HomeTech.fm - Episode 230 - Silver Linings

Episode Date: October 19, 2018

On this week's episode of HomeTech: Amazon plugs a big hole in Echo’s whole-house audio function. SimpliSafe releases a new doorbell cam. An interesting new B8ta-Google partnership. Is Mark Gurman���s startup, Essential Products, on the ropes? More great numbers from Netflix but are they invincible? And much more…

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by listeners like you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, October 19th. From Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. How you doing, Seth? Good, good. Man, it's not winter here. It's not summer. I don't know. What's it like? It's got to be nice and cool up there. it's it's it's it's not winter here it's not summer i don't know what's it a play like it's got to be nice and cool up there oh yeah we got our first snow this week actually had about four

inches of snow on the ground on sunday so a little on the early side i'd say for that but not not terribly so and uh you know i'm ready for it i'm a cold weather guy so i always enjoy seeing the seasons change and it's that time of year for us, for sure. We have seasons, but they don't change. It's one season. Summer and not summer. I mean, I used to make the joke that we would skip the ones that suck, but I can't really call that out anymore. It's getting really hot now and we have a lot of hurricanes. So yeah. What are you going to do?

Yeah, indeed. Well, we had a busy week. Got a lot of great engagement on our episode last week where we had an extensive conversation about RSM. We're going to touch on a small follow-up on that later in the show, so be sure to stay tuned for that. On a personal note, Seth, I did get my ring alarm up and installed this weekend, and I have to say it was pretty smooth sailing. I think it's a great system so far i'm i'm really happy with it and i would say you know my general observation on it is that it's still as as hard as you can tell they've worked to make it easy to set up it is still something that you think about that litmus test of like could my mom do this? Right. And no way, like no way. Oh, really? Wow. Um, no, it just, you gotta, I, I find, I found myself sort of poking around a little bit and like, wait,

when do I do this and what order and blah, blah, blah. But like, that is by no means a, how should I say this? My mom is not very tech savvy. Let's put it that way right so that's a hard that's a tough bar to clear but uh overall i i thought the setup was was very easy and uh so far very happy with it it's interesting to hear i i have one sitting over there kind of on the workbench as like one of these tbd projects one of these days um i i showed the keypad to my wife she's like that's not no that you can put that right back in the box i think wasn't buying it huh she did not like the keypad so um well you know what i told her i was like you know what they could do since the like the hub that they have that's that comes with it it's like a full-blown automation hub like they

it looks like to me they could introduce a different keypad someday right they could do different styles of keypad and um what's really cool is the keypad's wireless you don't have to get a hard wire to it back to the the main board like you do with a traditional alarm system so at any time uh they could release a better looking version and uh you know it may make it onto the wall but right now we're going to stick with the go control and uh is that yeah yeah uh i think it's go control yeah yeah sounds about right yeah that's you're talking to a security idiot over here so you know i used to be a lot better at security and now i think i've lost everything i can't remember like how to do binary programming on

a keypad it's yeah it's all it's all lost to me it's all gone yeah it, that muscle atrophies for sure. I totally get that. So we've got a fun episode here, jam-packed, actually quite a bit of headlines we're going to touch on and some interesting analysis of the streaming video space, especially Netflix and their position in that market. So we're going to dive into that, just you and me here again this week, Seth. So what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Amazon recently released a software update that fixes a major deficiency in their whole house audio implementation. With the new software, Echo devices can now be a part of multiple music groups. Previously, each Alexa... You did this. You did this you did this set you up skipping that could only be part

of a single music group so as soon as you created an everywhere music group that includes all of your echo devices um that was the only group you could create. That seems like a pretty major, it's like a really major thing, actually. Yeah. Small oversight there, I would say. But it looks like they've corrected it now, and that is surely very good news for anybody looking to use these devices for whole house audio. Moving on here, SimpliSafe has announced its new Video Doorbell Pro, featuring many of the features that you might expect here. 162 degree field of view, 1080p high definition, two-way audio capabilities. The device also boasts a dual sensor motion trigger that reportedly makes the doorbell more accurate and precise than similar devices, gives you the ability to more likely tell

a visitor or delivery driver, distinguish them from say passing pets or nearby traffic. The Video Doorbell Pro will retail for $170 and is available on the SimpliSafe website and in Best Buy stores across the country. Yeah, looking at the picture of it looks, I mean, it looks like a Google, the Nest one, right? It's what it looks like to me. Great addition if you're already

in the SimpliSafe ecosystem. Right. right there you go you know what i slammed i like better i saw the nest one at like a home depot or something over the weekend and um finally put some hands on it it's got like this high gloss finish to it and i don't know about you but like me and human finger gunk and high gloss finishes just i don't i don't think that's doesn't work no it doesn't work for me this one this one has a high probably high gloss finish but it also has a button that's like silver silver button so it's probably not going to get as gooey looking as the uh the nest sure doorbell camera cool that that's the important thing right no one wants goo on there yeah yeah exactly let's keep on's keep priorities here.

