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Verge Roundtable with MKBHD, TLDToday, & Austin Evans — CES 2015

2015-01-09
hey everybody thanks for coming to the verge lounge we're sponsored by Ford they have a Mustang we've been doing verge casts everyday and we thought it might be fun to do another one but make it sort of a special edition so we're calling us a virgin table and rather than the standard verge crew we've got some of our friends who are what would you call it guys on YouTube famous youtubers also super hardcore into gadgets unapologetically just love them some gadgets so we thought it might be cool to just sort of hang out talk about the gadget we saw at the show and how things are going so I am dieter bone on the executive editor for The Verge calm and let's go around the table and guys introduce yourself my name is marques I make youtube videos as we all do at youtube.com slash mkbhd that's about it yeah my name is Austin Evans I make videos that are slightly less good as marques and my channel is Austin Evans I also make videos John short for Jonathan I like the Bulls and youtube.com slash TLD can we talk about this hat that you're wearing before we get into gadgets I wasn't prepared for that but we can it's a very nice is it not hot walk here on the show floor wearing that thing it's it's comfortably cool right now yeah okay see nice here yeah it's a good hat so yeah we're walking on the show floor what have you guys what like how's the show floor been for you is it does it seem super crowded as it seemed are people like costing you everywhere or you just sort of just having a good time or what I this is my third CES okay and I feel like every year you try to you have a different strategy I guess for one-man band you kind of have a different strategy of what you want to see I'm surprised there's as many people here on today definitely it's slowed down by now so I guess I would say yes it's more crowded than I thought it would be but I've made my way around all three centers I've seen a lot of stuff I don't know if you guys have any specifically awesome things that you want to talk about that you saw yeah I was a little bit behind but I finally just played with gear VR about an hour ago what do you think I was really surprised so I've been a guy who I like I tried oculus the original I loved it you know the Developer Kit to morph is I just play with the Rays OS VR and all these things in they're great they're great and I put on gear of yard with like very low expectations like that's just a phone like yeah Google cardboard is cool but it's like you know whatever so I was expecting something like that and I was really impressed that there was a game I'm not entirely sure what the name of the game was it was like a spaceship shooter and basically the entire controls were like you're just constantly moving forward you move your head and you're able like because there are no tethers with gear VR you can like spin the chair around do everything you're always flying whatever direction in there a little touch pad on the side that you can shoot stuff with I just want my my footage the footage without shooting was hilarious I was finding people who are doing Brandon vr things and they were just kind of like you know moving around and looks weird but playing this game you're flying forward and you're just kind of looking at things that pass you but you have a swivel chair so you're actually like swiveling around really fast and impossible whole folk looking ridiculous yeah be easy for you do you guys find that there's enough content enough stuff to do in VR to hold your attention beyond a tech demo ask that man need to be our master not yet I mean I've I have the oculus the developer kit too and I play with it sometimes but I mean unless you're really into like you know the all the demos and all about the little things like a lot of the games I've played with are very much like the okay look this is a game we poured it over to oculus it works it's kind of cool it's a better experience but not it's not quite there yet for me so for me it's definitely the the tech demo the kind of the Hey look look you got like friend over or something play with this look how cool this is and you put in the closet for like another month right the most fun thing to do with VR is hand goggles to somebody and watch the music oh yeah that's that's awesome that's not my line I stole it from Eddie Robertson I can't that's true so you guys do a bunch of phone stuff right I thought that's like I love watching your phone videos uh not much in the way of phones now G flex 2 G flex 2 what happened the whole lot of yacht G flex 2 yeah no that was easily the most that was the most requested thing I've heard people that want to see a video about is that phone and then little murmurings of other things right but phones you see the bigger phones getting their own events their own announcements so CES has become a place for the lesser known brands and lesser known phones to rise up from where they were before so I would you guys take the G flex 2 as you like it I thought it was really comfortable yeah I reminded me of the Galaxy Nexus yeah same same exactly the same yeah and it it feels kind of restrained to me like they like LG's figured out that they can just you know it's an ostentatious phone right it's a giant curved phone which is crazy but that it's not like blinged out look at me I'm full of chrome it's just