#11 "CES Insights with Patrick Roan"

Speaker 0 00:00 Welcome to the workflow show. I'm Nick gold of Chesapeake systems accompanied by my colleague Meryl Davis. This is episode one 11 of the workflow show, and we have a guest today, culture jammer, professional freelance cake, independent journalist Patrick Rowan house, who we've known for quite a few years through various projects. Patrick is very active here in the Baltimore area tech culture scene, but also kind of on a more national basis. And Patrick, we have today, he was just at the CES show, consumer electronics show, and we thought, wouldn't it be fun to get his take on all of the funky stuff that he saw out there, but also from the perspective of an independent multimedia video oriented journalist. So Patrick, welcome to the workflow show. Thanks for having me. So, you know, CES always gets a lot of news. I was definitely kind of bombarded with a lot of little snippets over the last week and a half to IX. Uh, just about, you know, what folks in the consumer electronics industries were announcing and talking about. But if you had to maybe shoot a few themes that seem to kind of be the primary themes that ran throughout the show, but what would you say those, those were in your opinion, Speaker 1 01:27 Um, 4k production and ultra HD are this year's thing. Bet your black magic is feeling the burn on that one. Not necessarily they got, I, I have some 4k devices coming into the pipeline right now. They've they just released one of their capture cards. I'm still waiting for the two, 2.5 K devices in their pipeline. Oh, I see what you're talking. You're talking about the, uh, the camera. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that thinks sad. Uh, yeah, but, uh, so, so a lot, a lot of 4k production, uh, and accessories, um, Samsung and Sony were really big on the push. Uh, Sony had their CEO Kasserine who was originally the CEO of a Sony computer entertainment taking full stage, basically replacing the former CEO. Uh, sir, um, Howard stringer, they were just going really big into 4k TVs going into multimedia Schering, creating a platform for 4k videos. Speaker 1 02:17 They're going to be having about 12 of their videos by March now being 4k downloadable services. There'll be one of the few 4k providers for a download service, which will provide through other TV networks as well. And this can only be a good thing, right? Because when you're showing 4k at a consumer electronics show, then that really shows that it'll probably be ushered in, in, uh, bring the price down over the period of the next year. So they first showed some of the 4k screens about three years ago, they were like behind closed door showings. And then last year sharp shows one of the first like 67 inch four K images that didn't actually have a 4k processor on it though. It was only 10 ADP image that was an upscale to 4k, but this year was like, everyone was like Speaker 0 03:00 Saying, okay, we're we did 3d last year. This is now four K ultra HD. So let me throw something out here. And, and first of all, I'm going to take a, just a little step back for our listening audience. So, you know, a lot of people in the video world are familiar with 4k, but in case you're not 4k refers to a screen resolution. That's essentially four times as many pixels as 10 80 P. So imagine four, 10 80 P screens worth of pixel resolution kind of next to one another in a, in a quadrant that's the amount of pixel resolution you have in a four K image and 4k traditionally through today has not been something that has been available at a consumer level. And we'll talk more about kind of what is, and what isn't actually available today, but, you know, it's been used in the world of, of, of cinema. Speaker 0 03:56 Uh, originally four K resolution was, you know, one of the higher end resolutions, the next level beyond two K that actual film, you know, shot on film cameras was scanned at to create a digital intermediary. And often those digital intermediaries would be what postproduction was applied to sometimes just a rough cut. Maybe the final processing was actually done and conformed back to the original film over the last few years, if something is still shot in film and then scanned at say 4k often it will then stay digital for the rest of production and post production and even delivery. Now, although nowadays, obviously a lot of even cameras are originating content, maybe at four K resolution, but digitally from the get go. So it's a complete digital file based workflow and production post-production and now delivery to cinema. And so, you know, I'm going to throw like a little snide comment in here, Patrick and Marilyn, I'm curious to get your guys' opinions. Speaker 0 05:00 You know, you were just saying, you know, last year and maybe even the year before, I know it was a big deal at NAB. A couple of years ago, everyone was talking about 3d or stereoscopic, and now everyone is talking about 4k. And from what I gather four K resolution doesn't, isn't even discernible by the human eye, unless you have like a mega huge, like 80 inch plus television set and you're sitting close enough to it that you can even discern those pixels. So is this just another thing that, you know, the electronics industry is bandying about? Cause they're like, Oh crap, everyone invested in HD and they're not buying as many televisions and we couldn't get them excited about 3d really that much. Now we have to come out with something else to try to like reinvigorate sales and maybe it's something that people don't really want or need your thoughts. I wouldn't really say that. I mean the first Speaker 1 05:58 Generation of 4k is that people might know are the four K Sony projectors that were available in theaters starting about five years ago here in the Baltimore area. One of the first 4k, uh, cinemas was the landmark theater right down in the Harbor East area. I had the pleasure of going to their opening cause they had blade runner final cut in four K and it was actually the closest place to go see it within about a five state surrounding area. Oh man. But, um, 4k is, you know, when it comes down to, it's not 4,000 lines of resolution, it's uh, 38, 40 by 2164, the Sony brand 4k, the other four K cameras that people probably heard of are like the red cinema, one camera, which are now been updated to the red Scarlet and epics and the, the workflow for producing those. You don't have to work with the same kind of large file like you did with MPEG two or P to P cards. Speaker 1 06:50 You're actually dealing with a reference file. So it's recording an MK MP4 86, four reference file to reference the larger format, raw format that you're recording in Sony released their piece six or their F 65 camera. They announced it about a month ago and they had it on display at CES and showing it off. And they also showed off the new recorder device that was for the originally released F 700 camera series. That was basically a really cheap entry-level micro four thirds camera that was recording and 10 AP with uncompressed