Hulu's chief executive has said that the company is aiming to change its live TV offering by breaking down its current $40 per month channel package into smaller bundles. The current package has over 1 million subscribers. And CEO Randy Fehr did an interview with the information this week where he confirmed that the company is rethinking its approach to selling live TV. Freer said he wants to drop some of Hulu's existing live channels in favor of on-demand programming and focus on the company's live TV efforts on live sports and new sports, man. It's always sports that's taken over. It's like everybody wants sports. Yeah, indeed. You know, sports are definitely, I'd say, probably the last frontier there in streaming. They can still be a little bit difficult to pick up if you've cut the cord. So that makes sense. I don't know. This one's interesting. It does sound like they're sort of rethinking their approach and that actually some of those live channels may sort of go away.

So some of the people who are already using the service might actually appear to lose a little bit. But the company is again, rethinking their approach here. So we'll have to keep an eye on this one. Moving on. Speaking of streaming video here, or online video, it is a great time to fill up your iTunes movie library. This week, Apple launched a Dolby Atmos 4k sale with titles starting at only $5. $5. Yeah, that's that's, that's impressive. Dolby Atmos 4K sale with titles starting at only $5. $5? Yeah, that's impressive. Dolby Atmos functionality just arrived on the Apple TV last month with TVOS 12, making it the only streamer that is Dolby Vision and Atmos certified.

I'm looking at some of the movies they have here and like, okay, I guess I have some of these, but I don't have an Atmos system. So I guess, I guess this. Right. Yeah. There's that. There's the $5 movie. And then there's also the three or $4,000 worth of gear that I would have to, more than

that, I'd have to buy. Yeah. Yeah. Details, details. Exactly. Sonos has updated its desktop controller, including support for automatic player updates and for the forthcoming Sonos AMP. The update also includes a useful volume limiting feature,

giving you the option to set a maximum volume for specific Sonos devices. God, that's been needed forever. As part of these changes, you'll lose some features. Several admin functions, such as adding a Sonos device and creating pairs enabling enabling parental controls and managing network settings are now reserved for the mobile app i don't think that's a big deal like i'm that's fine keep them in the mobile app do that

kind of thing yeah no i don't think that's a big deal either probably doesn't affect a ton of people certainly if you're somebody who's a really accustomed to doing that sort of thing in the desktop controller you'll have a little bit of of adjusting to do but sonos clearly is trying to steer people towards the mobile app yeah i mean i can tell you uh these companies that have apps they they know exactly how many people have opened those admin features and they can say is it worth it to keep this in this in in this new update no it's not continually maintain it yeah that makes sense yep well have you ever wanted to try out a product beyond getting a brief demo in the store startup beta believes that all customers should

be able to do that and has partnered with google to make it possible so these google home devices can now be tested out in seven of Beta's flagship locations, including Austin, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Each of the demo experiences is modeled after a different room of the home, allowing users to experiment with various kinds of technology in the office, kitchen, bedroom, and more. This is a cool retail store. I wish I was in a larger city, like one of the three or four that were listed here to go check this out. Because this is one, I think Richard's been there a number of times and he's talked about it over at the

Home On podcast. And man, I think it's one of those that's, it's a really cool experience. It's one of those experienced destination stores that you have to, I think everybody should go see. So yeah, one of these, I think it's a really cool experience. It's one of those experienced destination stores that I think everybody should go see. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting model. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, essential products, the startup founded by Android creator Andy Rubin, has cut about 30% of its employees. hardware, marketing, and sales divisions, and come several months after the company canceled plans for a second version of its smartphone and paused the development of a smart home device that would compete with Amazon and Google. Not looking good. No, not at all. And this was a really hyped story. I know we talked about this several months back when Essential was very much in the headlines for their new phone, and there was conversation about this smart home device. A couple of years back, I think.

Was it that long? It's been a while, yeah. Wow. Well, like I said last week, I'm terrible with timelines, this, and I do recall the talk of this smart home device, and it all seemed very sort of conceptual is a nice way to put it, right? There was a lot of talk. There didn't seem to be a lot of meat on the bone there in terms of work that had actually been done. So I know you and I were fairly skeptical, but hopeful, you know, another new entrant there is never a bad thing, but not looking good for essential products. Yeah, they said there were 120 employees on their websites, what it says.

So 30% is pretty significant. Yeah. Facebook's portal cameras might be just the start of the company's plans to bring video chat into your home. We talked about those last week, Seth. Cheddar Sources, Cheddar being the website there, claim that the social network is making a, quote, camera-equipped device, end quote, that brings video chat and streaming services, including, of course, Facebook's own, to your TV.

