CES 2019: ‘8K Is Getting Real’

Disagree that gaming negates physical activity. I’ve given my arm quite a workout hurling my controller at the wall playing Dark Souls.

In all seriousness I play while doing an hour on the stationary cycle 5 days a week (not saying thats the ONLY time I play, but if I’m not really my currenr game, it just might be). It’s awesome and I don’t know why everyone doesnt do it.
 
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As far as VR and AR go, I don't think either will take off with mainstream consumers if they have to wear something strapped to their heads for it to work. Same reason 3D TV died.

When the technology exists to have AR holograms projected into the living room like Star Wars, then that will be a hit.
 
Jaime Valles said:
As far as VR and AR go, I don't think either will take off with mainstream consumers if they have to wear something strapped to their heads for it to work. Same reason 3D TV died.

When the technology exists to have AR holograms projected into the living room like Star Wars, then that will be a hit.
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I don't know if I agree with that. So many people wear glasses all the time. Either corrective glasses, sunglasses or safety glasses. Rarely is there a complaint about wearing any of those. If there is, they still wear them anyway. The problem with 3D (which I enjoy) is that it gives some people a headache, it's usually dim, you have to be sitting in the prime spot, the glasses are flat and glare if there are any other light sources on in the room, and if you're trying to eat something you have to look down at from time to time while watching 3D, it can be off-putting. Sure some people don't like to wear the glasses just because they don't like something on their face, but i'm guessing that's a small percentage compared to all the other factors.

VR/AR glasses if done right could potentially eliminate most of those problems.

I think AR will probably be the more popular technology and will also solve the problem of laziness to some degree (lol yeah right). It gives people a reason to get out and explore the real world by turning what would otherwise be boring suburban sprawls into hybrid digital landscapes with layers of different functionality.
 
Run&Gun said:
But Dan, isn't a big part of going to the movies or sitting down at home to watch one(or binge on many), to provide an escape from reality for a few hours? Most people aren't watching enlighting docs, they're watching big budget, unrealistic action flicks, or fantasy or sci-fi or rom-com's... None of it close to any of the viewers real life. It's an escape. Pure entertainment.

I'm not a gamer, but I'd argue that with video games they can help with mind-hand co-ordination, muscle memory, improved reaction time, reflexes and memory. No, you're not running a marathon or lifting weights when you're playing a video game, but at least you're actively doing something(not just passively sitting there), as opposed to watching a movie when you are just sitting there doing nothing and probably eating eating a big 'ole tub of buttered popcorn(that's what I do).

Both can be entertainment for people. They're just different forms.
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All valid points but people generally don't die of exhaustion (documented cases of people obsessing, playing until they have literally died in China, Korea, Thailand and Japan) while watching too many movies. All things in moderation, but with video games, that's like saying doing Heroin in moderation isn't too bad.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
I'm with Run&Gun. Watching videos is consuming, video gaming is participating. There are a wide variety of games, but a lot of them do actually involve critical thinking. I game perhaps 5-10 hours per week. I find it moderate and not addictive, relaxing, and a good way to pass the time when there's nothing better to do, and the game I mainly play (Ghost Recon: Wildlands) involves strategy and making smart decisions on the cuff, and when dumb decisions are made, you and your friends die, and call you dumb, and then you're motivated to work smarter next time. Applied to real life, one should be constantly thinking about the choices they make and always trying to act smarter to get better results. I've been getting into airsoft which is kind of the real life version of Ghost Recon.

I found this TED talk on gaming to be interesting.



I also think what you watch matters. I'd argue that dumbed down kids shows (think PBS shows, Dora the Explorer, etc.) that are supposed to be directly educational to children are not nearly as good for them to consume as intellectually superior content like what Pixar does, for example.
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Gaming couldn't be totally pointless, I would agree that it's not and that games can teach strategic mindset, etc. Problem is, especially amongst younger players, the majority cannot/do not/will not exhibit your self-control and discipline to only play 5-10 hours per week. I know younger people who work full time and go to school and still manage to squeeze in 35-40 hours of gaming per week on a consistent basis. No different than drug addicts or alcoholics. This is destructive to their lives, families, relationships and they CANNOT stop.
 
combatentropy said:
I disagree with the majority opinion that these things are just an escape: art, movies, novels, sports, games. With whatever criteria you are writing off these things as a waste of time, is anything you might call "play" safe from this criticism? Do you think it's good to do anything in life that people call "fun"?
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Of course I do, I think entertainment and fun is great. Problem is though that people are not very self-regulating. We've discussed this before with things like the NFL/Football worldwide. If we objectively look at the massive amount of money, effort, time put into the worship of football in the US, and football (Soccer) worldwide, we can see that the amount of money that fan worship generates through ticket sales, broadcast and merchandising is in the trillions of dollars. What does that say about our value system as a society? Does football (either game) really matter in the scheme of life? Of course not, it's essentially meaningless and serves no function beyond tribalism and revenue generation for those lucky and smart eough to have long term investment into the complex. I don't begrudge people their sports fandom, I'm just questioning, as a society, how did we get here, why are we here? If you think about all of the good and real meaningful change in people's day to day existence that could be propagated and furthered with those trillions of dollars, that's what gives me pause.

