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This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, November 20th. From Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin.
And from Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. Jason, I got a big surprise.
What you got? Well, tis the season. it's actually a mini surprise oh look at that very orb very orb like
very it's a lot smaller than i thought so this is the apple home pod midi mini mini all right
it comes in a box have you um had a chance to kick the tires yet i have turned it on and listened to
some music coming out of it and promptly turned it right back off.
Is that a review?
That's my review so far, yeah.
Well, it works as expected.
It sets up just as quickly as you would like.
It pairs with your phone.
It probably takes two taps to set up and it's ready to go.
So that wasn't bad.
But I'm kind of used to that because i have the uh regular sized home pods here and um like side by side there's just no comparison um and i i yeah
i the audio sound of the the big home i mean just a 200 it was a 300 product i think they've lowered
it to 250 and you can generally pick them up around
$200 now.
But there's no comparison.
Like, it's beyond night and day
difference between...
So you're saying spend the extra $100?
$100. That's the verdict so far.
Yeah, I would
definitely do that. Now, maybe for
a nightstand or something, this would be nice to have.
I might trade out... Right, or like something in the bathroom. for a nightstand or something, this would be nice to have.
I might try it out. Right, or like something in the bathroom, like the master bath or something.
It's a lot smaller.
I don't know if you saw that.
It's a lot smaller than I thought.
Yeah, it is pretty small.
Here is a, I don't know if this helps.
Here's a tiny Yeti cup for scale.
No, that's not helpful.
Oh, here we go.
Here we go.
It's like what?
Maybe, yeah, it looks like about a, maybe a tennis ball. That's not helpful. Oh, here we go. Here we go. It's like what? Maybe a...
Yeah, it looks like about a...
Maybe a tennis ball.
So look, I got a bell here for scale.
There's the bell, okay.
Gotta blow the dust off of that thing.
I thought it would be about the size of a softball,
but it's a little bit smaller than that.
It's probably a little bit bigger
than a normal-sized baseball,
if that makes any sense.
All right.
But definitely bigger than a tennis ball.
But tennis balls being the only balls,
like I'm not familiar with the size of a baseball or softball.
So it could be the exact same size as a softball.
I have no idea.
So going by my rough approximation of what a tennis ball,
it was smaller than I thought it was.
Let's just say that.
But the sound out of it isn't all that great especially compared to the big one um but i
think it does serve its purpose it does work if you're just wanting to kind of put your your toes
into the water and see what home pod does i think it's still overpriced because there's not much
that home pod does uh right now it will be nice, I think, in the future.
Like the intercom stuff that they've come out with is pretty nice.
I have used that on occasion a couple of times to freak my wife out by intercomming here
into the garage when she's in here.
But other than that, like using it for like home audio, not home audio uh home automation stuff like the siri kicking off the
the uh the stuff with uh home kit that is that works really well and it so far so um i i can't
i can't attest to this thing like i can't say that it's a great price for the audio that you get out
of it it's not like a revolutionary product there but it's not bad either it's not it's not like a revolutionary product there, but it's not bad either. It's not, it's not the, um, you remember the old puck,
hockey puck style Amazon echo. Yeah. Yep. Better than that.
So it's, it, it, it sounds better than that.
Echo has gone through a couple of revisions and I,
I have not personally heard those, um, any,
in any frequency anytime soon. So like,
I can't attest to like how they compare to that. Sure. Um,
but I would say it sounds better than the cheapest possible Amazon Echo that I've ever heard in my
life. Like that was the giveaway stocking stuffer for a couple of years. It sounds better than that,
but I think that was like a 20 or $30 product too. So. All right. Well, the early verdict is in then
if you're in the Apple ecosystem. Oh, oh oh what do we have here is this the
why is this the wise no no no remind me which one that is so this is a this is a new i got two
little packages in this week this is a unify g4 doorbell okay it's got the camera the doorbell
button has a little screen that says hello on it i I don't know how that could possibly be useful because the screen is so small I could barely even read it sitting here.
And what I thought was nice on these is it has a little light on the bottom that shines down, I guess, as you approach.
I haven't installed this thing yet.
So as soon as I get a chance, I'm going to go drill a couple holes and put it in.
