Juha Saarinen: CES 2015 - Mercedes steals the electronics show

Then there was Mercedes-Benz, with the rather gorgeous looking F 015 Luxury in Motion.

Samsung isn't the only one going gung-ho with 4K ultra-high-definition TVs. Competitors Sony, LG and Sharp all had large - up to 104 inches diagonally - eyeball-sizzling screens on display at the International Consumer Electronics Show 2015.

Curved screens, large colour gamuts, thin sets and better upscaling of 1080 HD material to 4K resolution were common denominators, along with built-in media players.

One of LG's new OLED screens, 78" in size. Not destined for NZ however.

It'll be interesting to see how they perform properly calibrated. More 4K content is definitely coming, via online providers like Netflix and Amazon. Well, that's in the US. How 4K streaming and content availability translates to New Zealand remains to be seen but fingers crossed, it'll happen in 2015. Lucky people with UFB fibre broadband...

Nowe, you might think that cars don't quite belong at the Consumer Electronics Show but there were plenty of the big automotive names represented, including Audi, BMW, VW, Chevrolet, and Ford.

BMW had joined forces with Samsung to build a prototype that comes if you call it - literally: you speak to a Samsung Android device and the car will drive up to you by itself.

It's far from production ready, as the BMW representative at CES admitted, due to what he termed "regulatory issues" around self-driving cars - without any drivers in them.

Then there was Mercedes-Benz, with the rather gorgeous looking F 015 Luxury in Motion.

This fully self-driving beauty runs on hydrogen cells, and has a pack of sensors as well as radar and cameras to work out what it does and where it goes.

Here's how you might drive to work in the future - instrumentation designer Dr Stefan Bossey told me the F 105 is very much at the concept stage still, albeit drivable - as demonstrated by messieurs Köhl and Hartmann, the exterior and interior designers of the car.

2030 is probably a realistic timeline for the development of cars like the F 105, given the many issues that remain around self-driving vehicles - see our earlier story .

This is rather a shame, as the F105 seems perfect for Auckland commutes. Provided of course the present public transport unfriendliness among our politicians continue and we're still forced to have individual, private vehicles.

Obligatory drone video

CES wouldn't be complete without drones with cameras for aerial surveillance, like this one from a Chinese company Torquing that was at first very reluctant to demonstrate its goods:

Juha Saarinen travelled to CES 2015 as a guest of Samsung New Zealand