HomeTech.fm - Episode 327 - Redefining the TV Experience with Dabkick's Balaji Krishnan

Episode Date: November 13, 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, November 13th. Friday the 13th. It's Seth Johnson from Sarasota, Florida. And from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? Good, good. Just getting a little bit of rain, a little bit of wind. So I hear. Yeah, I'm glad you were able to join tonight. Seemed like it was in limbo there for a minute. I was actually, yeah, the power had done a lot of flickering earlier today, and I was kind of wondering at the time I texted you, I'm like,

I don't know if I'm going to be online tonight. But our hardened infrastructure here in the hurricane state, or sunshine state, should say has uh has weathered the storm as has my you know it doesn't look so bad every everywhere out there so yeah uh it's been a lot of rain all day a lot of rain a lot of wind well i could tell you're like a seasoned florida storm veteran because i was like well i hope you're staying safe and you said it's just some wind and rain. It's fine. Meanwhile, the power's like flickering at your house.

Hurricane or tornado, whatever the worst one is, I never can remember. It's tornado watches or warnings. We had the bad one where it's like, yeah, there is a tornado in the area, but. Yikes. I don't know. Never saw a tornado.

All right. Well, here we are. We've got a great show this week. We have a fun and interesting guest on, Balaji Krishnan. He's the founder and CEO of a company called Dabkick. They've got a new product coming out called Dabby, which I won't say a whole lot about right now. You'll have to stay tuned for the interview. But it's a pretty unique take on streaming and really aimed at solving some of the problems, Seth, that you and I have talked about quite a bit on the show in terms of app fatigue and kind of jumping in and out of apps all the time and having to understand what content is located in which app and having

that sort of decision fatigue that a lot of us face and choosing what to watch. And they're taking a unique approach to solving some of those problems. And then one of the other big things that they're doing is a watch together functionality that they've actually been working on for quite some time. And Bology's got pretty deep history that we talk about in terms of streaming and kind of developing products in this space. So just sort of a timely conversation on many fronts. And I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's kind of like what it reminds me of is a cable box, but it's better than that because it's like turnkey streaming device, everything included, you know, wipe hands on pants, you're done. Like it's, it's, it's easy. Like it's,

it's what TV should be and streaming should be instead of bouncing around all these apps. And they've got a pretty good, pretty good idea. Um, pretty good interface to it. I kind of liked it. So yeah, it was cool stuff. But before we jump into that, we're going to, of course, hit headlines. But I know, Seth, before we even jump into the headline proper section here of the show, I did not get a chance to watch the Josh AI keynote. And from everything I'm hearing from industry colleagues, it sounds like I missed out. You did, Jason. You did miss out, even though you won our little bet about what the product was going to be. I don't know if it's a bet. I did. I'm taking some credit for that,

giving myself a little pat on the back here. But yeah, the keynote itself was really, I mean, it's probably one of the best keynotes I've seen from our industry. There were a couple of little, like, you know, slow spots or, you know, things, scripts, I guess, that could have been punched up. But first-time effort out of the gate for, you know, a keynote like this, oh, man, they knocked it out of the park, especially for our industry. It wasn't a boring thing. You know, it wasn't boring. It was just like, there's like, there's product to look at. There's, you know, here's what we're doing at Josh. Here's the boom, boom, boom. Here's the features. It was one thing right

after another. And all kind of took place in this like one or two properties. I wasn't sure if there was two properties or one. I probably should have paid more attention, but like there was this house that they, they, they walked up to, or, um, Alex was walking up to and like the freaking walls in the front were like motorizing open, like a door, like motorizing open out, like insane, insane. I'm sure in LA there, there are these like crazy motorized homes that just can basically get up and walk around or something. I'm not sure. This thing was nuts. Everything moves by the kitchen sink. Well, I don't know. There was a,

there was a sushi bar that had like that popped up out of, out of, I'm like, where did this thing even come from? And so like, yeah, that's wild. It was a lot of wild. There was a lot of like, uh, you know, the, the, the tree, like the tree trunks and that kind of thing. Tables. I forget what they're called. Live oak, live, live tables. Yeah.

But tons of that's like tons of like things to look at in these homes. But the motorization just really blew me away. Is that like how much was motorized in the projects? And it's quite a bit. I was all controlled by voice, though. It was kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. I, obviously I am aware of what they announced. I've read all about it. We're going to talk about it in just a minute, but I I'm kind of bummed. I missed it and I presume it's

somewhere I can go watch it and I'll have to go to go do that. But I think it's just the one comment I had as I'm hearing you describe all this is I'm not even going going to try to guess what the timelines were because I'm terrible with that. But whenever it was, several years ago when Josh AI was first coming onto the scene, I remember hearing Alex interviewed on Mike Wolfe's show, the Smart Home show at the time. And it's just interesting to see how far they've come. Alex is obviously a guy who's an experienced entrepreneur, and I'm not surprised necessarily by any of it, but they've really come a long ways, especially in the channel. I'm a fan. I'm a big fan of what that company is doing to really push our channel forward and put a level of polish on the professional home technology installed system that, that to date hasn't been all that common amongst, amongst our industry.

Yeah. Yeah. At least from a, from a public facing perspective is what I mean by that. Yeah. No, if you, if you see the, the, the, the website, the marketing materials, and the product that Josh AI is pushing out, you would think this stuff costs millions of dollars. It doesn't. Quick hint, like it's not, it's not, it's way, way less expensive, I think, than most people realize. Kind of to the point where I'm like,

really, that's all it costs? But it's not a bad deal. I think like the little, the micros all it costs, but it's, it's not a bad, a bad deal. I think, I think like the little, the micros retailed somewhere around like $600. So yeah, that's more expensive than an Amazon echo but, or an Apple home pod, but it's not going to integrate nearly the same way or have the same bespoke features that, you know, a Josh system

is going to have inside a house, much less get you the products that we're going to talk about here in a couple of minutes. Yeah. Well, yeah. Speaking of that, let's jump into it. Let's start our home tech headlines here. And I want to lead right out with the Josh Nano. So when you think of Josh Micro, a lot of words may come to mind, but intrusive is not one of them. Interior designers, however, would beg to differ. Leave it to interior designers. I inserted that part. According to Josh AI, CEO Alex Caposolatro, who says the company has had requests for smaller versions of the device. Josh AI has responded with the dual launch of Josh Nano and Josh Core.

Josh Nano is, according to the company, the world's first architectural microphone, and Josh Core is the processor that sits in a rack and does all the thinking so that the Nano can be its tiny, near-invisible self. And again, this is generally what I predicted when I read the sort of teaser. And I don't think it was a huge stretch to imagine this, given what Josh AI has been trying to do in terms of bringing voice control really to the high end of the market. And I think my prediction is that this device is going to do really well. I've worked in some high-end markets as an integrator, and I know that for the average consumer or somebody who's maybe not been exposed to that world, the pricing on these sort of systems can seem really prohibitive. But at the end of the day, when you're talking about homes in this clientele, money comes second, and the aesthetic and the performance of the system will always come first, and I predict this device will do really well.

