Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox ribbon I'm Joanie salesman Sprint and t-mobile are finally getting hitched after years of will they or won't they merger talks the third and fourth biggest u.s. telcos agreed to a twenty six billion dollar deal over the weekend t-mobile's German parent Joy telecom will gain control of Sprint and the new company will be named t-mobile so the deal is supposed to close early next year the question is will this actually pass muster with the government well it didn't before but it's anyone's guess now I don't know the Trump administration has been friendlier in theory to mergers and acquisitions except for the ones they don't like like Time Warner and 18c and there's always questions about whether that's because oh no this has a lot to do with the fact that US consumers would go from having four major options to just three major options in you know mobile and telecommunication so that's a big reason why regulators may hesitate over this type of situation but it's still a long way to go there's still at least like probably another year so for now customers probably shouldn't really expect much change right yeah nothing's gonna change until regulatory approval and all the clothes I mean assuming they get regulatory approval they can actually figure out what they're gonna do yeah company so just ahead of Facebook's f8 Developer Conference which kicks off tomorrow Joan you wrote about the company's VR business oculus and how they're working with an immersive theater they're kind of inventing a new way to watch VR they're developing this experience the woman who is spearheading us you described it as sleep no more the immersive play meets journey that indie video game where in your living room or wherever you have your headsets headset set up you at a point in time you slip it you put on your headset and you enter into this virtual world where remotely a cast of motion captured actors are playing characters in this story like in a live-action type of thing yeah yeah and so they can see you and they can react to you they're not in the same room as you so they can't touch you and you can't touch them but they can react to you in a way that a pre-programmed avatar or an AI powered avatar just can't match did you get a chance to try this like even see yeah it's not coming out until next year tentatively that's a tentative idea of when it could possibly come out they're still in the very early stages of it but I have done some experiences with live actors before and there are a lot of fun this is an idea that if it works it's a way for VR to scale an experience like that mmm do you think that there's money in it oculus or I mean if you think of the fact that immersive theater without any kind of virtual reality element to it is booming it's very popular and hasn't been growing and people pay $100 a pop to go see Sleep No More I can imagine I mean you have to imagine that if people are gonna get an experience like this and they're already people that are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a computer and an oculus rift or whatever headset that they enable they would be interested in paying a high price for a bespoke unique experience like that yeah so also just as a reminder come back to CNN on Tuesday for our coverage of the f8 conference see do you have any expectations for the show what you expect to see maybe Mark Zuckerberg goes back up onstage and apologizes yet again about Cambridge analytic oh I don't know oh it's definitely the highest stakes of an F 8 since f 8 started right I mean it's the time of greatest uncertainty for Facebook so what they focus on will be telling in terms of how they want to turn around the company yeah if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Joanie Sussman thanks for listening and thanks everybody for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast it's time for me to do my part of the paycheck and look through the chat for questions and comments first and foremost this VR thing is intriguing so the do we think we're gonna see things like people being able to act out their favorite movie scenes with the actual characters like that I mean what kind of what reenactments can we expect out of this well I don't know the subject matter of the experience but that's the thing about VR that I think is really exciting is that anything is possible really that suggestion all it really matters is if you want to have a Star Wars experience people that license and we know that people we know that the people that own the property the Star Wars franchise are willing you that they have a partnership with magic leap so that you could feasibly assuming magically but is actually real and has a product that is released if you have a magically pet set which is augmented reality overlays stuff mixed reality overlays stuff over the world won't you'd be able to you know our work cafeteria if you're wearing magically pets that you could transform it into the cantina and Star Wars or around your desk you could have instead of having you know a Syria or an LexA you could have a c-3po who just sits there and when you ask it a question it'll tell you an answer yeah the promise of a lot of these things sound super cool but you see a lot of them a lot more than I would argue most tech reporters do how close do you think that we actually are to some of that promise or we still kind of in the fumbling through trying to figure out what this is supposed to look like phase right I'm in terms of I mean magically but if you're talking about immersive having like