HomeTech.fm - Episode 218 - Fireworks, Football, and Streaming Price Hikes

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

On this week's episode of HomeTech: We get together on the holiday week to catch up the latest. Jason has been shamed out of inaction on his slow quest to cut the cord. Seth has a bone to pick with the state of streaming media. A nod to the UK-based football (errr... soccer) fans in the audience. 4th of July festivities. And, oh yeah, what little news we could pull from the summer doldrums...A close look at Honeywell's new Smart Home security systemAT&T's WatchTV is a new ultra-low priced streaming serviceSimpliSafe sells a majority stake to SnapAV's parent company, Hellman & Friedman LLCApple mulling an all-in-one media subscription planPrice hikes for DirecTV Now, PlayStation Vue and SlingTVNetflix now the No.1 choice for TV viewingAnd a look at Samsung's next-gen frame TV'sFan of the show? Want to support our efforts? Please consider becoming a Patron!

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by listeners like you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 6, 2018. From Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, happy 4th! Yeah, yeah. Excited. We're recording here the night before the holiday, and holiday week is always fun. The holiday fell right smack in the middle of the week this year, so that's always kind of interesting when that happens. But it's good. Cuts the work week in half, and we're looking forward to a nice fourth here. No major plans. What about you seth uh tbd like if the weather is anything like it was today uh the fireworks will definitely not be they will not be doing fireworks i mean we have some pretty

good natural fireworks that happen here in florida it's like they say it's the lightning capital of the world but i i don't know like it i've heard other people claim that they have like more lightning we do but there was a time today where it was just solid lightning for five minutes like just solid thunder like cloud to ground lightning in front of me yeah so it was it was pretty crazy pretty intense um so hopefully fireworks if not fireworks lightning yeah so you'll you'll have fireworks either way either way man-made or or a show from from nature all natural yeah yeah yeah yeah i love that i gotta say we had a thunderstorm roll through last night and i i enjoy kind of just sitting and watching that pass through but maybe that's because we don't get them as often

as you do down there in florida yeah i mean they do they do they do some damage here so yeah i can't say i like them they're fairly benign here yeah cool well yeah we we are definitely excited to get a show out this week it's pretty slow in the news i gotta say there's there's not a whole lot going on i think i think people are kind of in those summer summer doldrums and uh we've got a couple of interesting stories though that we're going to kick around just you and me uh No guests this week. I got to say one thing before we jump into anything serious. The World Cup, Seth, as you know, is going on right now.

And as we sit here and record, England played today. And we've mentioned this on the air several times. We have a lot of fans over, a lot of supporters, I should say, of the show over in the UK. And I happened to hop over into the hub, our Slack channel, today when the England game was going on, to see if there was some dialogue surrounding the, I'll call it soccer, for the benefit of our US listeners, or the football game. And I was not disappointed it was very lively had a good time uh chatting it up with our uk fans and and england came through they won on penalty kicks which i learned as a as an american who's not super savvy to the ways of football i actually learned that england apparently has uh this came from James, who's a supporter

of the show has, has traditionally been very, very bad at penalty kicks. And they've lost, I think more games in European cups and world cups. They've lost more games, uh, to penalty kicks than any other team out there. And so when it went to PKs, it was, it was pretty intense, but they were drinking. They started drinking more. Yeah uh but they won it was a lot of fun being in the hub for that i had a good time uh hanging out with with the guys and and chatting it up yeah well i uh i i'm having some i'm really not happy with the state of streaming when it comes to the uh the world cup this year in years past i haven't had any problems but this year they've gotten wise to my game and uh my game being i canceled my cable service and they are now requiring you to uh log in with the fox sports app and like okay

well i can't do that so let me go somewhere else so i go to telemundo which i can i can understand goal in any language pot. It's like all you need. Yeah. Right. And I mean, they call play-by-play. It's pretty easy to understand what they're saying, doing the play-by-play stuff. So that's how I've been watching the first groups as they were playing.

And I was streaming all of them. And now I think Telemundo has kind of wised up to it. And they're like, no, we're cutting you off after about 10 or 15 minutes of watching or streaming. It'll cut off and say, hey, you can log in now. And I'm like, no, no habla, no habla. So I just kind of walked away from that one, too. So I've got to find a reliable streaming source. This is driving me nuts.

