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good morning on Wednesday December 13th it's time for episode three thirty two of the three fifty nine podcast your host today our Ben Fox ruminant dammit David Katz Meyer damn it that's in the cradle oh yeah I'm rocking I'm rocking welcome welcome back we're gonna be talking all things TV and CES 2018 today ready you just published a story about this so that's why I wanted to have you on as always everybody sending your questions and comments we'll get to as many as we can at the end of the show and let's try to get through as many I have so many questions for you so let's try to get through as many as we can during the four minutes and then it'll spill over into the post show yep stick around alright hang out everybody we're gonna record the podcast and then meet you in the chat in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben David Katz Mayer the CES tech show is coming in January and with it the introduction of a lot of new TV technology I invited David on to walk us through some of the biggest expected trends let's start with the easy stuff HDR 4k how significant are those gonna be for the show well they're gonna be kind of the baseline so 4k TVs and HDR TVs there as cheap as 300 bucks now so they're everywhere the dissin TV industry has moved on so CES is kind of where you see the next step beyond these technologies what do you think you're the most excited about as far as any of those tech so I'm most excited about the the competition between the manufacturers at this point so right now we have a situation where at the high end of the market its OLED OLED oullette LG's organic light-emitting diode technology is kicking everybody's butt it is the high-end TV that people want to spend extra money to buy how much is it like on average like how much would you spend for something like that well the cheapest price for a nullity V actually happened over Black Friday 1500 bucks for a 55 inch TV ok that's expensive totally but what I learned myself when I wrote this article asked MPD which does a lot of market research the average selling price is 1700 for TVs that are more than $1,000 for that coveted high end of the market that's actually you know terrible now it doesn't Samsung make oh let's I mean like they're very well known for that for the smaller screens for the phones funny you should ask so Samsung is by far the most dominant brand in televisions the United States they don't make an all the TV they make something called Q LED which came out last year and that I thought they were trying to be a little you know imitative of LG well came up with what what is Hewlett I saw that at Best Buy recently and I was like I have no idea what that did they try to write an O and then put a little thing on it and hope nobody noticed you know and maybe go home and people like I have an OLED TV actually you know there's like there's a little dot there across the bottom of the oh it's Q so long story short it's an LED LCD TV like we've been selling for they've and sell for years it's not a brand new technology like OLED the difference is it uses quantum dots hence the Q which kind of enhanced the color of LCD but really it doesn't make that much of a difference since men of yeah LED you're not gonna really notice and I didn't notice when I did side-by-side comparison with earlier models it's really subtle the improvement OLED on the other hand is like holy crap this TV really looks like a $1,500 to $2,500 so right now Samsung has been responding this question for a long time because LG wrote the book on OLED and they've been coming out with him for a while Samsung started actually making OLED but then they pulled back and made more LCD LED technology one of the things that they might do is CES this year is introduce another competitor to OLED I'm thinking it might be micro LED or actual another version of Q LED that's better tell me about micro LED so LEDs are you know in lights and pretty much every lighting thing right now they also power televisions but they were behind it LCD liquid crystal display panel micro LED is gets rid of that liquid crystal display panel and just has a bunch of little dots that are LEDs that can change color the advantage there you can turn them all the way off so you get perfect contrast like OLED they're brighter it's kind of the holy grail for led Texas pretty similar to OLED why would it be called something different well because it's a slightly different technology yeah and it doesn't use the same types of of material so that the LEDs are different kind so they're not organic they're they're actually they're saying them more durable they're actually used today in industrial lighting and and those gigantic signs at you know Cowboys Stadium for example like those are all LED true LED displays with no liquid crystal in front of them so for some of the more futuristic tech stuff voice control is something that's that's really growing do you think like gesture control is really gonna grow at any point no we're gonna see some of that at CES no I don't think it well I don't think the gestures are gonna go anywhere I think it's all about voice is so much easier to talk to your TV than wave at it oh that's too bad but anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben David Katz Myer thanks for listening all right I