The Vergecast - CES: LG’s impressive rollable TV and Samsung’s iTunes integration

Episode Date: January 8, 2019

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Ashley Carman, Dieter Bohn, and Vlad Savov discuss the first big news day at CES — including Samsung getting iTunes on their TVs, LG's new rollable display actually coming out in 2019, and the numerous announcement of 8K. 07:28 - Apple trolls CES with a giant dig at Android and Alexa privacy 08:16 - Five big questions about Apple putting iTunes on Samsung TVs 17:12 - LG will bring AirPlay 2 support to its 2019 TVs 20:20 - Taking the smarts out of smart TVs would make them more expensive 27:08 - LG’s groundbreaking roll-up TV is going on sale this year 33:08 - LG’s 2019 TV lineup includes Alexa, HDMI 2.1, and an 88-inch 8K OLED 33:50 - Samsung’s 75-inch MicroLED 4K TV is a huge step into the future 33:59 - Sony is adding Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to its Android TV 38:27 - Sony’s best 2019 party speaker has cup holders for your beer 43:33 - Roku and TCL are working on an 8K HDR TV coming in 2019 46:11 - Smells like there could be drama in the scented proprietary pods business 49:08 - Kohler’s smart toilet promises a ‘fully-immersive experience’ 54:08 - Asus reversed the notch to get its laptop bezels even thinner 55:47 - Corsair shrunk the RGB LED down to be as small as the head of a pin 59:07 - T-Mobile roasts AT&T for updating phones with a fake 5G logo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of Vertcast is brought to you by the new Microsoft Surface Pro 6. It's light, super fast, and has a great batter life. So you can work how you want for as long as you want, wherever work takes you. Get more power and more speed with the new Surface Pro 6. Hello, and welcome to Verchcast, the flagship podcast of CES 2019. I think that's actually... No, contractually, you're not allowed to say that. That's a trademark violation.

Anyway, hi, I'm Neelai. I'm your friend. Dieter is here. I'm your companion. We're in Deeter's hotel room, right? Yeah, it's really weird. It's an invasion of my privacy. Vlad Savov is here.

Hello. And Ashley Carmen is here. Hello. So it is day zero. I hate this numbering scheme. It's not a good numbering scheme, but we've done it for a decade. So we're sticking with it. It is the day before the official day of CES beginning.

CS is a consumer electronic show. It is what we are told aggressively is the biggest show in tech, up for debate. But we're in Vegas. This is where all the stuff is supposed to happen. 180,000 attendees this year, which is down 2% from last year or something. That's 2%. I'm feeling it. Yeah.

As a member of the Vurge international team, I absolutely have to dispute the whole biggest tech show in the world. Because IFA exists. Exactly. And IFA happens in Berlin. And fun fact about IFA, it doesn't have its original name anymore because it was this really long German name that nobody could bother to learn and pronounce. So now it's just Ith.

And one time I was like, I'm going to do my research. I'm going to be hardcore about this. I was doing an IFA preview and I spelled out the whole thing and then they got in touch with me and they were like, no, just Eva. That's fine. That's our branding now. That's who we are. Anyway, so we're in Vegas. We got a whole crew with us. We've been running around for the past couple of days and all the press events. Tomorrow, the show floor of CES opens. The show is officially kicked off. But really all the news sort of like happens today because it's supposed to happen. So we'll get to that in the side. But in order to open the the show floor where all the stuff is, the companies like Samsung and Sonyology, they have to announce the stuff first. Here are our new TVs. So today was a bunch of press conferences where they announced all the new TVs, more or less. And then tomorrow the show floor opens people get to go look at them. So, Dieter, you've been coming to CS for... This is my 13th straight year coming to CES. You're a crazy person. I think I'm at 10. Yeah. Might be 11.

Vlad, you're right there with me. You must have more than 10 because this is my 10th. So I think I'm at 11. Yeah. At least. Which is a lot. Ashley? My third. Third?

No, three is a veteran for sure. You'll notice in Ashley's voice, she still has like the glow of youth, the fresh-faced excitement. Because it's a slog in Vegas. But here's what I'm going to say. And here's what we're going to talk about. There's all kinds of stuff going on. Apple is here. Dizarly in a big way.

There's CS is fundamentally a show where all the new TVs get announced. So all the big companies are put out new TVs. There is a bunch of crazy C.E. Yes stuff. I'll tell you the most popular post on our site right now as we record is an otterbox case with a built-in pop socket. You just never know what's going to happen in CES. Glad's disdain.

What's going to capture the interest of the masses? Is it for iPhones? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Then it's the thing. I mean, there's a bunch of silly stuff. And then AT&T and T-Mobile are going to fight on Twitter in the mentions to a verge tweet,

which is deeply weird for two corporations. So we got a lot of stuff talking about. But I'll say it's quieter here than... Yeah. One of the ways that you can tell how big the crowd is here is there's all these press events before things start where you go into a ballroom and look at a bunch of gadgets. And typically we know what the score is. You have to get there super early, get in the front of the line, maybe try and get early access if you can. And year after year, we show up earlier and earlier just to make sure that we get at the front so we can get in first and get a table to sit down and put our laptop.

And typically before, like, for example, there's a show called CES Unveiled. It doors open at five Typically at like four o'clock or 3.30 There's like 100 to 150 press in line At a half hour before the show The thing opened it was like 25 people Yeah It was just almost nobody

It's worth mentioning the detail was right in front of the line Yeah, of course I was in the front of the line Come on. And it was like that yesterday It was like that most today And it wasn't until this evening's press Ballroom conference called Pepcom That I actually experienced a real crowd at CES.

Yeah. And the only other keynote that had a big crowd of people was apparently Samsung's keynote. They had a massive crush of humanity. Well, they pay everybody to go. Well, there's that. But, like, LG was pretty quiet. That's a complete conspiracy theory. Is it?

I'll just say, when you own the entire influence industry. Yeah. They all got to show up. Also, I always look at the Venetian. So the Venetian does all the private, you know, like meetings with the top, top people. And the lines to get to the towers is always freaking crazy. Like, they have, like, it roped off where you have to wait in a huge queue. There was no line to the point that was just like, all right.

Like, I can just cruise right up to any suite I want in the Venetian. Get it. The two things I should just throw in here. I was talking to one audio company, and they were saying how the Venetian previously used to be, like, audio central. Speakers up to, like, $100,000 with $3,000 USB cables, heavy companies. Vlad stuff. Absolutely. Vlad and James Barron.

Yeah. Yeah. You can't get James Berm to come out to CS unless it's $10,000 or above. Let's go that straight. I miss you, James. And maybe it's because James isn't here, but they just didn't turn up. So they would occupy at least two floors of the Venetian, and I was just a few scattered suites. So I'm thinking a lot of companies are seeing less and less return on investment, maybe, coming to CS.

I don't want to get into the business strategy of CS or whatever. Like, there's a big company called the CEA that's responsible for CS. their numbers are going to go up and down. The reason I bring it up is I think the theories for why the show seems quieter this year are actually really interesting. So one is that I've heard this, I can't verify it, but I've heard it from a bunch of places, that the number of Chinese companies at CS is significantly lower than last year because Chinese companies and executives do not want to come to the United States right now, which is just like a wild idea that is just being floated in like the halls of Vegas this week. I think we should go report it out, but it's definitely one thing I've heard.

