TVs Pushing the Edges

TVs Pushing the Edges
Number	3540
Broadcast Date	MAY 28, 2019
Episode Length	33:52
Hosts	Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang
Guests	Robert Heron

AMD, Intel, ARM, and Nvidia up the Generation ante, Apple updates the iPod Touch, and donkey-enabled solar powered Community Tablets arrive.

Guest

• Robert Heron
  • Heron Fidelity
  • AVexcel

Quick Hits

• AMD Ryzen 3000 Announced: Five CPUs, 12 Cores for $499, Up to 4.6 GHz, PCIe 4.0, Coming 7/7
• It's Official: AMD Rolls Out Ryzen 3rd Gen Desktop CPUs, Including a Ryzen 9

AMD announced the first three new chips from the 3rd Gen Ryzen lineups will arrive July 7. There are two 7-nanometer Ryzen 7 CPUs and the first Ryzen 9, all on the existing AM4 socket and claiming to be the first PCI Express 4.0-compliant desktop platform. The Ryzen 7s double total memory cache to reduce memory latency. AMD also announced the first GPU to use its new Navi architecture. The 7-nanometer Radeon RX 5700 features GDDR6 memory, delivering 25% better performance per clock per core and 50% better power efficiency than existing Vega-based cards. The RX 5700 will be released sometime in July.

• NVIDIA is bringing pro-level Quadro RTX GPUs to laptops

Nvidia announced Turning-based Quadro RTX professional laptop cards. The Quadro RTX 5000 has 3,072 CUDA cores, 384 Tensor cores, and 48 RT cores paired with 16GB GDDR6 RAM. 17 laptops from ASUS, Dell, HP, MSI, Razer, Gigabyte and Acer will carry the new cards with the branding RTX Studio. Aside from the cards, the laptops will also feature the "NVIDIA Studio Stack" a software SDK and APIs designed to speed up video editing, rendering and vector animation. According to Nvidia, RTX Studio laptops will start at $1600 coming in the second half of the year.

• Arm announces its new premium CPU and GPU designs

ARM also announced the Cortex-A77 CPU and the Mali-G77 GPU. ARM claims the Cortex-A77 improves performance by 20% per clock over the previous A76, with 25% better machine learning performance. The Mali-G77 GPU uses the Valhall GPU design, with 40% overall better performance and 30% more power efficiency than its predecessor. It also runs machine learning inference and neural net workloads 60% faster.

• Intel COMPUTEX Preview: New Products Deliver Real-World Performance — Up to 2x Gaming and 8x AI Boost

Intel showed off the Core i9-9900KS, an 8-core, 16-thread processor capable of running all cores at a turbo frequency of 5GHz. Technically the CPU has a stock frequency of 4GHz, but will only run at that frequency if a motherboard uses default Intel BIOS, which generally isn't the case. Intel confirmed this isn't new silicon, rather Core i9-9900K chips specifically binned to run at the higher frequency all the time. Pricing, release and power consumption were not announced. Intel also announced it will start the 10th generation of its Core line of processors, code-named Ice Lake, with a series of laptop-oriented chips.

Top Stories

• Apple refreshes the iPod touch with the iPhone 7’s processor

Apple announced an update to the iPod touch which includes an A10 Fusion chip and a new 256GB storage model. This is the first update since the 6th gen iPod touch was released in 2015. The new iPod touch starts at $199 for the 32 GB model, $299 for 128 GB, and $399 for 256 GB.

• Browser vendors win war with W3C over HTML and DOM standards

The World Wide Web Consortium, aka W3C, has decided to hand over development of HTML and DOM standards to the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group or WHATWG made up of people from Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. That group was founded in 2004 to help speed up the development of HTML standards. The group developed HTML5 and led the effort to get W3C approval for it. In 2018 the W3C and WHATWG differed over version 4.1 of the Document Object Model or DOM, which was not approved. Under the new agreement, W3C members will now draft recommendations to be given to WHATWG for consideration for inclusion in the HTML or DOM Living Standards.

• HP's Revamped VR Backpack Delivers the Closest Thing to True VR Freedom Yet

HP first released the original Omen X backpack VR system in 2016, and now it's got an updated version with the same case and dock but a more comfortable form factor and updated specs. The notable thing is that the Omen X is not only compatible with HP's own Reverb headset but also the Vive, Oculus, or any other VR headset. When not used as a VR backpack, the main computer chassis can live in its dock and be connected to a traditional display, mouse, and keyboard, like a regular PC. Demos of the pack included OSHA training and a virtual trip to Helsinki. That plus the $3,300 price tells you HP is still targeting this for commercial use.

• Sony built an IoT chip with a 60 mile range

Sony is launching a low-power wide area or LPWA chip for internet of things devices to take advantage of Sony's ELTRES network launching this fall. The LPWA chip can transmit up to 60 miles, work in urban areas with a lot of potential interference and work on high-speed objects like cars and trains. The LPWA chips have a much longer range than WiFi and use less power than cellular. Sony's CXM1501GR chip transmits signals in the 920MHz band and can use GPS/GNSS to tell time and location. Use cases include bicycle and car rentals, locating ships, following boat races, monitor trains, buses and even street lamps, helping find friends in places like ski hills, etc. Sony will start with a build-out in Japan.

• The tablet computer pulled by donkey

The BBC reports on a container with solar panels, pulled by a donkey that uses touch screens to improve digital literacy in Mozambique which sits between South Africa and Tanzania. While Kenya, two countries to the north has 91% mobile penetration, Mozambique has less than 50%. The project is called Community Tablet founded by Mozambique's Day Amade. A three-minute movie plays to introduce people to the topics , prizes like t-shirts and caps are given out and the audience can use smaller touchscreen tablets to answer questions about what they saw. The idea is to educate and empower communities on topics like public health, mobile banking and voting.

Discussion

• Display Week
• Hisense Dual-Cell LCD Tech
• Japan Display Inc's 8K 120Hz Rec2020
• VIZIO P-Series Quantum X
• LG C9 OLED TV
• Samsung Q90/Q900 TVs

Mailbag

You said that Robert Heron will be your guest on the Tuesday show. I have a question that I hope you can ask him.

I haven't jumped into 4k TV yet, but I am shopping. I get the sense that local dimming is an important feature to enhance HDR, but how much is enough? In mid-priced TVs I see local dimming zones between 10 and 120. 10 or 20 seems low on a 65" TV. Is there a rule of thumb to determine the minimum dimming zones based on screen size?


Thanks,

Sent by Don in St. Louis

Links

• This episode on dailytechnewsshow.com
• Support DTNS on Patreon
• DTNS subreddit
• DTNS Facebook Group

Preceded by: "Sense and Accessibility"

TVs Pushing the Edges

Followed by: "Screening New Laptops"