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Panasonic has unveiled the first Blu-ray player with native 4K support today at CES, although the device is still just a prototype.

There was little else revealed, except for a bland black design and HDMI ports, but the company is expected to bring a player to market in the late Q3 2015.

All 4K UHD Blu-ray players into the future will be developed based on the parameters set by the UHD Alliance, which is led by Samsung, Panasonic, Fox, Warner Brothers and more. The Alliance sets standards and is also in charge of managing distribution.

4K TVs are all the rage now despite a major lack of content, and many more were announced today in just the first day of CES.

According to sources, Verizon has had discussions with AOL with the massive telecom looking to either acquire the smaller Internet company or join up in order to expand their mobile-video library and ad tech.

By acquiring AOL, or teaming up, Verizon could easily merge AOL's "programmatic advertising technology" (automated ad buying and selling) with mobile video that continues to see strong growth for the U.S.' largest carrier.

Verizon should have little problem acquiring AOL if it chooses to, given that AOL has a market cap of $3.5 billion compared to Verizon's $200 billion but Verizon has been stockpiling billions in order to buy wireless spectrum at an upcoming auction so may not have cash available.

AOL, besides its ad tech, also has significant online content and brands including the Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Engadget. The media properties boast about 200 million uniques per month. Additionally, AOL still somehow has 2.3 million paying dial-up customer which would most likely be converted to Verizon's fast FiOS broadband service.

Although not every tech merger makes too much sense, the synergies in this deal are plentiful especially given the new focus of the two companies.

Earlier today, Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp announced that attackers stole $5 million worth of the digital currency, shutting down trading on the exchange for the day.

CEO Nejc Kodric says most of Bitstamp's reserve are safe but the attackers did net 19,000 bitcoins, over $5 million at the current trading price of $275 USD.

Kodric says that the vast majority of holdings are kept in "cold storage" making them inaccessible for quick online transfers and therefore theft, but the attackers managed to empty out Bitstamp's operational wallet which is used for day-to-day transactions and site business.

Although on a much smaller scale, the theft brings back memories of Mt Gox, which was once the largest exchange until it was pillaged with hundreds of millions in Bitcoins stolen. The site eventually shut down.

The Internet Archive has significantly upgraded their free old-school gaming library, which now has nearly 2400 MS-DOS games available to play right from your browser.

Previously, the IA had hundreds of Atari and arcade games available with the use of emulators.

A few of the more notable games you would remember include Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D and Bomber 3D.

Internet Archive says the in-browser emulator is still in beta and you can expects some bugs.

Lenovo went crazy today at CES, unveiling a plethora of new products including a few new powerful smartphones.

The newly unveiled P90, available next month overseas, is the first device to feature a 64-bit Intel Atom processor and its other specs should ensure a slick experience.

Featuring a 5.5-inch 1080p display, the device is powered by the quad-core 64-bit Intel Atom clocked at 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, Android Lollipop (with Lenovo's Vibe 2.0 user interface on top), 32GB internal storage and a huge 4000mAh battery that promised up to 36 hours of life. The standard camera is a 13MP OIS shooter and the "selfie" cam is 5MP with built-in selfie features. The device also has an Intel LTE-A FDD/TDD modem which means theoretical download speeds of 150 Mbs if your carrier offers anything close to that.

The P90 will be available from Lenovo's site for just $499 in Pearl White, Onyx Black and Lava Red.

Massive car maker Volkswagen has announced that its cars will get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto later this year.

Announced today at CES, the company says the two user interfaces built for car dashboards will work with VW's MIB II dash devices. MIB II also adds support for MirrorLink, which adds better syncing support for smartphones by "integrating the apps and operating layout of numerous smartphones (including Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony) into cars."

Apple unveiled CarPlay last year, and VW was notably absent given their market share in the casual and luxury car markets.

"The two inventions of the century, the car and the computer, are gradually coming closer together. We need to design future mobility to be even more intelligent and even more networked," said Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn, CEO of Volkswagen AG.

The car company did not give an exact release date but did say MirrorLink, CarPlay, and Android Auto are all rolling out in the US and Europe later this year.

Roku has announced today that upcoming models will include streaming 4K Ultra HD support, meaning the set-tops will be the first in the industry with native support for the high resolution video.

Additionally, the company signed up Chinese manufacturing heavy hitter TCL as its first partner for 4K TVs that run Roku's Roku TV platform.

Netflix was announced as Roku's first 4K streaming content provider, which is unsurprising given Netflix's "huge" 4K library of about 20 movie and TV titles including the full seasons of AMC's hit "Breaking Bad."

Besides the 4K announcements, Roku also announced more partners for its Roku TV platform: Insignia and Haier. Insignia is Best Buy's house brand and Haier is a well-known low-cost TV maker.

Authorities in the UK have arrested 22-year-old Vinnie Omari on suspicion of fraud, less than a week after the group Lizard Squad took down Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live on Christmas via a large DDoS attack.

Omari was arrested as part of an investigation into thefts of PayPal accounts, but the investigators also took the suspect's phone, computers, Xbox One, flash drives and will search his emails and more "in relation to the hacking of the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live systems over the Christmas period."

Earlier this month, Omari and Finnish teen Julius Kivimäki made appearances on Sky News to comment on the downtime. Big time security expert Brian Krebs identified both and linked Omari to proposed sales of Mega vouchers on a hacking forum. This is notable because Mega founder Kim Dotcom offered 3000 vouchers for the service to the Lizard Squad to get them to drop the DDoS so he could get back to gaming.

