2024 CES Show Day 2

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I am CEDIA, I am CEDIA, I am CEDIA, this is the CEDIA media CEDIA podcast. All right. Hello and welcome to another CEDIA Podcast. I'm Walt Zerby, Senior Director of Technology and Standards and your host for the CEDIA podcast. This is day two of the CES show. And I'm still seeing a ton of people around the show. And I have two great friends here to give us their perspective on what they've seen what they've experienced at the show. So I'll start off, I'm just gonna get the names. We have Rob Saban, and we have Jim Hunter and, Rob, we'll start with you let everybody know who you're with what your deal is. Also, thank you for volunteering for Sr. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Jim as well, Jim's volunteered for CD as well on Technology Council. And and rob you you have you're currently involved in the RP 23, immersive audio design recommend immersive video design recommended practice. So yeah, yeah. So I'm Rob saiping. I'm the editor in chief at projector Central or projector central.com. And, you know, projectors is our beat. That's all we do. So I've been here at CES for the last couple of days kind of scouting out the projection activity. And fortunately, it's been an interesting show. So I've got some things to talk about. I thought so too. As I walked around, I thought there was a lot to talk about. So that's good. Jim, my name is Jim Hunter. I'm a serial entrepreneur who's finding therapy and building a new startup.

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This is we've talked about this earlier, guys, I'm this is my 29th. Ces is Robert. Here's what 30 seconds. Oh, yeah, there.

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We have to call him Papa. Yeah.

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Yeah, veterans. So I'm doing a new startup around data and empowering people to be able to sell their own data to change the relationship. But I'm a longtime IoT, love anything that's connected. So my lens has been really defined the next generation of products that are coming, that may or may not be leveraging AI, but specifically are solving problems by taking measuring and providing a new value proposition on top of the data that they're collecting. And this is cool, because we've talked about data is the new oil for a long time. And it feels like it's just being stolen or not maximized. And that's where you come in, that makes us the dinosaur. Yeah. How did it work out for them? I like to say actually,

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the same way, the new wine, because the value of the data dies on the vine if you don't actually take care of it. But once you once you find ways to find the best quality of it, then it changes the game entirely. Right. And when we start talking about data, and I'm not gonna get into it right now, but I think that's the real opportunity. Now, Jim, we should have a separate podcast on the state of business. I would love that. All right, that sounds cool. Because that's something that's a concern to every planet that consume every person that consumes on the planet. And I personally feel responsibility because it's my generation that actually said, Okay, let's go ahead and just have a checkbox piracy allowed so that anybody who wants to take the data can, yeah, they just have to be responsible with it. And that's absolutely ludicrous, because the people who actually are generating the oil, yeah, don't get any of the revenue. So it's time to change that. Okay. I will blame you for it, then, Tim. I'll take it. I'll take it because I'm fixing it. I'm fixing it. Alright, let's get into it. Um, gosh, I saw a ton today I concentrated personally on the Venetian area. Myself, and But Rob, I wanted to get you. So as you know, we obviously discussed we had Mr. Heiss on who's kind of a flat panel on a technology guy, and a marketing and sales guy, like what's happening on the business side of video, entertainment media, that stuff. You I love that you are solely focused on projectors. We've seen awesome changes in growth in the projector world in the past couple of years. And yeah, it looks like it's continued. It's

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led us at it. Yeah, it's really evolving. I'll tell you what was interesting for me at the show is that I saw I mean, I have been watching the trends, obviously, over the last couple of years. And we're seeing a really dramatic shift away from what a CEDIA guys would call the projector market. Yeah, into a completely different sort of mindset about what a projector is what you use it for. And really, if you if I had to sum up, what ces sort of communicates, if you walked around and just looked at projectors and didn't necessarily have a history and, you know, home theater boxes, you'd be Oh, these are all mass market products. These are not enthusiast products. This right this is it's it's it's entirely now about selling projection to a broad mass market audience in a way that we never have before. And this couple of new product categories that were very, very much, I think, reinforced at this show with some new introductions and it works out because this is the Consumer Electronics Show. Well, exactly right. And you know, what's fascinating too, is that at some level you look at it and you go wow, this industry is like giving itself life support. Because you know, pretty

