intel processors and support up to 32 gigabytes of memory and can be optioned with 4G or 5G, also with tile trackers integrated into the WLAN module. The G2 weighs in at 2.2 pounds, the Max is a bit heavier at 2.46 pounds with Windows Hello support, also a mechanical privacy shutter. Both come out in January. How about that, right around the corner? The Dragonfly Max comes bundled with HP's new Elite, rather wireless earbuds. Yeah, they also updated their leather Envy model. If you're into that, if you wanna just look cool when you pull out your Envy. Yeah, so it rains. The 3D printing company Form Labs worked with Rio Grande and the Gemological Institute of America to develop a new version of its castable wax designed for lost wax casting, which is capable of intricate detail. So this is printing the cast that then you make the rings out of. Castable wax 40 is 3D printable resin made up of 40% wax, letting designers create fine details in large structures, like the writing on a class ring, for instance. In the announcement, Form Labs made the prediction that quote, the next era of 3D printing won't be driven by hardware, but by materials. Pretty cool. A lot of challenges in using wax for printing. So this is a pretty big advancement here. If you're a creative professional, LG would like to market to you a new monitor. You announced the 31.5 inch 4K ultra fine OLED Pro monitor with individual dimming on all 8 million plus pixels. Also covers 99% of the DCI P3 and Adobe RGB color spectrum and has a million to one contrast ratio. All right, it's CES, it's time to do a router roundup. Router roundup. TP-Link announced its first routers with support for Wi-Fi 6E, which adds the six gigahertz band to the existing 2.4 and five gigahertz connections. The Deco X96 and X76 plus are both tri-band mesh routers. They use the six gigahertz band to communicate between the base stations. TP-Link's Archer, AX96 and 206 are tri-band routers, but not mesh. So the six gigahertz band can be used by individual devices. The Deco voice X20 is a Wi-Fi 6, not 6E, mesh router, and also a smart speaker that supports Amazon voice. The Deco X85G both acts as a 5G gateway and a Wi-Fi 6 router. I've recently switched to mesh network. I'm never going back. So that's the minimum is gotta support mesh. Yeah, especially if you've got, I've got like 12 smart globes in my house. It's a very small place, so I don't really need that many. But yeah, once your network gets crowded with a lot of things talking to the internet constantly like a dripping tap, then yeah, mesh is the only way to handle it. I've had to throw out a bunch of different routers that I've been testing because of that. Linksys also announced an update to its Linksys aware system that monitors changes in Wi-Fi radio broadcasts to detect motion. The update lets it also use connected smart home products connections to increase area of coverage and also accuracy. This also lets the system report whether the motion was detected near a specific device such as an Apple TV. The update is rolling out in the US in March or April, somewhere between the two, with the rest of the world in the months following. Linksys also announced a mesh router system that supports Wi-Fi 6E. This is the rage, everybody. Come in spring or summer for $499.99 for a single station. And Netgear announced its first Wi-Fi 6E router. It can deliver gigabit or faster speeds with a total throughput of 10.8 gigabits per second. That's total not per device. It can handle two to 2.5 gigabits per second over wired connections. Also, it looks like a man array. It'll cost $599.99. Netgear also announced an unlocked version of its M5 5G mobile Wi-Fi 6 hotspot coming to North America in the first half of the year. And that is the router roundup. Router roundup. Oh, the hits keep on coming though. Hisense announced a range of laser projection TVs that claim to meet 100% of the BT 2020 color standard, a key element of the broadcast 4K standard. Hisense claims that its new Tri-Chroma laser TVs offer 50% better color than high-end cinema. Wow. The brightness of 430 nits. Model shown include a limited edition 100-inch L9 Pro, a 75-inch model, and a self-rising laser TV which unrolls from a base. No price, no availability, but they're big and they look pretty nice. These things look fantastic. I remember the Hisense TVs last year that they had the same kind of projection ones and my son is yelling were just incredible. The screen quality was beautiful on those. And yeah, I reckon Hisense actually is one of those bang for buck TVs out there. I might have a second. Yeah, no problem, man, I appreciate it. If you're having a hard time making sense at all the TV stuff, by the way, Robert Herron and Patrick Norton will be on the show tomorrow to kind of help us wrap our heads around it. Alarm.com introduced a smart doorbell that doesn't have a button. It's being pitched as COVID safe, though keep in mind doorbell touching is not thought to be a common vector of transmission. However, it does mean that anybody who stands on the included door mat will be detected automatically by the device and the doorbell will ring. They don't need to press anything. There are even instructions printed on the doorbell device itself that people will be expecting to touch. They'll see the instructions and they'll be like, oh, I just need to step on the mat. Available now through installation partners for less than $200. Well, this is kind of interesting. I'm a big fan of home alarm systems that you install. I think they could have just went with a gesture and that would have been perfect instead of adding another device to it and probably would have been able to bring that cost down. But interesting nonetheless, even though COVID's probably not gonna spread through it, I clean my doorbell on a regular basis because