 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including John Atwood, Pat, Mike Cortez, and our new Patron, Brian. On this episode of DTNS, let's talk TVs with Robert Herron, plus Spotify's new audio plans, and update your mobile OS's stat. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, September 8th, 2023. From Studio Trisket, I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us today is Robert Herron, a home theater and TV calibration expert. Hi, Robert. Good to have you back. Hello. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I think it's kind of cool to call yourself a TV calibration expert, because not all of us can say that exact same thing. Hey, I've been doing it a very long time. And I say the persistence and the education and the right equipment, it all pays off if you stick with it. Well, we're so glad to have you on the show. We're going to be talking a lot more about TVs a little bit later. But first, let's start with the quick heads. Tesla and Hilton have partnered to install 20,000 Tesla universal wall connectors across 2,000 Hilton hotel properties in the United States and Canada and Mexico, starting in 2024. The deal expands a previous partnership between the two, and we'll see chosen properties get at least six new chargers. Hilton's chief brand officer, Matt Schuler, says that the second most search attribute for its hotels is EV charging. The IRS announced a new effort Friday to pursue 1,600 millionaires and 75 large business partnerships that owe hundreds of millions of dollars in past due taxes. IRS Commissioner Daniel Worfel said that new federal funding and AI tools will both help the agency target people who have cut corners on their taxes. AI making you pay taxes if you're very rich. Interesting. In a likely effort to fend off AI models training on its data, the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, updated its terms of service to prohibit scraping and crawling of any kind without, quote, prior written consent, end quote. Twitter has also recently updated its robots.txt file to remove all crawler bots except Google. X's new terms go into effect on September 29th. Google's next Chromecast remote might have more buttons. Android Deep Diver and Michelle Rahman dug into the latest Android TV 14 beta release and found a system video showcasing the outline of what looks like a brand new remote designed to control Google TV software. The new remote resembles the current flat pills shaped remote, but now the six main control buttons seem to have scattered to make room for what could be a new volume or channel rocker matching the diameter of the face button. Huawei's launch of the apparently 5G capable Mate 60 and Mate 60 Pro smartphones last week raised some questions about US sanctions efficacy. Today, Huawei challenged that further by unveiling two more new devices, the Mate 60 Pro Plus and the Mate X5 foldable. And gadget sources say that these are 5G devices, noting Chinese blogger Vincent Zong's speed test on the Mate X5, which reached a download speed of over one gigabit per second, though without a 5G indicator. So probably 5G, but not saying 5G. Related, the US Commerce Department has begun an official probe into what kind of chip exactly is in Huawei's latest smartphone line. And those are the quick hits. Now the official launch of iOS 17 is expected along with new iPhones and who even knows what else at Apple's Wunderlust event that is due for Tuesday, September 12th. We will be covering it with the Snob OS team Terence Gaines and Nika Monford joining us as we do for Apple events. It's going to be a lot of fun. But ahead of that, Apple released iOS 16.6.1, which patches two zero day exploits used to inject Pegasist spyware. Internet watchdog group CitizenLab explained in a blog post last week that they found a zero click vulnerability, which means a hacker's targets don't have to tap or click on anything to be affected. Basically, you just have to be affected. Add in quote, the exploit chain was capable of compromising iPhones running the latest version of iOS 16.6 without any interaction from the victim and quote. All right, Rob, the big news from those who've been following this is that you should update your iOS device immediately if you haven't already. That's pretty clear. We hear this with exploits all the time. Is there anything unusual about this particular one that we can take away from? Well, what makes this one particularly nasty is that you don't have to do anything. As you said, if you just get it, you've got it and you're infected and they can put this nasty Pegasist software on your device. So as you said, you want to make sure that you are updating your device. Don't say, I want to get the new iPhone. I can just hold out. You need to go ahead and run this update. Apple makes it really easy to do. And this is one of the times when you should absolutely exercise that ease and make sure you get this done. Robert, we got another couple of robs on this Friday. It used to be the case that a lot of Windows stuff, you'd hear about things like this, but Apple stuff was somewhat exempt. We are in a different world. Totally. They are the biggest phone manufacturer in the world and they are a prime target for exploits like these. And it's especially important if you happen to be in a country that is actively targeting, say, journalists or other people who may not be towing the line in terms of how they represent the country or discussing things the country would rather not be discussed and things like that. And that's where I think these updates are the most important for any platform, be it Android or iOS. There are companies like this one that will