Yeah, especially the way, I mean, this looks in a high-end house. It's got the privacy features that they brag about with a little switch on it that you can just watch over and turn off the microphone in that room. I think all in all, both of these products were home run. It's not like I saw anything at all that I was confused with how like how it worked or what it did. like made sense for them to put it in, especially the Josh core, which, which has the, the, the audio inputs and outputs on it. I suppose that you can use to connect into like a traditional home, home matrix system, like your audio, your house audio system. Um, in the past, you'd kind of have to use Sonos and, uh, and now you use this Josh core, you, you take the audio out. And, and when you, when you yell into the air at the Josh AI micro or nano,

the audio comes out of your in-ceiling speakers. Like I said, it's not a new feature for them. You've had to use a Sonos in the past, but with this, you can actually use a Josh piece to integrate it back into the audio, back into a traditional matrix system while like adding functionality and speed onto the uh josh ai system so yeah everything i saw just i was like yeah they're firing on all cylinders they're doing a great job over there yeah i think important to note very quickly there that the whereas this this was optional in the

past sounds like you could use a sonos i i wasn't candidly wasn't fully aware of that but but it'll be required with these they removed the built-in speaker obviously to reduce the footprint i'm sure so the nano itself doesn't have a speaker built into it and so this will be really for integrated homes you'll only and you'll need like you'll need some way to pipe that into a into an audio system but again i think for the target market that they're that they're aiming at with this device that's never going to be a limitation just look at the house yeah yeah the house already had the speakers you know it's like well you're gonna have to hook them up to something. Yeah. A couple other things here.

The Nano does have a capacitive touch sensor for, it says, contextual touch control. So that's kind of cool. It's got a privacy switch that physically disconnects the microphone when toggled. That's kind of a nice feature as well. It's PoE, as you would expect, remote temperature sensor built into it. And then one other thing shifting to the Josh Nano that I thought was kind of cool is the ability to daisy chain them for redundancy.

Again, in some of these really high-end homes, the performance is always above price. And so the ability to link these two together and have that extra bit of redundancy in the system, I think was a good design decision. So yeah, all in all, I'm a fan. Eddie in the chat room says he's already got his ordered. So Eddie, keep us posted. We'll look forward to hearing more about those. And I'll definitely be curious to see how this does once

we get some of these out in the wild. Yeah, both products, you can pre-order them now, but they're anticipating shipping them in early 2021. So it's going to be a couple months before we start seeing those actually out in the field and in dealers' hands. But it's going to be a couple months before we get, we start seeing those, you know, actually out in the field and in, in, in dealer's hands. But, uh, you know, that's the way of the world right now. Things take time. Yeah, absolutely. Why is the bargain smart device maker? That's already unveiled a pair of Bluetooth headphones, a video doorbell, a thermostat is about to unleash its first robot vacuum, um, available for pre-order now it's slated to ship in january 2021 the uh $199 wise robot vacuum connects to wi-fi networks and boasts features that we don't see in models this inexpensive such as the ability to map rooms and avoid areas that you don't want to it to enter

crazy this company this this uh this this price tag though seth it feels off brand 199 it should be like 35 yeah they've never i've never seen them sell anything for like more than i don't know i feel like 30 or 40 is like the highest price point i've ever seen well in the world of those those vacuums can get like six and seven hundred dollars they get quite expensive yeah so i guess it's all relative yeah i just i i had to read it a few times to make sure it wasn't like 1999 there wasn't a decimal place in there that you weren't seeing i think somebody got the decimal in the wrong place here but no it's interesting it looks like it's got those features you mentioned, like room mapping. It says handy features, the ability to create virtual walls that the vacuum won't cross.

If you set it for a full cleaning, runs out of batteries, it'll scoot back to its station. So yeah, it looks pretty cool. I haven't spent a lot of time learning about these vacuums, but I don't sense that any of these these features are revolutionary rather i sense that seeing these features in a vacuum at this price point right is uncommon yep so leave it to wise moving on from there comcast is entering the diy home security with self protection a new product for xfinity internet subscribers, which includes 24 seven video recording for $10 a month without a contract. You just need to pick up one of the company's X-Fi or Xfinity home indoor outdoor cameras,

and they'll automatically connect to your wireless network. So it looks like the company is positioning this product, um, kind of as a way to keep an eye on things, package deliveries, kids in the backyard. These are the sorts of things that are mentioned in this story here from Engadget. Interesting price point too, $10 a month, $120 a year. And it's kind of like a little small kind of like DIY security system, no contracts needed. For the right customer, this would be the right product. I think, um, we've seen a couple of things like this over the years, like Canary comes to mind. We talked to them heck a long time ago, but they're still out there. Um, and it just kind of reminds me of that. Uh, I think it's about the same price too per

month. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you for the right customer. I think of, um, you know, folks who maybe aren't all that inclined to go out and shop for a third-party thing like a Ring security system or SimpliSafe or something like that. If they're already a Comcast subscriber and just want to add this in, I think this makes a lot of sense. I haven't seen anybody do what Abode does. Don't they have that little monitoring that you can like turn on and turn off as you need it like if i need yeah a week's worth of monitoring while i'm out you know that's right that's right i'm surprised comcast or and no one else has really done that yeah no that is a good a good model at least from the consumer's uh perspective yeah i can't imagine a lot of other companies are eager uh to enable that sort of thing. More security news.

Originally planned not to roll out until mid-2022. ADT is announced it will accelerate the release of its new ADT and Google Do It For Me professionally installed system to the second half of 2021, a full year earlier than initially planned. The new platform will feature co-branding with Google, integrated Google Maps products, Nest cameras and thermostats, and Google Video Analytics,

according to Jim DeVeers, president and CEO of ADT. It will leverage ADT's existing command and control platform until the end of 2022. I got to say on this one, Seth, I was a little bit confused. This story is from CE Pro. There's a quote in here that says,

when we first announced the Google investment in ADT and the long-term partnership, we shared that one key outcome of the relationship would be a next-generation platform with home security, automation, blah, blah, blah. This is a quote from DeVries, Jim DeVries at ceo of adt and uh but then he goes on he says following a comprehensive review of all our alternatives we've concluded that adt should and will own the next generation platform which we develop which will be developed entirely within google cloud um that goes on to explain some of the features. So just the wording of that quote, like it kind of sounded like there, there was some sort of pivot made here and now they're shifting

the timing up and I dug around and I couldn't quite make sense of, of what's going on with this. And it just makes me wonder if there was some, again, sort of strategic pivot that, that might've thrown a little curve ball into this. And it's kind of being packaged as good news. And in a sense it is because they're moving the timeline up. But it feels to me like something fundamentally sort of shifted underneath this partnership. And I'm not quite sure what to make of it. But like I said, ultimately, I suppose good news for consumers as they're moving the timeline up significantly. Where there's smoke, there could be fire. It wasn't just a couple of weeks ago

that Google announced that they were discontinuing or not selling their security system anymore. So if ADT was going to rely on that Google Nest security system, I wonder if they kind of got caught off on their heels with this or something. I don't know. It makes sense for them to bring it in-house though,

like develop their own technology. And it's kind of, ADT's kind of done that for the most part for its entire business life. They've had their own monitoring systems, but they've leveraged, you know, manufacturers to make their own proprietary panels, so to speak. Yeah. So not anything new. Right. Right. Yeah. So interesting partnership overall, zooming out Google and ADT working together is just, just an interesting story overall. And definitely one we'll be, we'll be keeping an eye on moving on here, Seth end of an era before streaming video in the cloud was a normal thing. A sling box was the best way to access TV from anywhere. Just plug one of these transcoders into your antenna or cable box, hook it up to the internet, and it provided you a stream you could watch at work or on your phone. All of that is

