Gadgetory

hi hello just going to take a seat here I'm sure you won't mind hi I'm Joshua Topolsky the editor-in-chief of The Verge which is a website on the internet that covers technology science art in culture and you guys are currently in our super session which is called argue the future to return of the future and I think it's pretty apt because I think there have been a couple of things at the CES that make me feel like the future has come back a little bit it has returned a little bit and and there's some pretty exciting things going on in technology right now so we want to get a panel of people in this industry together who really know what they're talking about and are doing real things and just chat about where we're going right now where we are right now where we're going in the future so I'd like to bring up the panel and get this conversation underway the first panelist is our managing editor nilay patel who is known online as Tornado 92 Neal I ok sure you can applaud he deserves it he's earned it we also have Andy for sell who's the SVP of content at hulu and strangely he's never seen snow so weird fact about him bands no actual snow next up is eric chang the director of photography at Lytro he is an accomplished underwater photographer and but surprisingly bad at land photography and and and finally last but certainly not least Walt Mossberg who you may know from The Wall Street Journal and his site All Things D an interesting factoid about Walt he's obsessed with market fresh strawberries is that shoes give the gimmer around it so thank first I thank you guys for doing this you're all very busy here except for Walt he's taking it easy but you know I'm glad to have this group I think this is there's some diversity though I realize we've got three journalists up against to two guys making this stuff and I feel like if you notice us ganging up on anyone just say stay Stassi leave the red card they can hold up in the audience yeah seriously so so the first question I want to ask is about going into the CES there was a lot of talk about first others love taco CES is over it's not an important show there's no need for people to do this anymore because everybody's doing their own events certainly you guys do your your own events but there's this this idea that's kind of starting to float out there that innovation and hardware is done that we got the iphone we got iPads we got some broadband and HD and now we're good for a while and and I just want to I just you know I think Walt I want to start with you on this one do you think that that hardware innovation is are we at a plateau right now is this are we moving to a different stage of technology the technology industry um well it's an interesting question I think there are there are like 23 points to come to mind around this topic first of all I don't think it's possible anymore to separate hardware and software I think you know Steve Ballmer once said to me Apple is a software company that instantiates its software products and hardware and I think you know now Microsoft is do is instantiated its software products in its own hardware and Mike I think Google is pretty close to that as well with the Nexus lon they have now a line of Nexus things and they owned a hardware company so that's the first thing I think even just kind of the premise of well software's and services are moving but hardware is plateaued and you know it's it's all wrapped up the second thing is the number of come if you look over the last five years at the number of companies that have done truly game-changing hardware not you know small iterations it's not that many companies so and one of them the one that you mention i phone and iPad that's one company yeah they're great founder is has been gone for a little over a year they is obviously some natural term well there you know so maybe they're just taking a pause and working on the next thing how many apples working on a revolutionising television story have has the verge run has all things the wall street journal and rails right they are working on it we all know they're working on it but we also know that you know other companies are working on stuff so it may seem for a moment like a pause and then in three months we get an invitation from one of these guys to come to an event and you know something something big happens it's harder to surprise you on on hardware and then you know the last thing I would say is that these things have a slow ramp-up so it's you you know you can crack up and I certainly have about the 84-inch you know TV that costs as much as a car but you know the usual takes about five CES is for some of these things to come down into the mainstream after they're introduced can we still count them by CES is I don't know where we are do you think i mean III saw press release saying that they had attracted a record number of exhibitors and floor space and a large about 150,000 people so it doesn't sound like they're about to go away but right well let's so let's ask these guys cuz they're here I mean who lose here what are you doing here I mean you're not maybe you're not showing you know but you or here in every product or trying to be in every product so what's what is this for you what's happening right now what are you doing here during this week yeah i think my director answer that's probably not super exciting we're here because we have so many hardware partners and it's a really efficient place to come talk to them so you know we're here really for a ton of b2b conversations because it's a great place to do it but but i think that gets back to what Walt was saying is it hardware software services what everybody's trying to I think we're in a period where heart you know we're still trying to digest all the hardware that's come out all the capabilities that have increased in software all the great services a how do you make those work together Apple has one way of doing it they try to control everything the rest of the industry is trying to come up with other ways to solve that puzzle that are a little more distributed and that's still in process so there's ketchup going on there and then be since a lot of the capabilities that come out of those advances are about consuming media various types we're in this period we're waiting for the the business models to catch up on media whether it's video a printer or anything you know radio to podcasting I think we're in a period as well it says it takes five years it may take ten years for some of that to catch up and it's just business model change that can't happen overnight I mean it does it does feel and you know I think light rose actually you guys can we good example this you put your win win de jure the lytro camera when was it released to the consumer at the end at the end of februari end of February's and where did it gave you yeah didn't debut didn't say it debuted at asia d got you got clout got people to say that here today yeah oh yeah one and a half that but but your your product it's a brand new product in the market I mean there's nothing else like it you know I i reviewed it's got its greets got some great features got some flaws which I'm sure you guys are working on but I don't understand it I don't think I understand your product yet I don't think I understand what I can do with it and I think that's a lot of our industry right now that we made these things not me I don't make anything but you know you guys made these things and we're trying to figure out what to