CES

This week, Dick is back with a gadget he saw at Showstoppers during CES. The Manta5 Hydrofoiler XE-1, world’s first production hydrofoil bike launched in the U.S. at CES. Using the same technology as America’s Cup sailboats, and seven years in development, the Hydrofoiler is the first bike of its kind to replicate the cycling experience on water. The New Zealand-based company sold out the initial pilot production run in six months, after their short video of the hydrofoil prototype went viral, amassing more than 350 million views on Facebook.

Sam is back from CES and joins Leo to talk about what he saw. What surprised Sam was the Sony Vision S Concept Car. A 4 door electric sedan, it looks a lot like a Tesla. The car was built by Magna International, which creates a lot of the parts that come in today's cars. They also build cars in Europe for Toyota, Jaguar, and others. This doesn't mean that Sony is getting into the car manufacturing business, but was meant to showcase all the electronics that they make for the Car industry.  

Dickie D is back from Las Vegas, where he joined Leo on his excellent CES adventure. Dickie D likes to look for the crazy tech at CES. One device is Project NESSA, where women can virtually try on different outfits and warn you if you've worn an outfit before to a specific event. But the find of the day was the Smart Potato. the $34 Smart Potato inserts a blade-like device to use 'potato energy' to power the Bluetooth antenna attached to the inserted electronic card. Then, you can use your potato just like Alexa or Google Home. Just say “Hey Potato” and ask your question.

Johnny Jet is back to talk about CES. Delta has a binge button, where you can binge a TV show without interruption while on a long flight. Website of the week - FlightConnections.com. This website will tell you what connections any flight makes, the hubs they fly into, cheaper airports you can fly into, and more. 

Scott joins Leo to talk about all he saw at CES 2020. One of the nifty things he saw was an OLED gaming monitor that was 4K OLED with a variable 360fps refresh rate. 8K TVs were everywhere, including a 292" Wall by Samsung. MicroLEDs are the next generation TV, and while we're a few years away from being affordable, the technology will be the future once they make the production of the MLEDs scalable for production. Another trend was "miniLED." Tens of thousands of dimming zones and LEDs make for more consistent lighting from light to dark. TCL will be offering miniLEDs this year. 

Dickie D joins Leo to talk about CES. Dick goes every year, and he loves to see the craziest gadgets, the ones that will never see the market.  One such device is the Wow Cube. 24 LCD screens that look like a Rubix Cube. $249. There's also the Ember Labs Wrist Watch that can cool or heat your body.  Then there's the WELT Smart Belt. It's a belt that will predict if you're going to fall and warn you. It also measures your daily activity. $250.

CES begins next week and Scott joins Leo for the 16th straight year to talk about what we can expect to see. In fact, they met at CES during the first week of the Tech Guy 16 years ago. What can we expect? Scott says we'll see more 8K displays, which Leo says is rather silly. Just how realistic do we need TVs to get to real life? Scott says that while resolution is one consideration, there is a greater sense of depth, thanks to HDR and video processing. So the depth of field looks more realistic. Upscaling will look much better as well, like going from HD to 8K. Or 4K to 8K.