HomeTech.fm - Episode 280 - Meet the all new Assistant Security Shield

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Tune in to learn all about the hottest new device in connected home security—the HomeTech Assistant Security Shield (ASS)™. Your worse fears have been realized. Hackers are taking to the streets armed with lasers capable of unleashing mayhem on your smart speaker. You feel vulnerable. Helpless. Ready to throw in the towel on your smart home dreams. But fret not. The HomeTech Assistant Security shield leverages Advanced Impenetrable Reflective Technology (AIRT)™ to keep you and your family safe. It’s security, at the speed of light. Tune in to learn more! That, plus the latest home tech headlines, including: Initial thoughts on Apple TV+. Insignia smart products are smart no more. Walmart reportedly looking to put Vudu on the selling block. Google buys Fitbit for $2.1B. Lutron dismisses lawsuit against Savant. Control4 launches new NEEO remote. 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, November 8th from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, how are you doing, man? Are you watching Apple TV Plus? I'm doing great. I'm not. I haven't yet taken the dive, but I do understand that they've got, I think, a seven-day free trial for just about anybody. I know you recently purchased an Apple device, so I think you get, what is it, a free year? Yeah, yeah. With that? Yeah, so there's a big launch this last week. They finally put an Apple TV Plus is out. And yeah, when you buy a newer Apple device, like the phone or whatever,

I was on the upgrade cycle. So I got, you know, just like, okay, well upgrade my phone and keep going with that. And I was wondering last week if I was going to get the free trial. And I think it's a year's trial. And I did. So I've been been checking it out and been trying to watch some things. Well, what's what's your experience been like? Because I've, I've certainly been reading some lukewarm reviews on, on the app, at least I haven't, I haven't dived into read any reviews on the content specifically, but I know the app seems to be getting kind of mixed reviews. Well, okay. Well, I can kind of touch on the content real quick. The content has been, um, and I'll try and go find these like screenshots of like, uh, the rotten tomatoes uh reviews like um the the critics they they don't like um the morning show and uh what was the other one oh uh c c which is the like there's a blind

it's a basically the entire world's blind and some kids and babies are born and blah blah blah anyway it's like a set in the way future. Yada, yada, yada. Type thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yada, yada, yada. They didn't like that, but all the shows that have come out, like the popcorn rating, the one that the people like, everybody likes them. Interesting. In true Apple fashion, they've released a product that critics don't like, yet everybody seems to want to use.

Everyone else does. Yeah, yeah. That's a great point. I did think that was interesting um i've watched uh for all mankind that was that i would just that i would have bought apple i knew you'd be all over that one yeah and it's really it's actually really cool they're doing a really good job of it they've got a number of uh well first off it's got the guy from uh patreon in it so like the lead actor, Michael Doran.

Yeah. So like didn't really even recognize him. He's kind of like a completely different character in this. And I was just glad to see him get work because he's a really good actor. And glad to see that. And he's got also the other guy. The other lead character in there is a gentleman from Altered Carbon. I can't remember his name both

of these guys are like massive dudes like these guys if you saw them on the street they're like over six foot tall they've got you know huge wide shoulders they look like they're just they're just massive right and i'm like i've been to like nasa and i am not six foot tall something doesn't compute i can't fit in in anything that nasa had back then like the mercury and gemini stuff like it didn't i couldn't fit in that um so i don't know that's the most unrealistic part but it's actually a really good show i i've been forgivable yeah really enjoying that and then uh the morning show which i i didn't think i was gonna like but um yeah it's it's something to watch now these are both uh mini series right not

not like feature film everything is a let's see there's the morning show for all mankind there's dickinson which is uh kind of a kind of a teen pop type i don't know like uh like something you would see on cw for kind of based around em Dickinson, the poet. Yeah, I saw that. But evidently that's got rave reviews. No one has talked about that one, you know, before. It didn't seem like it was my kind of thing, and I didn't bother watching it. And there was a couple of kids thing on there. There's a Snoopy going to space, which was funny.

