television

Money doesn’t buy happiness. But it does give a monstrous Bugatti television that folds itself

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A 137-inch television that, when you are not watching it, folds by itself and remains as a luxury decorative structure in your home. Yes, it is as crazy and absurd as it is real. Bugatti has presented to the world “his” first televisionone of the most spectacular on the planet. Of course, it needed a little help, so it relied on the work of C Seed, an Austrian display brand focused entirely on luxury. WTF. The chances of seeing the video of this television and not surprisingly, in my opinion, they are very low. In fact, the first thing I thought when I saw the video was that it was generated by AI. Mistake. The concept is “simple”: a television in 110 and 137 inch formats that folds in 45 seconds and remains as a very expensive decorative element in the home. Beyond the eccentricity, on a technological level it is truly amazing. Original design of the C SEED N1. Two of them can be configured in dozens of options. Bugatti version. Who is behind. The truth is that Bugatti did not invent this television, it was presented by the Austrian company C SEED in 2022 under the name N1, and it began to be sold to order in 2024. C SEED is a young company, founded in 2009 and with headquarters and production plant in Vienna. From the beginning, it focused on luxury televisions and solutions, both for mansions and superyachts, events, etc. It’s a small, absolutely niche company, so if you’ve never heard of it… you’re not alone. The bug. The Bugatti N1 is a complete redesign of the original N1, with materials and lines used in the Bugatti Tourbillona four-wheeled hypercar million of euros. And as for specs… 4K UHD resolution, HDR10+. Foldable microLED technology (five panels). Wisdom Audio self-deploying speaker system. Swivel system up to 180 degrees to the right and left. 1,000 nits brightness. 3m wide, 1.7 meters high, less than 10cm thick in its 137-inch version. 680 kilos for the 137-inch version. The five panels of the television unfolding. How is it possible. C SEED has not created a 137-inch folding panel, the TV is made up of a total of five microLED panels. This is one of the keys: it is not a typical panel with sub-panel hinges visible at a visible level, they are rigid and independent panels. The company has patented its own “Adaptive Joint Calibration” system, in other words, its electronic calibration system to align panel joints with millimeter precision in real time, making them indistinguishable to the eye. MicroLED technology is self-emissive, in which each LED is an individual, independent light emitter. This means that the system can precisely control the intensity, color and on-time of each pixel individually, including the pixels that are on the edge of each panel, next to the board. Go deeper. C Seed does not go into details about the manufacturing of the mechanism that rotates and hides the panel, although the documentation of the panel reveals some images of its interior. In them, we can perfectly appreciate the cavities that house the microLED modules, the screws and some of the joints of the system. In addition to this system, the audio system, signed Wisdom Audio, is especially striking. The speakers are hidden within one of the panel structures, and appear only when we need to play audio. The rest of the time they are hidden, to keep the design as clean as possible. I want one. The C SEED website only allows you to configure the television. Once we have done so, we submit the request and the company will contact us. Depending on the materials chosen, the customizations we want to make and the size, the price of the previous version was around $200,000, so add another few thousand for this Bugatti version. Image | C SEED In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended 4K smart TVs

The Golden Age of television is over. Specifically, when Netflix assumed it was the second screen in your preferences

