 Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, the listener listening to me right now, or you can't hear what I'm saying, so I win. Thanks to all of you, including Tim Ashman, Johnny Hernandez, Hi Tech Oki, and new patrons, Ian, aka Lurkyo and Jay. On this episode of DTNS, more details on how to spend $3,500 on an Apple Vision Pro, and Robert Herron helps us determine what really was the best of CES in TVs and more. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, January 12th, ooh, Friday the 12th, 2024. Back in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. You really haven't had a ton for a while, Tom. From Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. Draw on the top tech stories from Cleveland, home of the AFC North wildcard, Cleveland Browns, I'm Len Perle. I'm the show's producer, Roger and AFC wildcard, Robert Herron, home theater and TV calibration expert joining us as well. Congratulations, Robert. Oh, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to be here. It's good to have you back, man. It's almost become a tradition at the very end of the CES week. We got to check in with Robert on the big TVs, so thank you for being here to do that, and thank you for looking at all the TVs. It was my pleasure. I love actually checking it out and getting the taste of basically what's coming up for the rest of the year and a peek into the future in some cases, which is really why I'm there. All right, we're going to circle back on that, but let's start with the quick hits. In an app store, real money games let you bet and win real money, like DraftKings, for example. Google has only allowed such games in its app store if they're regulated by local governments, but the company says it will now allow real money games that are legal, but not regulated, like a raffle for a toaster or something like that. Google said that the expansion of real money gaming will start in India, Brazil, and Mexico starting in June with rollouts in more countries in the future. Casey Newton's platformer newsletter is a moving on from Stubstack to Ghost for its delivery and management with the first issue being sent from the new host coming Tuesday, January 16th. Newton says readers should probably not notice anything different on their end. Newton had identified seven publications with objectionable content hosted on Stubstack. Stubstack removed six of those for violations of its policies, but not all of them. And the reasoning behind it is probably not satisfactory, which is another reason that Newton is moving. And probably another reason is that Stubstack apparently leaked conversations with Newton to other publications. So he's probably not happy about that. But in the end, Newton said that platformer's readers made it clear that the publication should leave Stubstack, so he's going with his audience. He's not alone. One of my favorite other Stubstack publications, Garbage Day, if any of you subscribed to that, also going to Ghost seems like a bit of a wave. In its latest dev channel preview, Microsoft is testing out launching co-pilot automatically when Windows 11 starts. The company says the AI powered assistant will launch on widescreen devices upon Windows startup, rather. But it didn't actually say what a widescreen is or how that's defined. Feedback from the dev channel preview presumably will help determine whether a broader rule out is going to follow. Tom Coates co-founded a decentralized app called Planetary. He posted about his meeting with him and other folks with Meta's threads team back in December. You may have heard some Scuttlebud about, oh, these people are having a secret meeting. Well, he's spilling the tea about it. Right now, threads post from a small number of accounts appear on Mastodon clients, which has made Instagram head Adam Moseri, the second most followed account on Mastodon behind the official Mastodon account. Coates says during that meeting, he was told that sometime in early 2024, they planned to let replies posted on Mastodon servers to those posts from the included accounts become visible on threads. Later this year, users will be able to follow Mastodon accounts from within threads and full interoperability is planned, though they didn't give any details or a firm date on that. They also didn't describe how the threads algorithm would treat any of those posts from Mastodon or any other Fediverse content. But Coates did say that multiple people in that meeting told him that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes threads should eventually become totally open. BMW and Vallejo demonstrated a remote valet system using existing car technology. So there's no actual autonomous algorithms here, no sensors either. BMW has wifi and the ability to drive by wire. So combining them with a 360 degree camera to let a person in a remote rig somewhere park the car for you. No beacons, no mapping, no extra stuff needed. The BMW IX they demonstrated at CES has driver assistance features that came into play as well to help the remote driver avoid obstacles, get into the parking space more easily. Speed is maxed out at six miles per hour. So if this is going to be at your nearest valet-enabled restaurant, it's not going to go all that fast. And of course, there are still a lot