HomeTech.fm - Episode 233 - HBO Goes Dark

Episode Date: November 9, 2018

On this week’s episode of HomeTech: The Dish Network-HBO feud that hurts no one but consumers. Did you catch the first-even National #SmartHomeDay? Samsung opens Bixby to third-party developers. Sonos delays their Google Assistant integration. Ring pushes some significant app updates. Great 5G commentary from the HomeTech mailbag. 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, November 9th. November the 9th. From Sarasota, Florida, I am Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? Good. I just can't believe it's November the 9th already. It's crazy. What's good about November the 9th is that Patriot comes out.

Patriot Season 2. Hey, there you go. If you haven't watched Patriot Season 1, you have no time as of when this podcast goes online, and you should have already watched it, because I gave that as homework a long time ago. You did. You did, and I failed. Yeah, you failed.

You still got time, Jason. I failed. I gotta say. You're going to take two or three episodes to get into it. And then you'll be like, what am I watching? Why are they doing this? And why is he talking to a dog on the phone? So anyway.

Well, I definitely plan to go check it out. I'm not promising any timelines, though. Yeah. I know better. I know how that is these days. TV. TV's tough. TV's tough. That's right. So, man, guess what? This is the month of November and important things happen in November, Jason, and something very important happened this last this last week. I'm talking about the national hashtag smart home day.

Facebook live stream. You know what? I had heard of this. I had heard of this. Did this already happen? It already happened. We missed it. Damn it.

Evidently, national smart home day was on Saturdayurday third november 3rd and it was a big uh like facebook live streaming thing that uh that's uh this group of uh companies put on crestron origin acoustics rava which is that theater company josh aia barco yep uh true audio control for tym which is a home builder in Utah. And I think they were kind of like the majority behind it. I went to their website and it looks like they're, they're a home builder in Utah, but they're very like tech oriented, uh, which is kind of cool to see. Uh, rest, uh, something innovations. I can't even, uh, Restrepo. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, the tech reps, which is, I guess a rep group of tech people. I don't know.

I've never heard of those last year. Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of these names are very familiar to me. And I know I had heard talk of this and I'd seen some of the, I guess, advertisements floating around. I have to admit that I missed the day. I would have definitely checked that out. Hopefully the stream is recorded and we can go take a look at that.

But it was being sponsored by nationalsmarthome.org, which is a new website that is affiliated with this and provides homeowners with, quote, free resources to learn about current tech standards, terminology, and more. Yep. Well, if you missed it, you'll have to wait till next year because your vote doesn't count. If you missed, you don't go vote. That's how it works, Jason. I'm sorry. That's it. You had one shot. You had one shot. Yeah, I'll have to check this out. I'm generally a big fan of anything that is done in the industry to generate more awareness amongst consumers about all of the great work that the folks in this industry can do. Smart home is getting a lot more popular, but a lot of people, everyday consumers, don't realize that this whole industry has existed for a really long time and is full of really smart, hardworking people that can do really quality work.

So I'm a fan. Yeah, I have to go back and check this out this week. Looks like it yeah it was 10 a.m on the yeah it was a saturday saturdays are tough around here these these this time of year so um i think i was looking at my calendar and we were trying to like set up a dinner uh with uh with another couple and we were like uh so how's january because every weekend through the end of the year was booked up like from november december done i hear you oh well yeah well crazy busy uh busy time of year

for sure um seth good news i wanted to announce very quickly before we get into our home tech headlines you and i have a whole bunch to talk about pretty actually pretty busy week in in home tech news and we're going to dive into bigger story this week as well about this growing feud between Dish and HBO, and hopefully that gets sorted out pretty quickly. It's an interesting story, so we'll talk about that here momentarily. But I didn't want to skip over this big, big news for too long. Great news for our friends across the pond bird the company made famous here on the home tech podcast nerds on birds at cdia 2018 this is the electric scooter company has a scooter sharing service starting on uh in london so there you go and i have confirmed seth they're here in denver too so cdia next year you have something to look forward to. You know what's funny is I have been on your and mine's favorite website,

which may not be yours, but it's definitely one of mine's. It's called Alibaba, which is the Chinese purchasing. You can buy anything that is made in China from Alibaba. And you can buy these scooters. You can actually buy these scooters that we use. And they're probably like $250. There's some minimum order quantities that you have to pull off. But you can get them shipped in.

And I've been thinking about it. I've been thinking about it. Just, you know. You're going to start a new business? Yeah, I'm going to order like 1, of them and just dump them, dump on roads around Sarasota. That would go over well. But no, I think I can use one, you know, zoom on down to the park or whatever.

