CES: LG’s impressive rollable TV and Samsung’s iTunes integration

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Ashley Carman, Dieter Bohn, and Vlad Savov discuss the first big news day at CES — including Samsung getting iTunes on their TVs, LG's new rollable display actually coming out in 2019, and the numerous announcement of 8K. 07:28 - Apple trolls CES with a giant dig at Android and Alexa privacy 08:16 - Five big questions about Apple putting iTunes on Samsung TVs 17:12 - LG will bring AirPlay 2 support to its 2019 TVs 20:20 - Taking the smarts out of smart TVs would make them more expensive 27:08 - LG’s groundbreaking roll-up TV is going on sale this year 33:08 - LG’s 2019 TV lineup includes Alexa, HDMI 2.1, and an 88-inch 8K OLED 33:50 - Samsung’s 75-inch MicroLED 4K TV is a huge step into the future 33:59 - Sony is adding Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to its Android TV 38:27 - Sony’s best 2019 party speaker has cup holders for your beer 43:33 - Roku and TCL are working on an 8K HDR TV coming in 2019 46:11 - Smells like there could be drama in the scented proprietary pods business 49:08 - Kohler’s smart toilet promises a ‘fully-immersive experience’ 54:08 - Asus reversed the notch to get its laptop bezels even thinner 55:47 - Corsair shrunk the RGB LED down to be as small as the head of a pin 59:07 - T-Mobile roasts AT&T for updating phones with a fake 5G logo 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by the new Microsoft Surface Pro 6. It's light, super fast, and has a great battery life. So you can work how you want, for as long as you want, wherever work takes you. Get more power and more speed with the new Surface Pro 6.

• 0:15Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of CES 2019. And I think that's actually- No, contractually, you're not allowed to say that. It's like a trademark violation. Anyway, hi, I'm Neelai. I'm your friend. Dieter is here. I'm your companion. We're in Dieter's hotel room. Yeah, it's really weird. It's an invasion of my privacy. Vlad Savoff is here.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:35Nilay Patel?

  And Ashley Carmen is here.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  So it is day zero. I hate this numbering scheme. It's not a good numbering scheme, but we've done it for a decade, so we're sticking with it. It is the day before the official day of CES beginning. CES is a consumer electronics show. It is what we are told aggressively is the biggest show in tech. Up for debate, but we're in Vegas at CES. This is where all the stuff is supposed to happen. 180,000 attendees this year, which is down 2% from last year or something. That's 2%.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  I'm feeling it. Yeah.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  As a member of the Verge International team, I absolutely have to dispute the whole biggest tech show in the world.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Because IFA exists.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  And IFA happens in Berlin. And fun fact about IFA, it doesn't have its original name anymore because it was this really long German name that nobody could bother to learn or pronounce. So now it's just IFA. And one time I was like, I'm gonna do my research. I'm gonna be hardcore about this. I was doing an IFA preview and I spelled out the whole thing. And then they got in touch with me and they were like, no, just IFA. That's fine. That's our branding now.

• 1:39Nilay Patel?

  That's who we are. Anyway, so we're in Vegas. We got a whole crew with us. We've been running around for the past couple of days at all the press events. Tomorrow, the show floor of CES opens. The show's officially kicked off. But really, all the news sort of like happens today because- Yeah.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  It's supposed to happen.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  It's supposed- So we'll get to that in a sec. But in order to open the show floor where all the stuff is, the companies like Samsung and Sony and LG, they have to announce the stuff first. Here are our new TVs. So today was a bunch of press conferences where they announced all the new TVs, more or less.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  And then tomorrow, the show floor opens. We'll get to go look at them. So Dieter, you've been coming to CES for-

• 2:19Speaker 03

  This is my 13th straight year coming to CES.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  You're a crazy person. I think I'm at 10.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  Might be 11. Vlad, you're right there with me.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  You must have more than 10, because this is my 10th.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  So I think I'm at 11.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  At least.

• 2:32Nilay Patel?

  Uh, which is just a lot.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Ashley?

• 2:34Speaker 02

  This is my 3rd.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  3rd? No, 3 is a veteran, for sure.

• 2:38Nilay Patel?

  You'll notice in Ashley's voice, she still has like the glow of youth. The fresh-faced excitement. Uh, cuz it's a slog of Vegas. But here's what I'm gonna say, and here's what we're gonna talk about. There's all kinds of stuff going on. Apple is here.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  Bizarrely, in a big way. There's CES is fundamentally a show where all the new TVs get announced. All the big companies have put out new TVs. There is a bunch of crazy CES stuff. I'll tell you the most popular post on our site right now, as we record, is an OtterBox case with a built-in pop socket.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  You just never know what's gonna happen in CES.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Vlad's disdain.

• 3:09Nilay Patel?

  What's gonna capture the interest of the masses.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Is it for iPhones?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, then it's disdain.

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I mean, there's a bunch of silly stuff. And then AT&T and T-Mobile are in a fight on Twitter. In the mentions to a Verge tweet, which is deeply weird for two corporations fighting. So we got a lot to talk about. But I'll say, it's quieter here than-

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. One of the ways that you can tell how big the crowd is here is there's all these like press events before things start, where like you go into a ballroom and look at a bunch of gadgets. And typically, we know what the score is. You have to get there super early, get in the front of the line, maybe try and get early access if you can. And year after year, we show up earlier and earlier just to make sure that we get at the front, so we can get in first and get a table to sit down and put our laptop. And typically, before like, for example, there's a show called CES Unveiled, uh, doors open at 5. Um, typically, at like 4 o'clock or 3:30, there's like 100 to 150 press in line. At a half hour before the show, the thing opened, it was like 25 people.

• 4:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  It was just almost nobody.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  It's worth mentioning, Dieter was right in front of the line.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course I was in front of the line. Come on. And that it was like that yesterday. It was like that most today and it wasn't until this evening's press ballroom conference called Pepcom that I actually experienced a real crowd at CES.

• 4:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  And the only other keynote that had a big crowd of people was apparently Samsung's keynote. They had, they had a massive crush of humanity.

• 4:35Nilay Patel?

  Well, they pay everybody to go.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Well, there's that. But like LG was pretty quiet.

• 4:40Nilay Patel?

  That's a complete conspiracy theory.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, when you own the entire influence industry.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  They all gotta show up.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Well, also I always look at the Venetian. So the Venetian does all the private, you know, like meetings with the top, top people and the lines to get to the towers is always fricking crazy. Like they have like it roped off where you have to wait in a huge queue. There was no line to the point that I was just like, all right, like I can just cruise right up to any suite I want in the Venetian.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Get it.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  There's two things I should just throw in here. I was talking to one audio company and they were saying how the Venetian previously used to be like audio central speakers up to like a hundred thousand dollars with $3,000 USB cables.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Vlad stuff.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Vlad stuff, absolutely. Vlad and James Burrem, right? You can't get James Burrem to come out to CES unless it's $10,000 or above. Let's go. That's right. I miss you, James. And maybe it's because James isn't here, but they just didn't turn up. So they would occupy at least two floors of the Venetian and I was just a few scattered suites. So I'm thinking a lot of companies are seeing less and less return on investment, maybe?

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Coming to CES.

• 5:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to get into the, the like business strategy of CES or like whatever. Like the, there's a big company called the CA that's responsible for CES. Their numbers are going to go up and down. The reason I bring it up is I think the theories for why the show seems quieter this year are actually really interesting. So one is that I, we just, I've heard this, I can't verify it, but I've heard it from a bunch of places, that the number of Chinese companies at CES is significantly lower than last year because Chinese companies and executives do not want to come to the United States right now. Uh, which is just like a wild idea that is just being floated in like the halls of Vegas this week. I think we should go report it out, but it's like definitely one thing I've heard. Then there's a thing Vlad is saying, which is the return on investment of coming to a

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  big show where you'll be obviously drowned out in the news cycle. I think companies are starting to figure it out. And this is my segue. I set, I set myself up here. The company that most obviously used to do that was Apple. They sat the show out and they didn't make any news.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  So, Apple, that's not entirely true. Apple will make, has historically made news at CES, but they did it by trolling the industry by like, uh, announcing, uh, another, like, they would, it was like, we're gonna invite you to come look at the new Apple thing and you'd get the invite while you were at CES.