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There’s a note that Netflix executives have been writing on the scripts they receive for years: “this is not enough second screen“. That is to say, it is not “second screen” enough, that the scene forces the viewer to pay attention. Apparently, paying attention to the series is now a problem. And although This has been talked about for months.it is now that it is being named. The problem is cataloged. And above all, it raises a vital question: is television ceasing to be creativity and innovation and becoming, once again, background noise? Origins. One of the triggers for this conversation was an article published in December 2024 in the literary magazine ‘n+1’. Its author collected the testimonies of several scriptwriters who had worked for Netflix: A common note from the platform’s executives was to ask the characters to announce out loud what they were doing, so that viewers who had the series playing in the background could follow the thread without having to look at the screen. The article went viral a year or so ago, and gave a name to something that many suspected: Netflix not only tolerated its users being distracted from what was seen on the screen, but also designed its content to encourage that distraction. Second screen. If we look at previous studies on Netflix’s footprint in fictional narrative, we can name the phenomenon: researcher Daphne Rena Idiz had published a study called ‘Local Production for Global Platforms: How Netflix Shapes European Production Cultures’, in which it described how Netflix internally labeled certain series as “second-screen shows” and developed them accordingly. One of their interviewees, for example, explained that the platform had even asked them that, if a character was sad, they expressly said so while crying and violins playing in the background. The logic. Another producer interviewed by Idiz related that Netflix had literally told them: “what you have to know about your audience is that they will watch the series while doing something else and talking to their friends, so you have to show and tell, you have to say a lot more than you would normally say.” And all this is pure commercial logic: what matters is not that the user pays attention to the screen (that’s how traditional advertising worked), but that they do not cancel their subscription. The content should not be boring, but it should not require effort either. When a study in January 2025 made it clear that 91% of Americans looked at their cell phones from time to time while watching a series, it is clear that Netflix is ​​not going against the current. Whether it is part of the problem or its true germ, it is obvious that Netflix is ​​fully riding this wave. More precedents. None of this is new: already during the actors’ strike of 2023, the first steps in this direction began to be detected. Actress and director Justine Bateman declared in a podcast who had spoken with showrunners that they received notes from the platforms telling them that their content “was not sufficiently second screen“, and proposed a term for that: “visual muzak“, television as elevator music. Even earlier, in November 2020, writer Kyle Chayka had coined the concept of “ambient TV“ to describe a sliver of Netflix’s catalog (‘Emily in Paris’ was its prime example) that it defined as content that “you don’t need to follow closely to enjoy, but that is seductive enough to capture your attention if you decide to watch it for a moment.” The proportions. From Serialized They explained that the data collected through Big Data had even determined which was the perfect series, and that it fits with these content decisions that we have seen: the perfect genre is a procedural (doctors, firefighters, detectives, lawyers), it must include a twist or hook visual every eight minutes, a proportion of 70% plot and 30% character development, and the aforementioned explanatory dialogues so as not to get lost. On the contrary. There are those who deny all these visions of work at Netflix which, let’s not forget, do not come from official sources. In this articlethree scriptwriters who had written for the platform claimed to have not received instructions of that type. Screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst, known for his adaptations of Harlan Coben, stated that no one had pressured him to simplify his work or adapt it for distracted viewers. Idiz herself warned in her study that it is advisable not to generalize, since Netflix operates in more than 190 countries with very different production teams and cultures. Something old, something new. The soap operas, the sitcoms of the eighties, the reality shows They have been designed for decades with the partially distracted viewer in mind. It is not new to create content that works in the background, but it is striking to do so when the platforms of streaming Current ones, preceded by the cable era where brands like HBO were born, are sold to us as quality alternatives to conventional television. The Golden Age of Television did not refer to ‘The Price is Right’, but if ‘The Sopranos’ were produced now, it would need a spin every eight minutes. In Xataka | In 2023, watching Netflix without ads cost 7.99 euros/month. Today its cheapest plan with ads costs 8.99 euros/month