Guess what, Jason?
The back of these things aren't the same across doorbell devices so you kind of have to you know
drill more holes in your fun yeah haven't had a chance yeah christmas came early at your house
seth lots of goodies you'll have to let us know how that one how that one goes yeah i want i can't
wait to test that one out um it should it should work all right but uh so far a day a day of listening to music on the homepod mini has been meh it's
okay i i would rather i would much rather crank up the big homepods yeah yeah i mean and if you
can get your hands on one for a couple hundred dollars you you sort of amortize that out over
the the period of time that you're gonna have it it. That extra $100 is not a big leap.
But still, like you said, relative to other options on the market, it's quite a bit more.
So I think Apple is still continuing to bank on that.
Apple's not going to play the price game.
They're not going to race to zero.
They're going to play the premium angle, and I certainly don't fault them for it.
But yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of cheaper
options out there. This does have the, um, there's the thread or not thread, but the Z whatever
Zigbee version of thread of chip, whatever they're, they're calling, calling chip. I guess it'll be
chip thread Zigbee is going to be built into is built into this. So I, I don't think that's in
the big home pod. Um, so we'll have to see if it is, I'm just going to return built into this. So I don't think that's in the big HomePod. So we'll have to see.
If it is, I'm just going to return this and get rid of it.
But if not, you know, I might keep it around.
I'll stick it off in a corner in a bedroom or maybe even in a bathroom just to kind of have an extra little device for an alarm or something like that.
A couple of comments from Robert here in the chat room. I think he says this screen on that doorbell that you got is for, says you can put tiny
stupid text messages on the screen.
So that's interesting.
And then they would never notice, right?
Yeah.
And then, and then here's another one.
Entire internet slash YouTube.
HomePod mini is awesome.
Seth. Meh. I don't know what they're seeing out of this thing. Here's another one. Entire internet slash YouTube. HomePod mini is awesome. Seth, meh.
I don't know what they're seeing out of this thing.
I really don't.
Seth's taking the contrarian position here.
I guess.
I didn't actually see any reviews on it, to be quite honest.
The only thing I can say that I was genuinely tickled with was how small it was.
And, of course, when you get an
Apple product, it comes in these vacuum sealed boxes that they have. They're not actually vacuum
sealed, but they're so tight. You kind of have to like shake it to get it to come out. And as I was
shaking it, it got towards the end of the, I mean, I can't even open it anymore. It's, it's sealed
itself. Um, the, the home, the, the mini kind of like rolled out across the floor because I dropped it. So there could be something wrong with mine.
Well, stay out of the unboxing video business, Seth.
Doesn't sound like you're cut out for it.
No, no.
I was thinking I should just get a razor knife and just open that nice, pretty Apple box.
I know.
They make their packaging so pretty.
Oh, man.
It's pretty.
But, man man do they
ever the the tolerances on those are so tight yeah yeah it's like it reminds me of when i was uh
when i was trying to put like racks inside of cabinets and i would tell the cabinet guy be like
oh yeah the rack is 19 inches wide and i'd get there and it would be like an exact it would be
exactly 19 inches wide there would be there would be no room to like
to have any any like zip tie or anything sticking out like he made it 19 inches wide that's it
that's all you get you got to come in with a higher opening position yeah yeah no i learned
that trick pretty quickly like especially on the depth like adding at least three or four inches
for wire yeah they would freak out oh my gosh you need oh they never got it yeah yeah all right well seth you and me this week we have no
guests lined up we got a busy news week some some big headlines what do you say we jump in let's do
it charlie kindle out greg simmons in snap av has announced a number of notable personnel moves
impacting various sectors of its business as well as increased investment
in its product development
and five centers of excellence.
Among SnapAV personnel changes,
the company is saying goodbye to Charlie Kendall
and hello to Greg Simmons.
