CES 2016 - Computer audio has been somewhat stagnant lately, with even Creative letting the audio chipset they developed for the Sound Blaster Z line carry them over in the discreet audio world for awhile. But that hasn't stopped them from continually upping the game in the field of audio.

For their next trick, they're bringing 15.2-channel sound, and Dolby Atmos certification, to the living room in the form of a sound bar. That's right, a premium sound bar device that lets you enjoy what's usually reserved for theaters or the incredibly willing audio enthusiast.

The X-Fi Sonic Carrier is more than just a way to enjoy Atmos enabled content, which is where there's more positional data encoded in the source than there probably is in real-life, but it's also a complete home entertainment solution aiming to take on the living-room entertainment space. And the positional audio from one bar is actually pretty convincing too.

CES 2016 - You had better watch out for media! We were invited to a secret backroom at CES 2016 where a separate subdivision of GIGABYTE's notebook business unit gave us a tour of their latest technology. Although AORUS is still in its infancy, they have made huge waves through the gaming notebook community in the past year.

Backed by one of the largest manufacturers of motherboards, VGAs, and notebooks, AORUS takes the experience of a large technology corporation and freedom of a separate division to push out some of the best gaming notebook offerings.

Their focus is to design and produce the best gaming notebooks on the market, and we saw nothing mediocre. Every AORUS notebook we saw had a dedicated NVIDIA GPU (or more), and many of the technologies they offered were unique and on the bleeding edge of VR and gaming.

CES 2016 - Upon entering GIGABYTE's CES2016 ballroom, we were greeted by many custom PCs, each using a different GIGABYTE Z170 or X99 motherboard and GIGABYTE's latest Xtreme Gaming VGAs. The new VGAs have three RGB LED rings around the fans as well as RGBs in the Windforce cooler logo.

This makes the VGAs easy to match virtually any build. The Xtreme Gaming VGAs are also replacing the G1 Gaming video cards as GIGABYTE's top offering. The VGAs utilize heat sinks with six copper heat pipes, three low noise high CFM fans, improved power delivery (more phases), and the top of the line GTX 980 Ti has a special LN2 BIOS with an extra 6-pin PCI-E power plug. The new Xtreme Gaming series of VGAs are premium offerings using either the NVIDIA GTX 970, 980, and top of the line 980 Ti.

GIGABYTE was also hard at work breaking world records (they actually took four global WRs with non-K CPUs). The overclocking was live streamed, and on both the streaming computer (on the left) and on the Z170X-SOC Force LN2 system (on the right), the Xtreme Gaming GTX 980 Ti was used.

Last year's 'Mad Max: Fury Road' was a phenomenal piece of art, which was far, far better than anyone would have assumed. Moreover, it's $375 million worldwide gross (not too shabby for an R rated film) confirmed that there was demand for more 'Mad Max' adventures 35 years on, even without star Mel Gibson. Now, it looks like we'll be seeing more of Max in the not too distant future.

Director George Miller spoke to Entertainment Weekly Radio and confirmed that he had decided the plot of the fifth film in the franchise, and is "certainly having conversations about it." Could we be seeing more of Charlize Theron's Furiosa? Miller didn't let much slip, saying "Yeah, she's a pretty compelling character so it would be great to tell her story. Her backstory is really interesting. We only allude to it in this movie because this movie is on the run; people don't have much time for recreational talk. But you pick up, you have a sense of her having gone through stuff. That's what the film is trying to do. You're trying to put a lot of iceberg under the tip, I like saying."

Still, another film could be a number of years away, with Miller wanting to do a smaller film in the interim; "something that's contemporary that we can get through fairly quickly. And something with not too much technical difficulty. Something more performance-based and so on, just to clear the exhaust."

CES 2016 - Synology has typically been solely in the NAS market, with some very nice home office, personal and even enterprise solutions for storing all manner of data. Now they're bringing their networking expertise to the table with their first router. A router that one an award at CES this year.

The RT1900ac was on hand at their booth at CES and they connected a variety of devices to in order to show off how easy administration was when using their Synology Router Manager OS, which provides a clean user interface that's surprisingly easy to use, as it builds appropriately off of their other NAS interfaces that have been received well by the community.