My personal beliefs are that we were created to help one another, period. Not to kill each other, diss each other or ignore each other. So wasting trillions of dollars on any corrupt, escapist mass entertainment complexes (gaming, drugs, alcohol, porn, Hollywood, Bollywood, organized team sports) of any kind is just sad. It's not that we shouldn't have fun and have entertainment, of course we need diversion from the horrors of life, the stress and the sad, negative parts of life, it's a coping mechanism. It's the "overdoing" part of it that I think is a waste. Go work Comicon for a few years and experience the level of fantasy entertainment escape that rules the lives of tens of millions of people around the world and the amount of money and commitment that people put forth to exist in a world/mindset that has no basis in reality. It's hard to not shake your head when you see the levels of people 40-60 years old and this is all they have in their lives. I get Comicon and that lifestyle is fun for a lot of people. But it's that going over the edge from mere fandom to all-consuming lifestyle that is a sickness as far as I am concerned. Once again, there is a moral imperative to being a human. It feels as if narcissism and selfishness has surpassed the moral imperative for most people and that's sad.

When I produced a documentary for Warner Bros. for the Wizard of Oz in the early 2000s, my associate producer had a term for the people who live and exist for, yes, the Wizard of Oz, "Foamers", as in foaming at the mouth crazy. We did a shoot with an unnamed pretty successful Hollywood writer/producer at his home in Runyon Canyon in LA. His Wizard of Oz Memorabilia collection was valued between $50-60 million dollars, he had a pair of the Red Slippers, one of Judys actual dresses, this person actually had their entire collection spread around their home as well as a 150,000 square foot warehouse of Oz memorabilia. Besides writing movies, this person literally had nothing else in his life, divorced, estranged from his kids, parents, siblings. It was insane that this person had dedicated essentially thier entire life and work output to acquiring Wizard of Oz memorabilia. This is an extreme example but one I have witnessed first hand multiple times throughout my career. This person was obviously wealthy but you can find this same story over and over, even with very poor people. Very poor people probably tend to experience more of life's horrors, setbacks and unpleasantness than the rich or middle class so it's a bit more understandable that they want to escape reality but my point is, you see this behavior at all levels of society, it's all consuming.

I just have a problem with the misplaced priorities in so many people's lives. It's like they were real people and somewhere along the line, they were consumed by mass psychosis in escaping reality. It's really quite sad.
 
I think we're starting to go down a rabbit hole here with the addiction/overdoing it argument, because it can be applied to pretty much ANYTHING. You can die from drinking too much water, you can die from working out too much/too strenuously. Some people have no self-control. Some people have addictive personalities. And it's going to manifest in something or more than likely multiple things. But that doesn't necessarily make those things bad by themselves. Obviously you have a personal dislike for gaming and it appears that, in general, you equate it to one of the things that's "wrong with this world" and when you see the extreme case/outlier events like what you cited, it just reinforces your personal belief that video games are no good.

I'm in my early 40's and video games really started to take hold in the home console market when I was growing up, so I've been playing on and off for well over 30 years, now(the original NES with R.O.B and the light zapper was my first console), so maybe that affects my opinion and philosophy on the matter. But as far as "bad things" happening, I've had way more bad things happen to me in the gym. I'm a year and a half into a shoulder injury from summer '17 that happened in the gym that just won't quite heal. But I still go to the gym, because I like working out, it has many benefits and I know that something like that isn't going to happen every time I go in. Just like playing video games. There may be fringe cases of people putting their health and lives at risk and losing them, but for the vast majority of the people doing it, it's safe and enjoyable and can have positive benefits.
 
Run&Gun said:
I'm a year and a half into a shoulder injury from summer '17 that happened in the gym that just won't quite heal.
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It's of course best to get evaluated by a professional, but you most likely may have a tear in your rotator cuff (very common injury).

It's a nagging pain that always comes back with the 'pushing' form of lifting (chest press/shoulder press), especially once weight is introduced. More severe cases will limit your range of motion regardless of weight.

---

P.S. If anyone makes a video game thread, I'll show you my video game collection (may blow you away, ha).
 
Josh Bass said:
Disagree that gaming negates physical activity. I’ve given my arm quite a workout hurling my controller at the wall playing Dark Souls.

In all seriousness I play while doing an hour on the stationary cycle 5 days a week (not saying thats the ONLY time I play, but if I’m not really my currenr game, it just might be). It’s awesome and I don’t know why everyone doesnt do it.
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I think this is healthy gaming. You are being physically active and only do it when you are bored on a bike. If everyone gamed like this, it would be great!
 
