251: CES Highlights

Matt and Sean talk about the items at CES that people should be–but aren’t–talking about. Was there anything you saw that think should have been covered?

Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, 5 BEST Things I Saw in Vegas at CES 2025 https://youtu.be/x9TE5I2ODxk?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi4At-R_1s6-_50PCbYsoEcj

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 On today’s episode of Still to be Determined, we’re going to follow Matt around at CES. Hi everybody. Welcome to Still to be Determined, where we follow up on Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. I’m Sean Ferrell. And I’m a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some stuff for kids, and I’m just generally curious about technology, and luckily for me, my brother is that Matt from Undecided with Matt Ferrell.

And Matt, how are you today? I’m doing good, Sean. I’m finally back from all my travel in the winter, and I didn’t get sick at CES, even though some of my friends that I met there got pretty sick from CES, so I’m really good. We’ve got a low bar in our society right now. How you doing? Didn’t get sick. I’m not ill, he said with a big smile.

Yeah, so you were at CES for how many days? I was there for four full days. So it was a exhausting, I was walking like 18, 000 steps a day, um, I’m not, I’m not built for travel, I’m not built for walking, I’m built for sitting on a couch like a slob, uh, it was exhausting, but I’m so glad I went. And at CES, of course, you saw stuff that is built to help you sit on your couch like a slob, but you also saw a bunch of other stuff as your most recent video went into you and we’ll get into the comments on that one in a few minutes. First, we like to visit our previous episode and talk about what feedback we received from all of our viewers and listeners there. But then we will go on to talk about Matt’s experiences at CES, which earned him some kudos because he didn’t do what a lot of other people do.

He didn’t focus in on, Hey, here’s a new television.

But to talk about our previous episodes, we had a conversation last week in which we talked about corporate efforts to do sustainability work around maybe packaging like Apple. Or production efforts like BMW, Matt had had an opportunity to visit the BMW plants in both Mexico and Germany to look at their most recent developments around things like heat capture and making sure that every, every piece of, of equipment that’s being put together there is being put together in a way that doesn’t leave a massive footprint behind.

And there was a lot of commentary on Matt’s original video. around the idea of Matt having kind of stepped in it. The company wasn’t leaving a footprint, but maybe Matt was because people were taking him to task saying, well, these corporations are still causing problems. So our conversation last time was largely around the idea of, do you let the perfect be the enemy of the good?

Can you talk about efforts that are measurable improvements over older ways of doing things, even if the companies are doing other things that we still disagree with. And so there were comments that weighed in on that conversation, and at one point we touched on the idea of the Brussels effect.

Something happening in the EU, where a law or policy is put into place that forces a company to do something there, and it’s just cheaper all around to do it everywhere, and so it benefits people who don’t even live in the EU. There was this comment from Patrick Kenny. Who jumped into the comments to say my favorite action that the EU took that impacted the U. S. early on is their requirement for THD and power factor corruption in computer power supplies back in 2000. The mess caused by cheap power supplies really had an impact on many things and they stopped the stupidity with a pen. So there was one improvement that changed how we buy computers, and we don’t even, at, I think now we talk more openly about those times when EU or some other more local or regional legislation has an impact in the United States.

For example, when we talk about California’s environmental protection laws impacting the national production of cars. Or we talk about the EU having an impact in, uh, the legislation around online tracking and privacy laws. And the EU has been very aggressive in that front. So now we go to websites and we see pop ups that say things like, there are cookies here, do you want all of them, do you want some of them, or do you want none of them?

And that’s because of EU laws, not because of Anybody else? But back in 2000, I don’t think we were really talking about it too much. Can you think of any examples as, as Patrick pulls out of his comment, were there anything that you can recall from a few decades ago where it was this kind of, oh man, some local action that Ripple out in this way.

I can’t, like if you’re going back a couple of decades, I can’t. I think part of the thing that’s different now is social media. It’s like social media is really kind of that’s what I was doing over the past five to 10 years. And so over the past five to 10 years, we’re talking about this stuff more globally than we ever have before.

