Month: January 2026

CES 2026 Dispatches Have Begun!

I’m at CES 2026 for the start of my latest Dispatch series, beginning with CES Unveiled, one of the early showcase events ahead of the main show floor. These Unveiled events are dense and efficient, with dozens of companies packed into a single room, which makes them well suited to fast-paced coverage.

This year’s Dispatch videos are intentionally lightweight in production, just me, an iPhone, and a backpack, with no sponsors influencing what gets covered.

Check out my first dispatch here!

Walking the floor, I ran into a wide mix of products, ranging from practical home tech to more experimental ideas. There were new security cameras and smart displays tied into network-attached storage systems, emphasizing local recording and the absence of subscription fees, though often requiring higher-end hardware. Music-focused gadgets showed up as well, including a “second-generation instrument “guitar hero” like device designed less around learning technique and more around casual, stress-free music creation with no musical experience required.

Mini PCs continue to evolve, and one of the more interesting concepts was a modular system that can dock into different enclosures, including a GPU base or a portable laptop shell, depending on how and where it’s being used. On the more whimsical side, I also came across a water-based drone meant for pools, capable of lighting effects and coordinated movement, clearly aimed at a niche (and wealthy) audience but at least something new and different.

Battery charging solutions were also on display, including systems that remove most of the decision-making by automatically handling orientation, charge state, and battery type.

One stand out from my first night was a compact and portable ice maker that cranks out ice cubes in 5 minutes, while others targeted professional and industrial users. A new FLIR thermal imaging device running Android positioned itself as a full workflow platform rather than a single-purpose camera, with industry-specific apps and built-in collaboration tools.

There were also familiar brands making a return. Pebble watches are back, focusing on long battery life and simple notifications rather than health tracking, alongside a new recording ring concept that lets users capture voice notes. In the outdoor automation category, autonomous yard robots continue to expand beyond mowing, with attachments for leaf collection and snow plowing, including models designed to be more affordable than earlier versions.

My dispatches are meant to be a snapshot rather than a deep dive, showcasing the range of ideas at the show. More Dispatches are coming as the show continues so be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow my CES 2026 playlist here!

Plex Q&A: Optimizing Video vs. Live Transcoding (sponsored post)

I took a look at a Plex feature that has been around for a while but hasn’t come up much in my previous coverage: media optimization. The idea is straightforward: instead of relying on your Plex server to transcode video on the fly every time someone watches something on a limited connection, you can have the server create alternate, smaller versions of your media in advance. Those optimized files sit alongside the original and can be played back directly, reducing the load on the server.

My latest video dives into this feature here.

In normal use, Plex’s transcoder does a good job adapting high-bitrate files for bandwidth challenged connections, but that assumes the server has enough CPU or hardware acceleration available at the moment someone presses play. If it doesn’t, or if multiple users are competing for those resources, performance can suffer. Optimization shifts that work to the background, letting the server do the heavy lifting ahead of time rather than in real time.

The feature lives in the Plex web app. From the menu attached to a movie or episode, there’s an option to optimize the media. You can also access it from the title’s detail page. When you start an optimization job, Plex lets you give the optimized version a custom name and choose a quality preset. The built-in options are aimed at common use cases like mobile viewing or TV playback, with defined resolutions and bitrates, but there’s also a custom mode if you want more control.

Custom optimization profiles allow you to pick specific resolutions and bitrates, ranging from 1080p down to very low-bandwidth 480p options. These profiles can be named and reused, which makes it easier to target particular devices or scenarios. Once an optimization job is started, the server processes it in the background and uses hardware video encoding if it’s available, which can significantly speed things up.

There are also some useful controls when optimizing TV series. You can limit optimization to unwatched episodes and cap the number of optimized files Plex keeps around. As episodes are watched, Plex can automatically delete the older optimized versions and generate new ones for upcoming episodes. That adds a layer of automation that helps keep storage usage in check.

When it comes time to watch something, Plex exposes the different versions through a “watch version” option. From there, you can explicitly choose between the original file and any optimized versions that exist.

Management of these files is centralized in the server settings under optimized versions. From that screen, you can see what’s currently being processed, what’s finished, and delete optimized media you no longer need. There’s also the ability to reorder optimization jobs if you want one item to be processed before others in the queue.

One additional setting ties optimization to the transcoder configuration. If HEVC optimization is enabled, Plex can create optimized files using HEVC where possible, which can deliver better quality at lower bitrates. That can be especially useful if storage and bandwidth efficiency is a priority.

Overall, optimization feels most useful for servers with limited processing power, older hardware, or libraries full of high-bitrate content that’s frequently accessed remotely. By preparing alternate versions in advance, more users can enjoy content simultaneously.

Disclosure: This video was a paid sponsorship by Plex. They did not review or approve this content prior to uploading and all opinions are my own.