HomeTech.fm - Episode 243 - The Patriot Bowl

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Kick off your Super Bowl weekend us as we cover the latest headlines in the smart home including: Sonos lowers prices and announces new accessories. More news surfaces about AT&T’s forthcoming streaming service. DirecTV Now drops 267,000 subscribers as promotional pricing ends. Roku enables premium subscriptions through it’s Roku Channel. Samsung’s new 8K chip and the end of ugly bezels. Crestron rebrands Pyng technology to “Crestron Home”. A peek inside OneVision’s service model. And much more!

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 1st, 2019. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Good, Jason. I'm all hunkered down here with the polar vortex and all here in Florida. Down there in Florida. Yeah, yeah. It's all of 57, it looks like, outside right now.

So, yeah, really cold. And just getting ready for that football weekend this weekend because I know somebody told me that there's a Super Bowl. There's a Patriots game on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a big one. Super Bowl weekend coming up i do you have any plans i i don't have anything anything big planned personally i'll i'll certainly have the game on in the background but nothing nothing too festive considering my broncos are watching from home with me this year right no and i i um i told my wife, somebody told me it was the Super Bowl this weekend. And she goes, huh.

So, I mean, I think that's as far as we've gotten with the plans so far. Big, big plans. Yeah, yeah. Needless to say, I mean, we like the commercials. So we'll watch the commercials. And the football game is generally pretty good. I mean, once they get Super Bowl level, it's generally not, you know, there's no, like, bad calls by the refs or anything like that.

You hope not. Yeah. I mean, they're all pros at this point, right? That's it. It's not like the NFL is actively trying to pick who goes to the Super Bowl every year, are they? Not at all. Oh, okay. Not at all.

It'll be a busy weekend. I know that on the professional side, we're gearing up over at One Vision to prepare for those last-second service calls. People don't turn on the home theater for weeks or months ahead of time and go down for game time and try to knock the cobwebs off 15 minutes before. So for any of the professionals out there definitely worth maybe giving your clients a heads up and if you own a system i highly recommend going and firing that up uh before the game especially if it's like a dedicated media room or theater that you don't use uh frequently and why does that projector lamp bulb light blink i don't understand why that light is

blinking on my projector that says replace and it's 15 minutes before you know everyone's showing up for the big game is yep definitely not the time that you want to be checking that uh also wanted to mention very quickly some good news for those of you who are cord cutters there's several different options available for streaming the game this year, including the CBS website. You're going to be able to stream that, cbs.com. They're going to have that playing for free. We'll also include a link in the show notes that has some other resources that you can use to watch the game. If you do not have a cable package, of course, there's always the over-the-air antenna option, but also a couple

of other streaming options available as well. So definitely numerous ways to watch that game, no matter how you plan to do it. And hopefully it's a good game and everyone has a fun and safe weekend. I know it's almost like a national holiday here in the States when the Super Bowl is on, so it should be a good time. A lot of people watching TV this weekend, I think. Absolutely. What do you say we jump into some Home Tech headlines? Let's do it.

If you've been looking for an easier way to play weird covers of Seven Rings through your Sonos speakers, well, today is your lucky day. YouTube music subscribers can now stream tunes directly through the Sonos app. You'll find your saved music in your library and you can browse playlists, albums, songs, and artist radio stations. There will also be sections for recommendations, new releases, and YouTube charts. Speaking of Sonos, the company has also taken $100 off the Playbar, Playbase, and Sub, marking each of them down to about $599. The Beam sound bar was also dropped $50 to its new price at $349. The company also introduced a new shelf, stand, and power cable accessories. The shelf works with the Play 1 and Sonos 1 devices and retails for $60. The stand works with the 1 and 1 as well, but will retail for $250.

The power cables are made out of the same material that's with the included 6-foot cable that comes in the box. They come in black and white, and they're available in 20-inch version and 11-foot version, which, you know, I mean, I laugh about that. But if you buy the stand, then you always need a longer cable or you're just dragging an extension cable. So it makes sense. I like it. It does. Definitely does. Good to see those prices coming down. Also saw some rumors.

