HomeTech.fm - Episode 244 - Why Control4 Acquired NEEO

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: We discuss Control4’s recent acquisition of NEEO including what’s in it for both companies, the end of the road for the DIY product, and what else the future may hold. That plus the latest headlines including: Nest, Justin Bieber, and the case for unique passwords. UltraViolet’s inevitable demise is upon us. Aereo got sued out of existence but Locast won’t let that deter them. JoshAI’s sleek new multizone control arrives. Roku in talks to add AirPlay 2 support. 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 8th from Chile, Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from where I just had to turn off the air conditioner in Sarasota, Florida. Balmy Sarasota, Florida. Yeah. Seth Johnson. How are you doing, Seth? Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. How are you? I'm good. Did you enjoy the Super Bowl? Yeah. No, I slept through most of that. That was

the worst game I think I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. It was not a very exciting game, I will admit. We ended up going over to a friend's house here in town, and I was thankful that we did. I was not going to lie, there's part of me that wanted to stay home and be a bum. It was a last second invite, and I was telling my wife, well, we won't get to watch as much of the game, but there will be other kids there, and the kids will have a good time, so let's go for it. And I'm glad we did, because the game was a real snoozer and so at least the kids had a good time yeah very boring the best description i heard of it uh was was on the choppo trap house podcast which is a funny political podcast but they described it as

watching grown men do their taxes with their bodies and i was like that's accurate that is accurate that's that's pretty. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I didn't catch a lot of the commercials either. I don't know if there were any good ones. I was sort of chasing my kids around the house for the most part because the game wasn't really holding my attention. So I have to admit, I don't even really know if the commercials were any good this year. I mean, the Bud Light really went after corn syrup people. admit i i don't even really know if the commercials were were any good this year uh i mean there was

the uh the bud light really went after uh corn syrup people that i guess that one i did catch and that was weird and then and then there was a game of thrones crossover where they killed the bud knight like they ripped his head off all right you know how the mountain rips that guy's head off like they reenacted that scene except they killed the but and it was like it was shocking because i was i was sitting there telling my wife about these really funny but like she had been kind of like going back and forth with with rose and taking care of taking her putting her down and that kind of thing and then i was telling her oh these but like commercials are really funny here's one and we watched it and we're just standing there carnage what just happened

just like every game of throne episode right yeah exactly exactly all right well what do you say we jump in we've got a whole bunch of news that we're going to cover this week a number of big stories here i do want to mention really quickly that we are going to take a look at isc stories next week we were taking a look at the news cycle this week, and I think given the press a little bit of time to catch up on ISE, since as we are recording here on Wednesday, ISE has only been going on for about a day. So we've seen a number of stories come across, and one that we are going to talk about that is indirectly related to ISE. But we're going to jump into some home tech headlines, and then we'll get into that. What do you say, Seth? Let's do's do it in recent weeks there's been a number of fairly alarming reports coming from nest users about cameras being taken over by hackers who use their access to broadcast potentially terrifying

messages or even ask alexa speakers to play justin bieber it's a good yeah the humanity this isn't a security failure on this part, but rather tricksters finding that they're able to log into strangers' Nest accounts with usernames and passwords that have been gathered and distributed around the Internet. A Nest VP, Rishi Chandra, sent an email to users today to reiterate that the company's devices have not been hacked and that there are some simple tips they can do to, uh, they can take to increase their account security. Like, you know, don't use the same password on

every single place or just a common password. Use a password manager. Yeah. Yeah. It is becoming more and more important these days. And yeah, this is a, on the surface might look like a security breach at nest, but it wasn wasn't there was a bunch of usernames and passwords breached and shared on the internet and then people went around scouring for i guess nest accounts and voila you've got justin bieber playing in your kitchen i wouldn't do justin bieber i mean i guess this goes back to our pre-show conversation but my pick would be rick uh the rick roll song you'd roll them yeah yeah rick roll them for sure no you're right those those hackers take a page out of your playbook you know

it's those kids the script kiddies is what they call it that's right that's right all right well moving on here ultraviolet the initiative that gives users digital access to movies and tv series they've purchased is due to shut down on July 31st. Bummer. According to information posted on the Ultraviolet website, the move is due to, quote, market factors, end quote, including the emergence of content services separate to Ultraviolet. Ultraviolet said it is working with Ultraviolet retailers,

which include services like Vudu, Flixster, and Kaleidoscape, to maximize users continued access to movies and tv shows however users ultraviolet libraries will be automatically closed and after ultraviolet shuts down so that's that's a bummer i i don't know a lot about this service but i know it was useful for certainly a cohort of people out there. So it's bad news. It was one of the first and one of the most horribly set up. And I'm going to plug Richard Gunther's really excellent story about kind of like the history behind it over at the Digital Media Zone.