So I think that might be part of the reason. I wondered about social media. I also wondered about just overall globalization and the production of goods and, It’s always been, since World War II, it has been a constant conversation about trade deficits and how much is made somewhere else and then brought here, or how much do we make here and then send somewhere else for people to consume.

And I feel like in the past two decades, that’s reached a fever pitch in the form of there isn’t a whole lot made here anymore. So we end up with these moments of, well Yeah, the EU passing legislation is going to have that impact because the production is impacted directly in other locations. On the BMW conversation, BK Nesheim jumped into the conversation to say, with BMW and others, it’s not the old models that are the problem.

It’s the newer models. Matt had brought up an anecdote of saying at the BMW plant there were decades old BMWs being repaired and the issue that BK points out is that, well, yeah, it’s great that they were building things years ago that lasted this long, but are they still doing that? There’s a, there’s the conversation in the same vein by Daryl L. Rickman, who talked about BMW and the right to repair regarding BMW motorcycles. He wrote, regarding BMW and the right to repair, I am into BMW motorcycles. BMW sells many repair parts for bikes back into the 1950s. They have a division called Group Classic that is in charge of this. And it sounds like Matt was at Group Classic HQ on Moonschafer Strasse.

Which is also a historically registered building that BMW started in. But I also understand that complaints the people like Toastmaster are talking about when BMW started integrating a lot of electronics into the motorcycle, they could have used industry standard OBD ports for accessing vehicle information, but instead developed a proprietary port and software that, for a long time, was only available to their dealers.

And now there is a third party that provides compatible readers, But at a cost of about $400. An OBD reader usually costs about $25. He goes on to say, so BMW, in my experience, supports the DIYer, but also locks out customers. It’s, I think that that’s a fairly standard complaint in the comments on this one.

And I was just hoping you might jump in and respond along the idea of, it feels a little bit like these corporations are of two minds at the same time. People in the companies probably love that there are DIYers who want to dig in and do these things. And then there are other people in the companies who are like, how do we make sure we lock this down so that we are controlling how this is repaired, how this is dealt with, and what can happen to this machine.

And as the machines have gotten more complex, I’m sure there’s an Argument being made inside these corporations, that probably sounds like we need to make sure that this is locked down for intellectual property, because the software that is running in there, we wrote that, or we need to lock it down from a safety perspective, because if somebody goes in and screws around with something, they made it inadvertently make the car unsafe or the vehicle unsafe.

And there’s a certain number of things that are at odds in that. And I’m wondering, not necessarily BMW, but just from your research and looking at a variety of technological fields, everything from production of solar panels all the way to cars and everything in between, can you think of any other examples where there seems to be a tension in the development of something, where the company seems to be saying or performing in a way that shows they’re not in step with themselves and their customers where they’re producing a thing and saying, here it is, go have at it. But at the same time, locking it down in a way that keeps customers from doing everything they exactly want to do.

Oh my god, throw a rock at any product today. This is, this is, this is where it’s like, I sometimes am not in complete lockstep with some people in the DIY community on this because a lot of anger comes out and assumptions are made of it’s purely, you know, planned obsolescence and they just, it’s a pure profit motive and that is absolutely part of it, but that’s not the only part of it. And you hit on a couple of the things. There are very rational reasons to do it for security, to lock things down, to make sure that your product can’t be hacked easily, uh, to ensure that when your parts are getting replaced, that they’re being replaced in a way where it’s like, if there’s a security protocol that has to happen between different hardware components, that it’s, it’s locked down and secure where if a third party’s doing it.

You don’t know if it’s being done properly. So there’s reasons why companies would want to kind of lock it down. Um, the probably the most famous and talked about one is Apple is like notorious for like saying one thing and then doing another thing that’s like, wait, wait, that kind of contradicts everything you say you’re doing over here.

