HomeTech.fm - Episode 275 - CEDIA 2019 Wrap-Up

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Join us on this jam-packed edition as we wrap up another big CEDIA show! Our discussion includes some of the biggest trends and technologies we observed on the floor, plus a few cool product-finds you won’t want to miss! That, plus the latest home tech headlines including: The end of an era as Interlogix prepares to shut down at the end of 2019. AT&T refutes rumors that DirecTV is on the selling block. News emerges on NBC’s forthcoming streaming service, Peacock. An interesting (if pricey) new gadget from Hue. An in-depth review of Amazon’s massive hardware event. And 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, September 27th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? Good, man. Welcome back. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Took a much needed few days off there last week to decompress after Cedia. It was a little camping trip that I'd actually had planned since early in the year and had a really nice time up in the mountains for a couple of days. Great time of year to do that here in Colorado, but I'm happy to be back. And man, we've got a busy, busy show ahead of us this week. week yeah yeah because well i mean let's let's just go ahead and and and bow to your brilliance here go to a show work really hard for probably a week there right like just yeah all out yeah meetings everything day after the show you go camping right so like well not quite the day after but close brilliant close yeah yeah it it uh, it was definitely something I was looking

forward to. Got a little bit of fly fishing in up there, which is like my number one thing that I love doing, uh, just for me. And, and, uh, so yeah, that was a lot of fun when I, when I planned it, um, earlier in the year, I kind of, I knew Cedia was going to be there and it just so happened that it was a nice, uh, that that lined up nicely. Mostly it was a, uh, a virtue of wanting to do it after the kids went back to school so that it'd a nice, uh, that that lined up nicely. Mostly it was a, uh, a virtue of wanting to do it after the kids went back to school so that it'd be a little bit less, uh, crowded up there at the campgrounds. And that turned out to be, uh, that turned out to be really nice. Very cool. Very cool. Well, glad to have you back in the, uh, what do we call it on the grid? Uh, so to speak.

Yeah. Yeah. Glad to be here. Yep. Well, we, we talked a little bit in our little from-the-floor kind of discussion of what we were kind of seeing around the show. Since we're both kind of working the show in different respects, we both had kind of different crazy responsibilities to get done during the week and didn't get as much floor time as we have each in the past. Mine was the floor time I had was meetings in vendors booths and kind of checking out the new products that they were talking to us about distributing or meeting with current vendors and talking about the products that they have on hand. But I mean, for the most part,

there weren't any or not any there cause there were, but there weren't many like show stopping announcements for product. It's like, uh, the cool stuff I saw, I posted, you know, online or on Twitter and somebody, and most people were like, yeah, I saw that last product. It's like, the cool stuff I saw, I posted online or on Twitter, and most people are like, yeah, I saw that last year. It's like, all right, well, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's yesterday's news, dude. Yeah. Yeah, I feel you. Definitely, we want to start out the show here diving into CDL a little bit, since we didn't really get a

chance to do that last week, because like you said, I was off the grid. I know we did get a short show published that we recorded from the show floor, but we'll dive in here to a few thoughts, and then we'll get into some headlines, busy news week as well. But yeah, like you said, we've talked about this before. I mean, it's just a very different experience going to Cedia now as a vendor on the vendor side versus as an attendee, where you get to really walk around and see all the booths. But as we've done the last couple of years, we did our crash course on Saturday. You and I got together and got to do a quick sort of speed lap around the show floor and made some notes about a couple of interesting trends that I observed in some specific booths as well. And I'm always sort of, now that I'm on the vendor side, always asking people when they come by the booth, like,

hey, what's your big takeaway? Any big products you've seen? And it's typically the case. I mean, we always, I think, collectively get excited about these shows, and we want to look for that big show-stopping story that we can all kind of rally around and talk about at the water cooler. But more often, it's an iterative process, especially now with, you know, in this day and age, social media and just online presence being what it is, I don't think that companies are quite as compelled as maybe they were in decades past to really hold off and make a huge show at these conventions. I think there's more ways to get the message out now, which means these companies don't necessarily hold off and keep their powder dry in Telsid way perhaps they used to in, in, you know, in yesteryear. So even, even companies like, I don't know, a company that may start with an A that we were definitely going to have to talk

about today. Cause today the Amazon had this massive event where they like refreshed all their products. What? Two weeks after Cedia, like they didn't show any of that product at Cedia. So it's like they kept their powder dry and then continued to keep the powder dry. I mean, we're a ring partner, right? And we talked to them at length about certain aspects and certain products we knew that were coming, but some of the stuff that popped up today had no idea, other than a couple hints in some of the conversations we had that something was coming, had completely

no idea that some of this product would hit the shelves or pre-order on their site in a mere matter of days from the end of Cedia. So, yeah, it's an interesting dynamic with those big boys on the show for it, like Google and Ring, and ring being Amazon, like they're, they're warming up for the holidays and I'm sure that companies as big as those, like they're thinking, okay, we've got black Friday coming up.

What are we going to do for black Friday sales? Well, we got to get our equipment out before then we've got to get everything lined up and talked about and in the press. So when people go shopping at the end through November, they know to go buy a ring doorbell or something like that. Right. That's right. and talked about and in the press. So when people go shopping through November, they know to go buy a Ring doorbell or something like that, right? That's right.

So completely different press cycle than Cedia. Yeah, Cedia is like barely a blip on the radar for them, certainly. But yeah, some of the trends, and there'll be probably a little bit of redundancy here with what we touched on quickly last week in our on location show. But definitely 8K was pretty prevalent as we walked around and always want to make it a point to check out the TV vendors, you know, Sony and LG and see what companies like that are up to. And 8K was pretty prevalent this year. So, of course, all of the questions remain about infrastructure and content and all of the challenges that are going to come with this 8K transition when many of us on the professional side of the industry, as well as presumably some on the consumer side, probably still feel like we're still figuring out 4k right now 8k is is definitely the very very big push but saw saw a lot quite a bit of that uh on the show floor this year yeah and the the 8k tvs that they were showing were extremely impressive i guess is yeah is is the only way to put it like um

they're tvs that i won't be able to afford at all ever you know i mean not not ever you you put it on right yeah timeline they're going to be like 30 in a couple years but uh that's that's right yeah 24k is out but um yeah the the the 8k stuff looked absolutely stunning sony had one that they were showing off and actually uh the guys over were partners with uh av pro edge uh their hdmi hd based hdmi stuff and those they are like, they come from a background of doing testing and that kind of thing. They had one of their 8K prototype