I watched it with my daughter. She liked it. And some other, like, older, there's Ghost Riderwriter and the helpsters which is kids related um so really haven't checked too many of those out but the three shows that i have watched for all mankind morning show and c um they're they're pretty good uh but they're but they're all suit does apple release do they do the oh yeah yeah sorry the whole series is available right away? Or are these like HBO style where they release them every Sunday? It's like half and half. So they released, and this was another confusing thing for me

because I was like, I'm going to binge this stuff. And I got to the end of For All Mankind, and it was like, that was the end of episode three. Well, you don't get another one. And so I guess they're going to release new episodes. So they are going to make you wait. Yeah, well, they're going to release them on Fridays. So come Friday when this show is out, there'll be another episode.

There'll be four episodes of these shows, and I can kind of catch up and watch those at my own pace. But yeah, they did release three episodes of each one of these right off the bat. And then from what I understand, they're going to introduce more shows every month or every quarter or something. right off the bat. And then from what I understand, they're going to introduce more shows, uh, every month or every quarter or something. So no, no binging and burning for you. That was a term I learned a few weeks ago, the binge and burn. Unfortunately, I would, I would binge some of these. I would definitely binge, uh, for all mankind. And I probably have the morning show

type thing. I don't know. That was kind of entertaining. I'd probably have the morning show type thing i don't know that was kind of entertaining i'd probably have that on and watch it too because it was uh it was uh just a fun one of those witty kind of shows um that's got you know people elements to it and decent actors in it so um jennifer aniston and uh steve carell are in it and uh oh reese witherspoon so like good actors and uh just fun to kind of fun to watch and leave them in the background if you're trying to do some work or something. Got it. Um, wash the dishes, that kind of thing. Uh, for all mankind, I was, I was wrapped into it. Got it. Yeah. How's the app though? What, what's your take on the app? I know you're a design guy. Uh, I'm reading mixed reviews. What say you? The app experience is absolutely horrible. I so it's not it's not bad bad but it's not

great um if we're gonna rate this on a on a on a scale of maybe like hulu to netflix this is somewhere slightly above hulu okay the the problem is is i really the hulu to netflix scale i like it because i mean netflix is pretty good I would say that's like the gold standard. And if you can do better than Netflix, you're doing really good, right? Yeah. Hulu, they just, it's just an abomination. Like, you can't find anything in that thing. But, okay, so on, my first mistake was going to the App Store, and I started, I was like,

all right, well, where's Apple TV Plus? Because I have the Apple TV app installed on my phone, but I've never used that before. Well, it turns out Apple TV Plus is not an app in and of itself. And it's just kind of like a section inside the Apple TV app, right? Interesting. It's treated, you would think Apple would be like all over the place, like Apple TV Plus this, just everywhere. But it's not. It's treated like just any other channel that you had.

So when I opened up the Apple TV app the first time, there was just like continue watching stuff that you were watching on, you know, Hulu or HBO or whatever. But there was nothing. Apple TV Plus was nowhere in sight. I'm like, well, I've got these emails saying that I'm signed up for this thing. And I've gone and clicked on the box. And I've seen kind of advertisements for it online but like where do I watch and you have to like scroll down

and start digging before you find the Apple TV plus channel it's kind of like a channel like stars or HBO or any of these other things would be in it right weird right so finding the content was a pain and then of course there's day one one. I'm sure they'll fix this, but I started watching one of the shows, paused it, went over to my Apple TV, and I opened it up. Oh, perfect. It knows where I left off on my phone, and I'm going to watch it on the Apple TV. So I watch the rest of the show, and I'm like, all right, I'm going to go back to my phone and watch it over there.

I go back to my phone, and it's like, you haven't even watched the first episode like what are you trying to do watch the second episode oh it didn't see no it didn't sink it sink the first time but not the second time and i i feel like that's like that's like table stakes for streaming apps now it should be yeah absolutely absolutely so that that was a big miss and um i'm sure they will they've heard the feedback i'm sure but i'm sure they will fix that kind of thing, uh, in the future. For sure. Yeah.

And, and the discovery, make the discovery just a little bit easier, um, because there's just a bunch of cruft in here that like I wouldn't click on. And I don't know, like you would think that they would put Apple TV plus as like a little banner across the top,

right? Like movies, TV shows, Apple TV plus, but they don't, it's treated just like HBO and any other channel that you can get in the Apple TV app. They like that subtle aesthetic, apparently. Yeah, I guess so.

