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This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 21st. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson.
And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Driffing. How you doing, Seth?
Oh man, I'm doing great. There's huge news, Jason. Big news. Staples Connect is back. So I'm going to go over to the museum over here
and get my Staples Connect and I'm going to hook it up. And let me just open this news article
and read what exactly they mean. Let's see. Oh, wait. Staples Connect is a podcast studio in a staples they faked you out wow okay very very interesting so so um so staples
connect is now uh like basically we work and not a home automation platform anymore and even if you
go to like staples connect.com it brings you to uh this weird we work thing that they're doing
uh but they you know you can we can we can at least have the podcast from the the the they should just call it the automation platform formerly known as
staples connect studios yeah i i can't decide if this is like
crazy good innovation or desperation i don't know sometimes that's a fine line staples is a huge like i mean amazon's big
on residential delivery but staples is a big like delivery service for business and having this as
like a taking their what it seems to me is like they're taking floor space inside their store
and dedicating it towards like a working like you'll never have to worry about stealing office
supplies anymore because you can just go over and get them from the shelf, I guess. That's right. Yeah. There you go.
Now you're thinking, but, um, the podcast studio is interesting. I just want to know if it comes
included with like, do they have like a three-year-old and a five-year-old that can bang
on the floor above you? Cause if they don't, that's like a non-starter for me. Oh, you have
to have that. You have to have that. Oh, that's what keeps me in the zone. Okay. That makes sense. That absolutely does make sense.
So I don't know if I can do this. Well, they may, I mean, it is, looks like it didn't a staples
store. So they may just have random three-year-olds or five-year-olds running through
banging on whatever, if that's, you know, if that floats your boat. That's true. If,
if we can work that out then
uh then i'll give it a go yeah there you go and if this is a great thing like you don't if you're
running you'll never run out of printer paper like i went to print something today and i went
to the printer and it's just blinking i'm like forget it i don't need to print this that badly
so it's still in there blinking and the next time somebody prints puts paper in the in the printer
um which we'll have to go to the store and buy because we're out uh we will they're gonna get whatever printed so it'll just be a surprise at that point
merry christmas yeah i uh it's interesting i didn't realize staples was doing all this
certainly didn't realize it under the connect brand so anyways looks like it's only in boston
uh in that area but an interesting thing to do for what, you know, what is a large space
of retail space that they may not need. Uh, especially if the consumers in general are
going to Amazon or whatever and, and buying their stuff there and taking part in like the,
even Staples has their own like online delivery fulfillment type thing. Right. So, um,
I could, I could see this, like, like they've got to figure out something
to do with that square footage. And if they can make some money having some nice desks or
locations where you can have a meeting or a board meeting or a conference call or even a job
interview or something like that, why not? It seems like a good idea. Yeah, no doubt. We'll
see how it plays out. Seth, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines here?
Do it.
Dish Network on Wednesday said it lost 194,000 NetPay TV subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year.
Big numbers.
The company also recorded its first ever subscriber decline for the streaming service Sling TV, losing about 94,000 subscribers in the final quarter of 2019.
Quote, the decrease in net Sling TV subscriber additions is primarily related to increased competition,
including competition from other over-the-top service providers, the company explained.
The CEO, Ergen, also on the call said that a long-rumored merger with DirecTV and Dish was, quote, inevitable, end quote, despite reticence from AT it's flat business, it's losing customers, but not growing at all.
Wow, that is, that's wild to think about, that DirecTV and Dish could merge together,
and we'd only have one ridiculously, what is it, hard to deal with satellite company to do.
Yeah, I don't know how the economics and things like that work at this sort of macro level.
I found it interesting that it was so almost cavalier.
The story says, Ergen conceded regulatory issues stood in the way of a potential merger,
but added that industry logic made a transaction very likely at some point.
So they're almost speaking of this as if it's like a foregone conclusion.
I also thought it was worth noting to kind of put this in perspective. We hear a lot about
subscriber loss over and over, and you kind of wonder, well, where are they at currently? It
said Dish had a total of about 12 million, just under 12 million subscribers, 11.99 at the end of 2019, compared with 12.32 million at the end of 2018.