HTMI out and a jog wheel for recording, but it was actually a really good camera. And they said, this will be upgradable with a hard, uh, you know, an attachment to record into 4k. And they released that and that upgrades $6,000. So for entry level cameras that Sony camera, the F's Fs 700 was basically only $8,000 camera. And this new ad on attachment 6,000, the new piece 65 cameras are going for just shy of 20,000. And then you also have Alexa who is releasing therefore K camera. And so the actual workflow and cost of it is actually becoming relatively cheap and actually doesn't require a huge amount of intensive power because you're using these reference files to do the editing, Speaker 0 08:07 But to consumers care, I mean, who's going to trade in their high Def TV and decide, Oh no high Def isn't enough for me anymore because I always see it as consumers need to demand something before producers will have an inclination to invest in it. It's, uh, I, I noticed very few producers is leading the charge before they're being asked for something. And I just, it's hard to imagine the video consuming public except maybe outside of the world of cinema production, but for more generalized video production, really demanding 4k. I think a lot of people are still kind of getting used to HD being the default, Speaker 1 08:49 Uh, actually wasn't around for like, you know, close to 12 years now. I mean like the, the, the, the peak TV it's was like the pioneer Kiros, which were, you know, when they first came out back in, uh, like 97, they were upwards of $27,000. And before they discontinued the pioneer curl lines, they were still going for $12,000 for a plasma television sets. And they were considered the pinnacle of black levels. But when you actually look at these TVs, when they had them on display, they had ones that small as 50 inches. So yes, you do need a larger format TV to represent that higher resolution because in 10 ADP, you can have as small as a 32 inch screen and represent that 10 ADP image from about five feet away with the new four K TVs, you have to have a 50 inch TV from about eight feet away. Speaker 1 09:35 And the one thing about these new TVs is a lot of them are really brand new backlit colors, where they're no longer doing edge lit. They're doing M S Samsung actually had some really nice ones, as well as Sony where they're Ariel lit. So there's like LEDs along the back edge. And so you can change the depth of them. And then they have the old led four K TVs, which when black is black that's because they've turned off those pixels. So the image quality is like nothing you've really ever seen for. I mean, when you look at the video that they have on here, they're using this raw format that a Sony just made for the new 4k stuff when they were demoing it for them. And it's, it's hard to really say, but it looks like if you've ever seen a high quality glossy print for photos, it's that sharp. And in moving images, they had some demo videos of a girl running around and showing the contrast ratio, the color contrast ratio is amazing. I mean, it, it, it's a gambit of colors that are in static that have a printed image. Speaker 0 10:41 So you're saying this round of 4k televisions and projection technologies, the, the pixel count is one element of their impressiveness, but the manufacturers are kind of baking additional types of newer presentation technologies into these screens. So across the many levels, pixel count, just being one of them, they are just superior television screens, video viewing devices. Speaker 1 11:11 It's not just that, but the actual color gambit for 4k is, is basically about, I believe four times of what the current Teneti P color ranges for representing the colors pro Rez, uh, four, four, four, four format is the Apple 4k video codec format. And if you look at the color specs that it can handle, it's impressive to say the least the ability of being able to do these editing, you know, in these formats and looking at the kind of quality image you get, while we might not be able to look at it with a 10 80 P image, it's going to show across when it comes down to color, richness and color depth. And the fact is that with the update for the home consumer market to the H dot two five format, which will offer the ability of using the current megabit per second streams, you'll be getting 4k videos at the same streaming quality that you have to have for a Netflix video for 10 80 P and C. Speaker 0 12:06 So, so that was kind of headed off my next question, which is okay, it's all well and good that the cam camera and production equipment and post-production equipment manufacturers have high quality ways of representing this much, you know, media data, but with, uh, the next generation video and coding codec that presumably the industry will embrace H two 65, the follow up to two 64, a very clever swimmers are actually going to be able to see some of this quality because of just that advancement in the compression technologies for, you know, that Comcast and other video providers will use to get these videos to you. Speaker 1 12:47 Yeah, the, the one current over a head issue with H dot two, six, five is that it is really processor intensive. I don't know if you remember when HD 64 first came out before they had a onboard video card, uh, processing, uh, for like Nvidia and ATI, but this is a lot more workhorse intensive. So you're going to have to have a multi-core processor in any set top box or console that people probably watch videos through to be able to process that new format, but you will be able to get those 4k resolutions at current five megabit, and even as much as 10 megabit per second bit rates. Speaker 0 13:24 So our, basically nothing, but the latest generation of computers probably is going to be able to play this format back. It probably isn't a terribly relevant format for mobile devices anyway, so that the fact that they don't have additional processing power is probably irrelevant because there's no need to have four K resolution video on an iPad and, you know, give it a couple of years and Intel and Nvidia, and these folks will have H two 65 hardware codex built into their systems. You know, by that point, it won't be as much of a burden to actually play that next generation video format back. Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right. Similar progression to HD 64. And I guess that means it, you know, I would say if we're just starting to even figure out how this stuff could be done, it's probably, I would think it'd be the end of the decade before it's even close to kind of even approaching ubiquitousness to, I mean, Meryl, what do you think about all this stuff? I'm curious to get your take, you obviously have an appreciation for quality coming from production and postproduction, but I mean, what do you think this is going to be, you know, picked up by consumers at all? Speaker 1 14:41 Well, I think, I think it was a good point to question initially as to whether or not this is really something that is going to appeal to the consumer. Uh, Patrick was right on the money. This workflow is totally born out of production and post production. And to that end, there's always application for that. So, you know, he talked about those 4k projectors. There is always a compelling reason if you consider yourself a consummate filmmaker to generate your source files at a higher resolution, uh, with the anticipation that at some point you are going to have a premiere between four walls at a, um, at a theater, uh, which means that if you were aware of the, the existing technology, uh, you can have your theater goers actually see the closest thing to the best theater experience that they can have now that that's not going to translate not today, uh, to the home market. Speaker 1 15:30 I don't think only because of time and all the wonderful things that the two of you already talked about. Um, I don't know that it will take till the end of the decade to see this level of adoption. I think, you know, we're going to see a, a far more compressed timeframe every time we do this, this go round. I mean, um, I like always to look at the video, the video game market as sort of a, a good example of a sort of a compressed timeframe. Every cycle. If you look at the timeframe between every single video game system over the last four generations, I anticipate that, you know, we'll be at a two, two and a half year cycle at some point, but everybody who is worth their salt as a, as a, a production fellow might, uh, might already know what a red camera is, right. Speaker 1 16:08 So there's, there's, there's always that recognition. And there's always that conversation to be had. Uh, in fact, um, I was shooting a documentary and it was largely a DSLR shoot. Um, and, uh, I had the gear rented for an extra day or two, and I told a buddy, I was like, you know, I can, I can hook you up with, I got some, uh, five D Mark twos and whatever, you know, if you need the gear for a day or two to do some production, uh, let me know. He said, I don't want that I'm going to get a red. So there is, there is a, um, you know, a level of expectation. Uh, certainly if you are a budding cinematographer, there is a need and a want to get that. So there's limitations of hardware at this point, but, uh, I think that the public is becoming more savvy. I think there is a place where most people are not even the HD content that they're consuming now is, is, is not on a blue Ray. It's usually either through an over the top application like Netflix or Hulu, or, uh, they're downloading it. So, uh, with no specific limitation on a, on a format, as it relates to 4k, I think you could see a wider adoption of that. Speaker 0 17:12 Well, okay. Let's, let's just feel this one for awhile and say for me, becoming more prevalent on the production side, the technologies are just getting out there. It's cheaper to shoot four K we're starting to have good, slightly less expensive screens. Cause Patrick, how much did the, if I wanted to buy a 4k television, now, how much is it going to cost me? Speaker 1 17:36 The, uh, depending which model you get Samsung was giving me estimates that their, uh, 4k OLED TVs would be, probably be about $26,000. And then they're led, uh, 4k television sets will probably be in a $16,000 range, but nobody's, nobody's going to buy these. And Patrick, I'm curious from CES time when they give, cause they never give like steadfast pricing, right? They give it, you know, the general sense of what it will be when it comes to market. Uh, in your experience, since you've been there multiple times, do you see that price waiver go up or down? When it, when the product actually does hit the market, um, older times of CS before I went there, you follow the markets and the trends and stuff like that. And yeah, you would see a lot of wavering, but because of the fact that everyone's pushing for this technology at the same time, and the fact that we've gotten to this kind of ultra fast turnaround time, you have to look at television sets and all this technology in the same way you look at Moore's law. Speaker 1 18:28 When it comes down to a CPS, the first one is always going to be like a multimillion dollar processor like that first Intel Pentium seven is going to be like quadrillion million dollars. But once you get the fabrication process where you're producing them at a steady, fast return, you're going to have a much cheaper device. It's kind of like how the iPhones, once you get more and more into the, you know, the production cycle, you can drop down the price. And I think that in the next three years, you're going to see a $5,000 60 inch four K television set with smart features. And one other feature that like, say, for example, Samsung is doing, they're trying to get it so that the TVs lasts longer, but you can upgrade the hardware inside of it. Like for example, last year they announced this new, a Silicon chip system where you can basically throw in extra processors into your Skynet Skynet, uh, that the Google Epic video from a couple of years back reminds me of that. Speaker 1 19:21 But, um, I think what's really interesting is that a lot of videographers and directors who said I'll never record in digital, like, you know, um, uh, Quintin, Tarantino and <inaudible>, and all those types are kind of being forced to go to 4k. And then they realized that 4k and then the eight K and 16 K, which are also being used right now in development, actually the 4k that they have now from Alexa and from, uh, Sony can get on par with the Panna scan vision of, um, of Lawrence, of Arabia. They were showing the transfer they're doing from, uh, Columbia Tristar, MGM from Sony when they were at CS and Lawrence of Arabia was amazing for the 4k transfer. I think it was gonna be really interesting as because of this high resolution, you're getting the equivalent of, depending on which camera using you're going to be getting the equivalent of possibly a 75 millimeter print. Speaker 0 20:15 So let me ask you this. If I get one of these four K screens at 20, some odd thousand dollars in the next few months, when they become available, is there any actual way other than playing four K content directly off of professional grade production and post production equipment to say, just watch a movie in 4k. It seems like the camera manufacturers and the display manufacturers who obviously are sometimes the same entities are our leading head here, but there's not really a whole lot in the way of consumer oriented delivery technologies. That's the thing is someone can actually play this. Speaker 1 20:59 Sony is developing an over the top, uh, platform to provide downloadable content that will be stored on hard drive. So you'll be able to download a 4k movie or watch it streaming. They'll be having that ready by summertime. When they start actually releasing these 4k televisions that's for the higher end market, who'll be able to purchase them. But the fact is that you're going to have this content. There's already an archive of movies that have been recorded in the last five years that