That's interesting. It's so buried that you had trouble even finding it and you were actively seeking it out. That is surprising. Yeah. So other than those two things, once you figure out how to dig down and find the episodes and find the episode you know the each individual episodes you can get in there and watch them relatively easy they even have it they do i will say it's nice they do have a skip uh what was it skip the beginning uh intro button

that pops up and if you click it fast enough it you know you'll skip the intro so glad to see that uh but everything else um everything else about the app experience, not so great. The content has been good. Happy with the content. Worth the five bucks if you got to show up. Well, that's five bucks a month. Ultimately, that's what counts. I can imagine the app is serviceable.

Anyone's going to be able to get in there and find their way around. So ultimately, it really comes down to the content. All right. Well, I certainly am going to go give it a try. Um, we don't watch a ton of TV here, but, uh, I think this one is worth, uh, worth kicking the tires on. Yeah, I, I, I would agree. It's, uh, it's, especially for the, uh, for all mankind thing. That's, that's really a trip to watch because if you're a space junkie or even a history junkie, uh, or a space history junkie um they they have a lot of

things that are that are like in line with our timeline but then of course so the entire premise behind the show is that what if the russians got to the moon first and then um they have history yeah yeah and that's not the only thing that happens like there are other things that pop up to to mess with the timeline and, and, and craft the show. And they have done a really good job of putting those things in there and writing them in.

Um, they can go anywhere. They absolutely anywhere they want. And from what I understand, like this is showing the fifties, but this thing is going to move fast. The show is going to move very fast and it'll be like the fifties. It'll bring you up to present day.

It'll bring you up to, and they'll go into the future where we're, you know, expanded out through the, through the cosmos or whatever. Space wars. Space wars. I'm sure those are going to come up, yeah. All right.

Cool. Well, I will definitely go check that out. I'm glad we got to spend a few minutes on that. We've got no guests this week, so we wanted to spend a few minutes chatting about that. I know that was one of the big stories this week, is Apple TV Plus coming out. But we've got a

several other, uh, we got Disney plus coming up in a couple of weeks. So expect a longer review on that one, right? Yeah. That one I've already got, uh, you and I both are signed up for that one. And I know we're looking forward to that one here in the Griffin house. So we'll look forward to that. Um, so many choices now it's hard to, uh, it's hard to whittle them down, but, uh, choice is a good thing. So anyways, let's, uh, let's move on here. We've got, like I was saying, there are quite a few headlines we want to jump into, uh, Seth, what do you say we get started? Let's do it. If you're a fan of Best Buy's insignia line of smart home products, we have some bad news for you. All smart functionality will

be stripped out of the devices on November 6th. That's today as we record. Rendering them anything but smart. The Best Buy announced the shutdown in September and discontinued most of the products at that point. But customers are still unhappy that their devices no longer function. Some of the devices will retain functionality, at least as far as their base function goes. Your smart freezer will stay a freezer. It just won't be smart anymore. Smart lights will still work as lights, and you'll have to turn them on and off the old-fashioned way. But after tomorrow, any Wi-Fi connectivity and control through voice assistants will vanish. Shut down the servers. That's what happens. Bummer. I love it. Smart lights will still work as lights, and smart plugs will still act as plugs. I would hope so.

I would hope so. So at least that's good. The story did mention that the Insignia smart camera has been the greatest source of outrage for customers. It says, while other products can still function, the camera will be rendered completely useless. It will be nothing more than a junk device taking up space in seth's home tech graveyard yeah i'm just about to say i need to need to go get one of these i mean anything in in insignia could if i find insignia freezer that would be helpful i could put it out here yeah right there sounds like this has been kind of a pr nightmare for best buy

insignia is only offering partial refunds. There's a whole bunch of hoops you got to jump through, it sounds like. And they're not offering refunds for all devices, I guess. And surprisingly, they haven't really even given a reason. The story cited Lowe's, who at least kind of explained their decision, but Insignia hasn't really done it. Presumably, it's just the business case isn't there to keep all of this infrastructure up and running. And so they're, you know, they're pulling the plug. Yeah, it's very interesting to see this. You've got Lowe's first.