generator boards there and they were hooking it up to a Sony that they basically had gone over to Sony and bought off of them for the show and had it in front of their booth. So we got to kind of have a little bit of hands-on time there and take real close looks at it. At the same time, they were hooking up their 8K generator to it and putting up test patterns and that kind of have a little bit of hands-on time there and take like real close looks at it at the same time they were hooking up their ak generator to it and putting up test patterns and

that kind of thing on it just a bright beautiful tv just absolutely stunning yeah yeah another one that that is always a kind of a showstopper and stops in your tracks a little bit is like the crystal led sony has a crystal led and i know that's a proprietary name. LG and Samsung have their, I think, competitive technologies. But that is a really beautiful display that they had up there, and how the little tiles go together is pretty neat. So more of a commercial application, although I have heard of some old colleagues of mine in the Los Angeles area that do really the ultra high-end stuff, and I'm sure this is going on in other ultra luxury markets, but the use of that technology in really high-end home theaters or cinemas could be really interesting as well. So I spent a couple of minutes kind of getting googly eyes over that technology. That's always pretty neat to see up close and in person.

Yeah. We could talk a little bit about these guys too black dove they were kind of all over the show and kind of a black horse of the show is that is that can i say that since they're named black up uh sure you can get away with that so so these guys uh these guys make this like moving artwork basically that you can put on your tv uh which which keeps the tv screen kind of moving and alive and doesn't look like the black mirror on your wall that no one likes. But they have a pretty good job,

and I want to kind of bring it back around to what you were just talking about with those commercial applications. On their demo booth that they have, and I'm trying to see if I can find this on their website, but they had this massive two-story planar video wall, kind of what we're talking about with the Sony, that was hooked up to a black dove piece of artwork. The client from his phone, it's a double volume entryway, basically, with the stairwell that goes up. pretty common in most homes

I think you would you and I would say to see that when you walk into the house just having this double volume room that you walk into yep an entire and they always had these weird walls that just like okay I guess we're gonna put a tapestry there I have no idea like yeah massive walls and they put artwork on them and they always look small so but. But whatever client decided to do this, decided to spend a million dollars on a planar screen, put it sideways all the way up two stories. And the video of this is just absolutely stunning.

It's hard to describe, but I'm going to try and find it. They may have a video of it online, so I'll try and find that and put it into the show notes. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes, hometech.fm slash 275. Go check that out. And yeah, you mentioned Black Dove there, kind of a TV art solution. And TV art was actually, to me, kind of a surprisingly prevalent trend. You know, Samsung really kind of led the way with their frame TV. Um, but you're seeing a lot of, of different, um, iterations of this now, whether it's a box like black dove that, you know, obviously doesn't

address the frame, but just puts the content up, um, on the, on the TV. There was a company, I think called frame my TV there, uh, that had solutions that you could put around the TV. And, uh, those were kind of interesting, but,, but LG was showing TV art as well. So I think there's, there's just a move, especially in the, the CDA market, which is inherently a, this is a high end channel for technology manufacturers to get to market. And I think they're realizing that like you alluded to, there is a demand from, from this sort of clientele to just not have that big,

ugly, black rectangle on the wall when it's not in use. And so it was cool to see. I know you and I spent a couple of minutes with Samsung looking at theirs and they were kind of showing off how really they've really tried to incorporate truly making it look like a piece of art, not just moving art on a TV screen, but actually the frame and how he showed an old... It was meant to look like a painting, and you could literally see the detail around the canvas around the edges, and it really looked very, very real. And so it was, it was kind of cool to just spend a few minutes looking at that and see that trend, um, emerging because I know for sure as a former integrator that, uh, there's a lot of homes that, that the home tech pros are working in where these sorts of solutions to make things more aesthetically pleasing when the TV is not in use are, are definitely something that people value. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it,

it is just this ugly black box on the wall. And the more we can pretty it up and make it integrated, I guess is a good word for that, into the rest of the home and the decor, the better. I mean, we try all sorts of stuff all the time. Like we try motorized mounts. And then I remember there was like this can't, they're still out there, like these canvas art companies that like put it roll a piece of canvas and it of artwork and it rolls down and in front of the tv when it's not in use i mean those were pretty popular you know a number of years ago i think most people are are content with living with the the tv mounted as close to the wall as possible um one tv technology this was brought up in in our it just reminded me saying saying

tvs being close to the wall as possible this was brought up in the uh in the chat is that i didn't see any uh and i think greg brought this up he didn't see any um curved tvs this year like nobody was displaying curved tvs and i what a bummer i have to think about it like i didn't see them either so i i can't really say. I think, is that trend dead? Are we not going to see Curve TVs anymore? It may be, and you're right. I actually hadn't even thought of that. I mean, I think I may be early.

Yeah, until you said that, I hadn't thought of that either. But you're right. I did not see any of those. And I think for most of us, that's probably welcome news i thought those always felt like a gimmick to me i was never a huge fan of the curve tv other than you know i could kind of see it for um uh like gaming applications i think it maybe had some some merit but yeah it always felt like a little bit of a gimmick. And you're right. I don't think I saw any of those at Cedia this year. Yeah. Everything was flat and as thin as, I mean, thinness was big, but everything was flat and artwork like that, like we were talking about

art, everything was, it was, it was trying to integrate it in with the home as minimally as possible. So I'm glad to see that trend over the curved and funky things that have been doing the video. Yep, you got it. All right, well, a few more updates here. We'll kind of move through these a little bit quicker. Sonos had a pretty good presence this year. I can't remember if it was last year or the year before,

but they had the Sonos no-show that we were joking about where they had the big giant booth in front and center of the show floor, then they were off-site and their booth was like you know nothing but a barren sign that said head over uh head over here to come see us but they they were there in in force uh this year and i know the um the sonos move i actually as we were loading out after the show had ended um ended up sharing an elevator with a couple of the Sonos guys and chatted with them for just a minute or two. And, uh, they, they said that the move, uh, the, the portable product was, was really, really popular. And, uh, you know, one of the guys commented like, ah, I was surprised. I thought, you know, integrators may not like this

product because they, they want more like installable custom solutions. And I remember thinking, no, I knew they would like this product. We've only been asking for this forever. 10 years, yeah, 10 years. So I think there still remains kind of a disconnect a little bit between some of these bigger companies like Sonos and the integrator, if I can just speak very broadly for a second there. But yeah, that product did, sounds like did really well and was pretty popular on the floor and looked pretty nice.