Looks like Sonos may be getting into the wireless headphone business. So we don't have a headline that we're announcing there, but it looks like the team over at Sonos has been busy. So that's a good thing. Yeah. We are learning more about AT&T's WarnerMedia streaming service as it inches closer to launch here. So AT&T's streaming service that we've talked about numerous times, a rumor to be coming soon. The platform, which will play host to Warner Brothers TV shows and movies along with licensed content from many others will use a quote two-sided model including subscriptions as well as ad supported elements this according to at&t's ceo randall

stevenson via deadline the latest information available suggests that at&t's new streaming service will be available sometime around the end of the year. Speaking of AT&T, they've been cutting back on the promos, and it's led their streaming service, DirecTV, to now lose 267,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter. You couple that with the 391,000 traditional video subscribers between DirecTV and U-Verse that they lost in the fourth quarter. The company now gave back more than 650,000 video subscribers just in the fourth quarter alone. Wow. The good news is, for AT&T at least, is that the company says it no longer has any DirecTV Now subscribers on promotional pricing, and the company framed that news along with its continued dramatic traditional TV subscriber losses as a part of a plan to place more emphasis on profitability.

So good luck, AT&T. Good luck. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess on the streaming side, that statement kind of makes sense because it sounds like what led to a bunch of these subscriber losses was getting rid of the promotional pricing that a lot of these companies use to try to hook people in. But yeah, those seem like some pretty steep losses. I'm not sure what percentage of their subscriber base that was, but apparently a lot of people cleared out when they got rid of that promotional pricing when you when you pass over half a million i think that's a lot yeah it's a lot it's a lot of money yeah earlier this month roku announced it would soon begin selling subscriptions to premium video services directly from its own

tv and movies hub the roku channel this week those subscriptions went live allowing roku users to sign up for channels like epics showtime and others, and then stream them without needing to install the channel's own native app on their Roku device. Instead, all of the content from these add-ons will be found within the Roku channel section itself, alongside other free and ad-supported TV shows, movies, news, sports, and entertainment programming already offered. Sounds like Amazon. Sounds just like Amazon.

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. Real Good, a website that has become a go-to service for many people thanks to its streaming video guide that lets you browse content from dozens of sources in a single interface, is coming to smart TVs. The company claims that by the time the rollout is done in 2020, roughly half of all smart TV households in the U.S. will have access to its app, which will appear on the home screen. It will mark the first time that a service of this kind can be accessed without an external streaming device.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, this one was interesting. I hadn't heard of RealGood before, but apparently it allows you to create an account, and then you can plug in which services you use. It says 52 options. It works a lot like the Apple TV app, where you can do a universal search across them. I know there's one critical difference I saw is that they do have Netflix, which I know Apple TV's app, or at least this article said it doesn't. So I'm trying to think, though, in my head. I feel like we use the TV app and Netflix, and maybe those two don't work together.

But anyways, another one of those universal search offerings that I think are pretty useful, considering how many different apps there are out there. And it's spelled real good, like R-E-E-L, not real good, because if you search for that, you get food and stuff. But, yeah, I don't know. Important. It makes sense.

Important spelling distinction there. You got it. Vizio has announced that its SmartCast 3.0 TV update is entering public beta. You'll still need an invite from the company after requesting beta access on Vizio.com. SmartCast 3.0 is the operating system that brings airplay to functionality uh also supports uh home kit as well so this will mean users will be able to turn on their tvs and turn them off via siri uh which is kind of a cool addition for those of you using home kit so it looks like this is out for public beta. And if

you're interested, again, you head on over to vizio.com. Yep. Speaking of public beta and really not public beta, but public hacking, I suppose, somebody had figured out how to enable HomeKit to, HomeKit, no, AirPlay 2 functionality on HomeBridge. So if you're using HomeBridge, like on a Raspberry Pi, to kind of like tie in other services to HomeKit, I believe you can go ahead and flip on and see how that's going to work. It's kind of cool.

