The Verge YouTube Roundtable at CES

Join Dieter Bohn, Austin Evans, Marques Brownlee, and Jonathan Morrison as they discuss the best gadgets they saw at CES 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey Vergecast listeners, this is Dieter. We don't normally do this, but at CES we decided to do a little roundtable with some YouTubers that we like. And we had a really good discussion about what they were interested in at CES and how they do their job as YouTube people rolling the floor at CES all by themselves. So we figured you might want to listen to it, so we're tossing you in the feed. Hope you enjoy it. Hey everybody, thanks for coming to The Verge Lounge. We're sponsored by Ford, they have a Mustang. We have been doing Vergecasts every day and we thought it might be fun to do another one, but make it sort of a special edition. So we're calling this a Verge Roundtable. And rather than the standard Verge crew, we've got some of our friends who are, what would you call the guys, YouTube famous?

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Youtubers.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Also, super hardcore into gadgets, unapologetically just love them some gadgets. So we thought it might be cool to just sort of hang out, talk about the gadgets that we saw at the show and how things are going. So I am Dieter Bone, I'm the executive editor for Theverge.com. And let's go around the table, you guys introduce yourselves.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  My name is Marquez. I make YouTube videos, as we all do. Youtube.com/MKBHD, that's about it.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, my name's Austin Evans. I make videos that are slightly less good as Marquez, and my channel is Austin Evans.

• 1:16Speaker 03

  I also make videos, John, short for Jonathan, I like the Bulls, and Youtube.com/TLD.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  Can we talk about this hat that you're wearing briefly? Before we get into gadgets?

• 1:27Speaker 03

  I wasn't prepared for that, but we can.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  It's a very nice hat. Is it not hot walking around the show floor wearing that thing?

• 1:33Speaker 03

  It's comfortably cool right now.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  It's actually nice here, yeah.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  It's a good hat. So, yeah, we're walking around the show floor. What have you guys, like, how's the show floor been for you? Does it seem super crowded? Does it seem, are people accosting you everywhere? Or are you just sort of just having a good time, or what?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  I, this is my third CES. And I feel like every year you try to, you have a different strategy, I guess for a one-man band, you kind of have a different strategy of what you want to see. I'm surprised there's this many people here on today. Usually it's slowed down by now, so I guess I would say, yes, it's more crowded than I thought it would be. But I've made my way around all three centers, I've seen a lot of stuff. I don't know if you guys have any specifically awesome things that you want to talk about that you saw?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  So I was a little bit behind, but I finally just played with Gear VR about an hour ago.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  What do you think?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  I was really surprised. So I've been a guy who's, I like, I tried Oculus, the original, I loved it, you know, the developer kit 2, Morpheus, I just played with the Razer OSVR and all these things and they're great and they're great. And I put on Gear VR with like, very low expectations, like, ah, it's just a phone, like, Google Cardboard is cool, but it's like, you know, whatever. So I was expecting something like that. And I was really impressed. There was a game, I'm not entirely sure what the name of the game was. It was like a spaceship shooter and basically the entire controls were like, you're just constantly moving forward and you move your head and you're able like, because there are no tethers with Gear VR, you can like spin the chair around, do everything, you're always flying in whatever direction. And there's just a little touchpad on the side that you can shoot stuff with.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  I just want to say the footage, the footage that I was shooting was hilarious. I was finding people who were doing random VR things and they were just kind of like, you know, moving around and it looks weird, but playing this game, you're flying forward and you're just kind of looking at things that pass you, but you're in a swivel chair. So you're actually like swiveling around really fast and impossible to hold focus.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  Looking ridiculous.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Making it easy for you.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Do you guys find that there's enough content, enough stuff to do in VR to hold your attention beyond a tech demo?