Oh, cool. Yeah. And what you can do to save if you have some ultraviolet purchases somewhere in an ultraviolet library, like what you can do to kind of like you can actually transfer them out and save them somewhere like Voodoo is stepping up where you can do to kind of like you can actually transfer them out and save them somewhere like voodoo is stepping up where you can save your purchases there so there's there's a couple different options you have but you have to do it before july 31st or they're just they're gone gone into the ether so into the abyss yep a new company named locast is touting itself as a public

service to americans by providing local broadcast signals over the internet in select cities. If you think this sounds similar to Aereo, you're not wrong. Aereo was sued out of existence by just about every broadcast network in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Locast has taken a different approach, however. Instead of charging subscriptions for Locast, Locast formed itself as a non-profit organization and is asking for donations there's a key difference here which allows allows for a copyright exemption uh that that applies to non-profits the service now has about 60 000 users in houston chicago boston philadelphia dallas and denver as well as new york and will soon add more in Washington DC. This is interesting. This is a

really interesting service. That is very interesting and I'm wondering if we that would be an awesome interview if we could get somebody on there I think. We need to get this guy. Yeah he's not even a tech guy like he's a lawyer. He's a lawyer. He's like I can do this. That's great that's a good find. Yeah we'll definitely have to keep an eye on that. I know the Aereo thing was a big story when that all got shut down, and he appears to have found a loophole, and we'll see how long said loophole stays open. Hulu is preparing to roll out a new advertising format

that users will notice whenever they pause a video the new advertising unit is similar to a pop-up when a user pauses a video an image will appear on screen that acts as a transparent banner ad and we'll have a link by the way in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 244 to a story that shows an image of what this would look like. The ad won't appear until a few seconds after the user hits pause. The goal is to keep the advertisement somewhat related to what people are watching. Okay, well, so second pick of the week this week may be this image. Yeah.

And I'm not going to spoil it. I'm not going to spoil it. I don't have a problem with this. I mean, if it's paused and I don't have to hear the commercial and it doesn't interrupt my viewing experience and it helps make the service more profitable and stable, which I don't think Hulu needs a lot of help in that department, mind you. But the concept of it, I personally, I don't have an issue with this. Yeah, me neither. I think it's similar. it's not intrusive. Yeah. Remember, you can get a Kindle. You can buy a Kindle with, when you turn it off, it actually displays an ad on the screen.

It doesn't use any battery to change whatever's on the screen. It's kind of similar to that, in my opinion. It's not like, I mean, they're tracking everything you're watching anyway. Right. Oh, well. Roku is in talks with Apple about supporting AirPlay 2, with the two companies currently working out details surrounding the partnership, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The plans are not finalized and are subject to change. AirPlay 2 support is likely to arrive in the form of a Roku OS update that would likely extend to smart TVs running the software as well. It's unclear when the software update might be released. That'd be cool. Yeah, interesting. And I know like we've got our TCL 6 series

that I bought back in November that runs on Roku. So I'll be interested to kind of play around with that and see sort of what that user experience is like. Speaking of Apple TV here, Apple's media player now supports X-Ray on Amazon Prime's video app. This, if you're not familiar with X-Ray, it mines IMDB's production database

to give you more information about your TV show or film that you're watching. By pausing or swiping up, X-Ray will display information such as what actor is on screen, the soundtrack currently playing, or other general tidbits about the show. This is not a new feature. X-Ray is not new, but having it come to Apple TV is new, which will help it reach a wider audience. Yeah, this is cool. I hear people talk about this all the time and i i since i use apple tv i don't get it but now now i i will i will enjoy i will bask in the imdb glory that's that's right fubo tv has announced that it's adding support for apple tv's app uh becoming the second major live tv streaming service to integrate with the with the