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After central.com, you don't think we look at what's happening with flat panels with with LED tiles and go, you know, where does this business go from here. And what's really happening is that these new products are emerging that are really designed to kind of use the power of the big image to the big images of what's driving. And then it always is, it's tremendous to write with an affordable cost as weather why projection still lives and and one of the things that I think is most interesting is that so many of the pain points that had previously been associated with projectors have as a consequence of technology evolution in the last couple of years, become, they've gone away because those products are becoming more affordable. And in particular, I'm talking about eliminating bulbs and lamps, right. Yeah, right. Everything's laser and it was it was a quality would go down quickly, slowly over time. And that's, that's right. That's not happening. Right. So now you have solid state light engines. We're not even seeing any even in the budget arena, except for a few pieces here or there. We're not even seeing new introductions anymore. With lamps. It is all laser and led. I would also say that in addition, there's the accessory market for that, like, I think that the ALR screens that allow you to actually have it when you're in a normal room so you don't have to go all blackout Absolutely. Jim this absolutely has enhanced this market as well because not having the downlights you know, mess up that image I have that myself and it changed the game. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you're the perfect example of the kind of customer that we're talking about now. So you know, the two big trends that are emerging in this industry are number one, you know, the old classic home theater projector which is in less and less in demand is giving way now to the living room TV projector we call the laser TV projector right there. The high sense create that kind of coined that term. I sense Did you know what it's actually believe it or not, I believe that that is actually a Chinese market sort of standard. Okay, so laser TV is one thing and that but we've adopted as an industry now talk about it, you know, it's a good way to describe it at some level. Some of these are they're not going to be all laser by the way because the LED engines are getting more and more powerful. So you're gonna see kind of a mix of those things. But as a category we've been using at projector central the term laser TV to describe this evolution of product. I would argue that the James Bond villains will still insist this laser

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Yeah, yeah, it's funny because we talk about the potential dangers, you know, the health dangers of having a laser projector, all of these things will turn off if you know your toddler goes up and piques his eyes into it. You know, so are you while you're trying to align it

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to having a senior moment with a psychedelic? You know, laser? That was a laser, who was that? Was the character's name. Yeah. So that's, that's Mike Myers. Yeah. And it's Mike Myers. And it is Dr. Evil Dr. Evil Oh, my laser Exactly.

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Right to a man dropping these pop references you to pick them up. There you go. Yeah, so so so the two things that we saw at the show really are number one more and more and more of these laser TVs coming out from a lot of brands you've never heard of before, you know, there's only really probably two or three major OEMs that produce a lot of these products. You seeing a lot of brands come in, and they you know, they think we're gonna see those brands in the US. Well, they are here now. They are they're being sold. You know, there are some examples of some of those brands. Yes. So for example, next up never heard of that right. Brand new manufacturer. They're doing a fairly they're doing a I don't know, it's a 2400. They've got a big booth, by the way, on the floor in LVCC. So he's invested. Yeah, no, that's not cheap. No, I'll tell you what, a lot of these companies that are coming in a very well funded, you can see that they have marketing dollars a wall vision, maybe you've never been heard or maybe know that what are those? They've been doing a lot of promotion lately. ultra, ultra media. I mean, where do these people come from? Right. Running shoes. Yeah. So So you're seeing a lot of these projectors. A lot of them are RGB laser projectors, meaning they're using these discrete red, green and blue laser engines. We can talk a little bit about the technology because some of the breakthrough stuff I've seen at the show is all about making those RGB lasers look better. We talked a little bit earlier about speckle you and I yeah, I said I have an issue. Yeah, looking at ALR screens and speckled just once I see it, I can't unsee it but I would argue it's not the ALR screen, but it's actually the specific laser engine that you are looking at mostly most of the L most of the RGB laser engines are really have some degree of speckled that you can see if you're looking for it. And some of the technological advances that we're seeing are all about what do we do to eliminate

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that now spec has been around for a long time. You know, if you're the barcodes of the world or the Christie's of the world, you've been struggling with how to control speckle in the cinema world. Because RGB laser. Why is that coherent light? And that's exactly what it is. Right? Yeah, exactly what it is. And we should. Yeah. So there's, I don't think I've observed this speckle for my laser projector. But I observed the rainbow effect. Yes. I know that one.

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Though your head really quick. Yeah, those are the two things. Yeah. So as long as they strap you into the gurney, so your head doesn't move. You don't get the rainbow effect, I actually increases with drinking. Well, it increases with denial and that stay stay. Oh, it's directly proportional to the amount of investment that you make. Because you can just make

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because drinking helps.