So significant as a percentage, but still almost 12 million subscribers, which I suppose is nothing to sneeze at.
But again, I don't know how the economics work that if the business is flat then having all
those subscribers may may not do much for them right yeah because a lot of these businesses are
based on growth right like they they put their pricing and they said their pricing in their
business model based on we're gonna obtain you know half a million subscribers this month and
it's a hockey stick and they never really like figure out that the hockey stick is gonna level off and just be flattened out yeah and and and that's a hard you
know it's it's hard to hard to do i remember when the dish was dish and direct tv was like a hockey
stick uh and and business to be in right like that was there was all sorts of money to be made by
installing dish uh direct tv uh boxes at one point in time.
But that has leveled off and just become in par for the course for a lot of dealers out there,
a lot of guys doing installs.
And it's kind of gone down to the lowest common denominator of installer.
Right.
We used to make a lot of fun of those guys that came in and tried to install satellite dishes from time to time.
But I don't know to me this is all like really expensive like legacy equipment right
like having a satellite dish network in 2020 um when you can get if you have an area that has a
lot of customers with high speed internet you're not going to have those customers paying for
direct tv or just network um you know you may get the rural areas but there's not that many customers customers with high-speed internet, you're not going to have those customers paying for DirecTV or Just Network.
Now, you may get the rural areas, but there's not that many customers, and not many of them
are going to pay for DirecTV or Just Network.
So it's kind of like it's hard to put a pin on where this is all going.
I really think this coupled with I'm always following the Space Launch News and that kind
of thing.
I mean, another 60 of those Starlink satellites went up this week,
and they're getting the next rocket in line to go up again for another 60.
If you're not paying attention to what's going to happen to high-speed Internet
in this country, in this world,
that's going to open up the ability for these types of companies to say,
okay, we'll just offer our services over this satellite
network and not even worry about an internet network and just it just becomes an app on your
tv and you don't have this legacy of installers uh going out and installing satellites just on
people's roofs you know like that's always funny to watch uh drilling holes in people's houses and
huge amounts of liabilities and that kind of thing.
And then you also don't have the liability of a satellite flying around in space that could break at any time and ruin your business.
And maybe you can move that to doing something else.
Like maybe they could drop off channels and give people that 8K quality broadcast that we've always wanted.
Right.
That's what everybody wants is 8K.
More Ks.
More Ks, yeah.
I don't i
don't know it will be interesting to see what happens to these companies over time but i suspect
that the most most of what they'll do is just go to like a streaming a linear tv streaming service
or or kind of like a both linear tv and on demand right tv all streaming right yeah agree well said
this week dvd kiosk company redbox quietly launched an ad
supported online video streaming service it's still in limited release but you can check it out
right now in your web browser or through the redbox android and ios mobile apps that's that's
pretty cool redbox is is that um well redbox that's generally out it's sometimes it's outside
of like walmart's and yeah and shopping centers and sometimes it's inside just depends on uh what it's like but people go
in there i see people all the time like so often going up to those things and renting movies
like the good old uh blockbuster days right yeah i i have honestly i don't think i've ever used a
red box they've got one in the grocery store that we go to right across the street, you know, right just across the main street here. And I see people using it frequently. I don't
know. We don't even own a DVD player or a Blu-ray player here at our home. And I think we're in a
growing segment of the population for whom that's true. Although my wife nags at me occasionally to
get one because we have like this one DVD of our wedding from, you know, years ago
that she still can't watch. And so anyways, we may have to cave and buy one of those someday,
but we don't. And I think, you know, it's interesting between this and the previous story,
you just think about all this kind of old infrastructure, DVDs, DVD players,
satellite dishes, satellite cable boxes, you know, all of that stuff is just kind of getting subsumed by, like you said, IP infrastructure and everything is streaming
now. And so it makes sense to see Redbox making this move. Who knows how they're going to be able
to make a run at it in terms of differentiating the offering. That's clearly the big question.
It's such a crowded market now. It sounds like this is a very limited offering based on the story that I read.
