HomeTech.fm - Episode 298 - Quarantini

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 10th from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from isolated Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. I'm safe and quarantined in my house. Yeah, from your background there on our Zoom call, it looks like you're quite quarantined in my house. Yeah. From the, your background there on our zoom call, it looks like you're quite quarantined. Oh yeah. So, uh, so if you have zoom, uh, if you do zoom and I suspect a lot of people are now there's a, there's this fun feature of it, um, called virtual backgrounds. You don't know about it. Go check it out. Um, you can't do it on the apps like the iOS app, or I don't think you can do it in the Android app either, but you can do it from the desktop and that's what matters.

And you can go in there and you can turn on virtual backgrounds. And I have the, uh, what is this? The, uh, hologram room, like the default hologram room from Star Trek, where they have, it's just like the yellow lines or whatever, uh, set up behind me. And, uh, you're, you're one upping yourself every, every week you're coming with a new one i like it yeah yeah last week it was uh like a hoarder's house so it's just like trashed and uh i have one i have a really fun one that's that's all like a warehouse of toilet paper and cleaning supplies i saw that i use and uh in some meetings there we go yeah funny enough last week i think

you had like this horrible 70s decor oh yeah that one there it is there we go yeah funny enough last week i think you had like this horrible 70s decor oh yeah that one there it is there we go with your back up on the wall yeah and our guest chris williams who i work with is like you know very aesthetically tuned in always well dressed and i waited just a few minutes to let him think it was real before i told him his eyes started twitching a little bit yeah right hey speaking of zoom seth i got a hot tip oh yeah yep got a whole list of hot keys here this is like life-changing for me is there a hot key for changing your virtual virtual background yeah there's a whole bunch of them i had no idea i don't know why it never occurred to me oh wow because i'm like addicted to hotkeys as you know but i i never even thought to look and zoom has a whole bunch of them so we'll include a link in

the show notes this is uh this is very exciting for me open invite window show hide in meeting chat panel i mean a lot of these if you were running a webinar or a bigger Zoom event, they could be very handy to have. Control-P and N, I don't know why they're so far away from each other, but Control-P is the previous 25, and N is the next 25 participants in the gallery view. So you can switch the views. I think this could be really handy if you need to be a power zoom user, uh, this could be pretty, pretty handy. Well, I, I do, I got to tell you, I, I've been actually, I think today, and I know this because I got a bunch of the LinkedIn like thumbs up, uh, today I think was

my three year anniversary at one vision, which is kind of crazy. Time flies. But as you know, Seth, and listeners to the show know, I work from home full-time since I started there. So I've literally been on thousands of video calls over the last three years. But just over the last few weeks, certainly more than usual, largely because I've been just doing more workshops and presentations, which is, it's fun. Double-edged sword. It's certainly a lot of work. Did the AV Nation Learn From Home event this morning. Today's Wednesday. This will air on Friday. Felt like that went pretty well. I think they had a pretty good turnout.

At least I know they had a good turnout in terms of manufacturer attendance. There was quite a few workshops presentations there i don't know what their total attendance was in terms of of uh of learners but uh it was a pretty pretty cool event i was i was happy to see them put that together yeah i spaced on it i forgot to go register so i went to go sign up for it and said it was full or something i don't know i couldn't figure out how to join, so I gave up and went and did some work because I still have work to do. Full, huh. Yeah, I don't know how you do an event and it's full, but maybe I just didn't see the right thing to click.

