HomeTech.fm - Episode 284 - The 5th Annual Fireside Chat Special

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

On this very special episode of HomeTech: Join us as we look back on the biggest smart home stories of 2019 on our fifth annual Fireside Chat! We are joined by both Richard Gunther and Adam Justice of the Digital Media Zone’s Home:On Podcast. This jam-packed episode will provide you with a comprehensive look back at all the trends that defined the connected home this year, including predictions about what 2020 will bring. Don’t miss it!

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the fifth annual Fireside Chat. Hard to believe it's the fifth time we're doing this, and as hard to believe that the end of the year is here again. Very excited to sit down. This is always an episode that I look forward to for many months ahead of time, and we've got a little bit of a change in our lineup this year. We're bringing in some new blood, Adam Justice. Adam, how you doing? Good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're excited to have you on, and we'll get here actually right away. Let's go ahead and jump in and let everybody introduce themselves.

This is going to be going out in multiple feeds, and so let's go around the horn. Adam, maybe you can start for anybody maybe tuning in through one of the other feeds and not familiar with you or your work. Give a quick personal introduction. Sure. Adam Justice, and I am the CEO and founder of ConnectSense, which is a smart home brand. We just released a new product, our in-wall outlet. You can check out at ConnectSense.com. And I co-host the Smart Home Show with Richard, which if you're not familiar with, we talk pretty regularly, about twice a month, and focus on kind of all things smart home from

different perspectives. So mine being more the business and industry perspective and Richard's being from a user and journalist perspective. Absolutely. Cool. Well, thank you for that, Adam. And speaking of Richard, Richard, why don't you go ahead and give a quick personal introduction as well? Yeah, I am Richard Gunther. I am Adam's co-host now on Mike's former show, The Smart Home Show. So we were really happy to pick that up and kind of bring that out of hiatus. And I also am the host of Home On over at the Digital Media Zone. Absolutely. Yeah. And you mentioned Mike there. For anyone who's not familiar, Mike Wolf had the Smart Home Show for quite a while there, and it kind of went into hibernation. And you guys

have picked it up and was really glad to see you pick up the torch. And you're doing great work keeping that going. So I'll speak on behalf of the smart home community and say thank you to you both. It's great work that you guys are doing on both of those shows. Awesome. Thanks. And Seth, I'm going to let you go ahead and introduce Seth and I, our co-hosts, for anybody not familiar. But Seth, I'm going to put you on the spot and allow you to do the plug here for our show and introduce yourself as well. Great. I don't know what to say. Let's see. It's hometech.fm. It's the podcast we do mostly weekly. It's kind of gotten off the rails with the

insane holiday schedule this year. But mostly weekly, Jason and I, we get together, we talk about the news and maybe have a deep dive into a couple of discussions, a couple of interviews here and there. And it's a fun way to sit down and chat with a friend every week about what's going on in the world of home technology. So that's hometech.fm. Yep, absolutely. And Seth, you and I both come, of course, from a professional integration background. We've both since migrated over to the vendor side of the business, but we bring a lot of that experience in terms of being out there on the front lines of how this technology gets deployed and sort of the impact that it's having on the home and a lot of the evolution, frankly, that's been going on over the last five years or so has been pretty dramatic in terms of the lines really getting blurred between professional and do it

yourself or do it for me. It's really been a fun journey to follow that along for the last several years. And looking forward to this episode, as I always do, because it's a great opportunity to zoom out and talk about some of those trends. And that's what we're going to do here. And we've got a lot to cover. So let's go ahead and jump right in really quickly. I'll mention that we're going to structure the show really in two big parts. So number one, we're going to talk about what was your sort of some of favorite or most important stories of the year. And we've prepared together and come up with really for a handful of pretty big stories that we're all going to chime in on and really excited to dive into those. And

then on the back half of the show, we're going to shift gears and take out our crystal balls a little bit and look forward to 2020 and talk about what their themes are that we're looking forward to in the year ahead. So let's go ahead and jump in and get started. The first big story that we want to talk about here in what was a very busy 2019 is this idea of people almost giving up on the smart home or downgrading their expectations. A little bit of dose of reality, I think, has been injected into what was really, we were early in the hype cycle four or five years ago, at least when Seth and I started covering the space. And Adam, I know this was a topic that you sort of brought to the table in our discussions, and I'd love to have you sort of tee it up and provide some of your thoughts on

this trend. Yeah. I mean, I think, first of all, I would say this is not my favorite topic of the year. It's not one I'm super excited about, but I do feel like it's important and you know, a friend of probably all of our shows, Stacey Higginbotham at one time, you know, one of her newsletters was very, you know, kind of her throwing her arms up in the air and saying, like, none of this stuff works together. I'm sick of it. Like it just kind of, you know, saying this isn't working kind of thing. And the other kind of example was, you know, Google kind of changed their marketing slogan around smart home to helpful home. And the narrative around that was like, we're not going to promise the smart home anymore. We're just going to shoot for helpful and hope we can hit it.

Yeah. Well, and I would add one more thing. And I think that is kind of the very vocal assertion from Charlie Kindle over at Control 4 saying, you know what? This DIY thing, it's just not working. Yeah. I heard Charlie speak, and I think Richard and I might've touched on it on our show. I heard him speak at a smart home conference earlier in the year in front of a room full of experts in the industry, manufacturers, things like that. And to give that message to that group, I was kind of like, what are you talking about, Charlie? You're going to stand up in front of all these people and tell them this isn't the way? Yeah. Yeah. Charlie's definitely an interesting one with his perspective because his work, just in case anybody's not

familiar, of course, over there at Amazon with Alexa for smart home, headed that all up and, you know, then moved over to Control 4, very professional dealer-centric channel. And even before he had made that move, Charlie was very vocal on his blog about, hey, the DIY thing's not all it's cracked up to be. And even I, as this total tech geek, like have a professional work in my home. And I always found that interesting. And I think we have seen that dose of reality. I think back to one of the big stories this calls to mind for me is the whole shift from the Works with Nest program away from that. And Google making that move and how many feathers that ruffled in terms of companies that were integrated through that Works with Nest program. And that got shut down. And Seth and I certainly have talked about that quite a bit on our show. There are some clear reasons why they did that.

And some of them are acceptable and some of them maybe from your vantage point aren't. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it ties back to your theme, Adam, which is people are downgrading their expectations because a lot of end users had those integrations set up through the Works with Nest program. And they're the ones who are really going to pay the price and be affected by it. And it's not just Works with Nest. I mean, we saw a lot of consumer products kind of fade away. Is Wink still hanging in by a string? I think it is.

I think as of the time of this recording, Wink is still around. Dude, you are so totally stealing from one of our future stories. Oh, sorry. I'll move on to Stringify. I guess it's kind of that theme too, right? Like there have been a lot of services that shut down, right? I think, oh yeah, Richard, you put that in there. So yeah, like it's not, consumers are not wrong to be lowering their expectations in this manner because they've been burned so many times from the height cycle that Jason was talking about that we started this off with, where companies are popping up on Kickstarter left and right, introducing new product that may or may not hit the market. When it does, they get acquired and

they stop supporting this thing. They've been burned so many times in the last five years. Of course, it's time to kind of like take a deep breath, step back from this stuff and look what actually does work and maybe, you know, wait for something to come along that fits your budget well, that does what you want it to do. Right. The smart home has definitely, I mean, Jason, as long as you and I have been working in this business, it's been talked up as being a smart home, but it's never been truly a smart home. It's always been a couple of things for home automation, but the home has never really adapted in any of the products that I've ever dealt with. It's never been like adapted around the lifestyle and living conditions of someone who lives at the house. It's all been like

convenience programming that we put together to make the lights turn on easily. You know, if there was a bunch of loads in a room or the TV to turn on, if there's a bunch of sources and receivers and audio zones and that kind of thing. Right. It's never been like walk in the house and listen to whatever Spotify station that you want to with the temperature and lights adjusted to the conditions you want, all predicted with some kind of robot AI. That future is not, you know, we're moving into 2020. We don't have jetbacks.