And this is not the first time that Redbox has tried to do this. So before their live TV,
they experimented with streaming on demand video service back in 2017. I don't remember exactly
what came of that. The story didn't go into the the details so i have to look that up and see if if you're curious but uh not redbox's first foray into streaming and i think it makes sense
for them as a company but huge question mark as to how they're gonna you know be able to make make
a go at that yeah well i mean think about think about those machines like breaking down like it's
like it's gotta be it's it's gotta be like the same company that makes those um what do they call jukeboxes that you're like an ihop yeah who's in the jukebox
business nowadays right right i mean your your company is your your your uh your your entire
install base is like um dive bars and uh waffle houses i guess because i can't really think of
any other place i've ever seen a jukebox out there.
I'm thinking of like the artsy hipster district here in Denver.
I bet you could find some jukeboxes there.
Yeah, I bet you could.
That's probably about it.
It's only ironically done at that point.
I bet it's like an MP3 player inside or something.
That's right.
All right. Well, moving on here.
HBO Max is still a few months away from its May launch,
but that isn't stopping AT&T and WarnerMedia
from trying to drum up some early hype.
The streaming service has introduced
its first official trailer,
and it mainly serves to remind viewers
that Warner owns a lot of movies and tv shows beyond hbo and i think that
that was the most interesting part of this story and you can go watch the trailer i took a look at
that and and you can tell they're they're very much trying to put the emphasis on it i i'm going
to paraphrase as best i can because i don't remember exactly what the tagline is but it's
something at the end to the effect of so much more than HBO or something
like that, which begs the question to me, why did you name it HBO Max? Yeah, just call it Max.
I don't know. They're clearly conscious about this and they want people to know that it's more
than HBO, but for some reason they went with that HBO moniker. And I
can't quite figure that out. I think that is going to be a challenge for them because I,
you know, even I, when I look at it, I'm like, oh, oh yeah, that's Warner Brothers and this and that.
And I just, at a sort of that automatic, almost subconscious level, you see it and you go,
HBO is HBO. We've all knownbo for so long and and i think breaking
that association is is going to be i think a little bit difficult for them it seems like a
limiting name in my opinion yeah i'm kind of like going through the teaser trailer and like
uh i could in in my head naming all of the uh of the things that are on and it's it's everything
you know like it's there's a ton of content that's going to be this i i personally i can't wait uh to get this uh and i mean it's we already pay for hbo go or now i don't know
which one it is it's one of it's the one that does not come with your cable service because
we don't have cable so i think that's hbo now i think it's now yeah um and so i can't wait to
switch to this when it comes out because i think it's $15 a month. It's roughly the same price we pay now.
And you get a ton more stuff, including it looks like Friends is in there, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, South Park, all sorts of good stuff.
Plus all these movies that are on HBO right now or part of that Warner library.
Yeah, pretty good.
Another great option.
Yeah. Google announced in a recent blog
post that beginning this spring, all Nest users will be required to enable two-factor authentication.
The action is being implemented in order to, quote, greatly reduce the likelihood of an
unauthorized person gaining access to your Nest account and doing creepy things, because that's
literally the only thing that can ever happen if they do. So yeah, this is a good move. This is really a good move by Google. I think heading off some
issues. Two-factor, man. You should turn that on if you got the option. Turn it on.
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And before we jump too deep into that story, I'll tee up the next one here.
Interesting timing on both of these. Ring is continuing its bid to improve privacy and security after facing criticism.
As of this week, the Amazon brand will start requiring two-factor authentication for all users when they sign into their Ring accounts.
The company will also offer more control over data sharing. the use of the majority of third-party analytics services in its apps and website, while it
devises more ways for users to opt out of sharing in its control center.
So a couple of moves there, but I thought it was interesting timing to see both Ring
and Google come out this week, Nest, I should say, come out this week with stories about
requiring two-factor authentication.
I think it's generally a good thing.
I think it's going to probably catch some users off guard.
I think certainly the more technically savvy amongst the user base
aren't going to be thrown for a loop at all by this.
But I do have to imagine some of the less technologically inclined
will probably have some issues adjusting to this.
