Gadgetory

world from the CNET stage in CES in Las Vegas I'm Donnell Bell he's Paul Sloane I'm gonna talk for you sheesh our tip cane and we're kicking off the day here with your inside scoop from the biggest trade show in the world right now this is a press conference underway here in the South Hall with the makers of the Pebble watch a Kickstarter project so later in the day the folks from Pebble will be here but let's see what if we can listen to what they're saying right now it's made of polycarbonate so it's strong and there's a polycarbonate lens on top protecting the display we've put a hard coat on top of this polycarbonate lens an anti scratch an anti scratch coat the strap is a standard 22 millimeter watch strap we designed a custom strap that fits really great all right when you're apologizing that'd be the color does seem to be off in the stream I don't think that's on our end here so he looks like he's from Avatar but that's it's a feature there as well you can do that just with a standard a standard band what makes it a great sports watch is that it's actually five atoms it's it's water-resistant to 5 atmospheres now we mentioned this during our Kickstarter project but we never really explained or when we announced it during our Kickstarter project we didn't really get into the details so we're proud to say that through the design process we've been able to maintain a 5 atmosphere rating for pebble this means that it's perfect for going for a run in the rain or swimming or going sailing or you know even doing the dishes if if you got to do that the pebble it it it really is kind of cool because it means that you don't have to take off your watch when you're doing you know running around doing the everyday life I leave my wash on quite a long time another thing that we have announced is the announced yet is the magnetic charging cable in order to make the watch waterproof or water-resistant we had to come up with an innovative method for charging the watch a lot of other sports and smartwatches have very clunky Docs or cradles that involve a large a large piece of plastic that you have to carry around to to charge your watch we've designed something a little different it's a tiny USB cable with a with a custom head on the end that snaps onto your pebble just like that it means that we don't have any gaping holes in the side of the watch for a charge port and it means that we can we can still maintain our water-resistant rating so this is the this is the cable as we announced during our Kickstarter project it's a we've made a we made a very colorful watch as you might as you might know we had a color option as one of the reward types on our Kickstarter project and that involved a vote where I think we had over 16,000 people vote for which color they wanted we we ended up getting so many votes that we decided to add two extra colors on top of the original red white and black we've added orange and gray to the to the pebble color gamut we spent a lot of time working on the colors because we knew that all right we're gonna bring it back here we've got the the people from pebble coming here at 11 o'clock it sounds like we're gonna be hearing a lot of the same things at 11:00 that we're hearing right now but we'll be able to actually show you closer what he's talking about that's some pretty cool though kind of like a magnetic MagSafe charging cable for your watch of the future yeah I mean the hype and excitement around this project was just like nothing we've ever ever seen so they gotta deliver some pretty neat stuff yeah I hope so we'll be back with them at 11 o'clock but there's a lot of news to catch up with that we've been seeing over the the past day so let's catch up with some of it here one of the things we talked a lot about 4k yesterday when in terms of televisions we did see yesterday Scott signs showed us a 4k tablet seems a little ridiculous because we were talking I said about how 4k doesn't really make sense on screens that are smaller than maybe you know 80 inches but here we're looking at a 4k tablet with a 20 inch display 20 inch IPS LED backlit LCD and this is being shown to us from Panasonic so what do you guys think is this the future of of tablets about 20 inch tablets and tablets that are 4k listen to the Panasonic talking about that it sure seemed like Panasonic trying to show the competition they can up things but it's hard to imagine right where's the content gonna come from I mean it's 20 inches it's will look nicer then they say then the Mac you know Retina display but where's the content it's the same problem we're lacking apps that would be optimized for 4k we're lacking yeah apparently it takes a while for photos to load onto the tablet to really make all those pixels sing and it's also it's dead it's still 20 inch tablet I mean board games would look amazing on this has they also made I think it was 23 inches it's you know massive and that's what they're you know it's kind of a their position is almost like an all-in-one desktop that you can like lay flat and play like air hockey and various other games on so we've seen a few others that are about this size at the show I think once you get once you've gotten past Retina right what your eyes be ability to perceive pixels a doubling mat is not going to make that argument you keep hearing against 4k is that the eyes can't really tell the difference I mean I walked around and looked at a lot of the 4k television side-by-side and they make them look great and you get really close and it looks great but it's pretty hard to it's pretty hard to decipher I love this idea though that 4k is kind of on this tipping point of if consumers do get excited about it we're gonna see 4k everything there's gonna be 4k toasters just anything's gonna have 4k slapped onto it but if they don't get excited about it then it's gonna be a retreat to some other feature right and what will it cost I don't know I mean it's tile it'll probably be like $10,000 and if it ever hits the market speaking of features sure you got to talk with Samsung yesterday about this idea of maybe feature fatigue in their their televisions yeah I mean it kind of goes across all of Samsung's products honestly you know they've always been known for cramming a lot of features into products which allows you to