But what you’re saying over here is a valid concern and a reason, but why the hell are you doing it over here? You could kind of go back to like how people get angry at Apple for, they create all these proprietary cables so that you have to buy cables. Uh. I don’t buy that. Do you know how much a cable costs?

How much what their profit margins are on a cable versus the profit margin on a phone? You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s, you’re talking pennies or quarters. It’s like, it’s not worth it to them for the selling cable argument. But there’s this weird issue with Apple where it’s like, they’re on the board that helped create USB C, but USB C wasn’t becoming a standard fast enough for them.

And they wanted to get rid of the dock connector that they used to have. So they created the lightning cable because they wanted to iterate and move faster than the standards bodies were moving. So they created the lightning cable. It was like, okay, makes sense. I understand why you came up with the lightning cable after the dock.

And then USBC finally started to get standardized and take off and started to move. It’s like, okay, that’s it. Come on, Apple, let’s go to USBC now, because that’s what you, you said. That’s, that’s the thing that you were part of the standards body for and you wanted to do, and they weren’t moving to it and they weren’t moving to it and they weren’t moving to it.

And suddenly the EU is like, Hey, yo, Apple, it’s been like a decade. Can you please move to USBC? And they’re like, fine, dragging their feet. So it’s, it’s one of those things of. In the early days, they’re like, we’re doing this for security. It has more functionality than a typical USB cable and the technology can provide.

So that’s why we’re doing it. And then it’s a decade later, it’s like that argument is now gone, but yet you’re not changing. And at that point, it’s kind of like, what is really going on here?

You think there’s a sunk cost fallacy at work there? Are they like, we’ve built things around this lightning cable that now pulling back to the USB C is going to take time and effort that we don’t feel is worth it.

I like, I don’t know. It’s like, at that point you’re reading the tea leaves. It’s like only people inside Apple will know for sure. And then those of us outside are trying to come up with correlations and causation and all this kind of stuff and making up stories about their pure evil because they want to make profits on selling cables and they’re changing cables to make a profit and all that kind of stuff.

And it’s like, I don’t buy that stuff wholesale. That’s part of the Rationale, maybe, but it’s like, it’s not, it’s, it’s a, it’s a whole mess of gray area with all these companies, with BMW, Apple, just, um, I have a 3D printer from a company called Bamboo. Love that printer. It’s like the first 3D printer that’s kind of like an appliance.

Take it out, plug it in, open an app. You don’t have to be super familiar with this stuff. It just works. It’s, it’s fantastic. But they just put out a firmware update that, Basically locks out a whole bunch of functionality that was built into the system where it’s like it’s, it has local control. So like, if you want to use a different piece of software to do your 3d modeling and send that data to the printer to print, they basically just lock that down in this new firmware update.

And it’s got the whole community up in arms as to like, why would you do that? It’s, it’s, it’s frustrating when you see companies do decisions like this, where they make the decisions because of the rationale of security. And you can understand why they’re saying what they’re saying, but the way they implement all of these changes leaves a lot to be desired.

And it comes across as, no, you’re just trying to do a, uh, a, like build a moat around competition at this point. So it’s, This is why I do like the DIY community for pushing back and trying to hold these companies feet to the fire of like, this is unacceptable. You can’t do it this way. But at the same time, I’m not a subscriber to the conspiracy theories of, yeah, it’s, it’s only for profit.

It sounds very much like you just, uh, put into your own words what Zila in the comments said, which is, I think there’s a good reason that some manufacturers don’t use universal standards. If a product is vertically integrated, it has a higher potential to innovate. It’s there’s that, well, we’re producing the phone and the charging.

So, like once we’ve got it working, why would we change? And if it’s as simple as why would we change, and if it’s as simple as pushing things on the spreadsheet to the next quarter, because right now, like, oh, finances right now, it makes more sense for us to push it to next quarter, and that keeps happening over a two year period, and then forces on the outsider, like, they’re nefarious.