Run&Gun said:
I think we're starting to go down a rabbit hole here with the addiction/overdoing it argument, because it can be applied to pretty much ANYTHING. You can die from drinking too much water, you can die from working out too much/too strenuously. Some people have no self-control. Some people have addictive personalities. And it's going to manifest in something or more than likely multiple things. But that doesn't necessarily make those things bad by themselves. Obviously you have a personal dislike for gaming and it appears that, in general, you equate it to one of the things that's "wrong with this world" and when you see the extreme case/outlier events like what you cited, it just reinforces your personal belief that video games are no good.

I'm in my early 40's and video games really started to take hold in the home console market when I was growing up, so I've been playing on and off for well over 30 years, now(the original NES with R.O.B and the light zapper was my first console), so maybe that affects my opinion and philosophy on the matter. But as far as "bad things" happening, I've had way more bad things happen to me in the gym. I'm a year and a half into a shoulder injury from summer '17 that happened in the gym that just won't quite heal. But I still go to the gym, because I like working out, it has many benefits and I know that something like that isn't going to happen every time I go in. Just like playing video games. There may be fringe cases of people putting their health and lives at risk and losing them, but for the vast majority of the people doing it, it's safe and enjoyable and can have positive benefits.
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Maybe I should revise my thought, it's not that I think video games are "no good", it's simply the compulsive obsessive behavior they encourage is destructive. I have a friend who is a marriage and family counselor and we've talked about what she sees in her cases and a disproportionate amount of patients who are facing terrible hardship in their lives are self-confessed gaming addicts. My own son is totally addicted, my 35 year old nephew, two nieces who live in NYC. They all spend a minimum of 30-60 hours a week gaming. Not sure where the line is but when you spend as much time as many workoholic employees do at work on a gaming console or your phone gaming, that can't be healthy and it's not isolated cases. Add in social media addiction, which I think we all face in one form or another, at one level or another and it's not good for humans or society.

I've played quite a few games myself, when I was a kid is when Atari's Pong came out (yeah, really dating myself here) so I was there essentially "at the beginning", I played Quake quite a lot for about six months when it came out although I mainly liked it for Trent Reznor's amazing sound design and score more than the game, my in laws have gaming consoles at their house and we have all played various games during family get togethers over the years. The difference is, I played, enjoyed but then quickly got bored, gaming is so repetitive, it loses it's attraction very quickly with me, thank God. I just think many underestimate the size, scale and scope of the issue with gaming addicition, it's not just fringe addictive personality outliers. But we could debate this for years, it doesn't matter, it's just my opinion and my opinion won't change anything about it.
 
Dan- completely understand your point of view regarding games and addiction- it's one of the reasons I left that industry years ago. And combatentropy (combat entropy ~= fight disorder... could become +negentropy (or something more elegant)), I worked corporate, including in a 1000 person building (for Fox/NewsCorp/Myspace) as well as many corporate startups, and understand your position as well. How are these things related (and related to 8K TVs)? It's about basic human needs: meaningful social interactions with other humans. Addiction of any kind can be related to lack of meaningful relationships with others and/or lack of a purpose in life. A side effect of this dissociation with human relationships is addictive and/or obsessive/compulsive behavior. Rehab without addressing the root cause of the addiction (lack of real human connections / meaning for one's life) tends to not work very well. Additionally, to effectively change behavior requires re-wiring one's unconscious mind, where most behavior comes from. Thus hypnosis/self-hypnosis/meditation/prayer/NLP/yoga etc. can all help make the necessary changes to the unconscious mind for lasting change. For extreme cases, e.g. PTSD driven drug/alcohol addiction, DMT (in any of its various form, e.g. ayahuasca, mushrooms) can be highly effective: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5867510/ . Most people have been conditioned to believe that these compounds (including marijuana) are "bad" and like anything capable of powerful changes, must be used with care else they can be harmful (e.g. cause PTSD or worse). Warning noted, the results of recent clinical studies and countless anecdotal reports show that these compounds can be highly effectively in changing the unconscious mind and can provide highly therapeutic healing in as little as one dose/session.

8K TVs including Gear Acquisition Syndrome can also be signs of addiction. There's certainly a dopamine feedback loop connection when one purchases new gear. After a while of acquiring enough high quality gear, one can realize that the lower cost gear was just fine for the level of quality work one has been creating. And thus start focusing on the quality of the content, to provide something of value for *others* vs. the temporary satisfaction of acquiring new gear and enjoying the higher quality results for *self* (which is certainly useful, though not nearly as useful as creating valuable content for others). The sustainable feedback loop then becomes creating value for others, in all aspects of life, as the primary source of dopamine reward. Still 'selfish' in a sense, yet sustainable and mutually beneficial to all. This is kind of like our bodies- when cells are working together for themselves and the benefit of others, the body is healthy. When cells are selfish (cancer) and/or malfunction due to overload (diabetes, heart disease), the body suffers. So for the math fans out there, it's fractal: self similar at many scales.