do with them now I mean that that even Apple seems to be in some ways figuring out what we made the ipad but is this all it can do or is this the you know the full extent of its ability I I mean I would argue I don't know that there has ever been a point in the history of Technology where we fully figured something out before something else came along we moved on to trying to figure that on television I don't do you know what you know what a television was originally I mean there's you know there's a big dispute somebody wrote a great book about it I can't now remember who actually Aaron Sorkin wrote a play about it that's right who invented television is his feet about it but there was a Russian inventor who was one of the people who was early on it and he did it purely in his mind as a way to monitor the safety of people down in mines and you know the telephone was originally thought to be something that where people in a town would have one telephone in the small town and they'd all gather around listen to opera coming out of the phone so right that didn't add out when jobs did the iPad that wasn't the first tablet we've gone through a whole 10 years of a failure to do tablets with the with the tablet pc he did his thing and there was a lots of people across the criticism people saying well we have smartphones may have laptops what is this poor and then how many easy sold 100 million of them or something by now so and people are using them for all kinds of things and so I think you're absolutely right people are still trying to just it discover it and walk around we a katie brett my colleague and I walked around the health section some of you may have done that if you haven't I recommend it it's really interesting that's a good exercise too awkward good exercise there's quite a few of those people with ipads doing things with health right over there that probably was not what the guys who designed it in Johnny I've wasn't sitting around saying i'm making a medical device well they did show off early on they showed all uses of the iphone but but i mean i think people come up with more things for then then were originally anticipated so Apple seems to be I do actually bring is back NDT you you have a content delivery service it's available on tons of devices everything i buy almost everything has hulu on it now I mean a lot a lot of things have you mean Hulu Plus right hulu plus well who the plus is this hue hue was on everything with a browser well with Lulu pluses the streaming service you pay money for and you get content with commercials even though you've paid money also and by not unlike josh and by the way any more and more commercials is yeah like it's right now it is almost the regular amount of commercial it's getting a whole lot just hold on it's approaching the regular amount of comer it really is what is it how many how many commercials in a 22-minute the goal the our view was always you got to go back to the Golden Age of TV which is the late 50s which is about half of where we are broadcast TV today so we're so you're saying it's half yeah it's about half of in fact I'm jr. we just pulled back a little bit because we a lot of feedback and people saying look we know you got to make a buck can you pull the bass over so we're not crazy when we it's in we have the impression I haven't I'm did I don't know about you but I wish I agree that compared to when you first brought it out there were there are more commercials in there now yeah and part of that was driven by just the ad sales teams done a great job demonstrating value we saw a lot of ads but a certain point have to say no we could make more money but you should you should you gotta think of the user and balance their interests and so yeah you'll see us pull back a little bit there and the challenge needs to be make those ads so valuable people make them pay more for them not just add more ads but so Josh was so point right well I mean this is interest the AG conversation that's interesting too but now there's the specter of in fact you know the apples always a spectra at see if they had this little leak in well they didn't have it but there was a leak in your your paper Wall Street Journal and no was reporting all I mean he was it was a sources told somebody at the wall street journal who knows who they could have been these sources that there that Apple may be making a cheaper iPhone which they already make it's called the iphone 4s and iphone 4 anyhow the point is a Tory you know it was but but so we heard the news here nobody's talking about the news not that huge your story but now in the TV industry there's the specter of apple hanging you know everybody's saying they've got something coming they're going to append the cable companies they're going to change the way we watch television you guys have been building this thing for years and years you're on all kinds of devices are you spook are you worried what do you you know do you see this as a threat to your business the thing that doesn't exist that we don't know anything about this factor he does know something about it though you want to tell us about what you know feel free there's nobody really you guys tom yum well looked at directly answer the one question and to skirt the other one uh no I don't think we feel threatened by it I think like we're excited whenever is experimentation as I said I think business models are catching up like the one thing that I've had to learn my job as I mean I'm a software guy now spent five years living sort of on the edge of media a lot of that time I had to spend learning about 50 years of Hollywood history and why things the crazy rights landscape and I will spare you examples but trust me they're crazy about why the show can't be on that screen and and it's amazing and and there's a messiness there that is part of what we've tried to tackle to say how do you you can't totally mask that messiness from users but how do you at least explain part of it to them and do the best you can and helping people understand you're trying to get as much content to them as you can and over time that will increase I think the one thing that's helped us a little is apple hates that kind of messiness they want to have a world they can control and I totally get that but you know I think they'll do some interesting things but I think because they hate that messiness I don't think they're going to change the world overnight this is a world that can't be changed I think it's a five year thing as waltz that ore contains no but I think that's a fabulously important point at least on television and maybe on some of the other devices and maybe it explains a little bit of the hardware sclerosis you were talking about if that's an appropriate just going that term thing out what I mean if TV and revolutionising TV and forget about it being just Apple because we know it's not just Apple intel's in it Google is in it everybody's trying to revolutionize TV too it looks to a tech company like low-hanging fruit an important device it's at the center of the home and it's poorly designed and there's got to be the UI as bad you know software is bad and the integration with the wider internet world is bad so it's low-hanging fruit what's the obstacle what is causing this pause why is this the third CES or there's at least the second with the rumor of apple hanging over over it I think it has to do with exactly what you just said it has to do with this crazy rights landscape and how you can't really