of questions yet to be addressed about how you might vet the remote drivers. Are they good at this? No word on official production either. Indeed, that's interesting. And that is a look at our quick hits. So for many years now, Engadget has awarded the best of CES awards. There's so much stuff. So you might as well try to put them in some categories. Every year it chooses close to a dozen of those awards, a best of show, usually a People's Choice Award, stuff like that. This year it did away with pretty much all categories and just shared a list of what it thought were great products and one best in show. So let's see what they picked and where we stand on these choices. Yeah, I have a feeling that they're never going to do categories again because instead of arguing over what category stuff falls in, they just picked stuff they thought was good. And I think they did a great job. I have some differences of opinion, but we all will. Let's go through these one by one. Robert and Sarah, tell me what you think of each of these picks. Let's start with one of the things I saw at CES and veiled right off the bat on Sunday, the withings BMO, that's that $250 stick. You can like point at your head. It combines body temp, electrocardiogram, oximeter, digital stethoscope and collect a bunch of data and then share it with your doctor. What do you think belong on the list? I like it. I think that especially compared to something really expensive, like say an Apple watch that would be able to do some of that functionality. And the only thing kind of missing really is like if you needed some sort of monitoring or testing while you're sleeping, maybe, but otherwise, I think that's a good price for something that does quite a bit that could help somebody that needs to track some of that information for your personal health. Yeah, I agree. I mean, with so many things that are cool, yet frivolous at CES, something like this, if you do need to share this kind of stuff with your doctor on a regular basis, or even just, you know, for the first time, it's not that expensive. My gut feeling is we're going to not hear about this two years later. I don't know why. And maybe the BMO could help me diagnose a gut problem. That's why I feel like that. But that's, I don't know, but I just have an instinct that this is, this is not going to stick around for some reason, but I don't have any rational reason for it. They're so used to wearables already type stuff? Or yeah, or it's just like, oh, that's great, but I don't need it kind of situation. Yeah, I think if you need it, you know, otherwise, you're kind of like, well, I mean, not necessarily the gift you give to somebody who's perfectly healthy. Now, this one I do think is great. And I think this would be a contender for my own best of the gyro gear gyro glove. It's a gyroscope enabled glove that can counteract hand tremors, particularly for a disease like Parkinson's that is registered as a medical device in the US and Australia and available, you can get it. And the company is already in talks with insurance companies about covering the cost of it. So this is a winner to me. Oh yeah, 100%. I have a very good friend of mine's mother has advanced Parkinson's and is on quite a regimen of medicine. I know that this does not replace the drugs that you might have to take for your condition overall. But yeah, I think getting this from sort of a, well, it's in a, you know, early test and who knows when somebody who really needs it might get it. I mean, we're already far enough along that I think this is going to be helping out people sooner than later. A stabilization system for your limbs, so to speak. And I think it'd be pretty cool, especially if something like being able to rest your hand on a physical object would help you in terms of maintaining stability, having just a device that you could wear effectively provides some of that same functionality would be a, I don't know, it can't hurt. And it would be cool to let people experiment with it and see where it goes. My suspicion on the next one is that the laptop editor is very assertive in these meetings because the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, a very sleek gaming laptop top of the line specs, AMD Ryzen 8000 processors, optional NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU. This is on the best of list. Oh, it deserves it. That was a fun introduction they gave at CES for that laptop in particular. It has the gaming functionality built into it, but on the back of the display, there's actually kind of a cool LED graphic that can be automated or animated to provide some extra flash to it, but you can turn all of that off so it could easily fit in within like a work meeting as well and without, you know, without being distracting to those around you, so to speak, while providing things like good GPUs and plenty of horsepower under the hood for getting your work done. And apparently it's got upgraded audio with some of the largest speakers ever incorporated into a laptop form like that, which I really appreciated. The we talked more about the anchor version of a flexible whole home battery that you can use to back up your house or not. But let's be honest, EcoFlow has been doing this a long time. They are probably the best at it. And Gadget gave EcoFlow's Delta Ultra whole home battery inverter system. The nod starting at $5,800 can be expanded up to 90 kilowatt hours. It's flexible. It's, you know, for these kinds of things, not outrageously priced and it's got EcoFlow's history behind it, too. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry. Sorry for Harvard. You know, the price tag, you kind of go like, that's a lot of money. But for what it does, and you're talking about, you know, the entire home being able to be powered by this thing, that is, you know, whether it's an emergency situation or just a great backup to have, it seems like a pretty good investment. And for the price point, it's about, you know, you think of it in terms of its capacity and power output, it's about a half to a third of what a Tesla Powerwall would give you in a more mobile form factor, which if you're going to be stacking a lot of these, that's going to be a lot of weight that I necessarily wouldn't want on roller wheels in an earthquake prone area like California. That might not be the best solution for me, but it does make it quote unquote, portable or more portable. And with the price of batteries literally decreasing constantly, products like these are great to consider. And if you're already familiar with that brand, there's, there's an option for you in terms of integrating something that could literally be your whole home backup. This next one we talked about years ago on Monday, the Samsung Music Frame. You display physical art or maybe even an album cover in a square, wall-mounted frame. That is also a speaker meant to look like a picture frame. It's got two woofers, two tweeters, two mid-range drivers and supports Dolby Atmos. Don't know so many audio companies now like Harman and JBL. And it's no surprise that they're going to be integrating something like this that can also tie into their whole home smart, smart things network in terms of providing links to your soundbars and other products as well. This just seems to go right along with what Ikea kind of pioneered with their picture or make it look pretty. Yeah. Yeah. An art-enabled sound speaker system that you can incorporate into either a stand up, make it standalone or with something like, I've seen people integrate these into their Sonos audio setups as well. Yeah. This is not something that I would buy. I mean, to me, I'm sort of like, I have an echo show that kind of works the same way. Of course, the audio isn't going to be as nice as this, but yeah, I'm probably going to pass on the Music Frame. But consider it also for something like a rear channel setup where you needed extra speakers in the back. Yeah, it's pretty flexible that way. That's true. You have the spousal acceptance factor as well in terms of integrating something like that into your home. Now, the Verge and Gadget both gave Best Devs to the Samsung Bolly, which they showed off in 2020, but now it can project a 1080p screen as it rolls around like a little bowling ball and scares your pets. I don't know why. Well, I mean, I know that's like, ha-ha, look at the dog wondering how that screen got on the floor, but how is it super helpful? Is it kind of like a kid thing? It's nifty, I guess. I mean, it's nifty in that it works. Robert, you love projectors. Does this offend you? No, not at all. Although it went from that design of where it was like that BB-8 Star Wars character where it was a physical ball that rolled to this thing now on wheels that's still shaped like a ball shaped. They were mostly just showing this in terms of its integration with their other smart home products and everything from feeding the dog to being able to monitor your home remotely. Or in this case, they were doing a lot of demos where they were just showing people in their home not wanting to walk into another room, but they'll send the robot in there to go take a look and then you can tell or, you know, do your reconnaissance quote unquote remotely if you so desire. But I don't think it's for me. Lightning round through the rest of these. We talked about this earlier this week too. TCL Next Paper 14 Pro, 14-inch tablet with glare reducing coating and a monochrome mode that reads similar to e-ink. It's not e-ink, but it looks like e-ink. It's pretty impressive looking. Yeah. I like it. If it works like e-ink and gives you some color, I'm in. The key of PBV, the platform beyond vehicles, that's the modular vehicle platform that has the same cab in every model, but it can be configured with multiple sizes of vans and pickups and you can even do some swapping. More of a fleet thing for businesses than a consumer thing though. I hope it just brings more of it to the public today. The Micron LP Cam 2 laptop RAM module. I missed this one, so I was really glad they put it on here. 64% smaller than Sodium RAM stocks in a self-contained unit that could be removed and upgraded. So if you can get manufacturers to use it, upgradeable RAM for your laptop. And small. Very cool. Yeah. Asus ZenBook Duo. Shannon talked about this one on Thursday. It has two screens and a detachable keyboard for 1500 bucks. I mean, it's weird looking, but I kind of like it. Why not? The Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 earbuds, which in gadget said