two decades of success with the most stable audiences on television

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The same week in April 2006 that La Sexta premiered broadcasts, ‘El Intermedio’ began its career as one of the channel’s flagship programs and Antena 3 launched the current stage of ‘La roulette de laluck’. Two decades later, both programs celebrate their anniversary (one with special panels, the other with Pedro Sánchez wearing borrowed suspenders) and stand out as true anomalies on a grid in eternal motion. The luck of roulette. ‘The roulette of luck’, a word guessing contest broadcast at two in the afternoon, manages to almost double the share of its own network. In the 2025-2026 season The program presented by Jorge Fernández registers a 21.6% screen share, with an average of 1,564,000 viewers and more than 3.1 million unique viewers. Antena 3, as a network, has averaged 12.4% of share. Its main rivals in that range, ‘Mañaneros 360’, is around 12%, and ‘El Precio Justo’ is timidly approaching 9%. It is not punctual: the format has four consecutive years above 20% and maintains a uninterrupted monthly leadership since May 2020. Poor beginnings. When the current stage of the contest started in 2006, it returned to the small screen with a 26.9% share and 1,318,000 viewers: promising figures that deteriorated in the following years. However, its number of viewers skyrocketed when it began to occupy the 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. slot that ‘The Simpsons’ had until then had, where television consumption is significantly higher. Curiously, ‘La roulette’ has seen its viewer base decrease since the 2020/2021 season, but the share has gone up. The explanation is that linear television as a whole loses audience, but ‘La roulette’ loses it less than its rivals. Not just business days. The robustness of the format also extends to weekends. Since 2020, Antena 3 has been broadcasting reruns of the contest on Saturdays and Sundays, and the program also leads in that slot: in the current season it reaches a 17.8% share and 1,258,000 viewers. All for a proposal that, born in the United States, has had some 60 international versions since 1975, and that arrived in Spain in 1990 with the birth of Antena 3, living a brief stage in Telecinco between 1993 and 1997 and a subsequent hiatus until Jorge Fernández took over the baton in his current stage. The ‘El Intermedio’ case. The satirical news program draws a different, but equally striking curve. In 2026, it averages about 848,000 viewers and reaches between 6% and 7% share (common data in the modest Access Prime Time of La Sexta). All this with specific increases such as the 20th anniversary special broadcast last Thursday, April 16, with which it scored its best quota since February 2022 (10.2%), in an unusually long delivery of more than two hours, and which brought together active politicians (several ministers, Gabriel Rufián or Pedro Sánchez himself) and musicians such as Kiko Veneno, Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel. A complicated hour. ‘El Intermedio’, unlike ‘La roulette’, has never moved from its original space, perhaps the most hostile strip of the entire schedule: the moment in which the viewer chooses where to spend the night. It has ‘El Hormiguero’ on Antena 3 and ‘La Revuelta’ on La 1 as its last direct competitors, but Wyoming has been resisting for two decades. According to a analysis of Barlovento Comunicaciónin 2012 La Sexta designed a strategic positioning of “vertical programming” focused on political and social news. The programs created then (‘The Intermediate’, ‘Al Rojo Vivo’, ‘Better Late’ or ‘Saved’) had the objective of providing street-level information about current events. The Atresmedia umbrella. The two programs share something more than the year of birth: both are from Atresmedia, and both operate in time slots where at least part of the competition cannot find alternatives. In the case of ‘El Intermedio’, the Wyoning program has seen in these twenty years how ‘El Hormiguero’ went from competitor to ally‘First Dates’ on Cuatro took shape as a more stable competitor during the last decade and finally, ‘La revuelta’ appeared, which notably politicized the strip. The numbers. Atresmedia closed 2025 with revenue of 1,002 million euros and maintained its hegemony on television for the fourth consecutive year, with a screen share of 26.1% and a historical advantage of 1.7 points about Mediaset. Antena 3 was once again the most watched channel of the year. These two anniversaries are indicators that the strategy of cheap programs, with rigid structures and a loyal audience continues to be profitable. ‘La roulette’ produces five days a week with a small team and ‘El Intermedio’ works with daily news as raw material, which reduces content development costs. And two decades of holding on. In Xataka | The “audience war” with ‘La Revuelta’ has been very good for ‘El Hormiguero’. Eight million euros of good