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  One year the-

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Suck all the air out of the room. Everybody would be wondering what was going on with Apple. I mean, they did this with like the iPhone. They're like, come, come look at the iPhone. Why at CES?

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  And then one year they did it with the iPhone on Verizon.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:14Nilay Patel?

  Which now in retrospect, looks like the lowest stakes announcement in the entire world. Like one more carrier. And then a few years ago, they did, they like the, the little MacBook leaked.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  Like the single port. So, but Apple, like that was their level of participation.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  This year, all of the news at CES is like kind of dominated in this first day, which is a TV day. It's like kind of dominated by Apple.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Which was a surprise because we thought we knew what Apple's troll was this year because they put up a giant banner with the iPhone facing the entire consumer electronics industry that said, what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Or maybe you're in China and then things are a bit more flexible.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  So, it was like, okay, that's Apple's troll. They're trolling it and everyone's gonna talk about privacy. Everyone's talking about privacy.

• 8:02Nilay Patel?

  Cause that's literally facing like the big Google house.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. Faces the, hey, Google, Mance.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Mance?

• 8:09Nilay Patel?

  The Mance.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  It's a Mance.

• 8:10Nilay Patel?

  It has a kitchen.

• 8:13Nilay Patel?

  So we, we thought Apple's big ad was a thing, but then literally the first big announcement at CES, which is insane, is Samsung announced that Samsung TVs would get an iTunes app.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  iTunes.

• 8:28Nilay Patel?

  iTunes. There are no tunes in this iTunes app. It is iTunes Movies and TV.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  Running on Tyson. Which is Samsung's weird Linux smart TV operating system. It's gonna get an iTunes app, it's gonna get AirPlay 2. I'm gonna just tell you this right now, the iTunes app on Samsung TVs will have Bixby integration, which is fucking crazy. And we're like, that's nuts, Apple like did the thing with their biggest rival. And then today, Vizio announced that its TVs from 2016 up. Oh, that early? Right, so Samsung TVs from like 2018 and 2019. Yeah. Will get iTunes, that'll come in spring. Vizio TVs from 2016 up, running SmartCast 2. Yeah. Will get AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. Yeah. Samsung TVs won't get HomeKit.

• 9:16Nilay Patel?

  LG TVs from this year will get AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. And then Sony TVs will get AirPlay 2 and HomeKit.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  So can I make an observation here? I think the two things are tied together.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  The massive Apple ad, which isn't gonna be cheap. It's not even a banner.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  It's the side of a building.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they literally repainted the side of a hotel. And as Dita says, it faces everyone. It is right in the face of the computer consumer electronics industry. So if you come to CES, there is no way you skip that. You see it, right? So Apple never needed to do that over, let's say, the past five, six years or however many. But what's happened with CES over the past one or two years is Amazon's Alexa has become the thing that third-party manufacturers are making devices for.

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  And then Google last year decided, okay, we want some of that business. And they invested tons and tons of money to basically force-feed Google Assistant into the same position as Amazon Alexa. And I think that's working out. They're doing it again this year. Like the way that I would describe Google's setup at CES is a compound.

• 10:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  You know, multi-stories, they have one side of the building that they've erected is a massive screen. Yeah, I mean, they're not cutting any corners in terms of spending. So Amazon has become a real big deal here. Without technically having a presence, Google has become a big deal by forcing it. And Apple, which used to be the big deal, there was an iLounge at CES, I don't even know if that exists anymore.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  It does not, no.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Which was literally, what do iPhone and iPad and Mac users want? What do Apple users want and need in terms of third-party accessories? That's what we're gonna make. So now, now people are doing other things. And with Apple distributing its software and its services on all these TVs, to me, that speaks to Apple's actual mortality as a business. You know, previously, it was screw you guys. If somebody wants to use our superior services, they'll buy our hardware. Screw you guys. We don't need to pay any attention to CES. You just build things anyway because we're

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  immortal, right? With gods of the tech industry. And what's happened is this year, that's not the case. Apple is spending money on advertising like everybody else. It has to play nice with people who make other ubiquitous hardware, such as Samsung, such as all the other TV manufacturers. And somebody had to do that with Apple Music and Android.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  And Alexa.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  Right. So Apple Music is supporting Alexa now.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  So I agree with you. I, right. I mean, we just spent all of last week on the show talking about Apple's sales in China and, you know, refactored earning guidance and all that stuff. But they made these plans way before that, right? Part of my, the jokes yesterday where I was like, was Eddie Q just like in the sands at four AM with like some Samsung executive? He was like, fuck it, iTunes. Right? Like, this is a weird announcement that came out of nowhere. No one saw it coming. The app isn't ready. So I asked Apple straight up, like, who is making this app? Are you starting a team of Tyson engineers to make Samsung an app for their TV platform? Or is Samsung doing it for you?

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. Is it Apple Music on Android or is it a rocker?

• 12:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  The like

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  The Motorola.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  The Motorola iTunes phone.

• 12:13Nilay Patel?

  And the answer was nothing to share at this time.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:16Nilay Patel?

  Which is like insane. Like you know, you know, the answer, whether Apple or Samsung is building your iTunes app. You also presumably know the answer of why it's called iTunes, which is Eddie Q was drunk at the sands at four in the morning and decided to put iTunes everywhere. So I, you know, like, but I think given now the scale of the announcements, right? It's every major manufacturer.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 12:34Nilay Patel?

  Um, and they were all ready for it in their presentations and their press conferences today. It's like pretty obvious, right? And like Chris Welch, when I saw a demo of AirPlay two this morning, it's like pretty obvious. Like they did this well in advance.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:46Nilay Patel?

  Probably before this earnings guidance flipped over for them.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  It's also pretty obvious why they're doing it, why they have put AirPlay on all these TVs and why in particular they put iTunes on Samsung TVs, which is this is the year that they launch their TV service.

• 13:02Nilay Patel?

  Right. They're spending billions of dollars on fancy people. To make them TV shows.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and like they don't want to spend all that money and make all those shows and have it only available on Apple TVs. And so they need to have a way for people that have iPhones to stream it to their TV really easily if they don't want to buy an Apple TV. And then, you know, Samsung.

• 13:19Nilay Patel?

  I agree with you, but a lot of people already have TVs. Like, that's like a not a great, it's still not a great sale.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true.

• 13:25Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, how many years before the 2019 LG TVs? Or as ubiquitous as every year of LG TVs that have been sold in the past? So it's interesting that none of this is backwards compatible and that you still, if you want to watch whatever show Oprah is making, right? Or Shonda Rhimes is making for Apple.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  You have to, still have to buy Apple hardware in some way.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  So is there, is there a way that we can classify this? If we say like the start of 2019 is essentially the beginning of Apple was more of a media company than it's previously been? Because previously, we could, I think the device that kind of defined it was the Home Pod. Right? Superior engineering, far-field microphones, all of that good stuff, good sound, et cetera, et cetera, and just so narrowly focused on the Apple ecosystem. Like, I wrote about it. The Home Pod appeals to me, I'm the Verge's resident audiophile, I care about sound, but like, what do I play with it? What do I plug into it? I have an Android phone and I, like, the only Apple device I really have is my MacBook Pro. And Apple just kind of didn't care about people like me.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  And now, as I say, it's doing things where it recognizes that it needs to have more services and services have to be ubiquitous. So what's the name of that era?

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  The hope this works.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  I'll tell you. It's the era of Apple willing to airplay ball.

• 14:44Nilay Patel?

  Right. Dieter is fired.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 14:47Nilay Patel?

  See? Ashley just fired you. That's what it sounds like when Ashley fires you.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  I just want to know what those negotiations were like. Like, when Apple came to Samsung? If Samsung just, like, laughed and was like, "Give us iTunes." Like if they were like, you can have AirPlay.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I spent a lot of time with Koreans this week and they're way too polite. I mean, I mean, they would go to the other room, laugh and then come back and just very politely say, okay, we accept.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  I just wonder if they like negotiated harder than everyone else and that's why they got iTunes. Like if Apple was gonna be like, you get AirPlay 2, like everybody else, like Vizio and LG and like whatever. And then Samsung was like, you want access to our TVs? We actually have the upper hand.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  Not only did they get iTunes, give us iTunes and Bixby gets to talk to it.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Like, that is crazy.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  That is, yes. I just realized something. TCL don't have an AirPlay 2 or any deal with Apple, do they?