an immersive experiment experience with a live actor that stuff's already happening and it's lots of fun when you can do it over the week or the last couple weeks Scott Stein and I we're at Tribeca and there are a few experiences one in particular where you are in a virtual experience with a live actor in a motion capture suits in that same room with you that's a lot more interactive than somebody who's remote in a motion capture suit so it would be different but it's really fun and really excited that work oh can you like touch each other yeah you know they react you like so but you're wearing to our heads that so you're kind of blindfolded no I but they are a character so the actor that I interacted with was a frog woman who was sweeping the floor and she was scolding me when I like reached out and touched her she was like Jack leave me alone you're supposed to be helping me clean which is I mean that's silly that is silly but that's the fun of it I feel that extremely high right now just thinking about that's all very silly but it's super fun you get to you get to feel like a little bit like a little kid where the things the fantasies that you have in your head that you're imagining feel so real it act when it actually like when you reach out and like bad at something and it's actually there but it's completely fantastical it's fun let me see if I get this right so you're wearing a VR headset and the live-action actors around you are like these weird avatars like a talking frog they're not wearing VR heads so now but they're wearing like you know a suit that can show their movement exactly like how we how Lord the Rings made Smeagol like the exact same thing so that when they move and their expressions in their body language is translated into this avatar in a come you know in a one-to-one sort of way was this something that was like super popular yeah I got a wonder how many characters you can have on screen at the same time because I was gonna take a buttload of processing power remember how many they said it took hundreds of hours to render out Gollum in The Lord of the Rings to do that in real time with multiple participants that's just daunting it is I mean and that's I mean you're touching on one of the challenges that people don't think about for VR creators is that not only is that a lot of rendering to do but it's live rendering like with an animated 3d animated film or something like Lord of the Rings where you have a heavy CG element you can shoot it and then you can just stick it in your servers and let them render render render render forever however long as it needs but in virtual reality experience because it's live it needs to live render and that's why you know when I was in this experience with a live actor I had a backpack that was my computer so I can walk and it could live render everything that was happening well and how graphically detailed was the Frog was it kind of like a pixelated frog or I mean it didn't look like it didn't look like Lord of the Rings like it didn't look photorealistic but it wasn't designed to look photorealistic you know there's ways to cheat a cheating isn't even the right world there's ways to stylize so yeah it was a stylized look it was a stylized way of seeing I'd be more frightened if it was hyper realistic because and I feel kind of matrix II conspiracy theory yeah yeah I would rather see it kind of artistic let's stay on the topic of VR how are they gonna make this cost effective to the average user is this going to be something that's like a theme park ride where you get a ticket is it gonna be super expensive people are kind of worried that you know how are we actually going to participate in this as an average citizen right well I have no idea about their pricing ideas what we know on the technology side is that technology for VR is continually getting cheaper and faster just kind of like all technology is as people invest more in it it gets faster cheaper better and considering that the people that are already investing in these technologies are continuing to put a lot of resources behind it I can imagine that the actual technology side of it is going to become more accessible as the years go on and then in terms of experiences like this I mean I don't know how much they could charge depends on demand I mean I people of Sleep No More it's a really good example if you don't know it it's immersive play in New York it opened in 2011 and it's really cool it's really cool it was only supposed to run for like two months and it's still running seven years later and those experiences for the just the baseline it's like a hundred dollars for a ticket people will spend up to like four hundred dollars to get this very immersive you go to a fancy dinner beforehand at their at their restaurant that's all in the same style as the experience itself so I guess accessibility matters on what is accessible to the person and what value you put on having thing that's so elaborate so firm me the like sleep no more is something that gets mentioned a lot in conversations around in in New York a lot of people like doing it for me I have kids so I've never actually gone to see the show so what's that was like why are we that matter because okay that's true um you're forcing me to admit that I'm just a lame-o which is fine and we'll establishment so needless to say the point for me is is that having these types of experiences that you could potentially be able to do in your home if you don't go out that my man could be really helpful but anyway I eventually got to that point it's a little bit