do this correctly without getting deals and rights and and bundles or whatever you have to get from people that own hulu the people that own the wall street journal is one company news corp but also you know everybody else well so don't you agree am I not certain I I think that's a long-term problem to unwind all that now what's going on in parallel that will progress and Apple will do part of it will do will help but part of it you know Netflix paying money for things will help but that money solves you know you guys voting with your clicks and making it worthwhile will help us unsolved you know solve that problem but it will take a while because it involves you know dick wolf suit NBC and suddenly that means you know this is just crazy crazy messages in the whole game in parallel there's an alternate thing going on with with you know youtube and other content being created all over and shown on people's own websites you guys create a lot of content and our effect you know competing in certain ways d certainly does that and and there's a parallel movement to say let's reinvent it with no you know let's do new content has no strings attached and I think that's fascinating because you have both progressing I think media loves to show a conflict story and say who's going to kill whom I don't think it's gonna be that exciting I think cable is going to still be around in 10 years it will be different it will be more consumer friendly because you all have voted with your dollars in your clicks to force them to do that will have helped in a certain way and then in parallel there's gonna be a whole world that develops that's not rights constrained and that's what Netflix is doing they're going to make their own shows they can show them anywhere in the world and so I think that's fast and we have we have two parallel things going on and it's you'll be easy to say it's a race I don't think it's that dramatic so here's my but it's good for it's all good for viewers so what I find interesting about the old content that you that looks one way like we know what TV looks like they're sitcoms you know TV sitcoms look like then I think about the content we make and we make it differently because we're making it online or means of production are slightly different in our audience look slightly cheaper slightly cheaper and then I think I think about Eric's company and you make a product that only makes sense if you look at it on a computer yeah right you have to interact with a light row photo so I think what we're changing our content and how we make we think about making video because our tools and our distribution are slightly different then I think about what photographers might do with light show cameras but they're only forced to be online right I mean just do you think photography is going to change because it only can happen on a computer is there a future for your product outside of the computer in the internet yeah yeah absolutely there is a future for it and in fact most existing photographers only think in terms of existing photography you know the first thing they ask is well how big can I make a print and I asked what when's the last time you made a print I think I can't remember and so you know in fact they're consuming pictures online constantly I mean if you if you leave someone alone for 30 seconds what are they going to do I'm going to pull out their phone and look at a picture you know so it's very natural for us to go straight to the web and to allow interaction with all these devices which are fundamentally interactive in the way that you handle them and so we're we're that's why we decided to do that first having said that light field photography is fundamental tech and you still can get a two-dimensional picture out of it for print or a 3d picture for some other kind of print which is you know on the fringes right now of CES those very small booths you know we haven't seen you and those are launching here yeah so I think you know this kind of multi-dimensional photography you can output whatever you'd like from it and while the first camera is a consumer camera with fairly low resolution to the output you can imagine that scaling up with Moore's law I mean we've just tied photography to computing and once that happens we vote we all know what happens can you so we were talking about this a little bit before we went on video video with life I know we're virgin into a light-filled conversation should hear and I do want to get back to the TV and I will in a second but video what are the possibilities of doing video what would that require to do video you can refocus in real time well it's fundamentally anibal every frame we take is one frame so you just string them together and you get video so we have proofs of concept time-lapse basically so what it requires is high resolution capture the raw capture and we know that already is here it's just in the very high end and I think what's missing which is very interesting for this conversation is that we consume very passively you know we consume video material very passively now and there have been attempts for many many years to bring interactivity into video you see these little pop-ups you know like how do I get this thing out of the way you know but interactivity doesn't need to be an overlay it can be you know like a very intrinsic part of that experience it can be now this is very content creators may not like that they like to lock everything in and say this is what I made I'm an artist you know but in fact when we have kids playing with these things they want to try to interact with every picture you know the kids of our employees try to interact with every picture they see of course you can refocus a picture and of course you can change the perspective they don't have the same hang-ups we do and so I think that's I think it's interesting that you're talking about you know the idea that just the very idea if you did if there was this video content it would be on it would be as flat as anything on a regular television standard television our old technology wouldn't be really be able to replicate what you're creating with the tool right you know you'd have to it has to be on the web or it has to be on interactive surface like an iPad or an iPhone I think that's you know telling about this that's TV industry changing I mean that's where we are going is this the second screen experience and obviously innovations like this but you said when we were talking before that you don't have cable right I didn't you don't you don't subscribe to cable you haven't for how long I haven't for about eight years or so and so what so what spurred so you look obviously you're deep deeply immersed in the world of technology what was how did you end up not having cable I'm kind of curious to know this story well I was out of town a lot but also I I wanted something like Hulu I hated having this expensive thing that I paid for every month that fed me ads and I have you know had to what i watch i had a TiVo so I would sort of record things and watch them but they were starting to be I mean not eight years ago but more and more every year there were more ways to get content where i could pay a little bit or sometimes too much you know i got really annoyed because i tried to buy the wire and it was twice as expensive to buy it on itunes than it was for me to order it the whole series and have it shipped to my house he was literally twice to come that's still true and that really was annoying I