have been recorded on red cameras. And now you have these, you know, for example, as I said, the Fs 700 from Sony has been out for about two years, and now that's going to be able to record in 4k with the attachment. So you're going to start seeing more four K cameras. And they actually were showing off a successor to the <inaudible> from Sony. Speaker 1 21:40 That was a, an easy to carry point. Lee not points you, but, um, you know, over the shoulder, not over the shoulder, it's a side, it's like the, the X one, which is the side one like small one, like about like, uh, actually it would be more equivalent to like the 700 UK I think was the model. Maybe we have computers. We can last, thank you. Um, it's the one that they would like sell in the Sony style store and stuff like that and have it on display, but you didn't, you didn't have the replaceable lenses, but, uh, they were showing off the prototype of that one and they're going to be selling that for about 9,000, they said. And so that's the estimated price now. So if you look at that in a year, like for example, I have the Panasonic AGA if 100. Yeah. I know when that started selling, about two years ago, it was $16,000. I got mine for refurbished for 2,500. Speaker 0 22:25 Okay. So this stuff is going to get cheaper. You know, I remain a little skeptical, uh, you know, the consumer electronics manufacturers and the camera folks and the production equipment folks were very excited about stereo a few years ago. I think we can kind of agree that consumers have not, we have restricted super heavily, but yeah, I totally agree. It's it's out there now. And 4k is, is emerging and maybe erupting outside of the world of cinema, you know, let's let's table this let's, we'll obviously keep on top of it. I'm curious. What other themes ran through the show as you were there? I mean, consumer electronic show runs the gamut between, you know, the major television manufacturers, the Sonys and Panasonics and, and what have you use all the way down to like the Kickstarter projects? Literally, I'm curious if maybe at the other end of the spectrum, more of the bootstrap startup kind of weird little tech ventures that are sometimes represented in the hallways at CES, did you pick up on any other kind of interesting currents that, that seemed to maybe tell a story about, you know, where just consumer electronics industry is going? Speaker 1 23:39 There's a large push for DIY projects. Uh, the MakerBot guys, uh, had their booth and before they were back in the South hall, like really far back, but now this year, they were actually more into the front of the South hall, the South halls, the considered the, um, there be dragons. Uh, if you go far enough back, you know, in this hall, it's like, there'll be everything from like, people will have stands of like posters that have lights blinking behind them. That's how cheesy some of this stuff is in the back of the South hall. But, um, South LA this year was a little bit more about a lot of DIY projects. Can you, in the MakerBot, that's like a three D printer, the MakerBots, a three D printer. And there were a lot of consumer branded, three D printers. Now there's about total of like 20 different ones that are on display in the South hall. Speaker 1 24:23 That's amazing that you can, you can literally print things. Now I recall playing a video game, a resonate evil Kovar on packs, and there were say three D printer in it. And I was totally excited by that. But also at the time, it was really sort of like, you know, something you could have in a video game and not in real life here. Now, there, you can make, you can make things you can make. Can you make keys? You can make housings. What can some of the things things are showing, some of the things you can make with them are actually fully moving parts, depending on how the quality grade of three D printer you have, you can actually build, um, metal parts. There's a company in the UK called make bikes that actually makes their bikes out of a titanium powder resin that when they print out and then they throw it into a Callum for a couple of hours, it's a fully working titanium joint that could only be produced by printing it because it has a, a, what's it called a honeycombed inside to it when they put the bike mounts in there for extra strength. Speaker 1 25:19 And, um, that's wild. Um, some of the things there's a project that someone released where they could actually print out a gun. I was just going to ask that cause that, you know, I think of the Terminator, it's like, so why don't you just turn into a bomb and then, you know, get him, he says, well, I can't because you know that complex chemical pots that come the guy moving parts. Yes. So that's constantly what I'm hearing. The moving parts are possible because you're basically depending on the quality printer, there's a company called Z printed. For example, that allows you to use four different types of quote unquote materials. And one of them is a water soluble material. So once you've printed it out, you have to make sure you have a lattice work to maintain structural ability if you have arcs. And some of that, cause you're printing it layer by layer. Speaker 1 26:00 So there's about four different ways of doing three D printing. One of them is this immersion where you're actually using a laser to cause a latex or liquid film to harden. As you're passing it through, you can also use a ultraviolet laser to do that. There is the, uh, the sand dust method where you're using sand to hold the stuff solid as you're going layer by layer and printing it out. And so you just add more sand to it. Uh, relatively over time. There also is the, uh, the acrylics based printer systems, which are what, um, MakerBot and sublet do is they use abs plastic that's, uh, run through like a normal, almost like a normal print head that all started out of a program called the rep wrap, which was an open source three D printer pro form. And that just kind of gave birth to all these other three D printers. Wow. There's an open source three D printer platform. Yeah. Speaker 0 26:45 Opensource three D printer sitting on the shelf behind you. It's just in a cardboard box. Cause I haven't assembled. Speaker 1 26:50 Oh yeah. I remember a year ago when that showed up at the office. Yeah. But I mean, uh, you're actually seeing now these legitimate three D printers that can print things that are movable parts and movable things. There's actually a here in the Maryland area there at the community college of Baltimore in Katensville they actually have a fabrication lab that's open to the public. You have to take a $200 class to teach you how to use the equipment, but they have a laser cutter, three D printer, a bunch of other tools. And there's also a at the digital Harbor tech community center, they now have access to train kids on how to do 3d CAD programs and they have a MakerBot and a few other laser printers and laminate printer in there as well. So this is becoming commonplace. And I think what's going to be really interesting