We don't have a smart home either. Yeah, exactly. Well, I think you bring up an interesting point because we talk about people downgrading their expectations, which, of course, is predicated on the idea that they had high expectations in the first place, right? And I think many of us have, of course, those of us who follow the space and the more geeky enthusiasts, and I say that in a good way, considering myself a geek, those of us in that category certainly are downgrading our expectations. But I think there's a parallel conversation here where when you zoom out for the vast majority of the population, we're still early. And the expectations have never been high or they've never even existed, perhaps, for large segments of the population.

So, you know, I think this is a natural correction and is part of that adoption cycle. If you, again, zoom out and look at the whole thing in perspective, I think that a lot of people are still early and still getting in on the game. And so, unlike us lucky folks, they're not going to be quite as disappointed. I think one of my problems here is I'm generally an optimist and I am still very excited about what's possible in the smart home. And, you know, I feel like, you know, I want other people to be excited, too. And to see some of this correction and people talking down or downgrading expectation, it's like, so maybe the word smart home, we're not there yet. But it's also it's aspirational in its nature. And it's, it's a,

it's a flag in the ground, you know, somewhere in the future that we're trying to get to and, you know, downgrading that, you know, are we going to settle for less kind of thing? And, you know, myself personally, I don't want to settle for less. I want that Jetsons experience. And that's where I want to keep our, you know, our everything pointed. Sure. No, that makes sense. Well, I actually... Before we leave this, though, I mean, I think that there's another factor at play here. And I think in many respects, the companies that have delivered, and there are so many of these, I can't even begin to count them, subpar experiences with setting up and using their products, I think have a lot to do with the disillusion that consumers feel about the smart home. Because frankly, in so many cases, it's just too damn hard. Right. Yeah, I agree. I think there's certainly culpability there in the mad dash to get things

to market and get products out there. Certainly, we've all had our fair share of really subpar experiences. So no shortage of blame to go around there, I am sure. But Richard, I want to transition actually, or all of us really, I want to transition into one of our next big stories, because I think there's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of parallels between our first big topic there, the kind of disillusionment or downgrading of expectations, and this next one, which is systems and services shutting down. We've seen some of the shakeout. We've seen some of those early companies have come and gone now, and even some that perhaps we thought were going to be around for the long haul. Richard, I know this

was one that you brought to the table and is near and dear to your heart. So I'm going to let you tee it up. Give us your perspective here on this big trend. I mean, this is something that I've written about a lot on the DMZ and the whole idea that we're, as consumers, becoming dependent on products and services that may not exist in our near future. And this is kind of what you were getting at, Seth, when you were talking about the potential demise of Wink. Nobody really knows what's going on at Wink. There was news from some disgruntled employees that they weren't getting paid. And we know now that their phone line for their customer service has been shut off, but somehow the service still seems to be working. Is it going to be working forever?

Meanwhile, Lowe's Irish shut down this year. Stringify shut down this year. Best Buy took the services away that supported their smart home products under their in-house insignia brand. So we have all of these, you know, the easy pickings for customers, like stuff that would be really easy for customers to get access to because it's in their big box stores, not the kind of stuff that you have to have a specific interest to go find on smarthome.com or amazon.com or something like that. These are average consumers getting affected by these services going away. And that's, you know, that that's bad for the industry in some ways. But I also feel like, again, these companies aren't really planning

for this well. One of the things that I have advocated for a very long time is that if you are a product company, not only do you need a success plan, but you need a failure plan. What happens when your cloud-connected product or service is no longer available? Design your product in a way that can perhaps accommodate that. Have a plan to maybe provide some sort of long-term post-company life or post-product life

cloud service or something like that, if that's possible. Maybe some sort of transition plan, but too often that just doesn't happen. So this is something that just frustrates me like crazy. And it's something that I coach companies on as a product consultant when they're trying to define what they're doing in the market. Yeah. I think it's a great way to look at it. Nobody wants to think about that. Nobody wants to design their product, their baby. And during that exciting phase, think about what happens if this all goes to zero, basically. It's like writing a will. Yeah, right.

Nobody wants to write a will. No, it's true. It's true. Adam, go ahead and chime in on this one. Yeah, I mean, I think I agree and I see the frustration. But, you know, to a certain extent, some of this had to happen for things to move on. And I think one of these that was touched on was the Nest thing and the works with Nest thing. And ultimately, I understand why they did this. And from a business perspective, sometimes you got to, you got to, you know,

kind of cut the ropes to the dock to, you know, get out to sail. And, um, that's sort of what this one felt like, uh, to me. And I think, you know, once we get a little bit further from it, um, I think we're going to see it was the right decision for them. And but I also see why people are upset. Sure. I love Adam's different perspective on this. And this is actually for those who don't know, this is how Adam and I do the Smart Home Show. He's looking at it from the industry because what Google put into the mix was a B2B problem, right? What they're taking away works with Nest, had a huge impact on other businesses,

much less so on consumers. Consumer stuff is still going to work, just maybe not as well. Whereas, you know, I was talking about the companies that had products in consumers' hands that no longer work anymore. And it's interesting because I hadn't thought about that huge impact that Google's changes have on all these other companies that depended on the Works with Nest program. Right. Well, Seth, I know for you, in a way, this is all great news, right?

You get to build out your graveyard, your wall of shame there this is kind of a morbid way of looking at it but uh i i i do want to say um one of the one of the great shows you guys had over at the smart home show was um how how you make a smart i i don't know i'm looking for the title of it right now but you guys did an episode fully devoted to basically like what are the processes of uh oh designing designing and launching a product uh in the in the smart home space and like what thoughts and things go behind that uh and i i think we could probably put a link to that in our show respective show notes to to reference that show because it was really good of explaining some of the like ins and outs of uh of this and um you know i don't i don't really remember if you touched on like the obsolescence planning but um i think that's that's a good thing

to be thinking about if you're if you're putting out a product is to like well what is it what happens if if things go south or you know one day we don't want to support this anymore like it's it just kind of the the support overhead cost of running a server is more than we're making off a product. Like, is there a way to eliminate the smarts part of this and kind of leave it up to the consumer to kind of integrate with locally, even if that's possible? So I don't know. That's a good idea. I like it. I don't know how many companies are going to have the forethought to think about that and put that in the product planning part of putting a product together that far up front. It's one of those things, it's like an API. You do it when the product's pretty mature and not when you're

planning it out typically. Yeah, it's funny. Here's a quick story. I actually know of a company that put a trust in place to ensure that their services would continue to get support if anything happened to them. Yeah, that's not uncommon. We do stuff like that sometimes where we're doing business with another company. And if we own the design, there's basically you put in escrow all of the design files and production files and stuff like that. And it's like, well, we own that. But if for some reason the company went under and they needed to keep producing that product, then all of that stuff goes to them. Yeah. It's episode 173, I think, is the one I'm referring to. It's a smart home device pricing and kind of what you're it's kind of of a good deep dive into, into what you're, you, you, what, how products get put together. Uh, uh, I thought it was pretty good show. So check that out. If you haven't already

