[MUSIC]
Hello, everybody, and welcome to day three of CES 2017 at the CNET stage.
I'm [UNKNOWN] alongside Roger float like a butterfly and sting like a bumblebee Chang, and [UNKNOWN] Rubin.
For a bigger than usual episode of our excellent bite sized news podcast at 3:59.
If you're new to the show, you should really watch the show.
Roger and Ben break down the most important tech stories in about four minutes, hence the title of the show.
Actually, we're gonna start off with a guest.
We've got M Q Wong, CEO and founder of [UNKNOWN] robotics To talk about his flying camera, the Hover Passport Camera.
All right, so I'm actually showing off a new feature that we introduced into the Hover Camera.
It's called owner mode.
So this is the first flying drone out on the market that actually recognizes owner and allows you to interact with it completely phone-free.
Without any controller.
So the way it works is, I'll fire up the app.
And I'm gonna record a new owner.
So what it does, is it's gonna let me turn my face around, and then just take a few shots on my face.
And then send it to this device.
From then on, I don't need my phone any more.
I could just press a button, [NOISE] and let go of it.
And what it's gonna do, is it's gonna spin and then scan the environment to look for me.
There you go.
Once it locks onto me, if I move, it just moves with me.
Cool.
So it's a completely autonomously following camera.
Wow.
And the cool part is if I want a selfie, I want a photo to be taken, all I need to do is to hold out my palm, and the light will blink, and signal to me.
It's basically doing a countdown, the old-school timer on your phone, and it will just snap a photo.
If I want it to stop, I'll hold up my hand again.
I give the okay sign and it will just stay there waiting for me to retrieve it, and I can just grab it like this.
Cool.
Wait, so I'm a little skeptical on the facial recognition, how does that scanning work?
How reliable is that?
It's actually pretty reliable.
So the reason I actually turn around a little bit, is because the flying camera will look at you, not just from the front, but from the sides and from behind as well.
Well, once it locked on to you it's not just relying on the features that it extracts from your face.
It actually trying to separate you away from the environment and people standing next to you.
So, it is the contrast algorithm which makes it even more robust.
Yeah.
So that's a new software upgrade that's coming in about you said two three weeks from now.
Exactly, yeah.
Since we launched the product in late October, we already introduced Three Upgrade each of them gives you better experience new features; and his is the beauty of you know this generation of flying robots right because you can do what we call OTA over the air upgrades of the firmware and the software at all times.
What are some of the other hand gestures people can expect going forward?
Yeah so, we are going to introduce seven hand gestures
Altogether, when we release this to our users.
It's gonna allow hover camera to do things like 360 orbit.
Orbit around you, so sort of like self-spinning, or spinning around you.
And you can actually control its position as well, so up and down, left and right, yeah.
Cool.
Yeah, it really is.
I saw a demo yesterday at the booth.
It seems really like kind of crazy to believe that, that exist at all.
I know that's been actually, you said October so, it's 5.99, correct?
That's correct.
And the software operates two or three weeks, like you said?
Yeah.
And you'd be able to be followed around by a flying camera, essentially.
I was talking to somebody, they were like, don't call it a drone.
Because it's not a drone really, cuz you're not racing this thing, it's really meant to be a camera.
It's got about what, a ten to 15 minute battery life?
That's right, each battery gives you ten minute of flight time.
And we ship two batteries with the standard package.
We were actually just running around CES yesterday with Hover Camera following us, and it was kinda fun.
We think of it as your personal photographer, not so much as a drone.
What are the quality of the photos?
What's the resolution of the camera?
Yeah, so it's a 13 megapixel camera that gives you 13 megapixel photos and it shoots up to 4K videos.
Do you have any photos you can show off?
Can we actually take some photos of us on the stage and we could maybe show it to camera?
Yeah, of course, we have a camera.
Let's do it.
Let's take a selfie of all of us.
All right, get close.
All right, fire up the hover.