And I’m not saying that it’s, I’m not trying to defend Apple or any specific corporation, but there is an old saying, which is don’t attribute, don’t attribute to nefarious goals what could be attributed to stupidity. It is in some cases, like it’s just people not doing what they said they were going to do.

That’s. That’s basically where I sit on the spectrum. It’s just like, I don’t subscribe, you know, like, it’s not like nefarious evil purposes. Oftentimes, it’s just somebody just made a bad decision. It like, it just made a bad call. And that could have led to this whole thing. And it wasn’t something that somebody was like twiddling their mustache going, we can make more profit.

It’s like, of course, that’s going to be part of the conversation, but it’s not the main motivator or cause sometimes of some of these decisions. I would also like to share this final comment from our most recent episode. This one stood out to me as one that I think would be, here we are, January 19th as we record this, it’ll be obviously later than that as you consume it, but Mac Fisher jumps into the comments and says, Sean, as I just recycled my Christmas tree, might I suggest the Ferrell’s Corporate Naughty or Nice list?

And I really like that idea. So I, I’m going to suggest to Matt, I didn’t talk to him about this before we started recording, but I’m hoping he’ll be on board as we go through the year. If you see a corporation doing something nice, jump into the comments and put a hashtag nice list and a description of that.

And if you see a corporation doing something naughty, do the same. Hashtag naughty list. Yeah. And leave a comment with a description. And what we’ll do is we might visit them during the year and pull out some as you point things out to us. It also is an easy way for you to kind of spawn on the types of videos that Matt is going to put together on his main channel.

If you, I think in particular, Matt would be interested in the nice list. If you see those things that look like positive developments, I think he’s going to jump on those and probably use those as a means of either adding to video ideas that he’s already working on, or maybe spurring on new video ideas.

So that’s, that’s a great thing there. But then at the end of this year, the year of our Lord, 2025, I would like to be able to revisit the naughty and nice list and take a look at what you’ve all been seeing and, and maybe take a little bit of a, of an opportunity to track those comments and see what has gone on during the year. What do you think about that, Matt?

I like that idea. I do like the idea of having a naughty or nice list and having the group kind of help source this information as to like what they’re seeing as naughty and nice. Yeah, and you’re a hundred percent right Sean. I like to focus on the nice list as an example of here’s what you should be doing, I’d rather, instead of like, was it the carrot versus the stick? Yeah. You wanna be a carrot on the carrot? Yeah. Yeah.

Agreed. It’s a lot. It’s a lot more fun being in the carrot when you’re trying to be a stick tasty. Usually because you’re working out some shit of your own. But when you’re a carrot, it’s just a lot, it’s a lot nicer.

On now to our conversation about Matt’s most recent. This is the five best things I saw in Vegas at CES. 2025. Well, you asked for it, Matt, and they responded. You said, let me know which of these you’d like to know more about. And for the most part, the comments were just, yeah, talk about this. And then somebody will be like, no, talk about this.

And somebody else will talk more about this. So you got a little bit of it all. So people in the comments were looking at, Pretty much everything you talked about and saying, yes, give us more of that. Like Swanson who said, jet engine follow up, please. And Richard Zeit who said yes to the compostable batteries that are made out of paper.

And well, Lame Wolf says, fantastic episode. I’m super curious about Jackery’s offerings for the solar roof system. And would like to see a deeper dive on that. So when it comes to you saying, which of these would you like to know more about? The answer was, yes. So, okay, is it safe for me to assume that these things that you talked about, I imagine a majority of them you were going to do a deeper dive on.

I would not say majority. I would say probably a minority of them, but like maybe 30 percent of them are things that we’ve put on our idea list. Like the compostable paper battery one was one that I immediately put on my list, but just wanted to confirm from viewers of like, do you want to hear about this?