If one is burned out at work, from OMB to being an executive in the corporate world and everywhere in between, spending time with nature, and more importantly, making connections with people *in real life*- take a yoga class, join a club, go to meet ups, etc. will all help give life more meaning, and for those dealing with addictions, provide relief and hope for the future.

There's a global shift in consciousness happening now, and consciousness does indeed effect matter and reality (see the quantum double slit and quantum eraser experiment videos on YouTube and elsewhere. Want something from the real world instead of the lab? http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ , https://www.amazon.com/Intention-Experiment-Using-Thoughts-Change-ebook/dp/B000N0WTBU/ ). It's real, and one's life state is directly coupled not only to one's actions but also the thoughts one thinks every moment of every day which directly affects reality in subtle and accumulative ways. Minimally, biasing the quantum randomness of reality in specific directions, which accumulate into what people like to call manifestation, thoughts become things, etc. A first step on internet forums and social media, is to see how often one can make constructive comments vs. destructive / limiting beliefs / complaining comments and see how one feels and how one's life changes after shifting one's consciousness to a new point of view.
 
The coming reality of 8K seems to envoke a lot of various thoughts.......... :)

One wonders how those 60s liquid projection shows look on a wall sized 8K TV. ;)

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The CES 2019 madness is kicking off with LG's press conference today. As we found out earlier this week, the company will be showing off its new OLED and LCD TVs, including two 8K sets. Rumor has it LG could be ready to unveil a foldable phone, though don't be disappointed if that doesn't actually happen here in Las Vegas. It may be waiting to introduce it later in the year, when it wouldn't have to compete for attention with the thousands of other gadgets being announced. Either way, we'll find out together and bring you the news as it happens at 11AM ET / 8AM PT. Keep your eyes on this page.
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https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/07/lg-ces-2019-liveblog/
 
puredrifting said:
I think this is healthy gaming. You are being physically active and only do it when you are bored on a bike. If everyone gamed like this, it would be great!
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Hold the phone there homeslice. SOMETIMES thats the only time I game. Sometimes you get an RPG that eats many hours per day til its over.
 
Mitch Gross said:
I just read how even porn is stepping back from VR and AR. Turns out most of the time people just wanted to look in pretty much one direction so that killed VR and while there were a few "devices" sold to go along with an AR experience, the market was... soft.
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They just couldn't arouse any interest in it...
 
combatentropy said:
Now to take it a step further, I believe that things like movies are Rest + Encouragement. Let's take Office Space. My job as a programmer at a large corporation is overrun with bureaucracy, which I have tried and failed to make a dent in. I'm always on the look-out for some dream employer who is both stable and bureaucracy-free, but my chances are slim. Although there are many corporations, they all seem to have adopted the same monoculture. The complaints I have about my company pop up all over the place if I just google it. In the worst moments, when as best as I can tell my own employer is actively working to keep me from getting anything done, I think of shows like Office Space and 24.
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Perhaps you have the makings of a film here? At least it doesn't sound like you have a boss from The Office.

That's one theory. Another is spectacle. I think spectacle, to a certain degree, is okay. I think all of these things are basically the same thing: witnessing a great landscape while on a hike, watching the quarterback throw a football...
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Nope, you'll never convince me that a zillion K screen is as good as immersion in nature. This one's embedded in our DNA.

And while Josh is the model of efficiency getting exercise while satisfying his gaming fix, though I do use a stationary, biking outside is far more enjoyable- preferably tearing up some trails on my mountain bike. I guess the adrenaline is part of it- focus (in an unfocused zen sort of way), or pay the consequences (I got some consequences on my shin today)... but wife said I can home today "grinning and glowing". I suppose the adrenaline had been replaced with dopamine by then?
 
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Its all getting a bit "grumpy old man" round here :D Any form of entertainment - no matter how high or low brow, is essentially wasted time.
I used to spend hours playing Bruce Lee on the C64, Toejam and Earl on the Megadrive, and Virtua Tennis/Quake 3 on the Dreamcast, all a massive waste of time, but great fun for me and my friends with no long term negative impacts,
 
We recently shot a music video for my band that involved is riding bikes outdoors. I had not been on a real bike in probably 15+ years until that shoot. I have to admit I found it kinda fun, thought briefly about getting a bike, but a little research tells me that to get an actual workout on a real bike you have to really be haulin ass, which was not what I was enjoying about it, rather, I was digging riding around at a very casual speed, and I know I wouldnt do that AND ride the stationary so nevermind.
 
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