Yeah, that's a bummer. I know that you're an official cord cutter, and these are the things I think about as I move down my journey, which, by the way, I've made some progress on and we'll talk about in a second. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, at least half the games, like the England-Columbia game today, at least here, I don't know why it would be different there, but at least here, like it was's been a lot of coverage on Fox Sports. And so as a as a soon to be cord cutter, these are the things that I think about. Not not so much the World Cup specifically. I mean, that happens once every four years and I get into it, but that's about the only soccer I ever watch. But I do have to say that football season is right around the corner here in the US.S., and there absolutely cannot be a single Denver Broncos game that I miss as a result of cutting the cord.

So that's one of the central tenets of my cord-cutting plan is I've got to make sure that I have the ability to catch all the games. And that's pretty easy. You know, the majority of them are on broadcast, but there are those occasional Monday night games that are on ESPN. And I think that's about all I've got to account for. Well, I've got to figure out by Friday, because I think the next games are on Friday, Uruguay and France. Uruguay, that's my team this year. So rooting for them, they're going to play a really tough team Friday, France. France is big. I'm looking at the graph for the Columbia-England game today,

and what a roller coaster that was, huh? It went back and forth a couple times. Yeah, it was a good game. Wow. I'm sad I missed that one. I'll have to go back and see some highlights, but that one looks like it would have been fun to watch. Yeah, it was a good game.

I didn't get to catch. I had it on in the background, but I was on call, so I wasn't really paying attention. But, you know, checked in periodically and saw how it progressed. And then, yeah, went through extra time and into penalty kicks, and it was a very entertaining game. So, good times. Get that antenna up, Jason. Get on your tablet. I mentioned that I had made some progress in my journey to cut the cord.

And I got to say that I was shamed out of my inaction. I got to thank a couple people in the hub. After a show we did recently, I got called out. I got to say, I got called out. People were giving me some grief for the fact that I got a tableau sent to me from a supporter of the show for next to nothing. And I've had this tableau sitting on my shelf for a number of weeks now, probably months, if I'm honest, and just needed to go out and buy an antenna. And so particularly TJ, who's a great supporter of the show, want to send a shout out to, uh, he, he went in the hub and was like, you know, these, these OTA antennas are like $20 on Amazon. So I'm not really sure what Jason's

waiting for. And, and, uh, you know, he, I was like, I was like, he's right. This is, this has gotten ridiculous. So I went on and I bought a very inexpensive antenna, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained and, uh, hooked it up to the tableau actually just today and went through the basic setup. I've still got some work to do on the tableau to really figure out my way around, but so far it's, it's working and it's doing what it's supposed to do. And I've got the antenna, uh, just sort of temped up. I got to tell you though, the biggest thing is I'm sure you've seen these. This is one of these antennas. It's like a, I don't know, 10 inch by 12 inch, like black square that you're supposed to just like mount up on the wall. If you haven't seen them, just go on Amazon and search for indoor OTA antenna,

and you'll see them everywhere. And they, they're ugly as sin sin and i have no idea where i would ever put this thing permanently so this is not the permanent solution i definitely plan to eventually get an outdoor antenna installed but that's going to require a little bit more work and for now this this will do the job but um those are awful yeah not really sure not really sure exactly where i'm supposed to put this thing but it was was only $30 and I just wanted to get it done and see if this tableau worked and you know, so far so good. So I've got a, like I said, a little bit more work to do there, but I'm on my way, Seth. Nice. Nice. Yeah. These, I don't know how, what were they thinking? Like these aren't going to fit. I don't know. That's, that's kind

of why I ran one outside. I looked at these and I was like nope nope nope nope nope that's you're literally supposed to like stick it to the wall i see some of them have like like sticky sticky backing does is that it's it's unbelievable i i don't know who gets away with that but i don't know it goes back to technology being designed by engineers who live in a single apartment in San Francisco or whatever. That's been my joke about software. But this, good Lord, even the other ones are ugly. The outdoor, oh, my God, these are so ugly. Mine looks like the standard.

It's terrible. You know, it's kind of like a little ladder looking thing. I don't know how to describe it. It's like a ladder. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, so that's what mine looks like. But it's outside. It's low key.