is that in the Baltimore area, particularly there's a big push for revisiting manufacturing and kind of this return to boutique shop creation. Speaker 1 27:41 Because back in like when America first started, we were 97% of America were self owned businesses, like small businesses that are run by people. And now it's like 90% of people now work for corporations. Well, I think you're going to have a large swing back because you're going to have locally. I need to have this printed or as, as, as MakerBot and all these other organizations called the column shape bubbles and the pirate Bay, which is the most famous torrent website has a section now that they call printables. So I can download the CAD file and print out anything I want from toys to equipment stuff. I'm imagining a time during the zombie apocalypse where this would be appropriate to have accessibility to like immediately. Yeah. Um, some of the things that you can do is like, for example, uh, I was, I designed a for shape bubbles, a, uh, a hood. So you can actually put this be printed out and then it has a bunch of slots that you can do, but it's, um, you can sign a piece of two-way glass and then put your iPad there, but it's a hood for doing it, uh, uh, waterboarding teleprompter, Oh God, a teleprompter that'll fit onto your camera. And that way you still have access to using your, um, follow focus, uh, control wheels, but it's a three D printed thing and you could throw it to any three D printer and print it out. Speaker 0 28:53 So I've heard the three D printing equipment industry often as kind of like these days to the early hobbyist days of the PC industry, when you used to go to the big computer club shows and the even early eighties heck late seventies. And there was a lot of interesting activity and it wasn't maybe quite ready for prime time, but it just seems like one of those things that could just get really big and it's not necessarily tough to imagine a few years out where you have this thing that kind of looks like a microwave oven sitting in your kitchen or something. And it's like, I need another fork. We didn't realize as uncle Nick was coming over for dinner and you like print out a fork, you know? Speaker 1 29:40 Well, I think what's interesting is that the Speaker 0 29:42 Ideas of three D printers, I remember them talking about this idea as a concept to everyone's house, back on the old PBS TV series. Newton's Apple back in like the early nineties, they've always had three parents, three parents have been around in the fabrication process. There's also been, um, multi-access CNC machines that allow you to, you know, pivot twist and all that stuff. But you're having this fabrication process, which I think is a burnout because you, I, I do agree it's the, the PC revolution, but it's not like how back in the days that, you know, HP was like, who the hell wants to own a personal computer. You're actually having people who've been wanting this for a long, long time. And the ability of saying, you know what, I broke something, Oh, well, you know what, the company won't give me a new replacement part. Speaker 0 30:29 I can print it out myself. And I think there's a strong influence of people who want to have self independence and be less dependent on a commercialization of products and gimmicks and gadgets and gizmos and whatnot. One, one imagines that this is going to have an interesting effect on intellectual property law, given that, you know, intellectual property certainly has kind of included physical goods to a degree. I mean, we obviously have patents for actual physical items, but in a sense, the, you know, if you consider the three D CAD file for an object to be kind of a piece of media, a digital file, there's going to be this interesting blend of like media oriented intellectual property as it relates to the physical production of objects. And let's say, you know, some, let's say you buy a consumer object. I'm looking at a Nikon camera on my, on my desk. Speaker 0 31:31 And you know, let's say one of the little buttons or something fell off. Imagine someone had kind of scanned in all of the components of this very camera. And I go online to this, you know, sharing website and I download the CAD plan for the particular button on this camera and then print it out in my three D printer so I can pop it back into place. You know, I imagine that Nikon is not going to be thrilled about that. And that this is just going to open up this very bizarre world of intellectual property law, where it's like, no, you don't even have the rights as a consumer to have like a plan for that part and a file that tells you how to make one yourself. Speaker 1 32:12 Well, the one thing that's interesting is that you bring that up. Is that the one thing that's, that's really important about this whole three D printing revolution that's happening right now is a lot of it is spurned out of the open source community. A lot of it is about people who want to be able to provide stuff to people. I mean, the joke was you wouldn't download a car, would you? It was like a joke off of the it crowd about piracy and whatnot. But that was actually a real piracy ad. That was, yeah. I thought that was a joke from the Hill. That was an it crowd spoof of the actual, I saw the original ad, but they didn't say you wouldn't download a car what'd you mean? Totally. They did. They did. I thought that it wasn't in the original. No, that's totally on the original one. Speaker 1 32:53 Then when they get to like, you wouldn't beat your grandmother. That's like when it's the photo stuff, but that was like a real, like, you wouldn't kill a police officer then shit in his hat. No, no, well, yeah, no, that was, that was real legit. Okay. But, um, for example, so you wouldn't download a car? Well, the joke was, yeah, we can now, uh, they've actually been a couple of three D printed cars, but talking about that, there was a company, um, see one second and pull up their name real quick. Uh, it's called mirror void. Um, the guy who was originally a CTO for Microsoft filed for a patent that allows him to put DRM on three D printed CAD files. And like, this was basically saying, yeah, right. That's not gonna happen because you already have this entire platform and idea the fizzles and these files being shared. Speaker 1 33:38 And a lot of these can also be created in like Google shape ups. You could actually take Google shape files and print print a straight up shape out or shape out. Yeah. But you can take those files and print them out very easily. Not only that, but like, if, if you're going to read like the law of the letter and say, well, you know, for example, if you treated a source code, well, then you know, what's to stop somebody from simply getting the general sense of what the design is, and then designing something that is functionally the same, but maybe doesn't have one extra curve or a line here then a then it gets even murkier, you know, they can, Speaker 0 34:11 Well, and I'm going to throw another angle out there. I mean, cause the, the, you