Then there's a thing Vlad is saying, which is the return on investment of coming to a big show, where you'll be obviously drowned out in the news cycle. I think companies are starting to figure it out. And this is my segue. I set myself up here. The company that most obviously used to do that was Apple. They sat the show out, and they didn't make any news. So Apple, that's not entirely true.

Apple has historically made news at CES, but they did it by trolling the industry by, like, announcing another, like, they would, it was like, we're going to invite you to come look at the new Apple thing and you'd get the invite while you were at CES. And then they would suck all the air out of the room and everybody would be wondering what was going on with Apple. I mean, they did this with the iPhone. Right. Like, come look at the iPhone. My CES. And then one year they did it with the iPhone on Verizon.

Yeah. Which now, in retrospect, looks like the lowest stakes announcement in the entire world. Like one more carrier. And then a few years ago, they did, like the little MacBook leaked. Yeah. Like the single port. But Apple, like, that was their level of participation. Yeah.

This year, all of the news at CES is, like, kind of dominated in this first day, which is a TV day. It's, like, kind of dominated by Apple. Which was a surprise, because we thought we knew what Apple's troll was this year, because they put up a giant banner with the iPhone facing the entire consumer electronics industry that said what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone. Unless the iPhone is listening. Easy. Or maybe you're in China and then things are a bit more flexible. Yeah, right.

So it was like, okay, that's Apple's troll. They're trolling it and everyone's going to talk about privacy. Everyone's talking about privacy anyway. Because that's literally facing like the big Google house. Yeah, right. Faces the Hey, Google, Mance. Yeah. Mance?

It's a manse. It has a kitchen. So we thought Apple's big ad was a thing. But then, literally the first big announcement of CES, which is insane, is Samson. announced that Samsung TVs would get an iTunes app. iTunes. iTunes.

There are no tunes in this iTunes app. It is iTunes movies and TV running on Tysen, which is Samsung's weird Linux Smart TV operating system. It's going to get an iTunes app. It's going to get Airplay 2. I'm going to just tell you this right now. The iTunes app on Samsung TVs will have Bixby integration, which is fucking crazy. And we're like, that's nuts. Apple, like, did the thing with our biggest rival.

And then today, Vizio announced that it's TVs from 2016 up. Oh, that early. Right. So, Samsung TVs from, like, 2018 and 2019. Yeah. We'll get iTunes that'll come in spring. Vizio TVs from 2016 up running a Smartcast 2. Yeah. We'll get Airplay 2 and HomeKit.

Yeah. Samsung TVs won't get HomeKit. LG TVs from this year will get Airplay 2 in HomeKit. and then Sony TVs will get Airplay 2. So can I make an observation here? I think the two things are tied together. The massive Apple ad, which isn't going to be cheap. It's not even a banner.

It's the side of a building. Yeah, they literally repainted the side of a hotel. And as Dieter says, it faces everyone. It is right in the face of the computer, consumer electronics industry. So if you come to CS, there is no way you skip that. You see it, right? So Apple never needed to do that. over, let's say, the past five, six years, or however many.

But what's happened with CS over the past one or two years is Amazon's Alexa has become the thing that third-party manufacturers are making devices for. And then Google, last year, decided, okay, we want some of that business. And they invested tons and tons of money to basically force feed Google Assistant into the same position as Amazon Alexa. And I think that's working out. They're doing it again this year. Like, the way I would describe Google's setup at CES is a compound.

Yeah, that's good. multi-stories, they have one side of building that they've erected, is a massive screen. Yeah, I mean, they're not cut in any corners in terms of spending. So Amazon has become a real big deal here without technically having a presence. Google has become a big deal by forcing it. And Apple, which used to be the big deal, there was an iLounge at CES. I don't even know if that exists anymore. It does not.

No. Which was literally, what do iPhone and iPad and Mac users want? What do Apple users want and need in terms of third-part accessories? that's what we're going to make. So now people are doing other things. And with Apple distributing its software and its services on all these TVs, to me and that speaks to Apple's actual mortality as a business.

You know, previously it was, screw you guys. If somebody wants to use our superior services, they'll buy our hardware. Screw you guys. We don't need to pay any attention to CES. You just build things anyway because we're immortal, right? With gods of the tech industry. And what's happened is this year, that's not the case.

Apple is spending money on advertising, like everybody else. It has to play nice with people who make other ubiquitous hardware, such as Samsung, such as all the other TV manufacturers. And it's already had to do that with Apple Music and Android. And Alexa. Yeah. Right?

So Apple Music is a supporter in Alexa now. Yeah. Which I agree with you. I mean, we just spent all of last week on the show talking about Apple sales in China and, you know, refactored earning guidance and all that stuff. But they made these plans way before that, right? Part of my, the jokes yesterday were I was like, was at EQ just like in the sands at 4 a.m. with like some Samsung executive.

He was like, fuck it, iTunes. Right? Like, this is a weird announcement. It came out of nowhere. No one saw it coming. The app isn't ready. So I asked Apple straight up, like, who is making this app? Are you starting a team of Tysin engineers to make Samsung an app for their TV platform?

Or is Samsung doing it for you? Yeah. Is it Apple music on Android or is it a rocker? Yeah. The Motorola. The Motorola iTunes phone. And the answer was nothing to share at this time. Yeah.

Which is like insane. Like, you know, you know the answer whether Apple or Samsung is building your iTunes app. You also presumably know the answer of why it's called iTunes, which is IDQ was drunk at the sands before in the morning and decided to put iTunes everywhere. So, you know, like, but I think given now the scale of the announcements, right, it's every major manufacturer. Yep. And they were all ready for it in their presentations at their press conferences today.

It's like pretty obvious. Right. And like Chris Welch, when I saw a demo of Airplay 2 this morning, it's like pretty obviously. Like, they did this well in advance. Yeah. Probably before this earnings guidance flipped over for them. It's also pretty obvious why they're doing it, why they have put Airplay on all these TVs,

and why in particular they put iTunes on Samsung TVs, which is this is the year that they launched their TV service. Right. They're spending billions of dollars on fancy people to make them TV shows. Yeah, and they don't want to spend all that money and make all those shows and have it only available on Apple TVs. And so they need to have a way for people that have iPhones to stream it to their TV really easily if they don't want to buy an Apple TV.

And then, you know, Samsung. I agree with you, but a lot of people already have TVs. Like, that's like a not a great, it's still not a great sale. Yeah, that's true. Right? Like, how many years before the 2019 LG TVs, or as ubiquitous, is every year of LG TVs that have been sold in the past? So it's interesting that none of this is backwards compatible. And then you still, if you want to watch whatever show Oprah is making, right, or Shonda Rhymes is making for Apple.

Yeah. You have to still have to buy Apple hardware in some way. So is there a way that we can classify this? If we say like the start of 2019 is essentially the beginning of Apple as more of a media company than it's previously been, because previously we could, I think the device that kind of defined it was the home pod. Right? Superior engineering, far field microphones, all of that good stuff, good sound, etc., etc.,

and just so narrowly focused on the Apple ecosystem. I wrote about it. The HomePod appeals to me, I'm the Virgins Resident Audio File. about the sound, but like, what do I play with it? What do I plug into it? I have an Android phone and I, like, the only Apple device I really have is my MacBook Pro. And Apple just kind of didn't care about people like me. And now, as I say, it's doing things where it recognizes that it needs to have more services and services have to be ubiquitous.