invent the remote control before television

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Televisions change, technologies change, but there are interactions that last despite the passage of years, decades and even centuries. An example of this is the remote controller, which has historically allowed us to interact with devices from a distance, although what we currently know is very different from the first concept of remote control. Although televisions did not become more common in the last decades of the 20th century, the concept of the remote controller appeared much earlier. Specifically, in 1901. And a fact that you may not know is that one of the pioneers of the remote control was a Spaniard, the engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo. The controller anticipated the televisions The history of the remote control dates back, as we said, to the first years of the last century. In 1903, the inventor, mathematician and engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo (1852-1936) conceived, built and patented the first remote control in history. He called it Telekino, and as one might think It is far from the controls for televisions and other devices we see now. Miniaturization was not a reality until much later and the Telekino took up an entire table. Telekino in Abra. Image: Torresquevedo.org Of course, the Telekino was not created with the idea of ​​controlling televisions remotely, which in reality did not become a reality almost until the incorporation of the cathode ray tube (with the push from Telefunken and other manufacturers). The idea was to control airships without anyone being in danger in the tests, but finally he tried it with boats as they recalled in the written edition of The Country in 2007, when the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recognized the invention by including it in its official list of milestones in the history of engineering. It was the first time that a Spanish creation became part of this list, in which we find inventions by Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta and Guglielmo Marconi among others. Telekino, as you may have deduced, comes from TV (from ancient Greek, “far”, meaning “at a distance”, “remotely”) and kinein (also from the Greek, “movement”), by the way. IEEE Recognition Plaque. Image: YouTube We already talked about Telekino in Xataka precisely because of this historical recognition, also to remember that at the time it was not highly praised. In fact, Torres Quevedo himself would abandon the project as he did not receive sufficient support. The valuable legacy of Torres Quevedo One of the prototypes of the Telekino is located in the Torres-Quevedo Museum, in the Higher Technical School of Civil, Canal and Port Engineers of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. And thanks to a short (virtual) visit to that museum for the centenary of one of the Spanish engineer’s inventions we can discover more of them, also very relevant. Torres Quevedo is credited with nothing more and nothing less than the first Spanish airship, as well as the first ferry suitable for transporting people (or in other words, an open cable car for people). The invention was patented in 1887, and it would not be until 30 years later when it materialized, being launched on Mount Ulía in San Sebastián in 1907. Compensation also came in the form of international export, since the system reached neither more nor less than to Niagara Falls. Thus, the call Spanish Aerocar It continues to operate today in the well-known region and celebrated its centenary in 2016, having completed more than 10 million transports without recording incidents. Torres Quevedo was also a precursor of modern computing with his Ajedrecista, considered the first chess computer game, and the electromechanical arithmometer, a calculator accompanied by a typewriter, a precursor to digital calculators. In Xataka | In 1925, procrastination was already a problem and someone found the definitive solution: the isolation helmet. In Xataka | We have been fascinated for years by the geniuses who come up with revolutionary innovations out of thin air. It’s always been smoke This article was originally published on Xataka a few years ago, and we have recovered it from the archive.

We stopped watching traditional television because of advertising, but YouTube is willing to recover it with unstoppable ads