Nicknamed Ripley, it is tentatively slated to launch in the spring of 2019. I don't know. It's one of those. I don't get it. I think Facebook's going to be pushing a rock uphill here, I think, for a lot of people. A camera in the home with Facebook attached to it is just something that flat out doesn't appeal to me. And even though, you know, there may be security risks associated with any camera in my home, Facebook has dug home. And I'm not one to get too hung up or worked up about those sort of concerns. But who knows? They've got a big enough audience. Maybe they'll see some success with it. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is last week, we did talk

about those portal devices. And a couple, Recode was actually saying that they had to, they're going back and editing, they're updating their story about the privacy and the data that can be collected. It said, last Monday, we wrote, no data collected through Portal, even call log data or app usage data, like the fact that you listen to Spotify, will be used to target users with ads on Facebook. We wrote that because that's what we were told by Facebook executives. But Facebook has since reached out and changed its answer. ads on Facebook. We wrote that because that's what we were told by Facebook executives. But Facebook has since reached out and changed its answer. Portal doesn't have ads, but data about who you call and the data about which apps you use on portal can be used to target you with ads

on other Facebook owned properties. So it's an advertising company, like everything you do and every way you interact with them does that does honestly does that surprise anyone though no it doesn't surprise me at all because it doesn't surprise me i don't even want to open the facebook app in my house anymore yeah it's just oh man it's i mean that's that's not even my concern with it, I don't get bothered by that so much as I do just the blatant disregard for privacy that Facebook has, has shown. Like to me, my data being used to target ads at me is just part of the deal. Like that's life these days. And that doesn't bother me. But Facebook's track record with, with privacy is, in my opinion, is a whole different story.

I think I was on another podcast on Monday. I've been getting around this week called The AV Life. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And there was an interesting discussion around the Vizio thing that had happened. We've talked about this in the past where Vizio was basically capturing your data, like what you were watching, no matter if you're watching something on cable or something on an app inside the Vizio was basically capturing your data, like of what you were watching, no matter if you're watching something on cable or something on an app inside the Vizio TV. And they were taking that data and just saving it somewhere.

And actually they were subsidizing their TVs by selling this data off to advertisers. Like this person watched this show for this long, that kind of thing. And they could use it even offline. Like if you were watching a DVD that you own, it would be able to know that because it it matches that data up with um with something it uses pixels displayed on the

screen not not like it's not looking at the whole picture it's just like this picture is red this pixel is green and this picture pixel over here is uh green so that means 90 of the time it's this particular show um kind of a cool technology if you ask me but they were using it for you know updating and they could find a whole bunch of money and we were talking about this and some of the people on the on the show there uh said you know i don't mind that's kind of the deal these days and i think that's that's the mentality we have definitely we have here in america it's like ah the deal is we use these services and and and they're just going to use our data and and and whatever can't

do anything about it i really don't care if i click like and they know that i like coca-cola but the bigger problem i think with that and i said this on the show is like it's it's not that you you they know that you played spotify on the portal it's that they know that and a billion other things about you that have been all aggregated together and uh man it just it gets so creepy so creepy so quickly like just so icky creepy uh that i hope that we have eventually have people in congress that aren't 90 years old that understand how the internet works that can pass decent privacy laws for us here in the u.s oh boy yeah yeah yeah so that's about as far as both awful parties. Yeah. No, no, no. Totally. Totally. It's just like home tech and conversations about Congress. Like, probably not. Well, but I know what you mean. GDPR over in Europe and here we are in the US, like wide open for business and like, we know that

you and I, I mean, and we know that people want privacy but we don't have any willingness or how to, I don't think we just have the level of understanding. Like, there's, the people in Congress don't strike me as very tech savvy. There's people that talk about

the internet being tubes and pipes and that kind of thing on the Congress floor. And that's not something that fills me with very much hopefulness that anything is going to be done. They basically asked Mark Zuckerberg on Congressional floor how to set up their Wi-Fi password. It was just a joke. So I would hope that in the future we have better leaders that can put something together that is sensible for both the companies like Facebook and people like you and me that are just concerned about privacy. But you know what's great is that we get really hyper-targeted ads for, what did we talk about a few weeks ago? TP and Oreos. Right, right. You need that bulk

TP and Oreos. They know what kind of Oreos I like. So there's that. Well, I'm just saying, Seth, silver lining. Anyways, let's move on. We've got some big, some bigger news that we want to discuss here. Regarding the sort of streaming video landscape. This conversation was set up for us by a great piece on a blog that I follow. And we don't cite their stories a whole lot. They tend to go in pretty deep in different directions about, I would say, sort of investing in higher level stuff than we typically are talking about here on our show. But it's a site called Above Avalon, if you're not familiar with it. They do some really great reporting occasionally.