I kind of got it sitting off to the side and oh man these are horrible no that no i know i would have been kicked i would have gotten kicked out of the house for that i literally had to uh just warn warn my wife i was like uh this is temporary before you even see it like just know that this is just a test and uh you know she's not super picky about stuff like that so i can kind of get away with it but um i i'm honestly like if anything as picky as her when it comes to those sort of aesthetics and uh it's pretty ugly but you know it was cheap and it got me up and running now i need to do some testing and make sure that i can pass the uh the soap opera factor that we've talked about on air yeah several times i've got to i've got to

ensure that i i cannot have any gap in soap opera coverage in this house when i cut the cord or there there will be hell to pay you're gonna have to put that on ups and you're gonna have to you know you're gonna you make sure everything's on aPS so it doesn't go down even if the power goes out. Yeah, there will be hell to pay. So I've got to – this is serious. There's some engineering that's going to have to go into this $30 antenna. Redundancy and all that. Yep.

You're going to need an off-site backup somehow, which you're going to have to do. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. Well, what do you say we uh jump into some home tech headlines let's do it first introduced uh by the way of indiegogo last fall and shown at ces 2018 in january the honeywell smart home security system is available for pre-order now and will begin shipping in august the camera base station will closely which closely resembles the amazon echo includes a built-in camera and works with a variety of security sensors the system is a user monitored uh system and kits will start around at a discounted rate at 449 not not terrible there yeah it's got um includes alexa and Google Assistant integrations. I forget exactly what that discounted kit comes with, but it's what you would expect. It's a couple of window sensors and door sensors and that sort of thing. So $449 there. Not sure how long that's going to stick around. This very much looks like a, the main base station anyways looks a lot like a Canary, which we've talked about a few times.

And if anyone listening is familiar with that, that's kind of what you can envision. 1080p camera, it's got night vision, 147 degree field of vision, motion detection, three microphone array, omnidirectional speaker. So that's basically what you've got built into the main unit. And like you said, Seth, it's user monitored. A couple of other points I thought were worth covering here regarding video storage. So there are different video storage options for the clips that that camera can take. $5 a month or $50 a a year it says you can save up to yeah for five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year you can save up to 1500 video clips for 30 days bump up that storage to 3000 video clips for 60 days and you're at 15 a month or 150 for a year

so there you go yeah i i'm looking at the just kind of reminded me that either last week or week before Ring announced that they were going to start pre orders for their $199 home security kit. So that's significantly less. And I, you know, it only adds that, what $30 a year or something like that, or $10 a month or something to your existing ring system. And if you already have a bunch of ring cameras around the house, then it's virtually free to do that for $100 a year. So I don't know. I think it's an uphill battle now that they've come out with this system.

This kit will include the base station, keypad, contact sensor, motion detector, and a range extender. And you can add a bunch of, I was looking, I was kind of surprised, they have a bunch of different accessories on here. So these guys are hitting the ground running. And for $199 to get you started, that's tough to beat. Yeah, definitely. It's gotten insanely cheap. And like you said, it's going to, I think, be an uphill battle a little bit for Honeywell here. But we'll see how they do.

Moving to our next story, we've got AT&T's new Watch TV. A streaming service with 31 channels and a $15 a month channels you find on most streaming services, such as A&E, AMC, CNN, TBS, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, etc. low price service philo which seth we've talked about numerous times on the show you will not find any sports or local channels on this service which is what they're doing really to keep those those costs down so we're seeing a couple of these offerings now coming out with these kind of i i guess what you would call a skinny bundle and they're they're keeping those prices very low for people who don't really care that much about local channels or sports or the world cup. Yeah. Or the world. Yeah, exactly. You've got a couple of different options now. I mean, $15 a month is a, is a pretty compelling price point. If, if those things aren't important to you.

Yeah. And I could see like, if I was wanted to really cut the cord or whatever and put my antenna up in my house and couldn't get any channels, like this would be a great way to get i mean these are some of these are really decent channels like turner classic movies tbs tnt amc uh you know we're always we have a couple of shows we like to watch on that walking dead which is dead to me now i don't want to watch it anymore but um that that that's pretty good so i um i'm, I'm kind of impressed. Like the, the price is very, very inexpensive. So, uh, yeah, I, I need somebody to let me try out something with a sports packet package for like a month and then I'm, I'm done with it. Right. Cause after the world comes

over, I don't care about sports for another four years. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Pay as you go. Yeah. Simply safe has sold a controlling interest, the company Hellman and friedman uh llc the private equity giant that acquired snap av last year as reported by tech crunch citing an unnamed source who says the deal values simply safe at one billion dollars the two companies themselves only announced that funds affiliated with h and f made their way to SimpliSafe Coffers to help the founder, Chad Lawrence, accelerate the company's growth and expansion of the home security market.