now coming to an end. Sling Media informed users today, this week here, that in two years, its servers will shut down. Once that happens, all of the existing boxes will stop working. So they're given a two-year runway on this, ample time for people to adjust course. And I'm not even sure how useful these things are now, given the way that streaming has evolved. I'm sure there are still some use cases out there, but yeah, that's the biggest thing to me. This was a really kind of a defining device in the home. It was one of those rare devices that comes along that it was just like, really shook things up. And to see it coming to an end kind of marks a turning point. I remember walking through like trade show floors and the sling people would be at their little like,

it wasn't a booth. It was more just like a podium in the middle of the floor and they would have like they'd have something they'd have the box there but then i think they'd have like a tablet or some or their phone or something demoing the streaming that was going from whatever box they had somewhere like a direct tv box somewhere else in the world into their phone which you know is a cool demo like you're walking around the trade show floor and you can't i mean for the life of you get cell phone signal and somehow they're doing streaming. It was a, it was a, it was a cool demo. Um, so yeah, end of an era. Now it makes sense why Richard Gunther was offering me a sling box in the hub today. One of the things I liked about it was like, it could get you around some of the licensing

restrictions so as a like a denver broncos fan if i was traveling and i had one of these hooked up to my cable box at home sometimes it's still difficult to get the broncos game on certain streaming apps but if you've got a sling box hooked up to your your cable at home where you get it you could get around that. And so I'm sure there's probably still lots of people out there using these for that purpose. Dave Zatz, interestingly, this article did mention Dave Zatz had discussed the possibility of a DNS workaround that might let users connect directly. But even that, I think, is going to be limited. Eventually, the app is just going to run out of support and these things will or baseball games or whatever that may be in a part of a blackout. But nowadays you just need whatever subscription service that you would probably normally have to watch football or baseball games anyway.

But then, I mean, I hear ads all the time for like VPN services that you could just VPN yourself to a different city. And then all of a sudden you're watching whatever you want to watch. Yeah, for sure. There's always a way around. It's a never ending cat and mouse game. Um, moving on to some other streaming news. Uh, the beauty of Netflix is that you can watch anything anytime you want, but if you don't feel like making that decision, uh, what do you do? That's the idea behind direct a new linear style channel that Netflix is testing in France as seen by a

friend droid. Okay. Like I said, I don't know what that is. Uh, when you, when you click, it sounds like a French Android Android. Yeah. When you click on the new direct link in the menu, you'll get a pre-programmed feed of popular films, series, and documentaries. Uh, you can then watch it in real time, just like regular TV channel, without even the ability to rewind. Jason, this sounds like a godsend for you.

Like, it sure beats scrolling through all those shows. I like it. Yeah, I would love if they enabled this here. I mean, I don't watch much TV at all, but like I've said numerous times on the show, there are just times where I want to turn it on and have something play. And this article used a phrase that I liked. It said, first of all, it says France is one of Netflix's most important markets, got about

9 million subscribers there. And then it says, in France, watching traditional TV remains hugely popular with people who just want a, quote, lean back, end quote, experience, where they don't have to choose the show. And that was a quote from a Netflix news release. And I like that, that lean back experience. I think that's a good way to put it. And ultimately, that is one of the things I miss. We cut the cord a long time ago. I generally don't miss having a cable bill. We're not at all considering going back to that. But like I said, every now and then, I just want to be able to push one button and have something just come on and start playing and not have to go through the machinations of choosing an app and trying to decide what I want to watch and all of that.

And it sounds like such a small and silly thing when I say it out loud, but it is just that totally frictionless experience that I miss. I think they call it, the kids call it lean back and chill. Hashtag show title. Oh man, be careful. This is a family show. All right. Well, uh, we've got one more headline here, Seth. Uh, this week, Cedia launched Propel, a program with IOT and wellness providers bringing wholesale

pricing to association members. The program is designed to connect association members to new brands and products from emerging categories, and also aims to be an avenue for manufacturers that are already using the channel to test the waters with new products for the channel. Three initial suppliers taking part in the program are Amazon ring bright, restorative beds and immersive gym. Seth, what say you? Man, I don't know what to think about this. Well, I do in some respects. From a distributor standpoint, I really don't like Cedia kind of muddying up the waters between distribution or buying group or whatever, and kind of putting people to particular products.

It's kind of insulting kind of, you know, insulting, uh, to say the least, but, uh, from like, just in like an overall industry standpoint, uh, I, I just, I don't like this move. I don't like this, whatever this affinity program is. So it's, it's, it's just, it feels dirty to me. Honestly, it feels just dirty. Um, because CD is, is, is basically bypassing traditional means of either distribution or setting up with a manufacturer and kind of putting out partners that they partner with to put dealers in touch with them directly. And I don't know.

The first one on there listed in alphabetical order is Amazon, which is amazon.com. And like, I, why, why would a trade organization that is supposed to be for, you know, the small mom and pops businesses of this industry, it's because generally that's what we all are. Um, push people to amazon.com. That's, I don't know. That's that's that that that one kind of stung the most but then the other ones are just kind of like okay mattresses uh irrelevant the immersive gym thing is kind of cool but none of none of these products to me look like if you if you take a step back it's like okay what's the goal here for these products is the goal to like have more

dealers or is the goal to collect more customer information? And I mean, Amazon, you know, the answer for that right now, right. To get to the customers, we're betting and mattresses. Okay. That's not what we do. So what's the play there in the immersive gym? I don't know. I go to their website. It's very customer focused. It doesn't have anything about dealers or hire an installer on it. So I don't know. It doesn't seem like these brands that they have picked to launch this with have dealers' best interest in mind in the first place. These seem like suppliers that are just more interested in bypassing our traditional marketplace and going off onto direct with consumer. Every one of them does.

So I don't know. If you're looking at Cedia as being a trade organization, I don't know. It feels like it's trying to be a buying group now. Yeah. And I don't like it. I got to say that was my first impression when reading the story.

I was, my my the theme i came away with was i was confused i was just not quite i couldn't quite wrap my head around what um what the vision is here and i i think i didn't have quite the same visceral reaction it sounds like that you did mine was more just um i didn't quite get it and and i agree it sounded very much to me like uh like a move in a direction of a buying group and i don't quite understand like um to me cdia feels like one of the big value props of Cedia is that it's kind of a neutral trade body. And I'm having trouble articulating like precisely why this doesn't feel right to me necessarily. But like it just sort of goes against that thing. Like you think about Cedia and that's, I just think as, as outside of the kind of this type of economics,

this type of arrangement. They're, they're a neutral standards body, uh, training. They're, they're not picking and choosing winners and losers based on who signs up for their, uh, affinity program, whatever the heck that is. I mean, and there was some pushback to me like, oh, well there's other trade organizations that have these affinity programs. But CTO is kind of like the only one that didn't. I'm like, yeah, for good reason, because it looks so dirty. Like it. I mean, don't I don't know. I don't know if there's any money changing hands on the background. Like CTO would kind of be crazy if you asked me if they didn't have money changing hands on the background back end, like if they weren't getting kickbacks from these companies for putting up their products. But