people are touching it. It's true. A lot of people feel the same way as you do, for sure. Volvo subsidiary Penta announced that its autonomous boat docking system is now commercially available. The integrated assist docking takes into account winds and tide along with data from GPS and onboard sensors. The boat's pilot just points the stick in the general direction of where they wanna dock and it's supposed to do the rest. The feature will be available this spring for existing Volvo Penta. Motor yachts between 35 and 120 feet. Oh, my motor yacht is in that range. Yeah, my yachts look slightly smaller than that. Yeah, mine's zero feet. How long is yours? Mine's negative 50. It's just a pipe dream, really. No, this is really cool. All jokes aside, this is difficult, way more difficult than some of the other automation that's been done for cars, so good stuff. Chamberlain. Oh yeah, go ahead, Chris. I'm down to rafts and blow up boats and we'll all be able to play. And trickle down. Chamberlain build a smart dog door called the MyQ Pet Portal with two 1080p cameras, infrared and light touch safety sensors, microphones and speakers, connecting to a Bluetooth low-energy beacon for a dog collar. Door opens after a few seconds of your pet sitting there asking nicely and then seals and locks when it's not in use. Proverter start today for a mere $3,000. Now, the price is ludicrous, but I gotta say, and listen, I've seen enough TikTok videos to know that a pet pig could also take advantage of this. People got monkeys and raccoons, live it in their homes now, but the whole idea of having a doggy door or a pet door in general that is smart enough to allow your pet to go in and out, to give you a lot of ideas of when that's happening and to also not be this kind of hole in your wall the rest of the time where you don't wanna posse them, just kinda coming in and sniffing around your house when you're not around. If the price came down, I would want this very much. I loved every word of this until you got the price. Yeah, absolutely. This is gonna be that thing that, you know, Sony and Samsung are gonna be looking at themselves saying, we spent all this money and all anyone is talking about is that doggy door, because it's just gonna make great TV, it's gonna look cute, but yeah, $3,000, what the hell? Lutron announced the IP65 rated Casita Outdoor Smart Plug, certified to withstand heavy rain, also snow and dust, and temperatures from negative four to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So big range there. Integrates with Lutron's app, Amazon HomeKit Google Assistant and Ring Devices comes out in late March for $80. Super interested in that, because I'm an Insta on guy and they haven't added a new device in years. So I've been looking for possible replacements if I need to replace something and this Casita line is one that's available with HomeKit. So yeah, super interested in that for my show. And then last bit of CES news for today, Moen announced a remote sump pump monitor connects to your existing sump pump and tracks water levels, performance, power loss, humidity, temperature leaks and Wi-Fi status, and then sends your phone an alert if it checks any problems with any of that, launches in the second half of 2021. Very slick. All right, let's check in with what's happening in the UK with Nate Langson. Thanks guys and happy new year. What a year last year was, I'm sure this year will be better. And to start the year off in a good way, I have deleted WhatsApp completely fully. And well, it caused an argument, let's say, and you can hear part of the argument that I have with my brother, who also happens to be a technology journalist on this week's text message. That's episode 226. It'd be great to have you on board as a listener this year and you can get started by going to uktechshow.com and listening to our latest episode. Thank you, Nate. Those Langsons. Hey, if you have feedback on anything that we talked about today, anything that you might be monitoring at CES that you wanna talk about with us, questions, comments, all that good stuff, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send those emails. We'd like to shout out patrons at our master and grand master levels today. They include Dustin Campbell, Andrew Bradley and Brad, just Brad. Also thanks to Chris Ashley for being with us today. Chris, where can people find your work? Oh, you can definitely come check us out. Me and the homies on SMR podcast. We record every single week that we can. Have a great time talking tech, get a little personal sometimes. You never know what you can hear. You can hear how to make a new cutting board, how to cook a brisket or you can hear some interesting conversation around tech, so come check us out. It truly is. It's the podcast that does it all. One of my favorites. Also thanks to Peter Wells. Peter, where can people keep up with your work? Yeah, so you head on over to thehelpdesk.com.au that is a daily tech podcast, funnily enough, but it is more of an Australian bent, obviously. And but quite often most of the stories are still coming out of the States. We just take an outside of you of it. Go check it out. Look with the text message, the helpdesk SMR podcast of this show. You'll cover it all, my friends. If you need a little more explanation though on tech topics in particular, feel like what is Wi-Fi 6E? How does this 5G stuff work? I've been hearing a lot about section 230. Go find out our related show, Know a Little More at knowaittlemore.com. We're live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. There's a lot more CES to come. So we're gonna be back at it tomorrow. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live if you'd like to join us live. Back tomorrow with Robert Herron and Patrick Norton. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.