Yeah. Yeah. So some creative language there. I don't know if this is an acquisition or not. I'm very confused. The story that we'll link to in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 218 is actually from CE Pro, and CE Pro is citing TechCrunch. And a pretty interesting read. It gets a little bit down in the weeds, and so probably more interesting for the professionals in the audience, home technology professionals. But I thought it was interesting, because I remember back when it wasn't that long ago that Hellermann and Friedman acquired SnapAV. And, you know, one of the big angles of that story, and one of the things that people talked about in the industry trades, at least, is that H&F is not just your typical acquisition company. Like they don't just, their model is not typically just to come in and acquire a company and then sort of pair things up and do things that will

add more value in kind of non-traditional ways, I guess, is a simple way to say it. But yeah, the acquisition of SimpliSafe combined with the recent acquisition of SnapAV is definitely fueling some speculation. Julie Jacobson at CE Pro, I think, does a great job in this article of laying out some other possible reasons why H&F would have acquired SimpliSafe. And they've got a whole portfolio of companies that they could potentially merge this technology with and do some really interesting things. So I think it's worth a read. Go check it out. We'll include a link to it in our show notes at hometech.fm slash According to the information, Apple is apparently considering combining its upcoming magazine service and original content television with its existing music subscription into a single Amazon Primus subscription.

Pricing for the bundle is not clear. The report says that Apple will allow customers to subscribe to each service separately, perhaps offering cost savings to those who subscribe for the entire bundle. Yeah, I hope they don't name Apple TV shows Apple Music. That'd be kind of weird to me on the branding side. Like, it would be very confusing. Oh, I subscribed to Apple Music. Did you see the show on Apple Music last night? No, and i feel like i've already seen that happening like there's just mixed messaging and confusion around that but i

i don't know this the story makes a lot of sense apple is there's been a ton of rumors and speculation and uh all of that that that's been circulating around their content efforts. Well, they've spent a billion dollars on content. So they are coming out with something. A billion dollars has paid Oprah money. I mean, this is a lot of money that's gone into this. They've got Oprah and Obama. They're making shows. No, wait, Netflix has Obama, but they've got Oprah.

And a billion dollars. They are definitely. obama but they they've got oprah and yeah a billion dollars they they are they're they're definitely like that side of the industry the the uh entertainment industry they're like we got to deal with apple and then apple's like well we don't really talk about anything until it's released and i think that's that's why we have these mixed messages is because we don't really have any official word from apple that they're doing a service even like right it's right that's kind of why this is all strange and murky right yeah yeah and i think it'll make a ton of sense once they've got all these things sort of pieced

together and and they'll be um presumably combining them into some sort of bundle but yeah only time will tell and there's like i, there's been a lot of rumors and speculation. It's just awkward right now. Nobody's really sure exactly. Nobody's really sure exactly what they're doing. We're all sure that they're going to be doing something when it comes to video in particular. And so we'll definitely be keeping an eye on that.

Moving on to next story here. A pair of popular streaming TV services announced price hikes for customers today, or this week, I should say. AT&T has announced a price increase for their DirecTV Now service, while Sony announced an increase for PlayStation View. So AT&T announced an increase of $5 a month, which makes their intro level package go from $35 to $40. And Sony also bumped $5 a month, which brings the price of their entry level plan up to $45 a month. And then Slink TV also is raising their price from one of their plans that includes ESPN.

They're going from $20 to $25 a month for that one. So this is how they're getting us, right? They're giving these nice introductory rates, right? Like they're, they're giving these nice introductory rates and then they're like, you're going up, you're going up. Yeah. You have to wonder, it is very odd to me as I was scrolling through the news stories this week and, and figuring out, you know, what we were going to talk about to see three of the major streaming providers out there, Sling direct tv now and playstation view those are those are three of the the bigger players in this really what i would call this emerging

uh streaming market they all announced price increases this week and i don't know i'm not i'm not sure what there is to that other than just there's, you know, there was a quote in the Sling TV story where Warren, oh my gosh, terrible last name. Of course, I get stuck with this one. Warren Schlick. I'm sure I'm butchering that. I'm the worst. Anyways, yeah. It's going to be a bell.