I don't know. It said sold out, and I'm like, I guess. Huh. Weird, huh? Interesting. I think these virtual events are going to be pretty popular in the future, so to keep an eye out for them. Yeah, it does sort of make you wonder the way events are going to be pretty popular in the future. So to keep an eye out for them. Yeah, it does sort of make you wonder the way things are going lately,

like how this is all going to sort of impact just the event landscape in general. I think Cedia sent out an email. I feel like I heard people talking about that today. I haven't seen it myself, but they're still planning on doing it. That's only five months away. The way things are going, I don't know like i don't know if i'll be there convention center is basically turning into like a hospital ward for the time yeah being and it's like uh yeah i i don't know i i i don't know how they are i mean september's a ways out but i just i don't know how they're

going to like you you if you're if you're a company like right now is if if you're a company, like, right now is, if you're a big company, like Control 4 or Crestron or Savant, like, right now is when you should be gearing up to, like, build new products and figure out your marketing message. And if none of your employees are really coming to work because, you know, they're not really essential. Like, they're not, they're not. We're all essential, Seth. What are you talking about? Oh, I have that. I have that background to essential employee background. Big, big banner, a step and repeat, step and repeat banner. Yeah, I just don't know how like how like you recover from losing valuable, valuable time. I mean, I can't tell you how valuable this

time is uh between now and the show uh is well and there's the there's that and i thought you were going to go a different direction but what you said is entirely true there's also the uncertainty of you know nobody knows what the timeline is going to be and it's not an insignificant amount of work to plan for a cdia event especially if you're a large manufacturer with a lot of products to show. Millions of dollars. And all the money and everything. And so what does that create in terms of if you're a company looking at Cedia right now and saying, man, if we're going to do this, we've got to pull the trigger now and start planning now, like you said. So what I'm saying is it's not even just the fact that people are at home and not in the office.

It's literally the uncertainty of knowing if the event is even really truly going to happen. Do you still drive with the same urgency in terms of planning? Or do you plan at all? Or do you significantly scale back and reduce your booth size and staff size just in case so you're not so committed? And then, like, what happens to a show like Cedia, which is, you know, does rely on being a pretty big show, 20,000, 30,000 people show up to that. It's not a decent size show. I mean, what happens to not only those manufacturers, but then you have all the hotels in the area that have to open up and be staffed. I mean, it's what a strange time.

Yeah, lots, lots of questions. Not just like, is the one little trade show that we have going to happen? So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of questions, we had a potential guest lined up this week, and I won't name names. Everyone's struggling with this stuff, so it wouldn't matter anyways. But, you know, they're an early-stage company that's been impacted by COVID, and their launch date is being pushed back. And so we've pushed back the interview.

So everybody's dealing with this across the board, as we know. And we're going to have a news news only show this week because of that but yeah it it um it's really hard to say i know we at one vision need need to start having some serious conversations about cdia we're in a fortunate position where you know being a the nature of our business we we don't have nearly the level of technical planning and implementation required uh to make it make it a good go at Cedia. You guys have to get a sofa in that room. We got to get some.

The furniture has to show up and that's about it, right? The sofa and the chairs and you're done. You know, we got a little bit of booth design, but like, yeah, we're going to, we actually have all of our stuff sort of figured out on that front already. And I don't know. It's many, many more questions than answers yeah absolutely well i i i hope i mean i've i've genuinely like i'm hoping that this like it all goes away like it just evaporates into thin air you know just it needs to go away right um that would be great and

then we could have our our fun shows back again where you know, and I think the industry is thirsty for a show again, but I don't know how people are going to react. Like, you have that side of it, too. Like, are people going to go to, like, are you going to stop your work and go to the show that you could get sick at and come back and get family sick again? Like, I don't know. Right. Well, that's the thing, too.

And a lot of medical experts are saying that this, you know, will most likely taper off in the summer and then come back again in the fall. Now, hopefully, we'll be more prepared as a society to deal with it in the fall. And so it won't be quite as big of a deal. But even then, do you want to go to a conference with 20,000 people? I mean, every time I go to Cedia, I come back with some sort of a crud. Right, right. And you're in the same town. It's like, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you can see the chat over there, but Bruno has joined us and he's got a picture of a Corona and what looks to be a picture of oysters, Hong Kong in the background across the bay there and uh yeah he's got not afraid with a big smiley face on it so having a corona in the middle of the corona pandemic i don't know right but we're in the middle of april now september's a good ways off and uh i know it just right now it seems impossible to think about going to a show of 20 000 people and shaking hands uh for eight hours a day, uh, right to eight to 10 hours

a day. Um, maybe in September, uh, we'll be a little bit, um, a little bit more apt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Yep. Let's do it. Could be a short form video service founded by Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and led by CEO Meg Whitman, formerly of HP and I think eBay fame, launched this week with nearly 50 shows for viewers to tune into. The programs are all specifically designed for mobile with episodes that are less than 10 minutes long. Quibi is starting off with a 90-day free trial, and after that, it'll cost you $4.99 with ads and $7.99 per month without ads. Wow.