And, well, they do great reporting all the time. I shouldn't say occasionally, but relevant to our show occasionally. And a great piece called Netflix Isn't Invisible. And this one caught my eye because, you know, we've been talking about Netflix a lot on the show. And Netflix has been all over the headlines lately and having all kinds of success in terms of continued growth and popularity with their original programming and all of that. And this piece does a great job of really setting up, I would say, the reasons for their success, but also really taking a broader look at the landscape and talking about why

it's not going to be just smooth sailing for Netflix ahead. They've got certainly plenty of challenges that they've got to grapple with as well. So I want to quote just a blurb here from the beginning of the piece. And we've got a couple other topics, you know, stories, I should say, that surfaced about Netflix and subscriber growth and stuff this week. So this story starts out by saying Netflix has been on a roll. The company is adding approximately 2 million paying subscribers per month while its original content portfolio

grows by leaps and bounds. However, calls suggesting Netflix has won the paid video streaming war are grossly premature. In fact, the battle hasn't even begun. We are still in the early stages of what will likely become a brutal stretch for many players as competition for paying subscribers and our time intensifies. New players, including Disney and Apple, are about to enter the scene as different direct-to-consumer business models are put to the test. Many prevailing assumptions about the paid video streaming industry will end up being proven wrong. And then the rest of the article goes on. We're obviously not going to quote or paraphrase the rest of the article, but goes on to talk about several of the reasons why, again, it's not going

to be just an easy road ahead for Netflix. So they've got plenty of challenges they've got to grapple with as well. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting world. I mean, we've got to talk about Apple coming into the game. There's been a ton of discussion outside of the tech industry. If you get into the entertainment industry, there's no such thing as non-disclosure agreements there. Everybody talks. If you have productions that have 100 people on them, they're all talking. They all go home and they talk. There's no real keeping secrets about which shows or who's been hired, that kind of thing. That's Hollywood.

Hollywood has been set up for a while and Apple can't keep those leaks out. So there's been a ton of rumors and shows and things that they've been buying. But that's a billion, $100 dollar company or trillion dollar company now for apple um netflix is is is huge now i i see that they have a negative free cash flow of three billion dollars for this year uh wow because they're they're they're spending it on shows that they want to, they want to, they want to get content into their, their platform, $3 billion. And, and I thought Apple was spending a lot by spending a billion rumored to be spending a billion. Um, and Netflix is saying last year that it expects to spend about $8 billion in 2018. So that is crazy. They actually

analysts think that it'll probably be out $13 billion when they get done. So I can't, those are numbers I can't even fathom. Yeah, you really can't. You really can't wrap your brain around that. At least I can't. You know, this article talks about some of the reasons specific to Netflix that are interesting. So it talks about their video catalog being underwhelming. They've got, you know, he says two dozen original hit shows. However, their broader content portfolio isn't all that compelling. Much of the legacy content is stale. Surprising number of original movies fell off or feel off as if they were low budget, despite having household stars.

Growing efforts with original shows may be enough to keep viewers as monthly subscribers, but more is needed on the content front if they want to grow viewer engagement. They talk about switching between video subscription services being very easy. No need to belabor that one. We all know how simple it is to activate and deactivate these streaming services nowadays, so very little friction around switching services. And then another one that was interesting, subsidized subscription pricing is helping the competition. So this is the idea that Netflix has, has long been subsidizing paid memberships in order to grab users, right? So keeping it cheap in order to get as many users as possible.

But the unintended consequence of that is that they've leveled the playing field for competitors by devaluing paid video content. So setting very low expectations amongst consumers about what this original content is for. So they make it that much more easy for new competitors to enter the market with pricing that isn't too far off of Netflix. So a couple of, you know, a few interesting factors there that aren't totally obvious, but once somebody sort of points them out, right, in a piece like this,

it makes a lot of sense. I don't know. You would have to fight with my daughter on how much she likes Puffin Rock. So that one's got to stay around. And maybe that's the real battle going on, right? Maybe they shouldn't have hired Adam Sandler for all those movies.