actually pay top dollar for these zero click exploits or zero day exploits that currently have no protection to be had. And looking at companies like Apple, it's nice just to see that how far they extend their updates. I believe the six s that I still use for testing, it just went off the latest update list. So if you have anything from approximately an iPhone seven or later, you're still protected by these latest updates. And that's really nice to see. And it's something I'm seeing carrying over to other manufacturers like Samsung, Google themselves and others on the Android side, providing longer term security updates for issues that really don't affect all of us. But it's still one of those things where, man, I don't even want the capability of somebody to be able to just send me a link or with no interaction on my part at all, take over my phone and turn it into a personal spy device, considering how personal these devices are. Yeah, I mean, I happen to be running iOS 17 because, you know, I'm part of the beta program. So I was like, well, I'm not, you know, this doesn't apply to me specifically. But the next one could. And yeah, I think being vigilant about the stuff and not ignoring anything that pushes you to update something based on something that is a security update is not the worst idea in the world. Well, you know, let's talk a little bit about Spotify, because Spotify has been in the news lately for a variety of reasons. Most recently, as a podcast hub that may be shifting course after some exclusive series, having panned out as planned. But it sounds like Spotify is doubling down on its non music audio efforts, including a pilot to test free audiobook bundles for its paying subscribers in the coming months. Yeah, so the Wall Street Journal sources say that Spotify is working with publishers in the US, which would let subscribers listen up to 20 hours of audiobooks per month. Spotify executives are reportedly looking to challenge something like audible, which is sort of the audiobook offering that gets attention. Hard to really figure out what is an audible, what is challenging audible, although you have other options, some free options. For example, if you have a library that has free audiobooks, as part of the library pass, you might be able to do that. But looks like Spotify is trying to figure out how it might challenge audible. Some of the new offerings might be designed to appease Spotify users, though grumbling about Spotify's price hike that happened in July. It was a dollar, now at 10.99 per month. Robert, are you a Spotify user or a audiobook user or both? I am neither, actually. I do have some premium audio subscriptions to my Sonos device, actually, is my primary one. My main use for audiobooks, though, has always been for commute hours or trips, where I'm in the vehicle for a long period of time, or just simply traveling. It's just one of those things where I have the time to actually pay attention, and it can really make a trip go by quickly. And it's one of the most wonderful ways of quote unquote, killing time, so to speak, when you're in a situation like that. So I fully understand Spotify's desire to transition some of their millions and hundreds of millions of users to being paid clients. And going up against someone like Audible is interesting to say the least, considering Audible is like the first company I think of, when I think of an audiobook experience. So that's the only one I think of, although there are others. But, you know, that's the incumbents, right? Yeah, there's definitely others out there, but I can't think of the names of any of them. I know I know I use something, as you said, Sarah, with my library subscription that allows me to get audio books. But Audible is the only one that I can think of. But I think one of the things that Spotify is doing here is that they have been on a run, they've been signing up users left and right lately. I mean, they really have been hitting their numbers as far as net new users. The problem is that they're not hitting their numbers as far as people who are paying for their service. So I believe right now Spotify has 551 million users, only 220 million are paid subscriptions. So I think this is an effort to try to get some of those free users. Oh, I can get audio books instead of paying for Audible. Maybe I will just do that inside of, you know, a paid Spotify subscription since I'm already using Spotify. I think that that may be one of one of the areas that they're going after here. I like the idea of checking out your local library too. That was a good reminder, especially for maybe new parents out there. Let their kids check it out and see what they think. 100%. I mean, to be able to read free books and get free audiobooks, ebooks, all the things, I feel like nobody pays enough attention to your local library. However, talking about what Spotify is doing here, I think is really interesting. In fact, I polled a couple of friends that I know are Spotify users. I'm an Apple Music user, but I always say like, they're the same. They're roughly the same price. You get the same, roughly the same libraries. Maybe there's an exclusive here or there. But yeah, the idea that Spotify has gone hard into podcasts with mixed results, depending on the podcast that you're listening to, but now wanting to be a place that you also think of as a spoken word type of place that you might want to pay for, such as an audiobook. I asked a couple of friends, how often do you listen to audiobooks? Many of them said, yeah, that's the only way I read. Not that I don't like reading, but I don't have time, but I can be in my car, maybe an Uber, maybe on a train, maybe on