The tech-gasm that is CES ended on Friday, and Razer’s new laptop wowed. The tech event is a big one for television manufacturers to show off new things, and 2016 was no exception. But we’ll start with virtual reality and end with a nod to David Bowie.

Things to consider before pre-ordering an Oculus Rift VR headset

You can now pre-order an Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset that started off as a Kickstarter campaign before being acquired by Facebook for $2 billion.

Those who were first to get in their pre-orders will be getting their headsets at the end of March. Within a few hours, enough units had been ordered that the shipping dates people were getting had slipped to the end of May.

If you were a backer of the original Oculus Rift Kickstarter, before the company was purchased by Facebook, you’ll be getting one for free.

But if you weren’t, and you’re thinking about getting in the line, here are four important things you should consider:

1. It’s expensive. The headset costs Cdn$849, plus $65 for shipping. The headset is equipped with built-in headphones. It also comes with a mic, an Xbox One wireless controller, and two games, Lucky’s Tale and the space fighter simulation EVE: Valkyrie. But for the same price, you can get a PS4 and an Xbox One and a few top games.
2. You need a top-end computer to run the system. The Rift requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM, an HDMI output, four USB ports (three USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0), and a graphics card that is as good or better than the NVIDIA GTX 970 (which is only 15 months old and itself costs in the neighbourhood of $500). Oculus is partnering with some manufacturers to provide discounted systems with the purchase of a Rift, but those systems start at US$1,000.
3. The experience can make you nauseous. There are two reasons this can happen. It can be caused by simulation sickness, which is caused by the dissonance between what your brain is perceiving in the VR and the incongruous signals it gets from the body. It can also be a result of a truly immersive experience in which you’d expect a response in your body. It’s reasonable to assume that if you are engaged in a dogfight in space while flying a fighter that your stomach might lurch a bit.
4. Other VR headsets are coming. The Vive, from HTC and Valve, is expected in April (pre-orders begin on Feb. 29). And Sony is expected to have its PS VR ready this year, too.

It’s early days for the immersive entertainment experience that is virtual reality. It will mature quickly. I’m not sure about rushing to be an early adopter at this point.

Making sense of TV tech terms at CES

There were a couple of cool TV tech things in Vegas.

• LG has an OLED screen that was so thin it could be rolled up. OLED is still, to my eyes, the best picture you can get in a TV. But they ain’t cheap.
• Samsung’s Smart TV operating system has been simplified, and ostensibly will automatically detect other hardware in your entertainment set-up and enable the remote to control them.

The manufacturers do their best to differentiate themselves from the competition, and sometimes they use fancy words and acronyms to do so. It can be damn confusing.

What’s with the curved screens?

They do not improve the viewing experience. Full stop.

What happened to 3-D?

Virtually all TVs being made have the ability to display 3-D, but it’s no longer a selling feature. It’s still there. Nobody’s talking about it.

What’s the difference between 4K and UHD?

None. They both refer to the resolution of the display, which has four times the resolution of standard HD (1080p).

What is HDR and why should you care?

HDR stands for “high dynamic range” and it’s the latest technical innovation in televisions.

In very simplistic terms, HDR televisions are able to deliver more detail in images because they are brighter, darker, and can display more levels of contrast within images. The goal is to provide images that are more true to life, by showing more of the detail that might get blown out in bright images, or lost in the shadows with darker ones.

While good in principle, not all TVs with HDR look better than non-HDR screens. And there’s something of a standards/format war brewing with HDR, with competing technology and methods of delivering. TV manufacturers can’t even agree on what makes HDR, with some saying brightness is the key, and others saying colour is more important.

Bottom line: You don’t need to worry about getting an HDR TV right now. If the set you want to purchase has it, and looks good to your eyes, that’s fine. But don’t go out of your way to get something with HDR.

Razer Blade Stealth laptop is stunning

For a few years, Razer has been at the top of gaming hardware and peripherals. The company walked away from CES last week with another “Best of CES” award, its sixth in a row.

Winning the award was the Razer Blade Stealth ultrabook, a thin, light laptop with plenty of power for modern gaming. The laptop begins shipping this month, and starts at only Cdn$1,600.

The Stealth was designed to work with the Razer Core, a housing for a graphics processing unit (GPU) that can be used to provide desktop-type performance. It’s akin to a docking station for a laptop, but one that turns your portable computer into as powerful a gaming machine as you want it to be.

The Razer Core will be shipping later this year. Pricing on the hardware was not announced.

Rest in peace, Ziggy Stardust

The Internet and social media were an interesting place earlier this week as the world responded to the death of David Bowie.

Beats1 DJ Zane Lowe used his show on Monday to play music from his every era. Just one reason I’m loving my Apple Music subscription.