Kendall, the architect of the Amazon Alexa
smart home initiative,
who was hired by Control 4 in August 2018,
two years ago,
is going to leave the company for other opportunities after
serving as chief product and technology officer. So a little bit of time at Control 4, a little bit
of time at Snap AD. And Charlie Kendall takes the bow out and Greg Simmons, sounds like Greg is
kind of taking over that role. Well, yeah, Greg is actually coming into, I would say, a different role, more industry
relationships. So Simmons will join as the vice president of industry partnerships. It says he
brings lots of experience from the integrator side. Quote here from the story, Greg has a long
history in Cedia and home security industries, having led one of the largest integrators,
Eagle Century, for many years prior to its sale in 2018. So he'll be really leading up more industry partnerships. The
promotion internal of G. Paul Hess is going to move into that chief product officer and congrats
to G. Paul. I know he's been on the show before and listens occasionally. So G. Paul, if you're
listening, congrats on the promotion there. I'm sure he'll do a great job.
G Paul is somebody who's really come up
through the ranks of the industry,
started as an integrator
and has moved now up to the chief product officer
at SnapAV.
So that's quite the ascent.
And I know G Paul fairly well,
and I think he's going to do a great job in there.
So some other internal promotions as well, but obviously one of
the big headlines here that you led with is Charlie Kindle moving out after not a very long,
not a very long stint here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, he was, he was brought in with control for,
I mean, we, we, we've had conversations with him about that process and I don't know,
there's been enough press around him, but I i i think at least in this particular instance i am more excited about gpaul getting involved with uh
moving to the chief product officer than i you know was about charlie kindle i mean charlie was
a good uh you know good good for control four to kind of have like the name and the name recognition
and kind of almost like a like a validation that you know somebody from with his
pedigree would go to control for you know the on the pro side yeah but i think at least in our
industry and then what our industry needs and what snap av needs is somebody with you know in in field
industry experience uh to to make the products that we all love and love to install and uh i
think that i think it's a great move to have somebody come up.
I'm not saying that there aren't those people already
that were reporting to Charlie Kendall,
but I think the person at the head of that organization
should be somebody who's putting in some time in the field.
I think that's a good thing.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly wouldn't argue.
I had great things to say about G. Paul
from everything I know about him,
but I differ from you a bit in the sense that I think this feels like a loss to the industry for me. I
know that some people in circles that I've communicated with following the news don't
seem as surprised and kind of echo similar sentiments to what you said. Ultimately, I feel like Charlie was a really, you know, coming in with the experience he had from a more consumer focused side like Amazon and, and the like you said, kind of the credibility or the visibility that he brought to our little niche industry here, I thought was a was a good thing. I was excited to see what he was going to be able to do at SnapAV. And so I was personally very surprised by this news.
I know that others weren't so surprised.
And I won't speculate as to the reasons of why he's leaving or what he's going to pursue,
but I'll only speak my opinion that this feels like a lost opportunity for the industry.
I was really excited to see what might happen with Charlie there at the helm of that product organization for, you know, at least a few years. So, uh, we'll see, obviously wish
Charlie the best on, on his next endeavors and I'm sure he'll land on his feet. No, no doubt about
that. Um, but yeah, these are, these are some big moves for, for SnapAV who continues to,
to really be aggressive in their
pursuit of pushing the industry forward.
Yeah, I will echo my curiosity.
It's like, what is Charlie's next move?
I will be curious as to where he lands.
But yeah, I think he leaves the SnapAV organization in good hands.
Yeah, no question.
Speaking of industry personnel moves, media server maker Kaleidoscape has announced
that Taylor Stansbury has been appointed
as the new chief executive officer.
Stansbury succeeds China Srinivasan,
who served as a CEO since 2014.
He will remain with Kaleidoscape
as a founder and executive vice president
focused on alliances and business development,
including movie studio relationships.
In addition, Norma Garcia Miro
has joined Mountain View, California-based Kaleidoscape
as the vice president of marketing.
So a couple of big personnel hiring moves here
from Kaleidoscape.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not,
I don't follow the Kaleidoscape world anymore.