I mean, I watched a few of them. They're not great, but... No, not great. That's putting it lightly. Yeah, you know, growing competition as well. You talked about Apple there. AT&T, Time Warner is another one. So talks about after buying Time Warner for $85 billion,

AT&T has a strong incentive to leverage its crown jewel, HBO, to gain a stronger footing. Talks about HBO valuing quality over quantity. Such content strategy being questioned when compared to Netflix chasing both quality and quantity at the same time. Nonetheless, AT&T Time Warner will be a competitor to be sure. And then another one there, Disney, who's making, you know,

growing forays into the streaming space. And it'll be really interesting to see between Disney, Apple, and AT&T, Time Warner. You know, those are some big, big companies with deep pockets and strong incentives to go after the market on their own. And so that's only going to present increasing challenges for, for Netflix. And Disney has picked up, well, Disney pretty much after all

this crazy Comcast stuff has gone down. Like I think Disney is now the like main owner of Hulu or will be shortly like they will own Hulu and that'll be kind of their, their baby to play with. And then they'll have the Disney streaming app, which is, which is definitely coming to like all the disney shows on it and that kind of thing so um yeah it's it's going to be an interesting interesting market uh it seems like this is an interesting market every year like this is this is evergreen for a while oh yeah no i agree i think that i think that streaming media is easily to me if i look at the last couple of years in home technology what got to be one of the most interesting spaces within within home technology to watch and just what's going on there and i do believe what was said at the beginning of that above avalon piece is that

we're really just at the beginning when you look at overall adoption numbers even though we're seeing a ton of momentum and we're seeing traditional pay TV subscribers, just, or companies hemorrhage subscribers, they've still got by far the lion's share of, of the total market. So there's still a lot of room for these streaming companies to, to grow and who's going to absorb that market share is really the question, you know, with all of that said, Netflix is still doing great. They released numbers, um, says for the third quarter, this is from Engadget, by the way, it says for the third quarter, Netflix subscriber additions were well above its internal prediction with worldwide growth of 6.96. So just under 7 million compared to the projected 5 million. So well over projections there. And now it is predicting it'll

grow by another 9.4 million customers in Q4. It's just amazing if you think about that, with most of the new subscribers coming from outside the US. And that's another aspect of the story that we don't tend to talk about enough, I think, is, you know, a lot of this is very regional, right? And it's specific to where you live. And so when we talk about growth, you know, that's worldwide, don't forget it. And I'm guilty of it as guilty of it as anyone getting tunnel vision a little bit and thinking about what's going on here in the U S but there's a ton of room for these companies to grow and go after market share all over the world.

Right. Yeah. there's a ton of room for these companies to grow and go after market share all over the world. Right. Yeah. It's, it's not something we often think about. Um, when we, like when I think about HBO though, I know that, um, when I got up to Canada, I had a hard time watching stuff on HBO, HBO. So, uh, there, there, there are definitely limitations on, uh, on things when it comes to streaming, when it, when it comes to crossing the border and trying to stream things. So what was funny is we just, I think we ended up turning off Wi-Fi or something or turning off the cellular signal and it worked.

It was something dumb that we had to do and it just worked. So yeah, go figure. Interesting. Yeah, these companies, it's an interesting story, a very interesting story. But these companies. These companies is interesting story. Very interesting story. But these companies have a long way to go, it seems.

And we're just seeing the kind of like the tip of the iceberg right now. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll certainly continue to keep an eye on that space. Very last thing here before we move on. On this topic, there was a great story. I think a great piece in The Verge this week, and this is nothing earth-shaking. Nothing in this piece is going to be new news to anybody, especially those who follow the show. However, it's a great roundup.

They went and they did a roundup of the best streaming TV apps, pretty thorough, YouTube TV they've got here. They've got Sling TV, scrolling down more. They've got PlayStation they've got sling tv scrolling down more they've got playstation view hulu direct tv now and they scored them all and talked about the good the good and the bad of both give you some information about pricing and this is for live tv is it live tv is that what they're uh you know this i believe is for live tv yes yeah okay so yep taking its time to roll out a live tv offering has served YouTube well. So yeah, they're talking about live TV, but definitely. So you're right. A little bit different from Netflix, but again, under that broader umbrella of just the way people consume

content, the way content is being distributed now, that whole world is being really shaken up. And I find it fascinating. Yeah. I've, I've been trying to, you know, we, we talk about these stories and we talk about how many people watch YouTube and I hear like people just turn it on and leave it on. And I think you, you end up having to watch YouTube and it figures out what you want to watch and gives you better videos or more videos. The little algorithm pops up videos that you want to see a little bit more often, um, has been working out that great for me, but I, I, I've been trying to watch it more, like deliberately trying to figure out how YouTube works a little bit better. And, um, yeah, uh, I was watching it last night and, uh, YouTube went

dead. Like it was dead. The whole, the whole site was down worldwide. Um, yeah, yeah. We got kind of crazy. Yeah. We, we had that same issue here. Um, kids were trying to watch a little bit of YouTube there towards the end of the night while we were getting some things done. And yeah, it went down. I saw all the stories going around today. That's a pretty rare thing for a site like YouTube to go down. But I think it was down, they said, for like a solid hour. Yeah, I'm looking at the timestamps on this thing. It says 9.20 it went down and didn't come back 100%.