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I spoke with them this week and they said they're the second biggest TV maker in the United States.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  And they're Chinese.

• 15:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so there's a lot there. So let me just go to Ashley's point for one second. So if you look at the split between what the other three got and what Samsung got, it's fascinating. So Samsung got an app that talks to Samsung services, Bixby, its search, its guide. It got AirPlay 2. It did not get HomeKit, right? So if you say, hey Siri, turn on the TV, it can't do it.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  Which is bonkers because Samsung owns SmartThings and SmartThings is like the canonical example of an Internet of Things home thing that will talk, it's meant as a translation layer. It's meant as a thing that lets everything talk to each other and no HomeKit.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  But doesn't that make sense because they want Bixby to be, they want Bixby to be your smart assistant? Like their logic is their home speaker, whatever.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Has it already been said on this podcast that they should just stop trying to make Bixby happen?

• 16:33Speaker 03

  It's the official position of the Vergecast that Bixby has to stay because dogs wearing shoes are cute.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Bixby's a dog with shoes. And we're not gonna rest until Samsung just gives up and that's the logo for Bixby.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:46Nilay Patel?

  We have a wide array of fan art that they could just take at any time, in vector format.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  What happened to that Webos Penguin, whatever they had?

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Oh, that, that, the Bean Bird.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is, it's not a great.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I miss that guy.

• 16:58Nilay Patel?

  Beanbird's around. He's still there. You buy an LG TV. Yeah. Beanbird all over the place.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  You could, you could have Beanbird roll up, like literally roll up.

• 17:06Nilay Patel?

  So, okay, so that's what Samsung got.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  They got AirPlay 2 and they got iTunes. Which I literally about to say without laughing. Then Vizio and LG and Sony, which is interesting for another reason, they got AirPlay 2.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:19Nilay Patel?

  And HomeKit.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  Which is crazy town.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  You're kind of saying that like is self-evident why it's crazy town and why it's.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Why didn't they get iTunes?

• 17:27Nilay Patel?

  They didn't get iTunes.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Samsung is good at negotiating.

• 17:30Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  And they, because Samsung's a big name in TV.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  So Samsung is like, all right, well, we're, we're, we have the upper hand here for whatever reason. And so Samsung chose to not get HomeKit because they don't want people using HomeKit. They want people using smart things.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. iTunes is huge. Like again, because it's like Big B's running it and it's an app on their TV.

• 17:52Nilay Patel?

  So the reason I keep saying the split is crazy town is because Samsung got one thing. They got an app and the other people got an integration with Apple's ecosystem. On top of that, Sony got HomeKit and AirPlay and they run Android on their TVs. So it's like a little bit insane that like the biggest vendor of Android TVs now has a bunch of Apple integration baked into it. Vizio runs Chromecast, that's their operating system and SmartCast, which is built on Google.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  And they're running a bunch of Apple integrated services. And I just don't know why Samsung wouldn't take HomeKit or whether Apple held it back and said, we'll give you iTunes, but we don't want a HomeKit. Or they, they gave it to everybody else as the carrot. Where everyone just got to pick and choose, like it's just like unclear. What I suspect is that Samsung got an exclusive on this iTunes. And that when this TV service launches, someone at Apple has to be like, we should rename iTunes. It doesn't have any tunes to our TV service name. And then everyone will get the TV service app. It's like the only thing that makes sense.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Or they're calling their TV service iTunes. I'm not kidding. I think that they're like, alright, we, old people love iTunes.

• 19:03Nilay Patel?

  Ashley's got a look of disgust on her face.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  It's gonna be called iTunes.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I mean, they already spun out Apple Podcasts.

• 19:09Nilay Patel?

  And Apple Music.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  And you like cannot call it iTunes, or else Apple will come for you.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  So, no, they're gonna change it. iTunes is dead.

• 19:17Nilay Patel?

  Except for iTunes Revisions TVs coming at Samsung Smart TVs.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  We just need a rebrand.

• 19:21Nilay Patel?

  It's spring 2019.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  They're kinda stuck for names though, because they can't use Apple TV. That's useful piece of hardware.

• 19:27Nilay Patel?

  They can definitely use Apple TV.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Apple TV stuff.

• 19:31Nilay Patel?

  The Apple TV app. That's what they're gonna call it. They're gonna call it TV, Apple TV. It's gonna be, it's just gonna be an Apple logo in the middle of your Samsung TV, your busy TV.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  It doesn't have any.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Are they going to insist that we never pronounce the Apple now, because it's a logo?

• 19:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  It's just the app. That's like Mastercard. They just got rid of their entire name. It's a logo.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  That is, that is literally, if you want to talk about a decision that was obviously made wasted in the Vegas, Vegas casino, it's a Mastercard putting out a press release that's saying, we're dropping the name Mastercard, and now we are just two interlocking circles. That is a real thing that happened today.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  What, today?

• 20:01Nilay Patel?

  It is insane. It is insane. Can we put out a press release that's like the Verge logo no longer says The Verge, because we have the Triangle logo?

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:09Nilay Patel?

  Okay, fine. Well, everyone get ready for our press.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Do you want, do you want me to talk about what my Twitter name means? Cause I'm ready for it right now.

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you've had like half a beer, man. Alright, let me just say one more thing about Apple and Smart TVs. The really super interesting thing about the whole deal is, Smart TVs are super notorious for tracking everything you do on them. They all, every single one of them runs automatic content recognition, so the, the glass literally like sees what's being displayed on it, and then they track that viewing data. And you can turn it off, you're supposed to be able to opt out. Like, if you try to turn it off during setup on a Sony TV, you're like, no, don't do that. And then you get another screen that's like, but don't you want your TV to be awesome?

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's like, it's really aggressive to get you to opt in. Apple made all of them turn it off for AirPlay 2 and iTunes. So Samsung is not allowed to track what happens in the iTunes app. No one is allowed to track what happens over AirPlay 2. They just pushed the industry into stopping this tracking, which is a huge step.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  And you have to believe that they're gonna not do it.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Which, yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Vizio? Apple Watch Vizio.

• 21:11Nilay Patel?

  If you're listening to this episode of the Veritas, you probably see in the feed, I interviewed Vizio CTO and we published that episode yesterday. And I tweeted, my parents' Vizio TV hits the network 10 times more than any other device on their network. And he was like, you could have just called us. You could have called, it sounds like a customer support issue. Like, that's probably a bug. And I was like, no. And he's like, well, just stop that. You should listen to that. It's really interesting. But Apple got the entire industry to stop tracking, which leads to this like, really weird backwards thing, which is they can't prevent Sony or Vizio or whoever from tracking HDMI one. So you just buy an Apple TV and plug it into HDMI. Sony can track the hell out of you. Right? Because they can't stop them from that. But if you AirPlay to, to

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  the Sony operating system, to Android, Apple has a deal in place that prevents them from tracking you. Which is super upside down.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  This is an example of something that we've had more than once in recent times. And I think that's going to be a bigger deal again. We as consumers, as little people, as commoners, are increasingly relying on big companies being hostile to one another and moderating one another. I mean, previously, it was competition. I want to sell the better product. I'm going to compete with you on price and so on, and so on. Now it's like, Apple has its own priorities. And it says, stop being so evil to the people. So you can serve our priorities. And we hope that there'll be nice conflict between Google and Amazon and Facebook. So those guys never collude and, you know, destroy the universe, hopefully. And it's like, again, I'm coming from an international perspective. But a little bit of regulation would have hurt here.

• 22:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  You know, just a touch of regulation, just a sliver.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  So again, I was talking to Bill Baxter. I've been to CS for a long time. I've talked to a lot of TV executives. I have rarely found myself in a position where I'm like, in front of a wall of beautiful new TVs. And we end up talking about GDPR and California privacy law.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:05Nilay Patel?