I'm gonna fire it up
It's that
So that gives us the 728 life view of where we are
Take a photo right now.
And then let it go, and there you go, that's the three of us, right?
That's nice, for another photo just do that.
It's that easy.
Then we're gonna bring it up a little more and point it downward So the camera actually tilts 30 degree downward, or, sorry, 90 degree downwards and 30 degree upwards, right.
I can move it back a little bit.
Sweet.
Just like that.
And-
Once you take that photo, can I grab that from and show it to camera?
Yeah, sure.
Can we look at it?
One, two three, there you go.
Yeah, and I'm gonna show you the photo.
It's instantly transmitted to your phone.
Could I-
Yeah, so that's the shot.
Why don't I grab that real quick?
I could show it to the audience right now.
So this is the shot that we just took live on the stage.
It's pretty nice.
It's ridiculous.
That actually just happened.
That's real.
[LAUGH]
That's just insane, man.
I really like that drone.
That actually made me look good.
That's impressive.
That's a trick.
That's, that's very hard to do.
Due to this case and function that we've built into it, that identifies dead looking people, and not do anything with them.
[LAUGH]
What's the, can you tell me a bit about the camera specs, like how many megapixels is it, how big is the camera [INAUDIBLE]?
Like I mentioned, it's 13 megapixels, yeah.
Yeah, it's just 4K video, actually.
So I know it does optical, sorry, that's electronic [UNKNOWN] up to 1080p, correct?
That's right.
But it doesn't do for 4K?
Yeah, because 4K, it's too large, and the processing time it requires to process a video stream is too long, so you won't get it live.
But we can do offline Video stabilization of 4K videos though, yeah.
You can do that, that's in the app?
Well, we haven't built it into the app yet.
Another over-the-air applet game or?
We could totally do that, yeah.
So these days, it's all about short content that you instantly share with your friends and family.
Nobody really shares that much 4K videos, right.
Not right now.
Not on Instagram and not on Facebook, but yeah.
As the network gets faster, I'm sure And people will be seeing a lot more [UNKNOWN] floating around.
Would you mind mentioning price and availability again> I know it's 599 or so?
So it's $599 but you get a whole package.
There's an extra battery, there's a carry case, there's spare propellers, everything.
And you can get it from getharvard.com.
And how much is it's weight?
Really quick it's really light.
Do you have that register of->> That's actually is very important.
So this is 242 grams to be exact.
So that's under half a pound.
And it's under the weight limit regulation imposed by FA so you don't need a license to operate it and you can carry it anywhere.
It's all carbon fiber, right?
Exactly
Like that's freaking light, I've been playing with that.
So, it's actually, you can press on that, it's very sturdy, so if this is built plastic, when you apply that much pressure it would just break, but because it's carbon fiber, so it's sturdy and it's light.
All right, we're gonna take a quick break and come back with more, 359.
All right, thank you guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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3:59 on our last day of coverage of [UNKNOWN] 2017.
You know, one of the things we've seen in a lot of the booths, Intel, Qualcomm, Ericsson even, a lot of 5G talk.
Wireless, crazy fast speeds.
I know, Roger, I was reading one of your articles a long time, a long time ago.
A couple months ago.
You know, tech time is weird.
So I think Verizon has 3.7 gigabits per second for their 5G wireless.
What did you see out there?
5G, I don't think people are publicly talking about it that much, but it's sort of this undercover trend, this undercurrent.
What it is, right.
A 5G is so fast and so responsive that it's really the network that everyone's looking at to power all the other trends that we're seeing.
Self-driving cars, Internet of Things High [UNKNOWN] streaming video.
All that stuff needs to have a wireless connection if we're gonna need mobile.
And right now, 4G and LTE not really cutting it, not responsive enough but everyone is starting to look at 5G as the really holy grail for getting everybody connected in a real responsive way.
Do you have a time table when 5G [UNKNOWN] a lot with these networks today?