Yeah, I mean, 50 shows for $7.99. You want to grab that one? Ew, that's expensive. And it's very interesting to me. I mean, I get it. We have short attention spans but i i didn't i just those two worlds don't seem like to fit together to me like if i want something short i'll just go watch something random on youtube right right but i guess they're saying like

highly produced content that's it's designed for that short attention span that's their that's their gamble here it is so so i i uh i sawibi. I've been kind of keeping an eye on it for a while. I saw that they were launching. I mean, they raised $1.7 billion to do this, right? Wow. They're definitely not cutting any corners when it comes to producing. I mean, there are fast cuts in this stuff. It is top-notch production work that's been done.

And what's interesting is there's like um so when you start it up it it starts up in a in in the iphone like the vertical view not the portrait view like you would normally watch youtube or something like you turn your phone sideways um when you're playing an episode you can turn like it's it's bricked off like they framed the episode um for the viewing in the the the vertical mode is that portrait mode i guess is what we call it portrait mode yeah uh and then when you turn it horizontally like they show the full 16 by 9 frame for that uh and and what's interesting is like the title cards and everything are designed to detect that which which what you have it in as well so if you're you're watching a show i have one here with christoph waltz in it i saw his name pop up at the

bottom and like it it's it if you turn the phone real quick you can see that the the title will kind of stay in the in the bottom right hand corner no matter what uh the angle you're at with the phone i forget what so they've really optimized it for mobile it's highly optimized yeah yeah yeah um so that's interesting i will say like it took me 10 minutes to like go through their entire content library and i'm like i'm not really interested in anything but this is all like like punked is on here daytime it's all like daytime tv stuff um that i really don't have any, any desire. Like there's a court show,

Christie's court, a dismal dish mantled, which is weird. It's like a reality show where they throw food at people and then cook it. I don't really understand that one. Like this is all stuff that I particularly wouldn't, wouldn't watch challenge. Yeah.

YouTube. Yeah. I wouldn't watch any of this. I don't think so. I don't think there's much value for $4.99 or $7.99 to me. But I don't know. Best of luck to them because it looks interesting. Yeah, it's a novel approach for sure.

Do they have original content or is it all just... I think it's all original content. Yeah. The only thing on here... Okay, so it's all original. Yeah, even the news stuff, like they have an NBC report think it's all original content yeah uh the only thing on here it's all original yeah even the news stuff like they have an nbc report it's done i actually watched this the other day uh if you start watching it it's done from like somebody's house because you know all the news reporters are in their own in their basements now somehow um but yeah it's done like in the the

the portrait mode and then you turn landscape you can turn landscape and watch it and see what's going on too. So it's all highly produced, original content that you get. And it's 10 minutes long. I think I saw that Reno 911 was coming back to this service too. So they're going to have a couple of, like a season of 10-minute episodes. So it's going to be pretty nice. All right. Well, we'll keep an eye on it.

Yeah. 90-day free trial. Check it out. If it's for you, it's for you. Give it a go. Cancel it. So, Seth, you know how quickly I move with home technology. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What's going on?