app after the playstation View added support this fall. The added support means that Fubo TV users will be able to access live TV and sports directly from Apple's aggregated TV app on tvOS and iOS devices, adding live television into the mix alongside the various streaming offerings from services that's pretty cool there you go input zero you need to check out fubo fubo fubu i don't know i missed it i think it needs a better name you need some help in the marketing department there shifting gears here josh ai is making it easier to control the tv experience using voice control by allowing customers to consumers i I should say, to walk into a room, request a show and leave the rest to the home automation system. Users don't

need to dictate which room they're in or which streaming service they want to use. Josh does all of that work on the back end, thanks to new integrations with Adlona video matrix switchers, as well as existing drivers for roku select tvs projectors and receivers so this is kind of cool uh a great addition for for voice control in the home where you have distributed video and you want to be able to conveniently call up different shows in different rooms this is a pretty neat addition yeah and needed for the the target market that that josh a i was aiming for i know this has been on their roadmap for a long time i work i've worked closely with them for a while and

um i'm glad to see that they they're they're expanding the product line this is this is pretty big for them yeah yeah absolutely all right well jason there there's there's a a big story that came across uh today i think it was today uh which is like right on the dawn of ISE. We get this huge press release from a bomb that was dropped, I guess. It depends on what side of the road you're on here. But it's either really good news or really, really bad news that Control 4 bought NEO, which is basically the end of the line for the DIY side of that remote control company. Yeah, it's not basically the end of the line. It is the end of the line.

The line has been drawn, and it stops right there. There's no gray area there. Very black and white, yeah. Yeah, interesting. The story broke on the 4th, so it'll be a few days since by the time this airs. But yeah, really, really big story. Neo was obviously... We've had Raphael from Neo on the show, I think a couple of times. I know we've had him on at least once. Really like those guys. I like the team over at Neo. I had a chance to meet them and hang

out and go have dinner with them when I was at ISE a couple of years back. And great team, really great vision, great product design. And I know they had what was a $1.5 million on their Kickstarter way back when they did that. And that was a record at the time. Not sure if it still is. But yeah, you just, I don't know. You got to wonder what really the backstory was here in terms of... Neo was a company that was very dedicated to its users. And the whole mission was to bring that really high quality level of sort of control and user experience into a more broad ecosystem, like the DIY consumer market, right? Raph talked a lot about that. He's a former integrator. And you just have to wonder if

maybe they were, you know, maybe the path ahead for this remote turned out to be harder to get the kind of broad market adoption that they wanted than they thought that path was going to be. Maybe they were struggling, and this was sort of an acquisition of opportunity for both sides, right, for Control 4 to pick up what they're getting, which we'll talk about here in a minute. But looking at it from NIO's perspective, lots of questions in my mind, and I can only speculate about their reasoning. Well, I mean, there's like 16 million reasons I can think of. Like, if you look at what they purchased them for, $11 million in cash. I mean, that's hard, cold cash. A couple of NIO employees were issued $1.5 million in equity.

Control Force stock, which is probably roughly 18% less, I think that's when they got it. Yeah. Yeah. Big, big, big tank on the stock just the other day. But plus, Control 4 assumed $4.6 million of their debt, which, you know, that's a lot of money to be out selling even a $300 remote. How much was the debt? $4.6 million. Yeah.

That's a ton of money. But I can, all right, from the bad side is, like, the Control 4 has basically said that they're ceasing sales. There's going to be no more sales on the Neo remotes. They're done selling those and i think they were gonna do yeah they're only gonna provide critical updates for the next 24 months starting today so that leaves anyone using their or using their 300 neo remote just kind of like out of luck for the next two years right i mean there's really not if you were expecting features to be developed for it or anything to be put on it that was coming,

that's done. There's nothing else that's going to be invested into that to make that product any better. Right. Which really, I mean, really sucks because I can only think of, I can only think of like two direct replacements for that. One would be the Logitech which i just

i just can't bring myself to buy one i just can't do it just can't get over that hump no i can't and and the other one is sitting on my desk here which is cavo um which we made fun of when they were made out of wood grain but now that they're they're they're shipping a 100 box which has been on like fire sale for the last couple weeks for like 59 i i gotta say i mean the cavo if you put you put the cavo next to the neo i mean it's it's gonna do more for you in regards to av control than the neo was was able to do um now as far as like home automation, I don't know, Neo was like kind of had feelers out for that too. Like you can integrate with, uh, hue lights and that kind of thing, but I don't know. To me, it was never appropriate to control hue lights from my remote, but, uh, I mean,

