HomeTech.fm - Episode 276 - Stanky Stankey

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: YouTube TV is finally available on Fire TV devices. A feud between Dish and Fox leaves sports fans in the cold. Next-gen ISP bundles may include various streaming services. The future of DirecTV’s “Sunday Ticket” package may be in question. Google follows Amazon’s lead, adding the deletion of Assistant command history. More delays on Ikea’s forthcoming smart blinds. Vivint is slowly moving forward with 5G internet service. 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, October 4th from not Denver, Colorado this week. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, where in the world is Jason Griffin? Yeah, yeah, my audio quality is not going to be what it typically is this week. I am on the road again here in Long Island currently visiting my in-laws, and I've been here for about a week, and tomorrow my wife and I are going to head to Nashville, actually, for the first time. We've never been there before. My wife is celebrating a big birthday here this week, so we thought we'd make a special trip

out there to Nashville. We'll leave our kids here with their grandparents and have a few days off of being mom and dad and get to spend a little bit of time together. So we're looking forward to that. Things are a little bit crazy here, but excited to sit down and get a show recorded. Nice. Well, yeah, let's get the show over and done with so you can get on to your adult vacation because that sounds wonderful. I'm staring down the barrel of several days off and it's looking forward to it. It should be a really fun trip.

Well, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. YouTube TV has been around since 2017, but ever since its launch, there's been one glaring omission from the list of devices that support the live TV streaming service, Amazon's popular Fire TV streamers. The reason was Google and Amazon had a pretty famous feud, a tit-for-tat spat, that only ended recently here in April of

2019. So the promise of reconciliation has finally become concrete, as Amazon has just announced its formal support of YouTube TV on nearly every Fire TV device. Yay for consumers, right? Yeah. Sounds like a good thing. Yeah. No, it is a very good thing. It looks like one little caveat here, first generation Fire TV and Fire TV stick are not supported. So one minor caveat limitation there. But like you said, a good thing for consumers here. And unfortunate that it took this long for the two companies to get it sorted out. As we've talked about before, consumers are really the only ones who lose in these scenarios. So this is welcome news. I'm trying to see how far back the first generation was. That was 2014, the first generation amazon fire tv came out so

okay some old tech there i i would suspect that if you wanted to get mod you know you probably want a modern streaming streaming device uh yeah to get modern well they practically give give those things away right so certainly if if not now wait till the holidays which are right around the corner and uh those will be on on pardon the pun here, fire sale prices. So keep an eye out for that. Speaking of consumers losing, Fox-owned channels like FS1, FS2, and Big Ten networks have gone dark for Dish customers because of a contract dispute between the service and Fox Corporation. The blackout comes at a terrible time for sports fans with college football and NFL seasons in full swing because of a contract dispute between the service and Fox Corporation.

The blackout comes at a terrible time for sports fans, with college football and NFL seasons in full swing and the Major League Baseball playoffs fast approaching. Each side is refusing to accept any blame, leaving frustrated viewers waiting for a resolution. Really unfortunate for Dish subscribers. Yeah, no kidding. We see this happen, like, it feels like all the time, right? They always have these blackouts,

and it's like a power move by whichever side to encourage them to call in and get on to either the distributor or the cable provider, I guess in this case, or to yell at the network or whatever that's doing it, I guess in this case, or to yell at the network or whatever that's doing it, like Fox in this case. And I don't know if it ever works, but I suspect if you start messing around with people's sports programming and they can't watch the big game, I suspect this may cause a few more, what is it, pitchforks and fires.

That's right. And as you would expect, both sides are accusing the other, quote, dishes at it again, choosing to drop leading programming as a negotiating tactic. A statement from Fox, a blurb from a statement from Fox reads, and then Dish Network is claiming that Fox is demanding a, quote, double-digit percentage rate increase for continued carriage of its local channels and attempting to, quote, force bundle those local channels with unrelated networks.