sort of a chill cool phone I think that's good for it yeah if they want to make this a phone that people actually want and want to buy it's a lot closer to what the LG g3 looked like and I think that was a really popular phone it doesn't have the same you know beautiful tiny bezels but but it looks like like I said people were saying look like a oneplus one and it looked like a lg g3 on the back and those are phones of people already like using so yeah the g3 from before was huge and this is actually a smaller phone which makes it I guess easier to pocket easier to hold up your face without looking ridiculous so I actually haven't seen the G plugs to yet but I did play where I'm with the original G flex is the screen any better because that was the big thing for me the screen was a little rough on the original key flat screen of the last G flex was a big plastic AMOLED 720p screen up and the screen of the new G flex is a slightly smaller slightly less curved 1080p display okay I think it looks a lot better yeah for sure two thumbs up okay so what else what else you guys find on the show like what's your what's your favorite gadget we should we should go around the table and do favorite thing at the show the most fun I've had here is actually off the floor was where's Sam he'll agree with me the Z board - yeah talk to me about that that was sick so it's lighter faster charges faster and like I played with it before and I've kind of been okay with it yeah but this was the first time I've got to use it like as transportation so like we're going at Downtown Vegas and I could really see being a means of transportation so that was kind of cool because we get so discombobulated with tech and chargers and headphones so it's kind of cool to bring that tech into something that you can go outside mm-hmm I get a little air right around so that's probably the most fun I've had at CES so far so is it so I'm a giant klutz oh I tripped on the way over here on the thing I can't do anything and I used to ski I was a kid but I don't know is it any easier to handle the case or I I mean I think because it's it's a little more intuitive it seems like if you have it just the slightest amount of like foot coordination that's all you need so I mallet I mean you're in yes but I don't ride a skateboard and like five minutes in like we were flying down the streets yeah how fast were you going the new one goes up to 24 miles per hour whoa whoa that's fast yeah I almost took an old lady out but you know it happens sometimes worth it I had to bail on it so it was the lady or the board so he can bail at 25 miles now yeah hey whoa I wasn't going 24 he can go up to alright I mean I think maybe Sam will go 24 I'll keep it like at 15 yeah I know that one of my favorite things that I saw I actually like to talk about two things there's a BMW stuff that was outside in that tent yeah and then there is some 8k TVs I saw today didn't think I'd think that much of them but as for as much as I see 4k stuff in 4k TVs the 8k TVs looked a lot better than the real a TVs yeah and these were at like 89 90 plus inch TVs from 10 feet away yeah and looked a lot better than 4k TVs so what kind of stuff are they showing like they're showing these slideshows they had this one text demo where you could read a whole bunch of text and at the bottom there was this tiny text and you can literally walk all the way up to the TV and read the text on the screen if you wanted to that was cool and basically photo slideshows because at 8k no one has 8k video but you can show these 25 like sure they did have to make a video they had some from this one Japanese 8k camera that's somewhere in Asia right now that there are four of them exist in like one Japanese news agency has three of them yeah they like all their footage from them but it looks awesome we actually see it yeah yeah so that actually looks significantly better than 4k so super expensive though yeah wins a TV battle this year I have my guess but I'm curious here what you guys see there's a lot of cool stuff at sharp not none of the TVs that I think are like coming out that were really that impressive like but they had a lot of different interesting panels like they had the one that wraps around the pole like I think it was like a forget it was like it was a super like hard bend around the pole well they had some of those like completely Bessel list displays likes like gauges and that kind of stuff they had 120 inch 4k TV they had 8k stuff a lot of stuff I don't know if I could pick a single thing but they had a lot of really interesting stuff and a lot it was just like look this is the concept if people actually want to buy it you know let us know when you might make it happen but it's more just like hey look we can do this now you know hit us up you want some we got them I think I like the the new Samsung TVs the best I mean the the one that eBay our design is just amazing but I was expecting this quantum pixel technology to just be a complete and total nothing I expected to be just you know a gimmick and it didn't I wouldn't be able to see the difference but I feel like I could I feel like it got closer to the dream of having a LCD panel that looks more like plasma you just check those out I did a video on it that was uploaded last night just explaining what it does and what it is but I saw some some Samsung quantum dot TVs that looked really good unfortunately I couldn't see them next to a regular LCD