Very much a late adopter. I actually timed something right recently, and we finally pulled the trigger and replaced the old apple tv that was uh we were using up in our master bedroom with a roku stick they had them on on sale on amazon nice i picked one up and as it turns out uh hbo go and hbo now they just announced will stop working on those older apple tvs uh at the end of April. So it says plenty of people are stuck at home without much to do. In other words, it's the perfect time to catch up on TV shows,

but HBO might be throwing a wrench into some people's binging plans as the company is pulling its HBO Go and HBO Now apps from second and third gen Apple TV units. Mac rumors spotted support pages, which state that the apps will no longer work as of Aprilil 30th so i dodged a bullet i'm trying to remember i mean that that i have one of those i actually

the only reason i still have it is because i took i have a tv a little small 19 inch tv and i like velcro stuck it or glued it or something it just hasn't fallen off um the back of that tv since i've had it. So it's stuck to the TV, and that's the only reason it's still there. But I'm trying to remember. Let's see, the second generation, let's see, started back in September 2010, and the third generation didn't come around until 2012. So you're rocking a pretty old Apple TV there

if you're still running a first or second if it ain't broke yeah and they it's still not you know it still works you can turn it on yeah it just got really annoying with uh the interface just feels really dated right right oh yeah yeah that was the old interface with like the like the expose and and the scroll yeah yeah and you just don't get like voice search and things that you know that that we really love on our other ones so but we didn't want to spend another 150 dollars uh for up there because we hardly ever use it so the roku uh 4k stick or whatever i think it was it was like 30 30 40 dollars or something yep uh great deal so i still have one

of those i haven't hooked it up it's like in a box over there and I, yeah, it's nice. We like it. I've been meaning to check out what the all, I, I actually use the professional side, the bright sign. It's Roku. It's the same company, but they make this, um, uh, digital media player for digital signage stuff. And I have used that for years. I always liked it. Uh, but I've never checked out Roku and actually physically used it myself. But from what I hear, it's great. So maybe I'll get it out of the box one of these days. And Bruno in the chat room is telling me that this is not a very green move of me

to replace my hardware. And he's right. The computer that you've had since 2012. I squeezed as much as I could out of it. Yeah, I mean, you can't get any more green blood out of that one. All right. Well, speaking of going green, Sonos is currently offering a decent $50 off.

Wow, 50%. $50 off a number of its speakers, taking them down to some of the lowest prices we've seen since Black Friday. The Sonos Beam, the Sonos One, Sonos One SL are all reduced, and with Sonos offering free shipping as standard, now is definitely a good time to buy if you're in the market for some new sound gear. Sounds like they're trying to move some product. I wonder if sales are slow. Yeah. Yeah, I had the same thought hard to say they've got um sonos beam here so usually 399 now 349 sonos one uh 199 down to 149 and then the

sonos one sl down to 129 from originally 179 so yeah i mean if you're in the market uh it's always good time your time your purchase here just don't throw away your old one or else bruno is going to write a blog post about you well i mean unless you have one of those super super old ones that's just that's going to be like on that separate i forget what they called it sonos one you have the sonos one two platform and the sonos one platform yeah unless you have one of those super old ones, like, I mean, again, it's, it's, it's not broke. You really, you really don't have to do anything with it. Squeeze, squeeze it for all it's worth. Yeah, absolutely. All right.

Few integrators today are using Amazon business, which offers special pricing and free shipping just for businesses. But Amazon business wants to change that. Amazon has identified the custom installation channel along with the home builder channel as two key areas of growth. Now this is kind of interesting. Currently Amazon business, this was launched in 2015. It does offer already various devices for the CI channel. Things like it lists Eero, various thermostats, ring video doorbell, echo dots, things of this nature. But according to a spokesman, it says the primary buyers of those devices are distributors in the industry

and retailers who take advantage of the special pricing. But apparently, integrators can get this special pricing as well. And Amazon is apparently interested in, in expanding that, that part of their business. Yeah. I, I saw this over at, uh, I think if CE pro had this, this article, um, I, I, I've signed up for Amazon business in the past, uh, for, for my like fake integrator business that I have. Um, so I could, you know, get some nice stuff, but like what I found is that like I have prime and I usually order stuff through that just fine and don't have any issues. And when I use the Amazon business thing, like I didn't like I got higher prices. I mean, I could physically flip back and forth

between the two tabs, you know, and see like, oh, well, this one's more than that. Yeah. And then I had like worse shipping experiences. The only thing I really got were like some business tools like you could get back to like you could go look up your orders and have like administration administrative stuff uh around around that like the shipping labels also your business name on it rather than your personal name it's like I don't know is it is it worth it I'm not sure um sometimes yeah if you can get uh you know i guess basically distributor pricing from amazon for ring echo stuff and ero it's funny this article says you ero thermostats i think they mean ero yeah i saw that wi-fi routers and things um maybe it's a good idea i don't know it but i don't know it as a as a as a as a independent distributor i'd say support the small guy.