So both sides here, you know, digging in a little bit, and hopefully, like you said, this will get resolved quickly because I'm sure the pitchforks will be coming out in no time at all. Yep, yep. According to Fierce Video, Comcast and other internet service providers, ISPs, will eventually begin bundling broadband and subscription streaming services as the market swells with new products. Barclays expects about 10 new streaming services from Legacy Media and new entrants will launch over the next 12 months. This includes new services from Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Quibi, Quibi, oh great, Quibi, there we go.

Quibi, yeah, I haven't heard of that one. And AT&T's Warner Media. As the numbers grow, the firm believes that we'll see a mix of price and product bundles from ISPs, which include multiple over-the-top services attached to a broadband connection at one price point. That's pretty cool, actually. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, it's like they're going to go from bundling the channels to bundling the streaming services. And so they talk about, you know, when and if ISPs begin selling subscription streaming

video bundles, Barclays predicts that Netflix will likely serve as the anchor in a way similar to how broadcast networks anchor traditional pay TV channel bundles. So yeah, it will be really interesting to see how this plays out. And we've talked about it before. It's a kind of an ongoing trend to see these ISPs, service providers trying to figure out how to add more value and how to include more with their bundles in order to retain customers. And Comcast's Xfinity Flex, they talk about, that's a streaming box and platform, provides unified search and access for multiple subscription services. They recently made that free for their internet-only customers after previously charging $5 per month.

So that one's a little bit different because it's Comcast-owned, but the point still stands. So I thought this was an interesting piece, definitely worth taking a look at. Fiercevideo.com is where we're getting this from, and we will include it in the show notes at hometech.fm slash 276. Just one more quick thing. I wonder how that will affect people like you and I who have cut the cord and gone over the air but with over-the-top services like Netflix and that kind of thing. If, in my case, Comcast starts bundling Netflix with their internet, which I'm already paying for, maybe even for the same price or a little bit more, uh, will it be advantageous for me as a consumer to use? I don't know. That's a very interesting, uh, proposition. Or, you know, like, um, cable TV companies of course are, are, are famous for these sort of offerings that are for new customers only. So as an existing customer,

you're kind of stuck watching from the sidelines and, uh, you know, waiting until it's time to start shopping around again. But, um, yeah, a lot of questions there for sure. The devil will be in the details as it always is. Uh, but I think it's, uh, you know, it's, it's not going out on a limb for, um, to make that prediction. So it'd be interesting to see how it shapes out. Right. Uh, staying here with, uh, TV programming, the national football leagues, NFL Sunday ticket package, which allows football fans to view almost any game, has long been a cornerstone of satellite broadcaster DirecTV, which holds exclusive rights to the offering.

However, DirecTV parent company AT&T isn't sure it wants to renew the deal. The company's chief operating officer, John Stanky, Seth, said he believes Sunday tickets' value to the company has peaked and that a renewal, especially if it comes with a higher price tag, will be hard to justify at a time when consumers are canceling pay TV connections, including DirecTV. Quote, there's less profitability to support the decision and it becomes less critical to the business over time. So an interesting move here, DirecTV. I mean, that NFL ticket has long been, like the story says, a cornerstone of their offering. And that'll feel almost like the end of an era if that's no longer associated with DirecTV. It's been that way for quite a while.

And according to the story, the current deal runs through 2022. So it'll remain that way for a few more years at least, and then we'll have to see what happens. And cost DirecTV an average of $1.5 billion, which according to the story as well, they make decent money off of. There's decent project. I mean, because I think that package is like $300 to $400. Oh, it's not cheap for the

season. It's been exclusive since 1994. Wow. Yeah. That's, that's wild. Uh, one thing I noted that, and I don't know too much about this, but I do know when I, I had customers who had direct TV, I asked them why they had it along with their cable subscription. They said for the Sunday ticket. Uh, and there was a, there's a quote down at the bottom from Moffitt Nathanson Research analyst Craig Moffitt. He said, lose the ticket and those customers will walk. And I think that's interesting. I wonder if that is true. Also, the only reason I put this story in there, one, because it had football,

but I really wanted to try and hear you say stanky again. Stanky. I really thought that was going to happen. Well, nice try. It almost got me. But yeah, it is. I do remember years ago when I had just moved out to Los Angeles, I was evaluating different pay TV providers. And I did go with DirecTV at one point strictly because of, you know, that, that was the thing that differentiated it was I was able to get the NFL ticket and they were offering it as free for the first year when you signed up as a new customer. Well, year two rolled around and I remember it was like several hundred dollars to get that. And I, I didn't, I didn't renew