have a better battery life and sound really good. So I guess they're just really good. Then of course we're going to talk a little bit with Robert about the LG OLED T, the transparent OLED 77 inch TV coming sometime this year at a very high price. And what about the best in show? We talked about this last week with Chris Ashley before CES began and gadget gave best in show to the GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker. Holy cow. Yeah. Nice. I guess that's an odd choice for best of. It must have really impressed them. I wonder if they actually got a chance to try any of the food it made. They were giving us steak. That's how it got best in show. I guarantee that didn't hurt. I'm not saying that's why, but I'm guaranteed it. But it's nice to know that I mean, assuming that these all got vetted appropriately by gadget that an indoor smoker, which again, like the Chris Ashley's of the world go, I kind of want to do it the right way. Knowing that this is an option is a plus. And he didn't tear it apart. He was like, for beginners or people who are just wanting to start out or not that serious about it. Or you don't have a lot of outdoor space anyway. Yeah, exactly. There's all sorts of all sorts of ways that this could be cool. I would give, I'm surprised the rabbit R1 didn't make this list. I feel like it is the darling of the show. Probably would have been the people's choice had they done one because they sold out so fast. But yeah, there we go. We are going to find out what TVs caught Robert. I Robert's I at CES in just a couple minutes. But first, Sarah, we got some details if you want to spend $3,500 this month. Yeah, you don't even have to go to CES to do it. In fact, you can't do it at CES. Apple's new Vision Pro pre-orders start Friday, January 19th at 8am week from today as of this recording. Ahead of that, Apple has some requirements though. When pre-ordering, you'll need to use an iPhone or an iPad with FaceTime in order to determine the right size of light seal and headbands based on the size of your noggin. Apple will do its best to try to figure out which sizes you need the two work together to basically give you a precise fit or a more precise fit. And I can say that VR headsets that don't fit precisely aren't a lot of fun at all. Now, if you wear prescription glasses, you'll also need a proof of a valid and unexpired prescription from a US eye care professional to get the proper Zeiss optical inserts that accommodate most prescriptions. If you wear contacts like I do, you probably don't need this feature, but it's still an option if you were going to be wearing the Vision Pro for a really long time and thought, well, I'll just, you know, put the prescription built in. So, yeah, that's that's that's what we know. But there's a little bit more to it if I'm really serious about pre-ordering, right, Tom? Yeah, that's if you like, I'm going to pick up my iPhone and order it as soon as I can. If you're not sure about spending $3,500 on a product you've never seen and you'd like to try it out first, Apple said in a promotional email that it will open signups for in-person demonstrations at Apple stores starting at 8am Friday, February 2nd and through the weekend on a first come first served basis. Now, there's still a lot of details that did not make clear like whether signing up secures you a specific demo time where you just get assigned, how long the demo will go, how much time do you have to set aside and whether you need to stand in a wrap around the block queue, like Apple days of your with the iPhone or if this is, you know, a reservation like a Genius Bar thing where you show up and you should go right in. Well, Robert, I don't know when you last stood in line for an Apple product, if ever. I did but not in a very long time and I don't miss those days. Part of me thinks that Apple's not going to have an issue with this the way that it did in the old iPhone days because someone who's interested in the Vision Pro, I mean, if you're interested enough to like consider the price that already weeds out a lot of people, you know, this is a very expensive product and the, you know, mixed reality headset market is just, you know, it's growing but it's still in its in its early days. But I would like to know, you know, yeah, like do I on Friday the second and Apple might offer more details about this. This is just kind of what we know for now. Yeah, on the second, do I just show up and, you know, it's going to be like mayhem because Apple sort of wants that that that crazy reservation theoretically, the reservations are to prevent that, right? Well, you can sign up to to get a demo on a first come, first serve basis. So I read that as at 8am, I sign up on the website somewhere, then I go to my store and yes, if they say Sarah Lane gets from 330 to 4pm later today, that's what I'm expecting. That's what I am expecting. Why have you signed up if you're not going to give me a time for me to show up? But right, they didn't make it clear. And I guess if you say first come, first served and 1500 other people want my time slot, and I'm just first, then they come later. I guess I took the first come, first serve part of this email to mean like you'll sign up and the available slots will be filled on a