And I don't know. It seems like a fun thing to kind of have hanging around the house. And maybe I can get, you know, some practice in before I go to Denver and try and kill myself again. That's right. Get your tricks. Denver and try and kill myself again. Yeah, that's right. Get your tricks. Get your tips and tricks figured out. Learn some sick.

I'm not even really good at the skateboard lingo there. Sick 180s and stuff like that. Yeah. Showing we're aging ourselves here. Hawk. Tony Hawk of the. That's right. All right, well, what do you say, Seth?

Shall we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Samsung is going to start letting app developers plug into Bixby, and hardware companies will be able to build the voice assistant into their products as well. Samsung is promising to make Bixby, quote, so open that developers will be able to make anything that Samsung itself could. To date, Bixby has been among the weaker options in voice assistance, but Samsung is moving quickly to build out what the platform is capable of doing by granting deep access to third parties. Yay!

Yay, Bixby! Another Bixby sighting. Yeah, we don't have to worry aboutixby sighting. Yeah, yeah. We don't have to worry about saying their activating word. There's that. Yeah. There's that.

A detailed post surfaced this week revealing some limited but potentially harmful weaknesses in the Google Home platform. Research revealed that at least until Google puts a fix in, the Home Hub can be controlled remotely by using an unsecured application uh api uh that was

that was originally discovered in the chromecast device google says the api is therefore setting up the device and does not expose user information uh while its primary use is to communicate with other devices jeremy gamblin uh the developer who discovered the issue believes serious security weaknesses are well known to google um i kind of looked at this i think it if you like open up this page and send a specific thing and it would let it re it would reboot the system but it was there was nothing else that you could do with it yeah i mean yeah unless there was more to it i i don't really think that's a huge issue you'd already you'd already have to be on the wi-fi and you'd have to know like to send this thing to the exact ip address yeah i mean yeah it's a hole

so i guess it could be security yep uh quickly in the interest of accuracy it's jerry gamblin who originally pointed this out not jeremy and yeah you're right there was a follow-up story here very quickly google for its part quote seems far less concerned about the perceived security flaw than gambling. Let's see spokesperson for Google told in gadget APIs mentioned in this claim are used by mobile apps to configure the device. And again, are only accessible when those apps are and device are on the same Wi Fi network. There's no evidence that user information is at risk. And the in gadget story goes on to say that any attempt to carry out an attack

on the Google Home Hub using this method would have to be extremely targeted and couldn't do much widespread harm aside from annoying the individual victim. Yep, keeps rebooting. Why? Yeah, exactly. Speaking of Google, Spotify has a treat in store for premium family subscribers here in the U.S. You can claim a free Google Home Mini.

The offer will be available for current and new master account holders starting Thursday, and you have until the end of the year to register for the little smart speaker. Not a bad deal. Free is good. Free is good you know if you're already considering that family plan then that's a nice little nice little cherry on top speaking of google again here google and i robot have announced that they are working together to improve a smart home technology using mapping data collected by i robots robot vacuums. The two companies say

the aim is to make smart homes, quote, more thoughtful, end quote, by leveraging the unique data set collected by iRobot, maps of customers' homes. Not sure what to make of this one, Seth. Well, I mean, if you've got Google Street View, maybe you can use the little man to walk up to somebody's door and walk inside their house. I know it's not going to be that crazy. I've seen some of these maps that those vacuum cleaners make, and they're getting better. Maybe that data will be something we can use with it later, especially when it comes to home automation and determining if you're home or what room needs to have what in it. A sensor is a sensor and a data is data. So maybe this gets aggregated somewhere and becomes helpful one day. So we'll

see. We'll have to see. Uh, Amazon, uh, has announced their black Friday, 2018 prices, or at least they were, they revealed somewhere, uh, both target and Kohl's have just published their black, black Friday ads. Uh, and sinceohl's have just published their Black Friday ads. And since both retailers sell Amazon devices, they usually match Amazon's own Black Friday prices exactly. And this will give us a preview of what exactly we can expect from Amazon. A couple features here. Fire TV Stick 4K, which it'll be $15 off at $35. And the Echo Dot 3, which it'll be half price at $24. And the Amazon Echo 2 will be $30 off at $69.

