HomeTech.fm - Episode 306 - CEDIA No-Go

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, June 5th from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, do I sound any better this week? You do. Yeah. You appear to be, I mean, you sounded fine last week. The problem is just there was this massive delay and I can tell that what I'm saying to you is now good that's the worst when you're on like a video conference and you've got like this one or two second delay and it can be so disruptive yeah yeah well I mean the latency on video conferencing

runs maybe a hundred milliseconds behind know, but we were experiencing much more than that, probably around two to three seconds of delay when I was talking last week. And I called Comcast up and they sent a reset. I'm putting resets in quotes, right? Because they sent a reset to my modem, which I think just means that they sent the actual settings for the plan that i had

upgraded to to it finally and uh boom it's been running pretty good so far since then so i've got got my 800 down and my 200 no 20 up not 200 up i wish it was 200 up but it's only 20 nice well that's pretty good yeah it's pretty good yeah I feel like ISPs, the reset, again, I'll use air quotes, is like in their training manual is like, if the first person forgot to do something and you need to do it, just tell them that you're sending the refresh. It's even better than that. When you call Comcast, you say internet problems and their little phone tree thing. And it's like, Hey, we noticed that the first thing we can do is reset your modem. And that fixes the problem.

Most of the time, uh, we're going to send that now. And you say, okay. And they sent out the reset signal. I can watch my internet go down. I'm sitting on my computer and it says, this takes about 10 minutes to come back online. Go ahead and give us a call back then. I'm like, no, no, no, no, wait, you don't understand. It doesn't let you talk to anybody. If you try calling back, it's like, Hey, you just called. It hasn't been 10 minutes yet. Like it's the most insane setup. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to wait that 10 minutes for, uh, before the little timer times out and you can call back. Yeah. I have not had to call an ISP for any sort of issues for quite a while. I'm going to knock on wood. I think I talked about this back when I changed over to Comcast, though. I got

to say, for as much as we all love to knock on ISPs and Comcast and all those companies, I remember the activation and installation process. I was actually pretty impressed with the app and they sent a lot of updates. So I knew exactly when they were coming and they made that process pretty easy. I feel like they got the activation thing figured out, but that's where all the money is.

So I shouldn't be surprised. All right, the onboarding, the onboarding. Right, right. It's the whole business that you're in, Jason, the old customer service part of it, right? Yeah. It's that whole messy part where you actually have to like take care of clients. We'll get to that later. Right, right.

We'll figure that out later. But any amount of money to acquire customers and get them paying us that it takes, we will spend. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very cynical view of us here yeah yeah i mean i i give comcast a hard time other than the outrageous terabyte data thing that they have like cap that they have a data cap oh the data cap yeah yeah which i've hit only once and and or once for about four months on

without realizing it uh they will charge you a lot of money if you go over that data cap by the terabytes that I went over. And it's not a fun thing to pay for. But that is kind of the only kind of outrageous thing I think that they have. But a terabyte of data is a lot of data. I really...

I was going to say, yeah, I have no clue how much I use, but I have to imagine it's nowhere near a terabyte. I had accidentally backed up my NAS drive to the cloud. That'll do it. Yeah. I didn't know it was doing that. And somehow, uh, the Macintosh software that I was using got confused and said, Hey, that looks like a folder, not a NAS drive. I'm going to update all of the ripped movies you have to your backup there, Backblaze.

And I'm like, we took months to figure out. It wasn't something that was easy. I couldn't figure out what was doing it. Got it. Well, let's jump in, Seth. No guests this week, you and me. We're going to jump into some home tech headlines here in a little bit. But before we do that, big news broke.

We thought we had maybe a hot scoop last week when we talked about Cedia. And at the time, again, in case anyone hadn't listened, I had received an email as a registered instructor for Cedia 2020 that indicated the conference would be reduced to two days. We, of course, Seth, record the show on Wednesday nights, as many of our listeners will know, and it airs on Friday. So in that time between our last recording and when it aired, the news broke that Cedia has officially canceled. So I can't say I was shocked by this, but still big news, all the same. I think we were all, as an industry, kind of holding our breath to see what would happen. I know most of the circles that I'm in and people that I

was talking to were anticipating that this was going to happen. So again, I don't think anyone was shocked by this. There's just so much going against Cedia this year. In fact, I pulled this out from the CE Pro story. It says, factors in the decision to cancel Cedia include latest federal measures, including guidelines on the phased reopening, a declaration by the World Health Organization of COVID as a pandemic. Okay, we all know that. A number of confirmed cases worldwide and domestically, current quarantines, containment areas, stay-at-home orders, restrictions of congregating and large gatherings imposed by both state and local governments, and the various company-imposed travel restrictions on employees affecting attendees in participating companies.