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Like a good bourbon with your RGB projector to kind of, you know, smooth things out. But, you know, to the point and you know, your projector, we spoke a little bit about the fact that you've got an LG try laser projector, ultra short throw, right. So what are the manufacturers do to try to control this speckle? And for people who haven't seen it, speckle is like, you wouldn't call it it's sort of like a layer of grain like film grain, except it doesn't. It's not integrated into the image. It sort of floats. Yeah, it's like artifacts. It's an artifact that sort of floats above the image. And if you move your head around, particularly on a white background, or bright background, maybe a blue sky, you know, you sort of see that there's sort of something in there, that's a little not right now, if a really bad projector that's not been well executed, it's very distracting. And you give me an example of a model or brand that is doing a good job on that right now. And well. So let's talk about we can very specifically, let me first talk about the LG projectors, because even three years ago, LG made the decision not to do discrete, red, green and blue because they knew that was an issue. So what they do is I think they do red and green. And then they use a phosphor for the blue, and maybe it's a fossil for the green. So they basically, purposely don't have three coherent laser sources that would increase the speckle. An example of someone who didn't do that was Samsung, who, by the way, upgraded all of their projectors at this show, back in the day, the right way, but they were the first to come out with a consumer RGB ultra short throw projector. And the LSP 90, which is the model I'm talking about has fairly severe laser speckle, which we commented on in our review of it. So it's all about how do you control that? So manufacturers are looking for different ways to do that. One of the highlights of the show was this x Jimmy Max project. Yeah. And that's the one I talked to you about. Yes. So let's just physically talk about this thing. It's about what 12 to 14 inches wide, very, eight 810 inches tall, six inches deep. And on almost like think of it like a like an angle bracket. Like you'd have an outdoor speaker Yes. And it's a beautiful and beautiful industrial design but it does not look anywhere near the projector that acedia person would be yes on the other hand just to put that aside for a moment that projector along with some of its other advances also received IMAX enhanced certification so when they told me that I'm like wait a minute Yeah, yeah, like I look at this little box I'm like really? Okay, so you interpret IMAX but I didn't know that actually received IMAX or if it is it is an IMAX certified projector. I think the only other projectors I know about that are IMAX certified if some of the Sony's right the Sony's high end Sony's so and that projector that we're talking about, which is this really compact, by the way under under $3,000. Not going to be a super expensive piece of cream. Do you think it can project? Well, they showed it I don't know if you saw the demo there but they had 180 inch mouth so I went to another booth at I got a booth and had that projector they had it like on it was the picture is like two feet wide. Oh, so I gotta go to the main booth. Yeah, go to the exhibit booth. They are showing it on 180 inch screen. And I gotta tell you something. It looks gray tan with high ambient light, I mean during the night in a dark room. So they're showing the they're showing the Enhance, you can see that projector doing in ambient light at their booth. But in that particular room where they're showing off the IMA or the IMAX enhanced performance. It's on 180 matte white screen, and it looks really really good. What's the lumens on that thing? You know what I? I don't remember I'm sorry, but I think it's gonna be it's be less than it'll probably be around 2800 I'm thinking less than the dark room. It'll be let no not really. We're kind of screams it'll not really. You want to laugh? Yeah, I love laughing was wallpaper.

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I'm not familiar with that brand. It was white to actually recommending that it be 2038

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Was it was white we asked I asked it was white wallpaper. That's just what they put on it. That's phenomenal. 80 inches and it looked really good. And to the point that we were talking about so laser speckle, right, this was an I got my face, right. And that's called the horizon Mac, it's called the horizon Mac. So they have had a product that they introduced last year, called the horizon Ultra. And again, if you think about this notion of what are they trying to do, there's very there's a very well integrated company, they're very vertically integrated, they do pretty much everything themselves. What are they doing from an engineering standpoint to try to make these projectors as pain free as possible? First thing is, is there they have some of the most sophisticated auto setup technology I've ever seen. I mean, the alignment Yes, it's it's a combination of auto Keystone so that it will align the image if it's if it's not a perfect rectangle. It is autofocus really, really fast obstacle avoidance. So if you happen to take this because the whole point of these projectors is not that it's going to be installed as a permanent thing. You take it out, you throw it in, you set it you throw it up on a wall or whatever you're doing, if it encounters a picture frame, or a you know, wall outlet, it'll go oh, that's not supposed to be there. I'll shrink the image down.

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Yeah, so it's it's really sophisticated stuff. What happens when it goes senile? I've seen that auto keystoning that it auto keystones to get it right and then it continues to try to auto Keystone even though it's not moving. Yeah, it just becomes a psychedelic, you have to get it right but at some of the projectors don't do it as well as others but theirs is very sophisticated. They say here Dolby Vision eight will do IMAX net.

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One, it will. It's got 3100 ISO lumens 3100 ISO, okay, great. Yeah, that's good. 20 609 2000 to one contrast ratio, but it really looks very, very good. So So Rob, what does that mean for so I consider it another tool for industry. But But when these things are starting to now get this good? How would this is actually a real solution now versus a old school or the well? Mounted projector? Right? Yeah. You know, it's interesting, because that demo, I talked about that 180 inch demo. They've got it mounted up basically on the seal if you had done 122 Holy crap. Oh, it'd be even brighter. Yeah. Because of the size of it. Could they actually just power it from one of the many soffit lights? You've got? Yes. Hold it up that way. So you don't have to actually just don't dim it? Yeah.