kind of do whatever you want with it but the problem is most people just bull stream Netflix you know they'll have you know 3,000 apps or whatever Samsung is up to now but they do very few of those do they have maybe like the data and statistics on how many people actually use their features I honestly have no idea it's more anecdotal I think you know that I mean and you know for myself you know with like a Smart TV I am basically going and watching either like Netflix or Amazon Prime or you know whatever service is on there necessarily taking advantage of everything I mean and you see it in their phones as well they you know basically across their entire product line I mean their refrigerators are you know tricked out with all of these amazing things you can do with them it's just a matter of if you really need to it seems like a trend or an idea that's at odds with everything CES is about though of simplifying their products instead of yeah I mean and that is actually one of their big focuses for this year is trying to make everything simpler so they're hiring a lot of people out in the valley and in their other design centers to work on the user interface interface and make it easier you know they launch some features here that do that they're with their Smart TV they have a new interface that you know that's a little simpler so it's easier to access things they're gonna be launching this video they call it a video discovery tool they don't have it named right now but basically from one app or one screen you'll be able to search all of your video streaming services and live TV and they're also gonna put it on their mobile devices so you'll be in this app and you'll be like oh I want to watch modern family where is it playing so it'll show you if it's on live TV or it'll show you you know if it's on maybe on Netflix Amazon and you know blockbuster or whatever and you can just go straight to it and you know watch it on this TV with the with the tablet you'll be able to watch it on your tablet or it'll even act as a remote you can't watch the live TV on the tablet unless you're streaming from the TV because I feel like it's something that you know not to bring up Apple at it and not Apple show but I feel like it's something that that company has kind of baked into their whole philosophy for making products and so you expect it from them I was gonna ask is whether you think they're doing this in and in anticipation of whatever Apple TV might or might not come at me potentially and I think they're actually probably hiring people from Apple you know they said that they're you know hiring a lot of people with expertise in this area you know right from rivals on your resume exactly yeah yeah I mean that is you know has been a trademark of Apple but I but you know for Samsung people want a lot of those features you know with with Android you want to be able to take your gadget and make it yours you know you don't want to you know kind of been a criticism or I get you know the people who like Android that's what they really like about it right you know so for Samsung it's kind of this fine line that they kind of have to deal with where they do want to make it easier they do want people to know how to use the different features but they don't want to limit anyway if you put simple to use as a sticker on a box for an Android phone no one would buy it yeah or there's a contingent who would buy it but the standard Android audience I think would yeah all right well we'll see if maybe CES 2014 is billed as the the simpler future but right now it seems like it's the 4k future it's also apparently the future for autonomous vehicles we're seeing we're seeing - Wow my computer's showing me things I don't want to see but we're seeing two car manufacturers talking about autonomous vehicles we're seeing many of them from yesterday though that we wanted to talk about here you know the days all blur together howdy showed us a self-driving vehicle that I feel like the big takeaway on this one is that they've been able to shrunk down shrunk down drink down the the laser array that would help you help the car be able to see where it's going so instead of this giant Tesla coil looking thing on the top of your car which is what the Google car has which makes it really fun to drive you I think they've shrunk it down to a smaller kind of kit like looking array that maybe goes into the the first automaker to get a license to test these in Nevada of course Google has a license but it's not technically an automaker so they were very careful in their language but it's sort of a big deal so if you want to get hit by an autonomous car here's your lawsuit ready yeah Nevada is the place to make that happen all right Lexus was also showing off Lexus however made a big point of saying it's not an autonomous car there was a lot of press that came up in it in advance of the show last week saying that they would Lexus was going to come out in Toyota we're coming out with these self-driving cars and they had their press conference to say here's our car of the few but it's not self-driving right we still very much believe in humans but we're putting all these lasers and sensors and we're gonna it's all about safety safety safety there might be some concern you know remember Toyota had that whole accelerating brake issue a few years back I think they want to be very careful to say no but you know the car will drive itself you still matter yes part of the court there too but it's definitely you know this is definitely a theme going on the more tech you can pile into these cars to you know into cars in general to make them park to make them sense out oncoming objects to make them see things at night to make them break when you don't need them you know what you do if you if you're not breaking fast enough all these things are sort of getting worked into the dynamic so it's interesting yeah I'm all for it I feel like the time I'm the most in a rage in a car is when I'm stuck in traffic and it sounds like that's the problem that they're solving first is that kind of stop and go driving make sure you just don't hit the car in front of you as you're just inching forward I'm for it I hope I hope this arrives soon although I hope the money for me in my life to buy a self-driving car and a 4k TV we