So what's the name of that era? The, uh, I'll tell you, the, it's the era of Apple willing to air play ball. Right. Dieter is fired. See? Ashley just fired you. That's what it sounds like when Ashley fires you. I just want to know what those negotiations were like.

Like when Apple came to Samsung, if Samsung just like laughed and was like, give us iTunes. Like if they were like, you can have AirPlay. I'm sorry. I spent a lot of time with Koreans this week and they're way too polite. I mean,

they go to the other room, laugh and they come back and just very politely say, okay, we accept. I just wonder if they negotiated harder than everyone else and that's why they got iTunes. Like if Apple was going to be like, you get AirPlay. to like everybody else, like Vizio and LG and like whatever. And then Samsung was like, you want access to our TVs?

We actually have the upper hand. Not only do we get iTunes. Give us iTunes. Give us iTunes and Bixby gets to talk to it. Like that is crazy. That is, yes. I just realized something. TCL don't have an airplay two or any deal with Apple 2.

No. I spoke with them this week and they said they're the second biggest TV maker in the United States. Yeah. And they're Chinese. Yeah. So there's a lot there. So let me just go to Ashley's point. for one second. So if you look at the split between what the other three got and what Samsung got,

it's fascinating. So Samsung got an app that talks to Samsung services, Bixby, its search, its guide, it got Airplay 2. It did not get HomeKit, right? So if you say, hey, Siri, turn on the TV, it can't do it. Which is bonkers because Samsung owns smart things. And Smart Things is like the canonical example of an Internet of Things home thing that will talk, it's meant as a translation layer. It's meant as a thing that lets everything talk to each other and no home kids. But doesn't that make sense because they want Bixby to be, they want Bixby to be your smart assistant. They're launching their home speaker, whatever. Has it already been said on this podcast that they should just stop trying to make Bixby happen?

It's the official position of the Verge cast that Bixby has to stay because dogs wearing shoes are cute. Yeah, Bigspe's the dog with shoes And we're not gonna rest until Samsung just gives up And that's the logo for Bigspey Yeah We have a wide array of fan art That they could just take it anytime In vector format

It's very easy What happens to be that webOS penguin Or whatever they had Oh, that bird Beanbird Yeah Yeah this is it's not a great I miss that guy

Beanbird's around He's still there You're buying LG TV Yeah Beanbird all over the place You could have Beanbird roll up Like literally roll up All right

So okay so that's what Samsung got Yeah They got Airplay 2 and they got iTunes. Which I literally got to say about my thing. Then Vizio and LG and Sony, which is interesting for another reason, they got Airplay 2 and HomeKit.

Yeah. Which is Crazy Town. You're kind of saying that like is self-evident White's Crazy Town and why it's... Why didn't they get iTunes? They didn't get iTunes. Why not? Samsung is good and negotiating.

Right. And they... Because Samsung's a big name in TV. So Samsung is like, all right, well, we have the upper hand here for whatever reason. And so Samsung chose to not get HomeKit because they don't want people using HomeKit. They want people using smart things.

Yeah, for sure. iTunes is huge. Again, because it's like Biggsby's running it and it's an app on their TV. So the reason I keep saying the split is Crazy Town is because Samsung got one thing. They got an app and the other people got an integration with Apple's ecosystem.

On top of that, Sony got HomeKit and Airplay and they run Android on their TVs. So it's like a little bit insane that like the biggest vendor of Android TVs now has a bunch of Apple integration baked into it. Vizio runs Chromecast. That's their operating system. It's smartcast which is built on Google. Yep. And they're running a bunch of Apple integrated services.

And I just don't know why Samsung wouldn't take HomeKit or whether Apple held it back and said, we'll give you iTunes but we don't want a HomeKit. Or they gave it to everybody else as the carrot. Where everyone just got to pick and choose. Like, it's just like unclear. What I suspect is that Samsung got an exclusive on this iTunes in that when this TV service launches, someone at Apple has to be like, we should rename iTunes. It doesn't have any tunes to our TV service name. And then everyone will get the TV service app.

It's like the only thing that makes sense. Or they're calling their TV service iTunes. I'm not kidding. I think that they're like, all right, we old people love iTunes. We got to do something with his name. It's going to be called iTunes. I mean, they already spun out Apple Podcasts. And Apple Music.

And you cannot call it iTunes or else Apple will come for you. Right. So, no, they're going to change it. iTunes is dead. Except for iTunes movies and TVs coming at Samsung, Smart TVs. We just need a rebrand. Spring 2019. They kind of stuck for names, though, because they can't use Apple TV.

That's useful piece of hardware. They can definitely use Apple TV. Apple TV stuff. The Apple TV app. That's what they're going to call. They're going to call it TV. Apple TV. It's just to be an Apple logo in the,

middle of your Samsung TV or a Vizzi TV. It doesn't have any of it. Are they going to assist that we never pronounce the Apple now because it's a logo? Yeah. It's just the app. That's like MasterCard. They just got rid of their entire name. That's a logo.

That is literally, if you want to talk about a decision that was obviously made wasted in a Vegas Casino, it's a master card putting out a press release. It's saying we're dropping the name MasterCard and now we are just two interlocking circles. That is a real thing that happened today. It is insane. It is insane. So don't put it past Apple. Can we put out a press release?

It's like the Virgil logo no longer says. because we have the triangle logo. Yeah. Okay, fine. Well, everyone get ready for our press. Oh, man. Do you want me to talk about what my Twitter name means? Because I'm ready for it right now.

Dieter, you've had like half a beer. All right, let me just say one more thing about Apple and Smart TVs. The really super interesting thing about the whole deal is smart TVs are super notorious for tracking everything you do on them. Every single one of them runs automatic content recognition. So the glass literally like sees what's being displayed on it. and then they track that viewing data. And you can turn it off.

You're supposed to be able to opt out. Like if you try to turn it off during setup on a Sony TV, you're like, no, don't do that? And then you get another screen that's like, but don't you want your TV to be awesome? Like, it's like, it's really aggressive to get you to opt in. Apple made all of them turn it off for Airplay 2 and iTunes. So Samsung is not allowed to track what happens in the iTunes app.

No one is allowed to track what happens over AirPlay 2. They just push the industry into stopping this tracking, which is a huge step. Yeah. And you have to believe that they're going to not. do it. Which, yeah. Vizio?

Apple, watch Vizio. Yeah. If you're listening to this episode of Virtas, you probably see in the feed. I interviewed Vizio CTO, and we published that episode yesterday. And I tweeted, my parents Vizio TV hits the network 10 times more than any other device on their network. And he was like, you could have just called us. You could have called.

It sounds like a customer support issue. Like, that's probably a bug. And I was like, no. And he's like, well, just stopped out. You should listen to that. It's really interesting. but Apple got the entire industry to stop tracking, which leads to this really weird backwards thing,

which is they can't prevent Sony or Vizio or whoever from tracking HTML1. So you just buy an Apple TV and plug it into HTMLI. Sony can track the hell out of you, right? Because they can't stop them from that. But if you AirPlay 2 to the Sony operating system, to Android, Apple has a deal in place that prevents them from tracking you.