Yeah, and one other thing as we were walking in the Sonos booth, this was kind of towards the back left side, I guess. Depends on which way you entered it. There was a partner's wall with a map of the show floor with little numbers of all the booths of companies that they are integrated with. And, uh, man, like night and day difference from the barren, you know, get it. Why don't you go somewhere else, uh, to look at our products, uh, to like, you know, what, two, three years later, uh, where they're, they're,

they're fully invested. It seems like they're fully invested in, uh, in, in working with integrators and the systems that we work with day in and day out. So very cool to see them stepping up there. Yeah. And speaking of being invested in integrators, another sort of big company that was making an interesting push into the channel here was Vivint. And by interesting push, I don't mean that this was their only push, but just the way that they were approaching it was interesting. And this is a program now that integrators can work with where it's a fairly large or significant dichotomy, in my experience in the integration space, between integrators who have security as part of the

business and integrators who just don't want to touch security. There's licensing, and it's just kind of a different can of worms that they want to stay out of. And all of the integrators that I worked for fell sort of into that latter category where we needed like a good solution to refer people to, because of course it comes up all the time and you don't want to just say no, you want to at least be able to say no, but here's a solution. And Vivint has this program now where you can basically just, as I understand it, refer Vivint. They'll come in and pretty much take care of everything. And the integrator gets 50%, numbers I jotted down here, 50% of the installation cost, 15% of the product cost. So again, 50 of the install, 15 of the product, and then 20% of the ongoing recurring monthly revenues. So that seems like a pretty good deal. Yeah, pretty nice thing to lay in front of them

to try and become a partner. I agree with you. The companies I worked with, I've worked for some straight alarm companies, which that's all we wanted to do. We really didn't care about the AV, but kind of get dragged into it. And then I've worked for the other side,

just a pure automation company. We were really good at that. And the security, like you said, it just comes up. You don't ever want to deal with it. You don't want to deal with the service part of it. And I understand the RMR implications, but you know, you can,

plenty of people made a good business off of just doing automation and AV install, right? Like you don't need to have both of that. So we got drug into that reluctantly because I think the problem that we were having was any other company you'd sign up with, it's almost like you have to almost partner with them, right? You're kind of relying on somebody else

to supply a working knowledge of a system that you probably, honestly, know more about than they do. But they have the security license and all that good stuff and you have to teach them how to bring parts on site that can be integrated with and not just put in the basic panel that has no options like for serial control and all that good stuff so yeah it can be extremely frustrating and i think with with this I think they had some integrations with like Control 4 and some of the other big control systems out there on the table

so it looks like they're kind of stepping up and stepping into the integration business in a larger way where they can become a valued partner for dealers like the ones I work for and the ones you evidently work for where security wasn't our main focus it was literally everything else we wanted to do first

before we had to get involved with security, but kind of got dragged into it as a last resort type thing. So hopefully that works out. Right. Yeah, it seems like an interesting program. Savant stopped by their booth. They were showing their breakers and, I forget, Race Point Solar and Race Point Energy, I think is what those were called. Interesting product. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that one a little bit.

Is it an energy monitoring solution, a lighting control solution? Which one is it primarily? It does a little bit of both. Does lighting control need to be literally in the breaker panel? I don't know. Savant dealers out there, it's been several years since I was really immersed in the details of Savant. But I'm hearing Savant continues to innovate, and I'm hearing generally good things about the path that they're on since Bob Madonna came back. But this one just feels to me like a little bit of an experiment. And I don't know how many integrators are comfortable. Most integrators have been burnt running experiments

in clients' homes. So I don't know. I'll be curious to know how that one does in the market. Yeah. Yeah. That will be interesting to see. I know that that particular type of product is gaining a little more popularity. Like Savant's not the only one that has a controller breaker. Obviously, we talked to, what was it, the Lebanon crowd. I know some other, like, in the commercial sector, I think this may be a little more popular. I don't know. I'm just wondering what it can do for you in a residential space.

So, yeah, I will be curious to see what they do with it moving forward. Yeah. And then kind of like the last quick noteworthy thing, of course, that we haven't touched on is the Snap AV and Control 4. They had different booths this year. They weren't merged under one booth, of course, but it was a big topic of conversation at the show, and I know CE Pro covered it quite a bit. I didn't get a chance to stop by and really spend much of any time chatting with any of the folks I know over at either of those companies, but I'm sure it was a really busy show for them, fielding a lot of questions from key dealers and general public at the show, I'm sure, did get a chance to chat with James over at SnapAV about Oversea and some of the updates they're making there. And it looked like some backend

and UI improvements and caching improvements he talked about. So basically making it, you know, the performance better and making it faster, more integration. So Oversea played, again, a very prominent role at the SnapAV booth. It was really positioned kind of front and center, which I continue to find really interesting that SnapAV of all of the products and things that they're featuring at their booth, Oversea continues to get really that prominent billing, which I find pretty interesting. You mean Oversea? Oversea. That's right i apologize yeah no i i i thought the uh the booth

was i mean if you can if the snap av and control four guys were all wearing and gals were all wearing the same uh like shirt like gray shirt and so if you kind of got into that area and you kind of like wandered into the wrong booth and you're like it's happened to me a couple times i'm like wandering around the snap AV booth. And I'm like, wait, this isn't, Oh,

the control for this is over here. And so I'd wander back out to the control for, but it's, it was kind of like a big continuous, I don't know. They're kind of at an angle, but you could easily find yourself in the wrong booth thinking that you were talking to the same people,

but they were all kind of wearing the Snap AV plus control for logo stuff, uh, which it's kind of awkward. Hopefully they'll fix that, uh, come up with the name of the company that doesn't involve a plus sign. I'm not, not a fan of the plus sign, Jason. Yeah. Not a fan. Understood. All right. Well, uh, let's, I think you had a couple of cool, like, um, sort of picks from CDR, cool, like products or things that you wanted to touch on real quick before we jump into a busy news week here. Yeah. Well, the first thing, I'm going to say the coolest thing I saw at the show. All right.

I'm going to say the coolest thing I saw on the showroom floor. Let's put it that way. I'm going to say I kind of liked if you go, our friend of the show, Adam Justice, had a nice little outlet, like controllable outlet, HomeKit controllable. I think it worked with Amazon and Google as well. But it was like a flush mount outlet, like the one you put in the box, right? It has little lights on it. It has, I think you went and looked at this thing, right? It has like the touch, adaptive touch thing. I forget the calls.