Maybe I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but it's got like, you see a picture of a TV as a device, instead of a light bulb or whatever, and you click on that, and it'll let you set the input right there.'s got like a little input bottom button at the bottom interesting it's kind of cool uh the only thing it's missing and i don't know how this is like such a big oversight but like it's missing volume control on the tv oops uh control so maybe yeah it's still in beta on apple so maybe we'll give them a break have... Yeah, we'll give them a break until something officially comes out.

But I thought it was pretty cool, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Cool. Samsung has built a new display controller chip for 8K displays. Great. That claims it will eliminate bezels on new 8K TVs. Oh, you have my attention. According to Samsung, the new chip can deliver twice the intra-data throughput that its predecessors could, which in turn eliminates the need for extra components that usually end up in the bezel. Let's get a quote from their press release.

The boost in the chip's data transfer capability greatly enhances the efficiency of the display's systems performance and reduces the need for these additional components, this also allows for more streamlined product designs for slim bezel-less TVs with display sizes 65 inches and above. Hey, that's really literally the only good news that has come out of 8K TVs. That's right. Yeah, this one was interesting. I think 8K, we've sort of ribbed on it here on the show, obviously, and there's still a ton of question marks surrounding how useful that is. But if nothing else, it's going to bring better processing to the market, and that'll improve, presumably, picture even on 4K or standard high def content even. And this is kind of cool. Like it makes sense. You've got a better processor, so therefore you need fewer components and therefore you get a, you know, a better looking TV. So nobody likes big fat bezels on their TVs and kind of cool to see those coming down in size. So we'll keep an eye on that. Moving on here, Crestron is killing ping. Now, before you jump out of your chair, they are not killing the products or the cloud platform, but they are killing the brand and messaging.

So at ISE 2019, Crestron will formally announce, quote, Crestron Home OS 3 as the successor to ping OS 2. So again, that branding is going away. OS 2 launched last year with a much-awaited support for digital media, platform supports up to 150 lighting loads, 60 keypads, 32 zones of audio, 12 zones of video, 24 HVAC zones, and 40 motorized shades. So it is a pretty powerful platform, and I'm wondering if that's kind of why they're moving away from the Ping branding, because Julie, I believe, wrote this article over at CE Pro. And I thought she made a good observation that a lot of the industry still thinks of Ping as sort of Crestron light, right? And maybe they're trying to move away from that Ping branding

to sort of disassociate that, you know, that perception. Yeah, no, I, I, that's interesting. That's interesting. I never really, never really thought about that. When Ping was, this was like one of, I think the first, first CD that you and I went to together, like after starting the podcast, this thing came out and I think we were both just like taken aback as to how cool of a product this was. It was kind of like, like a plug and play Crestron. And

I don't know, like, it didn't seem like it was Crestron Lite because you could always tie in a bigger controller if you needed to do more. But I think the biggest problem that I think Ping has had is that the dealers that are supposed to be the ones getting out and selling it have been selling against systems like this, or at the time had been selling against systems like this for the past decade, right? Like, this is basically Crestron's version of Control 4 or Savant. So, like, it's really a sales problem for them, like, just an education problem. But man, this Google clone, Google Home clone looks pretty good. I mean, they've done a really good job kind of like putting a new iPad app and web app together.

And it looks great. There's a cool little video that goes along with it, some of the features that they highlight. We'll put a link to the story in the show note that'll have that video on there. But yeah, it's a nice looking system and it looks modern and it's fresh and it's up to date. And, you know, one of the things that I saw in here is that they said that Ping was developed kind of like as a Skunk Works project and not part of Mainline Crestron, which may have also been, been you know the reason that it wasn't fully adopted within the sales channel um so but now i think if you look at ping and you compare it to with like control force avant i mean heck even smart things or home kit like it is a great answer uh on the professional side of putting things in to those products in clients that demand quality product that never go down and that kind of thing that you can actually as a dealer service and integrate with remotely and that kind of thing.