Which is super upside down. This is an example of something that we've had more than once in recent times, and I think that's going to be a bigger deal again. We as consumers, as little people, as commoners, are increasingly relying on big companies being hostile to one another and moderating one another. I mean, previously it was competition. I want to sell the better products. I'm going to compete with you on price and so on and so on.

Now it's like Apple has its own priorities, and it says, stop being so evil to the people so you can serve our priorities. and we hope that there'll be nice conflict between Google and Amazon and Facebook, so those guys never collude and, you know, destroy the universe, hopefully. And it's like, again, I'm coming from an international perspective, but a little bit of regulation would have heard here. Yeah. You know, just a touch of regulation, just a sliver.

So again, I was talking to Bill Baxter. I've been to CS for a long time. I've talked to a lot of TV executives. I have rarely found myself in a position where I'm like, in front of a wall of beautiful new TVs, and we end up talking about GDPR and California privacy law. And he's like, this is coming for us already.

And it's like a really, it's that moment in the industry. They all know it's coming. But Apple is just saying this is what we sell. I think the problem you're identifying is the market, like consumers have indicated no preference for privacy. That's right. Right?

So like why would you optimize to sell that to them unless you're Apple, which is, but now it's your brand and you're hanging billboards up. But that's not what any of these companies are doing. And they're pushing the price of the TV down. Whether it's privacy, whether it's your health in terms of the food that you eat, those are invisible things. Air pollution, right? It's invisible. Water pollution. It's only visible when people, you know, start getting sick from it and so on, and then you've got to fix the

problem. So these are really things that you do need to have regulated by a government because like chicken fed with antibiotics. It tastes good to you. You're like, I don't care, right? And then if you use down the line, you have issues because of that, because you're not eating healthily. Like these things that are not on the superficial level that are not visible to people It's I'm going to say it's the government's role and responsibility to protect the people from that I'm just saying I usually have Paul in that chair 100% the opposite of what Paul would say to me in this situation Look I don't know what's going to happen I just know that Apple has signed these deals

And it's wild to me that you're almost better off if you don't want to be tracked Using Airplay to the native software to a native Android stack then you are plugging an Apple TV into a TV that might track you whether or not you tell it to stop you. Yeah. Which is like nuts. Legitimately not. Well, how much, through the HTML, how much can they seek?

They can see like, they can see what apps you're accessing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's automatic. It's Shazam for TV. They're able to recognize what operating system, what game you're playing, what TV share you're watching, when you stop, when you start. And they package that data up and they sell it to add vendors. And they're all supposed to anonymize it and, you know, it's there to, you know,

give you recommendations for what to watch next. next, assuming that you live your life inside of like a smart TV operating system, you're like, that ad looks good. Like, you're not doing that. That's crazy. But anyway, so Apple's pushing it out. The one thing that I'm really confused about is why don't Apple just like make a TV? Like it would dominate these companies if it just produced a TV.

And it seems as strange to me that they have not. Well, because the market share maybe? Like Samsung Vizio, except TCL, which is like Vlad mentioned. Right. Well, if you consider the biggest manufacturer as a TV, Samsung makes its own panels. TCL makes its own panels. LG makes its own panels. I can't tell you the number of first releases I've read from like Korea saying

Samsung's eighth generation LCD factory, right? LG invests billions into its 12 generation such and such production line. And how does Apple just stroll into that? And we're all aware that Apple likes to have control of its supply chain. So how does Apple stroll into that without rebranding an LG or Samsung or a TCLTV? How does Apple make its own panels out of nowhere? It doesn't make any of the panels in. the iPhone.

It's a solved problem. Right? Like, they know how to solve that problem. Yeah. They don't make any of finals in the smartphone scale. In this MacBook, in the iPad.

It's solved the problem with the iPhone scale, but maybe that's not, it doesn't have that sort of capability on a TV scale. Yeah, I have no idea. I just know that whatever moment that they had to make a TV, like that window closed, and now they're just like, all right, now our shit can run.

What was there are the analysts who's... Gene Monster. There are a lot of Gene Monster jokes. As far as I'm concerned, the best reason for Apple not to make a TV is just to keep that legend going. Yeah. All right. Apple. We're going to read an ad.

We're going to come back and we're going to actually talk about these very many teams. Vads will be very happy. We actually talk about these TVs. This episode of Virtchast is brought to you about Microsoft Surface Pro 6. The Surface Pro 6 is a laptop to get if you need to get stuff done with an eighth generation Intel core processor. It's the fastest most powerful Surface Pro ever. And it just under 2.5 pounds. The surface lets you work wherever you want, your office at the airport, or just hang.

out on the couch. With up to 13 and a half hours of battery life, whatever you're doing, you'll do it uninterrupted. Do everything you need, even if it's a million things at once, with the power and speed of the new Surface Pro Six. All right, let's talk about these actual TVs. Okay, so last year at CES we came and we saw LG Display, which is not LJ Electronics, it's a separate company, quote unquote, separate. And they showed a rollable TV, which is literally a TV that rolls down into a roll and then rolls back up, and it's a 65-inch OLED TV. and it looks gorgeous, it's lovely.

And now all of a sudden, this year's CES, it only took them a year, and it went from LG Display's Concepts, Concept, Slash, Prootype, to LJ Electronics's Real Retail product, which is going on sale in the spring. We don't know the price. I have a guess. Five figures?

I guess it's $12,000. I was going to say $15,000. I was going to say $10. Oh, come on. Just keep going on. $40,000. There you go. I mean, they did show it next to, like, an infinity pool,

and some guys, like, beautiful L.A. loft on the cliffs and the hills. Yeah. So maybe. There's two kinds of TV prototypes. There's the kind that we see here that's like, well, that's nuts. And I will never see anything like that in my home. And then there's the kind where you see it like, well, that's amazing.

And in five years, like, that'll be affordable and I'll be able to get it. Which of these two do you think the LG rollable TV is? I honestly thought it was in the first category. I mean, I covered it last year's CES and it was like, why? No, it still is. Like, you can buy it, but you can't go. Like, when will I be able to buy it? LG rollable TV for under $1,500.

Oh, come on. No, that's what I'm asking. That's not, listen, you could say that about OLED. You know, close to my first attendance at CES, OLED screens were something like 20 inches. Yeah. And they cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Right.

And we're all like, this is never going to happen. Every year comes to CES and OLED isn't happening. It eventually turned into the second category. But there are other TV technologies that never make it into the second category. And so what I'm asking is, do you think the rollable TV, is going to make it into the second. I don't think it will ever be under $2,000. Just like...

Under $4,000. Yeah, I think a 65-inch OLED TV right now costs you $2,700. Okay. It'll be that. Okay. That's where it'll lay. Let me talk about the tech for a moment as well,

because I think it's really cool. What they do is they have the display and it's still extremely fragile, this flexible display. So you're not literally rolling it up like a, you know, a load of cloth. They have slats on the back. They're not steel slats.

Wow, fun. Plastic slats. They have plastic slats on the back, and those adhere to the screen, and then Dita put it really well. There's an airspace inside the row, so the screen shouldn't touch the slats in front of it. So technically, that is really, really precise manufacturing engineering that they need to make with every one of these. And also, like, first of all, that's really admirable on a technical level. And actually being able to roll up your TV, it's just practically useful and very cool. I just, and I think some people will buy it.