the package, but, uh, I remained acTV customer for quite a while after that. So I do think there's clearly some truth to that. It is a draw for DirecTV to bring people in, but you know, you're talking about serious money. And so they'll have to, they'll have to do the math $1.5 billion. And the story says particularly that, you know, that could go up very well, may go up come renewal time. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. Yeah, one of the things Mr. Stanky said in here as well was, one thing I'm worried about thinking about it.

Mr. Stanky. Mr. Stanky said. And we've heard, we've talked about football here in the past, but the ratings don't get better every year. In fact, they get worse every year. And there's not many millennials that are watching football, Sunday night football. It's, it's mostly, uh, the boomer generation and previous generations that are, that are really on that. So I'm wondering, like one of the things he noted here is, is that I don't think we're going to wake

up a year from now and suddenly there's going to be people in the United States that want to watch an out of team mark, out of market team. Um, it. He doesn't think that there's much room to expand there. It's pretty much plateaued, I guess is what I'm hearing from him. So I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what happens to this. I think really interesting 2022 rolls around. And it seemed like this was a wild statement to make maybe a year ago, a year or two years ago,

when we were first talking about this, but like somebody like Apple TV or Netflix could pick up these streaming rights in 2020 and do this type of service, you know, or YouTube TV. We were just talking about them. They could do something like this. And that would be how you get your NFL Sunday ticket rather than going through a traditional cable provider like DirecTV or Comcast. Yeah, no, it's a great point is how streaming will play into this because, you know, so much of this has been driven in the past by just the fact, you know, to go back to my personal example, when I signed up for DirecTV because of the NFL ticket, it was because I'm a Broncos fan and I was living in Los Angeles. And so getting my Bronco games, that was a big thing.

Hold on, you moved all the way back to Denver just to get those Bronco games so you didn't have to pay that DirecTV. That's right. It's important. That's right. It's important. But, you know, the streaming question really starts to break that down potentially. And who knows, you know, I know that, uh, sports right now, high ticket sports, especially like, like NFL and, uh, bigger draw things like major league baseball playoffs and stuff like streaming is still kind of a spotty landscape, uh, for that stuff.

But look how fast that landscape is changing in three years is a very long time as these things are measured. So who knows in three years what the NFL is doing and what their stance is with regards to streaming rights. And that could have a major bearing on this story as well. So it'll be, you know, time will tell. You've got some feedback there in the live uh, in the live chat, uh, home tech live chat. Uh, Rashid says, yep. Customers in the Midwest will leave right away. And Don follows that up with a hundred percent. So yeah, that's,

it's definitely something I, I, I've never known a customer to have direct TV exclusively. It was always direct TV and cable, um, kind of a weird combo here, um, to see that it's usually you have both of them interesting and they only have the direct tv for just for nfl yeah it's really strange i don't know why they do that here but they do yeah all right well interesting story like i said i'll feel like the end of an era that's been associated with direct tv for for so long and don in the chat room is saying yep have both yeah which is very common. It's common. Pretty crazy.

Yeah, I didn't realize that was so common. All right, well, moving on here. In a recent blog post, Eric Miraglia, there's a name. I don't know if I got it right. Director of Product Management and Privacy and Data Protection at Google, wrote about updates recently that expand the current privacy features on Google Home. One of them is the ability to delete your assistant history by saying things like, hey, Google, delete the last thing I said to you, or hey, Google, delete everything I said to you last week.