TV so that source rate in the demo the footage looks amazing but how much different is it really um but yeah I was gonna say sharp had a little bit of everything at their booth they had that 8k that OLED they had a lot of curved TVs a lot of flat TVs saw a lot of curved keys yeah there's a lot of cares a lot of curse I have not heard a single television producer utter the words 3d once nobody's like they're Dale might be but from what I've seen they're all like pretending like it never happened no there's like here and there the the occasional my glass is free JD yeah it's like it's dead huh I'm happy I'm happy yeah remember that great of an idea it was just you know guys come on that's all that looks like you do yeah yeah yo oullette yeah beautiful all that is is a future of TV is the feel because it's too expensive okay it looks so much better than everything else the blacks the also I saw these the BMW m4 and their booth have these LED taillights and the thing I think of when I think of LED because I'm messing with so many phones is not very bright Rosalita tends to not be as bright but then I look at these oil edy TVs and they look awesome and have you know pitch-black blacks and these vibrant colors and super awesome contrast ratios so I'm a fan of the O LED TVs uh we never got around to your favorite gadget was it the gear it was the gear as well as those - yeah the BMW stuff was there's a lot of really cool stuff on the I don't know I think my favorite thing was in the BMW booth they actually had these I think was they had the i3 which was not only driver well driverless basically you could hit like the button on your Smart Watch and actually be able to see like okay look I want the car to come up and pick me up and so just you see it driving like the wheels spinning like by itself and everything and then also the crash avoidance doctrine was wild after he had the best demos of anything they had the one for a Smart Watch thing that summons the car i sat in the backseat of it and basically the ladies like closed the door behind me so I got the camera set up and I was waiting for it to like get summoned and basically the wheel snaps into place and slowly starts rolling and that was weird because I was in the backseat of a completely unmanned car yeah you don't think that's going to be a something you're going to do but it was awesome and then a crash avoidance thing where basically I sat next to the guy who pointed the car at a barrier floored it and didn't let go and we didn't crash into it it slowed itself down stopped and he showed me he after we stopped he floored it a couple more times in the car didn't move so that was pretty awesome that's wild yeah man okay so mine because I have a huge long history and I'm a big dork is probably the webOS watch if you could - guys it's like they get out on the in the parking lot out he's showing it they're showing it you know they can unlock the car or whatever so app wait ow d is the first one to show this off Howdy's the first one to show it off they first showed it off they wouldn't say what it was everybody assumed it was Android wear and then somebody reported it was Android wear and then my old guys back at Android central went out there and like went into the settings and it's webOS whoa yeah and you know it probably won't come out for forever they've got to do a bunch more work on it but it was really fast a really nice screen and it's just you know I've gotten Estelle Joe because I'm a big old palm fanboy so yeah and also the palm brand so I was bring upload about this don't even he's gonna leave termite I didn't say no no it's so yeah we talked about it yesterday so it got sold to Alcatel or no TCL and they make Alcatel phones and they just want to like have people help them figure out what to do with it so they haven't actually announced anything they just bought the name like it guys what's up now they bought the name and said we tell us what to do we don't know we know you guys love palm wow it's a good strategy so was there anything else besides the name that they buy like there's not much left of counter is a webOS one to LG and they're making smart watches and TVs with it and all the patents went to Qualcomm and you know all the employees left so what's left is the names it wow I wonder what's left of that name like how feel like some people will probably know it but I don't know how much value really is in that name yeah I think that old dudes like me like take like you guys the you guys know like blackberry has got some really hardcore fans right like take that and cut it by like a quarter and that's probably it but the problem is you can't really use palm or webOS devices anymore so they're they're dwindling really fast so there's just not that many fans sad story dangered species yeah have you guys heard that you can buy a fake Apple watch like yes here yeah it's like 35 bucks I think it's somewhere I get dummy yeah I mean yeah is it functional yeah yeah well no it's like it like tells the time I don't I haven't had a chance to go see it we're good we're actually to put a story up about there's a few of them out there yeah I need trying to hunt one down yeah she do a video about it maybe Owen craziest gadget so my craziest gadget I didn't get to see it but it was a it's a band-aid that you put on a baby and then it tells the temperature of what the baby's over the course of like 24 hours so if your kid has a fever instead of like