I think it will replace projectors for some people. Yeah, exactly. Well, so actually, I was not sold on this TV at all. I was like, this is the gimmick. This is just like somebody who has too much money is going to buy this until they just, all they did was they just put the thing in front of a window. And I was like, oh, yeah, I want that now. Because, like, I've got a relatively big window. And it means that like my TV's in the wall and the sun hits it and blah.

But what I want is the window behind the TV so that I could just like watch. TV when I want and look out the window when I want. And so to like have the thing just go away and you just have your window. But when you watch TV, it goes up and it's in front of the window. It means you can like arrange your living room the way you actually want to instead of the TV has to go in that one spot. If you guys recall, we used to have curved TVs, 60 inch, 70 inch, 80 inch, a hundred inch. I continue to own a curve TV.

Oh, God. Yes. The point is we used to have curved TVs and your wife has written a really beautiful essay about how terrible they are. Then we even Samsung made a hundred inch curved TV that flexed out to flat and it flexed back to curved. Yeah. And that was that wasn't even your first category Dieter. That was the zeroeth category, which is this is a concept.

This is crazy and it's not in any way practical or an advantage over anything else we have. So like my faith in this rollable TV is that it has that practicality. Yeah. And that draw that Dieter explains because I get that with a few other gadgets as well where you might see it on paper and you're like I'm like, yeah, it's a gadget. And then you see it, you pick it up, and you're like, whoa. And you had that. Yeah.

With a fidget spin up. Yes. And he lit up. His wall moment. Yeah. It's what I need. No, look, the LGTV is, CES is often full of science projects, right? So, like, Samsung made a TV that flexes the curb and flexes back.

You can't find, like, a normal person to be like, I saw a great gadget. Like, the local news. The test for me at CS is always like, what is the local news going to pick up? And they didn't pick that up. They're, like, they can't sell that. Yeah. Right. But they can easily pick up, this TV rolls up and goes away.

I think they can pick up, here's a, like, Samsung's micro LED thing where you can just like build the TV of whatever size you want out of like little panels. Yeah. That stuff to me is, okay, we're getting better at saying how should the screens integrate into our living spaces. Yeah, I think it kind of hits on the whole like screamless trend too. You know, we're starting to become more cognizant of how much we stare at screens. And this is great.

It's like, oh, I can finally look out my window now. Yeah. There was a whole other world out there, Dieter. I'm going to look at it. It's not 90 degrees away from the screen that you're addicted to. I'm that projector person. You know, I like don't own a TV. I don't ever really want to own a TV,

but because of the fact that I hate it aesthetically, I think it's so ugly in your house. So this is perfect for me. When I saw this house, like, hell yeah. It actually reminded of a Bing and Oliveson product. This seems like such a product they would sell, and they have the luxury, you know, too.

so I don't know. It just seems like they would sell. I think five years, $2,700. Okay. That's my target for the whole TV. That's what I'll be due for a new TV. Perfect. There is actually a very good chance

of Bangalison just doing a B&O edition of this kind of TV because they've collaborated a good OG previously. Yeah, this seems like such a product for them. Yeah. So that's the LG, and then they did an 88 inch... 8K. 8K.

HDMI 2.1, which is the more exciting part of that, right? I mean, it's just the thing that can drive those screens. Yeah, okay, fine. So HDMI 2.1 is here. Like, variable refresh rate, enough bandwidth to do 8K at 60 frames per second. Yeah. Or 4K at 120. Yeah.

AK to soy is really only useful in Japan where NHK does some tests. It's not useful. It's not useful. Come on. Yeah. Well, my thing is that you know that 4K is like cheap and ready to go because they're already talking about AK. Yeah. Like if you were like on the fence, like, okay, it's critical mass.

Netflix will just happily stream you some 4K stuff tomorrow at like a reasonable bit rate that you'll enjoy looking at. Like, go buy a TV. You'll be happy. Turn off the tracking. Samsung also talked about AK But their big thing is a 75 inch micro LED Which is now a product that they're gonna sell Yeah and it's like you basically can put your TV together

Like you know panel by panel Oh that was very cool as well And it's cool as like watching it put together And have them turn on automatically Yeah It's cool for me because it's a more practical version In my mind than LG's wallpaper TV For some reason

Just because like it's easier to like mount on the wall and less fragile than that wallpaper paper TV, I think, in some ways. Just, I don't know. It's like Ashley was saying, like, it makes the TV less of an imposing hulking thing in the room. It's like, just put a little, stick on the wall. And if I want to put it on that wall over there, I can do it because it's just little panels I pick up and reattached. Can you buy, like, a 35, 40-inch TV like this and then just be like, a few years down in line,

okay, I'll add a few more panels. Why not? So that is the demo they're giving, which is they built a little TV out of like four panels. Yeah. And then some, like, do, like, it's a gift. You can, like, look at it on our site. Like, some dude picks up another panel and, like, just sticks it next to the thing. And it, like, slowly becomes a bigger TV.

Yeah. Bang & Orison again. This is turning to a Bangalerson show. But they have that with speakers. So they have these arrays, and they cost, like, $4,000. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And they're wall-mounted, right?

And you can have four or five of those. You know, if you're kind of low-end luxury, four or five of those. And then you get. Four or five more, and then you get four or five more. But the neat technological thing is that the more panels you add, the more speakers you add, it just automatically recognizes how many speakers it has and distributes a sound across the wall. So that will be the ultimate thing, a B&O wall array, and then Samsung's micro-LED array. Then we can get one of those light panels from NanoLeaf that you just keep adding on and like, whoa.

This is like the same idea as Sonos, but like crazier. Like, you'll just get a bigger living room someday. You're going to do great. You're going to work hard. You're going to get another room in your house for a Sonos speaker, and then your living will be bigger, and you're going to need a bigger TV in a Nanoleef array, in a Bangalison speaker array, and we're just going to keep growing with you. Sony announced AK TVs as well.

They announced some new 4K TVs. Obviously, they're a big announcement. Actually, Sony didn't have the announcements. Like, their press conference was bad. Like, I don't know how to say it. Like, you know, they have a new CEO. He came out. He was like, we're going to be a creative entertainment company.

He brought out the head of Sony Pictures, who is the squarest gentleman that I've ever seen in my life. He was like literally... Was he wearing a bowtay? No, he was just... It was bad. And he brought out Phil, Lord and Chris Miller to talk about Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. They made Spider-Man into the Spider-verse boring? Yeah.

Oh! It was like a lot. And then they brought out like a Sony music executive who then brought out Feral. Ferell looked very sleepy and went off the prompter and was just saying things like, what did he say the infinite field of audiovisual experiences like Ferrell was stunned I don't know how to explain what was going on with

Ferrell. Ferrell was drugged he was like we push you up to the stage he was like I can't where's my eyeball and then he was like actually I have an eyeball and then like the Sony music executive was like I want to be clear that Ferrell has an eyeball and they announced no products at this

press event and the lead up to it was a New York Times article with the new CEO that was like here's this vision for Sony that's going to be on display at the consumer electronic show. Everyone thought he was going to walk away from, you know, the entertainment and gaming assets, but it's going to be the focus of the, so we were all like, we had like a lot of people watching this keynote. So Sony, I mean, I watched the beginning of it.

It's like we make the stuff that, we make cameras and stuff for creators, and then we make movies and stuff. And then we also make the stuff that people use to consume this stuff. It's like they're just, they do have the whole cycle. It's like they're one Sony. I mean, they announced by the joke. They announced one Sony five years ago. Howard Stringer.

