HomeTech.fm - Episode 333 - Good Standard, Bad Standard

Episode Date: January 1, 2021

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, January 1st, 2021. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? Happy New Year! Happy New Year. We made it. Indeed, although it's like a couple days away. Still feels like Groundhog Day though, right? Yeah. New Year, same mask. New Year, same mask.

Yeah. Nothing is going to change because some random invisible number changes. We're still going to have the same troubles we had two days ago that we have on Friday. Not really worried about it. We'll make it. We'll make it through. We will. Indeed. Indeed. How was your Christmas? Very, very, very good. Uh, lots of really good food to eat. Uh, we had a ham this year, which was great. I love ham. Nice. Uh, and, uh, yes, we went prime ribbed here this year. I've been seeing that. It was good. It's my first time

ever doing it. Came out great. Great idea. We liked it so much that I went and bought another one today, and we're going to do it for New Year's. That's brilliant. It's like, well, this went so well the first time. Let's do it again. Yeah, exactly. Right? I've been seeing people doing prime ribs on Twitter and just friends posting pictures of what they were cooking. And I'm like, oh man, that's, there's a lot of really good ideas that you can, you can do outside the traditional,

like turkey or ham or, you know, whatever that you have. So yeah, prime rib sounds great. That's a great idea. It was awesome. And really quickly, we won't spend a lot of time on this, but I got to tell you the key is for Christmas, my boss, Joey, who we've had on the show, got me one of those thermometers

that you can leave a probe in the meat and then you got a little external uh thing that you can watch the temperature and that was key yeah like really being able to watch and just know exactly like took all the guesswork out of it i just knew when it hit 120 degrees i needed to pull it out of the oven and uh so it made it really easy yeah it came out great sous vide man sous vide we should get on the sous vide train i gotta keep it simple man i i did i did i do i do have something that came up this year for christmas and i i think we're gonna have to like suggest that our new congress and and new president or whatever uh pass this law this new year so like next year we don't have okay he's crazy got my attention yeah yeah so i didn't know this was this was a problem until after I was a parent, but I don't know what to name this. I

tried to come up with clever naming schemes for how they make the bills and they put these acronyms together. I couldn't get anything figured out about it, but I would like to propose a law that has minimum sentencing for at least five years for creating, selling, or even gifting a toy that repeats a single sound or song. So like if you get a toy, for instance, maybe a little wand or something, that when you press a button on it, it actually plays a song like from maybe, say, the movie Frozen over and over and over again. That might land you in prison, either as a manufacturer or stiff punishment. And if there's no volume control, double mandatory double sentencing. No volume control, double sentencing. So yeah, Rashid, baby shark toys, that right there, that's life in prison.

I don't care. Life, life. No parole. No option for parole. Yeah, yeah. I'm with you hey where do i you got me i'll sign wherever sign on the dotted line i think they can exist but like you have to have at least like the button you press one button i think that you have to have at least a minimum 120 variations on that song like so you so as a parent you only hear the same sound like you have 120 variations on that song. So as a parent, you only hear the same sound. You have 120 variations of the same song or sound.

So within an hour, you probably hear it, what, 60 or 70 times only. So yeah, you'd hear the same thing. Or you could rate limit it 600 times an hour or something like that. So the sound can only be pressed that many times. And I think that would be probably good. Or even a even like a safety switch that parents could actually like, like, like the pill bottles that we have, the kids can't get into the, the good drugs. Like, why don't they have that on the toys where you can

just turn off the sound and say, I'm sorry, I can't fix it. It's broken. And yeah, I just, I, I don't, I don't, I don't, I think we can fix this. I think we can fix this, but I, uh, I think that we need to put a law into place. This is what happened this year. One of my sister-in-law's neighbors gave her a toy and said, it wasn't a toy. It's like a decoration, like a Santa. And what did this thing say? It said something about the Christmas spirit is in your heart.

But that's all it would say. That's all it would say over and over again. Over and over. Yes. It's like, the Christmas spirit is in your heart. But that's all it would say. That's all it would say over and over again. Over and over. Yes. It's like the Christmas spirit is in your heart. And my daughter's like, why is he saying it's in your arm? Because you couldn't understand the thing.