Did you know there is an asteroid named for the creative talent? The asteroid named “Davidbowie” orbits between Mars and Jupiter.

The last video Bowie made, for his new album Blackstar, was for the track, “Lazarus”. If only.

With CES in full swing down in Las Vegas, what else were Drex and I going to talk about?

This week, a program you can use to turn your iPad into a second (or third) screen, OneDrive changes limits to your cloud storage, and what’s going on at CES.

Put your iPad to work during the day with Duet

If you typically only use your iPad in the evening, or while commuting, you need to check out Duet, an app which turns the tablet into a screen you can use with your OS X or Windows 10 computer.

The app for your iPad (it also works with iPhones) is currently discounted by 40% and costs $12, but the computer client is a free download.

Once you’ve got it running on both your computer and your iPad, you simply connect your tablet to your computer, run Duet, and the software automatically transforms your tablet into a computer screen that you can either set up to mirror what’s on your desktop, or run as a separate screen.

So here’s another reason to favour the iPad Pro over the iPad Air 2, because the bigger screen of the Pro means I’ve got even more real estate. So now, I run all my calendars and iTunes off the iPad screen, and leave my other two monitors for primary research and writing, and communications.

Cloud storage limits at OneDrive have changed

Microsoft was very liberal about giving away storage space on its OneDrive cloud storage service. They’ve since changed the storage limits.

It’s a controversial decision, because Microsoft had been offering people 15 GB of storage, and they are clawing that back to 5 GB of free storage.

Subscribers to Office 365 get 1 TB of storage with their plan.

One customer commented on the blog post announcing the change complaining about having storage already being used that was to be taken away.

It resulted in Microsoft program manager Douglas Pearce issuing a retraction of sorts

If you’ve been using OneDrive, and you want to keep the storage space you’ve already been using, you can do so by registering.

What happens in Vegas at CES is broadcast to the world

The annual tech conference, International Consumer Electronics Show, opened today in Las Vegas, but the pre-event press briefings and announcements have been going on since Monday:

• Taiwan tech company HTC has made some clever strategic partnerships recently. It’s working with Valve on the Vive VR headset, which is expected to be released in April, and announced on Tuesday that a new kit was being shipped out to developers right now. The company also announced a partnership with Under Armour on a line of connected health products: a band, a heart-rate monitor, and a scale. The three items can be purchased together in a “HealthBox”.
• To go along with the HTC products, Under Armour is also releasing a “smart” shoe and wireless headphones (with JBL).
• If you live in the U.S. and have a 4K HDTV, you can now turn your living room into a sports bar with the Hopper 3 DVR. The new device, from Dish Network, can split a 4K screen into quadrants, and show a 1080p stream of four different channels. The Hopper 3 has 16 tuners, so you can record or watch 16 programs at once. Only in America, though. Pity.
• Blu-ray players with the ability to output 4K video are coming to market this year. Both Panasonic and Samsung announced models yesterday.
• Kodak is releasing a new Super 8 camera that actually records onto film. Knowing how difficult it is to find and develop film stock, the company says it will send digital versions to people who send film in for processing.
• Volkswagen revealed the modern-day version of its popular Microbus van of yore. The electric Budd-e is only a concept, but shows off the German auto manufacturers plan for electric vehicles. The steering wheel, for example, is designed to respond to swipes and gestures.
• Faraday Future is a new vehicle manufacturer that promises to out-Tesla Elon Musk. On Monday night, the company unveiled its FFZero1 concept car, which looks like some kind of spaceship, both inside and out. This company was founded only 18 months ago, and they already have a vehicle in play. A 1,000 horsepower vehicle. They expect to deliver production vehicles within a couple of years. That’s ridiculously fast for an auto manufacturer, but with all digital production, they can iterate quickly. Faraday Future is still really vague about what they’re really doing, because a promotional video makes claims about like this: “What if you didn’t so much own a car as use one whenever you needed.” But they’ve got lots of money, have been hiring top talent from all over the world, and plan on building their vehicles in Nevada, where they say they will be breaking ground on the first plant within a few weeks. Faraday Future is something to watch.

Tonight, in a special appearance on Drex Live, I talked about the General Motors announcement that it was buying into Lyft to the tune of half a billion dollars.

Not surprising, I said. Last spring, an Uber investor suggested that company would buy 500,000 self-driving Teslas. And Ford and Google are expected to announce a partnership to manufacture autonomous vehicles.

It’s the convergence of tech companies and automobile manufacturers that will completely disrupt the transportation industries. And it will be in our face within 10 years.

Sam Ferris was sitting in for Drex, and we talked about the year in search, as determined by what Canadians looked up on Google in 2015. We also talked about Netflix’s New Year countdowns that help parents get kids to bed.