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Ask that man. He's the VR master.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Not yet. I mean, I've, I have the Oculus, the developer kit 2, and I play with it sometimes, but, I mean, unless you're really into like, you know, the, all the demos and all like the little things, like, a lot of the games I've played with are very much like the, okay, look, this is a game, we ported it over to Oculus. It works, it's kind of cool, it's a better experience, but not, it's not quite there yet for me. So for me, it's definitely in the, the tech demo, the kind of the, hey, look, look, you got like a friend over or something, play with this, look how cool this is. And you put it in the closet for like another month or something.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  The most fun thing to do with VR is hand the goggles to somebody and watch them use VR.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  That's not my line, I stole it from Addy Robertson, I can't take credit for that.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  So, you guys do a bunch of phone stuff, right? I love watching your phone videos. Not much in the way of phones.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  No, G Flex 2.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  G Flex 2 and then a whole lot of not G Flex 2.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that was easily the most... That was the most requested thing I've heard people that want to see a video about is that phone, and then little murmurings of other things.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  But phones, you see the bigger phones getting their own events, their own announcements. So CES has become a place for the lesser-known brands and lesser-known phones to rise up from where they were before.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  So, what'd you guys think of the G Flex 2? Did you like it?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  I thought it was really comfortable.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  It reminded me of the Galaxy Nexus.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, same, same, exactly the same.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it feels kind of restrained to me, like LG's figured out that they can just, you know, it's an ostentatious phone, right? It's a giant curved phone, which is crazy. But it's not like blinged out, "Look at me, I'm full of chrome." It's just sort of a chill, cool phone.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  I think that's good for it.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  If they want to make this a phone that people actually want and want to buy, it's a lot closer to what the LG G3 looked like. And I think that was a really popular phone. It doesn't have the same, you know, beautiful tiny bezels, but

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  It looks like, like I said, people were saying it looked like a OnePlus 1, and it looked like a LG G3 on the back. And those are phones that people already like using, so.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  The G3 from before was huge. And this is actually a smaller phone, which makes it, I guess, easier to pocket, easier to hold up to your face without looking ridiculous.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  So, I actually haven't seen the G Flex 2 yet, but I did play around with the original G Flex. Is the screen any better? Because that was the big thing for me. The screen was a little rough on the original G Flex.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  The screen of the last G Flex was a big, plastic AMOLED 720p screen.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  And the screen of the new G Flex is a slightly smaller, slightly less curved 1080p display.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  I think it looks a lot better. Yeah, for sure.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Two thumbs up.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Two, okay. So what else, what else you guys find on the show? Like, what's your, what's your favorite gadget? We should, we should go around the table and do favorite thing at the show.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Uh, the most fun I've had here is actually off the floor was, uh, where's Sam? He'll agree with me, the Z-Bore 2.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, talk to me about that.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  No, that was sick. Um, so it's lighter, faster, charges faster, and, uh, like, I've played with it before and I've kind of... Been okay with it.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  But this was the first time I've got to use it like as transportation. So like we're going to downtown Vegas and um I could really see uh being a means of transportation. Um so that was kinda cool because we get so discombobulated with tech and chargers and headphones. So it's kinda cool to bring that tech into something that you can go outside.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  And get a little air right around. So that's probably the most fun I've had at CES so far.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  So is it, so I'm a giant klutz. I I I tripped on the way uh over here on the thing. I I I can't do anything. And I used to skateboard when I was a kid, but I don't now. Is it any easier to handle?

• 7:01Speaker 03

  I don't skateboard. I I I mean, I think uh because it's it's a little more intuitive. It seems like if you have just the slightest amount of like foot coordination, that's all you need.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  So I'm out.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  I mean, you're in, maybe. But I don't ride a skateboard in like five minutes in, like we were flying down the streets.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. How fast were you going?