There have been a couple of other ones. Wink is still a big question mark. We've got Best Buy. These things take money to run, right? I mean, they're not cheap to run. i mean they they're not they're not cheap to run i mean it's it's not they have to run these servers they have to pay developers to keep the server and devops guys to keep the the servers up and going i mean if something breaks a security issue comes out they have to fix it um none of that comes free and when when they're selling

products and and things at a price point that there's no margin to make barely any profit off of i mean it makes sense to see some of this stuff going on i wonder if this is not like uh like a foreshadowing of more low-cost devices kind of like calling it quits because we we've seen that like slowly creeping in, and I'm wondering if they don't look around and say, what happens to us if we can't make our numbers? What's going to happen? I'm looking at you. What is that camera thing that we always talk about, the $25 camera? Oh, yeah, the Wyze Cam.

Wyze Cam, yeah. I'm looking at you, Wyze. Yeah. I mean, they made a scale. They made a scale you could sit on and wait it's like um okay you made a camera and now you're making scales okay that's yeah cool guys dollars it's kind of like the trigger on some of those wise cams i've just been so curious so i'll have to report back and let you know oh boy uh how it goes um at 25 it's kind of like

all right well if they pull the plug i'm'm out $25. Save one for me. Right. I'll send them to you. So, yeah, I haven't had a lot of time to kick the tires on them yet, but we'll see. All right, moving on here. Just shy of a decade after Walmart bought Voodoo, the information report said the retail giant is, quote, considering selling its digital video on-demand store. There's no word on how far along in the process any potential deal is or if it will actually happen. In a statement to the information, a Walmart spokesperson cited the service's 100 million strong install base and said, quote, we're constantly having and are open to conversations

with new and existing partners to explore the opportunities for continued growth. However, we never share the details of those discussions, which is all corporate speak for, yes, we are looking to dump this off as quickly as possible. So, you know, it's not shocking. Voodoo is an interesting one. They've been around, like the story said, for 10 years. When they came out, it was, if I recall correctly, it was tied to a set-top box yeah there was a hard we sold them i remember those four hundred dollar set-top box integrators will remember that and then it kind of moved over to streaming um it it had some interesting things going when it was

uh ultraviolet was still a thing, like where you could access DVD, digital copies on your Ultraviolet locker. That's kind of going away. You know, Ultraviolet's dead. Disney's Movies Anywhere is taking over a lot of that space. So the landscape has changed, and Voodoo's hung on for quite a while, but you just wonder how much longer Voodoo is for the world here. Don over there asks, is DivX still a thing?

That's right. We're going back. We're going back now. Circuit City days, yeah. That's right. No, no, no, no. Let's not get into DivX. I will post.

That's a sore spot. Yeah, very sore spot. It was not a good time if you were someone who worked at Circuit City and then had to sell stuff after. They pulled the plug on that one. Kind of like working at Best Buy and selling Insignia stuff. All right, moving on. That's right.

Google is buying Fitbit for big money, $2.1 billion in cash. The two companies just announced the deal yesterday. Fitbit will be folded into Google, and that means it will be making a fresh generation of wearables that will run Wear OS and be branded as made by Google devices. Here's a quote from Google. Over the years, Google has made progress with partners in this space with Wear OS and Google Fit, but we see an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce made by Google wearables devices into the market, said Rick Osterloh, Google Senior Vice President of Devices and Services, and tracking people,

because that's really what they're doing, right? I mean, this is like literally what Fitbits would be great at. I mean, that's right. You're going to track people. That's what you need. So yeah, there's definitely some concerns voiced in the story about the privacy, personal data, what might happen to Fitbit data if the deal is to go ahead. So lots of questions there. Hopefully, with the increased awareness that we've been talking about, you hope that uh, stay on the straight and narrow with this. Uh, obviously when you do, when you do anything with Google, you know, that your data is the product, like you, like the Gmail, Google docs, all of that. I mean, it's insanely popular. We all use it and we all just kind of know that, that our data is, is actually the product that they're