a plane. There is a lot going on here. I think it'll be interesting to see how Spotify retains audiobook listeners six months from now. The travelers is the sweet spot for this. A good buddy of mine, we know Rod Simmons from SMR Podcast and BBQ and Tech. He travels internationally two to three times per month. He is an avid audiobook listener, and he probably goes through three dozen books a year or more easily. I mean, that sounds crazy to me because again, I'm like, who has time to sit down and read all those books? But again, if you've got the downtime, especially if you're traveling, it's great to do. We would love to know more about if you listen to audiobooks and how. A friend of mine was like, I listened to audiobooks on 2X and I was like, that's insane. Why? And he said, because I don't have time. I get to the book twice as fast. I thought, hmm, all right, cool. Everybody does things differently. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send your feedback if you have anything about this. But just to let you know, if you are not familiar with Know a Little More, this season is better than ever. Tom breaks down a pivotal moment in tech history in the latest episode called the mother of all demos. How many technologies we use today were introduced in the year of 1968. Many of us were not born at that time. Some of us might have been, but why did it take over a decade for some of those technologies to go mainstream after that year? All this season on Know a Little More, check out the Patreon page at patreon.com slash Know a Little More to Know a Little More. All right, Robert Herron, we're so glad to have you on the show today. You recently covered a lot of stuff that came out of the Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association or CEDIA, which started yesterday, which means it's time to talk about trends that people can expect from the TV and home theater space. We had Patrick Norton on the show earlier this week to talk about soundbars and how that's all evolving. So what might we be seeing in upcoming TV designs that might make your home theater better? In addition to CEDIA, there's one other show currently going on right now. We're about to finish up called IFA, IFA, and that is the other one where new TVs are being introduced and it's likely things we're going to be seeing soon at CES come January in Las Vegas. One of the big trends literally for TVs right now is the fact that they're becoming supersized. I thought the 85 inch was a pretty big screen and it is, but now there are several options for 98 inch or even larger screens out there at a variety of price points from familiar manufacturers that you may already know something about, including folks like Samsung, TCL and Hisense. I am kind of shocked really about how many models are coming out at that particular size, and that might be something that's going to be important for folks who would like to go maybe projection, but don't have the rooms set up for that where it can be dark enough to be compelling, whereas you could put up a 98 inch TV and get a pretty damn big screen experience with something that can do very good contrast brightness and color. And the price points too. Some of these 98 inch screens for this year will likely start at about $6,000 and of course the more premium ones are going to go up into the solid five figures. But anyway, I think that is, actually too, I was taking a look at Best Buy. There is a 2022 I believe version of a TCL 98 inch TV right now part of their XL collection that happens to be a mere $4,000 on sale right now. That kind of blows me away in terms of just the cost for the given screen size. A TV literally about the size of a queen size bed and like I said too, if you've thought about projection and dealing with things like screens and room environments and the projector unit itself is just too much having just a standalone large format TV is the way to go. No, I know a lot of people say $4,000, that's still crazy. But for a 90 inch television, it greater than a year ago, if we were talking about this, it would have been $7,500, you know, if you're lucky or more. Why do you think the prices are coming down and who is this for? Because I think most people say bigger the better, right? But most people simply don't have a room where they could get far enough back from something of the size. You need a decent size space for it. But if you could be back say at least 10 feet from the screen, it's not an unreasonable size to consider. Obviously, you can have a larger room than that even. One thing to keep in mind is that LCD technology as a display system, there is really not much left in terms of development going into it. It's more of a massaging of all the current features on a very incremental basis going forward from this point. Folks are focused and these companies are focused more on what's next and that will be things like OLED and we'll talk about that in a second. But keep in mind that the people making these screens are trying to just capture as much of whatever the remaining market's going to be going forward with LCD technology. Now, if I'm looking for what I'm going to recommend to somebody out there right now, budget permitting, it will be an OLED based display system, an organic light emitting diode. The display system that's going to give you that infinite contrast ratio, perfect black levels and just punchy color with historically great viewing angles where you can sit pretty much anywhere in the room and still see a really nice picture. I still consider OLED to be king and it is, at least on the high end, it's still kind of an expensive technology for some people. But budget