know, listen, every everyone who's 35, like myself has probably ripped a CD from a friend at <inaudible> life. But I go out of my way to purchase almost predominantly through iTunes. Right. Yeah. And so let's, you know, but, but we know that the music industry and now the video industry have been largely affected by piracy. Although I guess that's arguable, but let's presume for a moment that there's some negative financial impact to them when someone shares something or for free that to me, people would have paid money for, well, how's this going to play out with physical objects? You're you were talking Patrick about like small community businesses where people are actually putting the hands of production back in their, you know, their own shops. And someone has, you know, let's say I'm here in Brooklyn, right? Everyone has like their own like craft beer or, you know, artists, little light bulb or, you know, fixtures or you know, something that is all about these days. Let's say someone in Brooklyn, 10 years from now has their little shop and they've come out with like some cool little widget that they can print out using three D printers that they have on the premises. Right. What's to stop someone from just pirating the CAD diagram and printing it. Well, the point Speaker 1 35:38 Is that they would have people who will be making money, are the people who sell the raw materials that you put into your three D printer. We have the big thing is that you have to put the CAD file on the internet first, you know, it puts the lotion on the skin or it gets the hose. So it's like, I don't know, that was random, but I like using that phrase. Um, it's like, yeah, yeah. So, uh, what here now I'm, you know, uh, but uh, you have to put that file on the internet first. So if they haven't put the file on the internet and they just basically say, all the CAD files are on a box that are not connected, the internet, no one else will have access to it except for them. And so it is right. It's pretty, they also have laser scanners, three-dimensional laser scanners. Speaker 1 36:14 And so if you buy a widget and you break it apart, literally physically into its constituent pieces, you can scan it and theoretically make your own CAD diagram for it, or even slightly tweak it. Maybe you even improve it. Right. Well, but that's nothing that's really necessarily reverse engineering, some funky thing that some of, but that's perfectly legal. But do you see yourself by the U S passed by the us patent office? Interesting reality that we're starting to see unfold here. I don't think there's any true answers at this point, cause it's not prevalent enough, but, um, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see if anyone can kinda, well, the whole point about money in that environment, off of those types of things that they might be producing. The us patent office was supposed to protect small businesses and small individuals. That was just origination. Speaker 1 37:07 When you talk about like, what is copyright law, it was supposed to add its essence, push things forward, you know, stimulate individual. Yeah. And, and the growth, but, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's some sort of weird perverse upside down is that you had basically the formation of the us patent office. You had the ability of having individuals be protected for creating a product for certain limited time, say, okay, you've put all this effort into creating this product. You got 15 years. If you don't create anything new in 15 years, screw you the patents open to the public. But with the push by legalization, by large corporate entities that are multinational corporations, they've kind of kicked the cans. So now you can have a patent, the owned by corporation and live as long as the life of the corporation. And then you have these patent trolls who buy up companies and get their patent portfolios famously. Speaker 1 37:59 It's one of the guys who, uh, was, uh, one of the co founders of Microsoft to basically got a lot of money. And he did that $4,000 Mac, a microaggressed Stromae book where they cut open microwave ovens and cut open pots to show you how things were cooking. He's a famous patent troll and you go down to Texas and there's this County in there that basically everyone goes to because they're very pro corporations and focusing on them for patents, but the, this idea of patents and stuff like that, I'm not going to go into that political hula, but it is kind of a, uh, well, yeah, copyright law, trademark Speaker 0 38:36 Law, maybe patent law. There's definitely examples of, of abuse and those those systems going outside of kind of the original envisionings, I would also submit that there's probably countless examples every day that are kind of more boring. And you don't read about it on the internet where people are legitimately using copyright law and patent law to protect the very things that those systems are supposed to protect. So it'll be an interesting story to see how this unfolds. So let's, let's move on. We we've talked about these 4k, um, you know, television systems and production systems. We talked about three D printers and this very do it yourself ethic at CES, you know, maybe one more big theme or, or maybe even a particular item that you saw. This may be something odd ball, but carrying maybe a certain weight with you as someone who's generally pretty well aware of trends in technology and you know, something that maybe surprised you or stood out. Speaker 1 39:33 The big thing with CS is that, uh, this is a year that was really interesting. There was a lot of people saying this might be the last year that CS is relevant because they're kind of having say that every year though, this was, there was an air about it. That was a lot different. Usually people will be at the Venetian or there'll be at the L let's call the LVH. It was originally the Hilton that's connected to the convention center. Like they'll have side rooms and suites there to, you know, show people off their stuff. Because even in the South hall for a 10 by 10 foot space to get four CS, it's like $10,000. Did CES go <inaudible>? Is that what happened? That's exactly what happened this year is that they're going <inaudible> uh, 1997. So no more booth. This is what you're saying. Well, there were booth beams, you know, this year, but the booth babes, usually the Morse, I do not mean don't digress here. Speaker 1 40:31 Not a thing. I actually find booth babes to be highly offensive. I'm one of those guys who doesn't like sports. I don't like strip clubs. We'll get along just fine, but you want to play some call of duty or something later, or a natural selection, a really good game for that's released on scene, but you have to play it on the windows because they don't have a Mac version. Yeah. But, um, the one thing with booth babes is that it's derogatory towards women and the crappier product is the more likely to have the worst, the product the further down the neck line. Yeah, that's true. Um, but you know, so just give