So I just thought that was, I was reading that and I kind of, I just kind of laughed to myself because it's like, man, when you put it all like that, you know, it's no wonder. So here we are. Yeah, well, and looking at how all this went down we i think we kind of knew that this was like you said this is eventually how it would come down to it um but i i think if we look back to that i think it was true strategery is that it's tech techery the the article that we read about the oh strategy strategy that's it i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm thinking about tech blog and podcast.

I think you got a good potential domain name. No, no, no. It's already taken Ben Thompson or something. He's really good. No, that article talked about their insurance and the insurance for cancellation doesn't pay if you cancel your own event, right? And I had seen that the governor of Colorado actually booked out the convention center through the remainder of the year as a potential place or a place to house COVID-19 patients. So if the convention center was booked for that, you can't have it booked for CDSO. Kind of a saving grace for them. I will note that CDA housing never opened up like when it was supposed to, right? So Cedia will actually buy a bunch of hotel rooms and then resell them.

It's what all conferences do just to make money. But that part didn't happen. And I suspect that there was a big reason for that. It was that they weren't exactly sure how many hotels they needed to buy out, right? Or they weren't exactly sure if they were still going to have the show. A lot of caution. They took a lot of caution, or Emerald took a lot of caution on this, and I suspect it wasn't an easy road to travel.

Canceling a show of the size of Cedia, there's got to be a lot of contracts and questions in place not something you can just flip a switch on and do at the last minute right so oh gosh yeah i i can't even imagine yes it's probably been um such a scramble uh for so many people um and god i, this is just one event, right? This is going on everywhere. But yeah, it's tough. It looks like they're planning a virtual experience of some sort. And so you have to wonder, you know, how that's going to come together. This story says Emerald plans to move forward with Cedia Expo virtual experience in conjunction with Cedia. This will launch in September. So I know,

again, as somebody who's registered or was registered to present a course at Cedia, it's been a little bit of a winding road for me. They had sent out a survey to instructors, and I had indicated on the survey that if I had to make a decision today, that I probably wouldn't be attending in person. And so they had come back again when they were still thinking about doing the conference for two days and they had canceled the workshop that I was going to teach because of my response. Now that it's virtual, I would imagine, you know, that'll be back in the fray, but I'm not sure. We, we've got a, they, they sent out an email to all instructors. There's going to be a call, I think next Thursday. I don't think I'm going to be able to make the call, but I'll, I'll get the cliff notes

and, and, uh, pass them along on the show. I'm sure I'll have more information about, about what they're planning to do with, with regards to education, at least after that. Um, but you know, this mentions, uh, panels, keynotes, product discovery, networking in an interactive expo hall. I don't know. So it'll be interesting to see. It won't be a replacement for in-person, but I'm intrigued to see if generally, not just at Cedia, but in the event space in general, if COVID sparks really new sort of novel or interesting ways to use technology to make up for it. Or like I've been saying, better ways of using technology or better technology in general.

We've already seen like Infocom is doing that, right? They're doing a virtual show. And oddly enough, CES, which is like typically 100,000 people, just announced today that they are going to be in Las Vegas. Uh, good luck with that guys. Uh, we'll not be attending Las Vegas with a hundred thousand people in the midst of a pandemic. Um, but, but I, I, it's, it's weird to be talking about this with CD in particular because the, when we say CD, I think I, when I say CD,