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A few days ago, YouTube users in smart TVs They began to notice something that many thought they had left behind forever: unskippable 90-second ads in the middle of forty-minute videos. YouTube had promised in March that non-skippables would be 30 seconds long, but the limit has tripled in a matter of weeks. You see the ads. On March 2, YouTube released a statement announcing the global arrival of 30-second non-skippable ads for those watching the platform on connected TVs. More people than ever are using YouTube in the living room, and advertisers want formats that look like traditional television. Only five weeks later, things began to change: this April 7, several users began to publish on the r/YouTube subreddit 90-second ad screenshots, triple the advertised maximum, which could not be omitted in any way. Some media They collected part of the reactions of the spectators, which ranged from fury to inevitable resignation. YouTube’s response. The platform assured that those 90-second ads were not intentional and that it was “investigating” what had happened. The same source published a survey in January in which 87% of more than 8,600 people questioned claimed to have received non-skippable ads lasting more than 30 seconds, and almost a third said they had seen them exceed two minutes. Paradoxically, in 2017 YouTube removed 30-second non-skippable ads considering them precisely “a relic of traditional television.” The accounts come out. YouTube generated 40.4 billion dollars in advertising revenue in 2025. A figure that exceeds the combined sum of Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which together earned 37.8 billion. The same firm went so far as to declare YouTube “the new king of all media” by estimate its total income at around 62,000 million a year. And it’s not just a matter of raw money: according to NielsenYouTube took over 12.7% of all television viewing time in the US in December 2025, compared to 9% for Netflix. The gap between the two has widened in recent months. More people watch YouTube on TVs than any other screen, and the AI ​​system Google uses to decide which ad format to show (including bumpers 6-second spots, 15-second spots, and the new 30-second non-skippable ones) now have data to decide when a viewer is comfortable enough to tolerate a long ad break. And if you don’t want ads… Anyone who wants to avoid ads has a way out: YouTube Premium, at 13.99 euros per month. There is no middle option, no setting that allows you to opt for shorter or less frequent ads. According to Google itselfthere is no setting to turn off the 30-second format without a paid subscription. The thing is that not even Premium is what it used to be: some service levels include certain types of ads. It is the same pattern that the greats followed streamers: Netflix launched its tier with advertising in 2022; Disney+ followed suit shortly after. “Pay more to see fewer ads” is no longer a promise of digital platforms, it is their business model. What differentiates YouTube from other streaming platforms is that it is not a paid service that has added a free tier with advertising; It is a free platform that has built an advertising business of such magnitude that it can now afford to behave as if it were traditional television. The 90-second ads are another test for Google to discover how far the user’s tolerance can go before they change services or agree to pay. In Xataka | YouTube knows it has a problem with AI “slop” for kids. It turns out that the main culprit is YouTube

date, time and where you can see it on your mobile or television if you are in Spain

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Let’s tell you how you can watch the 2026 Oscars galaso you know the options available in case you want to see it. This is the 98th film awards ceremony, which will take place again at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. We are going to start this article by telling you the exact date on which the gala begins, with the day and time it is in the Spanish time zone. And then, we will tell you the methods you have to be able to see it live if you want. When are the Oscars 2026 The 2026 Oscars gala will take place Sunday March 15. It is in the United States, and the start time will be 4:00 p.m. Pacific time and 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, and it will last approximately three and a half hours. But in Spain, the start time will be from 01:00 from Sunday to Monday00:00 hours in the Canary Islands. It will end around 04:30 or 05:00 in Spanish time. Regarding the schedules of the rest of the American countriesin Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico or Nicaragua will begin at 5 p.m. In Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Panama or Peru it will be at 6 p.m., in Bolivia, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic at 7 p.m., and in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay from 8 p.m. The red carpet It will start a couple of hours earlier. This means that starting at 11pm or midnight on Sunday you will be able to start watching all the Hollywood celebrities parade as they arrive at the gala. How to watch the Oscars in Spain In Spain, the Oscar ceremony will once again be broadcast exclusively by Movistar, specifically in Movistar Plus+ and his channel dedicated to the Oscars on dial 15. His special Oscar night It will begin at 10:30 p.m., and an hour later they will begin broadcasting the red carpet, and then move on to the live signal of the gala. Like every year, you will have all the information in in Espinof and Sensacineour half-brothers dedicated to cinema where you will have the information minute by minute. Also, on Monday morning you will have the summary with the winners in Xataka. In Xataka Basics | The 14 best services and apps to follow and control the series and movies you watch and have all their information

