CES 2020 Day 1: Sero rotating TV, Galaxy Chromebook, and a preview of the week

Recorded live in Las Vegas, The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Ashley Carman discuss what has already been announced at the start of CES 2020 as well as what to expect throughout the week. Stories discussed in this episode: Amazon’s Fire TV soundbars will get Dolby Atmos, HDMI switching, and more later this year Samsung details its stunning bezel-less 8K TV Samsung’s new Sero TV can rotate vertically for your TikTok and Instagram videos LG unveils eight ‘Real 8K’ OLED and LCD TVs ahead of CES LG’s smart TVs are the latest to add Apple TV, and you won’t have to buy a 2020 model to get it Sony’s first TVs of 2020 include its smallest 4K OLED ever TCL will enable variable refresh rates for some TVs later this year Vizio’s 2020 lineup includes its biggest TV yet and first-ever OLED TCL’s new soundbar uses reflectors for more immersive Dolby Atmos audio Roku launches program to let third-party soundbars integrate with Roku TV Amazon’s Fire TV soundbars will get Dolby Atmos, HDMI switching, and more later this year Vizio’s new soundbar rotates its speakers for better Dolby Atmos surround sound Ring adds lightbulbs, solar power to its smart lighting lineup The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook is beautiful, fast, and expensive Segway’s newest self-balancing vehicle is an egg-shaped wheelchair My favorite thing so far at CES Dell’s Concept Ori and Concept Duet laptops imagine a foldable and dual-screen future Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold is a $2,499 PC with a folding OLED screen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Rich Cast, the flagship podcast of Vox Media. Every time I do that with our executives in the room, I freak out. They're just gonna let me keep doing it. I am your friend, Neel Ipatel. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Howdy.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Ashley Carmen is here. Hello. And we are, if you're in your car right now, pull over.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  Just comprehend this fact, visualize this. We are in a ballroom at CES in Las Vegas.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  We are in a room full of Samsung executives. It's great. No, Samsung very generously allowed us to use one of their meeting spaces to do a live podcast with their folks in the room. Make a lot of noise.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Make like, double that amount of noise. No, that's like half the amount of noise. But it's a live episode, we're doing a preview of the show. Dieter, it's technically the first day of the show-ish.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Actually, so, counting CES days is weird. Technically, it's day negative, or it's day zero, because tomorrow is day one when the show floor opens.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  And we had day negative one yesterday.

• 1:36Nilay Patel?

  This only matters if you're in Las Vegas.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:39Nilay Patel?

  And you are counting the number of days.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:41Nilay Patel?

  That you have to be in Las Vegas. Dieter, you wrote a piece, just before you get started with all the news that's already happening, what's gonna happen, you wrote a piece about what the show is and how to like, deal with it. There's a lot of consternation among tech reporters and people who are here or don't want to be here. I think our friend Joanna Stern at the Journal... Is constantly talking about how she doesn't need to be here anymore.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00Nilay Patel?

  And I, I feel like we have to be here and we want to be here, but you wrote a piece about it. Go through a little bit.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  So like I said, it's always just, people are mad about CES. It's not super, it doesn't feel good to be super excited about the electronics industry when there's lots of terrible things happening out of Silicon Valley. But innovation does happen here and it at least gets shown off here. And getting into, uh, nothing, nothing that matters happens at CES. Cause like all the big phones happen elsewhere. All the big laptops get announced elsewhere. Okay, but there are, there is stuff here that will eventually matter a year or two down the road, or will eventually matter this year. And there's also stuff here that doesn't come from big gigantic corporations that rule the earth and it might be worth your time to go take a look at one of those.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  So let's start by talking about big giant corporations.

• 2:48Nilay Patel?

  This is great. I'm so, you're doing it. A plus to you. Keep it going. Everyone's going to look at you every time. It's just going to, the expectations are going to keep rising. Fame has a price, my friend. So the thing that happens every year at CES, and I think this is actually to me, the heart of the split. The phone dominates the world.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  Samsung itself announced a phone event for February, like the day before CES.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  All the phone stuff, you got it. All the phone stuff isn't really here anymore, the way it used to be.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  Or used to want to be. But what is here is TVs.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:19Nilay Patel?

  In force. And the story of the tech industry, to my mind, aside from phones, is just this perpetual race to put a computer in your living room. It is the thing that has never really truly happened. It has happened in sort of like the tangible way, like a TV right now is just a giant tablet.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  It has an ARM processor, it runs a Linux based operating system, it has apps, whatever.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Game consoles are just computers. Like in fact, they're more like computers now than they ever have been. They've got standard processors and standard parts and it's going to get even more standardized next year.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But those things, the way we traditionally think about computers, the way that Dieter now thinks about computers professionally, and his newsletter processor.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  See, I can do it too. We have not yet put computing in the living room in that way. There's not, not a lot of interactivity in the living room. There's not a lot of inbuilt connectivity to the rest of the ecosystem in your house and living room. This is, I would say a 25 to 30 year fight. Microsoft was here for years. Every year is Bill Gates. Every year Bill Gates would stand on stage, like Windows is coming to the living room. And then it wouldn't happen.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  And then everyone would cry. And that didn't happen. We were okay.

• 4:20Nilay Patel?

  Intel for years, the same thing. We're gonna do set-top boxes. This year, we're seeing it again. And you see it in the TV industry again and again and again. The push, this iterative push to actually make the TVs more like computers. This iterative push to actually make them more interactive. And where it starts, I think with all big paradigm shifts, is in display technologies and the resolution of the actual screens.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:40Nilay Patel?

  So this year, the big fight. This is what the Vergecast is for. It's a standards battle, y'all. About how to count the pixels in an 8K TV.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:50Nilay Patel?

  I promise you, this is riveting. So obviously, we had 4K TVs. Even in the jump to HD, the real reason everybody bought an HD TV was the form factor of the TV changed. It was the underlying technology that drove the upgrade cycle. It was not the resolution of the television. The panels got flat. Everybody wanted to get rid of the big boxes. They put flat panels on their screen. Every year after that, the TV industry tries to get you to buy a new TV. Okay, the TVs are now 3D. Anybody here have a 3D TV? TVs are now curved. Didn't work either. 4K TVs hit. The conversation on 4K TV for about five years was there's no content.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  Then HDR hit as well. And the combination of a 4K TV with HDR and big streaming services online that could deliver high-resolution content actually drove an upgrade cycle. So now, I said this last year, I'm gonna say it again this year. The best $1,500 you can spend is not necessarily a new phone. It's almost certainly not a new phone if you have a relatively recent phone. It is definitely a 4K HDR TV and a soundbar. Because you will have a library of content and it will be a massive upgrade in your living room soon. And Brian Scorsese can get really mad at you about watching theme parks in your living room instead of real cinema, but that's like a whole other thing. The argument is very long.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  I would also say that one of the things that's driving the TV upgrade cycle right now is that the price of televisions has plummeted. So you can go into a big-box store and buy an incredible TV that would have won Best of CES running away five years ago for like 250 bucks.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  Right. And the reason for that, and we'll get into it, there's some news around that, is the business model of the TV changed. So Sony, for example, used to sell you a Trinitron CRT that would go into your house. It was very expensive. You'd keep it for 30 years and that was the end of it. Now, TV manufacturers basically take no margin on their TVs and they sell associated services and advertising against the actual interface of the TV. That is a radical shift in business model. Obviously, it's privacy concerns. Samsung announced, I think, today a privacy dashboard, Ashley, you were saying?