But you can like push a button on the side. You can double tap it and it'll turn on and off the outlet itself. In the wall, that's a super cool product. I think he's coming to market later this year with that. So I think it'll be on their website, Amazon. But he had it at the show showing it off. I know he was excited to be there. It was really cool to catch up with him and talk to him a little bit about that.

But that was actually one of the coolest things I saw there was this little outlet that doesn't really exist everywhere. Right. I was glad to see that. I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah, I agree. And there was another thing that was lighting control related that they were kind of walking around the show, but they weren't involved in the show. And that's this company, Deco, D-E-A-K-O. I think we've talked about them.

I know we've talked about them before because I thought that this product was a really cool idea. In fact, I'm going to take full credit for thinking of this 10 years ago as I was frustratedly waiting on an electrician to show up and

swap out a control 4 dimmer because when you don't have an electrical license you can't do that so you have to wait for the electrician to show up and change out a control 4 dimmer that's gone bad and it costs the client double they made this really cool back box and they've put the electrician wires They made this really cool back box.

The electrician wires in these back boxes basically at rough-in or trim, I guess. Then you just slide in a regular switch into it. Then when you want to upgrade that circuit to being a smart switch or a smart three-way or four-way or whatever, you just push this little green button. There's some videos on their website. Yeah, I'm looking at that. It is as easy as it looks there and maybe not easier. And, man, the feel of the product is absolutely stunning.

I was shocked to be holding it in my hand and flipping. You know when you pick up a toggle, a dollar dollar toggle from home depot or a dollar to 75 you pick it up you flip it it feels cheap this did not feel cheap like it right it felt premium like i was i was shocked at like a first generation project product um that's coming off the line to be as well put together and as well thought out as this one was so um it actually was the coolest thing i had to show with a little caveat that it was like i saw it outside of the show because we met him for lunch or something like that and okay i sat down and talked to him about it but yeah still a really cool product keep an eye on these guys um since it it is a platform i know i know

we talked a little bit about him going around and talking to other vendors that make lighting uh to basically get their back boxes in their technology. So maybe one day this back box idea would be the standard, and then we're just popping in modules for lights, which would be awesome. Yeah, it's a cool idea. I think that is going to be the big challenge as I'm watching this. That's kind of what I'm thinking about. It's like, well, that's really neat. But yeah, there's kind of a whole, I guess, paradigm shift in terms of the planning and initial preparation. You got to get those back boxes in there. And as long as you do that, then yeah, it's really neat.

But of course, that can be a challenge depending on the nature of the project. So that's pretty cool. One to watch. Yep. Keep an eye on that one. A couple other things. There's a company called Racketeers. I've run across them a couple of times because they make those absurd products you would use to maybe wire your house, which is like a paint gun hooked up to a wire puller. And you shoot a bullet across the attic. And then, yeah, that's never going to work. You're going to put that guy out or something.

That's funny. I would keep an eye on it or something. That's funny. I would keep an eye out. They have some really cool things. There's a Qubit enclosure hole cutter that I thought was pretty cool that they have a couple of sizes. They have a two-gang size available on now. And there's some other stuff on their website that I think is pretty neat. I may bring up later after I get my hands on one one of these days.

But keep an eye on them. Rack, rack a tears. We'll put a link in the show and it's kind of weird spelling. Yeah. Yeah, they do. The cubit one is, is cool. And I remember watching this video. So you attach this thing to like a reciprocating saw. I think, yeah. Also oscillating saw actually. The vibrating one. Yeah. Yep. And then, uh then uh and it's just it's shaped like a single gang cut out and you just hold it up against the wall and it it cuts right through and i remember as i watched this video thinking like man i wish i had that because i'm telling you seth i sucked at cutting those holes like i was not the guy you wanted cutting your drywall

when i was an integrator let's just say that. I was much better behind the computer or wiring the rack. If it involved cutting into the drywall, I always managed to find a stud or a pipe or chip the paint. It was a disaster. No, I get it. Chipping the paint's an issue. I would always cut it in and then put the thing in. I'm like, that's not level. I sat here for 20 minutes putting the level thing on. So yeah, this could help us out. I used to sweat that. If you want to get involved with cutting drywall again, Jason, get one of these.

No, I'm good. I'm good. And then there was a, I think, I remember a couple years back, you were kind of looking for something like this. This Watchman Evo cell gate thing. Yes. Yeah. It was a couple of years.

You were like, I've got to find this for a client. But I thought this was pretty neat. You have a gate way out at the end of a long driveway, and you always have to run stuff out to it to support the phone ringing back at the house and all that. It's never fun to do. These guys have kind of combined Verizon and AT&T cellular into it, made a decent-looking box out of it. One of them has a touchscreen.

One of them has the regular keypad that you're used to seeing out at gates and entries to neighborhoods, and kind of put that together. But I thought it was a cool idea, adding on cellular technology. Yeah, because you're right. I mean, even when you're working on a, you know, quote-unquote normal-size home, it doesn't have to be a massive estate. If you've got any, although not many normal-size homes have their own auto gate, but we'll put that aside for a second. Anytime you tend to be working on those gates, they're always like in a location where it just takes so much planning and coordination.

And it's not like rocket science to get that done, but it's a pain. And I think I remember very vividly the client who a couple of years ago, we had a really specific thing where we just we really needed a cellular solution and we ended up finding one but it was hard we had to dig around there wasn't a lot out there uh that fit what we needed and so more more solutions like this that use um cellular technology at at the auto gates or pedestrian gates i think is is a great thing so i love it yeah it solves like issues with lightning and all that kind of stuff too because you're not running a wire back i mean run it back into the house put

a surge protector on it but still like i i can't tell you how many times i would get a phone call our gate thing doesn't work and turns out the gardener cut the line or went through the the conduit with the line in it everything up so you're out there trying to patch stuff in the ground and yeah this would solve a lot of those little issues down the road too so that's right i thought that was a pretty cool pretty cool setup and uh i think that's it uh yeah there was a forward fam the forward racks were touch on a little bit middle atlantic kind of a cool looking deal yeah uh i mean if you're gonna pay for middle-atlantic rack you're gonna pay for mid-atlantic rack and they have all these like x man do you remember getting the cat the catalogs and just kind of like sitting there and staring at them with like overwhelming like feeling of just being overwhelmed by everything in there oh yeah yeah well they're

they've upped the ante here because now they have these rack shelves and these little plastic accessories that you can twist, clamp into them, and then clamp your accessories down. Just a really smart idea, I think. We'll put a link in the show notes to this thing. If you've ever worked in a rack, this is definitely a dream for cable management and device management that all these little ballon devices that you get, just slapping these in a rack, on the side of the rack.