I know that there are people out there
who absolutely love this product. And every time I, you know, I can't say that I'm not one of them who has,
you know, has walked through the show floor and said, wow, that looks really good. Oh,
it's kaleidoscape. Of course it does. Um, but I, I think this, this particular product has,
has been handed, I mean, the worst of the worst market to to enter with everybody moving to super
powerful little streaming devices or or tvs that have you know the ability to down download and
play 4k tv 4k 4k video directly in them that arguably is not the marketplace that these guys
are trying to play in this is you know this works this works great in in in fancy theaters to yachts
and that kind of thing so um i i am not up to what the they will be doing with this company but
man it's it's this is interesting and it seems like the only time we ever talk about the
kaleidoscape is when the ceo changes or they announce they are going out of business or
something like the remember that they went like briefly they were like yeah yeah they announced they are going out of business or something like that. Remember that they went like briefly, they were like, yeah, yeah, they did. They did. And then, and then they
were resurrected or rescued, or I'm not even sure what the resurrected, what the appropriate word is
there. Um, yeah, Eddie's in the chat room. I know Eddie actually sent, sent us this story before I
had seen it on CE pro and, and, uh, Eddie, I know is, uh and Eddie, I know, in the chat room here says
Kaleidoscape needs this infusion of talent. If not, they're going to disappear. I agree. I'm
with you, Seth. I haven't been following Kaleidoscape very closely, but they've really
got a tough road to hoe in front of them, given everything that you cited. I won't be repetitive
there. We'll just add on to that to
say like it, well, first of all, they're, they're bringing in some highly pedigreed talent here.
Stansberry has a background as a CEO of some big companies, uh, or a CEO of a company called
Watermark Insights rather, but a CTO of Intuit, um, executive vice president of product and
operations at Ariba. And then Garcia Miro
has a really impressive background. She's an entertainment industry background. It said she
was integral to the launch of Dolby Cinema worldwide. Her previous posts include Head
of International Marketing at Lucasfilm, where she oversaw strategy and positioning for Star
Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, and as a director at Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
So she's really coming in with a lot of experience on the entertainment industry side.
And I think can only speculate here, but Kaleidoscape's got to really be thinking about
what can they do to, like you alluded to, continue pushing into that high-end market
and do things, do things differently. Um, and that's a infinitely easier thing to say than it is to do.
Streaming has become a really, really tough market.
So yeah, if anyone's listening and is more familiar with what Kaleidoscapes really can
strategy is translating to at the ground level, I I'd love to hear from our listeners on this
one. I'm frankly not sure what to make of,
of Kaleidoscape's process or,
uh,
of Kaleidoscape's,
um,
you know,
prospects here for success.
I,
I,
you,
when,
when Kaleidoscape first started out,
this was a,
there was a product that you could,
you could get,
uh,
a little small box with a DVD drive in it.
You'd stick the DVD in it and it would rip that to a hard drive or many hard
drives as many of my customers that I would,
that would come across it and had these larger systems that would have like a
raid array fail on them. And we'd have to ship it off to Kaleidoscape.
Would, would find out like it back then storage wasn't cheap.
The discs were when you rip them were very large and, and they've only gotten larger with Blu-ray and ultra Blu-ray.
But at that time, like Hollywood was not, let's the, you know, high, high, high success of streaming
and like these use cases that people understand, Oh no, I'm on a yacht. There's no streaming to
be had out there. Like, I wonder if these studios would be more open to companies like Kaleidoscape
and, and I really hope that they'll be able to, um, do more in that rental space, you know, or new movie space where they're downloading and installing movies directly from the studio, basically, onto their hard drives.
It seems like that technology side of that's already figured out.
And it has been for a long time.
But the business side hasn't been.
So that's where I hope that someone
that has studio experience like Garcia Miro,
she can come in and take care of the relationships
that need to be taken care of on the entertainment side.
Yeah.
That would be interesting to see where this all goes.
Yeah, it is.