I think AT&T is testing it out somewhere I'm completely blanking where it was, but they're trying it out.
They're gonna start trials in terms of as a home broadband replacement, right?
Taking out all the wires and just going full 5G.
But we're not really gonna see 5G in a real way, like we see LT.
It's more gonna be 2018, 2020.
They're still kinda working on it.
That's why there's [COUGH] So people are really talking about it behind closed doors.
It's not really super public.
You're not seeing a lot of five g products here at the show.
Right.
But the weird thing is, the fact is that Ericsson's got a giant booth and then all about five g, in the location where Disc used to be.
Disc got pushed aside, and they're right across in this little pavilion essentially.
Intel, Qualcomm, Ericsson And 5G is plastered everywhere.
Yep.
And that speed, I'm waiting for that one day.
Like, it's supposed to be what, 300 times faster than LTE right now?
Yeah, it's 100 times faster than the fastest possible home connection you can get.
Broadband.
Not even wireless, like it's amazingly fast.
[COUGH]
Isn't it the type of thing where you're gonna end up with a bottleneck if you don't get 5G soon enough?
Like, some of the concepts are like, live streaming VR, autonomous cars.
Like, do we need 5G as an ingredient in those recipes that actually make those things happen too?
So what the carriers are doing, they're upgrading LT at the same time.
They're trying to get LT to the point where it's Fast enough.
So it's an okay experience.
But 5G really unlocks things.
Like self-driving cars.
The response system, the latency of the 5G network is almost real time.
With LTE there's always a little bit of lag when you ping something.
And when you're in a self-driving car and it's about to get into an accident, you need to have that zero latency.
Like, it's got to be super responsive That's where 5G unlocks for the full potential of a self-driving car.
The other thing is 5G with those crazy speeds, even if it's lagging and slow, a slow 5G connection is way faster than the fastest LTE.
That's one of the things I always look, this is so nerding right now.
When I build my home network and I'm working on those things, I check.
I'm like, well, yeah, it's gonna be slow here but it's still fast enough for me cuz you want To be able full force a video, that be great if you could do that on the phone.
You try that now, it's j just gonna stutter and it's gonna die out there.
So what, they did kind of a prototype 5G network at the auction booth.
What they we're doing is pulling live 360 ft.
from the intel booth and stream in oculus ref, like in real time.
The quality was pretty damn good.
If they, if they through a wireless network?
Yes, this is through 5G, like this is like the simulate 5G network that they put up
So speaking of VR and AR, all right?
So VR was actually pretty big last year here because Oculus had a booth.
Now Oculus does not have a booth this year, but there's still a VR section, augmented reality as well.
I didn't say VR, virtual reality and augmented reality section.
What did you guys think of what we saw this year?
You know, I was a little disappointed.
I mean look, there was some hardware that's great, but you know the problem right now with VR is there's not a lot to watch.
And stuff I saw it just amounted to teasers and commercials, so it was a little disappointing and underwhelming to me.
The intel one.
The intel one, at the intel event, there were a lot of different demonstrations.
I definitely like the concept of live sports In VR you get a better appreciation of what it's actually to be there.
But at the same time, yeah, I agree with you that, I think it's still gonna take a little bit longer for us to get the amount of content that we really need.
Yes, so you have the term of the content, I was on the floor checking a lot of the hardware.
I like a lot of the hardware.
When they came to ODG, they have these awesome glasses.
They are essentially like an Android phone on your face.
It had a Snapdragon 835 in there, which isn't even out yet.
And it had a great picture quality.
The hardware's actually getting there.
Because I have a Daydream View at home and it just kind of pulls forward.
The ODG, you can see it right now, it's got a lot of cool things.
That's a nose pad right there they can actually adjust, you can bring it up or down.
If you have a different shape nose, they can actually change that out for you.
They also have little snap-ins for your prescription lenses.
They were super comfortable, image quality was great, it costs about $1,000, it's coming out later this year.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
A thousand bucks?