think it's still more expense the first thing I did was no was rip it so I could watch it on my iPad yeah you know that's far flaw I don't think he's got the work but no no no you can't get the wire in itunes that's right but that's not anymore that's one of the right look what's part of that whole rights thing yeah it's what it's this I'm not trying to open a books conversation but a similar thing I mean it doesn't seem logical to people that bits should cost as much as Adams and that has a lot to do with I'm not saying that Google and Amazon and Apple or innocent their ever part in it but a lot of it is the media companies and the structures that go back way beyond when any of the stuff was invented but Eric how much do you think you spend on on you know sort of replacements for that a month I mean roughly do you it's probably twenty dollars or something like that about yours announcement I spent probably 50 or 60 is it so you you I think you're in there probably not a huge minori but there's a segment that's like that where you successfully cut costs and also get the media you need I think a lot of people have tried it and I'm spending 60 70 80 bucks that they normally spend but it feels better it's a different way well you're not buying you don't feel like you're paying for yes this 700 ESPN channels that you well that's my thought about cable I'm not hugely negative on cable i have actually two cable subscriptions i'm sort of think you are you going to you right you sunday i guess i'm just because you can yeah well that sucks something ticket is a prime example of what sucks it's also a prime example of why hulu can't do what what cable does no look have these eyes what for the air with the NFL but look I live Adam get for the football team that I want to watch I live in New York on watch Packers I can't get DIRECTV I live in apartment building in New York City there is a product I'm waving the money in the air and the right structure is preventing me from having it what about that legacy while so why don't you buy slingbox yeah put it lighter where I've seen right pay the five bucks a mono idea sling where the eggs are swimming okay the five bucks a month to the extra cable box in one of your relatives I don't know me tell you that I do that least do is I want and I want in what Walt is saying what I actually do I think for a consumer is insane yes because what I have done is and it's there's demand for that the company could productize it I have created my own cloud television redistribution system does that sound like something any normal human being should do a lot more subscriptions to that I'm just saying when when the Ritz I'm a Red Sox fan when the Red Sox were in one of their World Series years it happened to be one of those years when the MLB in comcast for somebody were having a fight about right now this periodically happens and i said to my brother exactly what i just said to you I said right I'm coming to your house bring a slingbox i'll pick your extra key i'm gonna use your internet without telling you i'll pay for that put in a closet now here i get connected you do you have completely jaya seal give it but here's here's the question do you think so i understand why you don't like that and you want to get somebody ticket totally get it as a consumer you should be steamed about that but do you go another step and say well they must be stupid like you do you think they're missing an opportunity to think it's bad business I think not capitalizing on what is obvious demand is bad business but I think if the NFL and directv were here and spoke candidly I think they'd say look we've done all that math even if they're X number of you and we're wildly ambitious and aggressive about what we would pick up I mean it's just like HBO going a la carte it's a similar discussion I think it's good business but I hate to say it as a consumer selling but here it is good business yeah but here it is worth it to directv to have that exclusive and they massively over pay for that content and and it's horrible as in Sumer but I so it is this directv overpaying efficient in the market how do you want I think they're overpaying vs well if I'm NFL that's what I want sure and you can't ask the NFL to do so I mean you know we can't ask the NFL to take less money just to be nice so I think that's the trick I think over time HBO is the same exact question we all would look at we all many people would love to get HP ala carte they don't have HBO today so many people are inside HBO we love in there yeah I don't see how that math works though and I really don't you think there are enough people that they should be able to outbid direct essentially to change the business model no I I don't think I mean what are we talking about how much per month for HBO do you know I'm sorry the math only to be the math on the ala carte yeah they may be that it would be more profitable than what they're doing yeah but again I think HBO one way to look at is they get paid a premium by big cable because they big cable like DirecTV is willing to pay a premium for the NFL to be able to use that to get people to buy lots more than just the NFL you know people you use HBO the same way right and it sucks for consumers but I think it's probably a sound business decision so then we look at that what's the answer because you want to please users you want to get content to users and that's where I think some of that parallel developments can occur we're all right you gotta start greenfield in some cases but what boy okay so we're all you know MURST in this world we know everything about it were you know voracious I'm sure Watchers of content and you know we read all the news average consumers I mean to me it doesn't seem like there that Maddie you're mad but you know you're a very special guy I'm an angry guy you're very unique it seems like TV is better than ever i mean i watch i can't i don't think i can count how many shows i DVR now because there's so much good stuff on I agree and I mean really good this is the Golden Age of TV yes I mean it's chosen for walk Empire these like is that like watching a 12 hour right now well you want two million dog down talk incredible content great great comedy great news well some okay news not great okay those questions I was actually thinking if I was actually the day it's the Golden Age of TV drama yeah well drama and I think there's some decent sitcoms and you know but the point is the average can spend and also TV looks better than it has ever looked before there is there are more channels than ever do consumer our consumers actually I know we talked about cord cutters and that's a thing and I think you talked to Ari Emanuel and he he said there aren't cord cutters and you use no but here's here's that if I could just anticipate what I think you should go where I think I think there are cord cutters here's one I think there are fewer of them then we might have expected for five years ago because because the cable companies have been good at holding on to what they have yeah they've been good at holding on to it and I think this whole rights world Danny was talking about has hurt the efforts to do better more integrated over the top services that make the TV more attractive and easier to use and all that kind of stuff but I think there's something that this is what I was talking to Ari Emanuel about or trying to talk to him about which was you guys know who are Emmanuel is right he's like this Ari Gold travante he's already