Cause I want to hear about this. I already had that on my list, but I was surprised at the number of people who talked about the jet engine. That was the one that I was interested in. Yeah. Yeah. I was very interested in that. I just watched a video. It’s not, I don’t believe it’s new, but it is a panel at some sort of conference around sustainability and basically it seemed like it was a conference around the idea of like, what can industry do to make the world work better?

And it was a panel where an individual was asked a question and this individual was a historian. And he was basically like, this is all ludicrous because everybody here is super, super rich and everybody’s talking about what can we do? And the answer is going to always be taxes. And it was a very, very good video.

I’ll see if I can find the link to it and provide it to you, Matt. Maybe if you want to put it in the show notes, you could do that. But he pointed out, he said, we’re having this conference about, you know, impact on the world and everybody came here in private jets. Yeah. It’s like, and I found myself as I was watching your video after having seen that, I found myself thinking like, well, this would have a tremendous impact of, you know, measurable sorts to say if a plane could take off and land and you could say it’s carbon footprint was a 10th of what it would have been a year earlier, that will be remarkable.

And that’s something to shoot for. So I was very, very interested in that. Was that a model of a, of an idea, or is this a company that’s just like, we’re actually testing these things? So there are other companies that are already doing, I don’t want to say electric flight alone, but like cleaner flight. Um, there’s companies like ZeroAvia.

Um, I’ve, I did a video, I’ve done videos on electric flight before. And the one, my one hesitation with doing something on Wright Electric that jet engine I saw. It’s just people don’t seem to want to watch videos about flight on my channel, which I find every time I put something out about flight in any way, shape or form, it’s just like a lead balloon.

Nobody watches it. And it’s like, but yet I see comments like this of like people like, oh yeah, more on that. It’s like, well, where are the people that Say this, that aren’t what it’s like. I don’t understand the connection of it seems to get people going. Right, but, so you don’t wanna make a, this is definitely, you don’t wanna make a video just for Liam Wolf and Me is what you, okay.

Uh, but it’s like that they are on my list of possible ideas that we’re gonna look into more. I’m gonna have, I’m gonna probably reach out to Wright, to have additional conversations with them, but like Zero Avia is doing test flights of their prototype plane using their engines. Um, but they’re selling their engines to third parties to, to make the actual plane, but they have planes that have it on it.

The company I talked to at, uh, CES, they basically have the engine and what they’re trying to design is the whole package, not the plane itself, but the whole package to power it as well. Cause the big question around electric flight is batteries. Like how, like, how How do you get enough energy into the plane?

Because right now aviation fuel has so much energy in a small amount of space. That’s why it works for the volume and the weight and all that kind of stuff. And with batteries, that’s not the case yet. So they’re also developing their own battery system that will have a high enough energy density to make it work.

That sounded like in my conversation that that’s the piece of the puzzle they’re still working on. Yeah. Even though they have an electric engine that works, it’s like, this is the thing that actually works. Now they’re, they’re basically building the part that’s like going to fuel it. So it, for them, it doesn’t sound like they have any kind of working prototype, like plane.

But they have the engine and now they’re doing the energy storage to kind of power it. Yeah, I personally am, put me on the list of people who are looking forward to a follow up on that if you are able to put one together. I find it fascinating. Another one that really caught people’s attention, the AI monitored walking stick effectively.

Glidance. Lintha Wall jumped into the comments and said, As a sighted person, that smart walking cane thing is absolutely game changing. I’ve personally had to assist countless people over the years that got turned around and lost their way from their mental map for whatever reason, and were frustrated and even sometimes in a full panic.

To have effectively Google Maps and LiDAR in a rolling stick with the ability to audibly interact with the user is genius. That is good use of AI. Not content creation, But helping humanity. I just had a conversation with some people in my family about AI and whether ethical AI is even a possibility. And then I watched your video and I was just like, well, I can’t imagine anybody arguing that a cane that’s helping non sighted people be able to navigate the world more safely and easily would be a problem.

