#CES: Introducing Roku TV

The Roku TV smart TV was announced today in advance of the 2014 CES show. The company plans to license the new reference design platform and software stack to manufacturers to build and distribute Roku TV models. TCL and Hisense are the first partners, with first demos expected today.

Roku TV says it is removing the complicated layers and menus that plague existing smart TV set-ups and give consumers a home screen that centralises all content sources: live programming, streaming, music.

Roku TVs can be controlled by a TV remote or a mobile device using the Roku app for iOS or Android. It supports modern casting standards including DIAL, which streams content from a mobile device to the TV.

TV manufacturers will receive the Roku TV reference platform complete with TV and remote control design as well as software and support. Like their Roku streaming player counterparts, Roku TVs will have full access to the Roku Channel Store filled with more than 1,200 channels that offer 31,000 movies and feature TV shows and live sports plus news, music, kids, food, science, tech, fitness, foreign language and other programming

#CES: quirky tech gadgets for 2014!

With the world’s biggest consumer tech show, CES, starting tomorrow in Las Vegas, there’s a lot of buzz about the latest phablets, screens, giant TVs and smartphones that may or may not, for the first time, cook you a full Irish breakfast with ketchup on the side.

But the beauty of CES sometimes lies in the more unusual announcements to be found in the bright lights of Vegas this week. I’ve picked a handful of the more intriguing ones to help us start January smiling:

The toothbrush that tells it like it is

Just when you thought a toothbrush was one of the last straightforward, non-tech devices in your home, Kolibree steps in to analyse your brushing habits and display them on a mobile dashboard you can access from your phone.

Download the free mobile app, connect via Bluetooth and record every brushing. The data will then tell you if you brushed long enough and reached various parts of your teeth and gums. The app can be used solo or as a family to encourage the younger ones to brush their teeth properly for points.

For those who would enjoy a little coaching at the sink from Q3 2014, the price of Kolibree will range from $99 to $200 depending on the model including a free mobile app.

The chic hard-drive to make you go ‘oh-la-la’

Lovers of beautiful objects will be keen to get their hands on the new silver-plated hard drive by LaCie and luxury brand Christofle. Following a first collaboration that produced the Galet USB key, the new object called the Sphère is a handcrafted hard drive enclosed in a spherical case of silver-plated steel through a manual plating process.

The 1TB hard drive connects to a computer through a single USB 3.0 cable that also powers the hard drive and connects to LaCie’s software suite.