And I mean, you alluded to kind of the business side
of this. And I would say that they've even got headwinds there. On the technology side, we've
talked about everything that's happened, but there was a story just this week that Universal Pictures
has forged a new partnership with Cinemark to make theatrical exclusivity shorter, basically,
is along in the short of this. And
with everything going on with COVID and the quarantine, that's no surprise, right? They're
shortening that and they're trying to get movies into the streaming market sooner because lots of
people aren't going to the theater. And so they've even got headwinds there in terms of, you know,
like a year or 18 months ago, we could have sat here and speculated well
maybe there's some play for kaleidoscape to really carve out special deals to get access
to the streaming content faster than others but it seems like everything is starting to move in
that direction as well right so so even that's going to be a hard area to differentiate in i
feel like yeah yeah it's always good to, have somebody that has been like a director at Paramount Pictures. Like it's always good to have somebody who has those
contents in the, you know, who to call, like, who do you call at Paramount or, you know, uh,
the contacts and the nuanced understanding of, you know, how, how deals get done and all of that,
for sure. It's good to have somebody on the payroll that can help with those kinds of
deals. And I think that's probably one, that's a really good thing that, that, that they, that
she's joined. Yeah. So it'll, uh, it'll be interesting. And again, closing out on a,
on a positive note, like you said at the beginning, I know there are a lot of people out there that
love this product. It's got a niche, uh, following. And so it'll be an interesting story to watch
and see what they're able to do under this new leadership.
Well, a week after launching a smart vacuum cleaner
that we fawned over,
Seattle-based Wyze Labs is unveiling another new product
to help keep the grass green outside.
Wyze Sprinkler Controller is a smart sprinkler system
that allows homeowners to sync their watering system
to local weather forecasts, control scheduling scheduling and types of watering across eight zones through
the wise app and more the device is now available for pre-order for drum roll please 49.99 there you
go now that's on brand oh my gosh and and's a, the, if you want the advanced like weather data stuff,
kind of like the stuff that ratio cuts its teeth on inside their product. Uh, I think it's like a
$10. Yeah. It's $10 a year. It's good. It hooks up with, uh, it syncs up with 60,000 weather stations
across the U S and it, it, that first year is included in that $49 price. So really it's a $39
product with a $10 subscription slapped onto it. This is crazy. Crazy. It is. It is crazy.
The, um, story here that we are reading from GeekWire talks a little bit about,
there's some interesting things in here
about the company that I thought were kind of a good recap. It said, originally known for its
Wyze Cam, the three-year-old hardware startup now offers 13 core products, has been busy late with
a flurry of new releases. We've talked about those. Company closed out a $15 million funding
round at the end of july and um yeah continues
to expand i just for comparison's sake the raccio which you mentioned sells for 229 dollars
so they have come out with a lower cost one recently yeah but it's it it breaks under that
i want to say it's 150 i don't know it's it's a little bit like it's not 49 i can
tell you that it's not not 49 this is this is new territory for any kind of device i i think you can
go to um home depot and buy just a dumb sprinkler controller for 49 right that's a good point so it
is uh they also mentioned a runner-up uh another sprinkler system, the Orbit Beehive.
I haven't heard of that one, but sells for $149.
Yep.
So anyways, they're way low here.
He says, quote from Mike Sabosky, the product manager, innovations in smart technology for lawn care are few and far between.
And those that do exist are increasingly expensive. So I would just hate to be a manufacturer basically in any category that Wise enters
at this point.
Right.
Because you know they're not just going to undercut you.
They are going to cripple you, not at the ankles.
They're going to go straight for your legs.
That's it. the whole leg is
gonna be missing wow it's brutal but yeah i don't know man i still am scratching my head like
there's just no way that they're making any money on this i mean maybe that's that's my big question
it's like okay if they're not making money like this is one of those companies like yeah fifty
dollars i could throw fifty dollars at it, $10 a year.
If this company goes out of business,
there's gonna be a whole lot of these little devices
out there that don't look up to anything anymore.
And people are gonna get upset,
but at the same time, it's like the investment is so low
compared to getting a Ratio 3 for $229 or or orbit beehive for 149 or just even getting
just a normal sprinkler i mean i was looking at these the other day uh to get just a regular
plain jane sprinkler system i think it's like 79 at home depot from from what i remember so
like this is a smart one it hooks up to weather stations and can kind of do like the magic that raccio does maybe who
knows um 50 to 50 dollars that's that's a no-brainer like i may as well just buy i may this
may be a purchase number three for me here no it doesn't ship till january but i feel like we need
to there needs to be like a game show where it's like what will wise next? I can take bets. Something's telling me like toaster oven.
They're all over the place.
They are.
It's fascinating.
Moving on from there,
Hulu with live TV is the latest virtual TV bundle.