The assistant will delete your voice command history. And this was intriguing to see this come across the wire after the similar story from Amazon last week. And you and I spoke about that. And of course, the natural question was, will other companies follow suit? You and I were both big fans of seeing that from Amazon. And it appears that according to digital trends here that Google has indeed taken Amazon's lead and enabled a similar feature set. So great news. Very cool. Very cool. Glad to see that happening. Jason, you wouldn't have had to have that one if you, well, now I get an Ikea story. So let's see, let's see how well I do with this. Good luck. October 1st has come and gone, but Ikea's future smart blinds are nowhere. Yeah, that's right. Future smart blinds are nowhere to

be found in US stores. That's because they've been delayed yet again, according to an IKEA spokesperson speaking to The Verge. The blinds are on sale elsewhere. In the U.K., for example, the future blackout blinds are available for home delivery. They're also selling the less expensive but more translucent sheer cartridge model that won't be on sale in the U.S. There's no revised date, they say. We only know that they're coming, quote, later this year. The product that will never ship for some reason, it's very weird that these haven't rolled out here in the States. Right. Yeah, it does make you wonder what is happening behind the scenes. It has caused a couple of delays here but um you know the verge story does by the way

subtitle of this verge story a real fire festival fire fyr uh a little play on the fire yeah yeah that's funny yep too clever by half shows full of puns tonight uh closes out the story saying regardless i can tell you that the inexpensive window shades are worth the wait i've been testing a pair since friday i expect to have a review completed soon so not a full review there but early signs indicate that they are uh you know a quality product and they're they are inexpensive and expect these to be pretty popular um so hard to say what is causing the delays it's unfortunate but one can uh can assume positive things and hope that they're you know that they're taking their time to get things right

instead of rushing to get these things out there when they know there may be problems so we'll continue to report on that as more news becomes available moving on here another ikea story um apps and voice commands are fine for controlling music in the home but sometimes you just want to grab a dial and crank it no one wants to shout a wake word during a good part of a song and cause the music to soften or have to dig out a phone only to be delayed by the lock screen ikea is here to slake that need for owners of sonos speakers. The Verge took the $20 IKEA some, some, some phonisk, uh, H-U IKEA sound remote for a spin, uh, giving it an eight out of 10 Verge score. Technically the device does need a $30 trod-free gateway to work. Uh, but once you complete the overly frustrating

setup process, uh, sidebar, uh, pretty normal for any IKEA product. The tiny, tiny volume knob can be paired with a single Sonos zone and attached with screws or double-sided tape to nearly any surface. In concluding here, the Verge says it's not perfect, but it's hard to find fault in a $20 Sonos remote control that does what it says it will and does it well. Pretty cool product, I thought. I thought the review was pretty good.

They did have some problems setting up, pairing the app with it and everything. They said the app's not all that great, but once they did get it to work, it did work. And I don't know. This is tactile control, Jason. I think we still have to talk about tactile control. Yeah, we don't talk about that as much anymore. My big question is, do the instructions come with words or is it just the little, you know, illustrations that IKEA is famous for? I looked at, it's funny you asked that. I did look at the instructions for the Symfonesque, however you say it, when I was

there at IKEA. And the instructions were basically like, take it out of say it, uh, when I was there at Ikea and the, the instructions were basically like, take it out of the box, plug it in and then open the app. And that was pretty much where it left you off at. That's where they left it. Yeah. So, um, I thought that was funny, but it had like the same little guy, you know, the little hands pulling it, you know, plugging in that kind of thing. A little guy frustrated with screws or whatever uh rashid in the chat room is saying cough uh and then a picture of a of a lutron pico yeah uh remote so uh good point lutron has those pico remotes that can do uh really the same thing and and have a nice little form factor as well i'm generally a big fan of the uh pico remotesotes and haven't used one for this particular

use case, but really love those little remotes. I think they're a great addition to any Lutron setup. Yeah, and not the same price. I mean, if you need a $30 Trodfee hub, I think the comparable Caseta hub would be, what, i want to say i want to say yeah yeah i think so uh maybe a hundred i'm not sure it's been a while since i i priced those out but um yeah the the remotes are about the same yeah and some conversation in the chat room as well about ikea's uh meatballs you can't forget the meatballs no those are good and they have that cafeteria cheap food all good stuff yeah i i i i'm a big fan i'm a big fan i just can't forget the meatballs. No, those are good. And they have that cafeteria, cheap food, all good stuff. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan.