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, they mentioned it during their TV announcement, but we don't have many details, but like it follows all this news that's been coming up around how TV manufacturers track what you're watching, target ads against it, and basically how we all need to be worried about the surveillance state.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which you should be. Just like generally, fear it.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:55Nilay Patel?

  It's like in the shower. It's like have a moment of fear.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  I mean, there is an Alexa speaker for the shower.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Yes, you could get a speaker that listens to you in the shower that has custom algorithms to make sure that the sound of the water doesn't interfere with the microphone's ability to hear what you're saying.

• 7:09Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I would win so many more arguments if I actually had that microphone. Like from five years ago, but I would still, I would actually be like, do you remember that time that you totally burned that dude from five years ago? Okay, but let's actually talk about the news. So when I say there's a big fight over what 8K means, obviously, the next upgrade cycle here is going to be a resolution-based upgrade cycle from 4K HDR to 8K HDR. LG has its way of building a panel. Samsung has a different way of building a panel. And the way they are counting the perceived resolution that you can see is different. Why does this matter to you? Well, first of all, they get to market it to you, so that'll be very entertaining for all of us. LG is calling its TVs real 8K TVs.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:50Nilay Patel?

  Which is amazing, because it implies that the other TVs are fake, but they're very obviously there. They're like 85 inches. There they are. But the way it comes down to is how much detail your eye can discern and what the underlying pixels of the screen present to you as a logical pixel. So, Virchast listeners know, I care a lot about subpixel ads. It's just an unfortunate fact for everyone in my life. I'll talk about whatever you want. But like the OLED screen of an iPhone is not actually grid of pixels. It's a diamond pattern that has green pixels and blue pixels and red pixels in an interlocking layout. The green pixels are brighter because your eye can perceive green better than the other colors, so you actually get the brightness in the green. This is all very complicated. It's actually based in the biology.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  But the end result is, there's not actually that number of pixels across the screen. That is not actually how you measure the screen. So LG and Samsung are in a fight

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:44Nilay Patel?

  around 8K because they're not producing that number of pixels. They're saying, this is what it looks like to your eye. And there's a competing, there's two different standards bodies. One of them will lose. That will be hilarious.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  It's always hilarious when a standards body loses. I just think like, it's like a bunch of people in a gray office being like, we're the AK Foundation. Like, you gotta have some passion. Like, you can't, you gotta care to like, join AK Foundation. So that's like, the high-end news from both manufacturers is their big AK TVs.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  So Samsung has the bezel-less AK TV. Samsung!

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Samsung.

• 9:17Nilay Patel?

  Nailed it.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:19Nilay Patel?

  Someone yell AK Foundation. Do we have like, a spy in the room? Anybody?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  So, the bezel-less 8K TV looks incredible, but I will say that I am heartbroken that it is a bezel-less 8K TV, because I don't need an 8K TV yet, I would like to spend a little bit less and get a bezel-less 4K TV.

• 9:35Nilay Patel?

  You can't this year.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  No, you cannot.

• 9:38Nilay Patel?

  This year, you can only spend $100,000 on that TV. So that's like, when I say display technologies drive the industry, that is the high-end, right? The $100,000, you're Mark Cuban, you have a standing order for the biggest TV in the world, which is true. You just, I don't know who he places the order with. I would actually like to profile that company. Like, they're just, it's like in a state of panic that a new, larger TV will show up and that'll deliver to Mark Cuban. But he does, he just always has the biggest TV in the world, this house. So that's that end, and I'm sure he really cares about the AK Foundation. And then there's sort of what's happening now. So you've got the 4K TVs, the technology, I wouldn't say it's commodified, but it's accessible to a lot of people. And so now, they're experimenting with form factors. So Samsung's other big news was the Siro TV.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  Which rotates to portrait.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  I love that he looks to me for this.

• 10:27Nilay Patel?

  When I think about going 90.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  It's the opposite of going 90, because going 90 is going to landscape.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Go 180.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  And so this is going

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  If you're listening at home, know that I'm squinting. Right, okay.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Okay, anyway.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  So, an enormous amount of content, premium, I don't know what you would call it, real TV, is made in landscape. Obviously, user-generated content on every platform is made in portrait. The idea is that you will seamlessly share from your phone to the serial TV. If you have, I believe, a Samsung phone, you can actually map the TV rotation to your phone.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  So that when you just rotate your phone, the TV will like get a ping over the network and rotate for you, which seems crazy. I just honestly like, that's just a number of rotations that I didn't mean to have happen. That will happen as I like go through my day. And if you don't, you can just airplane your stuff from your iPhone and push a button and rotate TV. Ashley, would you buy a rotating TV? This whole buildup was Ashley.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  That was like, that was like 15 minutes to Ashley, are you gonna buy?

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  That's what we're here for.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  But here's the thing, so they showed it off in Korea, Samsung did, earlier, like it's last year now. And at the time, I was like, whoa, that is so cool. But now I'm kind of like, jaded already somehow.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  I know, what happened?

• 11:42Nilay Patel?

  It's the past that you've ever been jaded.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  But IG, Instagram has been trying to make IGTV a thing forever. Like, past years, it's been like a concentrated effort to make vertical video a thing. TikTok exists. Snapchat is vertical video. But I just don't know if people really want to watch that on a TV. To the point that you need to buy a TV specifically that rotates, so you can watch your TikTok videos.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  The more you say it, the more I'm like, yes, I do.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Oh, God. The teens.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  My whole thought with this TV is that you're not actually meant to buy it. Like, Samsung knows that they're gonna sell, you know, 1,500 of these things. And they'll go into like weird shops and like some, some cool people, some artists will have it in the corner of the room or whatever. But they don't actually intend this to be like a mass consumer product. It is a, it's a concept car in TV shape.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this is, the thing about CES in particular is there's a lot of concept cars here. Just like literally concept cars and then technology that's. Like literally concept cars are here. Is it actually a concept TV or a real TV? Do they intend to sell? No, the point I'm making is CS is full of these things that seem outlandish and often bleed into real things. So you might not see this tall, but which I think is a little small. I think it's like 48 inches. Yeah. It's mounted to an easel stand. It's fixed. You can't take it off. Yeah. But could you see TV mounts that actually go to vertical? Could you see the, the, the ability to change layout built into the software TVs such that you could actually mount it that way and use it that way? Like, there's a lot of stuff here that's in an integrated product right now. Mm hmm. You could see filter out in this world, assuming anybody wants to watch TikTok videos.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Well, right. And that's, it's going to come down to, it's like what you're saying about the upgrade cycle. No one bought 4K TVs until there was 4K content.