• 7:20Speaker 03

  The new one goes up to 24 miles per hour.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Whoa, whoa.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  That's fast.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I almost took an old lady out.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  But, you know, it happens sometimes.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  You know, it's worth it.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  I had to bail on it, so it was the lady or the board, so.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  You can bail at 25 miles an hour.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was about to say, whoa. I wasn't going 24. It can go up too.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  I mean, I think maybe Sam will go 24. I'll keep it like at 15.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that well, one of my favorite things that I saw, I actually like to talk about two things. There's a BMW stuff that was outside in that tent.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  And then there is some 8K TVs I saw today. Didn't think I'd think that much of them. But as for as much as I see 4K stuff and 4K TVs, the 8K TVs looked a lot better than the 4K TVs.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Really?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And these were at like 89, 90 plus inch TVs from 10 feet away.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And looked a lot better than 4K TVs.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  So what kinda stuff were they showing? Uh like?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  They're showing these slide shows. They had this one text demo where you could read a whole bunch of text. And at the bottom, there was this tiny text and you could literally walk all the way up to the TV and read the text on the screen if you wanted to.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  That was cool. And basically photo slide shows, cause at 8K, no one has 8K video, but you can show these 25 minute photos.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Actually, they did have some 8K video.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  They had some from this one Japanese 8K camera that's somewhere in Asia right now.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  There are four, they, four of them exist and like one Japanese news agency has three of them.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  And they like bought all their footage from them.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  But it looks awesome when you actually see it.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that actually looks significantly better than 4K. It's super expensive, though.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Who wins a TV battle this year? I have my guess, but I'm curious to hear what you guys.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  There's a lot of cool stuff at Sharp. None of the TVs that I think are like coming out that were really that impressive. But they had a lot of different interesting panels. Like they had the one that wraps around the pole. Like I think it was like a, I'm gonna forget. It was like, it was a super like hard bend around the pole. They had some of those like completely bezel-less displays like for like gauges and that kind of stuff. They had 120-inch 4K TV. They had the 8K stuff. A lot of that stuff, I don't know if I could pick a single thing, but they had a lot of really interesting stuff. And a lot of it was just like, look, this is the concept. If people actually want to buy it, you know, let us know and we might make it happen. But it's more just like, hey, look, we can do this now. You know, hit us up. You want some? We got them.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  I think I like the new Samsung TVs the best. I mean, the one that eBay are designing is just amazing. But I was expecting this quantum pixel technology to just be a complete and total nothing. I expected it to be just, you know, a gimmick and I wouldn't be able to see the difference. But I feel like I could. I feel like it got closer to the dream of having an LCD panel that looks more like plasma. Did you guys check those out?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  I did a video on it and that was uploaded last night, just explaining what it does and what it is. But I saw some Samsung quantum dot TVs that looked really good. Unfortunately, I couldn't see them next to a regular LCD TV. So of course it looks great in the demo. The footage looks amazing, but how much different is it really? But yeah, I was gonna say Sharp had a little bit of everything at their booth. They had that 8K, they had OLED, they had a lot of curved TVs, a lot of flat TVs. Saw a lot of curved TVs.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Saw a lot of curves.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  A lot of curves. I have not heard a single television producer utter the words 3D once. Nobody's like, they all might be, but from what I've seen, they're all like pretending like it never happened.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  No, there's like here and there the occasional like glasses-free 3D. Like it's dead.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  I'm happy. I'm happy it's gone.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was never that great of an idea. Just, you know, guys, come on.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  OLED looks awesome though.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  OLED, yeah, yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  OLED? Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Beautiful.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  OLED is the future of TV. It's the future because it's too expensive, but it looks so much better than everything else. The blacks, the, also I saw these, the BMW M4 in their booth had these OLED taillights. And the thing I think of when I think of OLED, because I'm messing with so many phones, is not very bright. Because OLED tends to not be as bright. But then I look at these OLED TVs and they look awesome. And they have, you know, pitch black blacks and these vibrant colors and super awesome contrast ratios. So I'm a fan of the OLED TVs.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  We never got around to your favorite gadget. Was it the gear?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  It was the gear as well as those two. The BMW stuff was, there's a lot of really cool stuff on the, I don't know. I think my favorite thing was, in the BMW booth, they actually had these, I think it was, they had the i3, which was not only driver, well, driverless. Basically, you could hit like the button on your smartwatch and actually be able to see like, "Okay, look, I want the car to come up and pick me up." And so just, you see it driving, like the wheel spinning like by itself and everything. And then also the crash avoidance.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  The i3 was, the i3 had the best demos of anything.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  They had the one, the smartwatch thing that summons the car. I sat in the backseat of it and basically the lady like closed the door behind me. So I got the camera set up and I was waiting for it to like get summoned. And basically the wheel snaps into place and it slowly starts rolling. And that was weird because I was in the backseat of a completely unmanned car. You don't think that's going to be something you're going to do, but it was awesome. And then the crash avoidance thing where basically I sat next to the guy who pointed the car at a barrier, floored it and didn't let go and we didn't crash into it. It slowed itself down, stopped, and he showed me, after we stopped, he floored it a couple more times and the car didn't move. So that was pretty awesome.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  That's wild.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Okay, so mine, um... Because I have a huge, long history and I'm a big dork, is probably the WebOS watch.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  If you guys, it's like, it's out on the, in the parking lot, Audi's showing it, and they're showing it, you know, they can unlock the car or whatever.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  So, wait, Audi is the first one to show this off?