But I'm with you, Seth.
On balance, it's a great thing.
And anywhere that two FA is available, generally a great idea to use it.
Yeah.
And if you don't know what two factor is, it just, it just means that it's two factor
authentication.
It there's, it will email you or send you a text message or present you with some kind
of code that you have to type in, uh in to actually authenticate past typing your password
in. So you get your password, correct? You'll get this extra code or email or link or something like
it's just a second way of verifying that the person logging in is you. And it's a pain,
like all things security related. It's a pain in some cases, but it can be super helpful,
especially when weird things can happen. If
you have a bad password or a password that's leaked out through another service and you have
indoor green cams and people are talking to your kids at night, that's really freaking creepy.
So yeah. Indeed. Turn the two-factor on. It can be kind of a pain. You're starting to see more
and more implementations of this that I think are addressing
some of that. We use a single sign-on provider at work called Okta. You may be familiar with it.
I really like how they do it, where you got the Okta app on your phone, and when you go to log
in, it sends you a push notification. You can, even from the lock screen on iOS, you're able to
do the push and hold on the notification, and it'll pop up with a little option, and you can write right, even from the lock screen on iOS, you're able to, you know, do the push and hold on the notification and it'll pop up with a little option and you can say, yep, that was me.
Boom, you're done.
So you don't have to get a code or go to a separate authentication app.
Like there's a lot of different implementations of this sort of thing.
And so hopefully companies will continue to invest in ways to make that user experience even incrementally better, because it is a pain.
I agree with you. When you have to go get that code and plug it in, sure, it only takes a few
extra seconds, but as a percentage of what it used to take you to log in, it's a significant
increase. So I think it does create a little bit of friction there from the user experience, but
definitely worth it on balance. Yeah, it's a good system.
I'm glad it's rolling out.
There are some other up-and-coming interesting,
like there's one out there I'm trying to think of.
It's called Squirrel, S-Q-R-L.
If you listen to the Security.Podcast,
Steve Gibson has been developing this thing for the past umpteen years.
I'll put a video in our chat our chat of that of like a quick
and easy login it uses like a qr code and so like it shows you a qr code and then when you point
your camera at that qr code on your phone or you have the app running on your computer it just like
you don't even type a password it just logs you in so it's really cool right but it's based on
identity and there's you know And you have the identity.
You have created that identity.
And don't ever lose the password to that.
Don't ever lose that identity.
Because if you do, it's going to create a whole world of nightmare.
Yeah, yeah.
But the idea is that once that's secure, once that is known, there's no need for passwords or anything.
It shows you this QR code.
You show your identity, this QR code, and it verifies your identity.
All the computers do their computer thing in the background, and boom, you're logged in.
There's no password or anything.
That's a great point.
I had forgotten about that, and I can't remember the specifics of the issue, but probably close to a year ago or so, I accidentally took my phone for a swim.
Not a great idea. Don't recommend it.
And this was not one of the iPhone 10s or the more waterproof or water-resistant ones. Anyways,
point being, phone was dead. And I had several issues with two-factor authentication because
my identity was basically tied to that phone as far as a couple of different systems that I used were concerned. I was able to work around it and get
that all reset, but it was a bit of a headache. And so I point all of that out. Two-factor
authentication does come with some clear drawbacks from a user experience, but from a security
perspective, if you care at all about keeping that login safe or secure and two-factor authentication is available, then you should absolutely use it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It looks like Rashid's posting in a thing called Trisona.
There's a bunch of this stuff going around.
And like you said, use a password, password manager.
Because, like, when you drop your phone in the water and all your stuff is backed up in this magic password manager, it doesn't matter.
Your phone is just like your identity and you can log back into that.
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
In some HomeKit news, available this week, Arlo Pro 3 may get updated to support HomeKit.
The update will allow you to see cameras with the Home app as well as use motion sensor to trigger the scenes and other accessories whenever motion is detected.
The update is rolling out right now to Arlo Pro 3 systems with Smart Hub version VMB4540.
Make sure you write that down.
Got that.
VMB4540.