• 13:23Nilay Patel?

  I've thought about rotating TVs.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Right. It's like, no one's going to buy the rotating TV until you're like, actually, there is this long form, vertical content that I really want to watch there. We'll get into it later.

• 13:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like so much.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  It's worth the hype.

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but quickly to run through some of the other TV stuff. LG obviously announced their new OLED TVs. Mm hmm. LG has been sort of the dominant maker of OLED TVs for a while, but you're seeing that category expand. So, uh, Sony has done OLED TVs using LG panels. They have different processing. They have speakers built in. Same core panel, different processing. Vizio is doing their high-end TVs in OLED now. Yeah. Some companies I've never heard of are doing OLED TVs now. You're seeing just that display technology again, get commoditized, democratized, spread out into other companies. I think there are rumors that over time Samsung will itself also make an OLED TV. That has become the dominant, high-end, you know, ultra-black blacks, contrast TV. And then you're seeing a bunch of new LCD technologies under it.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  LG also added the Apple TV app to its TVs retroactively. Again, we're talking about streaming services. They're going to be here in force. They need to be on all these platforms. Making your app work well on all these platforms is actually differentiator for these companies. So it comes on Apple. The app is like, pretty good on Apple TV.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:33Nilay Patel?

  It's there. It's not yet good enough for them to make it the default interface of the Apple TV, which I think says an awful lot, but it's also on a Samsung TV. It works slightly differently. It has a slightly different set of capabilities. It's also on Android TVs. It works differently. It has a slightly different set of capabilities.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Are you leading up to suggesting that the Apple TV app on LG TV is going to have cards? Because it's on WebOS?

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  I hope so.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:56Nilay Patel?

  No, it's going to look exactly like the Apple TV app.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  Apple does not care about your interface ideas. And then two, they just really don't.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:04Nilay Patel?

  Two things that I think are really interesting in terms of emerging tech here. A bunch of TV makers now are doing variable refresh in their TVs, which is very important. Video games.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  It's very important for video games. If you're in your car, just know that I went, "Ha, ha, ha." That was the face I made because I was so excited for variable refresh rate. Having finally started to really experience it on phones for the first time. I'm not much of a gamer, so I haven't experienced it too much on monitors, but saw it a little bit. But variable refresh rate on phones and high refresh rate on phones really changes it. And I think that more so, like, 3D was a bust. 8K, I don't think is that big a deal. HDR was a big deal. I think that refresh rate has a potential to be the thing that actually gets people to be interested in upgrading, once the content really starts to get there.

• 15:46Nilay Patel?

  I think it's the same situation as HDR. It's very hard to explain HDR to people for about five years, and they could go into a store and see it. It's going to be the same, I think, with variable refresh, especially because there is an enormous population of people who already play gaming, who already play video games on gaming PCs, using high refresh rate monitors. There's just a built-in audience of people who understand it. When the next Xbox Series X, X5 Plus, PS5, X4, they all have bad names. When they come out and they support this technology, it's going to be there. The other thing that it enables, which I think is just one of the most enormous challenges to making the living room work, is, I think LG announced filmmaker mode. A bunch of other TV makers have said they're going to support filmmaker mode, where they turn off all their ideas.

• 16:31Nilay Patel?

  They turn off all the stuff they did. All the hard work they put into changing your picture. They turn it off and let the movie come out of the streaming service the way that the director intended it. Please do not say anything about authorial intent.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  I won't. I will say that when, when, when they were announcing movie or filmmaker mode, I missed the beginning of it where they said this is a new mode. And I thought they were, they were just talking about how by default, this is how the TV worked and that motion smoothing would be off by default. So I was watching the keynote and I just, I just stood up and it was like cheering. And everyone in the room was looking at me like I was insane. And it turns out I was, that we don't live in that, that beautiful world where motion smoothing is off.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Why is it on by default? Do you guys know why?

• 17:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Can you, please, please tell me. I need to know. I just came back from the holidays. I had to fix all my parents TVs.

• 17:13Nilay Patel?

  I, I did five.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, why?

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  Like strangers homes, just turn it off. Um, so again, this is computers in the living room. You would never accept your laptop or your phone running at a refresh rate of 24 hertz, which is what a movie wants to be at. It would just be a stuttery mess. So they, every device wants it to be in the highest refresh rate possible and the highest dynamic range possible. So the Apple TV, by default, when you plug it in, it sets it to HDR 60. New TiVo's, TiVo still exists, their company, when you plug it in, it sets itself to HDR 60. That's bad, right? It's bad for movies. It's great for computer interfaces. It's great for sports content. So if you have a dynamically switching display, it can look at what you're doing and actually change it on the fly. So it knows you're watching sports, it can step up the refresh rate.

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  It knows you're watching a movie and it can roll down without blinking, without changing modes, without changing its resolution. So it's again, very nerdy, but it will drastically improve your experience the next time you upgrade your TV. So you're seeing it lift up now. The other thing that you're seeing in the living room space is sort of, I think, the rise of the high-end soundbar.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:18Nilay Patel?

  So we talk about Atmos on our show a lot. It is the new surround sound standard. It's the new codec. Dolby's pushing it everywhere. They may be overusing that brand name. You can definitely get a laptop with bad speakers that says Atmos on it. You feel cool. It's great. You can also put an M-series badge on your low-nPMW. It's great. Wow. That's what you can do. Anyway, but real Atmos, great Atmos is amazing. Yeah. It requires height speakers, requires sound to come from above you. That's one of the major changes in the experience of audio. We are now seeing, after it's rolled out, after it's been settled, soundbar manufacturers are doing neat things to get that sound to come from above you. So there's a new Vizio soundbar. The speakers actually rotate up when you're listening to Atmos content. They rotate down when you're listening to regular content.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  There's a bunch of reflective audio technologies that are happening. I think that stuff is actually a meaningful improvement to having sound in your living room. And as more and more consumption of movies goes to your home, out of the cinema, 15 Hours of the Irishman happens to you.

• 19:17Nilay Patel?

  You just watch it three times.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  I cried.

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  You cried?

• 19:19Speaker 03

  I cried.

• 19:19Nilay Patel?

  Because it was so long?

• 19:21Nilay Patel?