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Audi is the first one to show it off. They first showed it off, they wouldn't say what it was, everybody assumed it was Android Wear, and then somebody reported it was Android Wear, and then, um, my old guys back at Android Central went out there and, like, went into the settings, and it's WebOS. Whoa. Yeah. Um, and, you know, it probably won't come out for forever. They've gotta do a bunch more work on it. Um, but, uh, it was really fast, had a really nice screen, um, and it's just, you know, I've got nostalgia, because I'm a big old Palm fanboy, so...

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And also the Palm brand, so I was bringing up a little about this.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Don't even.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  He's gonna leave.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Never mind, I didn't say anything.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  No, no, it's so, yeah, we talked a little bit yesterday, so, it got sold to Alcatel, or no, TCL, and they make Alcatel phones, and they just wanna like have people help them figure out what to do with it.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  So they haven't actually announced anything, they just bought the name like, "Hey guys, what's up now?"

• 13:51Speaker 00

  They bought the name and said, "We, tell us what to do, we don't know, we know you guys love Palm."

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  It's a good strategy.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  So was there anything else besides the name that they bought? Or like, there's not much left of Palm, right?

• 14:00Speaker 00

  No, because, uh, WebOS went to LG, and they're making smartwatches and TVs with it, um, and all the patents went to Qualcomm, and, you know, all the employees left, so, what's left?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  So it's just the name?

• 14:11Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  I wonder what's left of that name, like, how, I feel like some people would probably know it, but I, I don't know how much value really is in that name.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think that, um, old dudes like me, uh, like, take, like, you guys, you guys are like BlackBerry has got some really hardcore fans, right? Like, take that and cut it by like a quarter, and that's probably it, but the problem is, you can't really use Palm or WebOS devices anymore, so they're, they're dwindling really fast, so there's just not that many fans.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Sad story.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  Endangered species.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Have you guys heard that you can buy a fake Apple Watch?

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Here? Yeah. It's like thirty-five bucks. I think it's somewhere...

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Like a dummy?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, yeah. Is it functional?

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, no. It's like, it like tells the time. I don't know. I haven't had a chance to go see it. We're actually gonna put a story up about, there's a few of them out there.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I need to try to hunt one down.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Should do a video about it.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Alright, oh wait, craziest gadget. So my craziest gadget, I didn't get to see it, but it was, um, it's a Band-Aid that you put on a baby, and then it tells the temperature of what the baby is for over the course of like twenty-four hours. So if your kid has a fever, instead of like freaking out and checking the baby's temperature every five minutes, you can freak out every three seconds.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  It has a battery? Does it have a battery in it?

• 15:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just a, it's a disposable thermometer that you stick to a kid and it will last for twenty-four hours.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  It's like, kind of a good idea, but also kind of a freaky idea, because the kid will be a couple upset, you'll become obsessed with, is your kid okay? But I suppose it's better than like, you know, just having a thermometer on all the time, so...

• 15:46Speaker 02

  See, I was about to say, we were over, we were at Marquez and I just like, an hour ago.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  The telepresence?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know those telepresence robots that like, can you go around? Well, there was like a twenty-foot tall one of those driving around their booth.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  It was good though, because you didn't notice it at first. There was all these telepresence robots that are like five feet tall, and you're kinda talking to these people, they have the webcams, and you're rolling around like, alright, I guess I kinda understand this booth. And then you hear a voice from like the ceiling, and you look and you just see these big wheels, and there's a gigantic one rolling around, I guess trolling people.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Just like the jolly, the jolly green telepresence robot.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  It was weird.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  The ridiculous thing I may have ever seen at CES, period.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Like, there was a guy looking up, it was like...

• 16:24Speaker 02

  And then like, there's a camera like facing down, so like, the guy, like you see, he's like on the screen up top, and he's looking down at you, and he's like moving towards you, and you're just like, there's this giant robot coming towards you?