I don't know. It just it doesn't look right to me. And I got to tell you, like pushing people. The thing that really irked me the most, I guess, is coming from the distribution side. We do sell Amazon Ring devices. We do sell Ring, quite a of ring. Um, it's tough to have your trade organization that's over the membership pushing, you know, customers over there. Uh, well, fine. So be it, you know, that's not going to affect us that much in the long run. But I think what, you know, what did hurt when I read it was, you know, these guys that are out there saying that you can get margin off of these products if you go to Amazon directly. And it's like, we sell through distribution. If you're a dealer

and you buy something from distribution, you're already getting margin from us. And we're giving you better margin as a distributor, distributor, because we're giving you like volume pricing and all that stuff that you're not going to get from Amazon. You're never going to get that. So it's just really, you know, a way to bypass the traditional marketplace that we have, at least in Amazon's case. I don't get the warm and fuzzies from them, if you ask me. But if Amazon's going to do what Amazon's going to do, and just because Ring is part of Amazon now, you know, I don't care one way or another. But Cedia being involved in kind of funneling people to Amazon.com that feels the worst part

that feels the worst out of all of this well yeah I hear where you're coming from in my last comment on it is just if you take this out to its logical conclusion where does it go what would happen for example if you go through the thought exercise of Crestron being part of the program, but Savant not being part of the program? Yeah.

Right. And using that as a sort of a thought exercise, like, because again, to me, Cedia feels like it's not required if you're an integrator that you be part of Cedia, but there is an implicit expectation. I feel like that you kind of should be if you're really serious about things. And so it's like, as soon as you combine that with now, like you said, Cedia sort of picking winners on the manufacturer side and brokering these sort of arrangements. It just feels like a slippery slope to me. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and there's no, if you look at these emerging, quote, emerging customers, I don't know how Ring is emerging, but whatever. If you look at these emerging manufacturers, like they're really, they're really just not interesting. They're not, they're not, they're not something that you would, you would see at the Cedia trade show. This is, this is the kind of stuff we talked about with John Clancy, like with Cedia putting IOT devices all around the Crestron booth. And, you know, the Crestron booth is this flagship million dollar booth. Everybody goes in and all about, And there's like IOT devices surrounding the edges feeding off of

their, you know, feeding off their location. It's like, yeah, that's, that's not cool. And now, now we've kind of got the same thing going on directly with the trade organization. I don't know this to me, this feels dirty. I will say there's a webinar tomorrow. It's, it's, that'll be Thursday where they're going to try and get together and, uh, answer a lot of questions about this. And if you're listening to the show and you want to check that out, um, just look on their social media and they have it all over there. I just, I just don't get it. I don't understand why this was needed. Like what does, what purpose does it serve for the average integrator? And I think if you ask that,

if you look at what integrators think of Cedia already, it's not great. We have people, I would say the vast majority of people that I talk to about Cedia, it's like, yeah, I don't really care about that. It's very non-relevant to them, right? So to do something like this,

to like on top of it, like how does this add relevance to the Cedia brand? I don't think it does. To me, it's one more like thing just to damage the Cedia brand and to damage what they're trying to do. And yeah, I've got my opinions on it. Feel free to go develop your own.

Well, hopefully this was cathartic for you, Seth. Well, you know, at least they're outlining the brand you probably don't want to be doing business with. Yes. All right. Well, all the links and topics that we have discussed on this week's episode can be found at our show notes at hometech.fm slash 327.

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 327. Don't forget, you can join us in the chat room, which is lively tonight, live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more on how to do that at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth. Well, without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into our interview.

Once again, we've got Balaji Krishnan, the founder and CEO of Dabkick, and we hope you enjoy. Hey, Balaji, welcome to the show. How are you? Good. How are you? We're doing great. We appreciate you joining us, and we're excited to jump in and learn more about what you've got going on.

But before we do that, we always like to start with a quick personal introduction. So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your personal background? Sure. Thanks for having me here. So my name is Balaji. I'm the founder of Dabby. The company's name is called Dabkick, and the product is Dabby. And I started this company four and a half years back. And before that, I started another company called Snapstick,

which was also in the home entertainment space. And before that, I've been an engineer for over 15 years working for companies like HP, Sun, Oracle, mostly on the system side. So my startups are the ones that I've been focusing on the consumer side. So it's just kind of a different thing that I was doing before. Yeah, excellent. Well, let's jump right into that. Give us the elevator pitch. What's the short version on Dabby? Sure. Yeah. So Dabby is what I call is a radically new entertainment device that does two things really good compared to any other streaming device out in the market. So one is we are bringing the best user experience for TV

by eliminating all these annoying and antiquated remote controls, like plastic remote controls that we all carry. So we are replacing that with the world's first touch interface for TV. And the second thing what we're doing is we are aggregating content from various different sources into one

seamless interface. So all you have to do is just tap the content on your touch interface that will play on your TV instantly. So that's what we're doing. And we are aimed to change the way people watch TV when it comes to user experience and how to find that content. Yeah. Excellent. Well, we're going to jump in to talk about that in more detail. But before we do that, I'd love to go back in time a little bit and share some of the backstory, starting with, I know while you were working at Oracle, back quite a while ago, you got into developing a little bit of a side project and a recommendation engine. Take us back to the beginning.

Tell us a little bit about that project. Sure. Yeah. So when I was working for Oracle, that was the first time I got Comcast Connection and the cable TV. So when I turned it on, I saw this like grid based TV guide, you know, it's kind of a intimidating, like overwhelming TV guide. And there was so many channels and I couldn't find anything that I wanted to watch. But I was wondering if I could actually create some sort of recommendation engine based on other people's interest, and then applying my own interest into that one and connect that with a TV guide. Can it spit out some movies and TV shows that I might like to watch from the TV guide? So then this was the time when MySpace was actually popular. So you all know MySpace before Facebook. MySpace, people were talking about entertainment a lot and people were talking about what movies they watched. So what I did was, this was like a fun project that I did.

So I was data mining these feeds that were actually going on in MySpace and did some sentiment analysis to understand what people really like and what people don't like. A quick example is if someone says, I watched Gladiator and I liked it. The sentiment analysis should understand that Gladiator is a movie and the sentiment is positive. And so that kind of analysis that was done. And so as part of this, what happened was I started creating this global interest graph, if you will. And then I applied my own MySpace profile into that one to feed in my interest profile. And then combine that with a Comcast TV guide.

It worked. You know, it actually gave me some recommendations for movies and TV shows that are available on a Comcast TV guide. And then I piped that into TiVo to record those TV shows. And then I started watching. So that was kind of, you know, a fun project that I did. And then I showed it to my friends and my friends started using that. So, and then of course, no, I refined this. So I was working on this for over a year, just for fun.

And then when it started working, I got a lot of interest from my friends and even friends of friends. So that's when I knew that, you know, something was going on there. Some of the recommendation was actually working. Yeah. I love that. Cause you were doing, doing this stuff that now we, we kind of take for granted in terms of this sentiment analysis and, and recommendation algorithms. And I just, I love that you were tinkering with this stuff as a side project way back when MySpace was still, still a thing, which kind of feels like ancient history now. Share, take us to the next step in the story, because I know you had a

big meeting at a conference that sort of changed the trajectory of where you were headed. Yeah, yeah. So this was a conference that was happening in LA, where I just happened to be there. And I met this guy named Craig Seidel. He is the VP of Innovation at Movie Labs. So Movie Labs is the innovation studio of Movie Studios. So he works closely with Universal Studios and various different studios. And we just, you know, we were just, I remember I was there to get some water and he was there, the same, same, same spot when we started talking. And then he asked me like what I was working on.