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That's good for renters? Yeah. Well, actually, yeah, that's that's one of the reasons why ust is actually succeeding these days as well, because it's it's a rental market. So but what what was your I don't know where you want to take us with technology. I want to make sure we completely cover projection, I was going to ask what your best to show was, and I want to bring up a high sense thing. I would like to lean into this entire opportunity for marketing to change the world. I think when the first company that solves a spectral problem, they definitely should get Mel Brooks as a sponsor, because no speckle that's exactly where this needs to go. Absolutely. I want to talk about high sense. And barco. Right, and I talked to the guy and you can tell you can explain more about what they're doing. But when I went there was interesting. There was a barcode guy that was there talking about it. He said, They grabbed a high sense projector decided to play around, chopped off their light engine put their own in, just to see what would happen. Went the high senses. Look what we did. And they said you're now our keynote and we want to work with you. That was the story. Well, I'll tell you what, if you saw the demo, and came to it with a little bit of perspective, you would have been impressed enough to understand why.

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So that what you're talking about is is an ultra short throw projector that is a prototype that they're showing at the booth that they call barco. Brighton at Barco brights been a catchphrase for them for a long time. I think their blog is called Barco bride. But in particular, they're referring here to a technology that they have been working on primarily in the cinema world for a long time. And it's all about how do you get the best HDR performance out of a projector. Now, the most important thing to understand here is that a pre a projector is always got the same light engine on it right so there's a certain set amount it's not like a tv where you can do local dimming for a backlight. Right or take pixels down to zero. In the case of something like an OLED, you really are sort of stuck with this bright light and the best that you can do with the projector is Get down. You can shut down the pixels on a DLP chip to as low as you can and it's going to be that's the black level right? Same thing for the brightness you're only going to be able to get as much brightness as you can out of the maximum lumens. So the projector so here's here's what they did. And you know what I've only seen two

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Do projectors, I've only seen two approaches, let's say this is this would be the second one. But up until now, I was only aware of one projector that actually was able to modulate the, in essence, the the the light that's coming into the chip. And that's the Christie Eclipse. Oh yeah, that's not okay. Not not, which is a 300,000, or whatever it is. But but here's the thing. So the free car, right. And if you've seen it, you know, it's, you know, the blacks on that projector, it's like, breathtaking, you know, you go into a demo with that projector, you know, and everybody in the audience goes, because they can't believe how dark it is. But what they're doing there is they've got six DLP chips, and they use one set of chips. It's a, like a three chip projector, but it's really a six chip, because they use one set of chips to basically modulate how much light the actual imaging chip is going to get. So if there's a dark, brilliant, right, so there's a dark area in the right hand corner and a bright thing in the left bottom corner, that before the light even gets to the chip that's doing the imaging, they've already dimmed the, the upper right, and they have put a lap full light to hit. And I just think, see you when I hear that kind of a thing. It's amazing that it's not issues with audio thinking think about the processing power. Yeah, that's right has to be involved. So So I thought that was the only way to do this, which is a very expensive process. So I cornered the Barco. Guy, and I just went to you would and what they're doing is they're they're basically playing with phase modulation on the light in the projector. So some lasers. Well, it's it's lasers

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or weaponry. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's getting very militaristic, violent energy. But really, what's what's happening is that they are, they are able to basically steer the lights. So you, let's think of a kind of like a, I don't know, you know, you have a certain amount of horsepower, right? That light engine, if you could take the, the light that you do have, and really throw as much of as you need to into that upper right corner, maybe where you have a very bright thing and find a way to darken or use less light in that lower left corner, right, because the spaceship in outer space is up there. All right.

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The rest of it is the lack of space with some, some spit, you know, some stars, if you can actually steer the light energy to the spots that you want. Now you have an opportunity. So they're telling me that they can go 50% 50% darker than a traditional projector and steel p, right. But before it gets to the chip, they've already modulated the light though. They're monitoring the incoming signal. And they're saying, Okay, we know we're going to need more light here for this frame and less light here. They've already made those adjustments. They've modulated the light in such a way that they've steered it to those areas that they need 50% deeper blacks 500% brighter highlights, I think they said, 3000 nits today or something stupid. It's ridiculous. And you know, they it wasn't they didn't have the very, very best demo material. They had a couple of Claire's three, they had a transformer clip that was maybe the best of them. They also had forget, it was a Star Trek Beyond the clip, you know this, but they're a Star Trek phasers, because you can remember, they, you know, they were limited somewhat because of copyright thinks about what they could use.