Sir Howard Stringer, who was a crazy person. Yeah, I mean, like, Sony has been announcing the fact that they make cameras and that they own a movie studio that uses the cameras to make movies. They've been announcing that at CS since 1971. I don't know what the point of this was, except for the say the new CEO got to bring from... Do people use Sony cameras to make movies? James Cameron does apparently. Or Jim, as his square friend prefers to him.

I don't want to relive this press conference. I'm just telling you. that it was bad in the real news that Sony announces all in press releases, including a bunch of new TVs. Another interesting trend here is all the companies are saying the speakers in their TVs are better. Yeah. Sony's already leading that way. And then Sony just made a huge, huge deal. I mean, the biggest news of the show is obviously the party speaker that has built in cups for beer pawns.

Stop it. Which is the single best announcement of the show, in my opinion. It's not for beer pawn. There's no lights on it. It's just so the DJ can put the beer somewhere. So Ashley and I, when we did the circuit breaker show, we called in a bunch of huge party speakers, including some Sony ones that light up. This one appears to be from a different division at Sony

using different branding, a different industrial design, but it folds out and it has cup holders. It's like a serious speaker. Yeah. Like we had the fun speakers, which is where you put the beer holders. All I'm telling you is that the incredible growth in action in the party speaker market is conclusive proof

that no one actually knows what people want. We got to find them at CES. I want to interview the new iteration is. Just like imagine like your job. We have jobs Like we go to work Something happens We go to meetings

Like we have to pitch stuff Like if you're in your car You're listening to Vurchase You might be driving to work You know you've got like a boss Imagine you're the person at Sony And you're like It's time for the third generation of party speakers

And you're like putting together your PowerPoint You've got like a bunch of market research You're like You know fraternities on average Destroy these every two years Here's our replacement cycle We've done a bunch of pricing data LG's party speakers have

karaoke functions. Like, someone's doing that work. We have to find them. TV trends at CES. Yeah. There was a minute, actually more like a million minutes, where the industry was telling us that we really wanted 3D. They were just, you want 3D, and we knew it was a lie.

And then they were telling us we really wanted curved TVs. And then they were telling us, we really want 4K. That was the cool new thing. And then they were telling us, no, no, no, you want HDR. No, you want this HR. No, you want that HDR. No, you want that H. That's it.

blah, blah, blah. And there was a whole thing there, right? They're telling us one thin. I don't see the whole industry like pushing a new thing here. They're trying to inspire us with rolling TVs and TVs you can like on the wall. But there's no like this is the next big thing in television. No, because they're in the refresh. It's like 8K is coming there later.

But we're in this cycle where there's no like hype cycle for like a TV feature. They like are all just, they've all like, they all support each other's HGR standards by and large now. They all have got 4K by and large. They've all got their little local dimming gimmick here there. But there's no grand like, this is what TVs are going to be now moment this year. No, because they are that thing. That's really my the inflection point. Yeah.

Like this is just the sort of like periodicity of the curve is happening. Like they sold everybody flat panels and then they sold everybody HD. And then they were fine with that for a minute. And then they're like, oh shit, we have to sell everybody in a new TV. Do you want 3D? Do you want this? Do you want that? Now they're like really good at like people are buying the new TVs.

Yeah. Right. So they don't actually have to, like, drive demand. They just have to produce the panels. Yep. And they're like, you can see the glimmers of the next thing happening. But I think it'll be a year or two before. Right.

Right now it's like, it has Alexa. It has Google Assistant. It has Airplay. Like those are the features people are buying because the panels and the content are all there. Yeah. But honestly, it makes sense for them to plateau a little bit because, as you were saying, DET, 4K was a big thing for a long time, which was a big thing out there, not in my house. Right?

and then OLED was kind of on a parallel line to 4K and there was a time there was a CES where we're like what would you choose right would you choose the 4K TV or would you choose the OLED TV because they didn't have OLED that mature now we have 4K OLED and HDR and flatness and rollable capability okay we don't really have low purchasable but the point is all of these desirable things especially 4K and OLED when we had them apart everybody was like I just want

together. I just want it together. So we need to at least be a little appreciative now and just be like, yes, the things are going to actually by a TV. Price is gradually coming down. A rollable 4K OLED with HDR.

That's the one. And you probably won the crystal display sound. For sure, yeah, throw it in. I'll also take the floor mats. If you could add these cup holders. The infinity pool. Can I go back to talking about the person on how they definitely had to like get Solo Cup specs?

I want to know the person that has a $15,000. OLED O-led TV in their infinity pool outside. They're just like, they just got sitting outside. It's Mark Cuban. Yeah. For years, like the thing at CS was Mark Cuban has a standing order for the biggest TV the industry can make.

Yeah. So they would announce like 100-inch plasma. And then like they'd be like, well, one's already being a ship to Mark Cuban. Like, it was really, it was really like. Well, if we're going to talk about cuff holders, let me just mention this. Oh my God. Let me just mention this. How bleak do you think it is?

For somebody like me, living by himself, single, four cup holders in his speaker. I just want the mega base, man. Why do you have to make me... We're going to get you this speaker and you're going to throw a party. Where do you have to make me feel lonely? Up to four people and no more.

I don't even drink beer, man. I mean, come on. If you have a party with five people, that fifth person, it's like not in the club. Like, staying in the corner. We're going to crowd by the mega base speaker. All right, can I just quickly say TCL also announced DTVs, including

the whole industry is pushing towards 75-inch TVs. Yeah. They also announced an AKTV. they announced an Android TV which is not being sold in the United States and the TCL press conference was legitimately crazy you watched it with me

you watch it with me yeah we were watching Was that where they said like the TV is cake? The contrast is the cake The contrast is the cake There's just a lot of lines Yeah contrast is the cake Nobody buys a TV because they want a television Yes that's another line they said

They put up a slide that says TCL loves our customers And then said zero words about privacy And they said we by the of the next few years will be everyone in America's preferred consumer electronics brand. Yeah. Which is just a big claim. They have a lot of goals for 2019. I feel like the Samsung people have a lot to say about that.

I mean, you're a boss of people, humans. If somebody came to you and had like a quarterly conversation with you, so listen to my goal for the rest of the year. It's to be beloved. By the country. I like dream big. Get out there. Just like maybe don't pervasively track everybody.

Hey everybody. This is Nilai Patel and the editor-in-chief of the verge, co-host of the Verge cast, and I want to tell you about Better Worlds, an exciting new science fiction project from The Verge. Look, everything today is so bleak. The news is terrible. The TV shows are grim. Even our superheroes are gritty and dark.

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We are launching Better Worlds January 14th and our first audio story goes up on the extras feed on Wednesday, January 16th. So once again, go to the Verge Extras podcast feed and stay tuned for Better Worlds in 2019. A little bit of extra silly C-S stuff. Ashley, I want you to tell the people how you made the fragrance vendors get into a fight. Well, so I love drama. Yeah. And we went to, oh my God, was it unveiled? Yes, CES unveiled.

Which is where just a bunch of companies get together in a Mandalay Bay banquet room and exhibit their things. And it's the first we're seeing of like basically CES. It's the start of the show sort of for press. Anyway, so last year on the circuit breaker show, I had showed Dieter and Nelai this device called the Moodoo, which promises. is to turn anyone into a scent to DJ. And you have to buy these capsules that you put into the device. And you can remix the scents to customize it to however you want your house to smell. And they were there this year and I was like, all right, I got to go say hey to my guy.