I really never have thought of the organization. Like I, the organization backed it and was behind it. But when I think I, when I say Cedia, I really never have thought of the organization. Like the organization backed it and was behind it. But when I say Cedia, I was talking about the show. Now the show is Emerald, but they still call it the Cedia show, right? Because that's what it is. But then you have like what you were talking about with the education part of it, which is the Cedia education stuff, which all could have been forever ago done online just like this, but they had their anchor event each year,

and that's where the education ended up. Fine, I understand the reasons for that, but now they may be in a situation where they don't have this anchor event where they can get 20,000 people to come in and a lot of them to sit there in education classes. The next best thing is to put this stuff online. So I'm really excited to see what happens there in regards to that, because that opens up the experience and the education to a lot more people. I mean, man, I worked for companies for years that could not afford to send me. I had no reason to go to Cedia. Right. But I always wanted to learn more. And I was a wire puller. Right. So like learning about the craft and the trade, it was like that wasn't on the tables for me. there that had online learning where I could have gone home and in my earlier years before kids and

learn about, you know, the business side of things and learn about how to make a profitable, how to make a quote, how to make a design for a system. I would have eaten that up. And, you know, I'm glad I'm really glad to see that that'll be available to people who may be in the industry and coming into the industry. And of course, to people who may be in the industry and coming into the industry. And of course, people who have been established in the industry to do that continuing education. That'll be really nice. I'm really excited about that aspect. Yeah. I think there'll be some silver linings here for sure. It does say the next in-person Cedia Expo will take place September 1st through the 3rd, 2021 in Indianapolis. So heading back to Indianapolis,

I think the show is there for that year and one other year, I believe. And then I want to say it comes back to Denver, I think somebody said like for good, like they were going to sort of try to keep it. I heard they had a five or six year contract. Yeah. So anyways, yeah, the world could look very different

by September of 2021. Hopefully the world looks very different by then. Certainly been a tough time on numerous fronts here for all of us. But yeah, sending my best to everybody at Cedia and Emerald. I'm sure this has not been a pleasant experience for them. And I really, I wish them all the success with this virtual event. And again, I'm going to try to look at that event in isolation and not compare it to the in-person and really just look

at it as its own new thing and what can it bring to the table and what can we all learn from that. And hopefully it's a valuable event for everybody involved. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. All right, Seth. Well, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. We talked about this a little bit, but Cedia has launched a new website with features designed to create a tailored experience for all users, as well as a new online learning platform dubbed Cedia Academy. rebuilt from the ground up to better connect with learners where they are and move them to the next level. This is exactly what I wish I had, like I said, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I was really starting off green in the industry, had no idea what I was doing, and had to basically get all my education from reading the rants and raves of lunatics on the online forums. Oh, wait.

I love those who shall remain nameless. You know who you are now. That's where you and I met. Yeah, yeah. Over at Integrator Pros, actually a really great resource for me. I haven't been there in a while, but it was a really great resource for me initially because great. There was a lot of really good guys there that that would share information, share ideas, ask questions.

It's really hard to find that kind of group anymore. I guess they're still there. But, man, there's some guys that were there that were just legendary in my head, I guess, to advancing me along the path of my career from just being a lowly installer to, to, you know, basically project management and running a shop. Yeah, no, it was a really great site. Integrationpros.org. I'm sure it's still around. Uh, I haven't gone to it for quite a while, but maybe, maybe six, eight months ago, I know I was there and it was still doing well.

So yeah, if you're a pro and, uh, you haven't and you haven't checked out that site, go give it a look. But anyways, back to the headline here. Good timing for Cedia. I mean, this looks like a very big undertaking, so I'm sure this was underway well before COVID-19 came about, I would have to assume. From what I've seen of the new website, it looks great. I haven't candidly spent time browsing around Cedia Academy, but I know in the past, Cedia's online educational stuff, I always had sort of mixed feelings about. There was good content on there, but the production value generally wasn't very high. And so that's probably the thing I'm the most curious about because, you know, having a great interface and being able to browse and find the courses you want and sign up for tracks and stuff,

that's all great. But really, I think the name of the game in this online learning medium is the production value. Is the content engaging? Does it hold your interest? Because that's hard. When you're in person, it's easier to focus and easier to keep people's attention. So I know on a personal level, I'll be curious to dig in and see that, but it looks great. I mean, they've got over 100 hours of online training at launch, says more interactive than ever before, more slated to come online before the end of the year. Says here, CD Academy, there's been a focus on expanded and revised pathway for those who are new to the industry, which I think is great, as well as more advanced courses in AV over IP and

cybersecurity are mentioned specifically. So both good topics, especially cybersecurity is one that I think is really interesting. So cool stuff here. And I'm glad to see them focusing on stuff for people who are new to the industry. I really not exactly going out on a limb here when I say that getting new blood into the workforce and getting people up to speed and trained is a massive need for the industry. So I'm glad to see him putting some attention there. Well, moving on here to our next story, leveraging the company's heritage in enterprise workplace technology,

Crestron has announced Crestron HomeTime in collaboration with Logitech and Zoom to deliver a premier video conferencing, home control and unified communications experience for socializing, remote learning and working from home. Ooh, that's a long sentence. Crestron HomeTime is a complete HD video and audio conferencing system with the size and scale to handle communications in any room in the home.