understood about 2% of that IRA sweet Hagley fast we packed half an hour worth of show in four minutes way to go dude isn't it you're gonna die and unpack right now but yeah there's there's there's a lot of leaves and get into emissive quantum dot which which I'm guessing is similar to micro LED it's so much fun so instead of LEDs their actual quantum dots what is that a quantum dot is a real thing it's like a little light emitting device just like an LED but not they can create color and they're brighter and the electroluminescent ones are kind of the super cutting edge of display technology they've been again talked about at a level where there might be concept display I threw it out there because hue LED when people really seems like person ask you let people who follow the industry were like oh they're coming out with a mess of quantum dots no it was an LCD with with LEDs behind it that's enhanced by quantum dots but now they've been talking about Sampson to talk about a concept form actual quantum dots again without the LCD in front of it so I guess all these guys want to do is finally ditch that LCD it's gonna take years so that all the new technology and this is extremely simplistic needs to make tiny tiny dots yep that can be turned on and off yeah and so that you've got the true black mmm on one side and and really bright on the other it doesn't bleed one way into the other so Ben you should do this really yeah did I actually get that right I was beautiful so yeah I can't wait no let me ask this how does a lite-brite technology play into this um it those dots are really big yeah that's so we have 4k TVs that's like point zero zero zero zero 4k TVs but you know what you got XP and stuff with this man yeah we didn't even get to also I wanted to mention streaming apps mm-hmm right before we went on t-mobile made in announcements right let's let's touch on that a little bit so it's not really an announcement it's kind of like we're gonna make TV in 2018 so to announce it announced yeah we haven't give you any specifics I think there's actually a call going on right now where CEO John magar is gonna be talking about it taking questions and people are gonna ask so how much is it gonna cost is it gonna have any channels ago be like sling TV your Netflix pay TV cuts yeah so t-mobile the the phone company is making television just like everybody else is YouTube this year Hulu DIRECTV yes sling TV which is run by DISH Network all these guys have their own cord cutter TV packages that you know we cover in depth and and there's a lot of them out there so this isn't like you know they're reinventing the wheel this is like oh a phone company's doing this - we actually a phone company AT&T already does it because they bought DirecTV and they have a DirecTV now which everybody jump into it is getting the phone the field will get called at some point well I don't know it seems to be just expanding at this point you know it's it's an opportunity and people looking into there's no cable companies and going wow people really hate them let's see if we can make some money off of that don't you think does you think that could create a problem for t-mobile that like they would be viewed as a cable company and then people would hate them I don't know that all that like edgy reputation yeah they're doing their best not to they're using a lot of pink you know there's no cable company that does that so I think they're they're there and good all right let's take some questions from the comments section on the video today Michael Brown by the way then you want to say something happy birthday Michael Brown happy birthday Michael Brown we will we be raving about buying 8k televisions in 2018 Best Buy blockbusters well funny you should ask because another rumor out of Korea is that Samsung will be producing well 8k TVs will take a step back have been shown at CES for years in fact in the article is a picture of me looking really close at an 8k TV because that's the problem is that you can't frickin tell the difference yes you get a bus but I was about that are so small that but 8k gives you a justification going back to LCD for using LCD technology because that is a big limitation of these you know individual diode technologies that you can't really get those things really small and really bright with an LCD in front you can get them small enough to make 8k so all these LCD TV that you wouldn't throw out LCD technology entirely no and and and if you're an LCD TV maker you got us money vested in making you know LCDs you go wow how can we keep this around and 8k is a really good reason do that the problem with 8k obviously is unless you're in Japan and you know you're watching a couple things there's nothing there's nothing in 8k I don't like how big does your TV have to be and how close do you need to be sitting next to it remember that is from a few years ago and 4k came out and it's really similar because it needs to be even bigger and you need to have even better eyesight and sit even closer I have to see horrible eyesight right so you're fine with the 720p or the like right television part looks great you look like a giant blob to me so I don't think I'm a customer for a cake so in your experience and what you're seeing developed right now where do you think the priorities lie between the actual quality of audio video and