first come, first serve basis. Right. Yeah. These have all the marketing slots anymore by the time you fill out. Indeed, these seem to be a bespoke item that they are crafting and there probably won't be tens of thousands of them. There probably are tens of thousands of them ready to go. But I don't think you're going to have that rushed for everyone to run out there and go buy this the way they would say the latest iPhone model. And with the prerequisites in place, that means you're already well established within this ecosphere of Apple products. And it's something you are genuinely interested in. And I think they want that crowd to be the first to get their hands on it to help with working out the little kinks and to see really how random people who get ahold of these can now basically use them and what they use them for. And I'm looking forward to seeing how it all goes down and to see what sort of content and use cases people come up with. But otherwise I'm taking a very wait and see approach to this particular product considering all of the other options out there, although none with I guess the level of engineering and perhaps the quality that goes into this at the price you're going to be paying for it. Yeah, I mean, I'm interested in getting one because I really like, I like the space and I want it to be cool because I want to be wowed. But I also really like my Quest headset. I don't do tons of things in VR, but the things I do I think work really well and bring me a lot of joy. So I want it to be cooler than that. But I think at the very least you're going to get a lot of people just being like, well, okay, is it like that other thing that I'm used to? You know, how is it better? Because the folks who have been able to play around with the Vision Pro and you know, it's not not a lot of folks, you know, who have been able to talk on record thus far say it is really cool. And it's like, how, how is it cool? I want to know. I want to see it for myself. These are going to sell out on January 19th. And it doesn't matter whether it's because they only made 10,000 or not, they're going to sell out and that's going to be the story. Apple Vision Pro sells out in 10 minutes on January 19th. And then the reservations at the Apple stores, they're going to go immediately as soon as they're available to be signed out. I guarantee on January 19th and on February 2nd, the stories are going to be Apple has so crazy amount of interest in this, you know, because they are not making as many of these as they make other products. So even if there's lower interest, there's certainly a crazy amount of curiosity, you know, that that's that that's for sure. So, you know, it'll die down eventually. But yeah, it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks. The design appears to be beautiful. And I do appreciate that folks. Real quickly, I want to remind you about Tom's top five available at youtube.com slash daily tech news show. We break down five things of interest in the worlds of technology and beyond. And this week, it's the five apps you need on your smartphone. So go check it out. If you if you want to get some some good apps or find out if you have the apps you need, or you're setting up a new smartphone or setting up a smartphone for somebody else, the top five apps you need on your smartphone youtube.com slash daily tech news show. Well, if there's one thing that CES is known for year after year, it's televisions from wall to wall displays to more sophisticated cinema like viewing experiences. This year's show had plenty of TV buzz and Robert, you do this every year. You just got back from the show and we want you to tell us the TV trends from this year's CES that you thought were the biggest takeaways. Oh, without a doubt, bigger, brighter and more colorful overall. I think one of the most exemplary displays you could think of in this day and age right now is something called micro LED, where the actual display itself is an array of tiny red, blue and green LEDs that make up the image you see. There is the prime example you would have seen on the show floor had you been an attendance. That is Samsung's micro LED display, and it is definitely the most advanced in terms of an actual product that's pretty much ready to go. These are incredibly bright displays, upwards of 5000 plus nits. They have the black level of OLED and in a sense of being able to turn off completely. That's the backside of it complete with multiple speakers built in about an inch thick. It's pretty much a ready to go product. And if you wanted one this year, you can buy one. However, the price is crazy expensive. For the largest of these displays that go up well over 100 inches, you're talking six figures. I'm hoping that the 65, 75 inch screen sizes might get into a more affordable five figure range. But still, it's expensive tech still, even with Samsung's advancements in terms of being able to manufacture these easier and faster. Now, when it comes to OLED displays, there was the big shootout of course between Samsung display and LG display. The big news there is that they are claiming brighter. At least the manufacturers are saying that this year's OLED for 2024 doesn't matter whose camp you're going to go with. There is the potential of having