Right. It's still a Crestron product, and you're going to have that support and quality built into it from the beginning. So I think this is great. I really like the fresh-ish look that they went with. Tons of work there on the UI redesign, but it does look pretty good at the end of the day here. Yeah, I agree. I think everything you said, I agree with.

We've got Greg in the chat room, and I know Greg is a longtime Crestron dealer and said it's very, very easy to set up. It sounds like Greg uses it at least fairly regularly. And, you know, like, like you said, it's, it's a platform that's been around for a little while and it's certainly developed and, and evolved in terms of its capability. And now they're, now they're looking good and Greg's correcting me. It's quote, stupid easy to set up. It is, it is. So let's make sure we get the verbiage correct there. And yeah, I think you're right.

It's a great answer for those clients who still want a professional system that has that reliability and custom, like the ability to integrate it with all kinds of different components and not go out and break the bank. So it's cool to see them continuing to develop that. Yep. Crestron Home.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't know about that branding, but, you know, whatever. I mean, it's kind of like Google. Like, I guess we'll just call it home. I mean, it's just not the most, like, advanced, you know, creative name they could have come up with. I mean, Ping was a little bit more creative in that respect. But, yeah, it's crushed on home now.

Can't argue with you there. Thankfully, you know, I'm not a marketing guy. Yeah, I don't have to sell this all right well we we wanted to touch briefly on a story that i ran across in c pro that jason jason didn't want to talk about but then i was like no you have to talk about it oh that's not well i i was i was sitting there just like reading this article this really really good article called a day in the life of a Remote Service Team. And it centers around One Vision.

So I guess Jason Knott of CE Pro, when we were talking about this, you said he came out to the One Vision offices, sat down with you guys, looked at how things happened, how calls came in, how things were troubleshot. And like the most amazing thing to me is like the very bottom thing. It's like, yeah, people are followed up with a couple of days later to make sure that everything is resolved. And it's like, man, this is really cool. This is like the entire One Vision process right here on one page. Yeah. It certainly gives a good glimpse. And I was joking with you before the show, I sort of avoid self-promotion sometimes to a fault. He's a humble man. So I appreciate you giving a little nudge here.

This was a fun story to see come out. Like you alluded to, Jason Knott was kind enough to come and spend a day in the office at our One Vision headquarters and hang out and just take a look at how we do what we do on the support side. What we do spans certainly more than is in this article when it comes to the marketing and the partner development stuff that we do. But yeah, for a really good look at like the article is titled, The Day in the Life of a Remote Service Team. And it was really fun working with Jason on the article and sort of seeing the finished product and what his, his observations were, uh, in terms of really what, what makes that team tick, right. And what, what the overall goals are of, of providing that service,

because it's, it's not really what everyone thinks, uh, on the surface. Like we certainly want to resolve as many issues as we can at, at the tier one level. And at One Vision, we, we always aim to do that, but you know, it talks about, there's a lot of value in providing that tier one remote support, uh, that goes beyond just being able to solve issues and sort of being present for your clients, having that 24 seven availability, being able to deescalate situations, provide workarounds, and set up like a structured framework where you've got clients who make an explicit choice about the level of service that they want. They've got access to this team. And

if they want to go sort of beyond a base level of service, setting up memberships that provide access to things like that prioritized response and extended hours of availability. The article gets into some of that as well, and really optimizing what you can bill for on the advanced side. So I think for anybody who works in the channel, certainly, I would encourage you to go check this out. There's some useful insights in there that you don't have to be a One Vision partner at all to take advantage of. So again, I enjoyed what Jason not did with it. Yeah. This has to be one of my favorite sentences because of one word in it. On average, a typical integration company will experience 50 unpredictable service events per month. Unpredictable. Yes. That's right. They are unpredictable. That's precisely it. Yeah. That is probably, I mean, it's such a subtle word,