like the like do I stay in and watch Netflix or do I go out to the movies like there's that kind of calculus involved and so the idea with having a virtual play with live actors happen in your home is that you're kind of striking a little bit of a balance like you can have an immersive experience something that's maybe high ends that not every not maybe is it is inaccessible in some ways but is accessible in the sense that you don't have to you don't have to be in New York to be able to go see this you have to be in New York to see sleep no more you have to be in LA to see things are going on there but something like this you could be anywhere and you could still be able to participate in the fun of it something that you think it's gonna be up your alley mmm-hmm speaking of immersive events so enjoy wants to know if we're gonna see VR upgrade to the silent disco where people dance and listen to music over headphones what's the thing yeah silent disco silent disco you'd need wireless headphones but or wireless headsets I should say but it's it's feasible right I feel like it's feasible right now if you wanted to I feel like a lot of social VR is so clunky right now that it feels a little bit like that yeah like nobody's listening to the same like no-one's marching to the same drummer stay in your own home and dance with somebody in like Calcutta staying on the topic of Ono moving on moving on we're done with VR go ahead and put your questions in the comments about where you think this VR experience could go where do you want to see it go what is an event or immersive experience you would like to participate in let's talk about t-mobile Lost Legacy who would be the CEO if mer if the merger happens and expanding on that from Joseph gasps do you think Sprint users and sprint phones will be able to take advantage of the t-mobile network and what did you guys think will happen to Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile they're still figuring out so to answer the last question they're still figuring out what to actually do with Boost virgin MetroPCS that's still being determined as far as the CEO I'm pretty sure it's gonna be John Legere yeah John Legere to serve serve as a chief executive so that's answering two of those questions what was the other Oh a big a big issue with this deal in the first place is to try to leverage the two different Network so arguably your service should if everything works out the right way service should get better if you're a t-mobile or a Sprint customer and they could potentially serve as a better competitor to Verizon which Verizon has been marketing itself as like the best most trusted biggest network so that would probably be the biggest benefit for consumers especially in smaller markets like rural markets I would probably say like t-mobile and Sprint are pretty good in the major cities already but as you migrate out into rural and suburban areas you probably got spottier service with those guys we got a little bit of criticism in the chat from Brian prime to the people that believe the merger is good in any form they are delusional t-mobile is now basically the same price as Verizon this will hurt American bills and reduce their options what kind of impact can we project over billing pricing and competition now that it's gonna Whittle back to three primary providers in the US so the argument from Sprint and t-mobile which granted they're the ones that have to convince everybody that this is going to be okay is that they're actually going to be a better competitor against AT&T and Verizon which are to much bigger companies and have more customers so that's that's their argument from the general perspective that you go from four competitors to three competitors it's hard to say I mean like t-mobile and Sprint have done a really good job of trying to create different ways to steal away Verizon and AT&T customers already and you would hope from a customer perspective that that would continue but you never really know it's it's hard to say and that's probably why the government is going to take a really hard look at this the competitive advocate would say that reducing for competitors to three is never gonna be in the best interest of a consumer but that's kind of you know that's the hard line the ideas variation that means prices can go up that means the amount of services that people have to offer could go down because there's not a fourth player forcing people to stay stay competitive yeah 18 t tried to buy t-mobile quite a few years ago they were in the top two at that point they continued to be and the government shut that one down they said no way is the number two player gonna buy the number four player that's not cool is it gonna work that the three and four are gonna merge I don't know it's it's kind of weird that this came up in the first place maybe they maybe the lawyers got together and decided that like alright we're gonna we're gonna take the chance maybe from like what you had said before about the Trump Whitehouse could potentially be a little friendlier to mergers but it's hard to say Carlos Martinez Carlos Martinez sorry he's worried about his plan changing he's got specialty needs for his plan what should he be on the lookout for and what can he do to try to protect himself happening for a year at least a year or so yeah yeah yeah it'll take that long for regulatory approval and and we'll know more about that as time and just cause the government decides whether or not to sue to block it yeah yeah and in the meantime for for specific types of deals and pricing a lot of times