They get a price hike this time up to $64.99 a month.
Hulu with live TV currently costs $54.99,
so $10 price hike.
This is an increase for current customers,
according to The Hollywood Reporter.
This brings it on par with YouTube TV,
a competing virtual live TV bundle.
The price change will go into effect on December 18th
and affect both new and current customers.
A lot of this going on this year.
Yeah, and this isn't, I mean, Hulu,
we talked about them until the end of last year,
going from like $45 up to $54.
Now they're going to $65.
We're approaching, well, we have approached,
in many cases, if you're having one of these
live TV subscription services,
over-the the top type services
with and you include you have to include your internet with that right because these these
services don't come with internet um they're approaching pretty much what it would cost is
you know to have a cable bill um you're not paying for equipment rentals and all the crazy stuff you
did you know if you if you go traditional route and get like a comcast box or at&t box and they make you pay 20 a month for their stupid box that breaks all the
time but with no ir codes you know that love that um i get that one in there yeah i mean just how
many years how many years of dealing with oh they're discrete codes they're gone you don't
you have to use just a power cable.
Who needs those?
Pesky, pesky.
But yeah, we're approaching just Apple actual cable,
the cost of actually having a cable subscription with many of these products.
YouTube, same thing.
Yeah.
With all that said,
looks like the service is having a good run here.
It says it got over more than 4 million subscribers.
It's approximately 1 million more than YouTube TV, according to this article.
And the article also says that the bundle has seen a 40% increase in subscribers over the last year.
So I know that Disney is really, you know, making a big bet on their streaming ecosystem.
That, of course includes disney
plus and espn and hulu's part of that so i know these these offerings are really important to the
company's future and they're going to continue to develop them but yeah the it just it just feels
to me like the pricing where all of these things were at like a year or two ago just wasn't it was
fake it was like artificial like it was a land grab and everyone
was just trying to get people to sign up and now what we're seeing is like the prices adjust to
really what it takes to to make these services more sustainable which is ironically on par with
cable which is what everyone wanted to get away from so here we are Yeah. I mean, if we could get away from the idea that you have to have those live TV channels,
like the home cooking shows and those kind of things, people like those.
But those channels don't pay for themselves very well.
Well, actually, I think the sports channels don't pay for themselves.
It's all the other ones that they can bundle in actually help pay for the sports channels.
But it's like this was a massive industry
that was already well dug in,
had how it makes money figured out, you know,
and all of a sudden technology
kind of started to interfere with it.
And we had a few years of disruption.
And like you said, now we're just coming full circle
and we're back at paying cable cable pricing yep yep
oh the irony at least you still have more choice i feel like now like it's it's more modular now
in my mind if you look macro like if you look at an individual package like hulu it's still
very similar in price and and content to a cable package, sure.
But like zooming out and looking at the whole landscape,
you can still put together a pretty diverse offering
that's more suited to your own personal tastes
than you might have gotten with a cable bundle.
I will agree with that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I will agree with that because I can personally not have live TV because i don't care about it but i can have netflix i can have disney plus for
the next three or four years whatever we paid for that um and then i can have like a shirt what's
really nice is i can have a service like hbo a few months ago we decided there isn't really anything
new on hbo we're just going to turn it off and when something else comes on we may flip the switch and turn that back on and start watching it again
so like I can turn Hulu on and off HBO on and off as I need to when shows come out that I want to
see on them and I think that is having that flexibility is a lot more than what you got
from cable companies because you'd have to call go through the phone tree talk to a representative
threaten to cancel change your plan It was just such a headache.
Yeah.
This does make that a lot easier where you can literally just go online
and just, hey, pause my service, cancel my service,
and then pick it back up whenever you want to.
Yep.
Yep, absolutely.
Well, speaking of subscription services,
Sonos has debuted Sonos Radio HD,
a new ad-free, high-definition streaming tier
of its streaming radio service, Sonos has debuted Sonos Radio HD, a new ad-free high-definition streaming tier of its streaming radio service, Sonos Radio.
Sonos Radio HD will feature even more exclusive content
directly in the Sonos app,
now in lossless CD quality audio.