freaking out and checking the baby's temperature every five minutes you can freak out every three seconds there's a battery there's a battery in it yeah it's just it's a disposable thermometer that you stick to a kid and it will last for 24 hours whoa all right it's like kind of a good idea but also kind of a freaky idea because the kid will be a cup upset you'll become obsessed with the shirt kid oh right but I suppose it's better than like you know having a thermometer oh damn so say that I was about to say we were over we're marques and I just like an hour ago we all oppressors yes so you know those telepresence robots that can you go around well there's like that 20 foot tall one of those driving around their booth it was good though because you didn't notice it at first there is all these telepresence robots that are like 5 feet tall you're kind of talking to these people they have the webcams and you're rolling around like alright I guess I kind of understand this booth and then you hear a voice from like the ceiling and you look and you just see these big wheels and there's a gigantic one rolling around I guess jolly Jolly the Jolly Green teleport it was weird the ridiculous thing I may have ever seen it CES period westrom like there's a guy looking up his like and like there's a camera like facing down so like the guy like you see he's like on the screen up top you can leave looking down at you and he's like moving towards you just like there's this giant robot coming towards you it sounds terrifying we that wins for me you see anything wild Jonna crazy wild they have vibrating Bluetooth controlled underwear is that for reals that do before what I think it doesn't yeah and then also a couples ring tell me that they didn't have like a demo station the lady was straight-faced like giving you the talk like you can apparently control it halfway around the world so but but three quarters of the way around the world not someone knows how I get it that was definitely the craziest weirdest thing but like they're selling that stuff yeah all right Wow Wow yes no gadgets are back there's all kinds of weird gadgets just like people have figured out that they can like cram things together put a tiny little chip on it have it talk to the cloud and just make weird stuff again it's kind of exciting yeah and terrifying so what's your guys's strategy for covering the show like for The Verge it's shocking ah we've got a huge team we've got a huge great video team and so we just descend upon the show and go every which way but you know you guys don't have huge teams and so I'm sure everybody's really curious to know like when you come in at the show what's your tactics for you know finding the thing you want to find showing your fans things they want to see yeah so yeah as far as I know most of us shoot our videos by ourselves so we're used to being a one-man crew so come out here and there's a ton of stuff to shoot you have to find other ways to do it so we're collaborating with each other were each other's cameraman we're each other's sound guy we give each other ideas we collaborate on other stuff like that so it kind of works helps to have other people who are like-minded maybe now we don't work for the same company in our part of the video team but it kind of works that way where we know what each other likes because we make tech videos all the time right yeah for sure like yesterday we went and we pretty much been all day shooting a couple videos on your channel like it's nice to be able to have a some backup you know like usually we're all by ourselves it's like oh I've got to go focus the camera but like we're all just roaming around looking for cool stuff to do I think for me especially considering that we are by ourselves and that we're having to do everything ourselves it's like there's very limited times it's like okay try to find those few things that are worth doing the videos cuz it's like I can't do I mean I still one editor yeah like I'm this is day three I have one video up so it's like any Hotel Wi-Fi and so I'll oh oh yeah we should talk about that you should mention what happened what it took to get that mkbhd video up last night well it wasn't that bad of a story basically I had a 900 megabyte file to upload and the hotel Internet is three down one up on Wi-Fi if it's working well yeah so I got I started uploading this file and it says something like ninety nine minutes left and then I tethered on Lu's iPhone for a while with which was getting like seven down and up on t-mobile hello so that's shorten the process by a lot but but it also took ten hours to render that video it did take ten hours to render that video on a dual-core MacBook Wow worth it so the the trick I've learned is get if you can get into the press room or you can wheedle your way into the press room which is a thing I did the first year ya get there at like 7:00 a.m. which is when it opens and they they probably still have it you know they've got laptop stations they've got a printer which is insane but there you go if you need to print something but then they usually have got at least one row of desktop computers walk up to one of the desktop computers and just you know steal the ethernet ah yeah there you go don't tell me about that usually you're finishing editing and you you don't know everything you're done editing and you just want to upload on the spot right so wherever you are let's go get that upload data and