YouTube didn't say anything until about 11 o'clock. So it's Eastern time, the one true time zone. Yeah, that's it. It was weird. Anyways, no need to belabor it. But we were able to search everything. So search results were all showing up. But if you went to play anything on any of the apps, it just wouldn't.

It just wouldn't play so at least on our end it seemed very specific to like the video playing and it was weird all of the search and everything like that was working fine on on multiple devices but we couldn't get anything to play yeah i mine uh i it would just look up like a it would almost i can't really describe what it looked like it looked like a shell of the site like it had placeholders where things should go and icon should go but nothing was there it was it was just and it was a little spinny thing in the middle yeah interesting yep youtube down where were you where were you when this happened i'll never forget never forget all right well all of the links and topics that we've discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 230-230. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes some further analysis, industry insights, and we'll send you weekly show reminders every week and let you know what's going on here in the world of home tech so once again that's home tech.fm slash 230 yep and don't forget you can join us in the chat room live wednesday

starting 7 to 7 30 p.m eastern the one to your time zone to find out more go to home tech.fm slash live we are recording on a wednesday night here seth yeah that's the real deal on schedule we we do try we really do try to keep it consistent. So we'll be shooting for that. Check us out Wednesday night, 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, hometech.fm slash live. So moving on here, we've got, we couldn't help ourselves this week, Seth. There's definitely more than one pick of the week. We've actually got two picks of the week. Okay.

And we've got a video to go in as well. There was just too much good stuff. So we couldn't quite narrow it down. First pick of the week. I think credit goes to the hub for this one. Am I right, Seth? Yeah, this goes to Scott McMurray in the hub. I don't know if this is something he saw. This is a gem. I mean, this is an absolute gem. He's got on his text that he sent into the chat room and did not follow up with, it says, can you fix this? The next quote is, is that a cable tie holding it up? And then, yes. It sure is. It sure is. It sure is. Jason, you describe this. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So it looks like probably in a, you know, a classroom or something, maybe like a K through

12 classroom or who knows. So it's got like the drop tiled ceiling and you're looking at a very probably inexpensive Sony projector that is mounted to the ceiling. And I love the craftsmanship to the, the cables are just like somebody, I don't know, maybe took a pair of pliers or something and, like, busted a hole through the ceiling tile to get the cables down. Right through it. Yeah, you can see it kind of hanging out. So that's bad enough. Not even a nice cut.

It's just like poke the screwdriver through a few times and then. Yeah, wiggle it around. Yeah, and then poke the cables out through it so the the stuff like all of the yeah yeah it's that's a beauty and when i first looked at the picture i got to admit i thought that's what i was looking at and it took me a couple of seconds to realize that the for whatever reason like the mount on the projector is offset very far to the left as you're looking at the picture and i don't know if the projector was like sagging or something i'm not sure what they were going for here but on the right hand side of the projector they've got several cable ties you know how you can string them together to make them longer and they've got like several of these

things strung together and wrapped up through the ceiling around presumably some sort of who knows what in the ceiling adding more support and holding up the right side of the projector you know what it could have been it could have been that this mount was too like cheap to actually you know hold the projector up level and and by the time it got to the screen it was like down on one side and instead of adjusting it this is what their solution was and you know what else i noticed i think you noticed the same thing i noticed but i'm gonna let you go ahead and go no no flush cutters i was gonna say you know how i know this? I think you noticed the same thing I noticed, but I'm going to let you go ahead and go. No, no flesh cutters.

I was going to say, you know how I know this is somebody that's not a professional that installed this? It's not the install itself. Like I've seen this done in the field too, but it's that right there. Didn't even have the courtesy to cut off the tag end. God, that just drives me nuts. At least it's not cat claws. Yeah. Silver lining. So we got number number two picture uh here and this is uh this is from twitter something i ran across on twitter and um and it says whenever there's a handmade sign there's usually a design problem

and then they have a picture of a boa speaker um not not exactly where i thought this was going to go but i guess there's a big sign on this thing it says attention this is in and not this is all in capital letters not as underlined and in red a garbage can it is a speaker do not throw trash inside with like four exclamation marks yes yes it's so clearly there was a there was an ongoing issue here this has happened multiple times yes you can tell how many times this happened by the number of exclamation marks yeah and the underlying red text and yeah there's there was some frustration that went into the creation of this sign. Right, right. For sure. It does.

I mean, I can see, like, I wouldn't throw trash in that because I know what Bose is, and I would know that I'm looking at some sort of speaker here. But, yeah, I mean, I got to be honest. It does look a little bit like a trash can. Yeah, it does. It does. It does. So these are two really bad photos that we decided to to to feature tonight um but we do have some some really good stuff and and i'm just gonna leave it in the hub uh j i don't know jason if you've had time to get

on the hub and look recently but james has been uh posting videos of his showroom there in the uk the control four certified showroom that he that he's done and he's he's done with it like it's finished it's all clean inside and he was posting videos of him walking around. Oh, nice. I'm going to leave that as hub exclusive content. If you want to know where that is, you got to be in the hub to see it. But we've got to get him on. I'm going to find the link and send that over to you. Oh, wow. I'm looking at it now. Yeah. That's gorgeous. It is amazing. He's got one demo in there where he does these downlights that just blows me away.