  And he's like, this is coming for us already. And it's like, a really, it's that moment in the industry. They all know it's coming. But Apple is just saying, this is what we sell. I think the problem you're identifying is the market, like consumers have indicated no preference for privacy.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  Right? So like, why would you optimize to sell that to them unless you're Apple, which is, but now it's your brand and you're hanging billboards up. But that's not what any of these companies are doing, and they're pushing the price of the TVs down.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Whether it's privacy, whether it's your health in terms of the food that you eat, those are invisible things. Air pollution, right? It's invisible. Water pollution. It's only visible when people, you know, start getting sick, sick from it and so on. And then you go to fix the problem. So these are really things that you do need to have regulated by a government. Because like chicken fed with antibiotics, it tastes good to you. You're like, I don't care. Right? And then if you use down the line, you have issues because of that, because you're not eating healthily. Like these things that are not on the superficial level, that are not visible to people. It's, I'm gonna say it, it's the government's role and responsibility to protect the people from that.

• 24:08Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, I usually have Paul in that chair. I was just gonna say, where's Paul? 100% the opposite of what Paul would say to me in this situation. Look, I don't know what's gonna happen. I just know that Apple has signed these deals. And it's wild to me that you're almost better off, if you don't want to be tracked, using AirPlay to the native software, to a native Android stack. Then you are plugging an Apple TV into a TV that might track you whether or not you tell it to stop you. Yeah. Which is not like nuts, legitimately not.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Well, how much through the HDMI, how much can they see? They can't see like, they can see what apps you're accessing?

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's automatic. It's Shazam for TV. They're able to recognize what operating system, what game you're playing, what TV show you're watching, when you stop, when you start. And they package that data up and they sell it to ad vendors. And they're all supposed to anonymize it and, you know, it's there to, you know, give you recommendations for what to watch next. Assuming that you live your life inside of like a smart TV operating system and you're like, that ad looks good. Like, you're not doing that. That's crazy. But anyway, so Apple's pushing it out. The one thing that I'm really confused about is why didn't Apple just like make a TV? Like, it would dominate these companies if it just produced a TV. And it seems strange to me that they have not.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Because of market share, maybe? Like Samsung, Dizio.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Well, if you-

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Except TCL, which is like Vlad mentioned.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Right. Well, if you consider the biggest manufacturers of TVs, Samsung makes its own panels. TCL makes its own panels. LG makes its own panels. I can't tell you the number of press releases I've read from like Korea saying Samsung's eighth-generation LCD factory, right? LG invests billions into its 12-generation such-and-such-

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  -production line. And how does Apple just stroll into that? And we're all aware that Apple likes to have control of its supply chain. So how does Apple stroll into that without rebranding an LG, a Samsung, or TCL TV? How does Apple make its own panels out of nowhere?

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it doesn't make any of the panels in the iPhone. It's a solved problem, right? Like, they know how to solve that problem.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:00Nilay Patel?

  They don't make any of the panels-

• 26:02Speaker 01

  It's solved the problem in iPhone scale.

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  In the MacBook, in the iPad.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  It solved the problem with the iPhone scale, but maybe that's not- It doesn't have that sort of capability on a TV scale.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I- I- I have no idea. I just know that whatever moment that they had to make a TV, like, that window closed, and now they're just like, alright, now our shit can run.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  What was it that the analyst who's-

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  Gene Munster. There's a lot of Gene Munster jokes.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Like, as far as I'm concerned, the best reason for Apple not to make a TV is just to keep that legend going.

• 26:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Alright. Apple. We're gonna read an ad, we're gonna come back, and we're actually talk about these very many- Vads will be very happy. Actually talk about these TVs.

• 26:41Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Veritas is brought to you by Microsoft Surface Pro 6. The Surface Pro 6 is a laptop to get if you need to get stuff done. With an eighth-generation Intel Core processor, it's the fastest, most powerful Surface Pro ever. And at just under two and a half pounds, the Surface lets you work wherever you want: your office, at the airport, or just hanging out on the couch. With up to 13 and a half hours of battery life, whatever you're doing, you'll do it uninterrupted. Do everything you need, even if it's a million things at once, with the power and speed of the new Surface Pro 6.

• 27:08Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's talk about these actual TVs.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so last year at CES, we came and we saw LG Display, which is not LG Electronics, it's a separate company, quote unquote, separate. And they showed a rollable TV, which is literally a TV that rolls down into a row and then rolls back up. And it's a 65-inch OLED TV. And it looks gorgeous, it's lovely. And now, all of a sudden, this year at CES, it only took them a year, and it went from LG Display's concept slash prototype to LG Electronics' real retail product, which is going on sale in spring. We don't know the price.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  I have a guess.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Five figures?

• 27:41Speaker 03

  I guess it's $12,000.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna say 15.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  I was gonna say 10.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Oh, come on, just keep going up.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  $40,000.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  I mean, they did show it next to like an infinity pool and some guys like beautiful LA loft in the cliffs and the hills.

• 27:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  So maybe.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  There's two kinds of TV prototypes. There's the kind that we see here that's like, well, that's nuts, and I will never see anything like that in my home. And then there's the kind where you see it like, well, that's amazing. And in five years, like, that'll be affordable and I'll be able to get it. Which of these two do you think the LG rollable TV is?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  I honestly thought it was in the first category. I mean, I covered it at last year's CES, and it was like, why?

• 28:21Speaker 03

  No, it still is. Like, you can buy it, but you can't go like, when will I be able to buy an LG rollable TV for under $1,500?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Oh, come on.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  No, that's what I'm asking.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  That's not... Listen, you could say that about OLED. You know, close to my first attendance at CES, OLED screens were something like 20 inches.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  And they cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  And we were all like, this is never gonna happen. Every year I come to CES, and OLED isn't happening.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  It eventually turned into the second category. But there are other TV technologies that never make it into the second category. And so what I'm asking is, do you think the rollable TV is gonna make it into the second?

• 28:57Nilay Patel?

  I don't think it will ever be under $2,000.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Just like, under $4,000.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think a 65-inch OLED TV right now costs you $2,700.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:05Nilay Patel?

  It'll be that.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  That's where it'll end.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Let me talk about the tech for a moment as well, because I think it's really cool. What they do is they have the display, and it's still extremely fragile, this flexible display. So you're not literally rolling it up like a, you know, a load of cloth. They have slats on the back. They're not steel slats.

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  Wow, fun.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Plastic slats. They have plastic slats on the back and those adhere to the screen. And then Dieter put it really well. There's an airspace inside the row. So the screen shouldn't touch the slats in front of it. So technically, that is really, really precise manufacturing engineering that they need to make with every one of these. And also, like, first of all, that's really admirable on a technical level. And actually being able to roll up your TV is just practically useful and very cool.

• 29:54Nilay Patel?

  I just, I, and I think some people will buy it. I think it'll replace projectors for some people.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  Well, so actually, I was not sold on this TV at all. I was like, this is gimmick. This is just like somebody who has too much money is gonna buy this until they just, all they did was they just put the thing in front of a window. And I was like, oh, yeah, I want that now. Cause like, I've got a relatively big window. Uh, and it means that like I, my TV's in the wall and the sun hits it and blah. But I, what I want is the window behind the TV. So that I could just like, watch TV when I want and look out the window when I want. And so to like, have the thing just go away and you just have your window. But when you watch TV, it goes up and it's in front of the window. It means you can like arrange your living room the way you actually want to. Instead of the TV has to go in that one spot.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  If you guys recall, we used to have curved TVs, sixteen inch, seventeen inch, eighteen inch, a hundred inch.

• 30:44Nilay Patel?

  Continue to own a curved TV.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  God, yes. The point is, we used to have curved TVs and your wife has written a really beautiful essay about how terrible they are. Then we, even Samsung made a hundred inch curved TV that flexed out to flat and it flexed back to curved.

• 30:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And that was, that wasn't even your first category, Dieter. That was the zeroth category, which is, this is a concept. This is crazy and is not in any way practical or an advantage over anything else we have. So like my faith in this rollable TV is that it has that practicality. And, and, and that draw that Dieter explains, because I get that with a few other gadgets as well, where you might see it on paper and you're like, yeah, it's a gadget. And then you see it, you pick it up and you're like, whoa. Uh, and you have that.