permitting, there are TVs out there right now like the Samsung S95C that I would consider one of the top in its category in class. This uses the new quantum dot OLED technology, which in my opinion provides some of the most saturated looking color, just purity of color that you'll see and this is their second generation of this technology. The panel itself made by Samsung Display and then sold through Samsung Electronics in the form of a TV. If you find the price points of that TV a little too much, you can go with their S90C, which knocks the brightness down a little bit, but it still features that color purity of the quantum dot OLED technology. Now, LG is not screwing around. This is their 10th anniversary of their OLED technology and for that they introduced one of the very finest displays they've ever crafted in the form of the G3 EVO OLED TV. This is using the metal lens array technology that they've integrated. That was basically a lab thing a couple years ago and is now being integrated. Millions of tiny lenses in the front of the TV to help capture light that would otherwise scatter incorrectly and redirect it forward for improved brightness, literally about a 50% bump in overall luminance coming out of the front of that screen. And that technology also improves off axis viewing as well, making it just one of the most compelling looking TVs as far as their premium flagship for the year. Sorry to interrupt you. One of the things that people ask me the most because I'm sometimes the most technical person in the room, you know, it's like, you know, what's all that proprietary OLED stuff depending on what manufacturer you want to go with or price point or both? I feel like a lot of these companies are talking about the same thing, right? For the panel, to me, there's only two manufacturers currently. It's either the Samsung display panel using the QD OLED technology, the quantum dot OLED technology. And technically speaking, that's just a blue OLED material that then has quantum dot color converters for red and green, it converts some of that blue light super efficiently into the red in the green for the red blue green that is used to generate the all the colors we see. Now in the case of Samsung LG, they use a whitish material that then goes through a more standard traditional color filter. And it's really just two ways of doing it. There are pros and cons to each one. I would say one thing in common with both technologies though right now is that compared to years past, they're more robust than they've ever been in terms of just how long they're going to last, how less susceptible to things like burn in they are. And in general, if you are looking at one of the new 2023 TVs, I could wholeheartedly recommend it. The one OLED everyone's still waiting for is Sony's version of the QD OLED technology using Samsung Display's panel. Last year, the A95K from Sony took first place in the shootout for last year's home theater TVs. This year, everyone's waiting for the A95K. And it is still not out yet. It should, you can preorder it right now. It will be out on October 13. And Sony in terms of offering a factory calibration that's just superb is one of those companies where it's probably the best massaged TV you could buy. You'll pay a premium for it, but the out-of-the-box experience can be fan-freaking-tastic. Now, in the 4K, 8K category before the show started, my mother, who loves you rubber here on, was like, ask him about something that's just, you know, the best 55 inch TV. I don't want anything bigger than that. I just want the best one in that category. And, you know, could perhaps be, you know, get a soundbar, you know, figure out a little simple home theater stuff going on along with that. What do you tell people who ask you about things in that category? If the word best creeps into it and the budget's there, I'll direct them towards Sony. Sony's version of that QD OLED technology is not only just well built from the factory, it also has some very unique functionality built into it. It actually has a way of vibrating the screen and the whole screen is actually an actuated speaker. And it is compelling to actually realize that sound is coming directly out of the picture itself. And that to me is pretty fantastic. They also integrate a camera system on top of the TV to not only determine room light levels and how far you are away from the TV. And it'll do automatic adjustments for both sound and picture quality in real time for that. And they've also incorporated some pretty robust privacy controls as well. So you're not freaking out about having a camera looking around the room while you're doing that. But again, that TV comes out next month. And that's the one most folks are just kind of waiting to see. And they will compare every other OLED out there to it. And that's the one I'm I already have appointments. People are asking me about they've already preordered it and I'm scheduled to go take a look at it as soon as it arrives. So I'll be doing that. But outside of OLED technology, if you're looking for a good value, it's going to be the LCD panels out there. That remains your best bang for the buck in terms of just I need a big TV. I need something bright, robust, and at a variety of price points, you can always spend just as much on on good LCD as you can a good OLED as well. And companies like TCL, they have their QM8 4K TV. That is one that is I would put up there with, you know, some of the best work I've seen out of companies like Samsung and Sony. I will say it is one of the brightest TVs you can currently buy as far as LCD technology goes. A few thousand nits of peak brightness, which this could be the if you have