gold it's the super agent in Hollywood and and we had him at our conference and Josh asked him a good question but yelled at Josh since the mainstream question its various very upsetting but anyway the point is horrific point is there's something called cable Nevers right and this is the most dangerous thing if I'm Brian Roberts Brian Roberts that being the head of Comcast's I have two sons who were once married ones not there they're both around thirty once 30 three ones three so the my youngest son would go without food before he wouldn't have internet right he has to have internet but he would never go without anything to buy a cable subscription he doesn't have a cable isn't it cute she never would and he never will my oldest son he was married has a very watched basic he has a very basic cable subscription they're trying to save up to buy a house which as you know is difficult next a fan of live in Boston it's a expensive market I he hasn't said this to me but if I had to guess if they had to cut stuff back to afford the house the cable would be one of the first games that would go because they both have you know iPads and and smartphones and good laptops I think one year for their birthdays I got them Apple TV's not an expensive a gift right so they have that only expensive take a watch hulu plus for what is the same place a month so you must this must be music to your ears are you loving this so after this your this is your audience hi guys who don't get I don't know the numbers I me and II might i'd love to hear it I don't know the numbers but there are these people that are cable Nevers there is in there it's it's I think it's even worse than that because we did a long thread in our forums of how do you watch TV we did this week of TV stories we said how do you watch TV we asked readers not one person answered I just have a cable box right but not one person says it's the burj audience but that's fine but the so hard if of people dia are the world audiences is carrying this industry forward right what notes are in Ohio Illinois the answer that and that is my question yeah the answer there you pulling all kinds of personal data for me see what you're doing uh oh hi only knows where my wife is from it's a smaller it's 450 people you know they don't have cable right they they can't have cable because look at the pipes are know the answer you might have a satellite to pay nothing for because they want to get national channels but as soon as they get the internet there on the internet I'm just not sure saying the cable industry can't say this is the one thing you need to get content right Apple can say that with the iPad because when you load it up with apps and two people it's I've and I don't watch TV I use my iPad and all the apps on the iPad qualify is one product right or if you're a virgin or you say in our forums I have 50 boxes under my TV and the most important one of them is not the cable box and they will argue whether it's the roku box to use netflix on or the apple TV box they buy movies on but they will never say my most important box is my cable DVR well she's also forgotten something else that's really important and when that's airplay yeah and there may be a generic term for it I'm not sure what is what it's called there's a bunch of America I understand why so do wireless beaming from other devices sure so having apples is the most evolved and probably the most used airplay but it prop might be exceeded by this time next year bites that melts miracast is the industry standard to do the same thing and you guys probably all know what we're talking about you're sitting there with your smart phone or your iPad or or that macbook air you have right there and it's just a little button you hit it and boom whatever's on your screen it could be internal to the app or the program if they built that in if that's allowed or multi I think you guys have that right you don't have that air play button on your iOS app right they're not allowed because you're not allowed to be you're not some of your community don't like them on the screen not a big screen a little plus you can do it yeah for rule applies always say if you tell me that you do have an air below on living room boxes as well so I oky right so the point is either the button is in the app in the scrubber barn you know in the control bar in the app or in now in the mac it's just mirror and the end the ipad it mirrors the whole screen so if you happen to be watching something where they really didn't want you to put it on the TV screen where if you plugged it in with an hdmi cable right not work you can just make it fullscreen it's great it is that button it's always in the menu bar and there it is yeah and you haven't had to string a wire you haven't had to get out off your chair and plug anything in you haven't had to dedicate a computer but people aren't there's only a few million Apple TV's most people but Samsung has the same thing you know there's wide eye which is an in was an Intel thing that toshiba and some others having their machines the problem there is getting a standard and getting a brand that people understand but it's coming well the applet play if I to guess and it would be a pure guess and admitted tell me if you think I'm nuts there's been a big expansion the sale of those Apple TV's it's still a small business forum but i think it's doubled or more than doubled I think airplay is responsible for a lot of that they even if you're not watching the content on the thing you're sitting there with another screen and now you can just beam it to the TV well but it doesn't you know airplay doesn't solve all the confusion about it's just another it is another is another reason why I don't need the cable what the cable isn't like essential right and I think that that cord Nevers combined with the even the people who buy the cable thinking to themselves this is secondary to what I see on the internet or I get distributed online that is the biggest danger if the cable industry and I think that's why they're gonna be pushed to make but luckily do you love me that you see more kind of like deal flow because they know I mean that would be well I guess I'd say I think the cable satellite telco are having to pay more close attention to consumers than ever before and that's a good thing I mean they're you eyes are slowly getting better too slow but slowly they're better if you if you look three or four years ago they're wildly better it's still not enough I think I think they're worried about that and I think they're they know they're gonna have to do some repackaging but they look at multi-channel subs and they've hung in around 100 million homes and it wavers a little bit but it hasn't hasn't dropped so they're all looking at the cord Nevers they're all doing a bunch of research but so far it hasn't hit the bottom line and I don't think they're going to anticipate that and start doing things differently so i think it's going to be slow it's also lucky that they happen to control the internet service where they also have their television service so in worst case scenario they lose that they can fly they got a horrible were stationary they're still gonna Pam we're all gonna pay more for broadband right now that's that's the thing and that actually brings me to something I wanted to talk about and then we're gonna do we'll get probably to a quick Q&A with you guys but 4k TV is everywhere at this show everybody's talking about 4k television why you laughing I'm