up to 3000 nits of brightness. I kind of doubt either of the electronics manufacturers are going to incorporate an OLED that bright into their TVs. But we'll see. I'm thinking at least though, well over 2000 nits for these and they will be beautiful as can be. Now, there weren't that many AK displays on the show floor per se, but there were a lot of AK projectors. And that's one area I was happy to see. One was actually ultra short throw designs from Samsung. The premier AK projector, which caught my attention. One, it has a wireless input box that can actually deliver an AK signal to that projector. And my favorite feature about it was that with 150 inch display, you could quad split that with four separate inputs. So you could technically have like four TVs running at once if you wanted to go sports crazy or have a good viewing experience like that. And I think that adds flexibility and usefulness to something that is an AK display. With that 150 inch example, that would be the equivalent of four 75 inch 4k TVs all tiled together and controllable as you see fit. Hisense had the other AK display that caught my attention. This was being demonstrated in a route on the show floor in a bright room, complete with something they called their sonic screen. And the sonic screen technology has actually been out in an 85 inch model for a while now. But that screen you see right there has 100,000 elements behind it that are basically creating sound that can be projected into the room. And with the demonstrations they were doing with Dolby Atmos content, it was freakishly impressive for what it could do. I have no idea what that that particular screen is going to cost. I am curious to see that above all else that AK projector was beautifully bright and colorful. And they tend to do a really good job with things like that. One of the most impressive projection demonstrations was also at the Hisense booth. And this was a collaboration between a company called Barco who makes some of the world's best projectors and Hisense who saw this technology and said, we want that, please, let's get together and build something. This projector in particular, it's a ultra short throw design. But what it has that special is a piece of technology that allows it to effectively modulate the light before it gets to the DLP chip. And it can concentrate it into bright areas where it needs extra brightness in that part of the picture. At the same time it can pull light away from areas that should be darker. You could think of this almost as if it's full array local dimming you would see on a TV. But for a projection technology, they were showing peak highlights they claimed were 2000 nits, which is unheard of for projection systems in the home. It looked that bright. It was really impressive. And it was something I cannot wait to see more of in an actual product hopefully later this year. Now, I think the biggest news of the show was also the biggest screens on the show floor. TCL kind of took the cake with a 115 inch magnificent TV. Part of their QM8 series actually the QM891G and this will be available this year. 5000 nits of brightness full array local dimming. I believe it has in excess of 5000 local dimming zones. Just a great example right there. Another one was also a little bit smaller, perhaps 85 inches if that's not considered gigantic. But Samsung had their Neo QLED 8K television. This was beautiful. This is probably my favorite 8K TV that you could buy last year and this year's model is even better with improved video processing that they had some exquisite demos of in terms of either cleaning up content with artifacts in it or upscaling content from either 1080p or 4K onto that 8K screen and creating something that looked just beautiful compared to the original source material that was being fed through it. And then over at the Hisense booth they had their ULEDX. These are their quantum dot displays and at first the displays you see right there are actually the 110 inch versions of this and they're showing it with different configurations for the base stand as well as the feet you see right there. Big news here is they're claiming 10,000 nits which is the full spec of the HDR format and that is an incredibly bright display. In addition they're also going to have in that particular case with the 110 inch screen 40,000 local dimming zones which seems kind of nuts. It should provide very good contrast performance with that TV. They also have a 98 inch version of that TV that will cost a little bit less, have a few less local dimming zones and be only 5,000 nits but that's still impressively bright. A lot of these companies are really pushing for larger and larger screens. 