a very bright room, this would be a TV that would compete very well with that. There are some quirks to its picture quality currently. And I love TCL as a company. I'm really hoping they put out at least one more good firmware update for this TV. And that's something I will be keeping an eye on. This is a Google powered TV. So it has that built into it as well. It's direct competitor, I would say would be the Hisense U8K. That is also historically a company that year in and year out is doing better and better work. The new U8K has arrived and it is currently available priced a little more competitively than the TCL I just mentioned. And the brightness might not hit the same peak levels, but it's still a dramatically bright, colorful, punchy TV. Just in the interest of time because we could go through this all day and I love nothing more than to talk about televisions because who doesn't like it? If anyone were to say, okay, so OLED is the best, but you're also talking about pretty great LCD TVs, what would be the one thing that you would say is the discerner between the two? You know, maybe sure you care about color quality, but is there one thing in a room that you potentially are going to put this new TV in that you really have to think about? I think if you really like letterboxed movies with the black bars on the screen, and you sit in a light controlled environment, a fairly dark room environment, there is something kind of magical about OLED screens because of that ability to completely turn off a pixel, it makes for perfect contrast. Those black bars disappear, that image is literally just floating there. And if you move your head a little to the left or the right, or you're not sitting directly in the sweet spot, you still get very good picture quality and that's where some LCDs struggle, especially the more value oriented ones. Now Samsung's premium 8K TV, they have a 900C currently, that is still one of my absolute favorite LCD televisions out there right now in terms of design. It has extra technologies for off axis viewing, and it's overall a fantastic thing. But when it really just comes down to me being in the appropriate room and for taking in the image quality, or there are certain cases to be argued to for gamers as well in terms of pure pixel performance and in terms of how fast that pixel can switch. OLED is almost unbeatable. I can't think of another technology. I definitely know LCD that can keep up with it. So that's, if you're going to say why do I harp on and make the praises for OLED screens, that's why. There's a lot going on there. But for absolute brightness, it's harder to do it with OLED and that's where LCDs can really shine, literally and figuratively. So that's something to keep in mind if you have a room with lots of windows, for example, or you might not always be sitting in the same place in that same room. And that also applies when you're looking at any TV. It's kind of nice to see them ahead of time or at least read the reviews and see how they focus on things like ambient light, glare reflection or anti-glare coatings. Samsung's one of the best companies and they've been pioneering for a few years now the ability just to minimize any kind of reflection coming off the screen. You'll see that going forward with more and more manufacturers for this year and next year as well. Well, Robert Herron, we are so glad to have you on the show. Many of us might be in the market for TVs where we just want to hear about the newest and the greatest and you are the man to do that. Let folks know when you're not with us on this show where they can keep up with your work. You can always look me up at HerronFidelity.com or RobertHerron.com. Either one, you'll find me there. And of course, I am trying to get back with Patrick Norton and get the podcast rolling again, but we're currently on the summer hiatus for the AVXL podcast. And otherwise, I imagine that'll be happening sooner than later. Well, we're so glad to have you today. Thank you so much for bringing the knowledge. Appreciate it. My pleasure. So Patrons, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet. We have another round of Who Am I? Can you guess the identity of the person before the final clue is given? Oh, we love our Friday games. We're glad to have Robert Herron joining us for that. But just a reminder, we do the show live. You can catch it live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC, and you can find out more or tell a friend. DailyTechNewsShow.com slash live. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend. We will be back on Monday with Justin Rubber Young joining us. Talk to you then. This week's episodes of DailyTechNewsShow were created by the following people, host producer and writer Tom Merritt, host producer and writer Sarah Lane, executive producer and booker Roger Chang, producer, writer and co-host Rob Dumbwood and Rich Strafilino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Coons, technical producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer Dan Campos, science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans, social media producer and moderator Zoe Dutterding, our mods Beatmaster, W. Scott Eswan, BioCow, Captain Kipker, Steve Guatemala, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget, Virtuoso and J.D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, Acast and Len Peralta. Acast adds support from Tatiana Matias. Pat, Patreon support from Daham McNeil. Contributors for this week's shows include Patrick Norton, Scott Johnson and Dustin Robert Young. Guests on this week's show included Robert Herron and thanks to all of our patrons who make the show possible.