also we didn't mention yesterday Nvidia is big reveal of their handheld gaming platform and you had some time to talk with yeah yeah I met with their CEO Jenson Wang yesterday he showed me the device it's clearly a product that he wanted to make for himself you know sell to the public yeah I mean it's I'm not a gamer but if I was I'm pretty sure I'd be you know ready to preorder this tomorrow that as excited as everyone is for kind of a novel new device because it's a handheld kind of Xbox look at it feels like a controller I can controller and then the screen like opens up out of it yeah I mean you know it's not a big screen you know it is you know it's it's a relatively small screen Android device it's an Android it's poor yeah but it's it's not something where you would buy it as like a if you're a gamer would be like your phone or your tablet it really is strictly made that's like a wireless gaming yeah I mean it's a wireless gaming device but you can also access your you can watch videos you can you can use it at your email on that touch screen with a big controller I'm not but but you can't that thing is you can like if you wanted to you don't have to take you know if you're a gamer you don't you wouldn't have to take your iPad along with you as well to just you know be able to access an app or you know whatever you want but he's serious about making this is not just I mean it's coming out he said he's coming out any games right it plugs into your Wi-Fi yeah you can stream from your yeah I mean they're trying to make it so you can game wherever you are you know you can stream from your PC you know there's the various gaming platforms you'll be able to use with it you can also like stream from the device you know to the TV you know he's really serious about you know cloud gaming like letting people access their games wherever they are you know of course you know the the device they showed is just a prototype it wasn't you know it's not they saw some work to do but you know they say second quarter so I think it's interesting I mean it's it's this whole vertical ization trend right in which they're making their full device just like Microsoft starts making their own devices and doing the whole thing and it's sort of the Apple model again of make of making everything from soups to nuts and and hence sort of maybe potentially getting in a way of competitors yeah I mean and you know that was a point I talked about him with you know talked about uh if you know the PC guys you know they're traditional partners if this is gonna anchor them and he said oh no you know we're not gonna make a smart phone we're not gonna make a tablet you know we are out there to make this one specific device because we think we have something to offer here and for Nvidia yeah for now I mean it you know and for it videos yeah ya know exactly I mean for NVIDIA gamers are there you know yeah their core you know those are the guys who are gonna buy their really high-end graphics and you know what it comes down to four Nvidia is the more people that use this the more people buy their chips you know the more people who use the cloud gaming the more people are gonna buy you know they have this new server rack that's you know specifically for like optimized for gaming so one caveat I think I did hear about for streaming your pcs games to the controller is that it needs to be from a computer that was using Nvidia graphics card I'm sure and that soft way and it still be over like a local network - it wouldn't be like you would be playing your PC's games from work desk yeah I mean but you know who know who knows what's possible in the future you know they're working on you know he said they're talking to talking to cable companies telcos everybody you know cable companies are looking at you know using their kind of like cloud gaming server system to allow people to have like an extra channel on their cable box it's gaming so then you pay like eight or nine dollars a month or something and you have a gaming channel where it's your games and you can access games and it's on your TV you don't need a console Microsoft has probably the best set of assets already to take this thing on and make it in the by because they already have Xbox they have their their windows 8 tie-in for that and that also has a mobile platform and make tablets now I always have Windows I they have all the different streaming partners for that content and honestly that the Nvidia controller looks a lot like old it's fun to see companies taking chances and bringing stuff out that's probably why this is getting so much attention to is that is something different it's not a fourth is the other thing you know everybody thought oh great well you know talk about the mobile chip at the show you know maybe some other surprises but nobody was really quite expecting something like this some other unexpected things that we saw let's see Heather sell this was an interesting one this is a a rechargeable battery with a Bluetooth chip built inside of it - and that seems like an odd pairing of things but the way that it works is that it applies your batteries so if you wanted to have put batteries in something and be able to control it turning on and off with your phone or your tablet this would this would do that and they in the article here mentions the idea of like killing off your kids annoying toys if they're your Furby yeah so that you'd have a dedicated Furby turn off app but also it could it could tell you when your batteries are running low and your smoke detector maybe so that your app your phone would notify you that you need to change I I've lost enthusiasm of the story as I'm talking about I realized that I don't want that this is one of these things that you know we've got a lot of comments on this piece a lot of people saying exactly this this is just like a solution in search of a problem but I don't know you know one commenter said well if you leave your bike in your garage and you're light on your bike is still on it'll tell you when you get upstairs I guess I mean you'd have to think that this would have to be integrated in everything then and what are the odds of that like how many manufacturers are gonna put this in every single product they introduce all right guys thank you both for talking with me today