heard it, smart home show 173. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's, uh, you know, I think I don't have a lot to add. I think we talked a lot there about when things go to zero or something gets shut down or a company fails, but this also happens when products get acquired too. Like back in 2014, I think of Revolve and they got acquired and then promptly shut down. The Neo remote was a huge DIY hit, at least had a cult following. I don't know what their overall numbers were, but they had a very sexy product that a lot of people really loved, and they were acquired by Control 4. And then it basically became, this is a pro product now, and things are shut down. And so these things happen, and I do agree that it was a big trend in 2019, definitely an unfortunate one for consumers. And I think it's something that all businesses and consumers entering the space have to think about. Alluded there to Control 4, they are, of course, acquired by SnapAV. That segues

nicely into one of the other big stories we wanted to talk about this year, certainly shifting here to a pro angle on the smart home. But I would say unquestionably, probably the biggest story of the year was SnapAV's acquisition of control for seth i know this is one you had some thoughts on so i'll go ahead and hand it over to you here yeah i was thinking of like how to like if you're listening to this you don't know who snap av is and you don't know who control for is like i was thinking about how this would be like related to the to like just the general public smart home space and And I'm like, well, think about it if Amazon acquired Ring. Oh, wait, they did that.

So it's kind of like that big of a bombshell within our own little channel, right? Like it's our largest, arguably one of the largest distributors in North America, acquiring one of the, if not the largest prosumer space control and home automation system and bringing that all into the fold under one big umbrella. It is, and I think will have some interesting consequences moving forward with these two companies and with the industry at large. I mean, SnapAV has been and was on a tear already of acquiring distributors from around North America to have a local space in certain markets. And they have that now.

They have all of their products in there. And I wonder how that's going to go out with Control 4. Will we start seeing an easy way to go if you're a dealer in a market with a SnapAV store nearby? Are you going to be able to go pick with control for like, will we start seeing an easy way to go? If you're if you're a dealer in a market with a snap AV store nearby, you're going to be able to go pick up some control for without having to wait a couple days for that to come in. Really good stuff. And I mean, for a control for dealer, I'm an I'm a distributor, I kind of I don't really compete with snap AV. But you know, we're out there. And it's just really interesting to see these big guys kind of doing their thing.

And I think shaping this industry or this particular part of the industry, this little channel that's set up in the industry, they're going to start shaping it more than we think in the next couple of years. They were like Thanos walking around gathering up their stones. Yeah, exactly. It's true. Snap baby's been on the warpath this year. Cool. Yeah, I think I'm happy to jump in here. SnapAV's acquisition of Control 4, definitely, again, in my opinion, biggest story of the year, by far, in the professional space. And Seth, I liked your analogy there. For people who aren't familiar with the space, it's a niche industry in the grand scheme of things. But if you just zoom in and look at just that niche industry,

yeah, it very much was the equivalent of like an Amazon buying a ring. It was a very, very big deal. It was a bombshell in the industry. I think very few, if any, people saw that one coming. And I think in hindsight, with any deal this big, there are always going to be winners and losers. And we know that, there are always going to be winners and losers. And we know that. And there's going to be some shakeout. Some good people are going to lose their jobs. Some product lines are probably going to get axed.

There's probably going to be a little bit of fallout on the consumer side. But, you know, I've had the privilege in the professional space of getting to know some of the very top people at both of these companies. And I think from a, from a, both a culture standpoint and a dedication to the professional channel standpoint, they're top notch. These are two companies that get it. They're going to do everything in their power to make this transition a smooth one.

We had Charlie Kendall and G Paul Hess on our show several weeks back and, and talked a little bit about the acquisition. And by all accounts, they said it was smooth sailing. I'm sure there's stuff going on, all kinds of moving parts there. And it's going to be a long time before these things are really fully ironed out. But I think for the professional channel, I'm on record. I did a blog post on this. I think overall, it's a great thing. In the short term, there's going to be some fallout, but in the longterm, you know, these are two companies that can really, you combine the things that they both bring to the table and you've got a really robust platform for the home technology professional. And so if you're in that business

or you're in the market for hiring a professional, the efficiencies and the benefits of scale that these operations can bring to the market are, in my opinion, a really good thing. So I'm excited personally about what the future holds for these companies. I look forward to seeing what they do in the year ahead. Richard, did you want to chime in? Richard, you got any thoughts on this from your vantage point? I have no thoughts on this one. I couldn't really tell when this happened, whether it made sense or not. And I relied heavily on the great conversations and reporting that you guys were doing about it. Well, thank you for the plug there, Richard. Your check's in the mail. We appreciate it. All right, well, we'll shift gears here. We've got a couple more big stories we want to touch on before we shift out and look into the future a little bit.

Another one here was the shifting back into the consumer space, Ring's security woes. I know this started back in, I think, January. Seth, this is one you brought to the table. Tee it up for us. Yeah. I think January, Seth, this is one you brought to the table. Tee it up for us. Yeah, I was. Well, I mean, even as of like last night, I think there was another piece written about some issues that some passwords, I guess people had hacked or something for the ring ring products. But I went back and looked and sure enough, in January of 2019, we were already starting to see these. We've been talking about security for the past couple of years. And this year, you know, Google, Apple, and for the most part, Amazon was already there.

But they all three companies really got serious, it seemed, about security and introduced new products and features for their end users to use to lock down their systems a little bit more. I think Ring is kind of just an easy target. We're seeing people write stories that say that they've been hacked, even though it's maybe a bad password or a reused password or something along those lines. Ring, for their part, says we're not seeing any indication that we've lost passwords, but maybe these are reused passwords that people have hacked elsewhere and they're just trying the same email and password for Ring and lo and behold, it works. But I don't know, like it, Ring's a big name because, you know,

Amazon's a big name and tangentially you're going to get these stories written about them. But I still think security is on the forefront of consumers' minds. And I was glad to see this year. I mean, Ring's had their problems this year. They've had a number of security hacks or breaches or whatever that were reported to them and they fixed properly within time. I think I counted like two or three of them this year. That's done right. That's security done right. And I think they should get credit for that. But I would like to see more being done with security around the entire industry

to start locking down products a little bit more, making it a little bit more secure and keeping that, you know, end user data appropriately stored or anonymized where it can't be used and taken advantage of by external sources. Yeah. You know, I think if anything comes out of this, it is that last point you made that Ring, if nothing else, should kind of be a reminder to all of these companies that they need to be taking security, particularly on cameras, but on any of these IoT devices, very, very seriously. I believe that Ring is, and they're reacting to things that have occurred pretty quickly. There's some argument that perhaps they should have had two-factor authentication required.

Frankly, it pisses me off when companies do that, so I'm glad that they don't. I think users should have options. And there are people complaining that they don't notify you when someone logs in in an unexpected area. I turn all of those notifications off because I hate that crap. So I think it's easy to vilify Ring because they're the recent billion acquisition and now they're owned by a trillion dollar company. And wow, hey, this is this is deep pockets. Let's start attacking. And and, you know, if it's not that, then it's about how they're using your data and police have access to it. And, well, how long can the police keep it? And what if? Well, but but the police can ask you for it.