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They they did have a barcode bright sort of billboard that they put up, which was powerfully right and dark at the same time. Yeah, it was. So yeah, that was the one I looked at and went oh, you know, how do you how do you get that done? You know? So that was really, I didn't see the like a projector in the booth this time. Was it there? Nope. Nope, like is not on the floor. I actually communicated with them and said, Hey, are you guys here? They were like, well, you know, we're just, you know, we felt we kind of get lost in the shuffle. Okay. I think some of that has to do with the fact that they're trying to disassociate as best as they can. With high since because it really is a high sense. Right. It's a high since platform. I didn't see Sonos on the floor either to switch to Oh, really? Yeah, I was gonna go see the price not on the floor. Yeah, I didn't see a booth in in the Venetian for them on the normal like were they might have a private meeting space or something. Yeah. Jim, let's move to you like you spend time and discussion today. And yep, the Venetian Eureka Park. I mean, is it like AI? Everything, right?

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Depends on where you go. In there. When you walk into a hall. See, for example, you've got all of the mobility stuff, all kinds of bikes, all kinds of technology like that. Yeah. And then as you head over, you go to the smart home stuff, the security stuff, that kind of stuff. But when you go to when you go to Amazon, there's special little areas and you go down Eureka Park AI is like every

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Where, but the interesting thing is real AI? Or do you think everyone's just drawing board around? Have you ever watched Portlandia? Now this is I can't claim responsibility for this comedy material. I have a friend Savannah, she came up with this. But the idea that Portlandia has this great episode where it's all sarcasm, right? And you're in a store, and to make the products more valuable, you put a bird on it, put a picture of a bird on lampshade and more valuable put a picture of a bird. So AI is like putting a bird on it. That's so foreign. That is exactly true. And your The question is, do you think is really AI? I think there's an opportunity for a company to come along with AI built into your camera to validate whether it's AI or not. Yeah, really call out? Yeah, it's likely machine learning a lot of these products and not really AI but exactly that it's data science of some sort. Yeah, AI, it's gonna write its own code. It's gotta be able to, you know, this, this quarter model of our greatest fears, just water bottles sentient there. Yeah. It is when you drink, like you're really nursing that drink. So it's going to actually check you into the hospital because you need therapy. Yeah. But to your point? Well, you know, because I receive all of the and I have an interest in digital health. Just a person. Oh, isn't that so? Yeah. So I signed up for that. I can't tell you how many emails came in to me prior to the show PR e mails that had AI in them. You know, you know, these people are just sort of claiming to have something that you know, they do the hot buzzword. And that's long been a problem. I've been on so many connections panels in the past where I would call people out, they would actually I'd be on a panel with folks. And they would say, Oh, we get AI? No, you don't? What's your AI? And then they talk about it? Thank you for doing that, Tim because somebody somebody signs out at the best edge. It's predictive, and he's ending up to be our police man for lots of stuff. Exactly. I need a badge that says sheriff's intent. Sheriff. Exactly. I love the verb ology. Sheriff. I'll make sure that everybody says the things the right way. Good. And I'm also going to have broken bones and black eyes because people don't like being called out. So Eureka Park, for those who don't know, is kind of startup land and way out in the future land.

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But it's also actually multi world representations. So that's down there as well. Yeah, not everything started by countries. They have zone areas, like countries, and then they sectionalize things based upon the area that they're in. Yeah. They're very narrow aisles. And when they start doing photo ops in there, you've got to, it's like you're an Uber driver trying to find the way around when I came to this hotel. I was dropped off the street because he didn't want to come into here. Right? Yeah, I think Yreka Park is the best place to catch a cold or something because you it is hot and

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cold. If you're donator Yeah. So did you What did you see anything down that really impressed you see, I breezed through there last year. And I was like,

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nothing really like caught my fancy. So there was an area of power, which has now exploded, which I want to talk about. Yeah. Absolute last year. And now that that's everywhere. Yeah, wireless power is is the wireless answer. And whole home backup for your battery is fully here now. Yeah. agree with that for sure. Yeah. But did you see anything that like you thought was just talking to you I love and it's, it's from It's from 1880s. And it's history doesn't repeat itself. But it often rhymes. We're seeing just more and more of the same with a different Claire, some people some people putting an advert on it, right there puts on us I

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there was a lot of interesting movements in gaming, specifically around interaction with games. So I saw like four or five little wearables that are haptic feedback gloves. Some of them were pretty cool. Some of them were let's just call them a science project. I saw a lot more water purification stuff we can actually take seawater and the solenoids it so if you wanted to survive at sea, and you had this thing you could provide power to there's a product I saw that I was very interested in that create that pulls water out of the air. Yeah. 100 gallons a day you can do just by extracting it basically to dehumidifier. One. There's there's a couple of things that I think were impressive. The biggest was AARP. Yeah, their booth was massive, massive

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technology. And Samsung was there and they had a they had a stage. Everybody was I was like I was shocked. Yeah, I loved it. I thought that that was absolutely the right answer because we have to be able to support the diversity of the the ecosystem, the people that are out there have their challenges they have their needs. And I'm not sure I'm going to admit this but we're kind of we got that mail. Oh, I got stuff happening now. Oh, oh, I get that stuff. I guess we're not we're not going there. Although you'd like digital health. So ya know, I was fascinated by the AI. Would you sell that data of your digital health?