Sonos' avid radio fans can now listen,
avid radio fans can now listen to Sonos Radio HD
to explore exclusive genre stations, sounds for sleep and
relaxation, and more in-depth artist content. Sonos Radio HD streams ad-free with skips and repeats.
Available, I was just thinking, if I wanted sleep and relaxation radio,
not having like a car sales ad, it would probably be pretty good what that
doesn't help you sleep no not really big mics ford yeah come on down to the circle
it's available all available in the sonos s2 app in the u.s and uk with additional countries to
follow customers can subscribe to sonos radio hd at sonos.com for
eight dollars a month or eight pounds a month after a free one month try interesting trying
sonos came out with this sonos radio earlier this year if memory serves and that's been out for a
little while now and not sure how that's doing for the company, but it seems like a natural progression. Not sure
how many people, I just always like when it comes to the audio quality, I just have no idea like
what the size of the market is for that because all of my anecdotal experience, I have zero data
to back this up, but all of my anecdotal experience as a, when I was an integrator was that
the vast majority of people were quite all right with
medium sound quality. They didn't want it to sound terrible, but they weren't necessarily
looking to spend extra money to have it sound good. Now, of course, there are people out there
who do want the high quality. And I'm sure that's not a small number, but ultimately,
is it a big enough number to make this like an attractive business prospect for a company the size of Sonos?
I don't know. That's just a question. I'm curious about it. I have no idea.
But beyond that, I mean, it looks interesting.
I know some of the conversations we were having when they came out with Sonos Radio earlier this year were really that that offering felt a little bit like there wasn't a lot there to sink your teeth into that you couldn't get on
like TuneIn, for example. But they've got a lot of exclusive stations on here, and maybe some of
this will be attractive to others, so kind of deeper exploration into genres. They've got, um, kind of, I would, I would describe them almost as like thematic,
um, stations, you know, things like, uh, let's see, what do they have here? Music for, uh,
physical and mental benefits, uh, mindfulness, productivity, relaxation, um, things of that
nature. So nothing terribly new there. I mean, similar to genre stations, and we've seen that on streaming services before, but it'll be interesting. Seems like the biggest
differentiator here is the higher audio quality. And again, I just don't, I don't have a great
sense for how many, you know, what portion of people are willing to shell out $8 a month
to get that. Yeah, I really think this is going to be a after they get everything in place this is going to be
a commercial play and they'll have their own 20 per month or 25 per month uh what used to be
called music but now it's called mood mood audio or whatever uh subscription service and you can
just go down and buy your i mean there's already a half dozen of those apps or services built into
the sonos already if you are doing commercial audio,
like you can already subscribe to a few of them.
Yeah.
I think mood is even in there.
But I,
I think they're,
they're probably just going to make a play for that money that they see
people.
That's an interesting prospect.
It'd be more,
more money and they can,
they can manage the music rights and all that good stuff.
And just kind of have it all in one app i
i feel sorry for the the guys that are already in the sonos device itself and having to beat you
know with a with a with a tier one you know level the manufacturer of the product but you know
without having your own player you're kind of reliant on somebody else anyway yeah yeah it's a
building on a shaky foundation there but um, um, yeah, that, that is an interesting prospect because obviously the financials make sense. And then from the, from the customer side, like from the business owner, who's ever looking to have music in their, you know, boutique or restaurant or whatever it is like the Sonos app and the ease of use is all great. And they don't want to be, you know, futzing around with a bunch of different apps and things of that nature.
So yeah, I, I think that makes a lot of sense.
Yep. Once, once they get all this put together, they can figure it out.
There are a couple of companies out there that kind of specialize in this kind
of thing and doing commercial streaming audio. And I, you can even get,
get connected with some of them that will actually make your,
like your business a custom stream, so to speak,
with your own custom playlists and everything in it.
So not that the technology is really hard or amazing,
but back when I was working at Muzak,
it was kind of, all the Carrabbas had their own little stream
coming from a satellite.
And that was a little bit harder to do than it is
to just stream something over the internet.
Yeah, absolutely. All right.