Like, it is unbelievable. And I would have never thought he has a cheap downlight from, like, Target or something like that. Not Target. He's at something else overseas there in the UK. And he has, like, a real downlight, one with 98 CRI and, like, has two v phases to have the same flowers in the side by side. And you can, you can see the difference in the light, even on the camera.

And I'm sure in person it's more striking, but I had never thought of that demo before. And he's, he's thought of it and done it. And wow, what a, what a great demo it is. That's yeah. That's gorgeous. I, I gotta say, I know there's been conversations in the industry about does a showroom make sense? Does it not? And there are different opinions on that. But I think a really well done showroom like this, it goes a long ways. People, when you're operating in that sort of the market and people want to see and they want to understand what this technology actually looks like in at least a least a semi real environment, not just, you know, brochures and, and, uh, pictures on a website. So I, I love it. Yeah. From what I've

seen here, awesome job. And James, if you're listening hats off and we'd love to get you on the show to, to talk about your, the, the trials and tribulations that surely went into that. That was a big project. the execution is chief is almost flawless like i i i was looking hard i was like what can i what can i see here that looks wrong and nothing like everything is and these are these are not these are not renders not no not renders not renders is off renders okay fool me twice shame on me right right he's done that before you have to worry about this guy that's's right. And, you know, last but not least, we won't even try to really explain this one. But these videos have been all over the Internet this week.

Boston Dynamics has made some leaps and bounds with their robotic technology. And if you haven't seen these before, they've got like a dog robot. I think it's called Spot, maybe. I't i don't remember the name it's got a name there's also like these super creepy like terminator looking robots that are now jumping up crates and boxes and giving me nightmares but anyways uh um yeah there's a this dog dancing to uptown funk uh you know if you're looking for a laugh, definitely head over to the website, hometech.fm slash 230. Pretty amazing stuff going on in the world of robotics.

Yeah. The dog dancing was cute. But that guy, the robot that runs up, like, I guess it just effortlessly jumps up this wall. It's freaky. Yeah. That's, yeah. We just needaky. Yeah, that's yeah. We just need Boston dynamics.

Please stop. Just please stop. Let's just let's quit while we're ahead. You know, between that and what's going on with AI, like the Terminator, it's it's happening. Yeah, it's it's right there in Boston. So, you know, we're ground zero is going to be. That's right. That's right there in Boston. So you know where Ground Zero is going to be. That's right. That's right.

All right. Well, moving on, we've got a couple of quick mailbag entrants here. We're going to read two of them. This first one from John D. writes in. And I got to admit, I laughed pretty hard when I read this. Me too. And not to say that I'm dismissive of the feedback but I think Seth there might be something to this and maybe we need to do like

a Twitter poll or something and find out what's going on with you know get a pulse on the audience John says hello I enjoy the content of your show but please either just say Alexa and don't worry about it say Echo or just say the Amazon thing

but in any case lose the buzzer. It might not be annoying to you, but I find it incredibly annoying. So first of all, John, thank you for the candor and writing in and letting us know. I genuinely do appreciate that. We want the feedback. I'm curious, Seth. I don't know. You know, it's working for me. It's like therapy, right? Like sometimes you got to stick with these things. Right. That's what it's here for.

It's for the therapy of it. And yeah, we have it going. So we stopped doing it. Like it's shock therapy on our end. So what I'm going to do is not a buzzer anymore, but i'll edit something in that's a little more appropriate uh for the for the oh man so back to back to like more post-production work for you well i mean i i edit them in anyway in post so it's it's not like yeah uh it's it's not that big of a deal uh that we can go back and do that but like it's it's it's an easy thing to do either way.

Well, you know, I got to tell you that between this and the one we read recently from the gentleman, I forget his name, who was just saying, you know what, just go for it. And if people have a problem with it, you know, go talk to Amazon about it. Right. And I'm more and more coming down in that camp, I got to tell you.