but unpredictable is definitely how service events come in. Man. Yeah. It's all over the place, right? You've got different client personalities and different client budgets, like clients who maybe spent what for your company is a very small amount, and then other clients who maybe spent a very large amount for your company. And all of these variables come into play, like what time of day is it? What's your relationship like with the client? How angry are they? Et cetera, et cetera. And all of these things are unpredictable, and then you're forced to sort of make judgment calls in the moment about how far to sort of take that service event. move that subjectivity and that unpredictability from the service process as much as humanly possible by putting a framework in place where you've got these different tiered levels of service, just like managed service providers do, right? You don't sign up with an MSP and have

them tell you, just give us a call. We'll do our best, right? That's best effort service. They've got different tiers. And if you want to pay a premium for elevated levels of support, you have the option to do that. So we're sort of thinking about it in those terms. And this article, I think, gives you a little bit of a glimpse, at least, of what that looks like in terms of putting more predictability into that process and making it not feel so out of control and crazy all the time. Well, I mean, the thing that I, I mean, the second sentence on here is of those calls that I just talked about, the 50 unpredictable calls per dealer or per firm, only two service calls per month per integrator will be escalated to urgent. Like, I guess, does that mean forwarded on in your parlance to urgent? Does that mean like,

okay, so out of 50 people that call in, I only hear two service calls that... Well, you only hear about two of them. The keywords are as urgent. So, you know, in really, really simplified terms, what that means is those urgent escalations are the ones that need to be dealt with like on a Wednesday night or a Saturday afternoon outside of business hours. Interesting. So anything that's escalated as non-urgent or normal is something that can be dealt with during business hours, first of all, and it can typically be scheduled out based on your availability. So it's not a drop everything and go, you know, get this fire put out. They get put into the support queue with the service guy, you know, maybe in a week we'll

get out there and take care of it. Exactly. Okay. Got it. Exactly. And so that's where you get into the notion of focusing on de-escalation at the tier one level. And so even if you're not able to resolve the issue, are you at least able to get the client into a place where maybe they're able to use the system or you've walked them through how to find the content on a different app or something along those lines where they're good until you can get out there and you're not rolling a truck on a Saturday just because the client is flying off the handle. So that's what that refers to. I gotta say, if I was still a dealer, just thinking of all the days and days of calls, and we just sat at the office, two of us sitting there and they're basically trying to get work done, but also on the phone every five minutes talking to somebody and taking care of like, oh yeah, I can't watch this on my Apple TV. And then kind of trying to walk them through on the Apple TV doing trouble, basic troubleshooting. Oh, it's your Apple ID is you need to log in. Let's now click left to go to

a now click left, left, left down. Oh, then your password didn't work. Yeah. How do we set your password? All right. Yeah. Another 30 minutes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of this stuff really is pretty, pretty basic when it comes to him, but just, just being able to be present for the client and help walk them through. And then really, you know, the article, I think Jason did a really cool thing where he like illustrates out different service tickets and he shows like what the documentation looks like. And it kind of walks you through chronologically what one of these support events might look like. So you actually get a real sort of taste of that. And I thought that was a cool idea by Jason. We were excited to see that when it came out. I think it was a really neat way to present that information.

So again, if you're in the channel and you're interested in just learning about some of the ways that we're thinking about service and our partners are out there executing on it, go check that article out. We'll have a link to it in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 243. And again, there's a lot of useful information in there, whether you're interested in partnering with One Vision or not. Frankly, we want to be a resource and be helpful to the entire channel. So go take a look at it and reach out if you have any questions.

We'd love to engage. Please tell me that this ticket number 3228 is a real example that says, problem, TV stopped working, troubleshooting. Client said it resulted from a, quote, loud bang. I think those are all real, yeah. I mean, I've had calls like that, and it yeah, that kind of stuff, like where somebody calls in and says something that can literally stop everybody in the company from working to kind of sit there and like look at each other for about five minutes with a puzzled look on their face. So I can see how this, I can see how this like just firewall can kind of help, uh, help companies move a little bit better internally. Yeah, it's pretty amazing the stuff we see, you know, doing support at the volume that we do. Yeah, you see a lot.