Is that right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, Fire TV will be 15. The 4K stick will be $34, $35. Basically, Echo.3 will be looks like 24 and the Amazon Echo 2 will be 69. Anyways, podcast Seth, not so great for rattling off a whole bunch of numbers. But point being, you can get some money, save some money. Save some money, yeah. And we'll have a link to this in the show notes, of course, at hometech.fm slash 233. The craziest part about that is that we're actually already starting to talk about Black Friday, and I can't believe how quickly time flies. So there you go. It's Christmas time. It's our first Black Friday story of the year.

There you have it. Yeah, there you go. Speaking of Amazon Alexa and Echo echo here amazon has launched both alexa and its echo range of smart speakers in mexico complete with a new voice mexico mexico oriented spanish local knowledge and alexa skills to match amazon music including both music unlimited and prime music is arriving in the country as well. The regular Echo, as well as the Echo Dot, Plus, Spot, and Smart Plug are all available to pre-order now ahead of the release next week.

Alexa, ¿dónde está la biblioteca? There you go. That's about all I remember from Spanish. I'm impressed, Seth. Yeah, voy a nadar. All right, let's see. Rings in on an email last week detailing the features they'd like to add in to their app in 2019. The new features include camera previews, which already exist.

I'll tell you how to turn those on in a second. An enhanced video timeline, smarter alerts that include person detection, and person detection happens to be found as human-shaped objects, which I thought was quite funny. Interesting. 24-7 recording for wired doorbells and cameras, proactive audible announcements, and timestamps on the video being recorded.

All sounds really cool, and I hope that they get all this stuff shipped in 2018, but I know that for a fact that the camera previews have been shipping for a while. So if you go to your Ring app and you hit the little stupid hamburger menu up in the upper right-hand corner, you can go towards the, I think it's towards the bottom of the list there. There is a new features option, and you can turn on those camera previews right now. And I know a couple of people have already gotten the enhanced video timeline, which is really cool where you can

like scroll through the video. They say it works great. So, um, go check that out. Uh, if it, let us know how you like it. Uh, if you have that video timeline thing, cause I, I really want that. And then it's not on my app. It's not on my app. Yeah. The 24 seven recording for wired doorbells and cameras is kind of nice too i know i've been doing a bunch of research for cameras around my home and i'm going to share that here in an upcoming episode sort of where i'm going and what i'm looking at but that's always been one of my hesitations around these more consumer focused and wi-fi type of cameras is that they don't always record 24 7 and you can get those little delays. And

when the video starts and you may miss something or there's, you know, clips, they only record 12 seconds at a time or, or what have you there, there are some pitfalls there. So glad to see that and looks like they're doing, doing good things. So like you said, we'll look forward to seeing if they're able to get all of that done and shipped sooner than later. Speaking of shipping new features, Sonos is delaying support for Google Assistant until 2019. The company announced this in a blog post this week. Going back to October 2017, Sonos announced that Google Assistant would come to the Sonos One speaker in 2018, this following the support for Amazon Alexa. However, over the past year, that integration has not materialized. Quote,

while we originally planned to have the experience ready to ship in 2018, the reality is that we need a bit more time to get the experience right and will now look to lock down a date. In 2019, we are continuing to make good progress sonos wrote in a blog post integration must be hard i don't know like man i'm bummed out about this one because uh i i've been holding off on any purchases of new sonos gear until something besides amazon worked on it because i'm i'm not the biggest fan of that and i like the google one a lot better wait you're not a fan bum Alexa? I had no idea. Maybe if it gets better.

It's got a ways to go, I know. It's played around a little bit with Google Home when I was visiting my in-laws, and it was my first time really kind of sitting with it and playing with it, and I got to say it is a superior experience by far. Netflix is unveiling six new animated projects as the streaming giant continues to

bolster its family entertainment slate. The offerings span film and television and spring from the minds of some of the most acclaimed names in media. The announcements continue Netflix's big push into the original animated programming, a move it is

making ahead of Disney launching its own streaming service in 2019. Man, I don't know. I keep saying, I know we got some reviews back in the hub. Some people went and watched, what was it, Big Mouth that I was recommending a couple weeks back. Oh, man. Yeah?

They said it was excellent. So there you go. There you nsfw right they're very very not safe for work yeah uh don't yeah don't go there not safe for work at all yeah um these are these are actually full-length movies though it sounds like these are not just uh like cartoon cartoon uh series that like like this so this this could be pretty cool yeah yeah but i Movies, though, it sounds like. These are not just cartoon series. So this could be pretty cool. Yeah. I won't belabor it.