after. So, you know, it's not inherently good or bad. It just kind of is, in my opinion. I'll give you an example of that. There's a lot of people really upset right now and continue to be upset that if you have a G Suite account, which is basically Google rebranded for a custom domain, right? So you probably use that for work. I use it for work. Uh, I have a number of other G suite accounts that I have like for random things that I pay for, including home tech, like all our email runs through Google. Um, so like you can't use any like Google home or Google assistant devices, uh, with a G suite product. Well, why I'm paying Google $5. Well, the answer

is more, you know, I've seen the answer floated like, well, the G suites. Well, why? I'm paying Google $5. Well, the answer is more, you know, I've seen the answer floated like, well, the G Suite's for work. You should have a Gmail account for your home. It's like, well, I have a Gmail account for spam and that's where I send all my spam to, but it has nothing to do with my day in and day out. But I mean, the more, the more likely answer to me, and it's kind of glaring, it's like, well, you well you you have to pay for you're paying five bucks a month per account per you know g suite account but i mean they make a ton more money off of you if you just use your gmail account and surf the web right so like that's what they want you to do they want you to to have your identity into that one account and they want to make money off you that way and that's what subsidizes their google assistant products and all that stuff. And the terms, I'm sure, are way different.

I really haven't looked at them, but I'm sure the terms are different for business accounts. Like they're not tracking a business account. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder how much of a difference. I would imagine there is a difference, but it would be interesting to dive into that. But either way, you know, this is a big deal, $2.1 billion. Clear signal, Google's serious about wearables. And so we'll have to see. There are a lot of many obvious reasons that we won't belabor why Google wants

to get into this. So the intriguing part of the story will be, of course, to see how this all takes shape in the months and years ahead. Moving on here in one of our, what's becoming kind of a recurring almost series here seth of of things that i don't know if i should laugh or be concerned about with regards to network security uh siri alexa and google assistant are vulnerable to attacks that use lasers it's a story about lasers uh to inject inaudible and sometimes invisible commands into the devices and surreptitiously cause them to unlock doors, visit websites, and locate, unlock, and start vehicles. Researchers reported this in a paper published on Monday, dubbed Light Commands.

The attack works against Facebook portal and a variety of phones as well. Shining a low-powered laser into these voice-activated systems allows attackers to inject commands of their choice from as far as 360 feet or 110 meters away not sure what to make of this one did you see the uh i i don't know if it's like fud or something like it looks like you need some pretty specialized equipment and you have to like be right on the money with where the laser gets in but that's what the lasers are for i suppose um this i can't tell if this is fud or or you know fear and certainty doubt but it's certainly an interesting item to ponder right it is one of the videos they have have is shows them opening a garage door by shining a laser through the window and hitting a Google assistant or something like that.

And I guess they're using what was funny in here is that they were using lasers to do this. They're using light and they don't really quite understand how it's working and said one of the researchers wrote we know that light triggers some sort of movement in the microphone diaphragm uh and that mics are built to interpret those movements as sound uh but we're not completely we don't really completely understand the physics behind it and we are currently working on investigating this i'm paraphrasing a bunch of interesting yeah they so they don't they don't even know exactly how it works it just works you shine the laser wow and uh you know i I'm sure the laser has pulses and whatever microphones they're using, these small, tiny microphones are reacting to this somehow. And Amazon did release a statement. Customers' trust is our top priority and we take the customer's security and the security of our products seriously.

We are reviewing the research and will continue to engage with the authors to understand their work. Google said, we're closely reviewing the research and protecting our users paramount. We're always looking ways to improve our security of our devices. I don't think Apple, yeah, Apple didn't decline and Facebook wasn't immediately available to comment. Of course, their products aren't immediately available either. I mean, I was looking at this. I asked about 49 days ago, 50 days ago, I asked if anybody had seen a Facebook portal in the wild. And no one's chimed in and said they've seen one. So I'm still curious, still looking for that Facebook portal, the mythical unicorn. That's the Facebook portal.

That's right. And, you know, I'm thinking it's only a matter of time until a new product category emerges on Amazon. It'll be like laser shields for your voice assistant. It's just a mirror. Well, you know, that's not great marketing, Seth. Laser shield sounds so much cooler. You better trademark that. Yeah.