You might feel compelled to give it. OK, whatever. I think the thing that this points out is that these devices do have flaws. They are being addressed and everybody who has a device needs to be on top of this stuff. What people seem to forget is that your computer and your phone and maybe your tablet, if you have one, that you use every friggin' day receive literally dozens of security updates every month. Yeah. No, it's a great point. Adam, I'd love you to jump in here. Of the four of us, you have the unique perspective of being on the hardware and the manufacturing side. How are

you guys thinking about security, both specifically to you guys and then, you know, broadly speaking, as a trend in the industry? Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that we've always been really focused on is security being a part of the design from day one. And, you know, whenever we're taking on a new product or making changes to our infrastructure, we're always looking for ways where we can make it more secure and, you know, kind of enable that. So it's something we're constantly looking at. And, you know, as Richard said, you know, I do think Ring is taking this seriously. I do think, you know, some of this is just them being a big target and people, you know, trying to pick on them. We see this all the time in the Apple world that, you know, everybody's got their sights set on them. And so any little thing, you know,

everybody comes at them. But, you know, I think the with Ring being, you know, security systems, cameras, you know, particularly sensitive and private stuff, their responsibility is so much higher than everybody else's. And so, you know, everybody's holding them accountable. And I know one of the things I remember seeing was around like, you know, stuff about during provisioning. And when the device was in provisioning mode, it was an open access point. It's like, that is so common. There are so many companies that do that.

It's like, you know. Not only is it like so common, like to hack something like that and retrieve the Wi-fi credentials at that point in time it's it's such a it's like beyond threading a needle right it's like right threading a molecule within the needle like it is you'd have you'd have to be the biggest nerd sitting in a car with these antennas sticking off of it you know right outside the front door just waiting knowing somebody's gonna set up their Ring doorbell.

And if you're, I tell you what, if you're. I got him. Yeah. If you're setting your Ring system up and you turn around and you look out, you look behind you and there's a guy just staring at you from his car, maybe, maybe just wait till he leaves. And then you're secure. Yeah.

With giant antennas. Like, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Looking back and forth at his laptop, like, waiting. I agree, but I think what's unfortunate about that story is that's not the headline. The headline is, you know, ring vulnerable and, you know, poor security. And those of us who are in the industry and who know that, know that that attack vector is so small and so minuscule and whatever, but that's not what people read.

And then, you know, you get there's all the the tinfoil hat people that are like, well, that's why I won't put any of this stuff in my house and I'm not going to let the government spy on me here. And, you know, it's like you're just giving food for those guys. And even if they responsibly patch it which they did like it was responsibly reported by a research company it was it was patched before it was even announced like it's not even a problem that's in the wild anymore on all ring devices worldwide in one you know push out roll out of firmware like there's there's no credit given to them for that the headline is still ring devices are vulnerable to hack.

They can get your Wi-Fi credentials. It's like, oh, man, come on. And you're right. People damn the cloud infrastructure for that. But, you know, the thing is, is when you get the ring device on the cloud, like, the first thing it does, just like any other cloud device, is download firmware. And it updates and gets rid of all those security holes and reboots. And then anything that could possibly have gotten

into it or anything that has possibly changed is gone because it's a new, completely new system ready to go. It's wild that cloud devices get such a bad take when they are substantially more secure than local devices like that. Yeah. And I think the other point here too, you know, we've done work with some of our clients and our stuff where we, we work with security companies and, and they'll bang on your stuff and they'll tell you what all these different angles are. And then it's, it's a choice you're having to make. And usually what that balance is, is user experience and some like super narrow, like we talked about attack vector guy in a van kind of stuff. And you want to balance how much of a pain do I want to make this for the user versus how likely

is this one very small thing to happen? And so those are choices companies have to make. And that's something that everybody has to struggle with. And there is a way that this pendulum could swing too far that would negatively impact the entire industry because we'd all say, well, this stuff's too hard and it's too hard to set up. And it's like, okay, well, it's secure. So, you know, enjoy. But, you know, that's definitely a balance that everybody has to strike. It reminds me of the story where we heard that voice assistants could be hacked to open your garage or disarm your alarm. And then you find out it's like some guy sitting across the street from your house

with a laser, you know laser aimed through your window. We fixed that, Jason. We fixed that. We did. It's a big problem. It's a big problem. What was it? Home Assistant Shield.

Home Assistant Shield, yeah. Go check it out. You can buy them online on our website. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Assistantshield.com. It's so popular we don't even remember the domain. It's Assistant Security Shield because of the, you know, you need that acronym there.

Anyways, yeah, it is funny. And I think it is unfortunate. The headlines get written as clickbait. They want you to click in. They're in the business of getting eyeballs on their site. So that's what you hear. And you miss all of the nuance. And it is unfortunate.

But all the same, I think privacy and security are definitely areas where companies are, I feel like, getting more serious. I think we've seen it. There it is. There it is. Too bad we're an audio-only show, but Seth's got one of our functioning prototypes of the Home Assistant Security Shield, so go check that out. Anyways, so I do think we've seen some improvements there, and we do see more awareness, I think, and companies getting more serious about it. So I think, on the whole, things are moving in the right direction with regards to privacy and security. I do want to shift gears here and talk about kind of the last big story. And I'm feeling a little bit repetitive on this one. Every year, it seems to get bigger. I know this is a story I personally have been very

interested in the last couple of years, and it's the streaming landscape. And every year, I think, man, this has been one of the big surprise breakout stories of the year. And then the next year, it gets even bigger. And I think this year was really a high watermark for streaming, just in terms of the number of choices out there and the significance of some of the offerings coming to market. Of course, Apple TV Plus became available this year, Disney Plus, we've got NBC Peacock coming soon, HBO Max coming out soon. So there's just this world of options out there now that people have to pick from. And it's gone from a story of, hey, I feel trapped in my cable bill, to now you actually have people complaining that there's so

many services out there that they're paying as much as they were for cable. And, you know, of course, I understand. But on the other hand, I'm like, it's a ridiculous complaint. Choice is a good thing. Nobody's, you know, saying that you have to have all of them, of course, whereas with the cable bundles, you were, in a sense, if you wanted cable, you were locked into these huge packages, and now you have much more of an a la carte choice model. All the same, I get it.

It's a confusing landscape more so than ever. And if it's an area that you're looking to get into and All the same, I get it. It's a confusing landscape more so than ever. And if it's an area that you're looking to get into and cut the cord like I did in 2019, it's certainly one you've got to jump in and do your homework. I did as well a couple of years ago, maybe 2017, cut the cord-, in that we had direct TV now, um, which was basically a cable subscription. But when I got it as an intro service, it was like 30 bucks a month. And it was, you know, that, that puts my streaming services were far less than my cable bill. Um, you know, I think a lot of those streaming services, uh, you know, you had here PlayStation view shutdown, clearly that model for a bunch of those streaming services, you know, you had here PlayStation View shut down. Clearly, that model for a bunch of those streaming services didn't work because all the prices ratcheted up for all those people that were trying to do cable as streaming.