It seems like we talk about it every week. I just love what's happening right now in the world of streaming and content production and hope it continues. It's bringing so many great choices to market for consumers, and I think it's awesome. Speaking of streaming video, Comcast plans to roll out a new streaming device, a product here for broadband-only subscribers, that will allow customers to aggregate certain streaming apps, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube, with a voice-activated remote. The product, which will first be a set-top box, will launch next year, said anonymous sources, who also said Comcast has not decided how much it will charge per month for the device. Comcast has declined to comment on these plans. This from a story on CNBC.

Interesting. These guys keep calling me up trying to get, you know, they know I'm a broadband customer only. I don't have the cable boxes in my house. And so they keep calling me up trying to trying to get me in to like using their Xfinity app. And I get emails all the time and, you know, use the Xfinity app to watch this and tonight for free. So like last night, I think they were, they were doing, since we had the elections here in the States, they were doing CNN's coverage and you could watch CNN for free if I just opened up the app. And I, I, I was convinced. I was like, Oh, let me try that.

And then I was like, wait, then I can't use my phone for anything. I have to watch this stupid CNN broadcast on my phone. So then I just went and turned on, turned on the Apple TV, tuned into channels and, and, and it, you know, I have OTA and it works perfectly turned on the Apple TV, tuned into channels, and I have OTA, and it works perfectly fine on the Apple TV. But for what it was, the Xfinity Stream app is what it's called, worked pretty well. There you go.

For the couple minutes that I watched it. Yeah. All these companies are trying to figure it out. I'm a little surprised to see that they're going with their own sort of hardware device. I thought that most of these companies were trying to move away from supporting their own hardware and all that comes with that. There's so, so many affordable options now for streaming set-top boxes that are, you can buy and own and not pay a monthly rental fee to Comcast. Go buy a Roku for $50, right? So I'm not sure. I'm not sure what to make of this one. It is anonymous sources and it's rumors.

And so only time will tell. The hardware set-top box, that's one of the things that stood out to me too. Like I don't know why there's not the Xfinity stream, and maybe there is and I just haven't looked for it, but why isn't there an Xfinity app? Like just a straight up Comcast app on the Apple TV that basically becomes your cable box. You know, like what I'm using channels now for OTA signal with the guide and everything. Why not have an app that just taps right into comcast yeah it looks like your cable well hopefully it looks better than the garbage little cable box that you have but at least you know the xfinity interface looks okay so maybe have that interface within an app on an apple tv or roku like i don't understand why uh other than like still supporting the network of installers that they have,

like why they need to have a hardware set-top box anymore. It just seems like the rest of the industry is moving away from that. And Comcast is like, well, yeah, we'll make a box. It's confusing. There's a hint in the story where it's, again, from CNBC.com. And it says the product, which will first be a set-top box. So that caught my eye for sure, but I still am confused why they would even need to go down that road of building their own set-top box. So there are certainly details to this story that aren't—not all of the dots are connecting right now. And again, this is all coming from people who are speaking on condition of,

you know, anonymity. Anonymity. Yeah, that's a hard word. Ace Ventura, that detective word there for you yeah but uh yep but we'll we'll see moving on here seth a pretty big story that i wanted to we wanted to spend a few minutes on this week hbo goes dark for the first time ever 40 some years this network has been around and has never run into this issue so really quickly to sort of summarize what's happening here. If you're not familiar, I'm going to quote from variety.com for the first time in its 40 plus year history, a blackout will keep HBO off the air for one of its biggest distributors. The signal for the AT&T owned channel went dark on sat caster dish. So dish pulled HBO and its sister virtual MVPD Sling TV last week. Dish represents about 2.5 million subscribers for HBO, while yanking channels has become an all too common

negotiation tactic as programmers and distributors look for leverage in affiliate agreements and negotiations. HBO has never gotten the ax before. So again, several names thrown in there might have been a little bit hard to follow. But in short, Dish Network and Sling TV lost HBO last week. It's about 2.5 million subscribers for HBO. And this is all over a broken down negotiation between the two companies. You know who doesn't have to worry about broken down negotiations? Between MVP, VBMB companies? HBO Now subscribers?

This guy right here. Because I go straight to HBO. I don't worry about having a middleman there doing their Sling TV thing and like this network. Like, I don't know. This seems like it's one of these things that just this seems like one of those things that happened in the 80s and it's still happening now. Like, why is this happening? This is like big cable junk.