And, and I was wondering, did you see anything else there, which was AI focused in the disability community in whatever aspect? Tools or things for the home or office that were to help with accessibility issues. Yes, there was one I saw last year, they were about to show it again this year I think, but it’s like, um, kind of, it was like a, think of AirPods, so it’s like a headphone that can act as a, not just as like a hearing aid, But it can isolate voices and it uses AI models, machine learning models, to do voice isolation.

And it not only just gets rid of the noise and lets the voice itself come through, it can isolate specific voices. So if you’re, let’s say you’re a party and you’re hard of hearing. And it’s a very noisy room and there’s three people talking to you and a couple people are having side conversations and you’re trying to listen to the person right in front of you.

You can basically, at the push of a button on your phone, have your headphones focus in on like you, I’m talking to you, and then everybody else kind of fades out. Or I’m having a conversation with two people. I can say, focus on these two people. And have a conversation with them. Crazy cool technology.

That kind of stuff. I got all like excited about it. This year it’s not necessarily accessibility for like people with hearing impairments or sight impairments. They have this device that’s like the size of a phone. And it can speak or translate, I can’t remember how many languages, like a hundred languages or something like that.

And doesn’t do it of course in real time. There’s a lag. But I know this software exists, Google Translate on your phone, like we can only kind of do this, but it requires cloud services and all this kind of stuff, and this is a dedicated device, that’s all it does is this, and so I want to go to countries I can’t speak the language, and having something like this would be incredible, but they also have a pair of headphones.

that you can put in and it will basically like going to the UN and somebody’s giving a speech in French and you don’t speak French and there’s like a lag of a translator in your ear talking to you. That’s what this device does. And I was just like, Oh boy. So imagine having the headphones and this little device in your hand.

And it’s like, you could have this translating people to you almost in real time, not real time, but close to real time in your ear about what they’re saying. And then you could speak back and show them the screen. It would translate what you’re for them to see. So it’s like, This kind of stuff is game changing stuff.

It’s going to open up the world to a whole bunch of people that couldn’t travel places or do things or communication. It’s just like, I also love, I also love the fact that this company on their big posters at their booth talked about how it was a babble fish. And if you’re a fan of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I was like, I love you just for that reference, calling it a babble fish.

Really cool tech. That kind of tech is the stuff that gets me super excited at CES. Very cool. There was also a vote from Paul to cover Aptera. This was the ultra efficient electric car that has such a small battery, it actually makes sense to put solar panels on it, in his words. Do you want to talk a little bit now about Aptera?

What did you see that made them stand out? I didn’t see them at CES, but I’ve seen them before at other events. I’ve also spoken to the company a couple of times, so I’m very familiar with them. I did a video on solar powered cars, do they make sense and talked about Aptera in that video. It’s a car that’s been in development for years now , and they’re super close to finally starting to deliver vehicles to their pre-order folks. I know a bunch of people are excited about this. Technically it’s not a car, it’s technically sold as a motorcycle cos it’s got 3 wheels, So it’s kind of this, they don’t have to abide by certain car standards because it’s actually technically a three wheel vehicle, even though it’s a car sized thing.

And it’s got this weird teardrop shape for aerodynamics. And it’s, it’s really bananas. It’s got two seats in it, a huge trunk, very cool that it can like charge. I think it’s like up to 40 miles a day. If you just leave it out in the sun, which is more than enough for an average drive in the US. I think it’s cool, but, um, sounds like this is where it’s like a paradigm shift, like just from a visuals perspective, it might be something that people question.

So remember when the Cybertruck was announced and everyone was like, what the hell is that? Um, that is my attitude towards Aptera of, it’s a cool idea, it’s a cool concept, and it’s going to have a niche audience that’s going to be like, I am there for this. And then once you get past that niche audience, everybody else is going to be on, what?

No. Pass. It is such a unique looking vehicle that’s going to turn a lot of people off. Uh, the second aspect of it that I have huge questions about is. No offense to Aptera, but it seems like it’s very developed and focused for warmer climates. I have no idea how well this thing would perform in Maine in the heart of winter.