That one doesn't surprise me. No, not at all. All the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found at our show notes at hometech.fm slash 243. Wow, 243, getting up there. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis

as well as other industry news that may or may not have made the show. Again, the link is hometech.fm slash 243. That's right. And don't forget, you can join us live in the chat room. We record on Wednesday nights, typically starting around 7 or 7.30 p.m. Eastern. And we'd love to have you. It's always a lot of fun to have folks join us in the chat room. You can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live.

Yeah, let's check the mailbag. I think we had something from a listener come in. Oh, yeah, Robert. Robert sent us an let me i'll go ahead and read it um he said glad you keep following all the ins and outs of streaming service changes for us but once in a while it's worthwhile to remember that even with the continued confusion and price increases if the industry can at least eliminate coaxial cable wiring and propriety set-top boxes um so all the entertainment basically comes through IP, there is a huge benefit to our industry directly and indirectly for all consumers. Too much time, effort, and money

is still spent on kludgy IR controls, video matrices, HDMI over IP extenders, not to mention waiting on hold forever with the local cable company or satellite company so you can get those boxes activated. An integrated, affordable, searchable, a la carte selection of content cable company or satellite company so you can get those boxes activated. An integrated, affordable, searchable a la carte selection of content may be the holy grail that is never achieved, but cleaning up the infrastructure and deployment mess is still a major step in the evolution that we need to continue to drive forward and demand

and not take for granted. It will only happen if consumers and installers keep demanding it. Good stuff there. Yeah. I thought it was a great email. And when I read the first couple of sentences, I thought he was going to tell us to stop talking about streaming. That's where I thought it was going. We've certainly been talking about streaming a lot. That's where the news has been lately. But I really enjoyed this note from Robert, and Robert's a great friend of the show and supporter of the show as well. So we appreciate that, Robert.

And I think it's a great observation. I have to admit I never really thought about it in those specific terms, but he's absolutely right that, uh, you know, regardless of what happens with, with the different apps and trying to consolidate the content and get rid of a lot of this confusion and the pricing is all over the place. And all of that may be sort of a permanent condition and a, and a by-product of, of this, of this transition or by-product of the market in general. But he makes a great point. If we can just continue to make progress toward getting rid of those antiquated cable boxes and the older infrastructure and just get things moved to IP, it certainly does benefit a lot of folks,

including, most importantly, the consumer, making that easier for them. So I thought that was a great observation. Yep. I'm betting Robert's not a fan of cable card. I would guess not. I think it's a pretty safe bet. Not exactly going out on a limb there. No, no. So status quo, no good. This new stuff, yeah, looks like it's a good thing. Worth taking a look at. Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Well, Seth, we've got a pick of the week this week, and I think it's a good thing. Worth taking a look at. Yeah. Exactly. Well, Seth, we've got a pick of the week this week, and I think it's a good one. It's a little bit, I have to say it's a little bit early in the year, especially with the polar vortex coming right now. I don't think a lot of people are envisioning sort of green grass and worrying about lawn maintenance. But iRobot announced a Terra robot mower. Now, this is not the first robot lawnmower. There are others out there. I know this article we found mentions LG and a company called Works, and I think Husqvarna has one as well that we talked about before. So not a totally novel idea, but still kind of fun to go take a look at this thing.

You don't get a great sense for the size of it. It looks small in this picture to me. I don't know if you sort of had the same observation, but a little robotic lawnmower with an antenna coming out of it. And, you know, I think that's sort of a dream for a lot of us, right? Be able to sit on your porch and relax while a robot mows your lawn. I certainly wouldn't complain about that. No, no, it does. It does look small in the picture with just the grass.

But if you look at the picture with the plumber, I guess, I don't know what this guy is. He's like he's got a guy and he's got a plunger attached to his belt. I really I think that's what it is. Anyway, it looks it looks of decent size. But yeah, I oh, man. Anyway, it looks of decent size. But yeah, oh, man. One, I'd love this. Two, I'd love for my grass to actually be green.