Crestron allows users to host and join Zoom meetings without a laptop while providing the simplicity of one-touch join from a Crestron remote or the mobile app. Um, so I think this is, this is a cool looking solution. I was on a call today with one of our partners at OneVision and he mentioned being very excited about this product because everybody's stuck in their home. And, and a lot of us are having these zoom calls with family and friends, and we're sort of huddled around the laptop. Uh, I know we've experienced a lot of that here. And so I think, you know, for people who have the budget to spend on a nice sort of Crestron integrated solution, I think this is going to be really popular. I think integrators are going to have success with this. This is a no-brainer.

And so I'm going to put like, I'm going to start teasing the masses here. Like guys, uh, you work with C-level executives, uh, their job is to look good and sound good on their, their calls. It's going to be super easy to sell these packages to these homes. Uh, do it. Uh, I have been excited about this for about two months now, because when I realized that all the guys that I knew that were in the upper, you know, C-level seats were all working from home, they weren't going to go back to work, they weren't going to go back into the office, even though they lived right around the corner. I was like, oh, wait, they need to have better conferencing, better audio, better microphones,

that kind of thing. So really smart for Crestron to offer this, basically, enterprise solution into the home. It looks like they've teamed up with Logitech and Zoom. They probably have already had this on their boardroom side, right? But the idea, guys, listen, if you're an integrator, sell a boardroom package, a small But the idea guys, listen, if you're an integrator, sell a boardroom package, a small one into every single home. It's, it's going to be a no brainer. It's absolutely going

to be a no brainer, uh, in the future. Uh, we we've actually over at Blackwire, we've been seeing this, like this path. Uh, we we've picked up Yamaha, which has like a insanely large boardroom, uh, package that you can get. And I was like, no, no, no, we got to find something better. So we found a STEM audio, which is a little product that we're pretty excited about. They do, they're not $6,100. This was reported in CE Pro that the question on home time is. But the idea is like, look, this is an easy sell. This is audio and video. Find a good webcam, get a good microphone set up, something that, you know, does noise cancellation and feedback cancellation. Get that put in to a

nice room, do some acoustic treatments in there. This is a no brainer. This is an easy package. This is way simpler and easy to do than a home theater. And we, you know, we can bust those out left and right. This is going to make the home office a pretty profitable place in the, in the, in the home for, for, for the, for the, for the foreseeable future. I can't imagine that some of these C-level guys are going to want to head back to the office anytime soon. So, uh, pull the trigger. It's, it's, it's something you should be offering in, in your packages now. Totally. Yeah, no, it's great. Um, STEM audio thing looks interesting. I'll have to check that out, but I agree with you. And I would even add that, you know, um,

don't, I, I wouldn't even limit it to like C-level execs. Cause I could see a lot of people who again, have the budget for it, not even looking at this as necessarily a business first thing, but just think about how many people are like doing zoom calls with family because they can't get together right now. We're, we're doing 10, we're probably doing 10 X, um, video calls than we were two or three months ago in my house. So I think these, these opportunities to go into family rooms and things like that, I think, I think consumers are going to eat this up. I love it. Look, it's, if you were in the brand, if you were in sales and marketing, your brand and your image matters big time. You, you, these garbage. Okay. So I'm going to go back to the production

value kind of mentioned offhand when we were talking about the, uh, the, the online learning courses, like production value, people have been accustomed to high production value things hitting YouTube. Now that is what we have to aspire to. So, um, get the tools, get the equipment, get everything you can and put into it. Your, the look you have online is just as important for your brand as it is for, you know, your business card, basically. Right. So you can't go on as a, you know, as an executive or anybody really these days, you can't go on having a bad video picture, you know, what integrator is going to go like go online and, you know, try, try and sell a video conferencing thing to somebody, you know, remotely or whatever and have, you know, stuttering wife, stuttering video because they're hooked up to Wi-Fi and not hardwired. Like, come on.