They also have a special type of rack. I don't know if you see it down the way where it says, lose the drill. It's got these square holes in the middle space of every rack unit. Those panels actually clip in without needing to be drilled. You don't need to have the four screws or whatever. You just put them in. I think they had a couple of shelves as well

that you could just pop in with those little plastic clips. So it made putting together a rack or rearranging a rack fairly straightforward. But I definitely like the wire management little blue clips that you can get and kind of set up inside the rack yeah push everything down i thought it was a good idea yeah go check that out if you're a middle atlantic uh dealer or considering it it is a premium product relative to some of the other racks out there on the market but you definitely uh get some quality there and they've

got some cool little gadgets there yep that, that'll help you speed things up. So, again, that's the Forward product family there from Middle Atlantic. All right, well, that'll do it for our Cedia wrap-up this year. Another fun show. So I had a lot of fun chatting with you out there in Denver. It's always good to see you, Seth. We'll have to try to get that up to more than once a year here one of these days. But that'll do it for Cedia.

And I think without delay, let's go ahead and jump in to our headlines. We got a busy week in news here. So what do you say we get started with those? Let's do it. Interlogix, a division of UTC Climate Controls and Security, will begin winding down its business in the United States and Canada by the end of the year, according to a note sent to its distributors. The company plans to focus on growth opportunities in other fire and security businesses. UTC says Interlogix will continue to provide customer service in the areas of tech support, product fulfillment, and warranty obligations in accordance with its warranty policies. End of an era.

I mean, these panels go way back. I mean, even before GE security existed, I guess, we had like the NX panels and CADEX. I think maybe CADEX was part of that. Just kind of a long lineage of security panels that go way, way, way, way, way back before the year 2000. That seems very far back. But in technology the year 2000. That seems very far back.

But in technology, it is. It is really far back. And I mean, it's kind of wild. I mean, GE got out, what, in 2004? And that's when Interlogic kind of took over this between ITI and SLC technologies. No, that was way back in 2000. Sorry, sorry. Yeah way back in 2000. So, sorry, sorry. Yeah, 2000 was ITI SLC. Yeah.

Yeah. Purchased by General Electric in 2002, renamed it GE Security in 2004, and then UTC bought it for $1.8 billion in 2010 and reverted it back to Interlogix. Yeah, yeah. That's the one I'm remembering, that big 2010. I had a bunch of clients that were actually involved in GE security that found themselves without a job and had these nice big homes that we had just finished. And, you know, they moved off.

They did well for themselves. But just kind of wild to see, kind of wild to see a company like this shut down. Indeed. AT&T Inc.'s chief operating officer defended the company's strategy in the media business and said it doesn't plan to sell the DirecTV unit, viewing the satellite TV provider as central to its ambitions in streaming video. Jason, there were a couple of rumors going around, flying around the interwebs,

saying that DirecTV was on the chopping block over at AT&T. And, you know, much to our shock, but it looks like they're saying that's a no-go. We're going to keep DirecTV around. Yeah. Yeah, it says, although DirecTV has hemorrhaged subscribers as the consumers cancel their TV service, Mr. Stanky said it would play a significant role when the company launches a subscription video streaming product next year. So interesting. We'll have to wait and see how that shakes out.

Speaking. Sorry, go ahead. Do you think that's his name? Stanky? Is it? I would say Stanky, but. Stanky. Well, you know me.

I'm just letting it go. We're going to keep it in the show. What's in the show is in the show. All right. Moving along here. NBCUniversal's planned entry into the streaming video market may prove costlier than expected. When the Comcast-owned entertainment company in January unveiled plans to launch its own streaming service, it planned to differentiate the offering from rivals like Netflix and Disney by making it ad-supported and free.

But a number of cable and satellite providers have told NBCU they won't automatically offer the service to their subscribers, likely reducing its potential audience at launch. Instead, they want something in return, possibly raising the cost of the service for NBC. So NBC getting ready to unveil their service, which I think they're going to call... Peacock. Peacock. Yeah. There you go.

And it's coming out soon. So I think they did announce... We may have had another story that ended up on the floor, but had a little bit more details about that. But yeah, they said it's named Peacock. So we've got another one in the fold to keep up with at this point. Yeah.

Phillips Hue has unveiled a new Hue Play HDMI sync box. The box allows you to sync your smart lights to your on-screen TV content. Awesome! With the Philips Hue Play HDMI sync box. Four HDMI inputs allow you to connect your media devices to the Hue setup, resulting in a fast, seamless display of colorful smart light that responds and reflects the content you watch or listen to on your TV.

Sounds like the most awesome product I've ever heard of, but the price of this thing is $230 freaking dollars. They are crazy. Is that a deal breaker for you? Absolutely. I mean, I've needed this in the past. Like, I've needed this to hook up.

There's a couple apps you can download and basically run on your iPhone or iPad. And it always has to be open. And you kind of have to set it next to the speaker that's playing the music. But it'll send out like this. It'll do this with your Philips lights. And I've done it for some parties in the past. Just, you know, kind of have have fun around New Year's or whatever. So this seems like a brilliant idea.

And then here we are. It's like $230. It's not $230 brilliant. I'm sorry. It's not going to happen. Yeah, it is pricey relative to that kind of type of product, I guess. I was curious when I saw that why they did four HDMI inputs. Maybe they'll come out with a cheaper one that only has one or two.

Yeah. Four just seems like a lot. It seems like just pass it through and maybe, I don't know, maybe they have to have that for HDMI specs. I don't know. It's kind of weird. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I think most homes, I don't know. I don't have the data to back this up,

but I think most homes that like Hugh is going into are probably going down in terms of the number of HDMI devices. Right. Like I think about my home and I've got one, like everything goes through the Apple TV. So for HDMI inputs, three of those, if I were to buy this would be useless,

probably indefinitely, forever. So, you know, maybe, Seth, your wish will be fulfilled with a cheaper one once they come out with like a one or two input. Yeah, I mean, it's like a BOGO sale. Like you buy one HDMI, you get one free, and they're just like, well, one and two, so I guess we'll get four. That's right. All right. Well, moving on here, Amazon is launching a new tier of its music service, another new tier. Oh, God. Dubbed Amazon Music HD. It offers lossless versions of audio files for streaming or downloading at a price that aggressively undercuts title, the main competition. Amazon will charge $14.99 a month for the HD tier or $12.99 if you're a Prime customer. Title's plan by comparison is $19.99 a month for the hd tier or 12.99 if you're a prime customer titles plan

by comparison is 19.99 a month uh and this plan from amazon was rumored a few months ago so this is now uh i think it's i don't know in fairness i think it's it's just really three tiers so it's i think the branding is more confusing than anything because they haven't really packaged these up as like um amazon music gold silver bronze, the branding for them has been kind of like separate. So you kind of get a little confused. I think at least I do. Yeah. I'm going to have to make a crazy wall with like the red ribbons connecting each one of these products. That's what I feel. That's right. It's a little, it's a little confusing, but there's the, the, the kind of the one that you just get for Prime.

