10/09/2016 Click

Now one BBC News, it's time for Click.

There was a time when a launch meant a launch.

It was something big, something special,

Something could go into orbit, or go up in

These days, launches also look like this.

This week in September, the

Apple is fuelling the good ship iPhone.

Sony has started the PlayStation countdown.

And everyone else has been over at EFA launching

Or is everyone just having a launch because they

And if you can't get to space, these days,

It's whistling past Uranus and on to Neptune.

Yes, I got my hands on the first device to use

Google's Project Tango, something we saw a few years ago.

It is a 3-D sensing system that can learn about

twin cameras to determine and remember the distance to

And that should lead to a more intelligent augmented

reality experience, which means you won't just be playing

gimmicky games any more, you will be able to do

sensible things, too, like furniture office.

sensible things, too, like furnish your office.

spruce up and you can drop in a new stool or two.

This isn't the first interior design application

that I've seen, but its depth perception should make this kind of

And if you want to rip up the room and start again,

there is this rather finicky tape measure

limitations of those sensors at the moment.

However, on the few occasions we have got it to work

properly, I can confirm, 1.5 metres, that it is right, which is better

That is the smart furniture sorted, so now all we need is a smart home

Over to Jen Copestake at Europe's largest tech

There are many new Smart home technology concepts launched at

Over the past two years, we've heard a lot about the internet of

things and making our products more intelligent.

The halls here in Berlin were dominated by ideas to

From refrigerators growing herbs to quick

drying hair extensions, and of course, the connected iron.

For ?1500, you can get this connected

You may ask why you need it, but it is quite useful.

You can teach yourself how to iron through the application by making

There aren't any sensors in this cover but you

have folding lines so you can perfect your technique with kids'

clothes or men's shirts, and there is a fan in here that keeps

Connected kitchen concepts are everywhere here,

including this rather impressive display from Panasonic.

The technology is really in the background.

The comfort and ease of

This includes a sake a fridge that not

only maintains perfect temperature and humidity of each bottle but

recommends recipes to go with your drinks and is connected to sensors

in the fridge that keeps an eye on when your ingredients are running

low and orders them from an online shop for you.

All this data is passed on to a very clever hob

which starts heating up to the right temperature to cook your selection.

The induction heaters extend to your table so you can keep

When you've finished cooking, you can relax and watch

television on a transparent glass door in your cupboard and receive a

notification that your laundry has been folded by the robot next.

notification that your laundry has been folded by the robot next door.

Slightly more practical than a laundry robot,

a Chinese company has made a washing machine that features

two drums and an application to control them when you're away from

The question is, how many people are actually using any of

There is a strong technological push right now,

Consumer pull in Europe is slow at this time.

I'm sure it will grow and our brand will

Robots have been integrated into smart concepts, too.

These cuties are called sandbots and are similar to the robots we saw

serving food in China earlier this year.

They are designed to do a wider variety of jobs, including health

People sometimes say I'm too tubby to be a security guard will stop

This robot has sensors all over its body

and will chat to you when you

touch it, and do a dance on

But the cutest home robot I've seen yet is Sony's concept

Complete with a screen in his tummy, he made me a

coffee and played me a song afterwards.

Amazon's Smart Speaker, the Echo, and represents Sony's plans to

expand into intelligent robots that can develop an emotional connection

This can be expanded into manufacturing facilities,

logistics, for example, elderly health care.

And so, we will start small with things like a home

robot, but there is so much more in terms of applications of the

We will cover those areas in a big way.

Putting those technologies to the test, Panasonic

announce a future smart city project right here in Berlin.

By 2018, 69 flats will host families selected to

They will test facial recognition and artificial intelligence

platforms to assist elderly residents.

It will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells and solar

panels, have electric cars and collective

decision-making by the

tenants on areas of technology to develop.

This could bring smarter and more connected ways of living

for all of us before the next decade.

Hello, and welcome to the

Whilst Apple, Sony and others seem to have been screaming

from the rooftops this week about their launches, it seems the

After cancelling orders for the Note 7 due to a small number of devices

exploding after charging, UK users were told

they would be in line for

Google scrapped plans for its customisable on the go modular

And in a whose side are you on twist, Warner Brothers

inadvertently requested its own website be taken out of Google

search, suggesting it was in breach of copyright.