And, you know, that just didn't work. You know, some people like, you know, Comedy Central and all those weren't cutting deals with those companies and so for me we watched so little traditional tv i said forget it and we've pulled that out but our streaming bill probably we're still saving a little bit of money but it's getting up there towards what we used to pay for cable so we're an example of that yeah youtube tv uh i think last i checked it was like they had raised their price up to $50. And that's pretty much, I mean, it's not pretty much cable, like that's a cable subscription price. Once you add on internet, right, like you're going to be paying, you know, over $100 easily for internet and cable alone at that point. So at least here in the States. So yeah, I think we've saved a little bit of money by shutting down. I think we shut down Hulu, but then we've gained a couple of these. I've got the free trial of Apple TV Plus going, and of course we did the Disney Plus, the deal thing. So I'm not worried about that for the next three years. I forget how much that was. It was like the, the, the cost of one month of cable

or something like that, uh, for three years of service. So I'm not going to complain about that at all. Um, but yeah, I, I, uh, my internet still stays the same and Comcast calls me literally every month. I think it's the same lady. She calls me every month and, and we talk for like 20 minutes about how, how, what services they can offer. And they can get me TV in my house. And I just say, no, I'm not interested in TV. I want faster internet. Can you do that?

Oh, yeah, we can do that. Can you do that without me paying more? And the answer is always just a no. And she's very disappointed every time that happens. That's right. Hey, Seth. How's the family? Just recording that they give me. It's actually an How's the family? They give me?

Yeah. It's actually an AI of the lady now just calling. Hit me again. I actually thought the direction you were going with that, which is the problem I'm having now, which is the Comcast lady that calls me that tells me I've used all my data allocation because we're streaming everything. I've hit that a couple of times and I think it's mostly it's it's less the streaming with me and I found it to be backups of data that I was accidentally maybe once or twice had backed up my entire Plex library. Whoops. So I think that was doing it more so than the uh than than uh than just streaming i haven't hit that mark with streaming yet you know you wouldn't have that problem if you just had a

few cable channels i always blame i blame my wife who works from home and often will like have netflix running in the background or something like that 4k all the time yeah well yeah we that was one of the ways we solved it i was like well if you're just running this in the background or something like that. 4K all the time. Well, yeah, that was one of the ways we solved it. I was like, well, if you're just running this in the background, you better down-res this, and that's going to help. So am I the only person who has not cut the cord? Sounds like it. Old timer. Wow.

Wow. Yeah, well, I mean, that's fair. I am on this one. So, yeah, I still have my cable. I did get rid of my premiums. It didn't save me as much as I had hoped. But I think the thing that concerns me the most about this, and certainly Apple is trying to make some strides to fix this. TiVo has tried. I don't know that they've necessarily succeeded in it yet. There's a service called Minnow that acts as a front end on your devices to all the different services

that you might have to try and make the discovery problem a little bit easier because this is now much, much harder to find the show that you know is out there and you want to watch, but you probably don't even know what service it's on. That happens all the time. Or in my

household all the time, I end up with a situation where I go away and Edward doesn't know where that movie is that we have. Is it on this service or that service? Now, luckily, Movies Anywhere has solved most, but not all, of that problem. So the industry is slowly fixing some of these problems, but I still think Discovery right now is really confusing, and I hope that we see some more companies trying to do something innovative there.

Most of the time when I'm trying to watch, when we think of a movie, like the other night it was The Nightmare Before Christmas we want to watch. We're like, if we don't own it, if it's not in the Plex library, then we go to a website called Just Watch or something like that. I think I have a Just Watch app. And I search for it and it's kind of like this Minnow thing I'm looking at here. It kind of aggregates all the movie streaming and it can kind of tell you where you can get it for free or you can pay for it.

And I think that's pretty good. So I fully expected Apple TV to be there one of these days, but it's... That one, Apple TV has replaced Hulu as being my interface of just, I don't want to go in there and deal with it anymore because it... Wow, really? The target of Seth's ire.

How can it possibly be worse than Hulu? Come on. No, it's not. It's only worse than Hulu because I've deleted the Hulu app. Because you got rid of Hulu. Yeah. So, you know, for all the complexities and I agree with all of those, the kind of paradox of choice gets a little overwhelming and then you've got the discovery problem. So there are certainly problems. The bills so many good shows out there to pick from right now. And there's something for everybody to get into. And there are different streaming services that no matter what your flavor is, you can find something that works for you and your family if you've got it.

So lots of resources out there you can go dig into too to get educated. Seth and I, I know I've talked about lots of those on our shows. And so I think on balance, it is very much a good thing. And I'll be curious to see what 2020 brings as far as the momentum and what other services are going to come. And then in the years ahead, like, do we start to see a similar pattern that we've seen where a lot of these early companies like maybe is PlayStation view the first of a pattern where some of this has to shake out and more of these services have to kind of die to make rooms for make room for some of the bigger ones to continue to grow. So anyways, speaking of that, and kind of looking forward there, let's shift gears into the next big segment of the show.

We talked there for a while about what we thought the biggest stories were of 2019. Let's get the crystal balls out and look forward into the future and see what are the big things here that we think are really going to define the year ahead. And so, Adam, I want to start with you here. Wait, that's not how I picked mine. Hold on. Not how I picked mine either. What are you most looking forward to? So these are different is what you're saying, Richard. Not how I picked mine either. What are you most looking forward to?

So these are different is what you're saying, Richard. So what you're looking forward to may not be exactly what defines 2020. So point taken. Thank you for clarifying that. So Adam, let's come to you here. What are you looking forward to most in terms of big trends moving into the year 2020? So I think I am interested to see how all the major voice platforms and smart home ecosystems move forward in 2020. And we had some interesting news this week as we're recording of a new smart home standard, simply called connected home over IP. Chip. I want to call it Chip. Why don't we call it Chip? Come on.

Stop trying to make Chip happen, Richard. The jokes practically write themselves. So, I mean, the big story here is, you know, major companies, Apple, Google, as well as Amazon working together on a smart home standard. So, and, you know, other players involved. I believe the Zigbee Association is part of the mix here and will likely be the standards body. So I think there's two things at play. They're promising a draft spec by the end of 2020 with all the member companies and people in the working group. So I think it'll be very interesting come late 2020 to see where that happens. But the other piece I think is interesting here is where do all those ecosystems go while we wait for this additional standard to happen?

Are they going to be stagnant and not make investments, you know, knowing that this may be where the future is? Or are they going to plug forward knowing that, okay, this is another thing we're working on, but we're not going to fully bet on it, so we're going to keep piling and innovating in the places we've been innovating today? Am I the only one old enough to remember when the thread was the same story? I don't know.

It just seems like this story comes up literally every year. Yep, it's still the same story. I don't know. Like, it just seems like this story comes up literally every year. And I... Yep, it's still the same story. Yeah, I'm... It's like Bluetooth. It's going to be the future of the home. And it just never... I mean, we never see a Bluetooth home put together.

I don't know. Like, it's always next year with this stuff. And I'm glad, I guess, they're still working on this. But like, really, another standard. This is what we need. This is what we're going to work for. I don't know. I'll be much more excited when it's a shipping product, I guess,

is kind of where I'm at. That I get, but go ahead, Adam. I'll blame Thread as to why we're not going to be a part of this working group. We were part of that in the initial first year or whatever, nothing was done. And I'm like, oh, well, we just wasted, I don't remember, it was like $10,000 or $15,000 to be part of Thread. I was like, well, that was money we just set on fire. So I'll let the big guys figure this out and I'll be watching from the wings. But yeah, been there, done that. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. And

your comment there is what I actually wanted to dive into. I mean, I get the jokes, I get the comparisons, but is this not different than Thread? I mean, just like, okay, conceptually, the execution could fall flat on its face and this could go nowhere. And I totally get all that. But like, I mean, it feels different to me with Amazon, Google and Apple, all three being involved, where Thread was much more of like a Google centric type of type of offering. I mean, like, Seth, how do you reconcile that? I mean, Thread wasn't I mean, it wasn't Google centric. I think they were like leading the way on it. But like from what I understood, it was more of like an industry coalition or group of people that were coming together.