laughing cuz like we have a bet and i think i think i'm right i think you're wrong Betty four thousand dollars six dollars 4k TVs everywhere what's this bed I want to know if I can get in it oh yeah my vet is uh within three years 4k TVs will be a main street it'll be the thing the high-end product best buy that most people want to buy three years and you are saying I think it's gonna be a little bit longer than that I'm on your side I think that we're not even so I talked to the CEO Sony cause her eye and he said well we got him we have to figure out how we get the stuff on the tvs the industry needs to come together on a standard maybe we'll do this maybe we won't right now they're sending servers to people preloaded with content because the files are so huge you can't stream them you can't put them on a disk and there's nothing to play them on anyhow so I think we're sorry as if you go to the Sony with my favorite products es in the sunny booth it's such a gadget nerd it's a non functional prototype of a 4k player which means it's literally a circle with a light in it and like my inner gadget nerd is like that's awesome it's a day doesn't know any meaning any guts or doesn't yeah yeah there's I saw behind it there's a PC behind it's actually doing this so so okay but so 4k everybody's pushing and I don't know there is a part of me that feels just a little bit we've been burned by things before like 3d we actually wrote writer of ours Vlad saw before an article it said it's official 3d is dead i think this CS proves that 3ds and not an issue anymore that nobody cares that bother you that the focus on 3d is gone because and the light show has some faint 3d capabilities yeah well we're not relying on stereo displays for 3d because we have 3d content that it can be expressed in different ways like perspective shift and you know this 4k discussion is interesting because you know when hdtvs came out and started to become mainstream how many people were actually watching HD content most people thought it was HD you know was it it was what it probably wasn't your website but which site had the retina vs ipad 2 comparison and they walked into the apple store and show people out the the oh my we mighta check out this retina display / and everyone said wow it's so much better and you know that's kind of that could happen with 4k TVs I mean it took so long for content to make 2k or 4k HD and trying to take a lot longer this is and this is what i was getting is that every time at 4k and then the president of sony says we don't know how you're going to get it what we want to do we're gonna be the first guys to do it but you know we have to figure it out in the industry has to figure it out but I think it's difficult to invest in 4k content and 4k distribution when there's no 4k televisions big chicken's name and what's been right but I think know this but what's blu-ray what's what's what's blu-ray an equivalent it steady you mean the resolution yes what steady touch 1k rights to gay rights they call to get right all right so the only effective delivery mechanism for that video today is a blu-ray disc way I how well the house for habitation yeah BB has 3 Xbox all of you know they all do 1080 they do 10 e but not as heavy as what's on a blu-ray I mean it's not as good it's really it's digitally compressed with the resolutions I'll tell you what I think I think there will be big changes until we've been talking about some changes in television habits video let's call it video viewing habits I'm not even sure the word television is gonna last another twenty years video viewing habits from whatever source I think making the TV the hardware the software better and different and more smoothly integrate just just so I don't have to change inputs yeah between being able to watch hulu plus and being and watch CBS right or Boardwalk Empire something on through cable if I do have cable I mean those things are going to be much bigger deals in the next three years if people will lose resolution at that that's right oh that's right i mean doing on your pages they do it you know what you just said is really really important we haven't talked about it but we all know or i think a lot of people know that one of the trends that it's not too evident here maybe it is and I just haven't seen it I think a niche trend this year is there's a push to do much more expensive audio you know I basically iPods there much there are seven hundred dollars right and you know the Neil Young project and there's another one a chabad we could the point is these people are audio files or they're recording artists and they really feel like they're specialists they really feel like the world decided just as you just said to go for a better interface and more convenience and give up quality on the music right and they did and it was hugely successful i mean steve jobs at one of his appearances at my car a conference said he thought it was it amazed him that people were willing to give up on the quality of the music to get the ability to put in your pocket no sir this goes so it's a little bit to action so if you I don't care what company it is on care if it's google I care if it's Intel and care for example aren't careful it's a company we have a named is able somehow to get some rights deals done enough to make some amount of critical mass and do a TV that is just really different than other TVs in it's the way you use it the fact that you have to switch inputs whatever all that that will be I I'm saying I think that would be more important over the next three years then adding doubling the resolution of blu-rays so right for kids well that's what I think so here's my TV is changing but what we're seeing out there just you know more resolution with so good beers biggest arguments that I don't think I think as people by the 4k I think you if it's a chicken and egg problem but one of them is actually more important than the other and I think having the sets in people's homes is what creates demand for the content and I think the broadcaster's the cable company they're not set up to deliver this content so as people get the televisions which the curve of those prices is going to plummet right so as people get the 4k televisions they will create demand for the content and the online services that can provide that content faster than the cable companies will begin to seriously challenge cable well this is where it's going and that will dry your brother this is where i was at which we end casa ride this is where i was actually going with this said we wanted to drive and you were talking about we wanted to drive the expansion of broadband because we think digital delivery is ultimately where the 4k content comes from and so you've got these samsung sony LG Panasonic everybody right all of those companies are doing 4k this year right and they're all saying this is where television is headed and as a result you know what's going to happen is we have to find some in other countries Asia and Europe have different broadband problems than we have here America but it has to drive up the pipe right you ever have a fatter pipe to get this stuff and then does that create I guess where i was going is does that create an opportunity to completely disrupt the industry that we have now because if the cable companies aren't there to meet it and it ends up that hulu is there you know is that is there a little bit to 4k TV yeah I imagine that those photos look even more beautiful and you have to you