teach their own, I guess. Right. There's a million other ways you can, you can do that these days. And, and, and maybe Kavo will introduce that. Well, I guess they kind of said that they weren't going to do that. So if you're looking strictly to replace the AV control side of it, Kavo is a good thing. But if you need that integration with Hue lights and Sonos and all that stuff, maybe Logitech is the way to go. Yeah. Yeah, Eric in the chat room is saying too many people content with their five different remotes. And I think there's some truth to that when you look at the market as a whole. I think a lot, Seth, like sometimes all of us, and I'm by no means immune to this, we get sort of in our bubble of being technologically inclined and we like

technology. And so we tend to project like our sort of wants or needs onto maybe a broader swath of the market than actually exists. So I think that, you know, so it's just been interesting to watch the DIY companies and like, I suspect a lot of them are, are struggling to find like a real broad sort of adoption. And I think that this is really like, I'm with you. I feel bad for the Neo community and their diehard passionate users. I'm sure they had quite a bit of them, you know, quite a few of them. And like you said, this is sort of the end of the road. I mean, Control 4, I did see in the reporting that they're going to continue supporting them, whatever that actually translates to in the real world.

You know, I think probably the days are numbered. I don't think in the short term, I don't see control for doing anything drastic to cut users off necessarily. I'm not sure. But it's definitely a bummer for those folks. I think there are some pros to it as well on the positive side. I think it's exciting to think about what a team like the team at NIO that really has a great design aesthetic and presumably some really good intellectual property behind the remote. Some patents were talked about in some of the reporting around several different, you know, the Palm sensor, battery life was another one that people were speculating about, like, is there some intellectual property there? Control 4 is not commenting on that specifically.

But point being, like, the merging of a company like that, that's got a lot of value to bring to the table with a company like control 4 that has all of the resources that they do it could yield some pretty cool stuff in the future well yeah and i don't really i mean i don't think you're gonna see a uh a neo remote for maybe you will i don't know but i don't think really you'd see a neo remote for control 4 like tomorrow uh this this was simply like what they call an aqua hire. Like they bought Neo for the talent. They bought it for the team. I mean, we talked to Rafael.

He mentioned that, you know, they had put this entire team and system together to build and QC their devices and everything. So they have all of this production experience behind them. And I mean, if you go over and look at, you know, the Control 4 website, I mean, they don't have enough product people. You look at Control 4, their, what are they called? The classifieds or whatever, the job openings. I mean, they've been sitting on a lighting, a project manager for lighting for like almost a year now.

I guess. Oh, really? lighting a project manager for lighting for like uh almost a year now uh i guess yeah oh really yeah i mean it's been a while since they've had a dedicated product manager for lighting on board so like they they need people they need talent and uh you know this is definitely one way to get it if you can't attract them with you know job offers on a website like you go out and buy them and uh you know on the business side, I mean, there's certainly advantages for control for, to continue purchasing companies, uh, to kind of make their stock look a little bit better, even though wall street didn't, didn't like that, uh, answer, uh, this, this month. Um, yeah, the earnings. Yeah. Long term,

long term. It's a good, you know, kind of staves off having to report some bad quarters. So I'm not going to pretend like this is a business show, but I know that's one thing you do. You can kind of like sandbag a little bit and push those numbers up a little bit more if you're able to claim that, you know, profits are coming in, even if they're coming in from speakers, you know. Yeah. It will be interesting to see what they do with this team, though. And, I mean, there's a, you know, Control 4's got a lot of talent there now.

Like, they've picked up Hiiji, you know, the Pack Edge people. They've got their networking. They've got Triad. I mean, it's become, like, a pretty big powerhouse. Charlie Kendall? Yeah, Charlie. Well, I mean, Charlie Kendall looks like he's he's like at the leading edge of this right like the picture on the press release was kindle sitting next to rafael like yeah having a good laugh about something you know

so like that that that's got his stamp like all over it so but i i know control four is out there aggressively trying to purchase uh companies in the industry. And I think about like, you think about like how this industry was set up traditionally where everybody kind of like Elan and Crestron and like the chassis and stuff that we used to buy that were all, you know, same label all the way down the rack. Everything you bought, I mean, could be Crestron labeled and branded and it all integrated together and and now control four has kind of started to do the same thing except they're they're doing it by by purchasing other brands that already exist and are well respected inside the industry yeah um build