Yeah, just kind of blur that out. What did you call me? Yeah. going to be a bell yeah just just kind of what did you call me uh yeah you know he said our team works hard to negotiate fair programming deals with the goal of keeping the price as low as possible uh he he goes on to say programming fees however only go one direction and that is up and so you know i i think this is probably less about the the streaming services themselves and some sort of plan to hook you and then raise the prices. I think this is just a necessary evil in the world of these emerging streaming services. They're all experimenting, and they're all trying to figure out this model

and how does it work right now. And I think we're very unlikely to see programming prices make any move in the downward direction. I think, unfortunately, the reality is we're going to see these sort of price increases as the content providers, programming providers sort of figure out the economics and then the companies like Sling TV try to figure out how can we bring that to the market in at the most you know cost effective way possible right it it's not i guess it's not really realistic to expect them to keep it at say it's 30 for the rest for the rest of all time right their their costs are going up of course they're having to pay for things um it's not like that gets any less expensive to do so right i guess i guess that from that perspective it does make sense but man the introductory rate uh that cable companies so

well perfected as uh has leaked over into the uh yeah the streaming that's what it looks like yeah yeah that's certainly what it feels like uh moving on here netflix is now the most popular platform for watching entertainment on TV ahead of traditional cable and broadcast television networks, as well as YouTube TV and Hulu. This according to a recent survey of US consumers by a Wall Street firm Cohen and company. For the survey of 2500 US adults conducted in May, they asked which platform do you use most often to view video content on TV? Overall, Netflix captured the number one spot with 27% of total respondents, followed by Basic Cable at 20%, Broadcast at 18%, and YouTube at 11%. So Netflix continuing to do very, very well. Yeah, I mean, almost like they were the first to market, so they kind of can hold on to that dominance, I would think.

I'm generally surprised at how many people are using this stuff these days. Because I talk to family members and that kind of thing just to kind of get an idea of what they're using. And they're like, you can stream stuff on Netflix? Like, it's still kind of, I think for the vast majority, like we're, we're in this bubble and like, if you step out of it and talk to people who don't get into technology and just, you know, have kind of gone on paying the cable bill every month, you know, they don't even know that you can stream movies from a company that is, that is literally named after streaming movies like Netflix. It's there in the name. And I think they've gone so far to say that it doesn't say DVD flicks or Blu-ray flicks. It like Netflix. It's there in the name. And I think they've gone so far to say that.

It doesn't say DVD flicks or Blu-ray flicks. It says Netflix. But yeah, it's funny how many people don't even know that exists. And YouTube, I mean, I don't know. I've got thoughts on YouTube. Maybe we'll come to that one day. I just don't understand.

I'm trying to get into YouTube. I really am. But I'm just not understanding the basics behind it. There's just so much on YouTube. And it it's just like this is such a bad video why and there's some really good ones out there but just i don't know like it's i don't know how many how 17 of the people said oh yeah i get all my video from youtube well 11 11 right and yeah 11 in the story um and yeah you're right i mean youtube i actually, I think I misspoke there and might have said YouTube TV earlier in the excerpt the quality of content, the, the sheer volume of content on YouTube is insane, but yeah, but, but the quality because of that is just,

it's all over the board. And, um, I'm with you. Like there are times where I, I'll just, for, you know, for whatever reason, I'm, I'm just kind of sitting around and I just want to poke around on YouTube and see if I can watch, uh, you know, something entertaining to watch. And like, it, it never pans out. Like I use YouTube plenty, but I use it very specifically for like how to, uh, real example, just last weekend, my lawnmower wasn't working. Right. I couldn't get it to start. I went on YouTube, how to fix the Briggs and Stratton, blah, blah, blah, and literally watched a few videos and was able to go out and figure out how to take the carburetor off and clean it out. And voila, like my lawnmower was working again. And you can't beat YouTube for that.