So I showed him the recommendation engine and he liked it. startups and companies like us that can help movie studios to do something innovative inside the studios. So he saw that to be a great fit for the movie studios. So it was just like a two-hour conversation, and he liked it, what I was doing. And then he wrote a check. He wrote a check for $50,000. It can happen only in America. It can happen only in the Bay Area. So he wrote a check for $50,000 without even knowing my background,

nothing. He liked it. And then he said, I used to live in the peninsula at a good shows and he lived in Palo Alto. So he said, let's get back together when you're in Bay Area. And here's a check. So that was insane. So that gave me kind of a seed money for actually turning this fun project into a real company. That's when I quit Oracle. And then I started doing this full time. Yeah. Amazing. Like you said, only in America.

Love that story. Yeah. So I know if I've got my story straight here, that sent you on a different path in your trajectory and that ultimately led to Snapstick, which is an interesting story in and of itself. So tell us a little bit about that. Sure. Yeah. So when Craig wrote me the check, of course, Movie Labs had some deliverables to be made from our side for the $50,000 that they gave us. So I was actually working towards that. But then Craig also introduced me to a couple of angel investors who

looked at what I was doing. But two things happened in parallel. One is I got introductions to these people who were willing to invest in the company. The second thing was the recommendation engine also evolved. This was a time when Apple also opened up their developer platform for their iPhones. So I started opening up the recommendation engine,

not just for the TV guide from Comcast. I was wondering, you know, if I apply this recommendation engine for online videos, would that be expanding my horizon? So, and surprisingly, it also worked for online videos that and then it basically gave me a lot of good recommendations from YouTube's and Vimeo's and Metacafe and various different videos and then I basically brought those recommendations into an iPhone app and so I started watching on my iPhone but we all know the first version of iPhone wasn't

that powerful, like to watch videos. So I actually wanted to watch these videos on a big screen TV. So that's when I ended up actually creating a small, what we call a net top computer. I bought a net top computer. And then my background before SnapStick is all on operating systems development. So that actually helped me to create a custom Ubuntu operating system that I put in this NetTop computer. And the iPhone app can talk to this computer that is connected to the TV. So this box will be connected to the HDMI of the TV and the iPhone app will be interfacing with that so that I can tap on the iPhone app and then it'll play that

video on the TV. So that was the full product that I would call it as a full ecosystem that I built. And by the time I finished this, there were a couple of angel investors that looked at it and they thought it could lead to something big. So they invested, I think it's around like 300 or 400K as a seed money. And then we started hiring people and the first milestone was to get to 2011 CES. And so that's when we debuted. In fact, this was at the same time Google TV was launched.

If you remember Google TV 2011, it had a clunky keyboard and all this stuff. I remember during CES, we were actually, you know, we were in a small suite in a hotel and then Google had a big booth at CES, but to Google's surprise, lots of studios like Fox and NBC, they actually shut them down. So they were not able to demo their product.

And what we did was we pulled all the reporters to our suite, and then we showed our product. So we won the best of CES. That was the big milestone for us. And that's when we got in touch with Rovi, who ended up acquiring us by the end of the year. Excellent. Excellent. And so this all brings, I do have one quick question on the recommendation engine. Is that only, so when you're doing that language parsing, are you only doing like English, English speaking languages or you do, or have you expanded out to more? No, it was only English. Yeah. Because even, even within English, it was really hard to understand. Oh, yeah, yeah. You can imagine.

Yeah, so, yeah, we stuck to English and, yeah, so we're not doing it in a language. So after SnapStick, it looks like, is that kind of what brought you to creating Dabby? What brought you to the founding and creating this product, Dabby? Yeah, so Snapstick was acquired by Rovi, which is now TiVo. And so I did not join Rovi, and I wanted to take some time off. So what I did was after the exit, I went to India for like three months. I actually wanted to watch a cricket match with my friends. So I really missed that watching together. So when I was there, I felt how different it is to watch together in the same room and cheering for the same team.

And my nephew was there. So, you know, we all wanted to watch together in a big screen TV. And when I came back here, I thought of actually recreating that experience as, you know, as I had in India, the only way for me to recreate that experience back then was to go on FaceTime on one device and then watch cricket match on a, on a different screen. And then I say, hit play, hit pause, three, two, one. So it was not a, it was a very clunky experience. So that's when I thought maybe, you know,

if you unify all these things into one seamless experience, it might be actually much better. And I really want to actually bring this experience to TV. But, but, you know, there are different baby steps that we had to take before we get to the TV experience. That's when I started Dabby. It was called Dabkick. And we started with watching together as a feature. And we initially started building technology for watch together, because as we all know, watch together technology is not that simple. One thing that people have seen is one too many broadcast streaming, that is pretty easy to do. Or if you do on a laptop browser, synchronizing videos is not that harder

in terms of technology. But when it comes to like a mobile app, for example, and if you want to watch together, where it is not one-to-many streaming, where anyone can change anything. For example, if I invite you to watch together, you should be able to pause your video and you should be pausing on my side and you should be able to scrub your video and you should be able to scrub on my side. So how do you synchronize

these videos on two different locations, on two different networks? And especially when it comes to mobile, I could be on an edge network and you could be on a high speed wifi. So technically that was a big challenge. So we created. Yeah. Because you're trying to sync two different players. I mean, syncing is hard enough as it is. And you're trying to sync two different players running two different devices on two different networks. It seems like it's easy, but that's a very hard thing to do. Exactly. So we were not even actually one-to-one. It's actually, we were the first company to bring this technology for multiple devices in very different networks. And, you know, they all should be able to synchronize the videos. So we have a lot of patents on that. And one of the patents is called Buddy System, what we call. I don't know if I can actually go deep into technology here, but the buddy system is, so we actually created a hybrid between peer-to-peer and the cloud.

If you take FaceTime, for example, it's pure peer-to-peer. And because of which, if the connection breaks, it'll say reconnecting. So that's pure, you know, pure peer-to-peer. But if you see Twitch, for example, if one person is broadcasting, the other people are actually watching, that is cloud-based system where each connection. So none of these guys were actually watching the live stream. They will be seeing the same exact, you know, like to the time live stream. Everyone will be having at least like two seconds off,

three seconds off, because each connection is a client connection. So we want, none of these things will work if you want to achieve this perfect synchronization across different networks and different players. So we created a hybrid between these two, what we call as buddy system, where if I invite you and Seth, and if your phone can talk to my phone peer-to-peer, then we form a buddy group. And if I cannot talk to Seth's phone peer-to-peer, he will be a different group. So anything out of the peer-to-peer system will be going through the cloud. So we can actually reduce the load on the server significantly. And you can also maintain the synchronization much faster. So that was the