• 31:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  With a fish spinner.

• 31:30Nilay Patel?

  Yes. With LED lights in it.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  His wall moment.

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what I need. No, the LG TV is, CS is often full of science projects. Right? So like Samsung made a TV that flexes to curb and flexes back. You can't find like a normal person and be like, I saw a great gadget. Like the local news. The test for me at CS is always like, what is the local news gonna pick up? And they didn't pick that up. They're like, they can't sell that. Yeah. Right? But they can easily pick up, this TV rolls up and goes away. I think they can pick up, here's a, here like Samsung's micro LED thing where you can just like duel the TV of whatever size you want. Out of like little panels. Yeah. That stuff to me is, okay, we're getting, we're getting better at saying, how should the screens integrate into our living spaces?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it kind of hits on the whole like screenless trend too of, you know, we're starting to become more cognizant of how much we stare at screens. And this is great. It's like, oh, I can finally look out my window now.

• 32:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  There's a whole nother world out there, Dieter.

• 32:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna look at it. It's not, it's not 90 degrees away from the screen that you're addicted to.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  I'm that projector person, you know, I like don't own a TV. I don't ever really want to own a TV, but because of the fact that I hate it aesthetically. I think it's so ugly in your house. So this is perfect for me. When I saw this, I was like, hell yeah. It actually reminded me of a Bing and Olsen product. Like I, this seems like such a product they would sell. And they have the luxury, you know, too. So, I don't know, it just seems like they would sell.

• 32:53Nilay Patel?

  I think five years, $2,700. Okay. That's my, that's my target for the whole. That's what I'll be doing for a new TV. So it's perfect.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  There is actually a very good chance that Bing and Olsen is just doing a BNO edition of this kind of TV. Because they've collaborated with LG previously.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, this seems like such a product for them.

• 33:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So that's the LG 88, and then they did an 88 inch.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  8K?

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  8K. HDMI 2.1, which is the more exciting part of that, right? I mean, it's just the thing that can drive those screens. Yeah, okay, fine. So HDMI 2.1 is here, it like variable refresh rate, enough bandwidth to do 8K at 60 frames per second. Yeah. We're 4K at 120.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:27Nilay Patel?

  AK display is really only useful in Japan where NHK like does some tests.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  It's not useful at all. Come on.

• 33:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, I think my thing is that you know that 4K is like cheap and ready to go because they're already talking about AK.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  Like if you were like on the fence, like, okay, it's critical mass. Netflix will just happily stream you some 4K stuff tomorrow. It like a reasonable bit rate that you'll enjoy looking at. Like, go buy a TV. You'll be happy. Turn off the tracking. Samsung also talked about AK, but their big thing is a 75 inch micro LED, which is now a product that they're gonna sell.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's, it's like you basically can put your TV together, like, you know, panel by panel.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Oh, that was very cool as well.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  And like, it's cool. It's like watching it put together and have them turn on automatically.

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Uh, it's cool for me because it's, um, it's a more practical version in my mind than LG's wallpaper TV for some reason. Just because like it's easier to like mount on the wall and less fragile than that wallpaper TV, I think in, in some ways. Just, I don't know. It's like Ashley was saying, like it, it makes the TV less of an imposing hulking thing in the room. It's like, just put a little, stick on the wall. And if I want to put it on that wall over there, I can do it because it's just little panels I pick up and reattach.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Can you buy like a 35, 40 inch TV like this and then just be like a few years down the line? Okay. I'll add a few more panels.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 34:44Nilay Patel?

  So that is the demo they're giving, which is they built a little TV out of like four panels.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:49Nilay Patel?

  And then some like dude, like it's a gif. You can like, look at it on our site. Like some dude picks up another panel and like just sticks it next to the thing. And it like slowly becomes a bigger TV.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Bang, bang, and again, I, this has turned into a bang, bang, and show, but they have that with speakers. So they have these arrays and they cost like 4,000 pounds, dollars.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Oh, I know what you're talking to me about.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and they're wall mounted, right? And you can have four or five of those. You know, if you're kind of low end luxury, four or five of those. And, and then, and then you get four or five more, and then you get four or five more. But the neat technological thing is that the more panels you add, the more speakers you add. It just automatically recognizes how many speakers it has and distributes the sound across the wall.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  So, so that will be the ultimate thing. A BNO wall array and then Samsung's micro LED array. And yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Then we can get one of those like light panels from Nano Leaf that you just keep adding on and like, whoa.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  This is like the same idea as Sonos, but like crazier. Like you'll just get a bigger living room someday. You're gonna do great. You're gonna work hard. You're gonna get another room in your house for a Sono speaker and then your living will be bigger and you're gonna need a bigger TV and a Nanoleaf array and a Bang & Olufsen speaker array and we're just gonna keep growing with you. Sony announced 8K TVs as well. They announced some new 4K TVs. Obviously they're a big announcement. Actually Sony didn't have announcements. Like their press conference was bad. Like I don't know how else to say it. Like they're, you know, they have a new CEO. He came out. He was like, we're gonna be a creative entertainment company. He brought out the head of Sony Pictures, who is the squarest gentleman that I've ever seen in my life. He was like-

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Was he wearing a bow tie?

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  No, he was just, it was bad. And he brought, brought out Phil Lord and Chris Miller to talk about Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  They made Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse boring?

• 36:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Ah!

• 36:36Nilay Patel?

  It was like a lot. And then they brought out like a Sony Music executive who then brought out Pharrell. Pharrell was very sleepy and went off the prompter and was just saying things like, I, what did he say? The infinite field of audio visual experiences. Like Pharrell was stunned. Like I don't know how else to explain what was going on with Pharrell.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Pharrell was drugged. He was like, we push you out to the stage, read the screen.

• 36:59Nilay Patel?

  He was like, I can't, where's my eyebrow? And then he was like, actually I have an eyebrow. And then like the Sony Music executive was like, I want to be clear that Pharrell has an eyebrow. And they announced no products at this press event. And the lead up to it was a New York Times article with the new CEO that was like, here's this vision for Sony that's gonna be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show. Everyone thought he was gonna walk away from, you know, the entertainment and gaming assets, but he's gonna, it's gonna be the focus of the, so we were all like, we had like a lot of people watching this keynote.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  So Sony, I mean, I watched the beginning of it. It's like, we make the stuff that, we make cameras and stuff for creators and then we make movies and stuff. And then we also make the stuff that people use to consume this stuff. It's like they're just, they do, they have the whole cycle. It's like they're one Sony.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they announced, they announced one Sony, uh, five years ago.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  Howard Stringer, Sir Howard Stringer, who was a crazy person. Um, yeah, I mean, like Sony has been announcing the fact that they make cameras and that they own a movie studio that uses the cameras to make movies. They have been announcing that at CES since 1971. Like, I don't know what the point of this was, except to say the new CEO got to.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Do, do people use Sony cameras to make movies?

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Ja- James Cameron does apparently.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  I think they use.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  Jim, as his square friend prefers to him.

• 38:14Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to relive this press conference. I'm just telling you that it was bad. And the real news that Sony announces on press releases, including a bunch of new TVs. Another interesting trend here is all the companies are saying the speakers in their TVs are better. Sony is already that way. And then Sony just made a huge, huge deal. I mean, the biggest news of the show is obviously the party speaker that has built in cups.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 38:33Nilay Patel?

  For beer pong.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Stop it.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  Which is the single best announcement of the show, in my opinion. For beer pong.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  There's no lights on it.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  It's just so that DJ can put the beer somewhere.

• 38:42Nilay Patel?

  So Ashley and I, when we did the Circuit Breaker show, we called in a bunch of huge party speakers, including some Sony ones that like light up. This one appears to be from a different division at Sony, using different branding, a different industrial design, but it folds out and it has cup holders in the top.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  It's like a serious speaker.