integrating a lot of more smart home technologies what are you seeing what do you think they should be focusing on well I I really have always been a video quality guy but there is a point of diminishing returns so you get to a point where everybody goes that's good enough where's that's really good right absolutely we're at NIST the point the the TCL Roku TV which have been kicking butt on Amazon is the most proper TV on Amazon for more than a year and I recommended everybody they're great televisions they build smart right in there and they do a really good job make them easy to use and they're hella cheap and for most people they look good enough so you know unless you're in that 10% of the market that's buying a TV that cost more than a thousand dollars you know you don't really care about all this stuff you just want you know a TV that's gonna turn on and give you you give your stories whether it's on YouTube or you know a Netflix or regular cable I want my stories yeah and as long as you can do that and wash yourself with a broom on a stick you're in good shape yeah you definitely need to wash yourself with a broom is that good I want my MTV Danny Green I want to when they are going to start shipping TVs with ATSC 3.0 to nurse ooh so that's still a little bit far out I don't think you're gonna see any announced at CES they just finalized the 80s c 3.0 spec in fact I think they're still working on some aspects of it so that's not gonna be a 2018 thing maybe 2019 the other thing that this brings up is hdmi 2.1 which is another future spec i totally know what these things are yes ATSC is sorry a standard for transmission of over-the-air television broadcasts so if you turn on your TV and into oakum antenna to it the reason you're able to get a picture is because of DTSC so all the tuners and televisions now are ATSC compliant and this is the latest standard of that got it HDMI is how you plug stuff into your television so all those HDMI inputs are gonna be upgraded not next year but probably the following year to a 2.1 spec which you know gets them ready for 8k and 16k and you know all that good stuff that's eventually coming taking taking this a step back for a second here what what do you see the TV TV market doing as far as like how excited are people about these TV technologies are they working and actually getting people to upgrade TVs I remember a couple years ago there was a lot of concern that you know hold on to your TV for five ten years whatever yeah so is it working to actually convince people to move to 4k or you LED or whatever well I think it's working by attrition so right now it's really hard to find a 1080p TV at a certain screen size if you're buying a 50-inch TV it's gonna be 4k for example and that's just going to continue to be the trend and and the larger picture of the TV markets flat you know it's not a high-growth market the same thing with cell phones by the way you know those are relatively flat marks but you're not seen as the huge money maker that they used to be and with TVs you know all they're gonna do is iterate on the technology that they have now and you know again try to get ahead of trends like streaming and you know all these things that voice things that are happening in the larger technology space and integrate them in the TVs make them work better so one of things I'm excited about is this improvement of voice technology being able to talk using an Alexa or a Google home that can control your TV you don't use you the remote or anything like that you can just say you know hey Alexa you know I want to watch stranger things and your tv turns on which is super beneficial and you think about the keyboard for every single one of the remotes just stinks and it's dunk for years yeah so very few people I know that actually have a physical keyboard to operate their television and we're ready for voice in the living room to play a large bigger role and the TV manufacturers that get ahead of that and more importantly partner with the guys that already do voice really well that are well entrenched Amazon and Google you know then they're gonna get ahead we were ready decades ago for voice control I can't tell you how many tutorial classes I had to give my grandparents and how to use a TV remote yeah yeah Roku does have its own voice control yes have a streamer yes a Roku streamer that does that and it's it's okay yeah it's not bad yeah and the issue there is that you have to hold the remote yes so what we're talking about is is Alexa is Google home is one of these far field speakers that's listening all the time ready to help you watch the TV show you want without having to you don't even have to pick up there you know what that's we had to like pick up a remote it sometimes was across the room and you get a freaking get up no hold it sometimes the remote got lost I didn't get a remote all the time I can't stop thinking about this scene from 30 rock when Tracy Morgan's character is trying to eat he thinks he's got a voice control TV so a television and some of your recent comments might have actually been beneficial to Jesse gaben in the chat who's wondering if it's worth buying a 1080p TV or should you just go ahead and jump forward to 4k as a baseline it all depends on the size so you know we really liked TCL's s 305 series which is their 1080 P series in 43 and smaller TVs if