it or buy it right yeah so very it's very interesting to see what this going on and um it's just one yeah one other facet and one other way to build up the company and i i think they've got a pretty good portfolio because of it and now they've got some some some really good you know chops on you know product team like a product team for remotes and touchscreens and that kind of thing put together who i mean you and i have the neo remote it's a great little piece of hardware yeah um and if i put it next to my sr you know my beloved sr250 or sr260 remote it's like one of them looks a lot better than the other even though yeah you know the the the 260 the two two x zeros are are like workhorses right

i mean oh yeah they they work they, they do their job, but they don't, they're not pretty about it. So I'm glad to see that control four is, you know, trying to step up their game and, and get a better product out into the end user's hands. Right. Right. Yeah. Well said. I don't know how much more I can add. This'll be really interesting to see, um, how it, how it pans out. My surface-level understanding, at least, is that Raph and his team will continue to operate from their home base in Switzerland. I'm not entirely sure about that. I don't know if you've seen specific reporting on it, but, you know, again, that's my understanding of it. I think that's the way to—yeah, I didn't see anybody moving to Draper. From Switzerland to Draper. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think that's the way to, yeah, I didn't see anybody moving to Draper. From Switzerland to Draper.

Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think that would happen. Culture shock. Yeah, just a little bit, just a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I can add one more thing, and that's the fact that, like, I wonder how much a universal, like, what is the use for a universal remote in tomorrow's market, right? So, like, if you think down the road, like, in these bespoke systems that the integrators are putting in, like, you definitely need a universal remote. There's more than one source. There's video distribution.

There's audio distribution. But, like, we're moving towards input zero. And for the average Joee do they need a 300 remote like do they need an 89 remote you know it's and and the headache that comes along with setting that up if all they do and in my case out here it's kind of like i have input zero like i turn my tv on and i grab the little apple tv remote and i i turn tv on while i'm working here at the desk and i sit there and watch it and it's like right how how i don't need a 300 remote i don't need any kind of remote to do that all the channels i can watch live tv i can do everything right there on the

apple tv and it's the sooner we get to that that input zero the quicker these types of remotes go away yeah you know so it's i i think it's a good it's a good exit for them and maybe a market that the demand for a universal remote, they can look down the road and see, man, the demand looked like it was here two or three years ago when we did this Kickstarter. But now, if we look two or three years in the future, demand really just goes away. And what can we do to keep this company going? I think you have to look at it that way, too. the man really just goes away and what can we do to kind of like keep this going i think it's you have to look at it that way too um i think future in the future we're we're not gonna i mean why would we need logitech remotes you know like it's it's it's it's not it's not going to be the

same type of setup uh you know five five years yeah i think completely different and you and you did you you sort of bifurcated that conversation, right? There's always going to be a market for those universal remotes in maybe the highly complex media room or theater or certainly in anything with distributed video, multiple sources, things of that nature. But I agree with you. I mean, I find myself in our living room here, we've got a very basic setup. We've got a TV and an Apple TV. And that's it. And like I use the Apple TV remote. Unfortunately, side note, the CEC, you know, the CEC control over HDMI. Oh, the CEC control over HDMI for the Apple TV and the TCL 6 series, the power on, power off doesn't work, which is a bummer.

So I do have to use the TCL remote to turn the TV on and then the Apple TV remote for everything else. But yeah, I think you're right. When you look at the broad market, there are some headwinds there definitely for a universal remote. Yeah, and into the devices of that type. So I think somebody posted in the hub earlier, like some, I have to go find them, but they're like earlier when all this conversation was talking about, like they posted like Logitech's earnings or something from Logitech's earnings. And they said that their smart home business in particular was down like some ungodly amount, like double, like 34% or something like that. So like it was, that particular thing will struggle. I mean, but you know, mice and everything else that Logitech makes will continue to sell. So i'm not really concerned too much about logitech they seem to be doing well but um it's it's interesting to to see uh yeah here here's the owen maddock was posting these today uh the smart home was like 40 oh wow 49 year over year

down wow uh which is which is massive and in q3 he put this in q3 our sales in the smart home group declined 49 to represent two percent over two percent of our overall sales while we continue to see various long-term opportunities in the broader smart home market we will be prudent in how we deploy our resources in the near term. Wow. So maybe, just thinking about this, maybe the universal remote, the sunset is coming on that. Put out to pasture. Put out to pasture.