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Like, we had the fun speakers, which is where you put the beer holders.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  All I'm telling you is that the incredible growth in action in the party speaker market is conclusive proof that no one actually knows what people want.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  We gotta find them at CES.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  I want to interview the person in charge. Just like imagine like your, your job, like you're, we have jobs, like we, you know, like go to work, something happens, we go to meetings, like we have to pitch stuff. Like if you're in your car, you're listening to a broadcast, you might be driving to work, you know, you've got like a boss, imagine you're the person at Sony and you're like, it's time for the third generation of party speakers. And you're like putting together your PowerPoint, you've got like a bunch of market research, you know, like, you know, fraternities on average destroy these every two years. Here's our replacement cycle. We've done a bunch of pricing data. LG's party speakers have karaoke functions. Like there, someone's doing that work. We have to find them.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  TV trends at CES.

• 39:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  There was a minute, actually more like a million minutes where the industry was telling us that we really wanted 3D. They were just, you want 3D and we knew it was a lie. And then they were telling us we really wanted curved TVs. And then they were telling us we really want 4K. That was the cool new thing. And then they were telling us, no, no, you want HDR. No, you want this HDR, no, you want that HDR, you want this, that's it. Blah, blah, blah. And there was a whole thing there, right? Then they're telling us one thin. I don't see the whole industry like pushing a new thing here. They're trying to inspire us with rolling TVs and TVs you can like

• 40:25Speaker 03

  on the wall, but there's no like, this is the next big thing in television.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  No, because they're in the refresh.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  8K is coming there later, but we're in this cycle where there's no like hype cycle for like a TV feature. They like are all just, they've all like, they all support each other's HDR standards by and large now. They all have got 4K by and large. They've all got their like little, you know, local dimming gimmick cure there. But there's no like grand, like this is what TVs are going to be now moment this year.

• 40:53Nilay Patel?

  No, because they are that thing. That's the only way the inflection point.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  Like this is just the, the sort of like periodicity of the curve is happening. Like they sold everybody flat panels and then they sold everybody HD. And then they were fine with that for a minute. And then they're like, oh shit, we have to sell everybody a new TV. Do you want 3D? Do you want this? Do you want that? Now they're like really good, like people are buying the new TVs.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  Right, so they don't actually have to like drive demand. They just have to produce the panels.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, you can see the glimmers of the next thing happening. But I think it'll be a year or two before. Right now it's like, it has Alexa, it has Google Assistant, it has AirPlay. Like those are the features people are buying because the panels and the content are all there.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  But honestly, it makes sense for them to plateau a little bit because as you were saying, Dita, 4K was a big thing for a long time, which was a big thing out there, not in my house, right? And then OLED was kind of on a parallel line to 4K. And and there was a time, there was a CS where we're like, what would you choose, right? Would you choose the 4K TV or would you choose the OLED TV because they didn't have OLED that mature? Now we have 4K OLED and HDR and flatness and rollable capability. Okay, we don't really have.

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Purchasable. But the point is, all of these desirable things, especially 4K and OLED, when we had them apart, everybody was like, I just want them together. I just want them together.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  So we need to, let's be a little bit appreciative now and just be like, yes.

• 42:19Nilay Patel?

  Something's gonna get actually by a TV.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Prices are gradually coming down.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Rollable 4K OLED with HDR.

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  That's the one.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  And and and you probably want the crystal uh display sound.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, throw it in.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I'll also take a floor mat. If you could add these cup holders.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Infinity pool.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  Can I go back to talking about the person and how they definitely had to like get solo cup specs?

• 42:40Speaker 03

  I want to know the person that has a fifteen thousand dollar OLED TV in their infinity pool outside. They're just like, they've just got to sit outside.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  It's Mark Cuban.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  For years, the like, the thing at CS was Mark Cuban has a standing order for the biggest TV the industry can make.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  So they would announce like a hundred inch plasma. And then like they'd be like, well, one's already being shipped to Mark Cuban. Like, it was really, it was really like.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Well, if we're gonna talk about cup holders, let me just mention this.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Let me just mention this. How bleak do you think it is? Somebody like me, living by himself, single, four cup holders in his speaker. I just want the mega bass, man. Why do you have to make me?

• 43:18Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna get you this speaker and you're gonna throw a party.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Why do you have to make me feel lonely?

• 43:21Nilay Patel?

  Four people and no more.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  I don't even drink beer, man. I mean, come on.

• 43:24Nilay Patel?

  If you have a party with five people, that fifth person is like not in the club. Like stand in the corner. We're gonna crowd by the nugget bass speaker. All right, can I just quickly say TCL also announced new TVs, including uh the whole industry is pushing towards seventy five inch TVs.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:40Nilay Patel?

  They also announced AK TV. They announced an Android TV which is not being sold in the United States. And the TCL press conference was legitimately crazy. You watched it with me. You watched it with me.

• 43:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  We were watching the whole thing on stream.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Like the TV is cake?

• 43:52Nilay Patel?

  The uh the the the contrast is the cake.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  The contrast is the cake.

• 43:56Nilay Patel?

  There's just a lot of lines.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Something about frosting.

• 43:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, contrast is the cake.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  Nobody buys a TV because they want a television.

• 44:02Nilay Patel?

  Yes, that's another line they said. Uh they put up a slide that says TCL loves our customers and then said zero words about privacy.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  And they said, we, by the end of next few years, will be everyone in America's preferred consumer electronics brand.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  Which is just a big claim.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  We have a lot of goals for 2019.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  And like, I feel like the Samsung people have a lot to say about that.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  So, I mean, Neela, you're a boss of people, humans. If somebody came to you and had like a quarterly conversation with you, they're like, so listen, I go for the rest of the year.

• 44:35Nilay Patel?

  It's to be beloved.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  By the country.

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'd be like, dream big, get out there. Just like maybe not pervasively track everybody.

• 44:47Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. This is Neela Patel and the editor in chief of The Verge, co-host of The Vergecast. And I want to tell you about Better Worlds, an exciting new science fiction project from The Verge. Look, everything today is so bleak. The news is terrible, the TV shows are grim, even our superheroes are gritty and dark. But so many great creators and inventors were inspired by golden age science fiction. Shows like Star Trek, writers like Octavia Butler and Isaac Asimov, stories that imagined how science could improve the future. That's why we at The Verge are launching Better Worlds, a new series of short fiction, audio and animation that explores how technology can shape our society and environment in better, more equitable ways. Writers like Lee Alexander, John Scialzi and Cadwell Turnbull are writing stories about

• 45:32Nilay Patel?

  new possibilities, from virtual pets bringing people together, to communities leveraging AI to survive worsening hurricane seasons. Science fiction should expand our horizons and help us imagine bright futures. And that's what we're trying to do with Better Worlds. So subscribe and stay tuned to The Verge Extras podcast feed as we adapt five of our 10 stories for audio. And if you want to read these stories or watch the animated videos, go to theverge.com. We are launching Better Worlds January 14th, and our first audio story goes up on the Extras feed on Wednesday, January 16th. So once again, go to The Verge Extras podcast feed and stay tuned for Better Worlds in 2019.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  A little bit of extra silly CES stuff. Ashley, I want you to tell the people how you made the fragrance vendors get into a fight.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Well, so I love drama.

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  And we went to, oh my God, was it Unveiled?

• 46:23Nilay Patel?

  Yes, CES Unveiled.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Which is where just a bunch of companies get together in a Mandalay Bay banquet room and exhibit their things. And it's the first we're seeing of like basically CES. It's the start of the show, sort of, for press.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Anyway, so last year on the Circuit Breaker show, I had showed Dieter and Neelai this device called the Mudoo, which promises to turn anyone into a scented DJ. And you have to buy these capsules that you put into the device and you can remix the scents to customize it to however you want your house to smell. And they were there this year and I was like, alright, I gotta go say hey to my guy. And I realized that there's another smart scent company and they're also exhibiting in this ballroom. So I go over to my bro at Mudoo and I'm like, yo, man, there's another smart scent company here. And I'm like, how do you feel about that? And he's like, who is it?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  And it's like a crazy name. All I know is the device is called the Compose with a Z at the end. And I'm like, is this guy from France? Compose?

• 47:25Nilay Patel?

  Of course he was France.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  And this dude's Israeli.