  Like halfway through, you're like, I get it. It's getting me awful. But as more and more of that happens, that is actually an experience I think the industry is going to converge on, right? You want a high-end display and high-end audio in your home because you're out of the spaces in theaters and wherever else that could provide that to you. So I think Hollywood directors, fancy types are going to want to see that happen. They're going to start to get more and more involved in this. That means you have to buy a soundbar. So Ash, I told you this is the only question.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  To go on your zero TV.

• 19:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Would you buy a soundbar for your zero TV?

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Here's the thing. So now, I used to be hardcore. I don't like the look of TVs, so I don't own a TV. But I feel like all of a sudden, it could be that I just stream more now and I want a big TV and a really nice soundbar. I'm ready. I'm ready to do it. I want a robot soundbar that rotates up. That's so cool. That's a neat trick. Being like, look, I flipped my phone and my TV flips too.

• 20:15Nilay Patel?

  And then your soundbar rotates.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  That's, that's like, it's a party trick, I guess.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  Your party is going to last a few hours.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  It's a very cool party.

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  Also, what can you show you, inviting people in your home, being like, I want to show you a trick my TV can do. It has a very shallow excitement curve. Are you speaking from experience? No. Okay. Definitely not. My parties are wonderful and I'm a great host. No one believes me. Dead silence. And then, obviously, other stuff that happened today, let's go through it quickly and we can move on to what we think is coming. There's smart home news.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, well, there's interesting, before we get into smart home, like, the nexus of smart home and assistant stuff is, or soundbars, is the Fire TV. So, Fire TV is coming to more soundbars. I think TCL announced one, and they're making a kit so you can do it, and they're also gonna allow soundbars to do HDMI switching. And so that, they're betting, they're hoping, that the soundbar could potentially be the central interface hub for all of your TV stuff, instead of it being your TV, which, I don't know.

• 21:17Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's easier to replace.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  So, that's a big problem for most people, is you wanna get rid of your receiver, you don't wanna replace your old TV, you want a new interface, you can actually just buy this one upgrade.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  You can plug everything into that, that can go to the TV. I think a lot of people are interested in that. I think a lot of people also have problems with their soundbars. They're still hard to set up. Roku announced today, made-for-Roku soundbars, so they're gonna start certifying some soundbars to integrate native with their TVs. I'll just call this out, like, often with soundbars, particularly with Roku TVs, there's a, you can't fix the delay between the video and the audio, so ones ahead or behind each other. That is mostly related to how hard it is to process the 4K image, so it's, like, very difficult. So, Roku solved the problem of implementing the standard correctly by creating a proprietary certification program. That's my favorite kind of ice cold move. Like, what if we just embrace, extend, and destroy the standard?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

  Like, I'm into it. But you see that starting to happen. Like, we're gonna build integrated systems in your living room that look very much like the integrated systems, the ecosystems that Apple or Google have elsewhere in your life.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  So, in proper smart home news, there was the Alexa Shower Head that we just mentioned, which is still the frontrunner for just-put Alexa on it competition. Why not? And I say that having seen a litter box with Alexa, so. Just pointing that out. There's a bunch of new Ring stuff. There's new light bulbs and a smart access gate. And then they also announced that they are going to have some sort of privacy dashboard finally.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so sort of like how Samsung responded to all the media reports around TV data tracking. Ring has also been in the media quite a bit for their work with police departments and how basically police departments can request Ring footage from people. And people had no idea this was even happening. So this week, Ring announced, did they announce products too?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, they announced the products too, but then along with that, they announced that they have a new privacy app that will let you control whether the police can actually gain access to your Ring and obtain that footage, which you could not do before.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  The Ring Fourth Amendment Dashboard.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  That's right. It's just, every time you open it, it plays that one Jay-Z lyric.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  From I Have Problems. Okay.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  And in our interview with Ring, they were like, we also really want people to use two factor.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  They really want people to use two factor.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  Do you know how many lawyers have passed a bar exam because of the Jay-Z song I Have Problems? It's like more than you would like in a functioning democracy. All right. Last in gadgets.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:49Nilay Patel?

  There are laptops.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, mini laptops. The one that I'm most excited about is the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, which I, there it is.

• 23:58Nilay Patel?

  This is great.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  I've been waiting for Google to update the Pixelbook for the past two years because I just wanted there to be a smaller bezel on the screen and they just wouldn't do it. So they gave me the Pixelbook Go, which is perfectly fine, but it's like a mid-range Chromebook, mid-high range Chromebook. And it turns out that the reason that Google didn't do it is because they knew Samsung was. And it's great. It's got an OLED screen and it's just, it's Fiesta red. It is so red. It's so red, it's orange.

• 24:24Nilay Patel?

  We have them in front of us here. It is extraordinarily red. It's very pretty.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Cherry red.

• 24:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm just going to ask you. There was some consternation in the world of ChromeOS this week. David Ruttick at Android Police wrote a long post about how it hasn't lived up to its potential.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  You felt this way for some time.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:41Nilay Patel?

  It's great hardware. Do you think that's going to get resolved?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  My take is, the thing I've always said is that Chromebook works well for 90% of the people, 90% of the time, for 90% of what they want to do. And when you start adding, well, doing that multiplication, there's a big percentage of stuff that they can't do. And it's been that way for way too long. And I think that Google needs to be much more focused in what it chooses to actually do next in its punch list. Because adding Android apps, adding Linux, it's not clear after somebody graduates from high school and doesn't have to use Chrome OS anymore, what is going to compel them to keep using it? Is it going to be like proper Office apps? Is it going to be Stadia? No. Is it going to be something else? And I just don't think there's enough focus to figure out what that something else is.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  But right now, I think that there's an assumption that it might, that Android apps are supposed to fill that gap. And I don't think that that's true. I don't know if it was ever meant to be true that Android apps were always supposed to fill that last 10% gap, but they definitely aren't doing it, and I don't see them doing it anytime soon.

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  So, wait, just a thing that I watch my teenager niece and nephew do is they want to make YouTube videos.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  Every teenager in America wants to be a YouTuber. They can't, because the idea already occupies that role in their lives.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  The best YouTuber of them all. Can you edit a YouTube video on this, on this computer?

• 25:56Speaker 02

  So, here's the thing. The answer is surely yes. The answer is, I haven't tried. I don't know exactly how to do it. And I could take the time to figure it out, but I'm not gonna, because it's probably pretty hard, and it probably wouldn't work as well as just doing it on a PC or a Mac. And as a person who uses Chrome OS literally every day, and spent $1,200 on a Chromebook a couple of years ago, and is planning on spending over $1,000 on another one pretty soon, the fact that I am not like, "Yeah, no, totally, you can do it, I can show you how," is the problem.