you're putting a TV that's smaller than that bedroom you know secondary TV even if you know you really don't have a very limited space there's no reason - the main thing is that you just can't find them in the larger screen size so don't go out there oh I really want a 50-inch 1080p TV because I can't tell this with 4k I'm gonna save some money you go to the store and you're like there aren't any they just stopped existing right why yeah they're there this year was basically a turning point for that sighs and then next year they might be only 40 you know - and lower you know whatever it's not only that like you said the the pricing on the 4k and HDR TVs 300 bucks yeah 300 bucks is a pretty good price for a TV yeah yeah for you know forty three inch so you know and and you're not there's very little premium again there's just there's just a cut-off where we're 1080p is is is gonna exist at the smaller sizes and that's it let's jump back and take some more questions the okay Channel how much of the TV market goes back into the actual television studios like how much do they put in towards this market how much do they invest as far as content creators is there any contribution towards development of new technology to deliver their content mmm well I don't know yeah I I think the best answer to that is HDR so one of the things that is techn outing with with the TV technology recently is high dynamic range which is a kind of thing that nobody really asks for but is awesome so 4k is one thing it's more pixel but HDR you know the easiest way to say it's better pixels and the idea about HDR is it allows the camera which captures way more the cameras that the you know producers use to create movies and halloween particularly these days are freaking awesome to get the picture that they see in their mastering studios to your house it gets dumbed way down so HDR is an attempt to get the directors you know awesome picture onto your into your living room TV and and and it's a whole set of standards that creates a much closer to what the director wants to do picture then on your television home so now they have a system for doing that and and HDR is is exciting a lot of people in Hollywood Netflix is really leading the HDR revolution they have Dolby vision kind of a mandate for all their original series if you go on to give any HDR TV you flip through all the Netflix originals almost all them are an HDR and Dolby vision and all the new movies coming out are taking advantage technology and directors love it because all sudden all the stuff that they were cutting out colors dynamic range which is the pop of the image is is you know when you have a blu-ray that doesn't have HDR on it it looks completely muted compared to HDR in general so I think that's one of the bigger wins for content creators is this new HDR standards and and they're just gonna keep getting more and more affordable right and that's what's interesting to me is that some of these technologies you actually signify a real improvement from you know your past 1080p as opposed to just telling people oh the the screen looks nicer yeah spend more money getting another television and and and especially if you can't see it you know if you got a sit two feet away from a 65 inch TV to tell the difference and it doesn't matter to anybody and with HDR it really is a noticeable difference especially because it's early days now but they're gonna get it better and better and better and it's a great you know reason if you're especially your high-end buyer to upgrade yeah hey yo remember see Artie's no painting dreams reminding us like once upon a time you had to get off your butt and go twist a knob and further right so ya change a channel I was when I first came up reviewing TVs we had like 34 and 38 inch CRTs you know we guys you put them on a wagon you know to get Sony made the flat ones so they're the flat Trinitron tubes so the problem was you have to curve it to get the electron gun to work but the corners of the flat were like these chunks of glass they're massive these tvs weighed you know two three four hundred pounds depending on the size the Lord they're insane Mitsubishi made a 40 inch CRT so yeah they're not really missed by me I had one that was close to 100 pounds and it was in a wood box yeah and I had the the rounded edge curved screen inside but it was encased in a plastic flat panel it's almost like it was some weird like like a protection yeah and it was a total detriment cuz that thing got scratched the hell yeah right so I'm already looking through like a filtered screen to get on the screen yeah that thing was my daughter box replacement for that I lived it on the porch of my apartment at college when I moved out was like that's not coming with me that's though along the side of everybody's throwing up the CRT monitor is in their TVs one thing I also wanted to mention from your story today why's there there's some maybe these are gimmicky tell me if they are but there were some flashy ideas for recent CES is yeah one of them was the the first wallpaper TV oh yeah there was another one where what was it it was like a rollable television and then a third one I wanted to get to why's the screen itself was the speaker yes something weird like that did any of those like excite you or you were interested in them or were they more gimmicky kind of like