Like, learn the tricks of the trade here. This is going to be a huge profit center for a lot of people because everybody wants this right now. They want to have good video, good audio. And, you know, Greg's in the chat saying many Crestron people just aren't getting it. Man, it is all about the brand sell into the brand lean into that hard because these guys that are, that are executives, they don't want to look bad. They want to look professional and they want to, they want to look good on camera. Uh, so that is, that is what is going to sell a $5,000 Logitech webcam. It will absolutely move them.

I guarantee it because this problem isn't going away anytime soon. And if they know that they can figure out and work from home with that, they'll be able to do it. Totally. Yeah. And again, I think, you know, the premium price tag on this, but point being there's other solutions out there. So whatever you go with, I just think, yeah, there's a big need for this. So I'm excited to see Crestron coming out with it. And I don't think it's just about the camera and audio. It's the integrated solution that I think certain clients are really going to like. So yeah, it's cool to see. Again, I think just a sign of the times. There's going to be a lot of demand for stuff like this. Well, moving on, Josh AI continues expanding the power of artificial intelligence in the

home through a new integration with Xfinity X1 SEPTOT boxes. Here we go back to Comcast. Using Josh AI's proprietary privacy-focused voice automation, Comcast customers with X1 will still be able to enjoy the voice functionality of their fancy X1 remote with the added ability to control their entire home in a hands-free, intuitive way. Jason, this is great.

The biggest complaint I got from people with integrations with Control 4 were like, why can't I just use the X one remote? It has a microphone. I can just talk to it. I can whisper sweet nothings into this and Netflix appears. Why can't I do that with my control four remote that, you know, cost me money. And I, I had no solution for them nowadays. There's your solution right there. Team up Josh AI control for X one done. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, no, I like this. And I also think from the other side, you know, it's cool to see Comcast, you know, being open to integration like this. And I know Comcast amongst the ISPs is has their, their, I forget

what they call their CX or CI program. So it's good, good stuff. And I think, you know, Josh AI, and like you said, I was still an integrator when the X1 voice platform came about. And yeah, lots of clients were asking for that. They really liked it. And it always felt bad when you couldn't figure out a way to quite make those two jive together. So this definitely, uh, that their integration offers a rich feature set of functionality. And, uh, let's see what, what did it say here? Users can, will be able to call configured channels by station name and number, surf channels up or down, open channel guide, pause, play content, and more. Um be able to assign them cable boxes as input sources in any system design and route content from room to room. So cool stuff. Yeah, very cool. All right. And our final

headline for the week, HBO Max made its long awaited debut last week, but you still can't watch the not too late show with Elmo or reruns of Friends via your Roku or Fire TV. That's because those popular devices remain without HBO Max apps. Despite being available on a host of platforms and devices, HBO's parent company, AT&T, has not yet reached an agreement with Roku or Amazon. And this is kind of the main rallying cry around what's really been an online, let's just say, not a warm welcome for HBO Max. It sounds like the rollout hasn't gone very well from a press perspective. My understanding of it is a lot of people didn't know that these platforms, Roku and Amazon, wouldn't be supported until it came out,

and they weren't. So that was interesting. Some of the other gripes are that it doesn't have 4K HDR support yet, things of that nature. I'm sure HBO is going to work those out. I don't have any concerns about that long term. But so far, not a a smooth rollout but by and large the the opinion seemed to be that this is still a platform to watch and that hbo is going to get it figured out yeah all this is news to me living in my little bubble of having apple tv apps and devices uh i i noticed we were actually like oh hbo max is coming out well we already pay for HBO now, I guess. One of the ones HBO now, I guess. So I guess, you know, we'll just we'll cancel that.

We'll figure out how to cancel that and then get HBO Max. Well, I woke up the other day and HBO Max is on the TV already. It was just like a seamless transition. It had gone like straight through uh logged in had all the shows that we were watching there before and yeah we uh ended up watching uh late show the not too late show with omo um which is actually kind of funny it was actually pretty good so yeah there you go yeah the platforms that it's out on right now it says ios android xbox one play PlayStation 4, Apple TV, Android TV.