85 inch used to be kind of the big size and now it's 98 inch for the LCDs and if you want something 100 inches or larger it's going to be available this year at ever increasingly affordable prices. Now finally for the OLEDs out there including my favorite technology, LG showed off that transparent OLED, the signature OLED T and there it is without any image on it whatsoever and you can see that person's hand there on the left where you get a look through it and some of the texture of the wall behind it and it is fairly trans, I wouldn't say it's glass transparent but it's transparent enough to where you could see through it and then it does have a built-in retractable screen that when it rises and covers the back of the display with a black background the image brightness was frankly pretty impressive for what it was. This is also considered a wireless display technology in the sense that you only have the power cord going to that TV and then the video is being transmitted to it with a wireless box similar to what they do with their wireless M technology, their M series televisions that they introduced last year and have updates for as well. Now LG's OLED G4 will be the flagship display of the year this baby's going to have, I don't think it's going to hit 3,000 nits like the manufacturer suggested but it's still going to be one of the very brightest out there to experience in terms of having that light output. Also they're introducing a brand new video processor as well which is something that LG has done a very good job of catching up so to speak with some of the best video processors out there from the likes of Sony and others who also use their panels but one of my favorites in terms of what I saw on the show floor and in terms of daily use would be the new S95D from Samsung and in particular what was special about that in addition to just being another OLED that can claim quote-unquote 3,000 nits is it's any reflective or any glare coating on the surface of this display. It was incredibly effective at minimizing reflections and I have seen more TVs in people's homes where the TV is placed in such a way as to prevent reflections from interfering with the viewing experience. This was one TV that I feel that and this is their flagship OLED for the year that it is going to give you more flexibility in terms of where you can place it in the room without factoring in so much as like oh we're going to have glare coming in from this window on the side. Oh I can't tell you how many times I've you know a whole apartment has to be constructed so that the TV doesn't have window glare. Or I see people blocking windows with big TVs just to prevent that and then ruining the view out like that and there is though an argument among video files about do you want a matte finish screen on a flagship display or something that can do very high contrast and yes I will say that a glossy screen subjectively can give you the impression of more inkier black but if you're dealing with light reflections it's very easy to that become the main distraction and that's something I really really appreciated that Robert has addressed. Why do you think people would want a transparent OLED? Man I don't see a reason for it I do see though in terms of maybe for high-end signage or specific use cases within restaurants or shopping centers or stores and things like that I think it could be popular there that and it's going to be available this year as a product you could buy or the cool factor okay pricing aside this is going to be a very expensive television in order to purchase one but I was surprised how well it worked as just a regular display in addition to being the transparent technology. Samsung did show off an LED based version of their translucent or transparent display system and it doesn't have a product name or a release date planned it was more of a tech demo I felt Samsung's LEDs could be brighter and more punchy but this is LG with the product with a name that's coming out this year that if you really wanted it and you wanted something to just kind of a lot of people are asking at our chat room like why would you want that I've I've come up with it's decorative and I've come up with a VO's use case which is putting it in a monitor so you can put a camera behind it uh so you can look right at the screen and be able to do video conferencing but other than decorative in that that that's all I've come up with so far and I don't think it's clear enough to really function as glass like a window so you have to do some processing to put a camera behind it even they made it work for a VO but yeah I mean but it's like so typical CES right is you know sometimes it's like a head scratchy thing like but why because we could and it's pretty I'm not going to deny that it's really pretty uh also real quick did you say micro leds are five figures six six figures yeah it's it's a bespoke technology it's the difficulty in doing manufacturing that's really what it comes down to uh we can get into it later but I also saw some great demos about how Samsung specifically is addressing that in terms of being able to manufacture these faster and more accurately and and creating displays that are more seamless as you get into larger and larger sizes it is it is the most impressive of the display tax because it kind of combines the best of all worlds in terms of the pure brightness these things are incredibly bright they do really well with glare handling and when the pixels turn off when the leds shut off it's pure black and it really helps with that punchiness the color gamut coverage is up there with the best and I mean this is technology that's coming straight out of the theaters uh Samsung had their onyx program which is basically installing very large versions of these in commercial cinemas to replace a projection system and this is