Well, all of the topics we've discussed in our show this week can be found in our show notes
at hometech.fm slash 328. 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 wonderful world of home technology. Once again, that link
is hometech.fm slash 328. Hey, don't forget, you can join us live in the chat room starting
on Wednesdays, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more how to
do that at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth, moving right into the pick of the week this week. What you got? I ran across this. So I use channels. It's a channel. It's a little app that you can run on iOS. I think they have expanded out also to running on other devices like you can run it on Android. You can now run it on Fire TV. And, um, they have been pushing for a little while now, uh, a DVR service that you can
kind of, uh, I think you have to pay a little bit more for it maybe per month. Um, but it always
involved like setting up like a, like a NAS drive or setting up something on your computer, a share
or something to, to record the, what you want, you you wanted to, you know, off the air onto one of these, um, onto the hard drive or something. And they have channels has made it
super easy, um, with a custom Raspberry Pi image. And you could set up a DVR in like five minutes.
They have, they have made their own little, like basically card that you would stick into the raspberry pie. And for, I don't know what, $35,
a little hard drive or USB drive on the outside of it.
You can have your own little channels DVR.
I thought this was a great idea, kind of like a low cost way of doing this.
And yeah, I mean under a hundred dollars for sure.
You could have a decent NVR or DVR for your over-the-air cable recording.
Yeah.
No, I like that.
Those Raspberry Pis, they're really just impressive little devices.
I haven't played with them a lot myself, but I just think it's so cool how flexible they are and inexpensive and just seeing all of the different things that people come up with, ways to use these is uh pretty neat stuff so yeah this is a good find i i know here at our house we're still
we're still using the tableau uh to record our over the air stuff and it's been working
working well for us but yeah if you need a if you need an option to record those over the air
channels this seems to be a good bet. Yeah, it does require the,
I think it requires the channels plus,
yeah, you get the whole home DVR
and streaming premium channels,
a bunch of other stuff that you can get in on this.
It costs $8 a month and $80 a year
after one month free trial.
So I don't know.
It's a really cool app,
a really good app for what it
does. Um, it's been hard to find, uh, software like this that, that, that revolved around TV
and that kind of thing. Uh, and this developer has done a really good job of putting it together.
Just your basic TV app where you can go in and watch shows that you want to watch. It works with the, I forget the Hall page, whatever it is.
I can't remember that. It's a German name.
But you buy one of these tuners separately and then hook it up to this device
and it just goes.
Got it. Well, there you go. Good find.
If you have any feedback, questions, comments,
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around home technology.
Man, I don't know.
It's been kind of quiet in there.
I don't know.
It's kind of quiet lately. Get in there. I'm'm gonna get in there and start stirring something up yeah i was
gonna say you gotta go uh you gotta go stir the pot a little bit robert posted a bunch of fan
remotes earlier today it sounds like you could just go in there and talk about how much you
dislike your homepod mini i could i could do that could do that. Anytime. I don't want to talk about this
thing. I don't know. There you go. And if you're looking for other ways to support the show,
take a minute to leave us a positive review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those
reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you enjoy what we do here at the
Home Tech Podcast, please take a minute to leave us a review. We would really appreciate it.
Yep. Well, Jason, that wraps up another week in home technology news.
Got any big plans for the weekend? I guess next weekend is the big holiday weekend.
Yeah. No, nothing too big this weekend. I was hoping to maybe get out and do some fly fishing,
but I'm not sure the weather is going to cooperate.
So we'll have to see.
And then, yeah, Thanksgiving is right around the corner.
So I know we'll be getting together next week to do our annual Black Friday holiday gift guide unofficially.
So that's right around the corner.
Well, I have to dig hard and find some deals.
There was a sweet deal that was today only.
So if you're listening to the show live, you guys in the live chat,
there was a ring doorbell was like $70.
Ring doorbell two was $70 or something like that.
It's today only.
So probably all gone.
But I thought that was a crazy good deal.
It was like $70 off, usually $140.
You could go buy two wise doorbell cams for that.
Just saying.
You could buy a wise doorbell cam,
and then you can also buy a wise camera
and probably a sprinkler controller for that.
Right? I don't know.
Yeah, there you go.
Load up the cart, baby i guess yeah not for 69
dollars but yeah yeah all right good stuff well seth i hope you have a great weekend
all right man have a good weekend take care