kind of architectural, you know, description about the watch together. Of course, no, there, even with this architecture, we had to do a lot of trial and error. And one thing that I used to do was, I used to drive from, you know, Cupertino, which is South Bay, all the way to San Francisco, I used to take 280 because 280s had a lot of dead spots. So I'll be watching together a video with my friend who will be sitting in the office, and he'll be on a high speed Wi Fi, I'll be on a dead spot. So if that's what happens, then what happens to the synchronization? And once I get once I'm back on the network, how does it re-synchronize? And what and you know one is the technology part the other is the

user experience part because people when they're watching together they would not know what's happening on the other side so if the other person is on a dead spot then what should the you know what should i see when when my friend is on a dead spot so all these things you know matter when it comes to creating a product to do this watch together if it is only a dead spot. So all these things matter when it comes to creating a product to do this watch together. If it is only a technology demonstration, then we don't have to worry about all these things. But when it becomes a product,

then the user experience matters a lot. Right. It sounds like it's pretty easy. Like you're saying, oh, we're just streaming things here back and forth. But all the edge cases of this type of thing makes it extremely complicated it's almost like developing a natural language processing utility to figure out what people like and

you seem to be up for these challenges so that's pretty good um so let's let's head on over and talk about the little dabby device too um obviously it sounds like watch Together is built into this, but I'm here on the website. It looks like you are aggregating a ton of online services like Netflix, Dizzy Plus, ESPN, everything kind of gets aggregated down into this box and shown on the TV. And I don't know, take it from here. Tell me, tell me more about what you get. Like there's a million of these streaming boxes out there.

What makes Dabby stand out? Yeah. So that is a good question because if you look at all the streaming boxes like Roku's and Apple TVs and Fire TV, pretty much all these devices, including the smart TVs,

they all operate on this app-based ecosystem. So what it means is someone has to create the app. In this example, Netflix has to create an app for Roku separately, you know,

smart TV separately, same with Disney+. In fact, Disney+, is not available on,oku separately, you know, a smart TV separately, same with Disney plus. In fact, Disney plus is not available on, I think fire TV, I guess. So, you know,

the apps may not be available on all devices because it requires engineering efforts, but from the consumer point of view, we go, if you turn on the Roku device, we are always dumped into this homepage where you have this like zillions of apps there. And then you have to, you need to know which app you need to open.

And then you go into this Netflix app. Netflix app is really well built and the UI is great. But if you look at Voodoo app, for example, the UI is not that great because you don't know where the search button is. So each app has its own UI and it's not unified. And even though Roku claims that they have this unified search interface, they cannot go deep inside the app and search within the app. They can only search across the metadata like surface level metadata. What we wanted to do was, we want to create one system where you don't have to a download any apps. So we don't we we hate downloading

apps to the TVs. Apps on the phone is different because apps on the phone is very close to you, you can touch it, you can easily download it and it is moderated by Apple and Android. That's it. Right. But when it comes to different kinds of ecosystems, like Roku has his own ecosystem, ecosystem, if you look at Samsung TV, they have their own ecosystem. So downloading apps and it's all, it's all, it's all, it's very different. So we want to avoid downloading apps and if possible, can we also eliminate signing into these services separately because you forget the passwords and you know, they show the activation code. You go to that, you know, your laptop and then put that. All these things.

Yeah. It's so tech heavy that normal people are not going to be doing this a lot, which is why, in my theory, why people don't watch a lot of TV is because of that experience. It's not because they don't want to watch on a big screen. Who wouldn't want to watch on a big screen? But the experience that you get from your laptops versus mobile phones versus TV,

the TV is the most inferior experience that you get. So we wanted to change that. So what we do is, first of all, we want to eliminate this plastic remote controls. So you're not going to be browsing on the TV because browsing on the TV is harder because you're sitting at a 10 feet distance and you will get tired in a few minutes because you'll be like hopping around between different bricks and then

you would give up. So we wanted to bring the browsing experience closer to you, which is why we are introducing a touch-based interface, what we call as Gabi Touch. So it's a tablet with touch interface where you would see all content coming from different sources like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Showtime, everything we bring onto the device. I will explain how we are actually bringing it because we don't have any apps. And then you touch the content on your Dabby Touch and there is a box that connects to the TV's HDMI and the box will know how to play that content. It is not streaming from the Dabby Touch to the box. The Dabby Touch

is just informing the box, go and fetch this content from Netflix. The fundamental architecture behind this is a browser-based interface because Because if you look at all these different ecosystems, we have two major ecosystems. One is the PC-based ecosystem, the other is the mobile-based ecosystem. So the mobile has two operating systems, iOS and Android. The PC has two operating systems or three, probably like Windows, Mac and Linux. PC-based ecosystem, they all have one platform where you can watch any content, which is the browser. So it's a HTML-based, it's a standardized language so that publishers, they can create HTML-based interface and consumers don't have to worry about any other UI or any

other interface. So they don't have to download anything. They can just go to a website, they can watch anything. So we wanted to use that interface for TVs. And we are not the first one to introduce browser for the TV, but we all know that Samsung has a browser, but the problem with that is how do you control the browser?

How do you open even a link? You don't want to carry a keyboard and a mouse, right? So. Right. It's an experience issue. Exactly. It's a customer experience. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So that's what we have created. So we have two devices. One is a touch device for browsing and controlling the TV. The other is the TV device that can actually play. So we are seeing TV to be the playback device, not a browsing device. So that's how we see it. And the TV box should always be playing something. We hate to take people to a homepage where you have to select something. Because for the TV experience, the most

important thing is discovery. If I ask you, like, what movie do you want to watch right now? It's very hard to answer that because your brain is not tuned into it. Especially when it comes to this TV, you want to shut down your brain. That's why it's called an it comes to this TV, you want to shut down your brain. That's why it's called an idiot box, right? So you want to basically just relax and watch something that you want to watch. Sometimes you want to actually search. It's not that always browse mode, discovery mode, but you want to have that fine balance between these two. And we believe that the touch device is going to give you that so that it's easy for you to browse. It's easy for you to search. And we have a very deep AI engine that basically enables all these experiences for you. Gotcha.

So kind of taking a step back here, I get a DABi. I go to your website. I buy it. Get the little box in. I have a little touch screen device too um i plugged the box into my tv uh and there's just video playing already that's how that's how it starts up like i'm watching traditional tv exactly yeah so uh that's one of the things that i i've always liked about the cable box because you turn the cable box on something is always on they would never dump you to the home page where you had to select. So we want to bring that experience. And there are a few things

that I liked about the plastic remote controls, where it's just one tap to pause, one tap to play. You know, if you add as an app in your phone, it is not that experience that you would get. And many companies tried this as well. So you need a dedicated hardware where you just tap one, one to, you know, pause, one to play. And also one of the things that I really liked, which we implemented in Dabby is, let's say you're watching a movie from Netflix, and then you watch CNBC live TV channel. Now you want to go back to the movie that from you were watching from Netflix. On Roku, if you want to do this, the live TV might be happening, like might be playing from Sling app.