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I would have thought was protected. To your point protected. Okay. You want to participate? But it Yeah, but but and you know, the interesting thing about that is you know, you talk about that checkbox. We heresy we have

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We never know what we're checking. Oh, you know what your reasons you let's leave like so dang. Which is, which just makes it even more dangerous. You literally these days, I'm smart enough to know that I'm signing away something I shouldn't sign away, okay to your point for your kids at home, you shouldn't do that. And if you're wondering what you're sending away, just so you guys know if you get it on an app store, there's this. There's this law out of Europe called the GDPR. General Data Protection Regulation and here in the United States, and then five states, their interpretation of that the most prominent is the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is actually more stringent understanding GDPR it's not only more stringent, but it a recognizes that it's not just a general personal information and personal identifiable information. PII, which is personally identifiable information comes from HIPAA. PII is personal information, it just can identify you. But CCPA says, If I can take an inference. So for example, if I can say that the gait of Your walk is one in 1000, and your zip code is this, I can start to use that to identify, so that has to be protected as well. But the whole point of this was when we talked about privacy and the data is there, it actually they've worked in your benefit. So if you go into any app store, and before you download an app, you scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll see all these little icons, they're almost smiling and sarcastically at you telling you what they're taking, when you say this debt is linked to you. And a lot of times I don't I especially don't accept the apps because once I read that I'm like, No, I don't want a special categories, like other information, sensitive information, financial data. And that's, that's, that's a that's another conversation. We're gonna have another podcast. Yeah, that entire idea is really important at CES, consumer show electronics. That's where we get our data, every one of these companies that has generated some form of data, and what you do with that data is absolutely going to be essential and understanding how humans live their lives. Yeah. The other really cool thing I saw on the show floor, because it's interesting, you see all these kinds of different companies.

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So I'm, I'm a long term guy, like I said, 29 CES, and I'm an IoT guy, Smart Home Guy. Yeah. So I'm always kind of looking for that. Not only because I'm, you know, kind of a nerd with an addiction. But also because I love to watch. Really, really super nerd there was a product that was announced here called Oliver IQ.

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It's from the boys that that brought us control for the boys that brought us the internet in our hotel rooms, and several other products like fast if you remember to do if you do go to the app, eBay, because you need to be there.

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Simply because I almost signed up to sell fast when I had an integration. Yeah, the landmark system. But so the whole idea there is what they're doing is now they've they've done the whole thing where they went to the integrators they do whole thing with it with the hotel, with control for they went everywhere. And now they've got all of our IQ, which is for the masses, finally, and it's a great experience, it connects to it's using matter, which is that yeah, that matters still trying to get going. Do you know why? You want to manage trying to get going Same reason everybody else trying it can wax had a great quote many years ago, where he said the best thing about standards is there's so many to choose. Yeah, well, that's his quote, there's that so long. I'm giving him credit for it, because I heard it from him. But who was was it asthma? I don't know who originally said it. But that's that is the best part about standards pick which one you think of Socrates that said that? Something like that? Yeah. But the whole idea there is matter is that hope, but what they're not recognizing is as soon as you get into that, that normalization to the point. And it takes between manufacturers? Well, the politics come because you commoditizing Yeah, additional piece on top of that. So I, my argument was, you know, being a musician, MIDI worked out fabulously well. It was robust, it was simple. It all manufacturers adopted it, everybody won. And I'm like, why can't we have that? Or was I thought matter was going to be here, here's why. Because many has to be the facto standard, because the committee still allowed the product to be visible. When we start talking about people who make light bulbs, people who make switches in the wall, people make these things, they have to adhere to a certain look and feel because architects are gonna demand it. Yeah, they're not a lot of flexibility. With regards to your creative options. That's really a meaty, you got all these guys that are making these amazing products, they're adhering to a standard and MIDI base basically, is, is not the same level. It's not all seven layers in the stack. It's simply a protocol that says if you want to add information to DMX is the same thing. It's a protocol that says it's going to go from point A to point B, and here's all the registers, here's all the data you're gonna send. When you start looking at what's going on with matter. They get into the data layer. And that data layer defines the capabilities that thing might have. Now when you have the same capabilities, the other product, you become a commodity. Yeah. And if you don't have the ability to add a new capability, then how you're going to differentiate your product interacting on this network of Connect. Yeah, now another thing is, I'm not seeing a lot of promotion of matter on the show floor as I walk around and see a couple booths as they say, you know, matter it was at Amazon