That would probably help. The money's all going to go to Amazon anyway, but you might want to support an independent distributor. That's true. Yeah, no, no. It's a point worth making. I think that probably the most interesting part of the story to me was towards the back half of the story,

they said, why is Amazon interested? And it says, quote, Amazon doesn't really make any money selling any of these hardware devices anyways, according to the spokesperson. We are interested in the downstream impact of the sales that take place through the custom channel. We know that ultimately, those devices sold to integrators are going to be installed in high value homes. And we see that when a professional sets up a system with Amazon, the usage of those devices is higher than in a do it yourself home. So interesting. I don't know. Yeah, I did think that was a little bit interesting. I mean, Amazon is so giant, giant that they don't have to make money on everything that they do.

Obviously, they can throw some spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks but yeah it does appear that they have some some interest in in a better user experience in these high value homes for users of their other devices so they see this as a way to enable that downstream i wonder what value they get out of something downstream if on a product they're not selling much of that came from a third party professional integrator slash builder in this case like um i don't know like what i could i can see the value being like hey i had my um ero wi-fi system or my ring video door station installed correctly because it was done by an integrator rather than like me fumbling with the

screws and and poking big holes in my wall like i could see that for some people uh but like what i don't know i feel like this is not like an altruistic thing something's going on here yeah so i don't know call me skeptical but uh it is it does seem like an interesting program well it reminds me um charlie kindle i'm trying to find it right now he had a blog i saw just yeah this is just on march 30th charlie kindle's third law so by the way his first one is every payment system eventually becomes an anti-fraud system his second law companies with subscription-based business model eventually behave in ways hostile to the company's customers. I don't know about that one.

I have to read more about his take on that. But the third law, Amazon will enter every existing business channel and market. If said business channel or market doesn't already exist, Amazon will try to invent it. Yeah, he was close to that team, so I can imagine that he kind of knows what he's talking about there. Yeah, for sure. So interesting. All right, well, all of the links and topics

that we've discussed on our show this week can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 298. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you weekly show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech once again that's home tech.fm slash 298 and don't forget you can join us in the chat room live wednesday starting sometime between 7 7 30 p.m

eastern for more about that you can go over to home tech.fm slash live all right seth great All right, Seth, great pick of the week this week. Shameless plugging here, but... Yeah. Beautiful imagery up on the Blackwire Design site, I have to say. Yeah, so these three pictures are probably the best and most produced images, I think, that we've ever done for the site. And you can see where we want to put our time and effort into. Yes. There's a dedication here to the craft.

Yeah. I don't know. Jason, do you guys do newsletters? I'm sure you do. Because we do. You're a forward-thinking company that likes to interact with your customers through a newsletter, maybe with information in it. Well, we do the same.

And sometimes we can't think of what to do. And, and right now I'd really, we, I don't know, we're kind of like at Blackwire, we're just like, we don't really want to email anybody, uh, you know, like saying, please buy from us and that kind of thing. So we're just like, what can we do? That's fun. And like one, one week we did a bunch of dog pictures, which is like, we asked everybody for dogs. And, uh, I think it was the last week of the week before. And everybody sent us their picture of their dogs. I put them all together and sent that out. And I'm like, I probably have like 300 dog pictures on my, my hard drive right now. I was just looking at me the other night. Um, but this week we did, uh, we did this thing