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I think it's, there's 50 of those problems.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. But if you aren't living in that last 10, 10, 10%, Using Chrome OS is great, more than Windows, more than a Mac. It's the thing that stays out of my way most of the time because I don't have to deal with a bunch of stuff. But it's, you don't have to deal with a bunch of stuff, but then you just can't do a bunch of stuff.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so, uh, three years ago, the first Pixel, Chromebook Pixel.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  No, second gen one, the one at USBC, I bought for my mom to replace her Mac. Because Macs just have too much stuff on them, too many interface paradigms. And all she needed to do was open a web browser and use Citrix for her hospital. And I, she still uses it, she actually carries around. And I asked her, have you used your Mac? And she's like, I haven't touched my Mac in like two years. Like she just uses this thing. So it works perfectly for that one very constrained set of uses. And then she has a phone to do WhatsApp. So that's the Chromebook.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  And then Lenovo has.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Lenovo just dropped a million laptops.

• 27:23Nilay Patel?

  But there's one.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Which one do you want to talk about? The folding one, yeah. So there's a folding, there's a prototype floating one. Uh, I think it's, they're like, they're actually starting to announce price, or not price, but like release date. They're getting closer to having it be more than just an idea. The hinge seems kind of cool, like that it's, there's some flexibility there. It has a little keyboard, sort of like Microsoft does, and it goes inside the thing. And then you can take it off if you want. Folding stuff. I looked at a folding TCL phone that is also just a prototype. Folding stuff. Everything's folding. Everyone, everyone says they want to do it. Everyone says it's the future. Nobody knows how.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think what's interesting about Foldables in particular is most, when we get asked these shows like this, preview CES. Tell us what's coming in the year in tech. When people want to know what the hot new gadget is, what they're often looking for is something that gives them a capability they didn't have before.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  Which is like the story of like 90's gadgets, like. Or they're looking for a form factor that like takes the industry along with it. So obviously phones and tablets just took the industry along with them. It was a massive change. I think a lot of people are looking for that form factor paradigm shift with smart speakers, smart home stuff, right? But now your house is the computer.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  Everything is going to change around it. I think there's just a lot of interest in the industry to be first

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:36Nilay Patel?

  to a new form factor and carry the industry along with you.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's be first and it's also, since nobody knows what to do with folding screens, they need to get something out there and have somebody use it and have them go, oh, what if it did this? That would be nice in a real practical way instead of, you know, sitting inside, you know, engineering rooms and dreaming about the future kind of way. The other thing I'll say is that there's a bunch of this stuff out there. It all feels really prototypy. It all feels really tentative for the most part. And every time we're like, what do you think is going to happen? They're like, well, once the glass can fold, then we'll know. So I sort of feel like everyone just needs to test a bunch of stuff. Some of it will be tested like in customers' hands and some of it won't. Because at some point, people keep bringing it up like it's going to happen. Glass will become foldable and then that will completely change the conversation in terms of like durability and that's like the main thing.

• 29:22Nilay Patel?

  When will Corning make foldable glass, Peter? Tell them right now.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  Everyone seems to be waiting on Corning.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  We're going to take a break for an ad. We'll be right back and we're going to talk about all the stuff that's happening this week at CES.

• 29:36Speaker 04

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• 30:07Nilay Patel?

  All right, there's a lot of stuff happening at CES for the rest of the week. What is interesting is there's always sort of like a secondary show that takes over CES. Yes, there's laptops. Yes, there's smart home. Other kinds of industries routinely show up at CES and try to make it happen for them. So historically, the car industry shows up and it's like, now it's a car show.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:25Nilay Patel?

  But now they're just established. They're here. It feels like this is the year where the content industry is showing up in force. Ashley, walk through some of that.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so for those of you Vergecast listeners know what Quibi is.

• 30:37Nilay Patel?

  You can't help it.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  They are well acquainted, but for anyone here perhaps who doesn't know what Quibi is. So it stands for Quick Bites. It's this new startup that is trying to make vertical video, quality vertical video, a thing you're willing to pay for to watch. And their idea is that they're Quick Bites. So you could have a two-hour-long movie, let's say, made by Spielberg because he signed on to the service. That two-hour-long movie is going to be broken, I can't even say it with a straight face. Is going to be broken up into like 10-minute chunks.

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  And?

• 31:09Speaker 03

  And.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  You can only watch it after dark.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Well, yes, for Spielberg's show, you can only watch it after dark.

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  But, and if, so they're also going to, it's going to be serialized. So you can't just watch the, like, click, keep clicking, 10-minute chunk, 10-minute chunk, 10-minute chunk. You have to wait a week to view your 10-minute chunk.

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  So.

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  It sounds perfect.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  This is, this is the big idea.

• 31:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  And Quibi's doing a keynote while they're here.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  The keynote.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, this is the keynote. Meg Whitman, Jeffrey Katzenberg, they're going to be on stage. It's unclear what they're going to do on stage, but it is CES. Maybe they'll show the app? Like, that would seem like a thing you do at the tech show.

• 31:48Nilay Patel?

  I think they'll show the app. I think they're gonna launch the app. Katzenberg has raised a billion dollars for the service. He signed up Spielberg, he signed up every...

• 31:56Speaker 03

  50 Cent.

• 31:56Nilay Patel?

  50 Cent.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  When I go for like the exhaustive list of influencers.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  No, this is 50...

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  The first one on the list is not 50 Cent.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  I would not care, but the people in my life, that is the one that got them. They're like, wait, 50 Cent signed on to this? And I'm like, yes? And they're like, whoa, Quibi.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  All right. Katzenberg is a genius. He has a window into America's soul. I'm like, anyone else? Clearly, he saw that coming. That's why he's the dude who did Shrek and I am not.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, I hope 50 Cent shows up. It would make so much sense for him to be here. It's Vegas, tech show, after-party.

• 32:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  If 50 Cent is here, I will be excited.

• 32:33Nilay Patel?

  If you know where the 50 Cent after-party is, please invite Ashley. That's all that's happening here. So they're gonna have a big launch. It feels like they're gonna have a lot of star power on stage.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Probably.

• 32:42Nilay Patel?

  It seems like we're gonna see this app. It seems... They're gonna make their play to replace Instagram and YouTube in your life.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:49Nilay Patel?

  For, I think, the pricing is announced. I think it's like eight dollars a month for no ads and five dollars a month with ads.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:55Nilay Patel?

  Seems like a hard sell, but that will be the big splashy

• 32:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:59Nilay Patel?

  thing out of CS because they are, they are the keynote.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  There's also other stuff happening.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so NBCU is also doing a keynote, I believe. Um, and they have Peacock coming soon, which is another streaming service.

• 33:11Nilay Patel?

  They're already advertising Peacock. Like, Peacock ads are running on the NFL playoffs.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:15Nilay Patel?

  They're utterly bizarre. I don't know if anybody's seen them. It's, it's like two eggs in a chicken coop and a chicken just staring at the eggs. And then it says Peacock.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  What?