35:00  
was the Granata switch in there? You know, it says works no matter. I thought I might see more of that. At the show, I saw a company called matter. It was actually it was matter I'm looking at. Do you guys? I don't know, check the pubs. Do you read any books? Do you know what's coming? Oh, it was actually called matter. And it was like interesting. It's in. If you're interested in Hall, see, you should go check them out and ask what they do, because I didn't, I moved away quickly. So it wouldn't be associated with it. But the matter piece, I think it's actually really important that that ability to do this now, like you said, there's a lot of politics. It was

35:36  
Apple's doing a really great job with it, by the way, and of all companies and you know, typically a closed company, they're apparently doing a good job with it. Yeah. So the the origin of that were two guys that were one from the leader center and one from who's a big manufacturer of OEM products. Yeah. And it was the guy that ran Tony Richardson, who ran the ZigBee. Alliance. Yep. They came together. And they came up with a way to do this. It was originally I think, it was a, it was a protocol. And they spent six months of their lives away from the kids away from the family, going to all the big guys and getting them all on board. They did an amazing job to create this. And it's become this big marketing swell. But now there's the reality of interacting with it their reality of how do you differentiate your product? Yeah, I heard also that setup setups really hard. It's not easy. Well, getting device I mean, we can have another podcast on that. Well, let's have a cop podcast of why it takes so long for a radio wave to move from point A to point B when we know what the speed of the radio wave is. I don't get it. Why does it take so long for me to find my bluetooth device? Yeah, because we always do things the hardest way to begin with Yeah, Rube Goldberg.

36:51  
For you young uns out there look it up because I know you probably heard of bass trap is still for sale on the shelves in the toy store. All right, I just have a few other quick things and then ask if you guys have anything else you want to add. Kohler

37:05  
you always got to be watching

37:08  
Kohler, Kohler, Kohler had a really big focus on wellness, on, you know, you're walking on the show floor, you're walking on the streets, you're walking through all these casinos, and it's just,

37:21  
you're all amped up or you're tired, or you're fatigued, or it's it's smells of smoke, or this or it's noisy colors, holds a lot of emotion there. There's all kinds of things that are going on with you alone, just saying that I'm just, I felt at ease and the color but you have a drink, I felt totally at ease and the color blue, they are all about chill their products were about aromas about simplicity. And the reason why I bring it up is

37:46  
I don't think a plumber is going to sell you a $22,000 automated tub or toilet or shower, and they're still moving in this direction. So it is a great place for an integrator to make the appropriate client aware, hey, we can take your bathroom to a whole nother level. You know, it's just not water or it's just not utility anymore. They have a whole Roma line. Now they have showerheads and hot tubs that that actually emit the aromas. They got an aroma line. They've really upped their game and lights as well. So I was really intrigued by that. Yeah, it was it was peaceful. So my bathroom it's an aroma to Can I sell that into to them license it to the mic my personal room. She was like a thing. I don't know if we want your Personal Room pheromones

38:34  
you saw

38:39  
life my family's we chase away pretty much everybody I'm sure. So it's actually interesting to me because I didn't put this in my in my intro bio. But I spent the last five years as CTO of Delos gonna bring that out on this committee. We're all focused on that I was totally focused on that. And it was really important. And to me the best way for we're talking about wellness is back to nature. Yeah, totally it anything that brings you back to nature that brings green into your life that adjust the lighting based on the sun outside because for for for a long time before we were ever in buildings, we were outside buildings, right? And that's how we evolved as a species, then we're still connected to it. So that disconnection screws us up that's still in us. I got jetlag but that's different. But the whole idea is we're expecting the sun to be able to tell us when to wake up and run from predators. Yeah, and shut us down when the melanoma it comes from the serotonin after the signal stuff from the brain. So seeing that I saw some lighting but I didn't see as much lighting as we've seen in the past now specifically around wellness. Yeah, but it's great to see the idea that it's all about the natural springs. It's all about kind of recreating that idea that I'm I'm at peace when I'm beside nature. Yeah Verbling all the kind of smells of nature. That's the right direction. Yeah. And it but it's not as much well as I expect to see on the floor. Yeah at all. I