Yeah, I was looking for something. You had it there. Yeah. Eric in the chat room had mentioned earlier that maybe Logitech was trying to get rid of Harmony, sell it off. Maybe they'll find a buyer, maybe they won't. But I wasn't sure. Well, I know Control 4 may want to purchase it.

Yeah, now that you read those numbers, the whole landscape of this kind of heralded DIY smart home that five years ago when we started doing the show, everybody thought was really finally becoming a reality. It's a tough road. And I think for those out there who are willing to put in the elbow grease and make it a hobby, there's a lot of really cool stuff you can do that you couldn't do 10 years ago or even six, seven years ago. But for the vast majority, the average Joe out there, it's still a really difficult, you know, it's a hard, tough nut to crack for companies who are trying to really go out and appeal to them with sort of mass market solutions. It's a really interesting trend we've seen over the last five years. Yep, yep. And Eric's really adding to the show tonight. I'll also mention Lowe's folding up Iris. I think we talked about that last week, but I'm not sure.

I've had a rough couple weeks here, sleeping and whatnot. Yeah, that's right. Actually, been a lot of work going on. Yeah, that's right. Actually, we didn't hit that in the headlines, but we actually should have talked about that. They're bringing it down. I think they were looking for a buyer there and couldn't find one. So the Lowe's Iris solution is being completely shut down. No further support, as I understand it moving forward. So yeah, I mean, I think the, the DIY smart home is, is, it's looking like a tough, you know, people still trying to thread that needle, but I just, I don't know. It's very similar to the, like the pro smart home, right?

Like we, you and I followed this, this is exactly what happens. Like you get, you, you are still an early adopter, right like yeah the chips have not fallen where they're they're supposed to lay and like you you're navigating and trying to figure out like what security system do i have oh lowes is a pretty good brand i'll use theirs you know like that you there's no way to predict and tell what company is going to have a good quarter and just decide to shave a smart home division off. And in the same manner, like 10 years ago, there was no way to tell if your $30,000 or $40,000 investment into smart home technology was even, the company was even going to exist the next year. How many of those Colorado VNet homes put in $100 thousand dollars worth of lighting that had to get ripped out um so like there it was dicey for us as custom integrators for a long time

cutting our teeth and and getting into this newer technology and then like now we're just kind of seeing it play out again in in a different market with with i don't want to say like lower price points is less of a big deal. Because I mean, if you had a Lowe's IRA system and you had invested, you know, a few hundred dollars into it, and then we're paying them, you know, X amount per month to have it running. Like, I mean, that's still money that came out of your pocket into a product that that was you know hopefully going to be around a little bit longer than than what there are years certainly degrees of of uh impact though there right like you think about somebody who had their entire home fitted with colorado v-net lighting versus a 300 hub but i get i get what you're saying it's a pain

in the butt it's relative way yeah but uh no you're saying. It's a pain in the butt either way. Yeah. It's relative. Yeah. But no, you're right. I mean, all of these things, it's all technology and it's all where are you going to put your chips? And I think anytime you're making one of those decisions, you've got to look at the company and ask yourself, are they likely to be around in five or 10 years? Right? I mean, that's the question. And flat out, everything that exists today, whether it's Alexa, Google, Apple, like flat out everything that exists today, you're gambling. You're playing with early adoption right now. We have not.

This is not mainstream. If you'll know when it's mainstream, when the stuff exists in your house and it just works like and I will lean back on that, that that show. Oh, geez. I'm trying to remember. It's on Hulu. It's about them going to Mars. I'll lean back on that show. Oh, geez. I'm trying to remember. It's on Hulu. It's about them going to Mars. I'll lean back on that. Oh, yeah.

The first. Is it the first? That's what the first is in my turn. Something like that, I think, right? Yeah, the first. Yeah, it's about them going to Mars and being the first people. But the technology that exists in their homes is not something they interact with in a way that you and I interact with our technology. You walk in the room, the lights turn on.

It's just known that's how it's going to work. You reach over, you tap the lamp, it turns on. That's the goal. That's what we're all aiming for. We have all these disconnected different systems that are trying to do that for us right now. And until it's flush and level and everybody, you know, you can go to Ikea and get your tribe free stuff that works with your Apple iPhone, with whatever technologies already is installed in the house five years ago. Like that, that's when it's mainstream. And right now, that's when we that's when we pack up.