If you're Prime, you get this one that's, I think, just Amazon Music, and then there's Amazon Music Unlimited, which is, I think, $9.99 a month and just gets you more songs, and now there's Music HD, which is the high-fidelity version. Well, just in time, just in time, because Amazon has done their event for the year. And man, did they release a bunch of new Echo products for this, and more, for this HD music service to run on. Spaghetti time. Oh, geez.

Yeah, well, there's definitely some spaghetti in here, and you'll identify the spaghetti pretty quickly as we get down towards the end of my notes here. But Amazon had a huge event today where they launched, I don't know, we were in the double digits with the products. I think it got up to like 10 or 14 different hardware products. Oh, God, it's got to be so crazy to work there i mean even with their resources like i just i have to imagine there's a lot of scrambling going on to get that many products ready for one show well and that's just the hardware products it doesn't count like the

sdks apis and and alexa stuff that they announced like all the new features that come to this like um they will kind of first kick this off they kicked off the entire event talking about privacy i guess um yeah it's kind of in the news these days when it comes to uh voice assistant topic yep big approve big push on privacy uh they they've made efforts to make the wake word 50 more accurate to prevent those false positives of it picking you up um they've introduced mute buttons that physically disconnect the microphones and cameras on their devices, so there's no chance of it recording when you put it on mute. And then they have a new feature that's rolling out. There's a new product, new feature. It's called Home Mode. And when you put your Amazon Echo or

your Ring cameras into Home Mode, the devices will not record audio or video while it's in home mode. So kind of some big stuff there. They all have the Amazon Privacy Hub, which is in the web and the app, where you can go on and look at all your recordings. I thought this was pretty cool. You can ask Alexa to delete what you just said. So if you say something and you look over there and you see the blue light running, say, hey, delete what I just said. Or you can say, delete everything I said today, and it'll do it. Because that's really cool. Amazon's the only company doing that and exposing those features.

I think that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, really awesome. That's great. I wish Apple and Google would do something similar to that where you can just delete the data that's on their web server. And they also have an auto-delete function that you can turn on that will delete those recordings in 3- to 18-month intervals. What they're doing with those are they're just looking at them or they're sitting off and parsing them

to make sure that what you said matches up with what the device thought you said was. And they don't need them forever. So having this delete three to 18 months later that's perfect that's we don't need that stuff floating out there forever so i think this is a great great idea yeah um and then later this year uh they're coming out with uh they're uh an alexa why did you do that which i think is awesome because uh you can find those those ghosts in the machine why why did it just do that? I don't know. It just put something over there.

I like that. It'll tell you why it just did or that it heard something or that it picked up somebody turned Bluetooth playing on somewhere else. It'll tell you why it did a particular action, which I think is great. I mean, this is awesome. As much as I give these guys for having a horrible app and kind of a product that just annoys me, this is a really good iteration on the software side of the product to make it better. And they are listening and trying to do these things to make them better. So kudos to them for doing this. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So some really cool stuff there. I agree with you on the

software side and features that I think, especially the privacy stuff is really important. We joke about it being a hot topic, but it's a hot topic for a reason and hats off to them for doing that. And like you said, hopefully other companies will follow suit. I think the more you see companies start to do this and Apple has been very prominent in their positioning about privacy. So hopefully this will become kind of a competitive differentiator that companies will strive to be more and more data privacy conscious, and that's a great thing for consumers. So good news there. Moving into hardware, and Seth, by the way, hats off to you for this write-up here. You'll have to see if you can get this formatted and posted into our show

notes. I'll just paste this in there, yeah. It's huge. Because there was a ton there, and we're not going to have time to go deep on all of this stuff. But quite a bit going on in terms of Echo speakers. So some new features there. It looks like more natural-sounding Alexa. Say it. I'm just going to say it. More natural-sounding Alexa. I tried.

I thought about it for a split second there. It was all over this thing. The products are named like Alexa Guard, Alexa for Kids, Alexa Guest Connect. There's no way that you can't talk about this product without saying the word Alexa. I'm sorry. It's going to happen. Yeah. Multilingual mode, celebrity voices.

They showed Samuel L. Jackson. That's pretty funny. Frustration detection. Supposed to know when you are frustrated with Alexa, which happens. I think we all know. So that's kind of cool. Guest connect lets your guests connect to your Echo and bring in their Alexa stuff. And then guard will now listen for footsteps, water, talking, et cetera, and send you text alerts. So those are some of the, a few of the new features there. Oh, and Analexa for Kids, Interface for Kids,

Education Skill API. It'll let you tell you how your kid did on their math test and more. So cool stuff there. Pretty cool. That's just kind of a small summary because there's more stuff they announced later. I kind of had to paste all this in kind of in random orders, but that's on the software side. On the hardware side, we got a new Echo Dot with a clock,

which is a smart idea because it's a bedside table, clearly made for the bedside table. It's got a nine-minute Suze button, and you can pre-order today for $59. Good price point for the holidays coming up. I bet they'll be free with a bunch of stuff. They'll pay you to take one.

Seriously, don't order any of this stuff today. Wait until November. I'm watching Twitter go by by and people are like i ordered this oh i just had to order this i had to get it and it's like why did you pay full price this stuff is going to be like 50 off this will be nine dollar product in like two months right yeah um the new echo uh is out it looks just like the echo plus from last year but there was no mention of a zigbee hub didn't hear anything about that in there so i'm wondering if they ripped that out uh it's 99 It looks just like the Echo Plus from last year, but there was no mention of a Zigbee hub. Didn't hear anything about that in there. So I'm wondering if they ripped that out. It's $99. It looks just like the Echo Plus has the same speakers and everything in it, but I don't know. Wonder what happened there. Echo Studio. Oh, so this is their Sonos slash Apple, what is it called?