And here we are. It's like it's we're moving into 2019. And here we are hbo is not on tv anymore for 2.5 million of its subscribers like what what why why yeah doesn't make any sense at all it you know it there's several layers to the story without getting too deep into the weeds hbo is owned and this is where you know to your point like the cable landscape is getting so i don't even know if cable is the right word but just that this whole landscape is getting so difficult to follow hbo is owned by warner media warner media was acquired as part of AT&T's Time Warner acquisition.

Right. So effectively, AT&T kind of owns HBO, I guess. I don't know how these things work. I'm an idiot with this stuff. But there's an association there, a business relationship. Back when this all happened, the Department of Justice was saying, you know, this could be a problem, right? AT&T might, quote, leverage its ownership of content to drive users away from streaming services like Sling TV over to its own DirecTV Now service. And this was the talk back when all of this was first developing. And,

you know, it was, of course, dismissed by AT&T. and they said, no, that's not going to happen. Well, here we are. So that's one side of the story, and that's certainly the side of the story that Dish Network is talking about the loudest. On the flip side of it, of course, there's always two sides, and the truth is typically somewhere in the middle. Oh, yeah. On the flip side, Dish Network is known for sort of hardball negotiations. I think I was reading Univision, I believe, has been off of the air of DISH for months because of a broken down tactic. And there were some other channels in the past that have been through this with DISH.

So this is not the first time that DISH has pulled a network from its airwaves as a result of a negotiation. And AT&T is, of course, saying this has nothing to do, or I think it was HBO is saying that this has nothing to do with AT&T. We've made a reasonable offer. Dish doesn't want it. So, you know, it's pretty tough. I was digging around and trying to find the specifics of the offer, but a little bit hard to discern from the headlines. The closest thing I was able to find is on fiercevideo.com. There was a summary of Dish chairman Charlie Ergen, and he was talking about, you know, this is a purely anti-competitive play. And he argued that AT&T was asking Dish to pay for a guaranteed number of HBO subscribers while also giving HBO away for free to AT&T wireless subscribers, something he called malpractice. He said, quote, no company would sign up for a deal like that.

So lots of layers. I'm sure it's super tangled and there's a there's there's some history there but it's unfortunate for consumers yeah exactly this and this had that little practice right there where he's calling it malpractice actually ties back into net net neutrality believe it or not uh because that that's kind of one of those little side deals uh that wireless companies can do um that while we had net neutrality, cable companies like Comcast and ISPs could not do. It's like giveaway services like that for free or build them in.

And it's a form of anti, I mean, really not fair practice because you're choosing a winner, HBO in this case, over somebody else like Cinemax or something, uh, simply because the parent company owns it. Uh, not because there's any like really competitive dollar advantage or anything like that. So yeah, at the end of the day, the only people that are hurting here aren't the negotiators, the AT&T or dish network, uh, or, or HBO. It's, it's consumers who aren't, who aren't getting their their game of Thrones kick or whatever. Like,

you know, there it's it's this is not helping anybody um so no ah man i i i long for a day where we don't have to deal with any of this mess anymore and it to me it seems like this should be like a straight like transaction between me and hbo and or me and dish network and i don't know like if i pay dish network. And I don't know, like if I pay dish network money, I should get the channels that they say that are on there. And I don't know, this is so weird how we're like living in a, in a modern age when,

when all this media companies and everything were set up, like back when TVs were invented and it's like, it hasn't changed any, a couple of here and there and how, how they pretend distribution exists anymore. And it's like, it hasn't changed any. A couple of here and there and how, how they pretend distribution exists anymore. And it's like, yeah, the people making the shows are the same ones that are in charge of distribution now, which is, is such a strange place to be.

Like, I don't think anybody could have saw that where this was headed now. So here we are 2018. Well, and, and I think, you know, the, this sort of problem is going to continue with the, all of the, the vertical integration that's happening in, in that world, you know, with content and just distribution companies, all partnering up. And I think thankfully on the consumer side, what I think when I read this is further evidence that you're better off cutting the cord. You're better off not signing long-term agreements with cable TV providers because crap like this happens. And if you're on the hook for a two-year contract and you really like HBO, then, you know, too bad.

At least you have the option now to go direct to HBO with a service like HBO Now. But if you're locked into a two-year contract, you're doing that on top of your cable bill. conversation is that as a consumer today, we have more options than we've ever had before in terms of the content that we want to consume and how we're going to pay to do that, what devices we're going to use, zero commitments, everything's month to month. So that's all getting better. And this crap that's going on with Dish and HBO is only going to further serve I think to drive people away from the traditional pay tv subscription models and push people more towards cutting the cord and using streaming apps exclusively absolutely absolutely real real-time follow-up Jason uh no there's no Xfinity app in the Apple store I just searched for it. But guess who also has Univision and is currently watching Jesus,

season one, episode three. I assume this is about, yep, there's camels and stuff, so this is about Jesus, I guess, is how this would translate. And I just saw the most amazing Bowflex commercial. So there you go. And the Latin Grammys just came on too amazing Bowflex commercial. So there you go. And the Latin Grammys just came on too. Great place to wrap that conversation up. That's great.