Don't know why they have that listed twice. Chromecast, and then, of course, web browsers. So it says if you have the HBO Go or HBO Now app on your Roku or Fire TV, or if your HBO subscription was upgraded to Max, you won't be able to watch HBO Max on there. So, yeah, just that HBO Max, just not available on those. And it sounds like they're just trying to come to an agreement with both of those companies. Yeah, it's really weird. I can tell you the app is heads above the garbage HBO app that I had before um it's it's not great but it's not hulu so uh it is it is like just having profiles where you can like have two people you know

assigned in there like my wife can have her own thing where she watches her stuff i can have my own where i and there's tons of stuff in there. Like, uh, the Turner classic movies are all in there. There there there's, there's, it's a massive amount of content. So I was, I was really happy to get all of it and see it, um, show up there. It was just kind of an automatic thing for me. Uh, I didn't, I don't have a Roku hooked up, so I didn't really know this was going on. I love it. Not, not Hulu.

So you're setting the bar pretty high there. Oh yeah. Yeah. Your apps on your TV are like, well, I guess Netflix would probably be towards the top. I mean, there's been like things with the Netflix app, like the autoplay of that, like the preview video and how the infinite scroll thing would kind of mess up on you. It's frustrating. But for the most part, Netflix does its job really well. Um, yeah. And then on the other end, on the far other end of the spectrum, you have the Hulu app, which was just garbage. Absolute, absolute nightmare fuel to, uh, to actually try and navigate and watch TV on. Yeah. I still have a tough time finding

stuff in that app after all this time. But yeah, the general consensus is not all bad. I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, they've got great content here between HBO and the Warner Library. And you're going to have some missteps on the launch, obviously, if they didn't communicate accurately about platform support. That's a big one. And people are rightfully going to be a little put off by that. But ultimately, there's an article that we'll link. HBO Max is a mess, but it's still a smart bet on HBO's future. And I agree with the author's take, where he says,

you know, ultimately, he says, look, none of this is going to matter in the long run. HBO Max is everything HBO already had, plus exclusive shows and films from the Warner library. Even if you're not obsessed with HBO shows, there's a wealth of content that makes a Max subscription worthwhile. So some mixed reviews, but I think generally, again, on the strength of their content alone, this one's going to be around for a while. And obviously, we're just, this is the new normal. Every major media company and tech company like companies like Apple are becoming media companies. I mean, they're all going to have their own streaming service that that's just the way it's going to be moving forward. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found on our show

notes at hometech.fm slash 306. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis, as well as other industry news that may or may not have made the show. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 306. Also, don't forget, you can join us live in the chat room on Wednesdays, typically starting around 7 or 7.30pm Eastern. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live. We've got Greg hanging out in the chat room, I know, and Anthony looks like a couple of people. Some Seinfeld dialogue going on in the chat room tonight. Gotta love that. Yeah, never a bad thing.

That's right. Yada, yada, yada. Was it Hulu? I think it was Hulu that had the yada, yada, yada button. They did, yeah. I remember that. All right, Seth, well, pick of the week is you this week. What you got? Well, this is probably my most expensive pick of the week and I have no idea how much this thing costs, but I saw

this and as a designer, uh, you know, and somebody who likes to spend other people's money, uh, this seems like a really, really, really cool product. It is the, uh, digital projection projection satellite MLS projector, I guess, system. And what this is is a modular projector. So when you think of projector, you think of this big white box that kinda, or black box that hangs from the ceiling or is in the back of the theater

that kinda projects the image up onto the screen. Well, inside that box, you have a light source and a lens and a little like, depending on the technology, some kind of filter or mirror that has colors that change on it that produce an image and that gets reflected out and put up on the screen. If you take most of what makes noise and heat in that box is the light source, the light. It gets extremely hot. And a lot of the design decisions that go into making a home theater really have to work hard to compete with the sound and noise and especially heat that come off that projector. This thing totally upends

all of that. I am just, I'm blown away. So they figured out how to take the light source and put it somewhere else, like all the hot, noisy, making, make noise, making things, put them somewhere else. And I guess they run a, like a, what's it called? A fiber optic cable from there to the projector. And the projector is basically just this like dumb box that has a light coming into it and a couple of like fans on it to basically keep it cool for, you know, keep the chip in there. Cool. That, that, that's, that, that has the image on it. And, uh, the light just comes out the lens and, uh, probably, you know, virtually no noise would come off of this thing. This, this looks really, really amazing. Uh, what, what's really cool, Jason, this is my favorite part. Uh, so the little light source

is a 10,000 lumen, right? You can take three of these and stack them together and get a 30,000 lumen projector head, or you can go like one, uh, source to many projectors and, and do, uh, three, 3,000 lumen projectors off one light source. Pretty cool. Wow. Yeah, this is really neat. I'm looking at the website here, and I got to tell you,