• 16:35Speaker 00

  That sounds terrifying.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Weird.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  That wins for me.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  You see anything wild Jonathan?

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Crazy wild, they have vibrating blue suits controlled underwear.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Does that...

• 16:47Speaker 03

  It's for real.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Does that do for what I think it does in this store?

• 16:51Speaker 03

  And also a couples ring.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Tell me that they didn't have like a demo station.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  The lady was straight faced like giving you the talk, like you can apparently control it halfway around the world, so...

• 17:03Speaker 00

  But three quarters of the way around the world, not so much, just half.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  That was definitely the craziest, weirdest thing, but like, they're selling that stuff.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, alright.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  CES.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  No, gadgets are back, there's all kinds of weird gadgets, just like, people have figured out that they can like cram things together, put a tiny little chip on it, have it talk to the cloud, and just make weird stuff again. It's kind of exciting.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And terrifying.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  So, what's your guys' strategy for covering the show? Like, for The Verge it's shock and awe, we've got a huge team, we've got a huge, great video team, and so we just descend upon the show and go every which way, but, you know, you guys don't have huge teams, and so I'm sure everybody's really curious to know, like, when you come in at the show, what's your tactics for, you know, finding the thing you want to find, showing your fans things they want to see?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, so yeah, as far as I know, most of us shoot our videos by ourselves, so we're used to being a one man crew, so you come out here and there's a ton of stuff to shoot, you have to find other ways to do it, so we're collaborating with each other, we're each other's cameraman, we're each other's sound guy, we give each other ideas, we collaborate on other stuff like that, so it kind of works, helps to have other people who are like-minded, maybe not we don't work for the same company and are part of the video team, but it kind of works that way where we know what each other likes because we make tech videos all the time.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure, like yesterday we went and we pretty much spent all day shooting a couple of videos on your channel, like it's nice to be able to have a, some backup, you know, like usually we're all by ourselves, and it's like, oh, I've got to go focus the camera, but like we're all just roaming around looking for cool stuff to do. I think for me, especially considering that we are by ourselves and that we're having to do everything ourselves, it's like, there's very limited times, it's like, okay, try to find those few things that are worth doing the videos, because it's like, I can't do, I mean... Still one editor. Yeah, like I'm, this is day three and I have one video up, so it's like...

• 18:53Speaker 03

  And hotel wifi.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  And hotel wifi. Oh yeah, we should talk about that. You should mention what happened, what it took to get that MKBHD video up last night.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't that bad of a story. Basically, I had a 900 megabyte file to upload and the hotel internet is three down, one up on Wi-Fi if it's working well. So I got, I started uploading this file and it says something like 99 minutes left and then I tethered on Lou's iPhone for a while, which was getting like seven down and up on T-Mobile.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Oh wow.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  So that shortened the process by a lot, but.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it also took 10 hours to render that video.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  It did take 10 hours to render that video on a dual-core MacBook.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Worth it.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  So the trick I've learned is, if you can get into the press room, or you can wheedle your way into the press room, which is a thing I did my first year, get there at like 7:00 a.m., which is when it opens, and they probably still have it, you know, they've got laptop stations, they've got a printer, which is insane, but there you go, if you need to print something. But then they usually have got at least one row of desktop computers, walk up to one of the desktop computers and just, you know, steal the ethernet.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Don't tell anybody I said that.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Usually you're finishing editing and you've done everything, you're done editing and you just want to upload on the spot.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  So wherever you are, hit that upload button and that can put you at some weird spots.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing too is that it's nice being able to be a little relaxed because I think so everyone out here is just like shoving videos everywhere. So it's kind of cool being able to like pick and choose and maybe not rush it out because everybody's going to see the videos from every other tech blogger on the planet.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  You can kind of pick and choose what's good and then really put the time and effort to make that worth watching and I think that's really the approach that every single one of us takes and.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I mean, you look at, like I was looking at your sub-box the other day and there's just like, there's like 500 CES videos.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Well, my sub-box is a collection of things around CES, so if I've heard that something's at CES, like LGG Flex 2, and I go to my sub-box and I see that first video on it, the other nine videos about the LGG Flex 2 are probably the same video, so I'll just kind of watch the one that's there and then just leave. So when we're making content, we're kind of thinking, I want to add something to that, but I don't want to make the same video, so we're just trying to find other ways to add value, add information, add an experience, that's why we're collaborating, having other opinions about stuff, so that's a lot of fun.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, doing the interesting, unique stuff is always.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  I think too, though, like, it's always that saying, like, surround yourself with people better than you. Like, it's cool, like, you just wanna be around talented people to step your game up. So I think that's the biggest thing that we've learned collaborating is, like, just vamp off each other and it ends up making better videos.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Do you guys find your, like, editing differently? Like, I don't know, I'd be like, actually, let me ask a better question. How do you shoot VR and have it not just be, you know, dude going like this?