All the links and topics that we've discussed in the news tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm. Once again, that's hometech.fm. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you weekly show reminders and occasional updates about all the great things happening here in the world of home tech. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting somewhere between seven and seven 30 Eastern. To find out more, head on over to hometech.fm slash live and read the information there i usually tweet out with that hashtag on our twitter account uh when we're about to get started or and i always

broadcast it in the hub too so if you're in the hub you'll get a little notice in there as well seth got a great mailbag yes yes i'm this week i saw this come through i read this and i'm i'm so glad you like caught it yeah this is Yeah, this is a great one. Great one. So this is from Nathaniel Gorey. And if you're a longtime regular listener to the show, that name may sound familiar to you. We had Nathaniel on back on episode 175 for an installment of our Projects project series, which, side note, we need to definitely get back into. And we'll be doing some of that soon. But Nathaniel reached out actually regarding our ongoing 5G conversations and had some really interesting

observations here and things to share. So I'm going to go ahead and read this really quickly, and then we'll talk about it. So he says, Hi, Seth and Jason. Just a little feedback on episode 232. 5G is right in the wheelhouse of my day job where I work doing mergers and acquisitions for a very large telecom infrastructure, REIT, Real Estate Investment Trust. I've been hearing about 5G at conferences for three plus years now and how it might be deployed, what it might look like, and how it might impact our business. One thing you guys were missing about your conversation was the latency component of 5G. 4G LTE and the associated technologies will continue to push the bandwidth of LTE,

and LTE will exist for a long time to provide broad-based coverage. Where 5G will come into play is future applications. Think self-driving cars, AR, VR, and who knows what else. These applications will require ultra-low latency and will benefit from the 5G network. And then he goes on to point out one other interesting thing, Seth, that I had never even heard of. He says, one other interesting wireless tech on the horizon is 3.5 gigahertz CBRS. I had to look this up. It stands for Citizens Broadband Radio Service. So 3.5 gigahertz CBRS, which will open a whole new slice of spectrum to the U to the US soon. If you're interested, check out this article, we will share a link to that in the show notes. It's a pretty good primer. And from my understanding, we can expect to see 3.5 radios in consumer gear starting

late this year or early next. So fantastic note, Nathaniel, thank you so much for sending that over. Yeah, yeah. I got to make one comment. Just as a side note, I think we really missed something. We should have planned this out, but episode 232, we should have just spent the entire time talking about RS-232. We really missed it. We missed a huge opportunity.

Maybe next time. We'll never get that back. We got 485 coming up. 485, I was just going to say. All right. Also, another note.

Mark your calendars. This latency conversation actually came up in the Hub yesterday from Brendan Davis. He said, a buddy of mine has a WISP. He said he thinks he's using the new 5G stuff at his apartment in downtown Boston. It's line of sight from there to their tower, and the apartment gets like 50 gigabits per second among the residents that have a one gigabit per second cap. His ping to Google is somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 milliseconds, and it used to be 35 milliseconds when on Comcast. So that's definitely interesting.

Now, that latency that he was talking about, that's how fast basically you can get out to the Internet and it gets back to you. So cutting that in half is going to be a noticeable difference when getting web content brought into the house and everything. Not to mention the more bandwidth you have, those one gigabit per second, um, you know, the, the bandwidth that you have that you can do all sorts of like video and that kind of thing within, within that, that range. So, um, that's, that's very encouraging. And I think in, in places like Boston and, and, and places that have like high density, it's going to make a lot of sense. I'm still kind of like on the fence, like how that, how that's going to look, uh, for the rest of the world, you know, like how, especially since the signal doesn't evidently doesn't travel, uh, very

well through trees and that kind of thing. So, um, we'll, we'll be interesting if you live in the woods, uh, you're, you're probably still going to end up not having internet or DSL or, uh, satellite, you know, like that's probably still going to be a thing. But, uh, this, this is definitely, definitely interesting technology. And I, I'm hoping that it, the limitations that we have, or we're talking about today and yesterday, uh, are, are, are exactly that. There's something that we don't have to look forward to in the future though. They'll work this stuff out. So, right. Right. Well, thanks again, Nathaniel. Uh, Nathaniel also, by the way, went on to provide us some updates about the things that he's doing at his home.