This is how you can win a 75” LG QNED evo AI television

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Xataka Xtra It is already a reality and comes loaded with advantages for subscribers. One of them is that the xatakeros and xatakeras who are part of this community can access exclusive giveaways of products of all kinds, from televisions and robot vacuum cleaners to mobile phones or translators with AI. Is that a little spoiler for the things we have in the oven? Maybe, but also a preview of the level that these draws will have. Today the first giveaway begins: a television LG QNED evo AI 75 inch. Therefore, it is necessary to explain what the dynamics will be not only of this draw, but of all those to come. If you are not yet a Xataka Xtra subscriber and you also want to have the chance to win this and many other prizes in the future, remember that You can join the community from two euros per month. How to participate in the exclusive Xataka Xtra draws Make sure you check that box to automatically participate in the exclusive Xataka Xtra draws | Image: Xataka To participate in the exclusive Xataka Xtra draws, in addition to being a subscriber, you must make sure that you have this box checked in your member area. You can access it directly by clicking on this link or by displaying the side menu and clicking on “Manage subscription”. You will see the access below or next to the modality to which you have subscribed, depending on whether you are reading Xataka from your computer or from your mobile. By simply checking that box you will be participating in the draws. That includes the television one that concerns us today, but also all those that are yet to come. When the day of the draw arrives, all users subscribed to Xataka Xtra who have the box checked will automatically participate, they do not have to do absolutely anything. That being said, here are some frequently asked questions: ¿How the winner will be chosen? From Xataka we will choose a random subscriber and two substitutes. If the winner does not respond within the period stipulated in the legal bases of each draw, the winner will go to the first substitute and, if this does not happen either, to the second. Winning a giveaway does not prevent you from winning in the following ones. How did I find outI will Is there a new giveaway? We will communicate all new giveaways through the website and social networks, as usual, as well as through the exclusive Discord server and our daily newsletter. You can consult the history through this link or watch it directly on the dedicated Discord server channel. How will the winner be contacted? The winner will be notified in the same raffle article, on the Discord server, and will also be notified by email. What products will be raffled? We will raffle products that brands kindly give us, as well as products that we have analyzed and that we consider interesting. For example, a high-end robot vacuum cleaner valued at more than a thousand euros. If it is a product that we have previously analyzed, we will make it clear in the description of the giveaway. Needless to say, we will check it thoroughly before shipping. When will each draw last? 12 days. Do I have to be a Xataka Xtra subscriber to participate in the exclusive draws? Yes, subscribers who are registered on the day of the draw will participate in the draws. The first giveaway: a 75-inch LG QNED evo AI TV As we said before, the first exclusive draw for Xtra subscribers features an LG television, specifically a LG QNED evo AI QNED86 valued at 3,199 euros. It is a MiniLED TV with 2,040 dimming zones, 4K resolution, native 120 Hz, webOS 25 and a ton of AI features to make your life easier. A fully-fledged high-end television that, with the World Cup being held this year, doesn’t sound bad at all. The giveaway begins today, March 4, and the winner will be revealed on March 13. You can find the legal bases in this link. You can only participate in this raffle from the peninsula, but we are working to have raffles for the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands and even worldwide. We will keep you updated. If you want to participate and choose to take this television, Take advantage of the introductory offer and subscribe. On March 16 we will have a new giveaway that, as we told you, will be really useful. In Xataka | Subscribe now to Xataka Xtra