Thanks, hopefully my furniture and books

will arrive, too, as Amazon are taking on competitors, bringing food

Amazon and restaurants will be for prime users

Oh, it's only available in some postcodes.

And finally, a Pokemon go play in Russia could face

up to five years in jail after filming

himself playing a game in

He is reportedly being held in prison, charged with mockery

of religious beliefs while he awaits trial.

He is appealing against the

Now, if you want to hurtle into no man's sky on a video games console,

But will it be the current PS4 or the new one?

Here is Mark with full launch coverage.

PlayStation head honcho Andrew House didn't waste any

time announcing the worst kept secret in games at this week's Sony

system that is slimmer, lighter and more energy-efficient.

Bizarrely, there have been reports online that

PlayStation 4 Slim is being made available for sale on eBay weeks

before the console was even officially announced.

Weird distribution issues aside, the Slim

is just that - a PS4 that's been on a diet.

It shares the same specification as the current

The big news was saved for the announcement of the console

previously known as PlayStation Neo, but now dubbed...

A more powerful version of the games console with a one TB hard

drive and upgraded hardware which supports improved graphics when used

Weirdly, it doesn't have a UHD Blu-ray player.

While the improved graphics and big upgrade in resolution from the ten

80p high definition is currently created

by the current machine, the

new console has extra brightness and improved contrast.

Games such as Horizon zero Dawn were demoed

showing off the machine's improved graphics.

Sony also suggested the existing PS four games could be

reworked to produce the higher resolution

images that the probe is

The Pro also has extra processing grunt which will be used

to improve the visuals on the PlayStation

also but is this two-tier console ecosystem a good thing for gamers?

It means there is a lower price console for those people who

couldn't afford to buy the higher specification.

At the same time, it is obvious there is a better model

out there, and anybody who has the lower spec model will probably

Sony is not alone in the new console arena.

Nintendo has a new machine waiting in the wings, dubbed the NX.

There is not much that has been confirmed about it, but we know that

technically it will be less powerful than its rivals.

Microsoft already has its Xbox one Slim, which also

supports HDR and streaming for K video, plus an ultra-HD Blu-ray

It also has its own hard-core piece of upgraded hardware

in the works, called Project Scorpio.

Microsoft has an advantage, having brought out the Xbox One S with

the ultra-HD Blu-ray player, which makes it

They have the chance to see what Sony is going to do, to get

the PlayStation for pro, pull it apart, see what is inside and make

sure they can better it with the console

that comes out towards the

For now, Sony's fired the first shot in the latest

The console launches on the 10th of November.

But sometimes we really do want to see the detail,

and although our eyes can manage it, our cameras can't cope

with the difference between a really bright background and a foreground

Which means you can only expose for one or the other.

Personally, I would prefer the background.

And it is only this year that a decent range of TV sets

It is called high dynamic range, or HDR, and it will show a greater

range of brightness from content filmed on new HDR cameras.

Now, different systems do it in different ways,

but one way of achieving it is to capture each frame of video

more than once, with different exposures, so that you can see

the detail in the bright bits and the dark bits at the same time,

something made abundantly clear by this Nasa project,

which turned an ordinarily overexposed rocket burn into a thing

Well, don't know about you, but I am ready for another launch

now, so let's head back to IFA, to see which next-gen TVs have

We have seen a lot of innovation in television over the years

In fact, it has been 50 years since LG created its first television.

To celebrate, here at IFA they have put together this

It is made of 216 55-inch curved TVs.

There are almost 500 million pixels on display here.

But it is not the amount of pixels that have caught our attention this

High-definition televisions create more contrast,

with brighter whites and more details in the shadows,

TVs classified as HDR have to meet the standard of brightness.

This is measured in something called nits.

It measures the intensity of visible light.

There are two kinds of HDR television we have looked at,

ones with dots or ones with Oled displays.

We went behind the scenes to see the quantum dot technology.

That's right, they are so small we have to put them into liquid,

When the light hits the layout, we can see the different sizes that

Quantum-dot TVs are essentially a new type of LED-backlit LCD TV.