A thousand dollars, 720p images though.
And the other thing is they have really modified Android.
So you can have the image either on your left eye, your right eye, or both.
So whatever you're doing, you can see what you're doing.
They've also changed notifications.
So like this is actually a really good implementation of how it should be.
Cuz I was so surprised at how light it was.
It felt like, all right, I'm gonna put this thing on.
It's got all the electronics in the actual device.
Put it on, and it just felt like my glasses.
So, we tried it on stage actually earlier this week.
And one of the things that really impressed me, they showed me a demonstration, live sports on display.
But sort of underneath it was this 3D rendering of the field, and the players in 3D kind of moving around and you could sort of manipulate it.
With the glasses, it was actually really stunning.
Cool.
I came away impressed.
But again, great hardware, not a lot of content.
I mean, I go back to that Qualcomm Power Rangers experience that we tried.
Which was awesome.
[SOUND]
I tried it out yesterday, I loved it.
Cuz you don't like power rangers, apparently.
Look, you get in the [UNKNOWN] and ten seconds later, the whole thing's over.
When you're about to get to the cool stuff, it's like, And end.
Well you're complaining because they don't have enough content in the actual adventure as it was, but what I'm just saying if you enjoy Power Rangers and you get to see the actual megazords around you it's awesome Roger.
Well, they are also doing some stuff where they are trying to improve the hardware where they are adding additional enablement like for instance
We saw the hypersuit.
I saw it unveiled.
It is basically this this ridiculous looking metal rig.>> There it is right now.>> That you get on top of and it simulates flying.
You know, those are arm controls right there.
It looks pretty ridiculous but at the same time it's like how do we make this even more immersive.>> Yeah, so when I saw it looked like the old arcade game super hang on this motorcycle kind of thing.
But yeah it doesn't, it looks way more ridiculous.
There's Scott Stein taking a bullet for us all.
Right there he was right there he was trying this out and there you can lay on it.
It looks like a massage table or something.
When you're moving your arms you're supposed to have the real experience like if you were flying.
I don't know if that's necessary, but I thought it was a really cool idea.
You got to figure out how.
Look you got VR.
You can't walk around everywhere.
Last year we had that 360 kind of a treadmill little plastic thing you can kind of run around in.
You got to figure out how can you not bump into stuff.
The hypersuit as ridiculous as it looks you're not going to run into people [LAUGH]
Wait, wait a minute
But let me ask you, who's gonna get this?
Is this for arcades.
Nobody, no, no, no, it's like for casinos, theme parks.
You're not supposed to buy it.
Like a rental item.
I specifically asked him that question.
I'm like so where is this gonna be.
Like back when the old surface table existed, Same kind of thing, this idea that I believe it belongs in our caves.
VR-
What are caves?
VR belongs in our caves, flat out cuz those are-
It belongs in the 80s basically?
Yeah, I guess so.
The 80s, things come back Roger, I don't know if you're old enough to know this but there's cycles to things and things come back.
Bell bottoms will be back again in 20 years, you'll be like it was back in the 90s, it shouldn't be there.
Arcades will be back.
Okay.
[LAUGH]
I promise.
They might be in bowling alleys, I don't know.
All right, that makes more sense.
But so now we've killed this horse.
It's gone now.
[LAUGH]
What's your favorite thing you've seen at CES, Ben?
Not you, Bumblebee?
Jeez.
I would probably say it would be the Hush Me, which is this It's this kind of crazy looking muzzle type of situation where if you're in an open office space what you can do is have private conversations even if folks are sitting next to you.
And it looks pretty strange, it looks kind of ridiculous.
This is an actual device and it's a muzzle for humans.
Right, but, you know, this guy could be having a private conversation, he could be calling his
The doctor, or his wife, or whatever.
Even if he's in the office or he's out and about, whatever.
One of the other aspects of it is, is that it adds voice filters.