called the quarantini. Uh, and if you go to blackwiredesigns.com slash quarantini um you'll find our um our some three drink picks that we had uh and and so i have seth no i'm not watching netflix negroni which is my negroni definitely my favorite drink like so we went with our favorites here uh good choice cody's uh straight to business margarita on the rocks and uh there you go it's a pretty self-explanatory. Although if you look at this thing, hold on, you've got to look at these numbers here, Jason, four ounces of Patron, uh, two ounces of, uh, control or Grand Marnier or whatever it is like this, this thing is like literally 50% tequila. Um, and it's an eight ounce tequila by the time you add everything up here. So Cody has a, has some problem. It's called straight to business for a reason.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you have, uh, Kevin's lazy. Oh, I can't say this. Marsh, Marshino, Manhattan, Maraschino. Yeah. Which these cherries, I know about these cherries. Like, uh, if, if you are going to drink something that has a cherry, it has to be this particular, particular, uh, cherry in it, uh, or, or just don't bother. So, uh, I, I do know about those, but I haven't had his, uh, but at the bottom of this, there's a form too. Like we want to know about your favorite cocktail and you can send that to us with a picture optionally. And, uh, we're going to, we're going to compile all these and, uh, try and make them all ourselves to see which ones we like the best. I think.

I love it. Yeah. Um um but i think drink a few of these and tiger king starts to look pretty normal that's a note under yours oh yeah yeah well you can see in the background like the note under cody's 50 of this drink is tequila cody's okay though yeah we want everybody to know he's fine this is good i like it we had a lot of fun putting it together this week helping out the community yep and sharing we had a lot of fun putting it together uh this week and uh sharing it out with our through our various social channels and newsletter and we get a lot of good feedback from from our dealers uh who respond to you know say you know thanks for the light-hearted emails

because we're really enjoying those right now. All right. Well, great stuff. I will not have much to add to your cocktails, given my wagon status, being on the wagon these days. But, you know, I'm still working on those hop teas. Those hop teas are good, though. I still have one in the fridge. I need to go drink that. A little plug for hop tea if you're looking for a delicious alternative. Go check them out.

All right. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or ideas for a show topic or guest, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. And we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. This is kind of the second week I'll say this is like, we're not really,

if you need to cancel your patron pledge, totally understand that. We're definitely not pushing for patron stuff right now, really if you need to cancel your patron pledge totally understand that uh we're we're we're definitely not pushing for patron stuff right now but if you can uh you can help out that way um or you can head on over to your podcast app of choice and give us a good rating so other people find the show that's always helpful um but we definitely want to thank everybody who is uh still pitching in a couple bucks a month uh to us uh us. Uh, it definitely keeps us on our, on our game and, and wanting to come in and, and, uh, record every week. But we know that things are kind of tough these days. So if, uh, if you do lose your patron pledge, no worries,

you're not going to get kicked out of the hub. We're not, we're not running that kind of business here. So, uh, uh, feel free to do that. And then hopefully we can get you to come back when everything, uh, picks back up again. Yeah. Yeah. Well said. All right. Well, thanks for tuning in, everybody.

We appreciate it. Seth, I hope you stay well and stay safe. I am going to go upstairs, and we've got some brisket for dinner. Ooh. Nice. So looking forward to that. We had burgers tonight. Nice.

Burgers with like a goat cheese. Ooh, I like your style. Kind forward to that. We had burgers tonight. Nice. Burgers with like a goat cheese. Ooh, I like your style. Kind of topping stuff. Yeah, and some asparagus french fries, which are interesting. Well, if you're anything like me, you're eating your way through the quarantine anxiety. Man, I got to say, like I used to eat a lot less when we, like, all at home trying to cook and figure out good meals every night. Yep. Oh, man, I have gained so much weight.

And I told my wife last night, I'm like, I need to go. I need to be outside and start running again. Like, this is ridiculous. It's the COVID-19. That's what they call it. So you got 19 hours. Oh, that's great. 19 inches to my waist at this point.

Well, you know, you got to cope somehow. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Seth. Well, have a good weekend. Stay safe, and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Yep.

Thanks, everybody. Jason, have a good weekend. All right. Take care.