Compatibility with other base station models will be coming in the future.
Kind of cool. This is what I like about HomeKit. It's like software. So they can roll this stuff
out now and you'll get little, you know, this stuff gets activated as it gets approved by Apple.
And again, you don't need two factor with this stuff because HomeKit is supposedly secure,
you know, using your your Apple ID stuff, which is, you know, your face and your fingerprint and that
kind of thing. There's your two-factor right there. You can get and see this video and interact with
the cameras that way. Right. Yeah. As far as that model number, there was, and we'll link to
the story in our show notes, hometech.fm slash 291, some instructions in there to go see if
you've got the compatible hardware. So my understanding, sort of takeaway from that is, if you've got an Arlo Pro 3 system, before you get too excited
about this update, just go double check and make sure you've got one that's compatible,
is how I understood it. And then the other thing I think that was worth pointing out in this story
is that, a little bit potentially confusing, because if you recall, HomeKit also has their
secure video service, HomeKit Secure Video, which allows recording of video footage in iCloud.
And this is not that, meaning this is strictly to be able to sort of interact with your cameras and
do the things that you mentioned earlier in the story. But users will still need to rely on Arlo
and Arlo's cloud services for remote video storage.
Yeah.
So I thought that was worth noting as well.
Interesting.
Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of little caveats
to every single product out there,
but I think it's nice that they're able to update
stuff that's existing out there in the wild
to get new support.
I'm always happy to see support added onto product
rather than it becoming a Staples Connect podcast studio.
Nice one.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And we've continued to slowly build out our HomeKit
kind of implementation or HomeKit collection here at our house.
And I just overall, I'm still a big fan of the framework and how easy it is and the ability to just seamlessly, you know, have my wife's phone up and working as we add these new devices.
And there's no fuss.
It's just very clean the way that they've set that framework up. So if something is HomeKit compatible, you add it. And it's literally one of the few things that I can say I've worked with where
it generally just works and it doesn't require a whole lot of headaches and stuff to implement.
So overall, big fan of HomeKit and happy to see that devices and manufacturers are continuing
to get added into the ecosystem. Yep. And I put in our little chat room over there.
It looks like ConnectSense got a review from iMore, which is a big, I mean, it's pretty
good.
Like literally anything I ever need to figure out for my iOS or macOS stuff, they have write-ups
on.
So like, that's what I know iMore for.
But ConnectSense got some press time over there.
Cool.
Got a good review there from the, from, uh, from the
Ironware staff. So a friend of the show, Adam Justice is, is behind that product and man,
it is a slick, you can see right there in the picture. That is a slick, like the outlet. It's,
you don't have to deal with these wall wart things anymore. It's just two outlets in the wall,
home kit compatible. They show up in there and you can turn them on and off. It's great.
Right. Love that product. Very cool. All right. Well, that does it for our quick headlines. We wanted to also spend a few
minutes here touching on a story that I thought was kind of thought-provoking, and listeners to
the show will certainly be familiar with the author's name. This is Bruno Napoli, former
of CRECA, good friend of the show, uh he engaged with us i think it was after last
week's episode uh reached out and sent this article over to us it's published on linkedin
and again we'll include a link uh in our show notes home tech.fm slash 291 uh the title of
the piece in in typical bruno fashion it'll it'll grab your attention smart homes, an ecological disaster?
And the gist of the take here is that we hear a lot about smart home technology and how it can help us live greener lives and save energy.
But there's, of course, as Bruno argues here, an uglier side to that coin.
A couple of excerpts from the story.
A problem with the smart home is that they try to
make us believe that with a connected thermostat spying on us, coupled with blinds that lower
automatically with its sunny, we're going to save three polar bears and put a smile
back on Greta Thunberg's face. In typical Bruno fashion, right?
That's right. But he goes on to talk about, you know, do you really believe these smart mass produced smart gadgets are they're not going to force you to change these devices every few years?