So you can sound like Darth Vader if you want to.
Obviously, it's not even gonna hit crowdsourcing platforms until a little while longer.
Who's gonna want this thing?
I don't know.
I thought it was kinda fun.
We have an open office in the New York office and it's very, very loud.
We have some very loud people.
Everyone's gonna look like Bane from Batman.
That's okay.
I thought-
And talk like him apparently.
Is that an option, you can do Bane, I know Darth Vader you just said.
Not quite yet.
Not Bane yet, but maybe.
They gotta have Bane right, that's exactly what Bane looks like, without the glasses.
I don't know about this, and whether it should exist or not.
But you know what.
One of my favorite things about CES, the fact that you see crazy stuff like that.
Because you got to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks and this, it might work in an open office environment.
We might see an investment [UNKNOWN] at our office.
You think so?
Especially for you.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's another one of those things like the hypersuit that looks Strange.
And you kind of have to convince people that you're not gonna look like an idiot actually buying this thing and using it.
I was just, I was wowed by the LG W7 TV.
Like that's a super thin TV, it's 2.57 millimeters thin.
And I have this weird cognitive dissonance.
I'm like, it's so thin, it's awesome, why would you spend $8,000, that's actually the price, they told us that yesterday.
$8,000, it's available for preorder right now.
This, it's really cool, they keep saying like you can't distinguish it from the wall, it fits less than four millimeters away from the wall with its new mount, it's got these, you **** in two points and they have two magnets on the bottom.
18 pounds, you don't have to worry about studs, you don't have to worry about mounting this on something sturdy, you can just put it up on anything, I was just Amazed by that.
And actually, since it's so thin, to attach HDMI cables and stuff, you couldn't do that.
So they decided to put a ribbon cable, proprietary ribbon cable, to this sound bar.
You can see it, it's this giant sound bar, Dolby Atmos.
And when you turn it on, these two speakers actually rise out of it.
Wow.
Because, why not?
You spending a $1,000 on a TV.
I don't need it but I want it.
The screen is.
And I don't understand why?
The screen is so nice too.
It's really gorgeous OLED screen.
They did mention that, it's OLED, it's like it's pure black.
Right.>> You're getting real awesome color there.
Did you see some before?
Yeah, yeah, no and they Myer, our TV expert loves OLED
I really serve the high end in terms of video.
Yeah, I have to grid some awesome stuff.>> So, Roger what was your favorite thing.>> My one was a thing, I actually found at the Ericcson booth, it was a the tactile touch platform.
It was this little accessory to your VR headset, like on Occulus Rift or Vive.
It attaches to your fingers, got a little little haptic feedback.
So when you're in the virtual world, if you're touching something, it will actually push back.
So, feel like you're actually pressing a button on a remote control or at one point I was like patting a teddy bear.
And I actually was able to grab a Pepsi can and throw it.
And it's, I mean, after a while, I was starting to get convinced that I was actually touching something.
It felt that natural?
It felt pretty natural.
It's a little early It's a little janky.
It kind of came off sometimes, it was a little loose.
But There's a promise of it, that, I mean that's a real useful thing, right?
We're in a virtual world, you are a little disconnected, right?
Like you've got, you can see everything but you can't really touch and this actually add as a new element or dimension to the VR experience.
Yeah, that gives it a really good idea because you know, it's one thing to be emerge on it.
It's another thing to be able to actually interact with it.
So, that's Like we said, the Hypersuit is trying to figure out how do you actually then make these things feel real?
So this is a pretty cool product.
I'm gonna go try to find it later.
I think that's gonna wrap it up for us.
You think so, guys?
You can find 259 on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, and of course, cnet.com brought at 359 broadcast, I'm Mya Zacktock.
I'm Rodger Kane.
I'm Ben Fox Reuben.
Thanks for watching.
Up next, the laptop reviews team is here with all their favorite laptops they've seen at the show.
Stay with us.
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