40:00  
It was only a couple air quality sensors I saw because yeah, we're I mean, we're a couple years past COVID. Now it'll come back. But it's interesting. The cycles again, history doesn't rhyme it often or doesn't repeat itself. It often rhymes. So, so enforce right now. Yeah. So tons of power again, and I just bring this up for everyone listening, you are going to maybe be asked about battery backups for the house and not traditional style. They are everywhere. And there, they've got 90,000 kilowatts of storage, 135,000 kilowatts of storage. They're formidable battery backup systems. I know we have professional versions in our channel. But these consumer portable things are getting pretty real and it's everywhere. The other company I just wanted to bring up was one called free cast. I saw them at the showstoppers event on Sunday, I forgot to mention it. One of my other pet peeves is the management of media. It's a nightmare. How do you watch something where? How do you find this particular show? Yeah, what service? Is this on? What subscriptions do I have? This whole free cast company is trying to aggregate all that stuff into one place, all your subscriptions are in one place, all your content is in one place. They can also aggregate and integrate, integrate and outdoor antenna into it, they digitize it. And then it becomes part of your profile. When you want to ask for a program. They'll be like, Okay, we'll give you your your local ABC, right? So just put this out here. Yeah, been an industry a long time. Don't know if it works company to be run to remain nameless as a patent, some of you wouldn't expect has a patent on the ability to search across multiple media platforms for a certain piece of media. And it's not the one that starts with an A. So be wary. Always check and make sure that you're not going to have somebody come up after you're generating revenue saying it's ours. Right. It's always a challenge. But I agree that's one of the biggest challenges. And not only that, you have all these companies rolling up like, I love HBO. HBO was like, it was back to my childhood, the buying through the city. All this stuff they did for all this Home Box Office. I grew up with HBO, when and Mary Miller and Mira and and Stiller, Jerry Stiller, they were the spokespeople for it as they were trying to get people to sign on to it. That was a such a memory. Yeah.

42:24  
People that didn't grow up when I grew up, sit down. Let's just call it Max. Let's roll it up. Yeah. And let's kill the HBO app in apple. Yep. Let's kill the apps to do this stuff. So this roll up is not just about finding it across the different services. But now it's also about well, who who did this roll up to? Like Amazon. Exactly. Amazon but epics? Exactly. That's the whole point. Yeah. So 100%, the, my, my main message here is you can no longer drop off hardware to your customers, you're going to need to assist them in another way. Robert, do you have anything else that we didn't cover that you wanted to bring out? No, I think I think I think the main point, as far as the projection stuff is concerned is that, you know, the the industry is really evolving in such a way that it's creating an opportunity for

43:11  
just everyday consumers to get bigger and bigger images into their lives. It's not about replacing your TV, necessarily. ust laser TVs, absolutely. You know, we're seeing larger and larger flat panels now, which at the end of the day, you know, you've got to decide if you want to do that. I think ultimately the ultra short throw projectors have to get bigger and bigger, in order to make that continue to make that a more viable option. But these these lifestyle projectors, and really this, you know that that x Jimmy we were talking about, is really it's not necessarily designed to be this hardcore thing. It's about putting out you know, being able to pull something out of a out of a closet and create a community with your family and your friends. That and that is always the beauty of projection. And I love to walk around the show and see all these little boxes, and how sophisticated they're becoming. Yeah. So that's really the best to show what you thought looked the best. Yeah, I would say so. So certainly that extremely Max projector. pretty fabulous. And for something that was in such a small box it really, really at a relatively low price. Yeah, I think it was quite impressive.

44:25  
You know, that Barco demo that we talked about was also okay. It was your does your top tip just from a as a guy who's an enthusiast and can look at a great picture and say, Wow, that's really something and look at what they're doing to get it you know, all right. Well, guys, Jim, yeah, I want to in this in this vein of thought I saw something on TechCrunch I don't remember the vendor. But there's a car company has built a projector into the front of the car. So you pull up to a garage and you project a new watch like you're driving in anybody's garage. Yeah, I

45:00  
I'm sorry for laughing so there's that even though it was snowing laughter. And in fact, I had a conversation at this show with some of the folks who were ap atronics, who are responsible for the ALP delight engines that are being used in a lot of projectors. Now, these are laser engines, and they have a whole automotive division that is devoted to not only that concept, but also the idea of, you know, just imagine where your your rear dome light would normally appear. Yeah, that's a projector. And a screen literally rolls down in front of your kid. Well, we get self driving and everything that's yeah, we'll be watching movies. Yeah, doing work.

45:37  
Yeah, it was interesting that all these traditional companies Honda, Sony, they're, they're completely changing. They've all got cars. It was first thing I thought of with the Honda cars. It's not repairable. I know its concept. But you know, you hear about costs of repairing Tesla's and things and these cars with all the sensors and all that it's gonna be really interesting. And then the costs how's that gonna go? I don't think the cars anymore. They're just big mobile devices. Yeah, I agree. All right, we're gonna do better and we could talk forever. Rob, thank you very much for being on the cast. I know. You got to read it out tonight. Yeah, so really fun. Thanks for really appreciate you giving us your time on it. And same with you, Jim. My pleasure. We're gonna have you back on hopefully on Friday. Yep, absolutely. So you're gonna get to see more stuff and talk about more stuff. Absolutely. All right. So thanks again for listening to the day two podcast. We will have another one for day three. And as always, I will ask you to please keep an open mind.

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