And I realized that there's another smart scent company and they're also exhibiting in this ballroom. So I go over to my bro at MoDoo and I'm like, yo man, there's another smart scent company there. And I'm like, how do you feel about that? And he's like, who is it? And it's like a crazy name. All I know is the device is called the Compose with the Z at the end. And I'm like, these guys from France, composed. Of course he was Israeli.

There's a lot of French people in Avalius. Yeah, and he's like, well, we have patents, so I'm not worried. I'm like, okay. And then he starts going off about how, like, scent technology works. And then he's like, I don't know who they are. Like, I've never seen that. I was like, I'll walk over with you if you want to go check it out. So I walk him across this ballroom.

And I'm just like rubbing my hands together. I'm so freaking hyped. I love drama and I want them to fight or something. Like a smell fight. You do realize that taking you over to French people, there was a high probability of the fighting happening. I would love to see a fight. I saw Ashley like in the middle of this.

She's like, they're going to fight. Anyway, so he's wearing a shirt that says moodoo on it. So as we're walking over, he starts like hiding his shirt. He has his badge on. He flips his badge over so they can't see his name. He kind of stands like a very safe distance away. and observes from afar. He starts making comments about the device

trying to figure out how it works. And I was like, I don't have any answers for you because when I talked to them, they told me it's their secret. It's like, they're a little secret. They can't tell me how it works, even though their thing is patented. So anyway, no one fought,

but I got to write a story about it. And then I found out today that there's actually another smart sense company. So there's three. Yeah. This shit's crazy. I'm telling you, it's all about this recurring revenue thing.

Yeah. Everyone wants to sign a subscription. Yes. Every VC funder, when you go to them as a start, does not want to hear your pitch unless you have a recurring revenue model. Every hardware company I've talked to that starting up tells me this. They're like, you need to have it.

You won't get money. They think hardware's dead until you give them the recurring revenue model. You see it everywhere. Do you think the Sony speaker people have like signed a deal with like a solo cup? What's like a ping pong ball company? Automatic refills. We can sense when it's empty. Oh man.

There's also a smart toilet at CS or announced the CS cooler. There's smart toilets all the time, but for some reason this one really took off because... Kohler? Coaler. Because they had this insane commercial with this, like, jacked bro, like, asking his toilet to, like, set the mood and then, like, going in to take a bath. A bath? In the toilet. Well, no, next to the toilet.

The toilet controlled the room because it was a smart toilet, and it was able to turn the lights down and turn the water in the tub. I feel like in our many years running conversation about where should the mics and speakers go? The toilet has never come up as the answer. And Kohler boldly was like, what if the microphone was in the toilet? I mean, here's the... And the toilet had mood LEDs all over it. The problem, the real problem is Coler on their press release said that you can have a fully immersive experience with the toilet. And this is where I command to fact check this.

Do you want to fully immerse yourself in the toilet? Is that actually, is that where? Go ahead and fact check it. I don't think it's a bidet. And that is clearly the fully immersive experience. And also, people love bidets. Yeah. Where's the bidet?

Glad I'm looking at you because you're European. Well, they needed to make space for the microphones. It is a heated seat, apparently. I have zero answers to provide here. I am still blown away, in fact. I met with a headphone company at a suite at a hotel here. And I was like, where is the bathroom? I'd like to use your facilities.

I walked into the bathroom that place is bigger than my living room and it was just a bathroom he had an extra corridor not joking I am not I'm not exaggerating there was an extra corridor of the bathroom and then it was a toilet

yeah one room with a toilet and a bidet and I guess the other room I don't know what was in it because I found what I needed right so it was good I was fine yeah but it's literally there's the bathroom a corridor and then an extra thing on time I understand this is whatever American home is like Yeah.

What are you talking about? You should move to America, Matt. What's the story about? Vlad, what are the most expensive headphones who've worn so far at CS? Oh, they're old. They're old. But it also depends, right? Depending on when you listen to this podcast, the price will shift.

And here's why. They have 200 grams of gold in them and six carrots of diamonds embedded into the headphones. The base price of the headphones is $4,000, so it won't dip below $4,000. But depending on the price of gold, the price will. fluctuate. Oh, dang. You could get a good deal, actually. Yeah. So at the moment, they're $120,000. Wait, wait. Wait. What? How flaky is the price of gold? Well, so the base price is $4,000. For the headphones, yeah. And then you can add $116.16. 16, it's very late. $116 worth of gold to the headphones. Yeah, but it's finely crafted gold. It's embedded diamonds.

These are the folk have utopia. So as I say, at $4,000, they're super pricey, but they're also very good. Those headphones, they're great, right? And they don't even look that extraordinarily gaudy. You know, they are just flashy. Yeah. It just, they have a few too many zeros in the back end. So I put them on, I took a photo because you have to, right? And I hand them back and I said, I don't have insurance coverage for this, so just take them away.

Wait, so can you buy them at $4,000? Yes, without the gold and the diamonds. And then you can, are there steps between $4,000 and $120,000? This is the thing, for Cal, which is the French company, they do speakers and headphones, they make the original $4,000 headphone, and then they collaborate with some ultra-luxury, crazy company. I see. And they make special editions.

And there's only, like, I don't know, eight of them in the world. Yeah. And they sold one, which was number eight, which is lucky in Vietnam, they sold it a Vietnamese person. Okay. That's all I know about it. That's like on my press release. I do not know that they've sold a second. Oh, I see.

So in one through seven, they're just like gotten a safe. I mean, they're around. Listen, they're around. There's the other thing. The value of gold is there. And actually the value of good headphones, again, is there. They don't have built in obsolescence.

They don't have built in obsolescence. Yeah. Because it's all electric. Because they're wired. Yeah. You can't fit that much gold in them. They're smaller, right? So they can never be...

I'm just going to transition this to something else headphone-related. I tweeted maybe one of the worst tweets of my life. It had a glaring typo in it. It said maybe people want headphone jack on their phones. missing articles we are now up to like 11,000 likes no like I don't know people just like the typo

or they're just like yes this is like this is how I feel about this like I'm so angry I can barely speak like I just want headphone jack like they're just it's like a compulsive it's a market demand is there okay it's wall the solution is wall we want wall without war we don't go anywhere

I want headphone jack on phone I want headphone jack on phone Like, that's where we're at this thing. AIS just made a laptop that has a little bump at the top for the webcam so that there's no notch or so that there's a smaller bezel. And you know what? I'm totally here for it. Just make a little camera bump? Put a little bump at the top.

Yeah, that's cute. It's the best. Let me squeeze in a couple of things here. These are very brief, techie things. So first of all, I'm calling that reversing the notch, the thing that Ais used. No, it's nega notch. Negan notch. I don't like either of these things.

Fair enough. Anyway, but I like it and I try that. I just to stop talking about that they got it out too bad. I definitely want you to stop saying it. Okay, forget the name, forget the name. I tried the very similar thing that Lenovo did with the Yoga S940. Yeah. It's a new laptop that they're done.