China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision

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Every year, hundreds of millions of people in China sit in front of the television to watch the Spring Festival Gala, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most watched annual program on the planet. It is not only a music and dance show, but also a showcase where the country decides what image it wants to project of itself. In this scenario of maximum visibility, the presence of humanoid robots ceases to be a simple technological curiosity and begins to function as a public declaration about the place that innovation occupies in the national narrative. What happened there was not just an artistic number, but a clear clue as to where the Asian giant is looking when it thinks about its technological future. Kung fu, choreography and coordination. To present their robots to millions of spectators, the organizers turned to a deeply recognizable symbol: martial arts. In the CCTV broadcast available on YouTube We can see robots using traditional weapons such as swords and nunchucks, as well as doing tricks and jumping from trampolines, always in sequences shared with human performers. The choice of kung fu provided more than just visual spectacularity, it can also be interpreted as a close way of reading technological advancement within a tradition known to the public. The magnitude of the event. The Spring Festival Gala has been broadcast since 1983 and is an inseparable part of the New Year celebration in hundreds of millions of homes. Reuters also describes it as an event comparable, in terms of media scale, to the American Super Bowl, capable of concentrating popular culture, political message and industrial ambition in a single night. What appears in that scenario entertains and, at the same time, projects a message and indicates priorities. A gateway for the industry. Behind the staging there were specific names and a visible strategy. They participated in the gala companies known in the West such as Unitree, but others less known such as MagicLab, Galbot and Noetix. The immediate precedent helps to understand the moment: Unitree’s robot performance in the previous edition went viral and, in a way, brought this technology closer to the general public. So the idea of ​​betting on a similar show again is reasonable. From the stage to the factory. The public display of these systems fits with a line of industrial policy that places robotics and AI at the center of the next Chinese manufacturing stage. In recent years we have seen how the Asian giant has invested heavily in this sector. According to OmdiaChina accounted for around 90% of the nearly 13,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide last year, a global shipping metric that does not go unnoticed. Morgan Stanley also projects that Chinese sales could exceed 28,000 units this year, which would point to a notable expansion phase. In Xataka There are people sharing their court cases with AI. The problem is when a judge considers the conversations as evidence In the end, what was seen on that stage went beyond well-executed choreography. Behind each movement appeared a country narrative that combines technological ambition, industrial policy and cultural projection in the same television image. The question is no longer whether these robots can perform in front of millions of people, but rather how much their presence will grow in the coming years and into what spaces of daily life they will end up integrating. For now, its massive presence is destined for this type of spectacle. Images | CCTV In Xataka | While technology companies dispense with juniors to replace them with AI, IBM is doing the opposite: catching bargains (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

In 1901, a Spanish man had one of the ideas of the century: invent the remote control before television

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Televisions change, technologies change, but there are interactions that last despite the passage of years, decades and even centuries. An example of this is the remote controller, which has historically allowed us to interact with devices from a distance, although what we currently know is very different from the first concept of remote control. Although televisions did not become more common in the last decades of the 20th century, the concept of the remote controller appeared much earlier. Specifically, in 1901. And a fact that you may not know is that one of the pioneers of the remote control was a Spaniard, the engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo. The controller anticipated the televisions The history of the remote control dates back, as we said, to the first years of the last century. In 1903, the inventor, mathematician and engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo (1852-1936) conceived, built and patented the first remote control in history. He called it Telekino, and as one might thinkIt is far from the controls for televisionsand other devices we see now. Miniaturization was not a reality until much later and the Telekino took up an entire table. Telekino in Abra. Image: Torresquevedo.org Of course, the Telekino was not created with the idea of ​​controlling televisions remotely, which in reality did not become a reality almost until the incorporation of the cathode ray tube (withthe pushfrom Telefunken and other manufacturers). The idea was to control airships without anyone being in danger in the tests, but finally he tried it with boats as they recalled in the written edition ofThe Countryin 2007, when the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recognized the invention by including it in its official list of milestones in the history of engineering. It was the first time that a Spanish creation became part of this list, in which we find inventions by Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta and Guglielmo Marconi among others. Telekino, as you may have deduced, comes fromTV(from ancient Greek, “far”, meaning “at a distance”, “remotely”) andkinein(also from the Greek, “movement”), by the way. IEEE Recognition Plaque. Image: YouTube We already talked about Telekino inXatakaprecisely because of this historical recognition, also to remember that at the time it was not highly praised. In fact, Torres Quevedo himself would abandon the project as he did not receive sufficient support. The valuable legacy of Torres Quevedo One of the prototypes of the Telekino is located in the Torres-Quevedo Museum, in the Higher Technical School of Civil, Canal and Port Engineers of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. And thanks to a short (virtual) visit to that museum for the centenary of one of the Spanish engineer’s inventions we can discover more of them, also very relevant. Torres Quevedo is credited with nothing more and nothing less than the first Spanish airship, as well as the first ferry suitable for transporting people (or in other words, an open cable car for people). The invention was patented in 1887, and it would not be until 30 years later when it materialized, being launched on Mount Ulía in San Sebastián in 1907. Compensation also came in the form of international export, since the system reached neither more nor less thanto Niagara Falls. Thus, the callSpanish AerocarIt continues to operate today in the well-known region and celebrated its centenary in 2016, having completed more than 10 million transports without recording incidents. Torres Quevedo was also a precursor of modern computing with his Ajedrecista, considered the first chess computer game, and the electromechanical arithmometer, a calculator accompanied by a typewriter, a precursor to digital calculators. In Xataka | In 1925, procrastination was already a problem and someone found the definitive solution: the isolation helmet. In Xataka | We have been fascinated for years by the geniuses who come up with revolutionary innovations out of thin air. It’s always been smoke (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news In 1901, a Spanish man had one of the ideas of the century: invent the remote control before television was originally published in Xataka by Anna Marti .