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Oh, that's, that's it. That's all it is. Yeah, I mean, go wider. Just get wider. That's it.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Just pan out, pan out.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Zoom all the way out. For something like that, you're just gonna have to talk about it. Like, look, this was good, this was bad, this is how it feels. I mean, that's, that's kind of a hard thing to get across on video, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I think people get it. I mean, people have kind of got an idea of how it works, and, you know, some people may have tried this, or, you know, tried, like, Google Cardboard or something. So like, usually they'll have an idea of what, you know, VR's gonna look like, but it's not, it's not the easiest thing, for sure, you know?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  I've found that all the VR stuff I've tried, if it's not Oculus, it's behind Oculus.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  The Oculus stuff, from his experiences, were awesome, and then the other stuff, I think, I don't wanna even name drop, but like, Razer's demo was just not good. It was bad.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I'll give them some credit.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And it's their first try, I understand that.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Aren't they trying to say that, like, this is just like a, a development kit?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  It's a proof of concept, right.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  So here's a, here's a bad one that we built, try and build something better.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  And you know what? It feels a lot like the original Oculus. It feels like they're, yeah, like, they're kind of starting from the same spot of, you know, where, let's, let's give this a try, the hardware's not finished, and, you know, there's, there's a lot still to be worked out. But, yeah, I mean, it's, it's decent, but I mean, you know, it's, Oculus, they're, they're massive. I mean, have you seen the Oculus booth?

• 23:04Speaker 00

  I have not.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  It's huge.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  I've been, I've been afraid to go there, because I know I'll get lost, and I haven't set up an appointment to, to see it yet.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, there's like a two-hour line to, to play right now. Yeah, like, last year, they were in a little tiny meeting room, and we, we took a look at it and did a little video, and now it's just like, they have the, one of the huge booths, it's like, all the way up to the ceiling, it's like, wow, there.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  You got that Facebook money, yo.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  That's what it is. Yeah, but...

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Well, guys, I think we are close to wrapping up, so I wanted to give you a chance to, like, just talk about your channels a little bit, uh, just 'cause, you know, we're gonna put this out on The Vergecast, and people that might not be familiar with you, so maybe, you know, plug yourself again, but actually talk a little bit about the kinda stuff that you do, and how to find you, where you are on Twitter, that whole jam.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Oh, me?

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, so you guys can find me, Austin Evans, on YouTube. Uh, I pretty much just do videos on technology in general. I do a lot of, like, PC gaming stuff, social, like, how to build computers and whatnot, but I just do anything that's cool technology. I don't like to kinda like pitch and hold myself into like, oh, it's this or that. It's just like, if I see something cool, I'm gonna do a video on it, if it has something to do with technology. So, yeah, youtube.com/AustinEvans.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  Great.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Word, uh, my name is Marquez. It's youtube.com/MKBHD. And I do a lot of mobile videos, so I talk about phones a lot, phone technology, but then I branch off into other cool stuff that phones remind me of. I say anything with an on button is game, but, uh, headphones...

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Great slogan, by the way.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, monitors, TVs, cameras, whatever it is. If it's cool, I'll check it out.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  They summed it up, youtube.com/TLDTech, but at the same time, I try to make it not so serious. I mean, we're all human, we have fun.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  The hat shows that you don't take it very seriously.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  No, we like tech, we like to have fun, so, um, that's it, yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Cool. And, uh, if you didn't know, we are youtube.com/TheVerge, and you can find us on @TheVerge on Twitter, a whole bunch of other places. Hey, guys, this has been great, thanks so much.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having us.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Sweet.