But there is less light wasted in the new sets,

To demonstrate, Jose measured the purity,

A spike in the reading shows the colour purity.

These Samsung TVs are capable of achieving over 1,000

In comparison, a regular LCD TV can achieve about 100.

In comparison, a regular LCD TV can achieve about 400.

Heading across the conference floor, Panasonic is backing

These TVs can't yet produce the same levels of brightness as the quantum

dots, but they don't have a backlight, so each pixel

on the TV can be turned off, leading to darker blacks.

The key with Oled is they can create perfect black.

And what Panasonic have worked on a lot is taking that panel,

which can create perfect black, and using our advanced processing

to be able to show the shades of grey just above black.

So you are not having just blocks of black on the screen,

you are seeing detail in that black area.

Our whole Panasonic ethos is "as the director intended."

So we actually have here in this display, we've got a reference

monitor, a reference Oled monitor, the kind that is used on film sets,

and what we are trying to do is reproduce that on our screen.

So I would say Oled is better for when you sort of pull

the curtains, watching a movie at night, whereas LED is great

for bright rooms, perhaps lots of people watching the football

But they have both got their place, I think.

There is another thing to think about when choosing a HDR TV.

There are two standards for providing HDR content.

One is called HDR-10, it is open-source, used by most TV

companies, and the other is Dolby Vision.

With more data, it is available in more colours, but it is not

LG is one company that has it for both formats.

If you go and see the other companies, they improve the same

It is not really fixed at this moment, some people are using HDR

Dolby Vision, so no-one really knows what is going to be the standout

So it is good to have both for their TV, for future-proof.

And, if all that wasn't enough to think about,

the BBC and NHK have approved a new standard called

Hybrid Log-Gamma, compatible with both HDR sets.

Have you ever rushed for the car and driven off,

only to later realise that you've forgotten something important,

Well, if you are that type of person, you may be familiar

These are little tags that you can attach to your valuables,

and they talk with Bluetooth to your smartphone.

And if you leave something behind, and the distance gets too great,

You connect your phone to the car, and up on the screen comes a list

of all the items that you should have with you.

And I know I have got my umbrella, for example,

If I want to find my keys in the car, just press

Now I don't remember bringing my wallet with me,

so hopefully that is here in the car.

There is the tag, inside a wallet which needs some

I promise I will do that this summer.

Annoyingly, the thing I have forgotten is my rucksack.

It does, however, give me a map showing where it was last seen,

which was just across the way, through the deluge.

Once more into the breach, dear friends.

Right, launch time again, and arguably no-one does launches

Apple's events create more hype than any other,

and these were the scenes on Wednesday, as the iPhone 7

It is now waterproof, it has stereo speakers,

and the larger version now has two cameras,

a wide-angle and a telephoto, which means you can choose your shot

size without losing quality by using a digital zoom.

But by far the biggest impact was made by the removal

of the headphone port, something that has been a standard

Your choices now are buying new headphones that use

Apple's Lightning connector, buying new, rechargeable wireless

headphones, like these new EarPods, for ?159 -

Or using your current headphones and this adaptor.

Oh, and the Apple Watches now are water resistant,

and will tell you if there are years Pokemon nearby.

Dave Lee is our man in San Fran, and he was at the launch.

You have had a couple of days to ruminate on Apple's announcement.

Well, we didn't think it was going to be a massive,

massive improvement on last year's iPhone,

Incremental improvements, not a huge year in the history

But I think people, as ever, were impressed with what Apple has

OK, so the big talking point is the removal

So do you think, when you open your iPhone 7 box, you are going to get

a nice pair of iPhone 7-compatible headphones in there?

Well, you are not going to get the wireless ones, I can tell

They are $159 if you want the new cool, wireless EarPods,

as they are called, but you will get an adaptor.

It is a bit ugly looking, could be a bit fiddly if you have

to have that always with you in your pocket.

But that is their workaround, and Apple are sticking to it.

A week packed with launches, but have any of them been the moon

Have any of them boldly gone, or even gone boldly?

We have had headphones that are a bit better,

improved, and TVs with slightly more colour.

And everyone, make sure you remember where you were when you saw Pokemon