It's interesting matt in the chat room saying you can also use vibration speakers directional speaker and ultrasound as well these microphones are micro electro mechanical systems or memes components is what these are called so apparently there's some known uh vulnerabilities with these types of microphones but if somebody's like in my house pointing a laser at my smart speaker i've and they want to do me you know ill you know they have ill will towards me i've probably got bigger bigger problems to worry about yeah some of the some of the hacks like this these super nerdy hacks it's like well you know a state sponsor might be able to pull something like this off if they had to but more than likely a brick through your window is going

to get in the house a lot faster so it was like when the iphone came out with the fingerprint thing and i read an article that was like it can be hacked and then i read it and it was like they had to take your finger and cut it off and like imprint it or like cut it wasn't quite that extreme but it may as well have been because it was like they needed your finger and cut it off and like imprint it or like cut it wasn't quite that extreme but it may as well have been because it was like they needed your finger and then they did like a plastic molding of your fingerprint and they were able to like use that uh so it's like you know it's some of these things are just just nerds trying to break stuff i think but yeah hey it's good you know it's especially it is it is good uh you know white hat research these are things we need we joke about it we need to be aware of these

things but yeah some of these are just uh fud i think you said it well well and not practical to worry about in in the daily use of these things and i'd say if you have a google assistant hooked up to your garage door that can open your garage door, like put a pin code on it or, or, you know, make it where, uh, make it where there's, don't hook that part up,

like leave that completely separate away from the Google assistant. So, um, yeah, yeah, that, that's probably, probably the best thing you do.

Like just don't introduce those security holes that can open your house up to somebody getting into it this way. Or come by a laser shield. I've got them for sale. I'm going to make a website up before Friday. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. I just sell these little mirrors. You just stick them in front of Google Homes.

That's right. The margins are great. Exactly. All right. Man, this sounds like a challenge. I think I'm going to make it happen. All right. According to a recent press release, Lutron Electronics has reached a settlement with Savant Systems. Pursuant to the settlement, Lutron dismissed its complaint against the company on Friday, November 1st over U. seven. Uh, smart home industry leaders worked collaboratively to settle the lawsuit in the interest of their mutual customers and look forward to continuing their longstanding integration, alliance, and relationship. Uh,

no word yet if the savant stuff is going up in price. Uh, I, I am curious because that's what happened to everybody. Literally everybody else who settled with Lutron is, uh, is there, there the price of their lighting stuff went up by, uh, by X amount. into everybody literally everybody else who settled with lutron is uh is their their the price of their lighting stuff went up by uh by x amount of dollars so the so the customer uh ends up paying for it ultimately the integrator yeah integrator and or customer yeah gotta pay those licensing yeah that's right yeah well you know lutron and and savant it's good that they're playing nice together uh at least and this is like you alluded

to is not the first time we've seen uh lutron go after somebody but i i remember when we originally talked about this and and saw the picture of of the two devices and i mean it was literally like a direct knockoff of yeah i think this is the palladium one if i recall correctly uh anyways good to see him bury the hatchet uh and hopefully everybody can uh you know can move on and there's not too much uh collateral damage that comes out of this moving on speaking of established players here in the pro space control 4 has officially launched the new neo Remote. The story reads here from CE Pro, when Control 4 acquired scrappy remote control manufacturer Neo back in February of 2019 for $11 million.

Many in the industry wondered why. Now we know. Did anyone really wonder why, by the way? It's pretty obvious, like the remote control company. Anyways, SnapAV, which subsequently acquired Control 4 in May of this year, has announced the launch of the Neo remote for Control 4. The $600 Neo is a touchscreen remote that delivers refined control of home entertainment through the Control 4 smart home OS 3 platform.