when these types of things happen you can get grandfathered in that's not a guarantee or anything and I think that that's still a lot of things to be worked out but the intention from Sprint and t-mobile in general is not to piss off their customer bases and send them you know running away to AT&T and Verizon so hopefully your plan stays the same but I think that's still being hammered out I think it'd be kind of suicidal for them to start messing with the coverage plans too much or the pricing plans because it will send people running because there are plenty of viable options out there well maybe there won't be and for the record this will stay this is going to be t-mobile innate is going forward that doesn't mean that the Sprint brand is going away that the wireless plan is now being absorbed under 10 oh no if the different company still exists well Wow oh really I think they're gonna yeah they made sunset the sprint name I wish Roger was here he's having a great time in Hawaii right now as he's come back as he's covering this of course but yeah he is very much our mobile expert and we wish he was here to help answer some of these questions but hopefully we're doing ok we got a question about the UK well we're not about the UK in relation to a similar event that took place in the UK Scott Myatt points out that a few years ago t-mobile and orange merged in the UK to create EE they pushed prices up but became the best for 4G as a result and now the most popular network in the UK and ayman says do you think this merger will be similar to that merger with the EE in England that sounds like a big positive and I think t-mobile and Sprint are probably really interested in having that type of story be told there they're both talking about how this is gonna help supercharged their businesses that specifically was about 4G they're looking at 5g which is gonna cost a lot of money to have that next generation of superfast speeds so having them both work together and spend a lot of money together an investment could I don't know help help t-mobile and Sprint do a much better job with 5g especially up against Verizon and AT&T who you know they're spending you know tons of money doing that too so to expand on that syringe I asked what's up with a narrative that t-mobile married Sprint just to get its spectrum for 5g this looks like a typical political marriage in the medieval age like Game of Thrones is entire possible I mean like sacrum spectrum is a big play a lot of the time anytime there's mergers and telcos so I'm sure that had something to do with it but I I think they're both really hoping that together they're gonna be able to you know do you throne either AT&T is number two or Verizon is number one you know they've made a lot of noise as the two smaller players and I think they're they're hoping to use this merger and push through and become an even bigger competitor so that's that's what they're hoping all right we are just about out of time we do want to make a note that we will not have a show tomorrow because seen it we'll be knee-deep in live coverage of the f8 conference so make sure to tune in for that and we'll have been at the table along with is and Bridgette commentating with Lexie on the floor out where does it take place again I always forget somewhere in California not somewhere in California right at the HQ yeah so we'll have everything from the floor there and then 359 podcast will resume on Wednesday before we go we have a couple of great suggestions for VR experiences a dog says would want to put their wedding in VR so they can remember the wedding in the best way that's kind of an interesting idea right could you see that happening custom companies I mean if they could figure out a way to do it and then charge you a $300 premium because it's your wedding I'm sure and you could definitely like even right now you could get a 360 degree without having a vendor camera and plop it if you're tech-savvy plop it somewhere in the middle of things just have the bride hold it the whole time in her bouquet of flowers ooh do go for that ride all right I'm quitting see net charging $18,000 for this idea ever sounds pretty reasonable somebody would pay that Oh bleep price you bring up the 360 camera and Ricky B says what about VR tickets to sporting events and we've seen some 360 cameras plopped down in the field while not in the field but near the field and we've leased and even seen that at concerts and stuff too I wonder if that could go into a full VR experience and what kind of technology that would take this truly scopa that the NBA is the most active in this kind of thing they've done a lot of streaming of live games in VR they have a partnership with magic leap to do augmented reality stuff once magic leap is a reality so if you want to see and kind of let you know have a thought experiment about what could possibly happen in that world look at the NBA and see what they've been doing so far and kind of think about where they could go interesting yeah are we dangerously close to ready player one I don't know because I haven't seen the movie to have read the book okay so sorry had to ask alright and that is gonna do it for us we'll wrap up here see on Wednesday hopefully see you tomorrow for the Facebook Developers Conference thanks everybody for joining us and once you take us on out all right cool the 3:59 podcast is available on iTunes students stitcher feedburner google play music the Amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for listening setting in your questions and we'll see you again Wednesday bye bye