But for just day-to-day like entertainment and watching video content, I'm with you. I hardly ever use it. Yeah. entertainment and watching video content i'm with you i i hardly ever use it yeah that's that like the total like the millennial thing to do is to go to youtube to look up how to do something like that oh yeah did you see that girl great for that it's kind of way off topic but she used youtube like she she was uh traveling didn't really know she was pregnant was having the baby in a hungarian hotel or something crazy like that she just no she ended up there pregnant having the baby in the hotel room and watched youtube videos to figure out how to do it wow yeah it was it was is that a

true story like verified verified true story she was all over the news a couple months back but yeah that's crazy i yeah yeah yeah very crazy i'll put i'll find a link and put it in the show notes but do you uh do you watch the handmaid's tale have you ever watched that show so i i tried to watch that and it it no i had to turn it off no suspend your disbelief it was just yeah yeah that's it it uh we're into it i i could see how you you would not be into it it's it's funny you anyways anyone who watches that show will know why i asked that question uh just now i'm not gonna say anything more for fear of i kind of get it but uh yeah spoiling anything if i haven't already spoiler alert but uh yeah you know speaking of streaming content that that's one of those shows that we've we've been into lately a very well produced well done uh i think that one's on hulu right

yeah yeah so it is hulu's is is right it's like right on the the heels of uh broadcast television uh when it comes to subscribers on that on that on that chart that was in that story um so that that's the other one i hear most people netflix and hulu's like that's if anybody's using one they're using one or the other um but not i i i don't hear people say oh yeah i use youtube and that And that's kind of what has me perplexed by those findings. Right, right. Samsung announced the next generation of its design-focused frame TV, which now comes with additional customization features

and a much bigger array of art to choose from. The TV has a 4K UHD screen, but now features HDR10+. We talked about that a little bit last week yeah uh which is an improvement over the hdr pro uh which the which the original version came with so yeah bigger better more prettier screens i guess i i don't know i i've seen a couple of like pictures of these uh they're making their way out into the field because uh i've seen like model homes and that kind of thing have these in them now uh which is kind of nice to see technology, a useful place for a TV over a fireplace, I guess is where I want to go with that.

Like, yeah, there's really no reason to put the TV over the fireplace, except if you use one of these frame TVs, I think. Yeah, I mean, wherever you put it, I think these things look really sharp, at least in the, uh, the marketing imagery, these things are very well suited for that and they look great. I always go to the, the reality for a lot of people of installing one of these things and you're going to have, you know, cables hanging out below it, unless you are willing to roll up your sleeves and figure out how to go about hiding the equipment and hiding those cables. And that's certainly not rocket science, but there is always that, that little bit of extra work that if you're not conscious of it,

you just go out and buy one of these TVs. You don't necessarily realize, Oh, I've still got to, you know, deal with cables and the marketing imagery. Never, you know, never really conveys that clearly. These do. I was just going to say that, like, that is the one thing in their defense. Like, I'm looking at one image now and you see a nice, a straight line, a white cable coming down from the bottom of the TV. So to their credit, they're not, you know, they're not completely glossing over that. But I really like these things. I got to be honest. I think they're, it's a really, it's a really cool idea. They're pricey. And so it's not something that. I got to be honest. I think they're, it's a really cool idea.

They're pricey. And so it's not something that I'm going to be investing in for my house today. But in the future, I got to say that having one of these on the wall, I would get into that. Having the ability to, when the TV's off, and have it look really nice and look just like a piece of art on the wall, I think is, is pretty cool. And I commend Samsung for this. I think it's one of the more original things I've, I've seen in terms of TV manufacturing in the last five years. And, and I know that it has a ton of appeal for, for the high-end homeowner who's, who's looking to have a TV on the wall and maybe not super concerned with it being an ultra high performance room although these tvs do have 4k and hdr 10 so i'm not i'm not suggesting that they're they're low performance tvs but they're certainly not a display that you're going to use in like a dedicated media room or theater

but if you're looking for for a good tv that you can put out in the living room and and have it really blend in into the aesthetic when you're not using it. I really like these things. I got to say, I, I'm a fan. Two grand for the 55 inch and $2,700 for the 65 inch. That's a, that's a step up from the TCL. From my TCL that I'm looking at. Yeah. I'll stick with the TCL for now. And $499 a month. If you want to do the subscription to the Samsung art store and, and I guess that's

kind of a good idea where you can kind of like go through and pick some art out that you want to have hanging up the wall. It says you can also purchase individual works of art too. So not a bad idea, Samsung. Not a bad idea. No, they're great. I mean, I go back to thinking about a lot of the higher end homes that I worked in and some of those environments like the master bedroom or the living room that they wanted to have a TV there for certain occasions. But when it's not on, you know, a big black rectangle on the wall isn't the most most pretty thing. So these these are pretty cool. I like them. Do you remember?

Do you remember the the vision art? Like where you had like a... Oh, yeah. Like a motorized art cover that would come down. Yeah. I'm sure that's still out there. I'm sure it is. This is obviously probably not great for their business model, but it solves the same problem, right? I mean, that's the whole idea.