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  And it I don't, again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not the one who put fifty cent on my streaming service. Like, maybe I don't know how to do marketing. Um, it, it, the implication is the Peacock is gonna hatch.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Well

• 33:36Nilay Patel?

  From a chicken. That's all, that's all that can be.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  It's also potentially like really dark. Like, one of the eggs will hatch and one of the eggs will be breakfast. And the, the birds just like sitting there

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  Way darker than I thought.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Thinking about what the future is.

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  The other egg is just traditional cable television.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  That's that first egg.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  It's gonna turn into this is your brain on drugs ad. That's what's next.

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  Also very dark, particularly this time.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Peacock.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  Great. So we know a lot about that streaming service. But they're doing an event.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  They're also doing an event and presumably it'll, I'm assuming going to be along the same lines of Quibi where maybe they'll show off the app, maybe they'll have talent. I imagine it's a lot of talent.

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  It's gonna be around famous people.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  This is very much like the Apple, Apple TV launch event where it was just a parade of famous faces.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:17Nilay Patel?

  With very little detail.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:19Nilay Patel?

  This feels like a appropriate time to disclose that NBC is an investor in Vox Media, which I'm sure. Their event's gonna be great, you guys. Super looking forward to it. And then Spotify has an event on the books.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  So

• 34:30Nilay Patel?

  Kinda, no, kinda don't know what's going on.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Spotify in years past has always been around. They do an event every year. Um, this year, they're on the CES schedule formally doing a podcasting event. So their head of content and then Lele Pons, who's a YouTube star, they apparently are doing a talk where they're going to talk about podcasting and the future of podcasting. So I don't know if there will be news or if they're just posturing and they're like, hey, we're here and we've invested a ton of money in podcasting. Hear about us. But it is interesting that podcasting really is having a moment here at CES. And I imagine that could grow.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  Why do you think it's happening here?

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Well, I was thinking about this with streaming too, because I feel like traditionally, South by is where, you know, you get the flashy talent, you get the movies. I mean, it's like South by.

• 35:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  I'm wondering if South by is just so crowded now that they're like, eh, we'll go to the tech show.

• 35:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  Like, why not? I mean, if 50 Cent is here, my gosh.

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  I feel like we have interviewed 50 Cent in the past at CES.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Probably. But also, we're playing with like, tech money here.

• 35:34Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Like, Quibi is well-funded.

• 35:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  So, I could see why maybe there's people at CES that have vested interests. Plus, the Zero is here, so they can show it off on the vertical TV.

• 35:44Nilay Patel?

  You think Katzenberg is not allowed?

• 35:45Speaker 03

  I mean, it is weird how Quibi's like, "Vertical video, vertical video." And we're like, "Okay, man, sit down." And then Samsung's out here being like, "Vertical video."

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  This is the magic of CES.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  Right? Jeffrey Katzenberg and whoever's in charge of the Zero, they're gonna go gambling. Yeah. And the first 5,000 Quibi subscribers get a rotating TV.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, they should do a...

• 36:06Nilay Patel?

  You get a rotating TV. If you don't get a free rotating TV for your effort here today, I don't know what's going on.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  A bundle needs to happen.

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  Right. I think that's actually the play that you're seeing from all of these companies, right? Big telecom companies are buying content companies. Yeah. This is their show. This is where they make their deals. You get the big flashy launch event, you get all the people in the room, you throw your party at 50 Cent.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  I hope.

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  Something happens, right? That is beyond the traditional... One of my favorite CES stories of all time is Vizio once sponsored its dinner for all the buyers at Best Buy against the Samsung keynote event. So like, the big free dinner would not, they would not be paying attention to Samsung because they would be hammered with Vizio. Like, that's the little minor gamesmanship that happens here. And it's all just, it's to get the deal. And I think a lot of the content action you're seeing here is, these services are nascent, they're, they need to be installed by default on mid-range Android phones, because that's the world we live in. They need to get their free data on AT&T, because that's the world we live in. And that's how they're all gonna win. And they don't have any of

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  those deals yet. I don't think we've heard any of that noise from Quibi. So I think, yes, the stars will be on stage, and then you're gonna hear, "Oh, we're gonna be, we're gonna be available for free to T-Mobile subscribers. Oh, we're gonna be available for free on your rotating Samsung TV." Yeah. And that stuff that comes out of this event, I think is a big deal for the content companies now, especially as they're all transitioning to streaming.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  All right, Dieter, what streaming service are you most excited to see at CES?

• 37:38Speaker 02

  At CES? I mean, I, man, I'm excited to see Quibi. I'm just gonna say so. Their whole idea is they're gonna-

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's hunting for that Quibi money, too.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  They're gonna...

• 37:49Speaker 02

  If they... It's interesting because it has to be a new kind of content, and if they don't make a different kind of content that really works on phones, it's gonna fall flat, and that will also be super fun to watch because it'll just be a billion-dollar disaster. But if-

• 38:04Nilay Patel?

  Do they have a SoftBank investment?

• 38:05Speaker 02

  I don't know. But, you know, one of the things that YouTube taught us is when you make a YouTube video that someone's gonna watch on their phone, you don't, like, stand in the back of the scene. You have a big talking head because it feels much more natural when you're holding a phone, you know, eight inches from your face to have a big talking head on the screen. It needs to fill it in. It makes it feel more intimate. So if Quibi is gonna try and do Hollywood-style content, like Steven Spielberg, he knows how to do a close-up, and he knows how to do a long shot, but does he know how to make content that feels good when you're holding a phone, you know, eight inches away from your face? Youtubers have figured it out. Instagrammers have figured it out. TikTokers have figured it out. Can Hollywood figure that out? I don't know, but like, it's gonna be really interesting to see them try. I don't even know if they're thinking that way.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Instagram struggled with it.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Well, they struggled with it.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  And YouTube tried to do YouTube Stories, and I don't think that's taken off the map.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Well, Instagram figured it out for photos and when they stole Stories.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, Stories is like the magic one. But they've tried to make IGTV a thing.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  They literally have talent scouts out in LA whose sole job is to appease talent and get them to use IGTV, and it's not working.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  But all of the successful vertical video content that we've been talking about, vertical photo content that we've been talking about, is user-generated.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Right? Like, none of the stuff is professional. So what does it mean when, like, Katzenberg rolls in with a million dollars or billion dollars and all his Hollywood buddies and says, "Hey, all you Youtubers and TikTokers, we're here now"? Like, what does that mean? Are people gonna actually watch that?

• 39:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I think that is a big question. The other big question is, are consumers gonna pay five bucks a month with hats?

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:35Nilay Patel?

  Which, again, I think that the end goal here is to have it bundled into your cell bill. I think that is everyone's end goal, is to charge you money without you thinking about it too much.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  It's my end goal. You should double-click to pay.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  I mean, this is why I have Disney Plus, Baby Yoda, and it came with Verizon, so...