And I know I really enjoyed having him on a while ago to talk about that. And so, Nathaniel, if you're listening, please do keep us updated there and maybe we can get you back on one of these days to catch up. For now, Seth, let's move on. We've actually got two pictures of the week. It's pics of the week. Pics of the week. Pics of the week. Pics of the week. Pics of the week. Pics of the week. I'm sorry.

This first one, quote, in a world of evil spider routers. This is a promising development. Netgear's first Wi-Fi 6. By the way, Wi-Fi 6, Seth. So we're seeing the version numbers now not n a b 802 1 n c i like this much whatever yeah this is wi-fi 6 this makes sense like this is wi-fi 6 it's better than wi-fi 5 that's actually the first thing that caught my eye about the headline but uh you got to go look at this router i mean it is just atrocious and uh i i don't know i mean it

looks like uh it looks like something out of star wars that like darth vader it looks like something you'd put on the back of a 1999 honda civic i think that's beautiful it would end up right on the back of that thing on the ah this is my car so fast yeah so fast and furious that's right oh my gosh that that is ugly i mean no who would let that in their house like who goes to the store and sees that sitting on the shelf and says that's the one i want right there it it better perform like an absolute beast that's all i'll say you know if you're gonna look like that then then it better be really really good and i don't know i have to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that some of the funky aspects of the shape of this thing are to optimize antenna

placement oh yeah performance that's what it says antennas are hidden inside of the devices now get this the device's wings they actually called that in the they call them the wings wings yeah oh that's fantastic a position that netgear says optimizes them for the best performance so so you're right you're right it's exactly what your suspicion is but man it's an ugly ugly ugly piece of kit looks looks like a spaceship four hundred dollars no no thank you no thank you oh my god anyways go check this thing out it's uh it's something to behold all right well that's not that's yeah good luck good luck netgear that's now to something more elegant way more elegant apple app elegant so uh we like home kit right jason like we really like home kit yeah yeah it's absolutely it's a

cool like i i have i have a home kit thing hooked up um it's actually the little i device i think it's i devices that we have right the little And I can say, turn on the fan. And you can see this, but nobody else can. Okay, the fan is on. Did you see the light turn on? I did. Yeah, I have something else plugged into it because it's not a fan anymore, it's a light. So just too lazy to rename it.

It's got to be so common. So there is a new app, though, that you can use for your Apple Watch. And I saw this thing. This is beautiful. Now, using HomeKit on your Apple Watch, like, you can already use, like, Home on the watch, too. But this one, this developer has basically taken the design and, like, taken it a step further. And you can actually put, you can use customized icons and colors.

You can reorder things however you want them. You can basically make a little control surface on your watch to be exactly what you want it to be. So when you launch the app, boom, you have the buttons there that you want to be there and little icons that make sense to you and maybe not anybody else, but they're there. So I think this is a great little pick. And I saw this thing and I'm like, yes, this is this is great. Unfortunately, I don't I don't use it because I my watch is slow,

man. Like, yeah, I don't know. My watch is really slow, but it's because I have the series three and I hear the series for like a massive upgrade. But I think I'm going to be like an odd guy and get the odds, right? Cause I do the odd shows. So I have to get the odd versions. Yeah. Be consistent. Yeah. Yeah. This, this looks really, uh, like a, a big improvement. And I know it's obviously with an Apple watch, the big challenge clearly is the amount of real estate that you've got on the screen to work with from a UI design perspective. pretty easy to visually look at and it's not cluttered up with a whole bunch of text and different things, which on a screen that small is going to get really busy really, really quickly. So yeah, I think he's, I think he's done a nice job here. And I know that Aaron's done several of these sort of home kit apps. He's got home cam home pass. Um, Aaron's definitely Aaron Pierce.