We have crossed another line with subscriptions. LG now allows you to pay a fee to use a television in a European market

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What started as a practical formula to pay for digital content has, little by little, become a way of life. Subscriptions to listen to music, watch series, store photos, work, protect your computer. Based on small installments, has been normalized that an increasing part of our lives depends on a monthly payment. And when the time comes to do the math, that recognizable feeling of juggling the budget appears: we cancel one, reactivate another, adjust as best we can so as not to go overboard. Perhaps we pay more and more to access, and less and less to possess. That is why the latest twist in the phenomenon draws special attention: now you can also “rent” a television instead of buying it. Rent a TV if you can’t (or don’t want to) buy one. The scene comes from the United Kingdom. There, LG already offers a modality called LG Flex which allows access to a selection of televisions and sound bars through subscription, directly from the company’s website. The logic is similar to that of other services: you choose the product and, at the time of checkout, you select Raylo as an option, since LG presents it as its official partner for this program. The proposal is sold as “flexible access” to premium products, with no initial outlay, and with different subscription durations to adjust the monthly price. In practice, it is a paradigm shift in an object that we traditionally bought and amortized for years. What does “flex” mean? The subscription is proposed with two very different paths: a renewable monthly plan, designed for those who want maximum freedom, and closed plans of 12, 24 or 36 months, which reduce the monthly payment in exchange for a greater commitment. It is a well-known logic: the longer the term, the lower the fee. In addition, the proposal includes a 14-day free trial and, at the end of the period, the user can choose between continuing to pay month by month, requesting a change to a newer model at no additional cost or returning the device. Of course, this last option is not neutral: the withdrawal has a fee of 50 pounds (about 60 euros). The key is what you are paying. A television like LG OLED evo AI C54 83-inch 4K (2025) It is offered for 3,999 pounds (about 4,620 euros at the exchange rate in that market), with a subscription available from 123.90 pounds per month (about 145 euros at the exchange rate) with Raylo, while a LG QNED evo AI QNED9MA 86-inch 4K Mini LED It is listed for 2,499.98 pounds (about 2,890 euros at the exchange rate), with installments starting at 78.35 pounds per month (about 92 euros at the exchange rate). The difference is in the time horizon: if the subscription is maintained for a long time, the accumulated amount may end up exceeding the purchase price. That is why Flex is best understood as a formula to have the television “in use” without purchasing it directly, not as an alternative designed to pay less at the end of everything. Will it leave the United Kingdom? For now, the experiment remains in the United Kingdom. LG has not communicated plans to expand Flex beyond that market, so, at the moment, there is no basis to assume that it will reach other European countries. But even as an isolated case, the idea says a lot about the moment we are going through: subscriptions are no longer just a method to access digital content or tools, but a commercial language that is also beginning to be applied to physical objects. Images | LG In Xataka | Apple Creator Studio is not just a subscription. It’s Apple looking to conquer the little tiktoker who uses CapCut and Canva

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