Wrap up here with a quick quote from Charlie Kindle over there at SnapAV. Neo was expertly designed to be beautiful, and with Control 4 OS 3, it's also the easiest way for family to enjoy entertainment in their homes. Says Charlie Kindle, SnapAV Chief Product and Technology Officer, Neo is a reflection of our obsession for creating the most elegant and simple interfaces for the refined smart home. Very cool. I, I mean, I have,

I think you have one of the original Neos as well. I have one. They're, they're nice. They feel nice. They're nice as a remote. Yeah. There's been a lot of feedback I've noticed on the control for forums about

these, these types of ones. And I, I'm not sure. Well, these products aren't for everybody, right? Like a half touch screen half remote

doesn't necessarily lend it to every single person out there right so there's been a lot of feedback and like well you're missing buttons for this this and this it's like well yeah a lot of people are complaining there's no number buttons on it it's like well yeah you don't really need no number buttons anymore guys uh you're gonna be streaming everything use the apple tv app you can't find anything number buttons anymore, guys. You're going to be streaming everything. Use the Apple TV app. You can't find anything. So yeah, I think there's a, this is an interesting product

at an interesting time for smart home and control systems. What's cool is, is that it's kind of the basic remote. Like it's the basic, like Rosetta up, down, left, right, select. It's got a couple of buttons for, you know, up, down, volume,

up and down, that kind of thing. But what it, what it gives you is access into the rest of the house, like into the rest of the smart house. So like if you have lighting devices in the room, you can execute lighting scenes from it pretty easily, right on the touchscreen interface. It's something you can't really do from like another smart, like my Roku remote, it's not going to be able to do that. Right. So it's, it's definitely a nice remote to have for that i think it's it's going to be well positioned um coming into the future when these smart homes are going to mix with more streaming platforms and we're as integrators we're going to have to figure out how to best uh get those working with the house and i think this is a you know stage one of control force development and obviously they have

they've i I saw a C pro article where they interviewed a Cordon and a Charlie Kendall. And they, they said, you know, this was on the roadmap, but seeing Neo there basically sped up that, that roadmap and we were able to acquire and just basically take their remote, uh, slap our software on top of it and, uh, you know, get it working with our systems, uh, within this amount of time. And, and there you go. Now they have a touchscreen remote like most everybody else in the industry. Yeah. I mean, it's great for Control 4 and presumably for Neo. It's great for Control 4 dealers and customers. I know there

were definitely some losers on the end of that bargain from Neo as they started as very much a DIY remote. Most listeners to the show will certainly remember that. But putting that aside, I mean, this looks like a great thing. There are a couple of interesting points that the article touches on. Number one, in terms of programming, it looks like they're really trying to make this very easy to deploy. So they talk about how as long as the home is equipped with OS3 and then has either an EA1, EA3, or EA5, you can basically ship this to the homeowner and have them enter their Wi-Fi password, tell the device which room they're in, and it's online.

So that's cool. I think most integrators will probably want to ease into the water. I know if I was still an integrator, um, it's always hard, you know, those things you, you want to be there to test it and make sure everything works as expected. Uh, but hopefully, you know, they're able to execute that smoothly. And if it indeed works out that way that you can pre-program these and then ship them out to the house, that's, that's great. Uh, so hopefully that works out well. Uh, the story did mention, by the way, that the, uh, Corden Vaughn mentioned that, uh, pre-orders from integrators are the largest quantity in the history of control for, according to this story. I did see that. I did see that, uh, that they were, they were complaining on the, uh, on the, uh, dealer forms that the

website was down and they couldn't order, Yeah. Which I thought was pretty good. Yeah. So, so a lot of demand for this thing and, you know, it's $600 MSRP. It's, it's, it's pretty premium offering in the smart home these days. Not, it wasn't long ago that $600 for a remote that looked like this would, would have been a steal, you know? Yeah. So we, we have to keep it

all in in perspective but yeah at this point given the way the market has evolved it's still a fairly premium uh offering but um but it looks great i hope they do well with it it's nice nice product yeah i do too i i i like i said i think it's it's step one and two whatever else they're going to get into because they they literally took what neo had and it looks like they put the you know the control for software into it i doubt they've done anything on the hardware side other than i heard it had like extra memory inside of it so they will run the control for stuff but it will not you can't take the old neo remote and put control for software in it. It won't work that way, unfortunately. So I don't have one.

I'd have to actually buy one right out. But yeah, that's going to be interesting to see what they do with it. Something to watch. There's another story I linked in there in our show notes, another CE Pro story that kind of dives a little bit deeper into the design Control 4 executives talking about it. And I love the pull quote that they pulled out of the story, you know, when they do the bigger quote that kind of eats up a lot of the page to get your attention. It says, quote, I don't think people would say our product design was something to lust after, Charlie Kimball, Control 4.