basically making it a more home style product and it is incorporating multiple tiled units together to create this view so they can scale it to kind of whatever size you want but they need to come up if they're going to make this you know for the masses it's got to be something you know they've got to get the price down and that that is still not happening quite yet it is still I put it more in the bespoke category of like you're really not too concerned about the price you just want to be one of the first to have it and that's what it is right now all right let's finish up by checking out the mail bag we've got a piece of mail about snoring yeah Andrew wrote in about the deruci anti-snoring pillow we talked about yesterday and we all thought was pretty pricey Andrew says I use a CPAP that stands for continuous positive airway pressure for mild sleep apnea it was completely covered under my insurance but when I went to investigate getting a backup or something to travel with I found that they all cost roughly 90 dollars direct to consumer 900 900 900 yes thank you Tom so uh Andrew's point is if that anti-snoring pillow works as well as they say and it gets picked up by insurance 900 is about on par might make it easier to pack and deal with on the road or for people who just don't want to tolerate something on their face all night oh that's a good point if you can get the insurance coverage that's why uh the the uh mitt the glove the anti-parkinsons uh glove was so impressive to me the gyro gear uh because they they've done that they they winning and they've started to talk to the insurance company so that kind of thing is really important all right let's see what Len Peralta has been drawing as we wrap up our CES coverage this week hi Len hey what's going on you know I love when Robert's on because I could I I could just I just love hearing all all the tech about TVs and the six figure television is crazy um this week is always uh traditionally we've been doing the show for 10 years is always traditionally the obligatory uh CES uh image or coverage and uh that's no uh you know it's happened again this year here's some stuff we've talked about uh the bigger the tv should have been bigger in this drawing actually um I'm uh very excited I don't know about you but the indoor smokers and one thing I really love about this image is that I was able to create a new word called tech tech chef it kissed the tech chef I don't know I found that pretty interesting so it's anyway maybe I'm the only person so you know it's great you spelled the t e t e c h e f which is actually the name of a brand of uh like a propane powered barbecues and I and the only reason I know that is I have one it's hilarious yeah yeah tech chef yes well if you want to check this out you can certainly go over to my patreon patreon.com forward slash len you can back me at the d t n s lover level you get it immediately or you can do the old fashion way go to my store uh at uh lempereldstore.com and you can just purchase it and you can have it and hang it up and uh commemorate c e s 24 for what it was it's the best way to remember c e s it is it is it's annual exactly oh thank you len and also thank you to you robert harron glad you made it back in one piece let folks know where they can keep up with your latest you can visit me at my website here in fidelity.com or I'm also on twitter of course or x as we call it nowadays at robert harron and all of the other usual oh actually I'm on blue sky now I'm gonna count over there and I like that too that's also a fun way to interact and otherwise you know ping me through my contact information and if you have any questions I can help with let me know patron stick around for the extended show good day internet we're covering more c e s home theater highlights with robert and if we have time a little quiz on the history of c e s reminder we do the show live you can catch it monday through friday at 4 p.m eastern 2100 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live we're off monday in the u s for martin luther king but we're back tuesday with scott johnson joining us have a great weekend this week's episodes of daily tech news show were created by the following people host producer and writer tom merit host producer and writer sarah lane executive producer booker roger chang producer writer and co-host rob dunwood video producer and twitch producer joe coontz technical producer anthony lemos spanish language host writer and producer dan compost science corresponded dr nicky ackerman's social media producer and moderator zoe deterding our mods beat bastard w scott us one captain kipper steve waterama paul reese matthew j stevens aka gadget virtuoso and jd galloway modern video hosting by dan christensen music and art provided by martin bell dan luders mustapha a a cast and len peralta live art performed by len peralta a cast ad support from tatiana matias patreon support from tom mcneill contributors for this week shows included allison charidan mollywood scott johnson and shannon morse guest this week included trisha hershberger and robert herron and thanks to all the patrons who make the show possible this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com time and club hopes you have enjoyed this program