And all of these things are going to sort of end up in landfills and in third world countries where they're, you know, taking our electronic waste right now. And that's a very real problem. He says, hundreds of millions of
connected products will become obsolete very regularly as they evolve and end up disassembled
in developing countries, which for the moment are happy to collect our garbage bins as long
as we know how to corrupt the right person. So anyways, it's a longer story and we're not going
to dissect every point or read the whole thing, certainly. But I thought it was worth discussion.
I do think it's something that's worth being cognizant of
as we all think about the smart home, both in our individual lives and as an industry.
My general take on the story is that while it does make some good points,
and again, I do agree that these are good things to be conscious of,
I think for what it's worth, the smart home is a small part of a much bigger problem,
which is just kind of global, the pace of consumerism and consumer electronics.
And what does that all mean for the future of the planet?
I think it's a huge problem.
And how you even begin to solve that uh i don't know right but it is
something that's worth uh having a conversation about yeah and like you said this this is just a
small facet of of that larger conversation and and he's got a point there like i don't know like if
you if you have just like the regular i'm thinking of like the the sprinkler system because he because
he has a picture of a sprinkler system thing up at the very top of the article.
If I get a ratio, that is going to work a little bit harder than the standard hummingbird thing that has been sitting on the wall for a couple of years.
To manage how the sprinkler turns on and off with water or waters, water or, uh, yeah. Waters waters,
the lawn based on like how much rain has been perceived to come down,
that kind of thing. So I don't know, like there, there are advantages,
lighting control system, like, well, yeah, I,
I am going to buy a dimmer that's going to last 10 years rather than the 20
years. Maybe a light switch would last before somebody's, you know,
going to remodel and replace it. Maybe like my house, probably my house was honestly, uh, maybe a 50 or 60 years before
somebody replaced, uh, anything in this house. So, um, you know, okay. I'll, I'll give you that,
that the, the smart dimmer might last 10 years, but I mean, also we probably should recognize that,
um, over those 10 years, you are maintaining savings on, you know, dimming the lights a little
bit rather than running them at full blast and that kind of thing. And turning off the lights
when you're not using them, using other sensors and that kind of thing too. So I think there's
like a give and take to it. And is there a balance? Probably not, but I do feel better if I'm,
you know, make sure that the lawn's not getting watered every day from the dumb hummingbird.
Am I using a ratio or I'm turning off the closet light because it's on a timer or
the bathroom fan that always gets left on for hours and hours and hours of time in one bathroom.
Cause it's only got a toggle switch, but the other one, it only runs 45 minutes and turns off all the
time. So like, I, I, I got to wonder, like, I, I feel better knowing that that stuff's automated,
uh, and, and that I'm not using that electricity,
you know, further throughout the day. And is it is it that much savings? I don't know.
Like it seems like it is, but at least I'm not wasting it when I would otherwise would be.
Right. Right. It's I hear you. Rashid says, well, said in the chat room and totally agree.
Rashid also points out, you know, simple.
If someone like Amazon wants you to constantly upgrade, maybe it's not the brand to get sucked
into.
And I think, you know, I think Rashid makes a great point.
Like we can all, I think a lot of times these problems are very overwhelming to us.
And we start to try to think about solutions on this macro level.
That's really difficult.
And I think we can all make conscious decisions
about the types of technology that we can put in our home
and who we buy these products from
and are these companies that have a track record
of producing things for the long haul.
That, of course, being a relative term
in the consumer electronics industry,
nothing has ever been built to last forever.
And I do think that to a degree,
of course, those timelines have compressed. I mean, you look at stuff like TVs now, and these
things are so cheap that I feel like it's unfortunate in a way that people almost just
look at them as throwaways. And the example that I always come to in my mind is, well,
what would happen if this TV was out of warranty and it broke?
Like it's literally cheaper for me to go buy a new TV
than it is for me to get this one fixed.
And it didn't used to be that way.
So there are problems that are facing us now
that weren't facing us five, 10, 15 years ago.
But I think that the only real solution
to these problems that we can, that any one of us can directly control, starting immediately, is the decisions that we all make about the brands that we do business with.
And I think, don't get me wrong, I think there's absolutely room for higher level, government level types of solutions here. And we all need to, um, get,
get behind those things that we agree with and support, but on an individual level.