It was almost literally the same press release group of people that were coming together. It was almost literally the same press release that I saw come from Apple yesterday. So I don't know. These threads may be good to get people working together and talking together about what they'd like to do, but it just seems like the business motivations between Apple, Google, and Amazon are so different. I don't know. This isn't going to lead to, like, an industry standard. It's just a communication standard. It's not an industry standard on, like, how home automation setup and install is done. Like, that's not going to get done because Google, Amazon, and Apple have

their own independent ideas of how, you know, you set up and deploy a smart home. And I think that's one of, like like Stacy's biggest problems that she was having was like she moved and she had to tear down a home system. And then when she got to the next place, it was like getting the stuff set back up was near impossible because none of this stuff saves itself

and can be transferred easily. So it would be really nice to see like some type, and I don't think we'll ever get there, is some type of like standards based. Like I'm trying to think of like an example. I think there's like OMPL or something that you can use to export your podcast list or something like that and transfer it between different podcast clients. We need that for home automation, like transfer my settings and whatnot from this system over

to this system so I don't lose my automations and the way things get set up. And, you know, that can't be very difficult to do, but I think the industry is just not mature enough to get there at this point. We're still worried about the communication standards that we figured out a dozen times at this point. I'm very saddened to report that I can't find a Wikipedia article on the number of a list of home automation standards. There's got to be something out there on this. Well, there's one more. There's one more now. I think the one thing they are trying to do here, and as a company that builds stuff in this space, it excites me is they're trying to have where a company could build to one standard. There is a standards body you would

certify that with rather than each of these companies having to do that. Because that's what happens today. When we have a product, we have to get the Amazon certification done. We have to get the Google certification done. We have to get the Apple certification done. And those all come with varying levels of pain, which you can listen to some of Richard and my other episodes to hear about those levels of pain. But having to only do that once and with one group sounds like a dream. But to what Seth said, we'll believe it when we see it. Right. Well, Richard, we haven't heard from you on this one. too many of them. In fact, as a result of that, they've been consolidating, which is probably a good thing. But anything that is a consolidated effort between Amazon, Apple, Google,

and one of the kind of legacy, if you will, players, Zigbeebee i think is ultimately a good thing now how far it goes how fast it goes what impact it ultimately has i think it's you know we're yet to see that but this is not one that i'm willing to kind of poo-poo the same way i did with all join when that announcement came out oh you i was like remember all join i was just no i mean no that was that was a disaster out of the gate i don't know what the hell they were thinking remember we read at least had a better plan together all join didn't have good vendors on board they made this promise that the user interfaces were just going to build themselves. It's all magic. Yeah, no, that's never going to happen. So, well, you know, we'll see what happens here.

I think it could be good. Yeah, other than unfortunate companies like Atoms potentially flushing money down the drain. We hope that doesn't happen. But putting that aside, I think no bad can come from this in terms of, you know, at a minimum, these companies start to get together and communicate and think about ways to make this better. And, you know, I think it's interesting that, and by the way, I'm going to transition into mine next, because they're very interrelated. Mine was kind of what companies can do to improve the user experience, to take that experience to the next level. And I think a lot of this does revolve around open ecosystems and interoperability.

It's still such a minefield to try and navigate all that. And even in my modest setup here as a technical person, it's like, I try to teach my wife. It's like, okay, you go to this app to do that thing. And then you can use Siri for this, but not for that. And then you got to use this other app for this thing. And like, for me, it's not a huge deal, but for anyone who's not totally inclined, it is. And, and you think that I just find it interesting that companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon would come together like this. Again, putting aside whether or not it's going to be successful, you have to wonder, what is the motivation here? Are they feeling this total bottleneck of, hey, we see a bigger vision.

We see a bigger picture of where the smart home could go someday. And we still think that the biggest roadblock to that is interoperability. And I suspect there's some element of that. This has to be self-serving at a certain level in order for these companies to do it. They're in business. And so ultimately, I suspect they're feeling that too. And I think moving into 2020, it'll be really interesting to see what companies can do to work together to address that. I was frankly surprised to see it happen. I mean, if you would have told me two weeks ago,

hey, this is what... I heard this rumor, I'd say you were full of it. For those three to lay down their swords and say, you know, the right path is to work together to solve this problem is huge. And I hope they can do it. Absolutely. Some of the other areas, by the way, I'll tee up here in terms of the user experience. I think I lumped several things into here. There's the ongoing like security and privacy conversations. And I think we touched on that. I don't want to spend a ton more time on it, but I think one area that I saw Seth and I talk about listened to. And again, I think this is one of those stories where the headlines tend

to really oversell, you said earlier in the show, giving users more choices, being more transparent, I think is a good thing. And I don't think that companies need to go down the road of forcing everybody to use things like two-factor authentication and forcing that upon people. But they should be doing everything in their power to promote awareness, to provide users with the ability to make those choices for themselves. And so I think combining that with just the interoperability and then the ongoing service and support of these devices and just making the experience smoother and more enjoyable for a much broader

array of users is going to be a really interesting thing to watch in 2020. Yeah, for sure. Cool. Let's shift gears here. Richard, one of your favorite stories moving forward into 2020, new stuff from Insteon. We haven't talked about Insteon at all on this show. I know this is a big area for you. Tee it up for us.

Yeah. So, I mean, taking your kind of guidance on how we were framing this very literally, what am I most looking forward to next year? And I'm going to start this out by disclaiming that I am now in a contract relationship with Insteon. But before that, earlier this year, I was doing a lot of reporting on what they were working on and why we haven't heard anything for so long. And I actually went out to California, visited their headquarters there, and talked with some of their executives, saw some of the product that they had. And they're doing some really cool stuff. And I am really looking forward to next year when a lot of that is going to roll out. Probably more than anything, I'm excited about the possibility that my Insteon stuff that I am not backing away

from is finally going to be compatible with HomeKit. So, you know, that's something that they have committed to doing next year. So I'm excited about that. They've also talked about coming out with a new generation of products that have some new hardware and new firmware in them, as well as a new industrial design. And I've seen some of the performance improvements that the new hardware is going to enable. And it's really, really impressive. So I think that's cool. They're also going to be coming out with a board very much like what Amazon did, where if they're interested in it, third parties could potentially build Insteon into their products. So I think that might open some new opportunities for them to see

partner integrations that they previously really haven't pursued heavily before. So that's what I'm most excited about. It's what I use in my home and a brand I've been passionate about for years since they started putting that kind of thing. I think that's an interesting overall trend I'm seeing across the board. I saw something at Amazon's reInvent where Wemo is also doing something similar too, which was kind of surprising to me. But, you know, I guess if some of those companies want to give a path to, you know, getting into their ecosystem, it's one way to do it. Did you say, Richard, that they don't currently have HomeKit or just some of the products that you have don't have availability to connect to HomeKit? Insteon was one of the first five. If you remember initially when Apple first launched HomeKit, five vendors came out with the first wave of products.