And then you basically get out of the Sling TV app, go to the homepage of Roku, open Netflix, and then Netflix will resume from where you left off. But in our case, just tap one button. It will take you back to the Netflix movie. This is what I liked about Comcast remote control. They have this last button, but that works only between live TV channels within Comcast, but we implemented that user experience feature into this. I mean,

these all sound like very small things, but it matters. When it comes to TV experience, all these things matter, right? So even a small user experience improvement. Yeah, no, I agree. I think, and Seth and I have talked about this frequently on the show, the abundance of streaming apps and content that are out there today

and all of the streaming devices are generally great, but they have introduced a lot of friction into the experience where sometimes you want to just be able to sit down and turn on the TV and have something come on and not be fumbling through multiple apps. And I like the universal search as well. It sounds like you're really focused on removing a lot of the friction from the viewing experience. And I think that's a great thing nowadays, again, with all of the app fatigue and everything that's going on. I'd love to, now that we've got a better sense for the system architecture, how it installs, how you're doing some of the things under the hood,

I'd like to actually circle back to the watch together feature and take another look at that from the user standpoint. We talked about it a little bit from the design standpoint, but if I've got one of these devices in my home and I've got parents who I'm not going to be with for the holidays this year because of COVID, and we want to get together and watch our Christmas movie that we usually watch together, what does that experience look like from the user's perspective? Right. Sure. So the way to sign up, sign into a Dabby device is using your phone number. That's it, right? So you put your phone number, we send you the validation code, and then you sign in.

So when you get a device, you would be using your phone number to sign in. And then when your mom gets the device, you know, she would be doing the same thing on her side. And then once you are inside Dabby, you would see a watch together button. So now with that, all you have to do is just enter your mom's phone number, and then it will invite your mom pretty much like a regular phone call. So your mom's tablet is going to actually ring like a phone call, and then she can accept that. And as soon as she accepts, you are going to be going on a video call. So you can

actually see her, she can see you. It's still not going to basically bring your TV and her TV synchronized, because sometimes she might be watching something else, you might be watching something else, and she doesn't want to be interrupted. After you're connected on a video call, then you can talk to her and there is a button that will say watch TV together. So as soon as you tap that, whatever that you're playing on your TV, it will be playing on her TV as well. It is not against streaming from one TV to the other TV because that will be illegal. If you are watching a movie, Christmas movie, for example,

we will know how to play the same movie on her TV because she is also a Dabby customer now. So we will bring from Netflix for her So we will bring from Netflix for her and we will bring from Netflix for you all legally. And then we have our technology to synchronize these two players across those TVs while you're actually doing a video call. The beauty of this is if she wants to change the video,

she can do that as well. So now she can say, Hey, no, Jason, I don't like this movie. Let's watch this clip, right? So she can actually do that. And you both can actually pause play. And you can also scrub the video to take it to a specific point in video, especially, you know, this could be great for watching football during Thanksgiving, right? So if you want to watch highlights, for example, you want to take it to the specific moment of the game, you can do that. And everyone is going to see the same thing and watch together. So both sides have that control. If my mom paused the movie to get up and get some more popcorn,

it's going to pause on my side as well and vice versa. That's very cool. I love that you've been working on this problem for a while. And incidentally, COVID has been a really awful thing for all of us to deal with. But I have to imagine it's, well, I know from our coordinating that it's thrown some curveballs at you from a product development standpoint, but putting that aside from a market standpoint, I have to imagine that the idea of watching together of these sort of virtual types of hangouts is going to become more and more popular. And we'll probably stick around after hopefully we get past this COVID thing. Give us your perspectives on, the general idea of these kinds of virtual watching together events. Yeah, totally. I think, you know, so we started watching, you know,

building this watch together like four and a half years back, but after COVID, like you said many people are stuck at home. And as you can see, there's a lot of streaming services like Netflix and the Hulu, they all launched this watch party, what they call, even Facebook launched the watch party. But it's all like contained within their own platform so that you can only watch Hulu movies. This is the problem that we see

when it comes to a feature like watch together. It is not just about throwing in this feature just for the sake of throwing in the feature. It's about the user experience. Because as a consumer, if I want to watch Hulu movies with you, there's a lot of steps that you have to follow both on your side and my side to watch these things, which I don't think a regular user would do it. But if it is all unified, and then just one tap to watch any content you want, then there is a possibility that this could work. But to answer your question,

this COVID is definitely where people are stuck at home and people are lonely now because they're not seeing people. So I think this is very important during these tough times where you bring people together and Zoom and other, you know, video conferencing systems, they are great for work environments. But when it comes to personal

systems, like, you know, people might use FaceTimes and Facebook Messenger. But if it is just about the video call, then, you know, it's not as engaging as video call plus entertainment. Because the serendipity should be there where I basically should feel as if I'm sitting with you. We don't have to necessarily talk, but we both are watching together, a movie together. So, but I should know that you're actually with me watching together so that if I laugh, I should know that you are seeing me laughing. So that's the kind of experience that we want to bring. And I think it's very important during these tough times than before. Yeah, totally agree. Well, we are starting to bump up against our

time here. I'd love to close this portion of the conversation now with a little bit of information on pricing and availability. If anyone's interested in one of these devices, what does that look like? Sure. So what we are offering now is we are actually leasing the device because what we thought that we want to bring one device that can bring all content for you as well. So we are bundling the content and the device together. Earlier during CES, we were offering the device. You can buy the device and then you can bring your own content, which we will bring early next year. We will bring it back.

But for now, what we are offering is, you can lease the device that will bring all content that you can possibly imagine. All live TV channels, 100 plus live TV channels, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+. So we pay them, but we basically bring content for you. So you pay a flat monthly fee for us. So the retail price is $99 per month for one TV. But for home tech

podcast viewers, we are offering it for $6 million. So $30 off. So $6 million per month for one TV. And then for two TVs, it is going to be a $99. And then for three TVs, it's going to be $129 per month. Got it. It's a special home tech, right? So, so I'm checking this out. You're taking, there's quite a few things that are included in this, like Netflix, Disney Showtime, Hulu, HBO Max stars,

like all most of the major streaming channels are included in this. And then on top of it, you have a ton of live TV streaming. Like I guess it would be streaming live TV, but like live TV, like the normal network channels that I'm used to, you know, news, tennis channel, Telemundo, that kind of thing, travel channel, all that's in there too. So like for, this is almost like, it's almost like what Jason and I refer to as like the input zero device. Like you just want to turn your TV on and have it go, you know, have it playing something and that this aggregates everything

into one without having to launch an ABC app and then switch over to the CNBC app to watch news or something like that, and then switch over to Netflix and watch a movie. This is all kind of just built into one. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So that is our goal. I mean, we want to actually create this holy grail for a streaming device where you just turn it on and then you can watch possibly any content you want. Because as a consumer, we all know that should I or should I not subscribe to HBO Max? We don't know, right? So you might think that you would watch Game of Thrones. So you would actually go subscribe to HBO Max and then you would not watch it and then you would still pay for HBO Max. One is like paying a lot of money for these streaming services, but the second thing is it's managing and then, like you said, how do you go from one app to the other app and hopping

between this content, which is tiresome. And that's why many people will not be actually using it as much as they would use it on their mobile phones. So we want to break that clutter, not just in the number of devices that you carry, because we want to actually eliminate all the devices that you would carry and just have one device that can play any content you want. And then also in the clutter of subscription services that you would normally subscribe to. We are able to do this because we have our AI based search engine because many people don't realize that they don't need Netflix. If they don't watch Netflix originals, most of the movies that you're looking for may be available on to be TV,

maybe available on other services for free, or maybe even available on a cheaper subscription service. So, but if you're watching Netflix originals on a cheaper, you know, subscription service. So, but if you're watching Netflix originals, then absolutely, you know, you need to subscribe to Netflix, and you may not be actually watching that all the time. So our search engine will know when to actually get these accounts activated, and then when not to activate it. So, which is why we are able to bring all this content for a flat price, and we are still able to log into your, you know, TV. Oh, very interesting. Well, really appreciate learning more about the product here. How can

our listeners, if they wanted to find out more or perhaps connect with you, what would be the best way for them to do that? Sure. So, the website is heyd Debbie calm h e y b a b b y.com. And we are you're running a promo offer right now for Thanksgiving. So we are excited to, you know, launch watch together feature during Thanksgiving right on time. And then I'm on Twitter. I'm actually if you search for Debbie or dab cake. That's my that's my handle. And people can actually follow me on Twitter. But hey, Debbie calm, they that's my handle. And people can actually follow me on Twitter. But hey,