Again, that's why I wanted to bring this story up on this week's show, because I do think it's
whether, whether you agree with the scale of what he's saying or the exact way that he's
framing the problem, um, it's still a valid thing to think about yeah yeah yeah you remember do you remember uh i i
driving down the road and like seeing one of those skeevy uh like shopping centers and then over in
the corners like this really even skeevier like tv repair shop do you remember seeing those those
those used to exist oh yeah um vcr repair here you know and uh they have all all but disappeared
used to be a an absolute like a career path you could take but um you're right that it's it's one of those things that like
everything on those tvs is a it's almost like a modularized computer board you have the power
supply you have the computer board and you have the display panel and you know depending on which
one of those three things breaks uh will depend on how much or if you have even the
ability to repair it um and even if you wanted to it's probably more to to have somebody open it up
figure that out and uh order the right piece than it is just to go down and buy the new tcl tv that
you got for you know hot hot sale on what three hundred dollars for the 65 inch tv that you're
picking up?
Yeah.
Find whatever Jason's buying and buy that, because, man, he's going to find the deal.
Well, you know, I'm tight.
I'm tight with my money.
You call it cheap.
I call it tight.
Well, I mean, it's a good deal.
That's what it is.
It's a great deal.
It's a screaming deal.
Yeah, absolutely. Ten years ago, that same TV was, you know, $10,000 probably.
And it's come down because of economies of scale, because your TV is spying on you.
I mean, we'll just put that out there too.
Like, it's being subsidized in other ways.
But that's par for the course now.
That's why our TVs are just a few hundred dollars and not, you know, tens and 20,000s of dollars for these nice, beautiful 8K resolution TVs.
All the Ks. You need to have them.
Right. All the Ks. That's it.
So anyways, interesting conversation.
Greg in the chat room saying,
Sony repair rate $190 an hour, four-hour minimum.
That means just don't call me.
Crazy.
Don't call me.
Yeah.
Greg's a friend of the show and professional integrator,
so he's talking about a $5,000 TV two months out of warranty that a client of his has experienced that. Two months out of warranty, and now you're gonna go you're gonna go ahead and do that but most of us mere mortals aren't aren't buying five thousand dollar tvs these days yeah right
yeah i think that's it's a good thing and it's a bad thing so these are all these are all trade-offs
and i think it's it's can be relatively easy to get swept up in how great all of this affordable
technology is but as bruno points out there, there's a darker side to that coin.
Yeah.
Greg's following up on that.
Nope, the client is upset.
And I totally, yeah.
I mean, it's two months out of warranty.
So yeah, and they're saying it's going to be that much to fix.
Yeah, that's not a great thing.
Not a great situation to be in.
It's the worst.
And then it's the, you sold me this TV thing.
Yeah, well, yeah.
I sold a TV to my in-laws it was
one of those pioneer uh like the very last run of 60 inch pioneer plasma tvs if you remember those
the big ones the nice ones and uh we we got a screaming deal on it because it was their last
run the distributors wrote it out and every time i go over there i'm like man i hope that thing
just lasts 20 30 years so far it's so good but uh but
man it's yeah you're holding your breath yeah you never want tvs to break on family that's for sure
that's right that's right family or clients yeah so anyways all all of the links and topics we've
discussed on this week's episode can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 291 while
you're there don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter we'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the
world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 291. Yep. And don't forget,
you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7, 7.30 PM Eastern.
You can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. Seth, we got a pick of the week this
week. We do. This is kind
of an old one, but I've been kind of saving it in the background for a slow news week. Yeah,
yeah. I think this is definitely evergreen. So this person has made a Harry Potter inspired
wall clock. So if you're familiar with the Harry Potter movies or books, I guess they were books as well, they have this
clock that is made for one of the families that has these magical hands on it that will point
to wherever the person that is on that hand is. So if they're at home or they're at school or
whatever, the clock hand will point to this person's at home, they're traveling on the road,
they're, you know, whatever.
It'll point to where they are.
And they have made one of these things to actually work.
And I mean work, like it's not just a clock with hands that move and point to different directions.