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Ashley, you've just written here, "AI fridge arms race."

• 39:58Speaker 03

  I have really weird interests.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  You're all from a place, kid. What is going on in the AI fridge industries?

• 40:04Speaker 03

  So before CES started, LG and Samsung announced that their smart fridges would all... Samsung already has a camera in the fridge, you can see through whatever. But now they're going to both be using AI to see what's in the fridge and then help you come up with recipes and maybe do meal delivery to get meal suggestions based off of your groceries, basically. And then maybe you can order through the fridge too. Which is like, okay, kind of weird, right? The thing is though, I've heard about this idea before from a smart oven company called June, and they also talk about their AI camera that can tell you what's in your oven and how to cook it and then recipes for it. And I'm like, oh my god, is this a certifiable trend?

• 40:46Speaker 03

  And I just love thinking about all the AI engineers who thought they were gonna like, I don't know, find cancer with AI or like, find the Nazca lines in Peru that have been hidden for centuries, millions of years, and then are like told, "So you're gonna build the food AI that figures out what's in people's fridges and suggests recipes." I mean, I just, it's like, it's, I don't know, I just don't know if it's like the best use case for AI. I just don't think it's like...

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  How many cameras are in... So it's an arms race?

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Oh, everyone, this is, I mean, everyone's doing it. It's the thing that's going to keep happening. There's other companies, startups here too, that are all pitching me on their food AI.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  And it's just like, we can see what you have in your fridge, we can see what's in your...

• 41:30Speaker 03

  But here's, this is the other thing, is that like, okay, maybe you can find an onion in your fridge, but what about ethnic foods? Or other ingredients that aren't as recognizable? I think that there's actually a lot more, it's more complicated than we would think, and I don't necessarily know how useful this will be.

• 41:45Nilay Patel?

  How does it find an onion in your fridge? Like, the base concept to me is actually still very difficult. Like, does it have a camera in every compartment? Is it a fridge with like 400 cameras? Like, that's the arms race I'm interested in.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  We're gonna be on this show floor when it opens. This is what's coming, is we get to actually see the fridge and do the demos and test the food.

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  And then, is there like, associated, like, cloud service cost? Is there like a recurring revenue model of the fridge?

• 42:11Speaker 03

  Well, for Samsung, they bought a thing called Wisk, and they will do food delivery for you, the groceries and things. So yeah, there is recurring revenue to this, 100%, and that is the game here.

• 42:21Nilay Patel?

  Is that lower the cost of the fridge?

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Probably not.

• 42:23Nilay Patel?

  It's still 64.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, definitely not.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, I love this, I'm immediately buying one. The thing about the big companies doing it is, as you cover the June oven, the June oven would turn itself on?

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:33Nilay Patel?

  Oops, seems like a mistake. There's now, there's a rival company called Juno, which has a refrigerator, which I think is great, because there's June for making things hot, and Juno for making things cold.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Oh, gosh.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  I feel like that's a CS, maybe we can get them together at 50 cents.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  I think everyone should just come together at 50 cents after-party and make the deals that you're speaking of.

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  This sublimated goal of getting invited to 50 cents after-party is becoming a very explicit goal. Dieter, you wrote "My favorite thing at CS" about a key?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna pronounce the company name, Natamo? Natamo, yeah. So, they make a, it's a smart door lock, and I don't love it because I think most people should buy it. I don't love it because it is better than other smart door locks. I love it because they just took a, like, existing technology that's already out there and just applied it in a really clever way. So it's an NFC key, and instead of just tapping your door, it's a literal key. And what that means is, if you want to reprogram your door lock, or you want to give someone a key, or make someone's key not work, you can just do that without going to a locksmith. The battery lasts a super long time, because it doesn't have a motor inside it. So if you're not comfortable with an August, or, you know, replacing your entire lock with, you know, some other weird computer, this is like half a computer.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  And it gives you some of the functions that you'd get from a smart door lock, without all of the extra stuff that you don't want. Will your Bluetooth connect to it or not?

• 43:57Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Will you have to like fiddle with your phone? Will the app work? Will the NFC tag on your phone actually activate? Will HomeKit actually do what it's supposed to do? You just, you have a key and you put it in the hole and you turn it and then you're inside your house just like you're used to. No, you can, you can't, you can't do remote unlock, but they can, you can unlock it with an app.

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  It will like trigger the unlock and then you can like twist it up and get in.

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  So you can give people a physical key that turns on and off?

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty cool.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you can like repro, you can like, it's like, instead of filing a new key, you just change the NFC code.

• 44:27Nilay Patel?

  What does the key look like?

• 44:28Speaker 02

  It looks like a weird black little key with a little fin on the end of it. Yeah.

• 44:32Nilay Patel?

  I'm into it.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, and again, like, no, most people shouldn't buy it. Like, it's not that good. But it's, it's clever and there's definitely a few people that are like, oh yeah, I, I want that because I definitely don't want that other thing.

• 44:44Nilay Patel?

  The big problem with the smart home, there's like two or three. One is where are the microphone, well, it's only a few categories.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:50Nilay Patel?

  One, where are the microphones and speakers gonna go?

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:53Nilay Patel?

  Still not solved.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  That's why you end up with Alexa in kitty litter boxes.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:58Nilay Patel?

  Alexa and smoke detectors, I don't know if you, anyone has ever experienced a smoke detector just screaming at you that your timer has gone off? Very, like, literally alarming. Like, that thing tells you it's a fire and it's like, your timer's gone off and it's like, oh, I guess it was a good run. Um, it's just, your entire brain is conditioned to see a smoke detector going off as like a problem. And Alexa's like happily like playing the wrong Spotify song at you. Um, so where are the microphones and speakers gonna go? Totally unsolved problem. We see it all over the place here.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  What can the assistants do? Uh, there's a little bit of news here, it's actually my favorite piece of news. Alexa has now expanded its capabilities in cars, so it can control the HVAC, it can do direct navigation. The car they announced it with was a new Lamborghini, so if you've been holding off,

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  let me tell you, now you can tell your Lamborghini to turn the heat up.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:50Nilay Patel?

  Then there's like the set of things you want your smart house to do. You want it to do access control.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:55Nilay Patel?

  Right? You want it to lock the door. You want it to be able to let somebody into your house remotely. Still a very unsolved problem. Most, I have an August lock, that thing just burns through batteries. It's great, I like it a lot, just eats batteries.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  Most of the other motorized locks do.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  There's, there's, I mean, there's many more problems. There's like, who, is, is your data being secure and is it kept private? Is it being used to advertise against you or track you in some other way? Is it easy to use? Is the, are the things work together? Is there, um, I mean, the rest of the Verge cast is Zigbee versus Z-Wave and the new chip alliance, uh, so buckle up for that?