Speaking about the product design, of course, of course, outside of the Neo remote. So the gist of the story being that, as we know, this acquisition by Control 4 was really about the beautiful design of the Neo remote and the team behind it, what they're capable of. So hopefully they can continue that. And like I said, I hope they have a lot of success. They and Control 4 dealers out there all have a lot of success with this product. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 280. Wow, 280.

Jeez. Getting up there. While you're there, don't forget you can sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis, as well as other industry news that you may not have had, that may not have made the show. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 280. Also, don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live on Wednesdays, typically starting around 7 or 7.30 p.m. Eastern, Seth's one true time zone. Again, 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live. We've got several folks hanging out in the chat room with us tonight. We really appreciate it. It's always a lot of fun. Assistantshield.com purchased. Oh man, you're quick. I like it.

Yeah, you know, this live show, we got to get moving on this for these other guys. Pick it up. That's hilarious. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Well, I think we got something here, Seth. Yep, absolutely. Nothing in the mailbox today but we do have a pick of the week jason you you ran across this one uh i gotta say this is this is hilariously funny uh bit of marketing from from the fine folks over there at hbo it's great i i thought it was really funny and i was reading the uh digital trend story and they were kind of like i felt like trolling on it they were like you know as if hbo

was serious about this thing so i was like i gotta go watch the video it clearly not serious well they are serious i mean it is a contest and okay well contest ends today or tomorrow and uh serious but not serious like it's meant to be a joke yeah yeah i mean so the grand prize of this contest is a box that you can basically sit in and watch h, uh, privately, I guess it's a cardboard box. They're going to ship you. And they're all excited about this cardboard box. That's the grand prize. Uh, but they also have additional prizes that include Apple AirPods, HBO branded t-shirts and sticker sheets. So, uh, you have to be in college. Like this is like directed at college students. You have to be in college. This is directed at college students. You have to be 18 or over, have an EDU address, all that good stuff. But I thought the video was hilarious and something to check out if you haven't seen it.

It is funny. I could use one of the boxes sometime. I think we all could. I go back to my dorm days, and that's what the video is predicated on. It's two guys in a dorm, and you don't get a lot of privacy. And then it's like, we reinvented this cardboard box and painted it black. And so it's just as the name implies. It's a box that you sit in and watch HBO.

So I thought it was pretty funny. Worth a minute of your time if you're bored. Go check that out. We'll have a link in the show notes at hometech.fm slash two eight zero i do i do like that they they they put uh at the end of the video they say uh box is literally in our middle name it's a fair good fair amount of uh decent copywriting on this one it's good i like it go check it out you know creative marketing gets people talking. All right.

If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or ideas for a show topic or guest, give us a shout. We'd 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 the online form.

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But every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you, the other supporters of the show can gather every day and learn about our new product jason assistant shield assistant shield yeah assistant shield.com yeah we're coming to take over the world with this thing yeah it's gonna be great it's gonna be great all right and if you're looking for other ways to support the show uh we'd love to have you take a few minutes to leave us a review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you enjoy what we do here on the podcast, please take a minute Collective, a podcast. You can find HomeTech over there and other great shows like Home On, The Smart Home Show, and DTNS over there at Technology.fm. Go check it out.

Absolutely. All right, Seth. Well, that'll do it for us this week. We are buttoning up the final details as we record here. So I'm going to go out on a limb a little bit. I think things are pretty much firmed up. We're going to have, speaking of SnapAV this week and the Neo remote, we're looking to have G. Paul Hess from SnapAV come join us on the show.

So that'll be great. I know G. Paul fairly well, and he's got a really interesting background in terms of coming up as an integrator. Started out as an integrator and is now, you know, very high up over there at SnapAV and it'll be a lot of fun to bring him on to catch up on everything that's going on over there. So definitely be sure to tune in for that. Yeah, it should be a very good interview and I can't wait to talk to him.

And with that, Jason, we'll close out the show this week. I will talk to you next week. All right. Sounds good. Have a great weekend, Seth. Take care.