Yeah, the vision arts definitely were a great solution. I was involved in a couple of those, but, man, they're complicated, right? Basically, it's a shade roller. You've got to figure out the box, how that installs, get the wiring in the right place, figure out a control system, you know, on and on. So by the time you figure all of that out and pay all of all of the necessary people involved to make that all come off without a hitch um yeah all of a sudden this two thousand dollar 55 inch tv doesn't look so expensive no i mean i'm looking at their website now i went went and found them i'll put a link in the show notes prices start at 16.95 uh and that's just for

the frame you know that doesn't include the install on figuring out how to automate the shade well i guess the shade's automated going up and down but they've got some premiere galleries that are like seven or eight thousand dollars but i mean there's a big difference too of uh of like having actual canvas with paint on it living of course yeah and and and doing the samsung route which is kind of just a matte tv TV that from a distance you're like, oh, that's pretty. And you won't get up close. It's like, oh, this is a TV. So I don't know. Like there is a difference in if you're a discerning client who wants to have canvas with paint on it in the room. The vision art is probably the better way to go. Right.

And don't forget the ability to put whatever display you want behind it, right? So if you want to invest like top dollar in a full array backlit, you know, LED with all the bells and whistles, you can do that. And again, I'm not implying that the frame TV is a slouch in terms of performance, but there are better displays out there. Yeah.

And so if you're looking to have the best of the best and then you want that canvas to come down over it and cover it, yeah, certainly that is still a very viable option. But for somebody who's looking for a more economical way to have a TV really blend into the background when it's not in use, I think these frame TVs are a fantastic idea. All the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 218. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for the weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis as well as other industry news, not this week,

though, that may have not made it to the show. Again, the link is hometech.fm slash 218. That's right. And don't forget, you can join us in our live chat room every Wednesday. Typically, we were a little bit off this week because of the holiday, but our typical recording time is Wednesdays around 7 or 7.30 p.m. Eastern. Find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. Pick of the week. I've got a pretty good one from a friend of the show, TJ. Oh, all right. Yeah, yeah. So this should be good.

Same TJ that shamed me out of inaction. So this, this should be good. Same, same TJ that, that shamed me out of inaction. So TJ has got two, two mentions on the show this week. So the, the label here is TJ's new shoes and, uh, he, he ran across these somewhere. Oh my God. These are amazing. So, uh, wait for you to load that up. I'm looking here. So these are shoes that come with a remote. What are these like LEDs in the shoes or or something yes they are remote controlled lights wow that's amazing oh man i i love this this is this is crazy can you imagine i mean i can tell that i've been on this aisle here at walmart with the little kid shoes um can you imagine a little kid running around with led lights and aiming a remote at their shoes like that's that's that's great i totally can and i'm sure it would be entertaining for them for all of about 15 minutes

and then they'd be over it and then the remote be lost and you can't turn the shoes off at night because they're just glowing in the closet then you get a crappy pair of shoes with leds that you can't even control and beautiful beautiful i like it yeah yeah that's a good one all right well that'll do it for this week seth i hope you have a great fourth of july i i know that uh we're looking forward to a nice uh relaxing holiday here i want to thank everybody for tuning in as we always do if you have any feedback comment suggestions you know questions we didn't have anything in the mailbag this week we'd love to hear from listeners. If you've got any of that, send it our way, and we'll get you on the show.

Feedback at hometech.fm is the email to do that with. Again, that's feedback at hometech.fm. Or if you want, if it's easier, head on over to hometech.fm slash feedback, and we've got an online form that you can fill out there. Absolutely. And I want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show each week by listening, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support

to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a shout-out on the show, but every pledge gets an invite to our private Slack, an automated invite to our Slack channel. Yes, it's automated because this is an automated show. Our Slack channel chat hub where you and other supporters of the show can watch soccer games or football games and cheer on the home team, I guess, as they're playing every four years. But we can also talk about home technology as well.

That's right. A little bit of that going on. All right, cool. Well, Seth, I will look forward to connecting with you again next week. And again, thank you everybody for tuning in. We appreciate it. Hope you have a, well, this will air on Friday after the fourth. So I hope you had a great fourth and we'll look forward to reconnecting with you again next week. Sounds good, Jason. Uh, have a great week. All right. Take care of Seth.