Kivimäki was arrested last year for his part in a large botnet, and was found to have over 3000 stolen credit card numbers.

Krebs has a very interesting piece on the Lizard Squad, who he basically calls script kiddies and "angry" teens.

Withings, a small French electronics company made waves last year when it introduced the Activité, a $450 Swiss-made smartwatch and fitness tracker.

Despite great critical review, the watch's price tag kept the average consumer away and the company will look to try to remedy that situation with the release of the Activité Pop, a mostly scaled-down version of its more expensive brother but with all the same perks.

The Pop still looks attractive as a wearable, and could easily pass as a casual watch in all three colors (beige, blue and gray) and Withings has already promised more band styles. For $150, the watch has a silicone band and PVD coated stainless steel casing with mineral glass compared to the $450 watch's calf leather band, stainless steel case and sapphire glass.

Just like its brother, the watch tracks your steps, monitors your sleep and vibrates to notify you when you've reached your goals. On the watch face, there is a 0-100 indicator letting you know how you are progressing every day. The phone syncs with your iOS device for the time being. The watch is water resistant up to 30 meters and comes with a watch battery that lasts 8 months, meaning no need for a daily charge.

Seagate has introuduced the world's slimmest USB 3.0 external hard disk drive, the Seven.

The device is a ridiculously slim 7mm thick, and the drive is cased in an all-steel chassis that looks very sleek compared to most bland hard drives. There was little more details given except that under the hood is a 5mm Angsana drive and that the capacity is 500GB. Hopefully, the transfer speeds can match the style.

Seagate says the Seven is special to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Seagate's launch of the first mass-produced 5.25-inch HDD.

The drive will be available later this month for $99.99.

Xiaomi, the world's third-largest smartphone maker and one of the planet's largest privately-held companies, sold 61.12 million smartphones last year, bringing in $12 billion in revenue.

CEO Lei Jun on Weibo released the figures, which show huge growth for the four-year old company. In 2012, they sold 7.2 million units, followed by 18.7 million in 2013. Weibo says the company has internal expectations of 100 million phones sold for 2015. Thanks to such massive growth, the company recently raised $1.1 billion from investors that value the company at $45 billion.

Initially selling just in China, Xiaomi has expanded to seven Asia companies, with more expected in 2015. There have been reports linking the company to launches in Mexico, Brazil and Russia, opening up the company to hundreds of millions of new consumers.

Xiaomi has become popular by selling powerful, stylish phones for rock-bottom prices, with all of their unlocked devices selling for $150-$350, well below the unlocked price of $700 for the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S5, for example.

The company has razor thin margins due to the aggressive pricing, but remains lightly profitable as they sell services and build their ecosystem. The company also has a small marketing budget and low overhead, which helps keep costs down.

After months of limited alphas, Videolan's VLC media player is now available in the Windows Phone Store as a more complete beta.

The app is notable for its widespread compatibility for video and audio formats and it also brings native MKV support.

Reads the company's quick blurb: "VLC media player is a portable, free and open-source, cross-platform media player and streaming media server written by the VideoLAN project. VLC media player supports most audio and video compression formats, files and streaming protocols."

VLC is the most popular media player for PC among the tech crowd, and has been popular for mobile devices, as well, despite issues getting into the iOS App Store.

Due to international laws that vary by country, not all Netflix subscriptions are created equal.

A few more tech-savvy users have found ways to get around the lesser catalogs of their country's Netflix using proxies, VPNs and other workarounds to get access to the full American library of streaming content.

According to one popular VPN (virtual private network), Torguard, there has been a large spike in errors for users trying to access American Netflix through their service from other countries. "This is a brand new development. A few weeks ago we received the first report from a handful of clients that Netflix blocked access due to VPN or proxy usage. This is the very first time I've ever heard Netflix displaying this type of error message to a VPN user," said TorGuard's Ben Van der Pelt.

Others that are using custom DNS settings are out of luck if they use the Android app, since Netflix just updated the software to block such workarounds by forcing Google DNS, as well.

While relatively few have been affected, so far, this could be just the beginning of a wider-spread crackdown on unauthorized Netflix usage.

Alcatel has introduced their latest smartphone, the Pixi 3, a device that is compatible with three major operating systems.

The name may seem familiar to Palm/WebOS fans, and Alcatel decided on the name after acquiring the Palm brand and its licenses late last year.

There will be 4 versions of the Pixi 3, starting with a 3.5-inch 3G model for the very budget-conscious, followed by LTE models at 4, 4.5 and 5 inches. All of the phones will be able to run Windows Phone, Android, or Firefox OS.

Alcatel has released Android, Windows Phone and Firefox devices in the past but it remains to be seen how seamlessly it integrated all three in one device.

The company has their own booth at CES, so we should have plenty of more info starting on January 6th.

Acer has decided that the Chromebook market has devices that are just too small.

The company will soon be releasing its new Chromebook 15, the first Chrome OS notebook with a 15-inch display (15.6 to be exact).

Design-wise, the notebook looks exactly like the company's smaller Chromebook 13, except that it will be easily the heaviest Chromebook on the market, at 4.85 pounds.

For your money, you get to choose between 1080p or 366 x 768 display resolution (non-Touchscreen unlike the Chromebook 13), and either a new Intel Core i3 or a Celeron processor. The notebook has USB 3.0, USB 2.0, an SD reader and an HDMI port. Other options are 32GB or 64GB internal storage (SSD) and 2GB or 4GB RAM.

The base price is $250, but it remains unclear how much a 1080p, Core i3, 4GB, 64GB model will set you back.