It's a clock that actually syncs up with apps that are on the cell phone
that know the locations and points the hands
to where people are at any given time.
So really cool.
It's got a really cool build to it.
All the stuff is like open source on GitHub.
I really want to make one of these.
It just seems like a really cool thing.
My family here is pretty big fans of the Harry Potter series,
and it would be a welcome addition into the house
and probably something I could actually pull off given that somebody's already done all the hard work on it. So there you go.
Yeah. Yeah. And Rashid's giving you a hard time for the, I guess these, these might were books
as well. You guess? Uh, that's funny. Yeah. I, I have to confess, not a big Harry Potter guy. I've
seen, you know, I've seen parts of the movies and stuff
not not really my thing but i it's a fun idea and i think projects like this are really cool like
with the open source component and and and how you can really just kind of geek out and sky's
the limit nowadays and i love seeing uh the creative uses of this sort of technology so
so fun pick even even the uh the like the, the, like the stepper motors, like the servos,
the little brackets that, that they made, they have 3d printed brackets. So all of that is
included in the GitHub repository. You just download that, go to your 3d printer, or in my
case, there's actually, um, like a little educational thing down the street that has 3d
printers available and you can basically rent time there for like 25 bucks or something like
that so you just show up and you could print this stuff out go home put it all together and uh it
just it's it seems like it's pretty cool like it doesn't seem like it's very very difficult to do
with a little bit of domain knowledge you could you could pull it off right very cool all right
well if you have any feedback questions comments picks of the week or ideas for a show topic or guest, please do give us a shout. We'd love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support
to learn how you can support Home Tech for as little as $1 a month.
Each pledge, or every pledge over $5 a month gets you a big shout-out on the show, but
every pledge gets you an invite here to our private Slack chat at the Hub, where you and
other supporters of the show can gather every day and talk about Harry Potter.
Jason, that's what we're going to be talking about now that we know you're a fan that's right the biggest fan the biggest fan yeah
absolutely they have theme parks jason they have theme parks i know it's huge i feel like i'm the
only one sometimes but uh yeah you literally are you just living under a rock here apparently
uh if you want to help the show out in other ways we would also really appreciate a review on itunes
or uh in your podcast app of choice those reviews definitely help more people find the show out in other ways, we would also really appreciate a review on iTunes or, uh, in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So
if you're a fan of what we're doing here on the show, you're getting value out of the show,
uh, you know, take a minute to leave us a review. We would really appreciate that. Or just go tell
a friend, uh, send a link over to an industry colleague or a fellow smart home enthusiast.
Uh, that would help us out as well. Yeah, absolutely. Anything you can do to help us, uh, get the word out for the show. It
would be great. No, we really appreciate it. Jason, we are wrapping up that wraps up to 91.
That means, uh, we're, let me do this joke last week and you, you, you pushed it, you brushed it
off and you put it under the table that I think we have new music coming up, right? We're going
to try and get new music for 300 on. I still liking our music we had that old music for so long
uh in the new music plus i you know i'll be totally honest like choosing show music
not an easy thing to do we it's like like everything that we do it is the thing that
we do not like to do it is i think we'll keep this one for another 100 shows yeah i i'm game
for that for sure because i don't even want to think about how many different samples of music we listened to when we were trying to find this one
and i think ironically if i recall correctly you and i listened to like i don't even know an
ungodly number of samples and then your wife was like how about this one yeah yeah she's always
right so that's and we were like it's perfect. It was that total light bulb moment.
So anyways, if we're going to pick new show music, maybe your wife can do it for us.
I was going to say, should I outsource it again?
Just like, hey, we're thinking about getting a new show music.
You want to pick something out again and let her have at it for like 10 minutes.
Because we spent three days on it, and she found it in like 10 minutes.
In like 10 minutes, exactly.
Anyways, yeah, we're staring down the barrel of 300, which is amazing.
It's been a really fun run, and we'll look forward to that.
So thank you, everybody, for tuning in for another week of Home Tech.
We appreciate it.
Seth, have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you next week.
Yep, have a good weekend.
All right, take care.