And it was kind of a mess for all of them. And frankly, I think Insteon probably handled recovering from that least well of all of the vendors. And as a result result ultimately ended up just kind of not paying attention to what they did there anymore and just trying to figure out whether they were ever going to get back to it. So they have decided that they do want to get back to it, but you know, it's a whole new space now. Back in the day, vendors weren't even allowed to talk to each other when they were releasing product. So you had to release software that potentially had the ability to control and see and expose all of these other products and the information about these products. But you never had the opportunity to try it yourself before it went live. It was ridiculous. True story.

Before a bunch, before some of that first wave of HomeKit ever happened, there were a number of companies, ourselves included, who all, you know, kind of met and started kind of plugging and playing and testing stuff out. And it was kind of done in secret.

Apple didn't know about it. And a bunch of us were just kind of banging on it to see how it all worked together because exactly what you said, like companies didn't talk to each other. And we were all like, well, we got to cover our butts and make sure this stuff works together. So, you know, if they're not going to do it,

then we're all going to do it. And I think we're past the statute of limitations on that one, so we can talk about it now.'s an apple crime there are no statues you heard it here first that's right i won't name names yeah cool it definitely is a different world because i mean apple just like yesterday committed a bunch of home kit the home kit accessory development kit the adk to open source yeah yeah open source. So it is a completely different world from it was what, two, three years ago, four years ago. It's been a while. But yeah, when you can go on online as a developer, grab this stuff and run it on a Raspberry Pi. That's kind of wild to see.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we sort of shifted off onto HomeKit there, but coming back to Insteon, I'm glad you brought it up, Richard. I know you've been passionate about Insteon for a while, but you're far from alone. That's been a mainstay in the enthusiast smart home space for a very, very long time. And I'm really glad to hear, like, admittedly, I don't follow them very closely, and I'm glad to hear that from you. It was cool. I wasn't aware of all of the development happening there. And I think that sometimes I know I'm guilty of, I think of the smart home space in these two big buckets of professional and then DIY, pure sort of DIY, more point solution type of offerings. But there is this very robust place in the middle where enthusiasts who, like yourself and many, many others who really want to put together a robust system and are

willing to invest a little bit of time and money into putting that in, these solutions like Insteon are really great. And I'm glad to see them continuing to innovate. So cool. Well, let's move here then to you, Seth. Looking looking forward into 2020 what are you most excited about well I decided to to take a take a uh a page from Jason and uh do something easy this year again and just call out streaming services so one one of us has to carry the torch and I'll be the one this year um good I'll hand that off I I but i'm genuinely like i have a few different things i'm genuinely uh curious to see what's going to happen with these streaming services as they come to market we're seeing them mature as we talked about earlier uh and we're going to see more come

to market i think hbo max hits next year there's the nbc peacock one that's coming in next year so there's going to be a whole much more offering you know streaming services offerings uh hitting the market what i am excited about is the content like what you can watch on them the new shows that have come out have been they've been great like we've we've talked a little bit before the show about uh mandalorian uh the the the um for all mankind that i'm watching and no one else seems to be watching. And, uh, and, and,

uh, what's the morning, the morning show. Like, I didn't know that I could hate Steve Carell. Oh, it turns out like he can really, he can play a loathsome bad guy.

Like I, I, you know, Joffrey, the little King, little blonde headed kid, like how everybody hated him. Like I hate Steve Carell like that now.

It's like, wow, he's a really good actor. Amazing. But like you're, we're he's a really good actor. Amazing. But like we're seeing some like things being done on TV that I don't think networks or any kind of network would have taken the risk to make. Much less put out there in front of the public's eyes in the past couple of years or any time in the past couple of years, or any time in the past. And I'm so happy to see shows like that come to market right now with the advancement of the delivery being easier

than having to deal with a single monolith company like Comcast or something like that. Yeah, I think some of what that comes to is that with the broader delivery comes broader audiences and, you know, they're able to better target these niches with, you know, a niche show that, you know, can find its audience where, you know, when stuff had to be on network TV, it had to be broadly appealing. And now you can have something that's a lot more niche and it can find its audience. Those people can subscribe and pay for those things and they can find life where they wouldn't, you know, beyond at a normal network TV. And I think it's almost becoming

a problem now too, of like, there is too much good stuff and there is not enough time in the day to watch all of it. And so you just got to pick and choose and you can't lose. Yeah, it truly is right now the golden age of television with the shows that are on. The quality of them is stunning. The acting is stunning. The photography in them is stunning. The storylines are just amazing.

Like The Watchmen, if you're a fan of The Watchmen comic book, you're probably already finished it. I haven't finished it yet, but it's an amazing, amazing show that they put together that just really dives into a deep little niche like you're talking about.

And for some people out there, they're going to watch that and go, what the heck is this about? And stop watching it. For some people out there like me, I can't get enough of it. And I'm probably going to end up watching it a couple more times, just seeing how well it's been done. So I'm so happy with the content that we've had come out over the last couple of years here. And it truly is for TV. Movies are struggling out there, but TV seems to be pretty good. Another couple of things that little bullet points that I had on here that I'm looking forward to our features, like, and I'm specifically talking about like, the UX, user

experience and the UI that we get, like, I'm really hoping to see companies strive. I think, Richard, you talked on this a little bit more earlier, really hoping to see companies strive. I think, Richard, you talked on this a little bit more earlier. I'm really hoping to see them strive to make it easier to find their content and get it playing on your TV than it currently is now. I'm really, like we're talking about a standard for, a new standard for standards for home automation. Maybe we need a new standard for like content delivery into like a single app where you can just go in and watch what you want to watch.

Or us standard. Just us standard at all. A standard, yeah, yeah, yeah. And can someone please fix the authentication model? Please? Someone? Apple comes closest. But not everybody wants to play.

They do. Because typing passwords into your TV is super easy. I don't know what your problem is. It's the best. When you're away. Yeah, doing that when you're away, because that's when they've decided that, oh, your session should only be open for 30 days, even though you use it nearly every day. I recently bought a new TCL for down here in the basement. And so I'm using the built-in Roku streaming. And I was trying to authenticate Disney Plus.

And you get the Roku app where you can, from your phone, you have the app, you can control the TV. But I found that, and I have one of those long, randomized passwords for Disney Plus. And so I had the Roku app open, and it was infuriating because for some reason, I don't know what's going on, but I went to my password manager on going on, but I would go to my, I went to my password manager on the phone and I copied the password. And then I went back over to the Roku app and I pasted it in. And then I could see when it shot up on the screen that it was jumbling all the care. It was putting them in the wrong order. Oh my God. I have no idea. Like I'm not technical enough to have any clue what's going on there. But then I tried like, I think probably four or five times to like manually type in this like 20 character randomized password thing on the on-screen display. Having to switch between keyboards for every letter.