• 47:28Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot of French people in Unveiled this year.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he's like, well, we have patents, so I'm not worried. And I'm like, okay. And then he starts going off about how like scent technology works. And then he's like, I don't know who they are. Like, I've never seen them. I was like, I'll walk over with you if you want to go check it out. So I walk him across this ballroom and I'm just like rubbing my hands together. I'm so fricking hyped. I love drama and I want them to fight or something.

• 47:50Nilay Patel?

  Like a smell fight.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  You do realize that taking him over to French people, there was a high probability of the fighting happening?

• 47:57Speaker 02

  I would love to see a fight.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  I saw Ashley like in the middle of this. She's like, they're gonna fight.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Anyway, so he's wearing a shirt that says Mudoo on it. So as we're walking over, he starts like hiding his shirt. He has his badge on, he flips his badge over so they can't see his name. He kind of stands like a very safe distance away and observes from afar. He starts making comments about the device, trying to figure out how it works. And I was like, I don't have any answers for you because they, when I talked to them, they told me it's their secret. He's like, it's their, their little secret. They can't tell me how it works, even though their thing is patented.

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  So anyway, no one fought, but I got to write a story about it. And then I found out today that there's actually another smart sense company. So there's three.

• 48:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  This is crazy. I'm telling you, it's all about this recurring revenue thing.

• 48:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Everyone wants to sign your subscription.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Yes, every VC funder, when you go to them as a startup, does not want to hear your pitch unless you have a recurring revenue model. Every hardware company I've talked to that's starting up tells me this. They're like, you need to have it. You won't get money. They think hardware is dead until you give them the recurring revenue model. You see it everywhere.

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  Do you think the Sony speaker people like signed a deal with like?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Solo Cup.

• 49:01Nilay Patel?

  What's like a ping pong ball company?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Automatic refills, we can sense when it's empty.

• 49:07Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. There's also a smart toilet at CES or announced at CES.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  There's smart toilets all the time, but for some reason, this one really took off because Kohler, because they had this insane commercial with this like jacked bro, like asking his toilet to like set the mood and then like going in to take a bath.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  A bath?

• 49:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  In the toilet?

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Well, no, next to the toilet. The toilet controlled the room because it was a smart toilet. They was able to turn the lights down and start the water in the tub.

• 49:38Nilay Patel?

  In our, our many years running conversation about where should the mics and speakers go? The toilet has never come up as the answer? And Kohler boldly was like, what if the microphone was in the toilet?

• 49:49Speaker 03

  I mean, here's the.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  And the toilet had mood LEDs all over it.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  The problem, the real, the real problem is Kohler on their, on their press release, said that you can have a fully immersive experience with the toilet.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  And this is where I come in to fact check this.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Do you want to fully immerse yourself in the toilet? Is that, is that where?

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead and fact check it.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  I don't think it's a bidet. And that is clearly the fully immersive experience. And also people love bidets.

• 50:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Where's the bidet? Vlad, I'm looking at you because you're European.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, they, they had, they needed to make space for the microphones.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  It is a heated seat, apparently.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  I I have zero answers to provide here. I am still blown away, in fact. I met with a headphone company at a suite at a hotel here. And I was like, where is the bathroom? I'd like to use your facilities. I walked into the bathroom. That place is bigger than my living room.

• 50:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  And it was just the bathroom. It had an extra corridor. Not not joking. I'm not I am not I'm not exaggerating. There was an extra corridor of the bathroom, and then there was a toilet.

• 50:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  One one room with a toilet and a bidet, and I guess the other room, I don't know what was in it, because I found what I needed, right? So it was good. It was fine.

• 51:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  But it's literally, there's the bathroom, a corridor, and then an extra thing on top.

• 51:08Nilay Patel?

  I understand. This is what every American home is like.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 51:11Nilay Patel?

  What are you talking about?

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  What's the story about? Uh, Vlad, what are the most expensive headphones you've worn so far at CES?

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Uh, oh, they're they're old, they're old. Um, but they're, well, it also depends, right? Depending on when you listen to this podcast, the price will shift. And here's why. They have two hundred grams of gold in them and six carats of diamonds embedded into the headphones. The base price of the headphones is four thousand dollars, so it won't dip below four thousand. But depending on the price of gold, the price will fluctuate.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Oh dang, you could get a good deal, actually.

• 51:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  So at the moment, they're a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. These are the four carat.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  What?

• 51:48Nilay Patel?

  How how flaky is the price of gold?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Well.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  So the base price is four thousand dollars?

• 51:52Speaker 01

  For the headphones, yeah.

• 51:54Nilay Patel?

  And then you can add a hundred. Sixteen. Sixteen. It's very light. A hundred and sixteen thousand dollars worth of gold to the headphones?

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's it's finely crafted gold. It's embedded diamonds. Uh, this is a four carat Utopia. So as I say, at four thousand dollars, they're super pricey, but they're also very good. So as headphones, they're great, right? And they don't even look that extraordinarily gaudy. You know, they they are just flashy.

• 52:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  It just, they have a few too many zeros in the backend. So I put them on, I took a photo, because you have to, right? Uh, and then I handed them back and I said, I don't have insurance coverage for this, so just take them away.

• 52:29Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so you can can you buy them at four thousand dollars?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yes, without the gold and the diamonds.

• 52:33Nilay Patel?

  And then you can, are there, are there steps between four thousand and a hundred twenty thousand dollars?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  This is the thing, For Cow, which is the French company that do speakers and headphones, they make the original four thousand dollar headphone. And then they collaborate with some ultra luxury crazy company.

• 52:46Nilay Patel?

  I see.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And they make special editions. And there's only like, I don't know, eight of them in the world.

• 52:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  And they sold one, um, which was number eight, which is lucky in Vietnam, they sold it to a Vietnamese person.

• 52:57Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  That, that's all I know about it.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  That's like, that's like on a press release.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  I do not know that they've sold a second.

• 53:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. So in one through seven, they just like got in the safe.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  I mean, they're around. Listen, that's the other thing. There's, there's the other thing. The value of gold is there. And actually, the value of good headphones, again, is that they don't have built in obsolescence. They don't have built in obsolescence.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Cause it's all electric.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  Cause you, cause they're wired.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  It's just, you can't fit that much gold in them. They're smaller, right? So they can never be.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna transition this to something else headphone related. I tweeted, maybe one of the worst tweets of my life. It had a glaring typo in it. It said, maybe people want headphone jack on their phones. Missing articles. We are now up to like eleven thousand likes on this tweet.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, I don't know, people just like the typo. Or they're just like, yes, this is, like, this is how I feel about this. Like, I'm so angry I can barely speak. Like, I just want headphone jack. Like, they're just, it's like a compulsive, just saying.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  It's wool, okay? It's wool. The solution is wool. We want wool.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  We want wool.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Without wool, we don't go anywhere.

• 54:05Nilay Patel?

  I want headphone jack on phone. Like, that's where we're at with this thing.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  Uh, Asus made a laptop that, uh, has a little bump at the top for the webcam.

• 54:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  So that there's no notch or so there's not a smaller bezel. And you know what? I'm totally here for it. Just make, make.

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Just put a little camera bump.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Put a little bump at the top. Yeah, that's cute. It's the best.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Let, let me squeeze in a couple of things here. Just very brief. These are, these are very brief, techy things.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  So first of all, I'm calling that reversing the notch, the thing that Asus did.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  It's nega notch.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Nega notch?