I'm going back to my days in Los Angeles doing really high-end home theaters and even some that weren't like the uber high-end, but just a lot of home theater work out there, and there's so much agonizing that goes into figuring out projection enclosures, like you alluded to, to deal with heat and noise primarily. And the fact that you can now mitigate a lot of those concerns with this sort of a modular, they call it a satellite modular laser system, is really neat. I love this i think that uh anyone doing home theater

design uh should definitely be taking a look at this this looks like really neat technology it's a good find yeah the look at the little rack mount it's a rack mount like maybe four ru rack mount laser projector thing like this is the future jason this is the future i'm just looking at this i'm just blown away uh yeah stick all that loud hot stuff in the you know in the in the mechanical room or geez i mean anywhere but inside the theater that that's the problem is like a hundred meters a hundred meters away you get this thing you know and you're you're dealing with this in an environment where aesthetics and not having noise are key, right? So you have these conflicting forces where you've got this big, expensive, loud, hot projector going into a room where you need it to be quiet and cool and everything needs to be good. So you've got these, these just contractors and

architects all, you know, and then a lot of times those companies don't deal a lot with projection. So now you're battling uphill the whole way, asking for more space and more cooling and this and that. And so it's just a, it can be a real nightmare. Um, so having something that makes that a little bit easier, uh, is really cool. I really cool i uh if anybody knows let me know how much things is it's probably a two hundred thousand dollar system it ain't cheap no i can tell i'm sure about that yeah i mean i i've i've done a a few digital projection mostly like the e-series for like commercial stuff but um they weren't cheap the light bulbs that go inside they're not cheap either so uh this one blazer. I wonder if that's any different. Uh, I haven't really looked into that, but, um, somebody let me know how much this thing costs. We'd love to know. Absolutely. Well, if you have any feedback, questions,

comments, picks of the week, or ideas for a show topic or guest, give us a shout. We would love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at home tech.fm or visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. 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 patron page. If you don't know about our patron page, head on over to home tech.fm slash support to learn how you can support home tech for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about home technology.

And I think I saw pictures of like a jukebox in there. And Seinfeld. And Seinfeld. If you're looking for other ways to support the show, we would really appreciate you leaving a positive review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those positive reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you haven't done that and you listen to the show, uh, take five minutes to go do that this week. We would really appreciate it. Well, Jason, that wraps up the show this week. Uh, man, it, it feels like the weeks are moving faster than ever. There's a lot going on these days,

which kind of keeps us busy every day. But, you know, it's nice to sit down and chat, talk a little technology with a friend over Zoom with excellent video and audio quality as us integrators have, right? Yeah, nothing but the best. Yeah, exactly. I think we run pretty much the same system. You've, you've got a different microphone than I have, but we've, we've, we've got this down pat. See, this is what I'm saying.

If you like how we sound, you know, we we've spent time and effort and energy and money putting, you know, building it, building a podcast set up at both ends and figuring out how to do recordings, like your clients are going to want that too. That's what makes the difference. That's what makes, you know, if we were just yelling into the, we sounded like we were on a Zoom call, your average Zoom call, you wouldn't like that. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, this is going to be huge. It's going to be huge for this industry. Well, 306 shows in, I think I'm starting to get things figured out here. Did we record this one is the question. That's my greatest fear is to like, look over there and see like the little red light is not red. It's actually white still. And I'm like, oh man.

We've avoided major disasters thus far. Again, I'll knock on wood. But yeah, that'll do it for this week. Seth, we've got a great guest lined up for next week. So Randy Stearns, the CEO over there at DTools, lined up to come on the show. And Randy's a guy who's been around the business of the connected home and home technology for a really long time, really deep experience in the business

and really looking forward to getting him on and kind of getting his perspective on some of some of the things that D tools is, is doing recently. And also just, he's got really valuable perspectives on, on the business landscape. Very intelligent guy. If you've never had a chance to, to meet Randy or chat with him, um, should be a lot of fun. So look forward to that. Definitely, uh, definitely tune in for that, uh, on our next episode. Excellent. Well, uh, that wraps up this week. Jason, have a great weekend. All right.

Thanks, Seth. You too.