Yeah, yeah, it's a bad product design. And guess what? If you got a bad product in your house, I got to tell you. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bad product design. And guess what? If you got a bad product in your house, you're going to have to live with it. Alexa, buy Oreos, toilet paper. Anyways, thank you for that, John. Absolutely will take that feedback into consideration. Moving on here, I alluded to this very early in the show. Got some good engagement on LinkedIn from various people I know in the industry and who have different involvement in

the world of remote systems management, or RSM, as we often call it. And I wanted to take a minute to read one directly from Domotes, by the way. I got corrected, so it's a long O for both. Domotes. Domotes. That's going to be weird, but there we go. There you go. That was what you were saying. That's me looking at the word, and I was thinking,

that can't be right, but maybe it is right. I've been told to say it that way before, and I'm just like, no, I can't do it. It's okay. But I'm going to commit to getting it right. Domotes. Domotes. Domotes. Yeah. No, I can't do it. It's okay. But I'm going to commit to getting it right. Domoats. Domoats. Domoats.

So they write in, you know, and by the way, I'm going to reach out, and I think we're going to try to get somebody from Domoats on the show here to discuss RSM. And I'd love to reach out to the folks over at SnapAV with Oversea as well as Control4 with iHege and Backpack. And look for that in the next couple of months here. I'd love to check in and get a pulse on what these companies are thinking and how they're looking at the world of RSM. He wrote in about

the pricing change and said, we feel that we've added a feature for our customers. Point of clarification here, you can still use credits. For whatever that's worth, the previous pricing model with the credits, those are still going to be applicable.

So you are able to use those. And he says, yeah, no doubt this is a change, but this change is about making it easier for our customers. And that was from JB over at Domo. It's hopefully JB, you don't mind me reading that on air. And like I said, we would absolutely love to have somebody on from the show so we'll uh we'll get to work on that yeah i i think my my it wasn't domotes that i was this is really hard for me to say it wasn't domotes that i was i was complaining about that like but they were i mean we've kind of like said yeah they're changing

how they do business i think that was one of the comments we made where they're changing again like it's hard yeah i mean they've done that several times. Let's call a spade a spade, but they've got their reasons to do it. And like I said, I wish them success. And I think that it's just something that they're like any relatively young company, they're trying to figure out what works for them and what makes it easier for their customers. Right. It wasn't, it wasn't that, that I was at, I mean, that really wasn't the point of the segment was to like, um, go after domotes. I'm like halfway in between. Uh, it wasn't, it wasn't the point to go after domotes for, uh,

for, um, changing your business model. model like the the point of that whole conversation was like what is rsm doing like the only thing that we've gotten has been an update on uh pricing changes from from these guys from one vendor like the rest of them don't have prices to worry about so like i i that was the whole point of the conversation i think actually going back and listen to it at least two or three times, because I have to edit it. Like that's, that was a pretty good conversation. I think it just needed to be had and I'm glad it stirred up more conversation inside the industry. So. Yeah, absolutely. And we won't rehash it now. It was an extensive conversation, but if you missed it, go back and listen last episode. So two to nine is where we talked about that. And it's a little

ways into the show, but you'll find it. It was an extensive conversation, and I agree with you. It was a good one. And so we'll continue to keep an eye on that space and invite some folks on. I just selfishly would love an opportunity to sit down and chat with some of the folks at Domotes and, again, like I mentioned, SnapAV and Control4 and find out what's next. What are these companies thinking about? So that's something that I intend to look into. And hopefully our supporters and listeners are into that.

We'll be getting that teed up here shortly. So if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, ideas for show topics, or just want to say hi, our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Again, that's feedback at hometech.fm. Again, that's feedback at hometech.fm. Or you can hop over to hometech.fm slash feedback. And we've got an online form that you can fill out there as well. We'd love to hear from you. Yep. And we'd also like to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support our show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support

to learn about how you can support Home Tech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a shout-out on the show, but every pledge, every single pledge, gets you an instant invite to our private Slack channel, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and drool over James' showroom in London. Oh my God. That thing is gorgeous. Like just unbelievable. That's right. That's right. Well, I'll echo what you said, Seth,

and thank everybody so much who has supported our show. If you want to help us out here, but you can't do it financially, we totally get that. We would absolutely appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Five stars, nothing less. That's what we're shooting for here on the Home Tech Podcast. Right, Seth? Yep, absolutely. We will do what it takes. We will do what it takes.

And if we're not, then hometech.fm feedback, let us know what we're not doing. Yeah, write us a note like John D. did and tell us where we're sucking it up. Yep. I mean, that's how you can make changes in this show. That's what you can do. That's your feedback. You're supposed to vote and everything in the elections and stuff. This is how you do it. We're a show for the people.

Exactly. Your voice makes a difference. That's right. All right, Seth. Well, this was a fun episode. I look forward to connecting with you again next week, and I hope you have a great weekend. Sounds good. Thanks, everybody, this was a fun episode. I look forward to connecting with you again next week and I hope you have a great weekend. Sounds good.

Thanks everybody for listening and thanks to a couple of people there in the live chat. But yeah, a couple hanging out in there. That's right. We appreciate it. Yep. Thanks for sitting down, Jason. We'll talk to you next week.

All right. Take care, Seth.