got to make a device that can take photos that can utilize what that wouldn't be hard for you probably to make a 4k device yeah it's I mean it'll get up scaled and arch what a 4k light for a big just show me what it'd be like if it has to be actually physically larger it doesn't just need to work more raised or pixels in the underlying sensor and they can be more densely packed along as you do that right now we could do it it's a cost issue how expensive would it be a fork a white robe output full output in video yeah no no 4k still you're more capable Park it really Spencer it be tens of thousands of dollars you know in the hyatt just me again a few more thousand pixels a few months cousin I'll be perfect what was it ten dollars a pixel what is it down what is it better light sound so cheap the weight disadvantages you order start paying your employees in in pixels yes they're worth more that would be very affordable yeah there I don't think so all right maybe not are not easy okay let people who have been throwing away pixels forever right they throw them well you take a 20 megapixel thing and you look at it on this 1080 well that yet let should I say they don't care it like to walk don't wear and it looks better when it goes for okay because the display is around the same size and the pixels are much more dense but it just it or not that's what it is that's what that's why I started buying netbooks a few years ago member the netbook right but I mean what if you want to make this all the way back to apple and all the phones were seeing here people want they want the pixels back I mean Apple drove two huge adoption curves by saying the screen is better why every phone here is live inches intending most people will wait until the back but they'll wait until a lot of plenty of people they sold a ton of pre Retina screen yeah and then the next the next thing that could advertise around and it was an engineering achievement I'm taking away from but was the retina screen it wasn't like there was a huge antennas had already bought the non-retina runs they just went and bought it's why the throw money or whatever throwing money away what does even but you know if you I mean if you look at the retina MacBook like that is to me that is the silliest product I don't want it there I think my screen has enough pixels and I used them in a different way when I look at my ipad I'm assuming the continent want to be very beautiful like you want them but that you don't necessarily think you need them if you have if you'd like to save an extra hundred bucks it doesn't feel like that big of a deal to go get the ipad 2 instead of the new what is it the fourth generation for a lot of people and I suspect I don't know the sales numbers they don't share those exact numbers but I bet they sold a lot of ipad tues just the way that's the way they sold a lot of ipad mini's which has the same resolution just the way Vietnam adjust the way or just the itunes centerfield quality mp3's and people are taking a lot of lower quality pictures in watching compressed this Idol has gotten extremely do I look at your breath it's not that no I think what it is is that over to them I I think what we're going to just a second but I do think that the average consumer the people aren't specialist they would just want the contact lee it's not the stuff if I'm a Philistine I'm a full steam but I'm happy to watch hulu plus on the ipad mini i'm happy to watch it it looks fine it's great to me sometimes I you know I say or or the galaxy the nexus 7 it doesn't you know I say to myself I'm holding this thing and and this really looks like good video now I know that on the on the bigger everyone with the retina it looks better and I have that one but I grab the mini makoor the the nexus 7 because it's just a little lighter and lose market area around right all right I'm happy to watch hulu on it you know I want to do we only have a few minutes I want to do some some Q&A for for the panel here if you've got a question any question that i'll raise your hand and someone will find you with a microphone someone has to focus us got ya couple here bro yes someone got a all over the place there I think we'll get to you guys in a second I think in the Russian runners kind of flow yeah there's someone up the gentleman over here in the blue shirt and you've got somebody over there so let's whoever gets to somebody first with a microphone yes sorry we'll try to get you guys hello he started to drift a little bit for the topic which was the future revisited so we did we got mine off we might have we might have digressed I wanted to revisit the topic of the future revisited and get to the overall trend that I heard a couple of times before I panels with the user interface revolution and the convertible idea that there's a collapsing of the gadgets into one convertible tablet like thing whilst you said no but what about that what about like is that really a big deal question what's the question wait what about the user interfaces what about the future of how that's going to impact the industry well yeah I need software is software and user interfaces are increasingly important because you touch everything now I mean my this is my pin I think about don't you think we're beginning to see I think we went from obviously from doss to GUI and then I think the importance of multi-touch regardless of who has the patents and who invented it's kind of boring but importance of it so I hope I its kind of Duke yet sorry don't get too many patents right now we'll be here all day you know the direct manipulation multi-touch yeah and now we have gesture and perceptual and things that are controlled by eye tracking so yeah and that's and that's the next way that's a huge win but we have started on the next wave of user interface and that's hugely important I mean obviously if you only have a screen you better be sure you better be damn sure that you know how to get somebody to use that thing because you can do whatever you want with it it's not like hey I'm constrained by a qwerty keyboard and you can only do so many things with the qwerty keyboard this is you know user interface is massively important but you know we're just at the beginning of it you look at the user interface of the ipad that is essentially the same i would say vastly unchanged from the original iphone which was six or seven six hours old let me ask you this and i think this is this goes to what both of these guys to the user interface the ipad is nothing right it's a almost a completely blank slate apple provides you with some like lazy way to get a lot of time and money on that nothing well sure but what they really provide it was a great touch layer you build your own interface that is optimized for content discovery that has nothing to do with it what apple provides you will do on interface for viewing interactive photos it kind of has a thing to do it it provides I think the best absolutely on iOS right now are googles apps which don't look anything like without but at a high level yeah but that interface is changing rapid but at a high level you've got to have that you you have to have the basic it's still touch the UI has to be there but that's all that's yeah we started in a blank slate still understand berries convey understand so Google so Google Maps and I agree with you I mean I actually think the new Google i/os maps and soda the people at Google has left ahead now in you I Walt and I were in a car last update are you Siri to