Debbie.com, they can find all information. And we also have this built in chat system, both in the on the website, and also the product that we ship. So people, that's one thing that our early customers, they're very happy about, because we are able to talk to them right from within the device. So if they have any problems, we will be, you know, interacting with them right within the product. Got it. And then I think you mentioned a special offer for Home Tech listeners. Is there a coupon code or something that people should jot down if they wanted to take advantage of that? Yeah. So when they go to heydabby.com, they can actually click get Dabby now, and that will take them to the product page where they would would still see the retail retail uh price which is 99 but then when they go to the checkout page there is a discount code

that they can enter and for home tech uh discount code is jpod uh 2020 is jason's podcast 2020 so it's jpod 2020 that's the uh discount code. Excellent. All right, Seth, I got that one. You'll get, you'll get the next one. Yeah, there you go. Well, I can still use it too. All right, Balaji, this was a lot of fun. We really appreciated again, learning more about the product. So thanks for coming on and joining us. Hey, thanks guys. Uh, thanks for having me. And it was, it was a fun show. Yeah. I really enjoyed talking to you guys. All right. Take care. Awesome. Great. Thanks guys. All right. right well that'll do it for our interview and and once again i i thought this was was a timely conversation given not only everything that's going on with

covid but just the broader macro trends that we've talked about quite a bit on the show with with regards to streaming and app fatigue and overwhelm with decisions. I just thought this was an interesting product and I enjoyed learning more about it. Yeah, I really, this is one of those, like I said at the beginning, it's just turnkey. And that's what impresses me the most about it. Like all you have to do is plug the thing in, like you said, put your phone number into it

and you're up and going. And reducing that friction from, you know, my in-laws have an Apple TV and it's got Netflix on it, but it's got nothing else on it. They don't know how to go in and install any other apps on it or they're not going to unless one of us goes over there and does it for them. So yeah, this, this is a pretty cool product. And I think for the right person, it's going to replace a whole lot of a whole lot of cable systems out there, but for the right person, it's going to be a great device for them. Yeah.

Yep. All right, Seth, moving on. We've got a frightening pick of the week this week. Well, it's frightening in some respects. So this is my pick of the week, and my pick of the week is based off this story that has gone around today called Ring Doorbells Are Being Recalled for This Frightening Reason. I guess Ring is recalling 300, get this Jason, 350,000 of its second generation video doorbells in the U S an additional 8,700 units sold in Canada. Come on, Canada,

get with it. Put some more ring doorbells. Um, it's, this is specifically around the second generation ring doorbell, um, uh, that were manufactured through June, 2020 through October, 2020. It's amazing that they know like which ones need to come back, um, to me, but, uh, customers have been, uh, installing these and not, there's nothing wrong with the doorbells like you see the headline and it's like you read a little bit more and it's like oh the doorbells are catching on fire but are they it's it's it's not the only reason they're catching on fire is because they're installed incorrectly and and and so ring's going to recall these and ship them out with revised instructions and jason i put the revised instructions inside that card there.

And you want to open it up and tell me what somebody may have done wrong. Oh, my. So this is what was causing the issue. The fire. Yes. The fire, yes. The fire risk. So you've got this screw in the bottom, a security screw, presumably, I don't know,

just to keep the things in place. I'm not even sure what that does. It keeps the little front cover on. Like on a ring device, there's a front cover, you snap it on, you put the little security screw in the bottom and you're done. And so this is a very small little flathead screw. like yeah it just looks like the kind of screw that you would expect to put there and then you've got a big wood screw with a sharp pointy end uh that i would never in a million years think to screw into something that wasn't wood or drywall i guess i would think that's like maybe

the screws that come in the box and that's what you use to mount the ring to the wall right oh i'm sure it is yeah but if you don't want to go find that stupid little security screw and you dropped it because it's tiny you drop that and it falls in the ground and goes into the bushes or whatever yeah just zip a wood screw in there put a drywall screw in you're good to go why don't you um go grab your impact driver while you're at it and use that just in case yeah yeah i this this story just blew my mind i i saw i saw it making the rounds like oh ring doorbells are catching on fire that's too bad and uh and i i looked into it i'm like wait a minute seriously there this is the reason the reason is is because somebody drilled a drywall screw into the bottom of it

probably hit the little battery thing that they have in there well yeah that's that's what the story i read said it was like there's a risk of it said if you install it incorrectly there's a risk that you could like pierce the battery yeah they didn't mention that you would have to be dumb enough to drive a wood screw into the plastic housing of your ring device i ring is being a nice company nicer company than i am and and you are for saying that for not saying that but yeah i uh i was just blown away uh that this is the revised instructions that need to go out for 350 000 doorbells that they're having to recall that's painful well thankfully they're backed by amazon yeah they can absorb it maybe

they've got all that cda propel money coming to him so well played if you have any feedback comments picks of the week 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 their show through our Patreon page. If you don't know how, 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. Any pledge over five bucks 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 and talk about how to properly install the Ring doorbell. And if you're looking for other ways to support the show, please consider leaving us a positive review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find us. So take a minute to do that. We would really appreciate it. Well, Jason, that wraps up another week in home technology news. Good show tonight.

Really, really enjoyed the interview there and talking about the little dabby device. That's a cool find. Lots of fun. And we got another Seth rant out of the deal. Well, those come free. No, no extra charge for that.

No extra charge. All right, man. Well, yep. Good show. I hope you have a, a great weekend and stay,

stay safe and dry out there. Yeah. It sounds like the wind is, is slowed down. So I, you know, I, I might be, well, the, the, the last couple of the nights, this thing's kind of been floating around Florida and the last couple of nights, um, we have the old, like flip out windows. I forget what they're called, like Anderson windows where they like, but they're like from 19. I don't know what they're called, but I know what you're talking about ubered windows i guess i don't know um they they they they don't really have all the like the linkages are all like messed up and so like if a wind comes along like hard like strong enough wind they'll like open up and then slam shut so like throughout the night we hear this you know and it's like

you don't with having a three-year-old in the house, you don't know if like the random clunk noise that comes from a window blowing around or whatever is the window or is the three-year-old. So sleeping. That's true. Kind of a similar tone. Yeah. Yeah. Sleeping, sleeping has not been great for the last couple of nights, but hopefully this thing goes away in the next couple of days and we'll get some rest. Indeed.

All right, man. Well, like I said, hope you have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week. Yep. Have a good weekend. Thanks everybody for listening.