CES 2020 Was a Wonderful (And Frightening) Harbinger of the Future - Part 1

I39ve been tracking comments from my peers who attended which ranged from quotuninspiringquot to quotamazingquot While I don39t go to CES to solely be wowed by tech make no mistake I love it and there were numerous innovations that wowed me No the CharminBot was not one of them As someone who has attended for the better part of 18 years I pay close attention to the show39s evolution and the underlying messages about our consumer adoption culture and the macrolevel role that technology will play in our lives over the next five to 10 years What I saw this year both thrilled and scared me in a very real way While the future is amazing the path there amp8212 for the future of wellpaying jobs amp8212 is another storyHere are some of my key takeaways from CES 2020 in part one of my twopart seriesPart 18K Behold Yet Another quotKquotAI evolvedChina Earns Respect and FearThe launch of NextGen TV8K Behold yet another quotKquotThe shift to 8K was inevitable but for the majority of TV owners and buyers it is really a meaningless marketing tool According to the Consumer Tech Association over half of the 40 million televisions projected to be sold in 2020 will be 4K and 21 percent of LCD screens sold in 2020 will be 65quot or larger If you are buying a 75quot screen and sit REALLY close to the screen perhaps 8K will mean something to you If you don39t sit so close then you39ll be just fine with a 4K set with a good refresh rate and HDR amp8212 both of which are more important than pixel density And if you have anything smaller than a 55quot you don39t even really need 4KIf you do ignore this and get an 8K TV recognize that there is already very little content available in 4K outside of some movies on Amazon and Netflix There is and will be practically no native 8K content outside of some 2020 Olympic footage that NHK is filming this year or likely the next Despite all this there will be 8K sets out this year from practically every single manufacturerOne quick note There really wasn39t much happening on the TV front although the Samsung Q950TS its almost completely bezelless set the bezels are 23millimeter per side but otherwise pure screen is incredibly beautiful However this quotInfinity Screenquot TV is 8K please refer above The Samsung Sero which does have a bezel also has a nifty trick it can pivot from landscape to portrait So if you are obsessed with vertical video a la Snaps then this could be a TV for youAI EvolvedCES 2019 was an allout battle between AIs with Google and Amazon taking exponentially larger spaces to highlight both the use cases and partners within which Google Assistant and Alexa were embedded This year both main players kept the same floor locations and space but the focus was clearly on use cases with a more limited controlled view of partners Both had spaces that were designed to take you through life moments and areas of your home where Assistant and Alexa can enhance your lifeAmazon focused on major announcements about Alexa39s auto integration with brands such as Lamborghini and Rivian AllElectric vehicles R1S and R1T Amazonamp160also announced that Echo Auto the device that brings Alexa into their car will launch globally this year amp8212 though it has been available in the US for the past yearBy April of this year US Echo Auto users will be able to pay at over 11500 Exxon Mobil stations just by telling Alexa to pay the bill Additionally Amazon has partnered with Fiat Chrysler and BMW to bring FireTV Edition for Auto to some of their cars Passengers will be able to stream from Amazon Prime FreeTime Netflix and shows recorded with FireTV Recast via this technologyCES clearly demonstrated that AI is getting more predictive and proactive I wasn39t a huge fan of the nowdefunct Amazon Dash buttons yet here I am intrigued by Amazon Dash Replenishment ADR There are various devices and partners that have integrated ADR which monitors product usage recognizes when inventory levels are low and then automatically reorders the productFor example when your HP printer gets low on ink the replacement cartridges will magically appear on your doorstep If your Air Wick fragrance starting to fade in your Essential Mist Bluetoothenabled diffuser no worries The replacement fragrance will just arrive all on its own At CES RB announced four new products will ADR integration Enfamil Infant Formula Finish Dishwasher Tablets SmartCap and the aforementioned Air Wick Essential Mist BluetoothWhile I am still not 100 percent sold on its usefulness in the home for business office managers it will take some of the friction out of having to monitor and reorder office products such as ink and toner kitchen supplies and paper in addition to being able to more accurately quantify usage ratesOne of the more interesting AIenabled technologies is a company called Dabby which is claiming to be the first quotsmartquot streaming OTT service To be clear I do not believe that Dabby will find much success as a hardware product with consumers Its cost out of the box is 399 which is never going to work given the sub100 of streaming devices such as Roku and Amazon FireTV The Dabby software though is incredibly impressive In a nutshell Dabby can search across all your streaming services for