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  It's a joke. It's not a threat. It's a joke.

• 46:32Nilay Patel?

  We're going on this right with us. We started with, can you, can your eyes discern pixels and we're ending with, I mean, it actually is a fight, but we don't do it now.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:39Nilay Patel?

  Here's the Z-Wave Alliance. First of all, they named themselves the Z-Wave Alliance. Like, let's be honest, the amount of hubris it takes to be like, we are the Z-Wave Alliance is off the charts.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  That's like, that's, that's super bad sci-fi video game writing from 1993.

• 46:52Nilay Patel?

  Is their building shaped like a Z?

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  They screwed up if it's not. And I think, given the advances in prefabricated construction, they could accomplish this goal.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Which sound, what sounds more ominous? Z-Wave or Zigbee?

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  Zigbee is just your buddy.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like your pal, right?

• 47:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's gonna be fun. We haven't told you any information about these standards. Rest assured that they exist and Zigbee is going to win because Z-Wave Alliance, in addition to being named like an evil cabal, actually has the predatory business model of an evil cabal. Um, and the entire industry's turned against them.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 47:25Nilay Patel?

  These are facts. There's a great story on the verge.com that is, uh, reported soberly and with facts and not just me doing this at this time. You can read it. Jake wrote it. He's, he's better than I am. Okay, so there's that set of problems, right? We want to let people into their houses. We want people to talk to their houses. By doing this stuff in a cloud system, we're generating an awful lot of data. The other problem of how each individual device connects to your core system is getting better but still unsolved.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  So, right now, a lot of, a lot of your Alexa commands, you say, Alexa, open the door. Alexa interprets your voice in AWS, connects to your door locks cloud. Your door lock sends a command over IPT or local network and your door opens.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  That is 5,000 points of failure and 5,000 points of insecurity.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:10Nilay Patel?

  They're getting better at it.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  They're starting to do more local stuff. I, I know I said that Zigbee versus Z-Wave was not going to happen, but...

• 48:15Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's already happened so much.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  The thing that we were all worried about the smart home five years ago, you can go read Jake's article about it is, oh, my God, it's all fragmented, nothing talks to each other, Zigbee versus Z-Wave, who's going to win, what's the standard going to be? And then we stopped worrying about that for a while because Alexa and Google Assistant, and that's basically it. We're not going to talk about Bixby or Cortana or Siri.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  There are other ones.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are other ones. And so that layer of abstraction just made that problem of what the smart home standards are go away for a minute because it just handled that for you. But long term, all the companies that make those gadgets might not want that to be handled by Amazon or by whoever, or Google, or Apple, whoever. They might actually want to control that directly. And it's also, like I was saying, it is inefficient to have a thing, send something up to the cloud to understand what it means, come back down, send another command up to another cloud to do the command, then come back down again, then send another command up to the cloud saying, yep, I did it, and then have that come back down and say, yep, it's done. That is insane.

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And all this means is so much more processing has to happen inside your home. So right now, the big story of almost all these devices is they're cheap. Almost all of their smarts and improvement over time happens in a cloud system. So Alexa gets smarter over time. You still have the same first generation Echo in your house. As you need more processing in your house to solve the security problem, to enable more components, you're going to have to put a computer in your house somewhere. So that's another just massive problem that you're seeing with this smart home stuff. To me, all that suggests is it's not actually here yet. The smart home that you can go out and buy, unless you go out and hire an integrator to do it for you, which you can do, and they're fine, most people aren't doing that. You can't just buy one off the shelf because the model for how it should work isn't quite there.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  And actually, the discrepancies, this is one of the hardest things for us to review, the discrepancies between how something works between Google Assistant and Alexa are actually enormous. But unless you sit there and live with them and compare them, you would never actually know. And they're really small, and they're really minor, and every single one of them is the world's most ridiculous sounding edge case. I can say to Alexa, play music in this room and it'll do it. I can say it to Google Assistant, and it can't because this company didn't sign this deal. And like, this is already a verchasted borders on the esoteric in terms of detail. That's like the most boring thing I've said so far. And I've talked about contrast issues on television today. So it's just not there yet. And I think that's why you see so much wild stuff here.

• 50:45Nilay Patel?

  Because there's no paradigm for it to fit into. They don't have to like meet a constraint. You can just like build whatever you want. So that's what we're gonna see at CES.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also, we're gonna see a headless robot kitten. Because the headless robot cat was so successful last year, they needed to make a smaller one.

• 51:01Nilay Patel?

  This is a true story. It's very exciting. iPod mini of that little robot cat. Ashley, what are you excited about?

• 51:06Speaker 03

  I mean, the one Instagram post I want from CES is me in the S pod by Segway.

• 51:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the rolling egg chair.

• 51:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's all I want. I want to leave CES with one Instagram post riding around that thing like at the throne.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  Ambitious goal. Is anybody aware of the Segway egg chair? Have you seen the movie Wally? It's here.

• 51:27Nilay Patel?

  Segway, the company that did not make the Segway happen.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Segway Ninebot.

• 51:33Nilay Patel?

  Segway Ninebot, almost they have a new self balancing device. It's a chair that looks like an egg. I think it's fair to say.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  It does look like an egg.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  And it'll roll you around. It's a good time.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  So my initial reaction was, you're already in a chair. Why, why, why does it need to like roll around on two wheels and be self balancing? And there's three answers.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Wow, I can't help if you got the three.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  The first answer is if you were to just put it on four wheels on it or three wheels. It needs to have a much, much larger wheelbase in order to not tip over because it's a big tall egg chair. And so they need Segway Ninebot self balancing technology in order to not have such a large wheelbase. Second, it makes it more nimble because it's able to have a much, it can just turn in place and it doesn't have to like have a big turning radius to move around like it would.

• 52:21Nilay Patel?

  I feel like you're describing these as solutions to problems.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Third, and most importantly, the reason that it balances on crazy, you know, two wheel self balancing technology is because that's what Segway makes.

• 52:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what they got.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:32Nilay Patel?

  It's like Dyson. It's like, can you put a fan in that?

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  Hair dryers, we did it. Their electric car did not have a fan and it didn't go off. Yep. That's all I'm saying. Okay, that was the Verchast. It ended with me once again dunking at an electric car company. It's CS, everybody. By the way, if you are interested in that coverage, Sean O'Kane is gonna visit like virtually every electric car company here. Yep. Some of them may succeed. Tune in the Verchast to find out. Okay, thank you for everyone being here. We're back later this week. The Verchast, we're doing a bunch of interviews this week. CEOs, various hangers-on. We're gonna try to find 50 Cent, I'm told. He's just everywhere. I remember what the interview was, he had headphones. Yep. They didn't.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  I really hope he's here.

• 53:13Nilay Patel?

  If you know where 50 is.

• 53:17Nilay Patel?

  That's Verchast, goodbye.