Being easy to use can sometimes mean sacrificing quality, features or even security. Or at the very least it could mean hiding away the advanced features in such a way that is the exact opposite of intuitive design. But that's not the case here. This is a powerful and intuitive OS that could give other vendors a real run for their money.

Worldwide and domestic United States box office records continue to fall in the wake of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' which continued its swathe of destruction over the weekend. Now, 'Jurassic World's spot as the third highest grossing film has been taken by the sci-fi sequel, as it now guns for 'Titanic' in the second spot.

Opening strongly in China in the last few days, 'Force Awakens' took around $53 million - impressive considering this is the first 'Star Wars' film to hit cinemas in the country. In the U.S., the film has taken the highest grossing film record at $812 million; the first film to gross over $800 million. While the film is internationally around $450 million behind usurping 'Titanic', if it continues to run as it is it might just do it.

In Win is always looking to innovate and find new ways to dazzle their customers with new things. That thinking extends to products already in the market too.

At CES this year they brought the ubiquitous 805, but with a few new changes instead. In place of the normal front panel, they put on a an infinity mirror complete with RGB lights on the inside. It's more than appropriate for the particular Las Vegas flavor, and it's not really too garish either. It's only a few cm deep, but the effect is really well done.

The infinity lighting is controlled by the ASUS RGB motherboard and can have any number of different patterns and colors. The case on display was simply revolving around the color wheel. It's a prototype and they're just looking for feedback on the design to see if it's something that they might implement in future designs, or even as an add-on later. They've also added metal extensions on the bottom of the case that hold the tempered glass side-panels in, so they don't fall so easily when you remove them.

CES 2016 - Cooler master is consolidating their business, and that means new products along with that new vision. One of the most anticipated of those is the revamping of their keyboards and mice, from the value Devastator combo all the way up to their top of the line mechanical keyboards.

The Devastator bundle caught on surprisingly well when it was released in 2013. It was cheap, and actually a really decent experience for the money. They're upgrading that to the Devastator II, which should update it significantly while shooting for the same price point.

They've essentially taken a Topre switch and taken out the spring, replacing it with a rubber dome instead. They're calling it a Mem-chanical switch. So it's still a membrane keyboard, but it has the feel of a much more premium keyboard than the price might otherwise suggest. The result is a silent and more sure typing experience. Best of all is that you can customize the keycaps, because standard Cherry keycaps will fit over the switches. It'll of course be bundled with the Devastator II mouse.

CES 2016 - After our chat with NVIDIA learning about the new Android 6.0 update for the Shield, we went through two VR demos: one on the new Oculus Rift, and one on the new HTC Vive Pre VR headset.

The first was the Oculus Rift with the Oculus Touch controllers, which we wrote about here, with the impressive Bullet Train demo from Epic Games. The next was an awesome demo using the new HTC Vive Pre, where we played around with a paint brush with the Lighthouse controllers.

Not only that, but there was also an Everest demo, where we kinda scaled Everest - showing off the walking-around-a-room VR experience that HTC offers with Vive. All of the demos were powered by NVIDIA's great GeForce GTX Titan X, which can handle the ~3K resolution of VR at 90FPS.

CES 2016 - Audio is a precarious subject for a lot of reasons. Not everyone can tell the difference between two different sets of headphones and sometimes audio-quality isn't the first thing on some peoples minds when it comes to building PC's. But then you try a $55,000 set of headphones and you wonder where they've been all your life.

Sennheiser is now on to their second generation of Orpheus headphones, using the original 1991 model as inspiration, they crafted the ultimate audio experience. And no, the price-tag doesn't color the experience, they're actually that good. It's overwhelming, so much so that someone actually cried while listening to the Orpheus (not me, but almost...)

They feel expensive in your hand, and I placed them gingerly on my head, careful to avoid bending them too far. But there's no actual need to fret, because these are made to be used and actually listened to. I put them on with Hotel California playing through them, which has a huge variety of sounds to help showcase just what they're capable of. Once they're on, you get blown away by the huge sound-stage, something that extends into what might be described as natural. It's not like you're sitting at a concert, no, it's much more than that. It's like you're literally in the music itself somehow, if you close your eyes. It just envelopes and it's never harsh and I certainly never wanted to take them off.