I would love to get him to get him on the show sometime he's done a lot of cool things with HomeKit and I think this is no exception he's got yeah HomeScan the little Bluetooth scanner one so it's the same guy really inside the HomeKit ecosystem I think this is great but yeah I had the app but I

just haven't really set anything up so oh well we'll get around to it and I think this is a really good one haven't really set anything up. Oh well, we'll get around to it. And I think this is a really good one. I like using the Siri integration better than anything. I can just say Siri and it does what I turn on the light. But I think if you're in a situation, I mean, the thing I like best about HomeKit

is that it lets developers do stuff like this. Like, they can put whatever interface that they want on top of HomeKit. Right. And they don't have to worry about, like, Aaron doesn't have to worry about writing an integration with the stupid, you know, fan light switch that I have back behind me. Like, that's all taken care of. And I think that's a really freeing thing for developers. And that's why I liked HomeKit from the beginning. But obviously it wasn't enough to get hardware manufacturers to come in the door and start hooking their gear up to HomeKit. So now that that's kind of like less of an issue these days, I'm glad to see the developers are coming back around to HomeKit and starting to invest more time and effort into making the HomeKit stuff work a lot better.

Right. Yep, absolutely. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for a show topic, give us a shout. We'd love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. That's feedback at hometech.fm. Or if you would prefer, you can head on over to our website at hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form.

We definitely read all of those messages that we get, and we're always happy to hear from supporters of the show. So definitely take a minute and reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Absolutely, and we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about our patron page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Home Tech for as little as $1 a month.

Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge, every single pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and talk about 5G. Because that's, you know,

we talked about 5G for quite a while. The topic du jour. The topic du jour, yeah. And Jason, we actually had a $5 guy come along this week. Yeah, yeah. We did. Bob. It is. I'm going to get the hard one again, of course.

I'm backed off. I'm done. Yeah, Bob Knacker. Knatcher? Bob. Bob C. Hey, Bob. Thanks. off i'm done yeah bob connacker cannot can archer bob bob c hey bob thanks bob you know who you are we really appreciate it i apologize for butchering your last name it's a thing for me it is definitely i think consider it a gift yeah you just you're joined the club. Truly, we really, really do appreciate it. That means so much to us. And like Seth, like you said, we really appreciate everybody who has come on board and done that.

If you do want to support the show but can't do it financially, we totally get that. And there are, of course, other ways that you can help our efforts here. And one of the great things that you could do is take a few minutes and go give us a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice. We are of course shooting for five stars, but any review is appreciated. Let us know what we're doing well. Let us know what we could do better. We would, uh, we would welcome all of those. Absolutely. Five stars is what we're aiming for. Um, Jason, I've got one more little tiny thing to add here, right? And see, see if you made it this long, you get the little special thing, the Easter egg. I have, uh, I've got one more little tiny thing to add here right at the end of the show. See, if you made it this long, you get the little special thing that's put in the end. The Easter egg?

I have acquired the Home Tech Reddit. Ah, yes, indeed. You told me about that. That's great. If you go to reddit.com slash r, which is the little subreddit thing that they do, and type in Home Tech and hit enter, that brings you to a little page that I've been trying to set up. I really don't know much about doing this.

So it's a lot more involved than I thought it was. Because if you go to Reddit, it looks pretty simple, right? There's like stories and you can upvote and downvote. But I think this would be a pretty cool place for me to kind of like dump stories that we may be looking at or may not be able to talk about on the show and and kind of look at them there, too. So if you have a suggestion for a story or something, you want to post it on there. Go for it, because I think I gather stuff from the hub. I gather stuff from from Reddit. I gather stuff from Twitter all the time.

But we now have like an official home on Reddit, which is kind of great. That's great. Nice work. Yeah, yeah well i'll definitely go check that out and uh we'll put a link to that in the show notes one last time hometech.fm slash two three three so uh great chatting with you this week seth i know we've got a couple of uh interviews here that we're working on locking down for the month. We're also going to have probably some Black Friday chat later this month as Thanksgiving approaches, and the holidays are right around the corner. We are reaching out to our good friends of the show to organize a fourth annual, I believe, the fourth time we're going to be doing it, which is wild, fireside chat.

So if anyone has heard of those, join us for those before, you know, they're a ton of fun. So we've got a lot of great things working here for the what's what's left of 2018, which is not a whole lot. And we, we really look forward to, to winding down the year and having some fun as we, as we move into the holidays. Yep. Absolutely. Well, that, that sounds great. I can't wait to have the fireside chat and uh yeah well i can't wait for 2018 to be over i'm ready for 2019 but uh here we go all right i'm ready for 2020 like let's get to the future yeah that's that's that's right that's when we're supposed to have like flying cars and stuff so we were promised jetpacks yeah where's my jet right yeah i get a bird scooter. Yay, thanks.

All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for taking your time off to listen in the chat room tonight. We definitely appreciate some of the feedback that came in through in there. Yep. And, Jason, I will talk to you next week. Sounds good, Seth. Take care. Take care. Take care.

Take care.