It's a smaller protrusion. But it makes total sense. The bezzo's ultra thin. Yeah. The protrusion is like a couple of millimeters higher and it's just at the center of the laptop and it allows you to have the webcam at the center at the top where it belongs. Those are top-notch things. Oops.

But here's the point. When that comes down, it is exactly the thing that you need to open up the laptop. Yeah. And still on the OS 940, the display on that, I think the edges have that 2.5D curve on it that you have on phones. And that combined with thin bezels and just like really, really gorgeous and rich colors on that display. Just kind of blew me away. Usually I go to the Novos briefings and I'm like, show me the ThinkPad. Okay, I'm here for the ThinkPad.

I don't care about all your smart home stuff. I don't have that much of a home. just give me the thing pad. But this time, I was like, okay, no mind thing pad. This yoga just kind of, you grabbed me. It was really impressive. So I think whenever we get that info review, that's going to be a really awesome laptop to review. That being said, we'll set that aside, final techie thing, and then we can talk about AT&T and stuff.

Corsair, the gaming peripherous company, they've reinvented the RGB LED. And usually I would be like, oh, for crying out loud, you know, just the massive eye roll. But the way they've done it is actually super impressive because the usual. usual LED that you embed into things like mice and keyboards is about the size of a fingernail because there's an assembly around the LED to keep it together and make it actually function and work. What I've done is they reduced some ridiculous, it's the size of a pin, the head of a pin. So now they can fit 100 LEDs in the space where they could previously fit four. And they're 60% brighter, 60% more power efficient, literally every parameter is better.

Bigger story. Because tiny LEDs are behind almost everything we've talked about here. Right? They're behind the contrast backlight. Contrast is the cake backlights in TCL TVs or behind the micro LED displays. It's like a, I just keep hearing in one way or the other, like there are smaller LEDs in this world and now we can do something else. Like, for example, this gaming mouse. Yeah.

And, well, it's a gaming mouse. It's for keyboards. Well, of course, for them, it's for RAM sticks. So now I have 12 individually. addressable LEDs on your RAM sticks. So you can do all sorts of programming and like flowing. To make your RAM light up. Yeah.

Of course. I mean, if your RAM doesn't light up, why do you even have a PC? I mean, come on. And also, Corsair,

somebody asked a really good question from the journalists who are really hardworking and worthy people about whether somebody else will copy it. But Corsair, they said they've basically bought the production line with the partner that they have for these LEDs. So for at least a while longer, they're going to be the gaming peripherals maker

who has this, mini exclusive for this. And, you know, with keyboards, they especially want to do it with wireless because then the LEDs consume like basically not power. The backlight on them is just intense. It doesn't feel,

because any backlight they have, even on Magma Pro keyboards, you can kind of tell there's individual lights underneath. Yeah. But if you string together these ones in a really dense alignment, it just looks like it's literally color coming out of your keyboard.

It's just intense and impressive. I'm here for it. Wow. I also here for individually addressable. is on RAM 6. Absolutely. What am I doing? I got to build a PC.

All right, Deeter. Yeah. Tell us about evil, thieving, lying AT&T, which, by the way, has not yet responded to the fact that they are launching a streaming service called Verge TV. No, they're not launching it. They trademarked the possibility that they might intend to someday, but they're not launching it because we won't let them.

It's true. Hold fast, Vlad. I'm holding. Flod's going to throw carrot at AT&T until they give up. Just as they did with 4G AT&T is. running 5G by naming 4G phones, 5GE phones, and that update, as we have discussed, is the worst, and it is now going out. So we dutifully wrote the post saying if you have any of these particular Android phones,

Samsung phone, your... It's the LG, it's like the V40 and the S8 active. Yeah. Some crazy set of phones. You're not going to see 4G or LTE in your status bar. You're going to see 5GE, and you should know that this is a lie. This is not 5G. this is 4G

and in fact not to put too final point on it but AT&T is actually behind when it comes to rolling out LTE advance the faster version of LTE that they think counts as 5GE they're actually way behind where Verizon anyway so we Jake wrote this post

we were busy at CES running around looking at Twitter and we could whatever I'm using an Android phone which means I don't have an iPhone which means I don't have well I have an iPhone but it means the point is. It means I had the algorithm on on Twitter.

And so I saw one of the more popular tweets that I had missed during the day. And it was T-Mobile replying to the verge with a short little video clip applying a tiny little 9G post-it note to an iPhone saying I didn't know it was that easy. And now they're beefing in. That's a solid roasting.

It's pretty good. Yeah. Do you think AT&T is going to have the shame to stop it? No. Hmm. Also, don't get on your high horse, T-Mobile people. Because you did it too.

Because T-Mobile did it too. The only reason we refer to it as L-T-E instead of 4G is because T-Mobile was one of the people screwing it up and the whole term concept of 4G got destroyed. I think T-Mobile might be doing it with 5G too. They're gonna. No, they can't now because they started this beef. But I think what they're calling 5G is not as much 5G is what Verizon thinks 5G is.

It's unclear to me. I don't know. I don't know what 5G is. What if? I do know that I'm on a... panel at 8 a.m. tomorrow talking about 5G. So I should figure it out. Listen, if you don't know what 5G is, you're perfectly

in your place. And then on that panel. I don't. I will say there's another tech reporter. I won't blow her up too much, but she was like, I'm on a panel about 6G. What? Yow. No. Okay, we have to wrap it up.

We've been going for a minute. We'll do another one. We're doing another one of these tomorrow. Here's what we didn't talk about this on this episode at all. Alexa or Google Assistant we're going to the show floor, we're going to see a bunch of crazy stuff. So tomorrow come back. We're going to get into what's happening with the smart home platforms.

I suspect it will be a lot. Dieter actually has a piece up. Google Assistant now on a billion devices. So that's, I think we're going to go see some of them. Some subset of billion devices. We're going to go look at them tomorrow. So come back for the Vergecast tomorrow. I'm also interviewing a bunch of other people here at CES.

So look out for those interview feeds, interview shows to hit the feed. Ashley Carman, you are doing. an episode of Why'd You Push That Button Live. Yeah. We're making Caitlin come to CES. Yeah, Caitlin's coming to Vegas. We're worried for everyone. This is exciting for me and Caitlin.

Tell the people... If you're at CES, they can, like, come see, right? Yeah, if anyone's at CES, our show is actually taking place at Google's mansion or whatever we're calling it, the compound, whatever word Dieter used. Mance. Yeah. We're really early in the morning. We're at 9.15.

We're going to be interviewing Brett Kinsella from voicemot. com. He just loves voice assistants. and Lillian Rincon, from Google Assistant, about what it means to have a smart speaker or a smart assistant as a part of your home and part of your family. That's fun. Yeah. Please throw them a little bit. Anybody involved in small assistants.

That's like why Caitlin. That's like Caitlin's like the thing. You can also listen to why you push that button in your feeds right now. Go listen to that. Yes. Our season finale is this week. And it is honestly the best episode ever. I'm excited.

It's an all-star cast. And it's about elite dating out. Wow. Oh, you've been working on this one for a while. There's also like the whole rest of the episode, so go listen to Olive Button. If you're at CS, come listen to Ashley and Caitlin at the Google Place or just wait for that to hit your feed. You can also listen to- You can also listen to Pivot with Scott Galloway. And you can listen to Function with the Neil Dash, all part of the Boxingney podcast network. And we'll see you tomorrow for more Virchcast at CS.

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