the content that you are looking to view I39m not just talking full shows or episodes you can ask Dabby to search for a specific clip segment from a specific movie and it will find it Being a cross between skeptic and a geek I asked Dabby to find a scene from the newer Battlestar Galactica where the Cylons attacked the humans and sure enough within seconds the screen was showing the clipOn a more practical level Dabby can monitor your streaming service usage If Dabby recognizes that you haven39t used one of the streaming services in your portfolio in a reasonable amount of time it can either alert you or automatically cancel the service for you In this era of nocontract noobligation streaming services plus the laziness factor of human nature Dabby could save a consumer serious money I see no reason why Dabby couldn39t be a perfectly amazing phone app that is synced with my streaming devicesFinally there is Neon a company funded by Samsung39s research division STAR Labs Neons are photorealistic human avatars with conversationallyenabled artificial intelligence This takes deep fake to an entirely different level I can see many jobs being disrupted including hotel concierge rental car attendants QSR counter service and thousands of government bureaucratic roles Neon is still in beta but it gets closer than anything I39ve seen to passing the Turing test the point where you cannot identify if you are speaking to a human or a computerChina Earns Respect and FearThere is little question that China took CES by storm Although phase oneamp160of the USChina trade agreement was only recently signed Chinese TV mobile and smart home companies39 commitment to attend CES was clearly not impacted by the trade war over 1000 Chinese vendors attended CES 2020In the past Central Hall was dominated by Japanese Sony and Korean LG and Samsung TV manufacturers About 10 years ago Chinese companiesamp160such as TCL Haier and Hisense started to appear with smaller convention space and secondtier quality product Fastforward to today and Chinesebased brands dominated Central Hall even displacing or filling Intel39s massive booth The TV quality on Chinese sets is almost up to the same level as Samsung and Sony with TCL having found quite a bit of success in the USamp160with its brilliant integration of the Roku OS According to NPD TCL sales volume ranked number two with a 165 percent share in the USChinese company Skyworth is making a massive push into the US in 2020 It showcased its 8K and paperthin OLED sets as well as highlighted its transparent LED technology which was a headturnerAs with all modern televisions most of the Chinesebrand televisions are smart TVs and are collecting viewership data and TV appusage data The ascent of China in the smart TV space is a cause of great concern not just as a true competitive threat to Korean and Japanese manufacturers but from the perspective of data collection Just as the US has taken a strict and close look at the popular social media app TikTok given its China ownership there could be real issues with China having access to secondbysecond HH television viewing usage which also includes every device attached to that TV In a subsequent column I will be discussing this issue indepthThe Launch of NextGen TVLast year the ATSC 30 standard that governs overtheair digital transmission standards of television was ratified at CES Since then independent stations across the country have begun the process of upgrading their broadcast technology to take advantage of the twoway interactive capability that ATSC 30 opens At this year39s CES ATSC 30 was officially branded quotNextGen TVquot and several manufacturers announced their plans to upgrade the internal TV tuners to be compliant in 2020 models LG will offer six models Samsung will feature NextGen TV in all its 2020 8K models and Sony will ship on its X900H model All in all there are 20 devices on which NextGen TV is slated to be integrated and inmarket during 2020 While this is a decent start and eventually all new TVs will have NextGen TV tuners the adoption rate of new televisions is the longest of any technologyAlthough there will be interim NextGen TV adaptors due to the growing number of cordcutters it will likely be three to five years before there is real scale and true financial upside to local stations It is possible that like HDRadio NextGen TV turns out to be a quottoo little too latequot technology However given the hastening transition to streaming there is still a runway for NextGen TV to take off Of all the technologies at CES for our little universe of advertising and marketing this is one to keep an eye onBut Wait That39s Not AllStay tuned for Part 2 where we will explore how CPG brands are embracing tech the robots have arrived and yes I39ll take a slice of mushroom with that why privacy was integrated into almost every conversation and I will share my personal wish list for the technology that I want to buy now Please look for the forthcoming GoFundMe page Hey Alexa GiveMinskyALamborghini Just remember folks I do it all for youClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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CES 2020 Was a Wonderful (And Frightening) Harbinger of the Future - Part 1

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