Home Pod killer. It's got 3D audio, Dolby Atmos, self-tunes to the room. It looks like a big squatty Echo, and it's got three mid-range speakers, directional tweeter, and a five and a quarter inch bass driver. From everything that I was reading, people in the room, they set it up in there and hit play on it and sounded pretty good. You can pair two of these with a sub. I was curious, whoever bought an sub they're they're still out there but you can pair it with a sub and then it'll work with the fire tv and give you a 3.1 surround sound so kind of cool all right those are uh 100 those are 200 bucks a piece and i have on here look out sonos because that is like squarely aimed at a Sonos killer, right?

Oh, yeah. Sonos and, like you joked about, the HomePod as well. Nobody's buying those anymore. Yeah. Not sure what's happening there. We got a new Echo Show 8, which is just a little 5-inch screen. Now it has an 8-inch. So now they have a 5, an 8, and a 10.

So a good lineup for them to have. It's $199. I'm sorry. It's $1299 which is impressive on the price because that's i mean google's is like 179 or 200 for roughly the same thing it's hard getting hard to keep track of now there's so many of these is becoming a pretty popular uh device category facebook came out with their new uh portal devices I think, this week as well. We're not even going to jump into those because I don't know who's. Wait, I got a call out.

I called out on Twitter. On my account, I called out on our Home Tech, which has a few thousand people that follow it. If anybody knows someone, you don't have to admit to owning it. You can say that I know somebody that owns a portal. Yeah, let us know. don't have to admit to owning it like you can say that i know somebody that owns a portal yeah let us know i'm well i'm actually genuinely curious as to anybody who owns a portal or knows someone that owns a portal i i really want to know kind of like the cross demographic of who is buying these and what are they using for like i'm just really curious as to what these work well for

because i i don't hear anything about them other than they they come up with new product and then they're like if you go on reddit their their Reddit group has like 60 people following it. So I know it's not that popular of a product. So I really want to know where these things are going. I really do. I'm just morbidly curious. So side tangent over, back to the Echo stuff. We got an Echo Globe, which is a, sorry, an Echo Glow,

which is a glowing orb type device that can change colors and blink lights on and off from your Alexa-powered dance party. You can pre-order that for $29. I think that would be a pretty good holiday gift for people out there. Because all it does is glow. It's not very bright. I think I saw where it was 100 lumen, which is not very much at all. It's like a nightlight. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a little nightlight. Yeah. Yeah. Good, good for kids rooms and stuff. If you want like a little colored kind of nightlight or something, that might be kind of a cool little, like you said, cool holiday thing.

Yep. And it'll probably, it's $29. It'll probably be all of, it'll probably bundle it with a Echo. I'm telling you, they're going to start paying you to put these devices in your home soon. Yep, pretty much. And then another piece of hardware, the Echo Flex. This is a curious one, Jason. So this is like a tiny little Echo. It's like an Echo built into a wall wart, if you can imagine that.

You plug it into a power socket. It has USB on the bottom, so you can charge things or add accessories. It's got two buttons on it, like the mute thing on there. It's got a speaker, a mic, a tiny speaker, tiny mic, LED status. And they said it makes it easier to put voice access points around the house. So if you want to put one in the master bed, but you don't want to have a big, giant echo,

you can just plug this into the wall. It's $25, and it's got a motion sensor and nightlight accessories that you can add on to it. I don't know. It seems like an interesting product. I wonder what they're going to do with it because it kind of expands the Echo ecosystem out from the tabletop-type devices that we've seen from day one, really. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so lots of different Echo devices there to wrap your head around. Again, Seth, we've got to find a way to get all of these beautiful notes that you took into our show notes at hometech.fm. Tons of info there. There's more. Oh, there's plenty more, yeah. And we'll try to move through this relatively quickly. But, yeah, a lot to talk about, so we'll keep going. I want to jump a little bit down on the way you have these notes laid out and talk about the wearable stuff. Okay. Yeah. So this is your spaghetti. This is your

spaghetti. Yeah. This is the spaghetti. And since we're on Echo, so Echo Buds, they got their first, you know, there have been earbuds with Alexa integrations before, but these are the first ones with it native. Native headphones with built-in noise canceling by Bose. Pre-order those for $129. So again, native Echo earbuds. Echo frames, eyeglasses, discrete direction speakers that point audio at you, but not the people around you. They are prescription ready. 31 grams is what they weigh. i don't know what that compares to like i have no idea what mine yeah currently weigh there is no display or camera on them 179 dollars uh invite price yeah i think all of these were like limited maybe not the buds but the frames in the next one we talk about those are like echo the the frames and then i'll touch

on the next one real quick the echo loop a ring with a microphone built into it, buzzes for notifications. It said demo did not work well, apparently from the event. Again, an invite price of $129 on this one. The frames and the loop are particularly interesting. The earbuds earbuds not a huge surprise but to see them getting into smart glasses and and an actual ring wearable pretty interesting yeah well i think i think the the earbuds the 129 price point is is interesting because you're looking at like if you look at some of the other ones uh even within bows like you're looking at 200 plus for those type of headphones or yeah earbuds so i think that the price point is pretty good especially with noise Even within Bose, you're looking at $200 plus for those type of earbuds. I think that the price point is pretty good, especially with noise canceling.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. Shifting outside of the Echo world here for a minute, they've got a new Eero. In case you forgot, Eero was acquired by Amazon not long ago. New Eero devices, I don't like the aesthetic on these as much as the current ones. They're kind of thicker, a little squattier. Use a word you used earlier. They look a little squattier, I think, I feel like than the ones today. But dual band radio, adaptive backhaul, quick setup, mesh coverage, all that you would expect from euro you can use alexa to control wi-fi so turn on and off for certain devices users etc it's got the api available for other router manufacturers

take advantage of this feature as well on sale today for 99 a year up later this year in the three-pack bundle 249 down from 399 uh so quite the price reduction there yeah that's well at least that's what I read. I'm not sure if that's... I mean, I've seen that price all over the place, especially in the last couple months. Yeah. But, you know, I think for the holidays,

it's a good price point to have that three-pack bundle. And $100 for that device, that's a great price as well. Right. Moving into Ring. Ring, again, another Amazon company, but definitely part of what they're trying to do they mentioned this and i'm not sure what exactly they meant because i was kind of watching like one of those live blog things and not a live stream they have a ring they're going

to put alexa inside of ring doorbells the elite models the wired models um so i from what they saying, you can say something like, ask them to leave the package or something like that. I don't know. I thought it was a very confusing thing for the Alexa interface to be inside of a doorbell. But they're going to do it. I guess you can have your robot answer your door when somebody walks up to it. Like, hi, how's it going? There you go.