• 54:33Speaker 03

  Nega notch.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I don't like either of these things. Fair enough. Anyway, but I, I, I like it and, and I, um, I tried that.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  Stop talking about the Nega notch so bad.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  I tried. I definitely want you to stop saying it. Okay, forget the name, forget the name. I tried the very similar thing that Lenovo did with the Yoga S nine forty. Yeah. It's a new laptop that they've done. Uh, it's a smaller protrusion, but it makes total sense. The bezels are ultra thin. Yeah. The protrusion is like a couple of millimeters higher and it's just at the center of the laptop and it allows you to have the webcam at the center at the top where it belongs. Yeah. Those are top notch things. Oops, sorry. Um, but he, here's the point. When that comes down, it, it is exactly the thing that you need to open up the laptop. Yeah. And still on the Yoga S nine forty, the display on that, I think the edges have that two point five D curve on it that you have on phones. Hmm.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  And that combined with thin bezels and just like really, really gorgeous and rich colors on that display. It just kind of took, blew me away. Usually I go to Lenovo's, uh, briefings and I'm like, show me the ThinkPad. Okay, I'm here for the ThinkPad. I don't care about all your smart home stuff. I don't have that much of a home. Just give me the ThinkPad. But this time I was like, okay, no mind ThinkPad. This Yoga just kind of. Yeah, yeah. It grabbed me. It grabbed me. It was really impressive. So I think, um, whenever we get that info review, that's gonna be a really awesome laptop to review. Uh, that being said, we'll set that aside. Final techy thing and then we can talk about AT&T and stuff. Uh, Corsair, the gaming peripherals company, they've reinvented the RGB LED. And usually I'll be like, oh, for crying out loud, you know, just the massive eye roll. But the way that they've done it is actually super impressive because

• 56:05Speaker 01

  the usual, uh, LED that you embed into things like mice and keyboards is about the size of a, a fingernail. Because there's an assembly around the LED to keep it together and make it actually function and work. What they've done is they've reduced so, some ridiculous, it's, uh, you know, it's the size of a pin, the head of a pin. Uh, so now they can fit a hundred LEDs in the space where they could previously fit four. And they're sixty percent brighter, sixty percent more power efficient. Uh, literally every parameter is better.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  Bigger story, because tiny LEDs are behind almost everything we've talked about here, right? They're behind the contrast backlight, contrast is the cake backlights in TCL TVs, or behind the micro LED displays. It's like a, I just keep hearing in one way or the other, like, there are smaller LEDs in this world and now we can do something else. Like, for example, this gaming mouse.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and well, it's, it's a gaming mouse, um, it's for keyboards, it, well, of course with them, it's for RAM sticks. So now you have twelve individually addressable LEDs on your RAM sticks. So you can do all sorts of programming and like.

• 57:09Nilay Patel?

  To make your RAM light up.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Of course. I mean, if your RAM, if your RAM doesn't light up, why do you even have a PC? I mean, come on. Uh, and also Corsair, somebody asked a really good question from the journalists who are pretty hardworking and worthy people about whether somebody else will copy it. But Corsair, they said they've basically bought a production line with the partner that they have for these LEDs. So for, for at least a while longer, they're going to be the gaming peripherals maker who has this, uh, mini exclusive on this. And, and you know, with keyboards, they especially want to do it with wireless because then the LEDs consume like basically no power. Uh, the backlight with, on them is just intense. It, it doesn't feel, because any backlight they have, even on MacBook Pro keyboards, you can kind of tell there's individual lights underneath.

• 57:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  But if you, if you, you know, string together these ones in a really dense alignment, it just looks like it's literally color coming out of your keyboard and just intense and impressive.

• 58:00Nilay Patel?

  I'm here for it. Also here for individually addressable LEDs on RAM sticks.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  What am I doing? I gotta, I gotta build a PC. All right, Dieter.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  Tell us about evil, thieving, lying AT&T, which by the way, has not yet responded to the fact that they are launching a streaming service called Verge TV.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  No, they're not launching it. They trademarked with the possibility that they might intend to someday, but they're not launching it because we won't let them.

• 58:24Nilay Patel?

  It's true. Hold fast, Flood.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  I'm holding.

• 58:27Nilay Patel?

  Flood's gonna throw a carrot at AT&T. So they give up.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Just as they did with 4G, AT&T is running 5G by naming 4G phones 5G E phones. And that update, as we have discussed, is the worst and it is now going out. So we dutifully wrote the post saying, if you have any of these particular Android phones, Samsung phone.

• 58:50Nilay Patel?

  It's the LG, it's like the V40 and the S8 Active.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:53Nilay Patel?

  Some crazy set of phones.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  You're not going to see 4G or LTE in your status bar. You're going to see 5G E and you should know that this is a lie. This is not 5G, this is 4G. And in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, but AT&T is actually behind when it comes to rolling out LTE Advanced, the faster version of LTE that they think it counts as 5G E. E, they're actually way behind where Verizon, anyway, so we, Jake wrote this post. We were busy at CES, running around, looking at Twitter when we could, whatever. I have, I'm using an Android phone, which means I don't have an iPhone, which means I don't have, well, I have an iPhone. But it means, the point is, it means I had the algorithm on, on Twitter. And so I saw one of the more popular tweets that I had missed during the day.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  And it was T-Mobile replying to The Verge with a short little video clip, applying a tiny little 9G Post-it note to an iPhone, saying, I didn't know it was that easy.

• 59:53Nilay Patel?

  And now they're beefing in.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  That's just solid roasting.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  It's like pretty good.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:58Nilay Patel?

  Do you think AT&T is going to have the shame to stop it?

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  No. Also, don't get on your high horse, T-Mobile people.

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  Cause you did it too.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  Because T-Mobile did it too. The only reason we refer to it as LTE instead of 4G is because T-Mobile was one of the people screwing it up. And the whole term, concept of 4G got destroyed.

• 1:00:17Nilay Patel?

  I think T-Mobile might be doing it with 5G too.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  They're gonna, no, they can't now because they started this beef.

• 1:00:22Nilay Patel?

  But I think what they're calling 5G is not as much 5G as what Verizon thinks 5G is. It's unclear to me. I don't know. I don't know what 5G is.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  What if?

• 1:00:31Nilay Patel?

  I do know that I'm on a panel at 8am tomorrow talking about 5G. So I should figure it out.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  If you don't know what 5G is, you're perfectly in your place.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Here at CES. I know, I would say, there's another tech reporter, I won't blow her up too much, but she was like, I'm on a panel about 6G.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:00:49Nilay Patel?

  Yo.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:00:51Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we have to wrap it up. Yes. We've been going for a minute. Well, we do, we'll do another one. We're doing another one of these tomorrow. Yeah. Here's what we didn't talk about this on this episode at all. Alexa or Google Assistant, we're going to the show floor. We're going to see a bunch of crazy stuff. So tomorrow, come back. We're going to get into what's happening with the smart home platforms. I suspect it will be a lot. Dieter actually has a piece up, Google Assistant now on a billion devices. Yep. Uh, so that's, I think we're going to go see some of them. Some subset of the billion devices. We're going to go look at them tomorrow. So come back for the Vergecast tomorrow. I'm also interviewing a bunch of other people here at CES. So look out for those interview feeds, uh, interview shows to hit the feed. Ashley Carmen, you are doing an episode of Why'd You Push That Button Live?

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Nilay Patel?

  We're making Caitlin come to CES.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, Caitlin's coming to Vegas.

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

  We're worried for everyone.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  This is exciting for me and Caitlin.

• 1:01:40Nilay Patel?

  Tell the people. If you're at CES, you can, they can like come see you, right?

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, if anyone's at CES, our show is actually taking place at Google's mansion or whatever we're calling it, the compound.

• 1:01:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Whatever word Dieter used.

• 1:01:52Nilay Patel?

  Mans.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, we're really early in the morning. We're at nine 15. We're going to be interviewing Brett Kinsella from Voicebot.ai. He just loves voice assistants and Lilian Rincon from Google Assistant about what it means to have a smart speaker or a smart assistant as a part of your home and like part of your family.

• 1:02:11Nilay Patel?

  That's fun.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  At least throw them a little bit. Anybody involved in smart assistant.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  That's like why Caitlin, that's like Caitlin's like thing.

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  You can also listen to Why'd You Push That Button in your feeds right now. Go listen to that.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  Yes, our, um, season finale is this week and it is honestly the best episode ever.

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm excited.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  It's an all-star cast and it's about elite dating apps.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Oh, you've been working on this one for a while. There's also like the whole rest of the episode. So go listen to Olive Button. If you're at CES, come listen to Ashley and Caitlin at the Google place or just wait for that to hit your feed. You can also listen to.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  That'll happen at some point.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  You can also listen to Pivot with Scott Galloway and you can listen to Function with Neil Dash, all part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. And we will see you tomorrow for more Vergecast at CES. Rock and roll. Paul. Oh. Provo Code.

• 1:03:16Nilay Patel?

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