I just can't get there because it's so far away. It's like 45 minutes out. Where's your sense of adventure, Seth? With the two-and-a-half-year-old Jason. Right, right. That's fair. Vivid Internet has announced the commercial launch of its next-generation home Internet service in Salt Lake City metro area.

The introduction comes on the heels of the successful completion of a pilot program in Lehigh, Utah, using the service's wireless mesh network, which is said to provide reliable 5G gigabit class experience throughout customers' homes. The internet service provider is the most recent spin on a Vivint smart home following Vivint Solar's IPO in 2014. I've heard about this for a while, but I know a bunch of people up in that area through relationships with companies like Control4. And I've heard that they were kind of testing out some kind of wireless internet thing out for a while, but I didn've heard that they were kind of testing out some kind of wireless internet thing out for a while but i didn't know that they would had moved into

like the 5g uh area so that's that's pretty cool that's very cool here yeah i've heard bits and pieces about this as well and the story does go on to say that you know with the completion of this pilot program the company will continue building neighborhood networks in utah while also exploring opportunities in new regions across the country. So they are kind of starting in their own backyard there in Utah and kind of slowly testing the water, so to speak. And it looks like early signs are successful, and it will be interesting to see how this develops. Yep, absolutely. All the links and topics we've discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 276.

While you're over there, don't forget to sign up for the weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis, as well as other industry news that may or may not have made the show. Again, that link is h home tech.fm slash two 76. That's what I get for scrolling up and down so fast. Also, don't forget. You can join us live in the chat room on Wednesdays, typically starting around seven or 7 30 PM Eastern. We've got a few folks hanging out in the chat room, uh, this week, and we always appreciate that a lot of fun to have you guys. So thank you for hanging out. Once again, that's Wednesdays around 7, 7.30 PM Eastern. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live. Well, no mailbag this week, but Jason, I've got a pick of the week.

It's that time of year. I ran across this on Twitter the other day and I just, I laughed out loud because it's certainly the time of year to break out the pumpkin spice Ethernet cables. Pumpkin spice everything this time of year. And I'm guilty of it. I love the pumpkin spice. Oh, you're the one. Love the fall. I love the fall.

Everything about this time of year is great. This is a good one. Just an orange Ethernet cable wrapped up nicely there in a circle on the on the counter or whatever and time to break out the pumpkin spice spice ethernet cables this one's from at biker glenn on twitter uh 831 retweets and 4 000 likes uh not too bad from a guy who's got 416 followers so this one this one caught fire. That's pretty funny. Yeah, pretty good.

This time of year, everything's kind of converting over to the fall colors when you're out in retail. So why not convert your Ethernet cables over to Pumpkin Spice? That's right. Get in the spirit. All right, well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, ideas for a show topic or guest, 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 visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out our online form. And we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our patron page, head on over to home tech. Dot FM slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a shadow on the show,

but every single pledge gets you an automatic invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day and talk about i think there's been a lot of lutron discussion that's been going on there recently i was i was kind of looking into that but it seems to be a lot of like lutron qs discussion was some high-end product uh going on so really cool to see that yeah no it's always fun and you know pumpkin pumpkin spicy ethernet cables and, and who knows what else.

No, it's a really fun community. Really appreciate everybody who participates over there. If you also want to support the show and don't want to do so financially, another great way that you can help us out is to leave us a review. That helps other people find the show. So if you enjoy what we do here at Home Tech and you could take a few minutes to do that, we'd really appreciate it. Just head over to iTunes or in your podcast app of choice and leave us a review.

Let us know how we're doing. Absolutely. And Home Tech is a proud member of the Technology.fm collective of podcasts. You can find other great shows like Home On, The Smart Home Show, and DTNS over there at technology.fm. All right, Seth. Well, that'll do it for this week quick show before I head out of town for a few days

so you're going to enjoy that I think we may be off I think both of us are traveling next week yeah I think we'll both be out that week

yep so a week off for us next week but we will be back in action the week after that we definitely appreciate you taking some time

to tune into the show thanks so much for that and Seth I will look forward to reconnecting again with you here in a couple of weeks. All right. Sounds good, man. Have a great vacation. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Will do. And we'll talk to you soon. All right. See you later.