let's show it off at a tech show mhm so good question because that's what CES is for the most part a lot of the news at CES is concept crap that you're never going to make it to market the two of those three are actually right now available for sale the the the wallpaper TV LG makes it it's an OLED TV it's literally like I think it's two millimeters thin yeah that was the whole deal the show yeah that was the coolest thing ever right and if I mean literally like who wouldn't want that who does like minimalism it's freaking awesome and of course it's really expensive but you know that's the future of television I think it's easy to for anybody to see and and the roll up roll pun was a concept but they're actually saying this year that LG might try to commercialize it so that's another rumor out of Korea is what end I don't know question smokable you know I'm not sure what you do with your old of television if you want them you get you know your dog with it when they misbehaves that's that's terrible speaking of smokeable let's get existential right for a second ready smokeable televisions yeah well dad's asking what is smaller than quantum oh my god as Rin Joyce says string theory streaming technologies string technology you know how close you have to sit to a string TV to tell the difference you have to be in the string TV you do if you sit too close to the string TV you will get sucked into it and you'll end up in a black there's a 3d TV died right but with string TV you can have eight DTV amazing and you just keep going you might meet they're all held up in really small these dimensions but that's right I got it smoked my TV alright so to close it out let's do a couple of just rapid-fire ideas about where we think we're going industrially is that word yeah sir enjoy as a should Samsung take a different route of voice assist and push big speed into the Smart TVs try to take lead in the market we may very well see that it already announced it it won't fail just like everything else but yeah they now sit yeah and Michael Brown I think TV manufacturer should mainly focus on vertical integration of audio and video I love how Sony productions shot with Sony hardware and software look really good on Sony televisions no I'm not enough of a connoisseur to really tell the difference yeah me neither but good on you if you can maybe a Sony makes some of the best production the the reference monitor for all Hollywood studios is an OLED 34 inch TV that they use Sony makes an older TV and it's a frickin awesome unit I think it's the 40 grand the liberal media industry is going with like the Amazon Studios and being all pissy with YouTube and yeah but you can still get Amazon Prime original creations on your amazon firetv stick that we think we're gonna see more stuff like that like more while gardening noni studios special featured bonus content on sony sony doesn't have like it sony is not a new tagging company anymore they don't have the ego or to play well if you're Sony Pictures do you want to be only on Sony TVs or do you want to actually be on you know the other 95% of TVs out there I mean they did there are two separate businesses and the hoos sony to be you know watch better than they feel as possible but yeah I think vertical makes a little bit sense but I think just working together is the things proven with Sony for example their televisions work with Google's Android TV yep and that got them on board with Google home before anybody else the operating system is is almost as good as Roku in some ways that's better and you know they're they're really smart for ditching their own you know frankly crappy Smart TV and going with Google's much more well developed one that's got better apps in the audio yeah and going back to the YouTube Amazon oh yeah this fight going on right now dirty it's it's hurting the both of them so the expectation at least for me is that at some point it is going to be settled because because they're neither of them are winning it's just a simple pissing match well aim this before reminds me of cable must carries where you get the note like oh horizon is about to drop see be it whatever it is you know that CBS never seen never ever no natural yeah so all these guys you know it's it's a it's it's the new age of you know carriage of disagreements sounds so wonderful yeah I can't wait til the broker suddenly drops you Hulu or whatever hopefully hopefully exactly like just just wait like that all right we are out of time we do have one more show this week though and that'll be the fine one more like and that'll be tomorrow morning just want to let everyone know we are going to be going a little early around 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time tomorrow morning for the grand finale and we'll really all be all that grand people will have doughnuts we're talking we'll talk about net neutrality I know Todd's yeah that's okay maybe well I've done it but that'll be the last live show however next week we will be putting up a couple of filler episodes for funsies to fill in the gap while we're on hiatus but until then Ben yeah a pit up okay the 359 is available on iTunes tune in pitcher feedburner google play music and the amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for watching well thanks for joining us one last time in 2017 any time and in three two one dammit you