Yeah. Yeah. Looking for the use case on that one. Unlock the door. That's not a good use case. Not great. But I guess it's coming to the hardwired Elite models later this year. So it will be interesting.

The huge, huge, huge product from Ring, which I had no, as a Ring partner, I had no idea about. Like, this is awesome. It's a Ring retrofit alarm hub. So if you've got the old ADT panel in your house that hasn't been hooked up in 100 years or one of these GE panels, the company's going out of business now, you can get your hardwired alarm contacts that are already installed in the house integrated with the wireless ring alarm system.

They have this takeover module that is very similar. Yeah. Very similar to two gigs offering. It's kind of what I have in my house. Um, you just wire in your contact sensors and your motion detectors into it. And, uh,

those get brought into the ring panel. Uh, it's one 99 or you can bundle it with a ring alarm. Like it's got a package, uh, for three375 which is stunning on that price point like what you can do you can actually get in a complete takeover kit alarm system everything you need for $375 that and the price point that ring does for monitoring is just crazy what it's going to do to the uh how it's going to upset the traditional uh alarm uh i don't think they've produced this product at all like the

into the into the into the market but i know a ton of people i think you even have one i know people that have them they love them so um i have one but i i have hardwired content so i was kind of waiting for this product right right right yeah Yeah, that's a really neat one. If you're looking to upgrade an older system, I really like that one. Smart product there. Yeah. On the ring side as well, a couple of new cameras. Stick-up camera for $99 and a ring indoor camera.

Really small indoor form factor. Supports home mode, which you talked about earlier, for only $59. So this stuff just continues to get crazy inexpensive. That'll be $3 for holidays. For the holidays, that's right. Don't buy the Ring Indoor Cam right now, guys. Don't do it. $60?

Yeah, don't do it. I think it'll be $29. I guarantee you it'll be $30. Yeah, they're pricing these products knowing that the holidays come and they're going to put them on sale. So you're right. Works with Alexa, 100,000 plus new skills. No, no, no.

No, no, not new. Even for Amazon, that would be crazy. But they're at 100,000 plus skills, 85,000 plus compatible products. They got a smart oven they were showing. So that's kind of crazy. Other crazy things, Amazon F amazon fetch dog tracking hardware and software pretty interesting there echo auto coming to buick chevy cadillac uh and gmc and then saving

a really interesting one for last year amazon sidewalk a new low frequency radio standard so yay another standard um wait do i get to ring the standards bell yeah there you go we haven't rang the bell in a while uh works on 900 megahertz secure extends distance for controlling smart home devices 500 meters or better is what they're touting yeah interesting to see them come out with that with a new standard yep you go low low frequency like that you can blast through walls and everything uh i i i really want to see what they end up doing with this and what products they're shipping that have this in it i don't know i this has got to be for something like maybe the ring alarm system i don't know um

we'll be interesting to see what they do with it though yeah yeah all right well that'll do it uh just a few things there from amazon today um well again we'll get those notes posted in the show notes uh nice job putting those together seth so hometech.fm slash 275 all of the links and topics we've discussed on this episode can be found uh there one last time hometech.fm slash 275 while you're on the site don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter we'll send you weekly show reminders and other occasional updates here from the world of home tech. And also you can join us live in the chat room on Wednesdays, usually starting between 7, 7.30 PM Eastern. You can find out more about joining us live at hometech.fm slash live. A couple in the chat room tonight. Thanks for hanging out and

joining us. Matt's there, Matthew G., and Greg is maybe there. I'm not sure. Yeah, hanging out for a monster episode this week. Coming down the homestretch here, great pick of the week, Seth. I got a kick out of this one. Quote, useful invention. And it took me a minute to see what was going on here, but there's a guy

sitting at a computer. I'll do my best to describe this one. He's sitting at his laptop and he's got a little vacuum pack attached to his back. And the hose comes up over his shoulder and kind of passed over his ear on his left side. And then he's got it kind of clamped there and it's hanging down um and then hanging down on a couple of strings just below the end of that vacuum hose is and i love this because i've got a weak spot for for these a can of pringles um so he's got these this can of pringles hanging down about maybe six inches below the vacuum hose and then when he turns his head it pulls a string the string pulls the pringles up the vacuum grabs a pringle he turns his head back and he can eat a pringle all without taking his hands off of the keyboard yeah it's it's beautiful yeah that's the thing of beauty yeah automation at

its finest i gotta i gotta say this is courtesy of the uh greg of Greg in the chat room, the hub. He kind of ran across this and said, guys, you have to check this out. And, yeah, it's one of those delayed reactions, like what is going to happen here? And then he eats the chip, and you're like, oh, that's genius. So predictions for when this is up on Kickstarter? Can you imagine how loud this thing is, though? There no video there's no audio in this video very very clearly a joke but pretty funny i got a kick out of that one so go check that out at hometech.fm slash 275 if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week ideas for a show topic or guest give us a shout

email address is feedback at hometech.fmm or visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form 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 patreon page head on over to home tech.fm slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month any pledge over five dollars gets you a big shout out on the show but every pledge gets you an automatic invite to our private slat chat the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and talk about pringles pringles and vacuum cleaners because that's that is pretty cool now there's been there's

been a lot of news flying back back and forth oh yeah amazon it's been busy busy in there yeah and uh if you want to support the show but can't do so financially, we would love if you'd take a few minutes to give us a review on iTunes or on your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you enjoy what we do here on Home Tech, please take a minute to leave us a review. We would really appreciate that.

We also want to mention that Home Tech is a proud member of the Technology.fm collective of podcasts head on over to technology.fm if you enjoy our show you'll find other great shows like home on the smart home show and dtns that you will definitely also really enjoy well jason that wraps up monster a monster episode this week yeah yeahd a wrap up and we've got we've got news we've got amazon i mean what more what more there's gonna be a lot more tis the season yeah it always gets busy this time of year as cd a wraps up and and other companies really just start to rev up for the holidays um and get stuff out there to market so this is always a fun time of year and i was just

thinking about it today. I can't believe how close we're getting to another end of the year wrap up. So starting to think about that a little bit. That'll be here before you know it. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, geez, man. Don't say that. Don't say that. I know.

Because we usually record that in December. And like, it's already September. That means December. Almost October here. Oh, geez. Crazy. All right. Well, now that I'm depressed, let's somehow salvage this and get back on the high road.

Yeah. Jason, it is good talking to you and sitting down and being able to chat with you about the home technology news. And I guess have a great weekend, and we'll see you next week. Sounds good, Seth. Take care.