It's not. And three, how does the iRobot get into all these flower beds and get all those weeds out? Because that looks amazing. That's the real question. Yeah. Hmm. I don't know. Robots are amazing. Can pull weeds.

Yeah, yeah. I'm going to, I really, let's see. This is, so it says the iRobot Terra robot mower will be available for sale in Germany as well as a beta program in the U.S. for 2019. No pricing given yet, but it looks like Germany and the U.S. is where this is headed. I like this. It's pretty cool. We can all keep dreaming of a day when robots mow our yards for us. Self-driving cars and robot lawnmowers.

It's a great time to be alive. Yeah, yeah. Now that I'm just thinking of people putting their cats on this thing and then letting it run around. It's going to be a whole new... Oh, it's ripe. It's ripe for some YouTube videos. Yes, for sure. Excellent. All right. whole new you know it's it's ripe it's ripe for some for youtube videos for sure excellent all right well if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week or ideas for show

topics definitely give us a shout we would love to hear from you our email address is feedback at hometech.fm again that's feedback at hometech.fm or if you would prefer you can head on over to the website and use our online form at hometech.fm slash feedback. And we want to give a big thank you to everyone who does support 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 slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 per month. Any pledge over $5 gets you a big shout on an air. But every single pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack channel, the hub where you and others supported the show can gather every day and talk about inside baseball things about home technology. A lot of good stuff there.

Yep, absolutely. And if you can't support the show financially, we totally get that we would appreciate you taking a moment to give us a review on itunes or your podcast app of choice those reviews definitely do help other people find the show so if you want to take a few minutes and let us know how we're doing again on your podcast app of choice or on itunes would be fantastic we would we would really appreciate that yep and i think that wraps up the show for this week. Next week, we're gearing up for ISE. So everybody's quiet right now. And I think we're going to see some fun stuff come out of ISE next week. Yeah, it'll be interesting.

ISE is always a little bit of a question mark, I feel like. I know a lot of companies do release new stuff, but other companies are sort of rehashing things we maybe saw at Cedia in the fall. And so it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that. I always do look forward. I know at a minimum, look forward to seeing what some of the companies that are a little bit bigger across the pond, you know, technologies like KNX as one example, what's going on in that world. So like you said, we'll certainly be keeping an eye on ISE. And if you're over there attending the show, definitely reach out and let us know what you're

seeing. We'd love to hear from you. Yeah. And if this polar vortex thing gets any crazier, we're going to have to just head on over because I mean, it'd be like a beach, you know, a summer's beach there in Amsterdam compared to the negative February Yeah, February in Amsterdam feels like a tropical vacation. I saw they were anticipating weather that felt like 60 below zero in northern Minnesota this week. So I'm embarrassed to say this, but growing up below Interstate 10 for nearly, well, all of my life, I have not been able to like wrap my head around negative

values and and and the only time i've ever experienced negative values in temperature was in like chemistry class right so you get to zero it goes you know zero is the water where water freezes you go negative one so i've always thought that oh yeah we get down to like water freezing and then when they say it's negative 60 it's negative 60 below you know whatever um i never realized that you know oh we still had you know 32 degrees to go before we hit zero and now we're you know negative 60 beyond that oh man it's it's something yeah you've been spoiled i've had to wrap my head around you know well no, it doesn't matter where you come from. 60 below is hard to wrap your head around. Yeah, stay inside.

Definitely. You know, all jokes aside, if you're in one of those regions where we're expecting this crazy weather, stay safe, stay warm. It's going to be record-breaking lows here for a lot of the country. So we hope everyone has a safe week. And like you said, Seth, that'll wrap up our show this week. And I'll look forward to connecting with you next week. And hopefully we'll see some cool stuff out of ISE. Sounds good, Jason. Have a good weekend. All right. Take care, Seth.