get to the next hotel Siri completely failed out and we both said you are that might have been the network here but you're right you're absolutely right look let the put put what's cool about the google maps thing it swipes you know it this wipes up the swipes over to turn on traffic those kinds of gestures or android innovations by the way there's andhra those are android whatever tears their touch gesture innovations and i think i don't know for sure but i mean i think he was talking about the future is really i think kind of this perceptual natural gesture recognition stuff and it's around it's around the floor you'll let me ask this um you've got a product that not when people get a light rail not only do they have to understand how to use it they have to understand what is going on because unless you kind of know what's going on you can't get the most out of it so when you design the interface for the tablet for touch versus the interface for desktop how do you kind of how do you teach the user what's going on because that's your you have the biggest interface challenge of all it and your interface is extremely vague and is it should try to use what it's there's a bunch of hidden menus it I'm not saying it's bad yeah it was offense in touch because in touch you know you touch something that's blurry and it refocuses and you dragged around in the perspective changes and in fact you can just tilt the device and the accelerometer will trigger the perspective shift to move as well so there we're starting to see some ways to get passive interactivity in light field which is something we always thought about but with a computer is just the tools the the standard interfaces aren't there and so if you can just move the device and the picture changes then suddenly its interactive without you having to actually do anything let's try to get there's a think something has a microphone did we take the microphone away all right okay and by the way I do think we talked about the future right I just want to say that what we were talking about we kind of veered into the future of content and content delivery but that was just a quick just a quick easy question about 3d how can you say it's dead or gone if there's like 30 movies coming out some of the biggest movies out were 3d this reason I think it'll be a difficult animal to kill here China 3ds multiple you know it's it's on the ground I think I mean I just don't think that people I just on the ground I just think I think it's been it's been wrestled to the ground yeah you've got a death love ya happen I what I here's what I think I think 3d was a gimmick for the most part I think in the living room it is I consider to be a complete failure do you know anybody who sits in their house with glass on there's one person right there I don't want somebody you want have microphones anybody here stated their living room and watch 3d there's one person ok TV so like 3 and 0 you show that you were okay Benny the theater on the theater I think in the theater it'll still be uh there will be the right movies I want to come in his defense I think he was talking about televisions in your home yeah I was talking about home the home 3d movement that we've been pushed I've covered Sony's keynote for what five years I've had to wear 3d glasses for for Vienna it's true we have pictures him in 3d glass from any key I mean Howard Stringer wandered around stage looking lost in 3d glasses for like an hour so what will happen when you're on and it's it's just over i mean it's and I think you'll see fewer and fewer films actually I think that you know if you look at how much content coming out they're really going to zero in on the avatars the spectacles right and those are going to battle drive box office right don't want to go to the theater to get the 3d experience actually a couple of years ago and I think you were you're there and maybe some some of the rest of you okay said we had James Cameron at our conference who arguably was that you know it's done the best job with it he predicted there'd be a whole bunch of crap movies in 3d that would do it badly and it would eventually we said James Cameron yeah yeah no he did it by the way genius guy's a genius but he was right yeah yeah you had a bunch of horror movies chain texas chainsaw massacre 3d maybe that was successful so but but but we don't work I'm certainly not in any don't know anything about theatrical stuff and that's a different category but it's certainly true that the show was full of 3d TVs and I really it's not now yeah not I just think I saw one 3d TV here Vizio has a totally glasses-free it's got this crazy Dolby technology it looks really cool and they're like it's three years out I think I think my her original headline for that story was 3d one 3d is dead because every TV can do every teeth price every buddies TV here can is capable of 3d because they could build it in cheaply enough but nobody is really no or making content for it if somebody else I think we could probably get one more question in we've got this gentleman here which he had his head up a while ago you give the mic is coming over oh hi George theres the mic here we go all right okay basically i happen to be a professional inventor I've been vetted stuff for Hollywood the thrust for the you know the 4k and the 8k and the 16 and the zillion k is that they had to throw stuff on a very large screen 60 feet 30 feet and so on and they're trying to replace the film film has a wonderful quality and very good resolution and the digital stuff was barely coming up and so on there's a there's a phrase in inventing it's good enough as best is there sorry I mean a rush along where all the time anyway question so this all came out of the theatrical stuff and then his kind of bumped itself down into the normal house that's not a question it's not a question it's just a it's a good point but but but not a question you Justin flex at the end it sounds like that they ran up a little bit towards a question thank you thank you I you know I we have 30 seconds what you want to try to get one for it in 30 seconds or yeah if anybody is it she's got it okay you found somebody whose any just give that might any human here even if they don't have their head up I think all these people are very um so with the advent of context awareness and a lot of the sensors that aren't being utilized right now for instance samsung it has the barometric center and that kind of stuff how soon do you think that you'll see those things come to light in the future and consumers actually start to adopt those kinds of things yeah I think that just and we're gonna have to end it here but I next few years it be an explosion they already are right the Fitbit in the Nike FuelBand consumers for whatever reason they want to know what's going on with their bodies with data and the more unit in your future is integrated thank you welcome welcome has an initiative to create the tricorder they're actually trying to give somebody millions of dollars to build a react are truck tracks I think sensors are huge and and you know you use them you all use them every day that you don't even you're not even during think about them in your phones and those there's the first group that came out now work on them in the second wave of sensors and will in the third wave maybe in another year or two yeah so they're huge unfortunately we gotta wrap up I want to thank the panel thank you guys so money rest and thank you for joining us appreciate it