Yeah. And the show. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah all right nothing left to talk about here we're done i mean it'll be show like we'll hit you know we'll be in quad digits at that point jason but like um i i suspect it it's it's still a number of years out for that but oh yeah we're still in the early adoption phase and and it's ramping up but we're not not near that, but we're still in the early adoption phase and it's ramping up, but we're not near mainstream right now. We're still early adopting this stuff. Agreed. All of the links and topics that we've discussed on our episode here can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 244. Once again, that's hometech.fm slash 244.

While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis, weekly show reminders, and occasional updates about all of the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Don't forget you can join us in the chat room. Live Wednesday starting 7 to 7.30, somewhere around there. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live. And you can follow us on Twitter, too. That's generally where the announcements come from. So I'll tweet out an announcement with the link and everything at hometechpodcast on Twitter. Yep, absolutely. All right, Seth. Well, we've got a doozy, I think, of a pick of the week this week. Actually, I think a video this week is what we're doing, right? Yeah, well, I mean, timely.

The only thing that I think is coming out of ISE that I'm going to be super impressed with is this incredible video. I think it's an LG booth. How do you describe this? It's like a curved. It's got a bunch of curved screens kind of like up over your head it wraps down curves around and then drops down and they've got like this rainforest scene where like you're looking when you look up you're looking into the tree canopy it's crazy you look down you look into like a waterfall and the waterfall is curved even like oh man it is absolutely amazing and uh when i saw that i'm like well there's

there's the pick of the week that is beautiful yeah no it is it's an impressive array for sure and something that yeah you you're not going to see in your average home certainly no uh really really cool though uh Super impressive display. I agree. If I was there at ISE, that'd be a showstopper for me. I go back and sort of imagine my days as an integrator out in the Los Angeles area and, you know, the 1% of the 1%, right? I could see one of those guys sort of watching this video and being like, I need that in my 25,000 square foot mansion in Beverly Hills. And that will happen. One of these days that will happen.

And if you're an integrator on that project, you know, send us some pictures. But for now, we can all sort of look at this video with googly eyes and just marvel at the amazing display technology that's happening right now. It really is an incredible time in that field. Yeah, anything you want to do with video. I've said this for a couple of years, but it's just even more true today than it ever was. Anything you want to do with video, especially in commercial, you can do. The answer is yes. The next question is how much money you got.

But the answer is yes, it can be done. And this just goes to show. I don't know if these are like production panels or they're custom for this. It'd be interesting to find out. But man, this is, this is, it's really, because it looks like to me, like if you're looking at some, some of those panels look flat and straight. But then some of them are curved. And I don't know if, I can't tell if like it's the same curve and they're just like joining them up and matching them or like it's an entirely flexible panel. And you just like get in there like track lighting and kind of like, you know, get in there and bend it up and then set the frames in place and then wallpaper the screen technology on there. I don't know, but like it is a cool display.

It is very cool. So if you want to check that out, hometech.fm slash 244. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, ideas for a show topic, give us a shout. We would love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm. Or if you would prefer, you can head on over over to home tech dot fm slash feedback and fill out our online form yep and we want 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 home tech dot fm slash support to learn

how you can support home tech for as little as one dollar a month any pledge over five dollars a month gets you a shout out on the show but every single pledge gets you an invite to our private slack channel the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and for the inside baseball conversations about all aspects of home technology and ise there's some really good conversations about you know some people some of the guys are in actually atSE this year, and pretty cool to see what's going on. Yeah, it's great. We've got a large contingent of supporters of our show here that are over across the pond in the UK and elsewhere all across the world. And the Hub is a great place to connect and engage in really great conversations.

So thank you to everybody who is part of that community. It's a lot of fun. We really do appreciate it. If you cannot support our show financially, but would like to support us otherwise, we would appreciate a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice. Doing so lets us know how we're doing, gives us some feedback, and we're always trying to improve here. And just as important, it also helps other people discover the show. So once again, if you have a few minutes to go, give us a review on your podcast app of choice. We would really appreciate it. Sounds good. Well, Jason, I think that wraps up this week. I'm sure there'll be some more news coming out of ISE over the weekend and we're sure to pick it back up and talk next week. Yeah, we'll keep an eye out for that.

And I hope you have a great week, Seth. We'll talk to you soon. You too. Have a good one.