a little bit of background. So what happened to <inaudible> was, um, it was largely a trade show, which CES is, and as it grew and grew and grew, and there were, uh, you know, why we're talking about booth Bay. Speaker 1 41:17 It was just, this was like a real big thing for the video game. Folks was booth babes, boop. They booth, uh, booth babes. But, um, at some point they hit a tipping point and they had to reevaluate what exactly this event was. It had become more, even though this is still even, it says consumer in the title, this is still a trade show at its core. The big the people, the big people are coming are press buyers who are coming in from like, this is the international consumer electronics show. I mean, there's, there's a IFA, which is in Berlin. And then there's also like, um, Computex, which is over in Taiwan, but that's typically more like computer parts and the computer steps. There's also CTI, which is about mobile phones city, which is about home theater equipment and also audio equipment. But see, yes, it's kind of like, this is the show pony. This is like, you know, the Budweiser Clydesdales of gadget events. And you'll have people coming in from Europe and from Asia coming into buy stuff, you know, they want to be able to see what something we can throw in our stores to buy, like, you know, JNR H and, uh, ah, what's that other H and H and H that I got, thank you. A, B and H B and H best buy, you know, circuit city. Their service was state of the art until they went out of business. Speaker 1 42:31 Yeah. I was at a table with like people who are like VPs of, you know, acquisitions for best buy HH. Greg, this is not the place to go if you, you know, it's like, you know, when they do international toy fair, is there, there were toy manufacturers. You wouldn't necessarily bring a child to that in the same way. If you really, really like TV's, this is not necessarily two years ago. They actually was interesting. They partnered up with gadget with peer Rojas, from gadget. He was with one of the original founders of Engadget and also one of the original founders of Gizmodo. And they were partnering up with him and you can actually come now they have an open public pass now, so you no longer have to pay the $600 tape. Yeah. They have, they have a one day, two day pass for a quote unquote fans of technology and you sign up on their website and it's a free pass. Speaker 1 43:14 I feel like that's, you know, cheapening of the CVS brand. I, I do. I do. I feel as though if this is the case, then, then as soon as you get the, the, the fan into the mix, it always messes things up. Well, what's interesting is that America's one of the only countries that doesn't have an open to the public trade shows for these things. IFA is open to the public for video games. Uh, Tokyo game show is probably one of the most famous video game expos that actually has the first three days are completely business. Only the last two days are like cost players out. The yang yet is so Japanese, but they also have a, was it game calm, which is in Berlin for video games, that's open to the public for the last two days. And then because of the fact that <inaudible> has never been opened to the public, which has always, you know, the loss of Los Angeles convention center, they a PACS, which is the penny arcade expo is now opened up and is actually video game. Speaker 1 44:05 Developers want to go to that instead of going to <inaudible> because they want to get the fan's point of view about their games. I mean, what's a better way of testing your game, but having diehard video game fans actually playing it and telling you this sucks, fix it. And so there's an interesting, there's an interesting dynamic of what is now open and what's now closed and what they should allow access to. But as we're saying, you know, CVS is going the <inaudible> route back in 97. They, uh, they went from being at the Los Los Angeles convention center on Figeroa to basically saying, okay, um, everyone's going to have private hotel suites and you've got to go to their hotels. And so trying to get around the city was a cluster. So it's, it's, it's interesting. I think this external stuff may be impacting the overall quality of, of the product that's shown. Speaker 1 44:58 What's interesting is that the North hall is where they typically have a car audio, as well as, uh, automobile manufacturers. Like I go there and talk to Ford about their new electric cars that they have, but that used to be the quote unquote I lounge area, where they had a lot of the eye products and they would be like the most Genki looking rhinestone iPod cases, but this year they really changed it up. The, the, the, the Chinese companies have kind of realized that having that strip mall kind of approach to a booth that looks like it's like in the no man's land of canal street in New York city of like Asian shops that sell really janky Chinese knockoffs is not the way you want to do it. And they actually really spiced up their booze for like what they're showing off. And I think that's, that's a product of the fact that you have China becoming mature in the manufacturing process. Speaker 1 45:46 I mean, a lot of China's stuff in the last five years before that was very gray market produced stuff where it's basically, you, you've probably seen this on 60 minutes where like, they'll be a company that's producing like golf clubs and they're making the titanium golf clubs. And then on the gray hours, which is the after hours, they're making those same, uh, golf clubs out of steel instead. And so, like, there's a lot of stuff that's copied off of like famously a lot of technology companies, one that I'm not going to name we'll produce knockoffs that rhyme with. Okay. I, um, but, uh, they famously, you know, copied off of Cisco routers even to the point where they just basically copied off the Cisco iOS four network information systems. That's true. And the entire African continent is powered by their routers and the majority of the middle East as well. And they're not bad routers, but there's some interesting security issues that the U S had a reason to block a certain company for America. And I'm not going to say why, but it's previous job related thing. Sure. And you could, you could just do a quick Google search and learn more about that. Yeah. Speaker 0 46:53 So guys, I want to wrap this up, but, um, I would like Patrick to maybe respond to that last question I asked about, you know, just any, any other interesting gizmos you came across this year. Anything surprising, uh, little, little tiny things that maybe hold a little promise for the future? I Speaker 1 47:10 Think one thing that's interesting is the, the move over to over the top platforms, Roku announced a partnership just the two weeks before CES that was, um, time Warner cable is going to be providing all of their HD channels to watch over Roku. Is that with an existing service that's with the existing subscription. But the fact is that means that's killing the cable box and there's talks to them