that can put you in some weird spots yeah I mean I think the the biggest thing too is that it's nice being able to be a little relaxed because I think so everyone out here is just like shoving videos everywhere so it's kind of cool being able to like pick and choose and maybe not rush it out because everybody's going to see the videos from every other tech blogger on the planet right right you can kind of pick and choose what's good and then but really put the time and effort to make that worth watching and I think that's really the approach that every single one of us takes and yeah because I mean you look at like I was looking at your sub box the other day and there's like there's like five or my sub box is is a collection of things around CES so if I've heard that something's at CES like LG G flex 2 and I go to my sub box and I see that first video on it the other nine videos about the LG G flex 2 are probably the same video so I'll just kind of watch the one that's there and then just leave so when we're making content we're kind of thinking I want to add something to that but I don't want to make the same video so we're just trying to find other ways to add value add information at an experience that's what we're collaborating yeah having other opinions about stuff so that's a lot of fun yeah doing the interesting unique step as always I think to though like it's always that same like surround yourself with people better than you like it's cool like you just want to be around talented people yeah step your game up so I think that's the biggest thing that we've learned collaborating is like just vamp off each other and it ends up making better videos yeah do you guys find your like editing differently like I don't know I'd like actually let me ask a better question how do you shoot VR and have it not just be a you know dude going like this oh that's that's it that's all yeah and all you know wider just get wider that's it Jan out pan out yeah all the way out for something like that you're just gonna have to talk about like look at this was good this was bad this is how it feels I mean that's that's kind of a hard thing to get across on video but uh yeah I mean I think people get it I mean people have kind of got an idea of how it works and you know some people may have tried this or you know try like Google cardboard or something so like usually they'll have an idea of what you know VR is gonna look like but it's not it's not the easiest thing for sure well yeah I found that all the VR stuff I've tried if it's not oculus it's behind oculus right oculus stuff yeah and his experiences were awesome and then the other stuff I think I won't even name drop but like razors demo was just not good it was bad well I mean I'll give some credit risk try I understand that aren't they trying to say that like this is just like a development kit to proof millinery so here's a but here's a bad one that we built try and build some and you know it feels a lot like the original oculus it feels right there yeah like they're kind of starting in the same spot of you know where let's let's give this try the hardware's not finished and there's there's a lot still to be worked out but yeah I mean it's it's decent but I mean you know it's oculus they're they're ass I mean have you seen doc dose booth I have not it's huge I've been I've been afraid to go there because I know I'll get lost and I haven't set up an appointment to see it oh yeah there's like a two-hour line day yeah play right now yeah like last year they're in a little tiny meeting room remember we take a look at it and did a little video and now it's just like have they won a huge booth it's like all the ceilings like wow there you got that Facebook you know what it is yeah but well guys I think we are close to wrapping up so I wanted to give you a chance to like just talk about your channels a little bit just because you know we're gonna put this out on the Virge cast and people that might not be familiar with you so maybe you know plug yourself again but actually talk a little bit about the kind of stuff that you do and how to find you where you are on Twitter that whole jam tell me oh yes so you guys can find me Austin Evans on YouTube I pretty much just do videos on technology in general I do a lot of like PC gaming stuff social like how to build computers and whatnot but I just do anything this cool technology I don't like to kind of like pigeonhole myself into like oh this was just like if I see something cool I'm gonna do a video on it this has something to do with technology so yeah youtube.com slash Austin Evans right word my name is marques youtube.com slash mkbhd and I do a lot of mobile videos so I talk about phones a lot phone technology but then I branch off into other cool stuff that phones remind me of I say anything with an on button is game but uh head rate slogan by the way yeah monitors TVs cameras whatever it is if it's cool I'll check it out yeah they summed it up youtube.com slash Tod Tech but at the same time I try to make it not so serious I mean we're all human we have high shows that you don't take it very serious we like tech we like to have fun so that's it yeah cool and if you didn't know we are youtube.com slash to the verge and they can find us on advert on Twitter a whole bunch of other places hey guys this has been great thanks so much yeah thanks for having us we you
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