And I messed it up every time. And I literally quit. I was getting so mad. I walked away. I was like, no Disney Plus on this TV tonight. Forget about it. So yeah, that is a problem for sure. And I think we joke about it, but the problem of literally having too much to pick from is overwhelming. And Seth and I have joked about like, you do the thing where you sit down and you're like, I want to watch some Netflix. And then all of a sudden it's

been 30 minutes and you've done nothing but like thumb through a million different options and you give up and you walk away and you never watch anything. Right. So there's like this whole I think I've heard that Netflix is starting to test like human curated connection or collections. I think there's always going to be room for the algorithms to get better, to make better suggestions. I think, you know, I've started to rely on other humans, like seeking suggestions from friends on Facebook or going on Reddit or whatever the case may be. Like it is a problem. It's a challenge. Total, like, I feel like such a, you know, it's such a first world problem, right? Obviously, but, but it is, it's overwhelming and great problem to have. I think it really is a golden age of content, but it is. It's overwhelming and a great problem to have. I think it really is a golden age of content, but finding the good stuff to watch is definitely somewhere where I

think there's opportunity, not just for the existing companies to make improvements, but perhaps even for other startups to come into the space. I should ask that bot that calls me from Comcast what she likes to watch. There you go. There you go. She might be able to help you. The last bullet point I had on here was price. And, you know, we're seeing that mature too. Price is going up. I'm curious as to what, I'm very curious as to what will happen to price. We already touched on this. I'm going to glance off of it. But I'm curious to see what the price does for these streaming services uh as more come to the market and we have more choice and more content uh to pick and choose from uh what

what's going to happen to the price points of each one of those individual services over over time um like like we said earlier youtube's 50 a month now it started off at like 35 or even 25 i think like it's it's gone up quite a bit. And we're seeing the players like PlayStation View drop out of the market because it's a horribly named app and they should never attach the PlayStation name to it. I'm very curious as to what's going to happen there with pricing and how that's going to work with these studios, essentially.

Netflix is banking a ton of money into creating the content that we all know and love, but they're eventually going to have to raise their price because they're rolling that ball down the hill further, and they're eventually going to have to come to the point where they're going to have to pay for all that stuff. And if their prices aren't at the right price point and they don't have the number of subscribers that month, uh, it's going to be a very, very difficult thing for them to get through. I know how they solve it. They can just, uh,

they can just offer different packages where you get certain pieces of content based on the price you pay. The one, the one thing I'll, the one thing I'll say on price was I was very happy to see some of these services like Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus coming in. If you have a plus in your name, apparently your price has to be low. But them coming in at the lower end of, things being, you know, four or five dollars a month, not, you know, Disney Plus not charging for 4K, you know, some of that kind of stuff. I think that sets a good precedent. And I hope people move more in that direction than the other direction, because it's just not sustainable. And what I've seen some people do, you know, friends and colleagues and things like that is like they're juggling services. So, you know, I'll get, you know, CBS for a month after Star Trek's done and I'm going to binge that and then I cancel that and then move on.

You know, but that's just like, I don't want a job where I have to juggle all these services. You know, maybe that's an innovation opportunity as somebody that cancels and resubscribes for you when your favorite shows come back. It's like DoorDash, but for your subscription services. Yeah. Subscription management. That's funny. Yeah, I think that it's interesting because we talked about price earlier in the show a little bit. And we talked about companies like PlayStation View and DirecTV Now having to make adjustments.

But I mean, you look at Netflix, I know we saw at least one, maybe even two price hikes from them. They weren't significant, a couple dollars here, a couple dollars there, but their prices continue to inch up. Hulu, I think, changed some of their pricing models. If I recall correctly, it was only on some of the higher tiers or something to that effect. But yeah, I think you just have to wonder. Disney Plus is so inexpensive. I forget what it even is because I, like Seth, bought the three-year package. But the three years was like $110 or something.

And now it's like, what, $5 a month? It was $129, and the list price for it is $7 a month. $7 a month. And so you just have to wonder, Disney obviously has extremely deep pockets, and they can subsidize that if they want to. So are they keeping that price artificially low to try to get people in? Can they sustain that price? Is that price going to go up significantly over time? Netflix, they're spending ungodly amounts of money. I think $15 billion was a number I heard. There's several different numbers thrown around, and of course, depends how you dice that. But these are massive budgets, and so you just wonder, even those companies at the lower end of the price spectrum,

are they going to be able to maintain those price points, or are those going to go up significantly two, three years from now? So only time will tell. All right. Well, that'll do it for all of our stories that we're looking forward to, as well as the biggest stories that we all kind of gathered from 2019. Again, a very busy year. And I, Richard, Adam, Seth, appreciate everyone taking the time to get together. This is always such a fun episode to do and look forward to more in the future. As we wrap up here, let's go around the horn real quick and just anything else you want to plug for your show or maybe just talk about what, from a content and show perspective, what are the things that you're looking forward to here in the new year? So let's start with Adam. Sure. So Adam Justice, you can find me on Twitter at Adam Justice. Find everything my company's doing at ConnectSense.com. And if you haven't already, go check out our new product, the Smart In-Wall Outlet. And show-wise, I know Richard and I are looking forward to doing some recording at CES this year.

So our company will be at CES. Richard and I will both be there, and we'll be recording a show from the show floor. So that coming up soon here in January. All right. Looking forward to that. Richard, we'll come to you next. Go ahead and plug your stuff. And if there's anything you wanted to add to what Adam said, lay it on us.

Yeah. So as I said, Digital Media Zone, I'm writing about smart home and digital entertainment technology. And I will be at CES all week long. I actually have the recording stage reserved on Wednesday and Thursday so that we can record our shows there. So looking forward to that. And I'll be recording Entertainment 2.0 Home On and the Smart Home Show with Adam. So check those out if you're interested. And then just kind of a quick plug for myself. Maybe people might not know it, but what I do for a living is that I'm a product consultant,

a product experience consultant, and I worked with companies to help them define their products or their feature backlogs, to help prioritize, to help prototype, maybe come up with release roadmaps and stuff like that. And I have a heavy background in user experience. So if that's something that you're looking for some assistance in, hit me up on Twitter or something. My DMs are open. I am at Richard Gunther.

Excellent. Thank you for that, Richard. Seth, let's come to you next. Seth Johnson, 50% of the Home Tech podcast crew over there. Jason's the other 50, of course. And let's see, what am I looking forward to? I recently got bored one day and cranked up our blog again so I'm trying to post uh what I would call hot

takes uh on there occasionally uh let's see the last one was two days ago so I guess I need to have more hot takes on things but um one of them one of the things I found was a 4k video of whams last Christmas so that's on YouTube right if you want to go look at that. But yeah, I think that's – I'm looking forward to kind of like using that medium, the blog medium, like from 1998, I guess, a little bit more this year and kind of work on that for the show a little bit more moving forward. So that's what I'm excited about. I don't know if that's crazy to be excited about a blog in 2020, but there it is. Hey, now. Hey, it's all about the content.

By the way, you guys both plugged CES. I wanted to mention for anybody listening, that's coming right up January 7th through January 10th. So be sure to tune in for Richard and Adam's coverage of that. That's right around the corner. Jason Griffin here, again, the second half of Home Tech, really looking forward to 2020. In addition for all of the themes and everything that we talked about, I think as somebody who lives and breathes the professional smart home, I just think there's still so much opportunity there. As much as we talk about DIY and the growth in the do-it-yourself space

and straight-to-consumer products, I think it's a really exciting time to be in the space, both as a manufacturer, I would presume, and especially for somebody who's in the business of helping people get this technology into their homes and enjoy it. I think there's so much opportunity. It really still is a green field when you zoom out and put things in perspective. So I'm very excited about continuing to talk about and cover that space. Again,

you can find us at hometech.fm or at hometechpodcast on Twitter. And with that, we will wrap it up. So again, Richard, Adam, Seth, thank you guys all for, uh, for taking the time to come on and join on this fifth annual fireside chat. We hope you enjoyed, we thank you for tuning in and we'll look forward to seeing you all in the new year. Happy holidays, everyone. All right. Happy holidays. Happy holidays.