also providing online DVR support. Well, I mean, that's, that's a pretty wise, you know, I, I think that the reason why they announced that is because you have, you don't understand how much this scares people, but Google, Google fiber in Kansas city, Missouri, and Kansas city, the only reason I've ever considered even going anywhere near Kansas city. I know, uhm, is scaring the ever-loving pants off of all the entire telecom industry. And like for example, at and T and Verizon are trying to get them blocked and saying, it's illegal for them to do this. Speaker 1 48:06 You know, they got them very, very heavy lobbyists contingent that, uh, even to get city ordinances passed to, to prevent yeah. Um, something that seems so intuitive and useful. I had a chance to use it 900 or 900 megabit per second internet speeds. And that's, that's, that's them still working on fixing it. You know what I get, I get three and a half megs down in my Comcast. And also the what's interesting is they're going to have, they have these boxes, all their HD boxes save to the Google drive index. So you get one terabyte of space on Google drive. So you can watch any videos you record anywhere you want. If you have internet access, each of these boxes also acts as a Google TV and interfaces that will search Netflix, Amazon TV, being broadcasted we'll record to them. Each one of them acts as a wifi repeater for your house and they all have gigabit connection. Speaker 1 48:57 Why would you need a set top box at this place? And I think time Warner is actually very smart to go this way because everyone's, Gardy got the equipment in place. And really if you're, there's a copyright issue with doing online DVR support, recording it at your house and then uploading to a storage facility, that's still encrypted in the, in the chain is different, but having someone record it at a facility outside of your house is no, no that's copyright infringement. And there's, there's a huge hurdle with the fact that the way the patent office and the copyright office in America works because it's no longer about protecting the individual. It's about protecting old money and old paradigm, the courses, entity, which is now a person, but it's always been a person since, uh, the, uh, the legalization of the, uh, the, uh, the, since the 14th amendment. Speaker 1 49:44 They actually threw that in there when they emancipated the slaves. And so corporations got their person status when we freed African-American slaves. So I missed that part in Django Unchained. I think I know that I'm upset. I grew up with a history buff for dad. And, uh, so I grew up being very well versed in the constitution stuff like, especially the fact that I'm a network security engineer by trade and particularly one that was a network security geek. Do you remember, um, you're talking about all this stuff and, uh, you know, as it relates to time Warner, um, there was a company that I want to say was very similar to Netflix early on, and they had housings of DVD players. And what they did is they sold a streaming service where you would, you would rent a movie and somebody somewhere would put a DVD in a DVD player and hit play. Speaker 1 50:32 And then they, I think they existed pretty well and made a whole bunch of capital for like two years. And then, and then like the door, they came knocking down their doors. Yeah. That one, uh, can't remember the name to company, but I know exactly what you're talking about. That case actually, they got sued out of existence, but eventually they were able to get the case to say, yeah, they have the right to do that, but it was, they were done. They were done. But what's interesting. There's another company right now. That's operating on it from New York city. Um, let me look it up real quick. Uh, the company is, let's see streaming TV. What's interesting. They usually are born out of sort of noncompliance when it comes to this stuff. Crunchy roll is another good example of a, you know, a video service that, uh, the really sort of it started illegally. Speaker 1 51:12 But then the actual anime companies then bought the rights to use it. And they got such a fan following. It's very true. And, uh, the, the company that's now the big person is called Ario. They actually have a huge giant facility where all they have are these racks of software antennas that allow you to get a TV, digital signal, and then be able to watch that through your laptop or through your set top box or through your iPad. And then it records it for just the New York market for just the New York market currently. But it lets you record shows that are over the FCC mandated, open access, broadcasted television networks, and all that tells you the networks are going ape about this because the fact is they don't want their content being downloaded or purchased, you know, over the internet. But the fact is it's FCC mandated to have these basic digital channels broadcast. Speaker 1 52:02 And plus for first of all, we've been doing that for years when, before the DTV mandate, I mean like you pop the tape into your VCR, you hit record. And now, you know, there are encoder decoder products on the market or enterprise level, but you can take a public FCC broadcast stream and bring it down and utilize it. These guys are just scared because they might be losing some money somehow, somewhere along the line. So lots of crazy things going on at CES, uh, lots of changes the public can go sometimes now there are still very strange things in the South hall. And, uh, really what we're seeing is a, is a slow sort of upslope of, uh, uh, adoption as it relates to 4k. But I think it'll probably be a little bit of time before the consumer level folks really embrace it, but, uh, it's there in full force for production and also the DIY three D printed stuff. I as always, if you have questions or comments and you would like to talk to the folks over here at the workflow, show myself and Nick, can you please can send them over to workflow show at <inaudible> dot com. Speaker 0 53:01 Patrick, how do people get to you directly? You output a lot of media, you were shooting video out there at CES. You interview a lot of folks. You read a lot of interesting articles. What's your four one, one. Speaker 1 53:14 Uh, you can reach me at planning media that's P uh, that's plan eight.tv. That's a P L a N the number eight.tv. You can also reach me on Twitter at, at Rowan house. That's R O H N H O U S E uh, just Google Patrick Roadhouse. And you'll find all the work I've done for several publications and planning media as well. Uh, we're gonna be producing new shows soon. So we're going to have about six shows coming out of the pipe of 15 minutes, shows that we'll bunch together to make 45 minute shows for people as well. So, uh, we'll be producing some really great content soon. And thank you guys for having me on. Awesome. Thank you so much for running. Thank you, Marilyn. This is Nick, and you've been listening to the work flow show. Talk to you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.