You know what I mean? It’s like, you’re not going to get 40 miles added to that Car Day, you’d probably be lucky to get a couple miles added per day, uh, with that. And then it’s lightweight. And does it have enough traction for the snow and the icy conditions? So there’s this, there’s this whole aspect of, of, for me, it is such a niche vehicle.

It will never be mainstream, but maybe it becomes like a Vespa. And it’s just a thing that in certain parts of the world, it’s popular and other parts of the world, it’s not. And maybe that’s okay. But as soon as. But as soon as you try to apply this kind of same thinking to a regular vehicle, it’s when it’s apparent, and this is why I talked about my previous solar car video, it’s apparent that it’s not viable.

Because when you’re talking about a normal kind of car with the weight and all that kind of stuff, you might be adding 10 miles of range a day. And how much extra does it cost to integrate those solar panels into the vehicle? And it’s like, does it really even make sense? Um, and in most cases it doesn’t.

I’m definitely not anti Aptera. I am pro Aptera. I think they’re a really cool company. I’m very excited for them to start delivering these vehicles and see them on the roads. It’s going to be really awesome, but it’s just going to be a very niche vehicle for a very particular Subset of use cases and regions around the world.

I don’t think it’s ever going to be a mainstream thing. We shall see. Finally, there was this from Elizabeth who just wanted to give you a slap on the back and say, wow, this was by far the best review of CES 2025 I’ve seen so far. Everybody else seems fixated on TVs and smartphones. I really look forward to the coming episodes on both home tech and clean energy.

In that vein, do you want to shout out any particular smartphone or TV that you saw that stood out and made you say like, well, that’s pretty cool? Uh, I’m a fan of LG and same thing happened last year. It’s like last year was transparent televisions, which I’m just kind of like, Neat tech, but what’s the point?

Everybody seemed to be doubling down on transparent TVs and LGs. Is this because we need to be able to watch TV while we’re driving? What is the? The idea, the pitch that they’re making, which I don’t think This is one of those, like, a company comes up with a technology that’s really kind of like interesting and they think this is the use case for it, but then they put it out in the world and then people find other use cases for it.

It’s like curved televisions. It’s like, what’s the point of a curved TV? They, they, they made up a use case that didn’t happen, but then it became a little more popular, like gaming monitors, kind of a thing where this transparent tech, they’re selling it as you don’t want that big hundred inch black slab hanging on your wall.

It’s ugly. Well, you could have this thing that just looks like a frame, and then when it’s not being used, you see the wall behind it. Or you could make it look like there’s a painting in the middle of it, and then you see through it. So it’s like, it can become less of a eyesore in your room. And I’m like, less of an eyesore in my room for 10, 000, I think I’ll buy the cheaper TV and put up a black slab.

So it’s like, there’s, there’s issues in how they’re promoting it, but I got to tell you, it is cool technology. When you see it in person, it really is eye popping and amazing. That’s like, Oh, you can see through it. And suddenly it’s opaque and black and it’s like a regular TV. It’s really cool stuff. Um, so for me, LG and their TVs, they were pushing this year.

I was the most impressed by, on top of which they have wireless technology. Where the big problem is like you have this TV, you hang it on your wall, and then you’ve got like your cable box and your Apple TV and your other things that you’re plugging into it and all these cables are hanging on your wall or something like this.

This is just all you have to do is plug in the power and it has a separate breakout box that you plug stuff into that you can scroll away in an entertainment center off in the corner and it wirelessly transmits the video and audio signal to the TV. Really cool. I don’t know how well it’s going to work for gaming.

There might be an additional lag there for a gamer, but like, that’s really cool. Um, I think that has more practical purpose than a transparent television, but for me again, coming back, I think LG had the most impressive TVs that I saw while I was there. Interesting. So listeners, viewers, what did you think?

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