But it's like 30 or 40 times of that within like two or three minutes. It just gets to be much. So, yeah. The joys of parenthood. Yeah. Yeah. I've got another one they should outlaw is the little inserts, like the paper inserts that they put in and they unfold. And then you've got like the 20 other toys that, you know, your kids are going to want with the little check boxes so that like the kids open the one toy. And then within five minutes, they're telling you the other 20 that they want from the same collection. These things are diabolical. They work so well. And you know exactly what, the toy companies know exactly what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I've been dealing with my sons. We got him a big Hot Wheels thing and it came with one of those. So like every day he

points out the next big Hot Wheels thing that he wants. And pretty soon I think I'm going to have to build a new addition to my house in order to accommodate all of these Hot Wheels. Yeah, we've been spending time. The other day I figured out the Xfinity app just to kind of like rip a button on this. But like the way kids minds work and the way my mind used to work, too, until I broke the cycle. I found out that you could put the Xfinity app on a Roku and actually get live TV. So I turned on like a live, like kids channel, I don't know, Dora, the Explorer or something, you know, kids show. And my, my daughter's watching

it and, and little commercials would come on in between. And I'm like, these are commercials. She's like, I like commercials. I bet you do. You've never seen one in your life. Oh, that's funny. Yep. Yep. That's yep. They know how to get them. Indeed. Well, first world problems, I suppose. Yes. Glad you're having a good holiday season. And what do you say, Seth? Let's jump into some home tech headlines.

Let's do it. Disney has announced that the monthly fee for Disney Plus in the U.S. will be going up by $1 in March to $7.99. Strong demand for Disney Plus led the company to boost its long-term subscriber estimates as well. Disney is also preparing to release loads of new content. The company announced to investors that over the next few years,

Disney Plus will have roughly 10 new series from Marvel and Star Wars, as well as 15 Disney live action, Disney animation and Pixar series. Disney also said that 15 new films from Pixar, Disney live action, and Disney animation will be heading to the service. Well, this is the Disney Plus that we all wanted. It feels like it launched prematurely. I don't know. It launched late, but prematurely for what the service was that they wanted to put out. And man, now I think as an organization, it's firing on all cylinders

and we're going to get tons of good quality content out of them for years to come. This is going to be great. Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot on the content front. On the subscriber front, it says they announced 86 million subscribers currently, they had 74 million at the end of last quarter. So they're climbing very steadily. They're projecting the service will have somewhere between 230 to 260 million subscribers by the end of 2024. So that's some big numbers that they're shooting at, and they're really producing the content to, to get there. They had a ton of announcements. We won't go through all of these, but you know, just the, the scale of the content announcements was, was really, I would say a reminder to everybody that

Disney, you know, Disney's having a good year and they're really they're looking at Disney plus very seriously as a, as a pillar of the business, particularly with the hits they've taken this year because of COVID and all of everything that's entailed as it relates to the Disney entertainment parks. So pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, I remember the presentation. It was like a four-hour long presentation. Over three and a half hours of it was actually like new content stuff that they were talking about so that's that's a lot i mean that's a long time to talk about new stuff but it is quite a bit of stuff that's going to come out so it's good deal lots of stuff in star on the star wars i know

you seth been a fan of the mandalorian i have not gotten into it yet but it's it's right at the top of my list i've heard a lot of really good things about it. They revealed new details for series that have already been announced, like Andor, which evidently, according to here, is based on a character from Rogue One, Star Wars. I'm not a Star Wars guy, so forgive me. They've got Obi-Wan Kenobi. So they've got several, the point is several spinoff series and they're really like the star wars franchise just continues to grow and become a mainstay of this offering well i mean it's a cash cow because the star wars fans are uh you know they're plentiful and like you know it's it's it's actually a fun universe that they've put together with this this is kind of like um the the mandalorian and stuff

was all spin off of like this cartoon clone wars so like it's not like this is kind of like um the the mandalorian and stuff was all spin off of like this cartoon clone wars so like it's not like this hasn't been like primed into star wars fans for like a long time right that stuff goes back to them like to the 2000s era like it's cartoons that you know were playing back then and they they built a universe around that and this is kind of playing off that plus what people know from the movies, plus, you know, some characters here and there that they pop in. Um, so it's, it's what I'm trying to say is like, there's a wide Gulf of like age range that this is going to cover from, from, for fans. And, uh, yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna put the content out. That's, that's going to bring people into the service and yeah, you may get bored watching, uh, the

couple of dozen Disney movies and things that are in there. But you also have access to all the Star Wars spinoff series and movies. And then you also have access to like the Marvel Studio stuff in there. We've actually been going back and watching some of the older Marvel movies just because they were good. We remember we were in college when those things came out. And yeah, they're good movies. Going back and remembering them and kind of laughing at how young Robert Downey Jr. looks in the first Iron Man. One more point on this, Seth.

Probably the biggest one. Mighty Ducks. Mighty Ducks reboot. Flying V, baby. The Flying V. The Flying V. Starring Emilio Estevez. Yeah, that was actually, Mighty is funny. The Flying V. Starring Emilio Estevez. Yeah, that was actually, it's funny, the Flying V.

That was one of our charades thing we were trying to, somebody was trying to figure out over Christmas dinner. And he was doing this V thing, and nobody could figure out what he was talking about. Flying V. Flying V, yeah. Well, we'll keep it on streaming news. There's little doubt that WarnerMedia had high hopes

for Wonder Woman's 1984 simultaneous debut on HBO Max and in theaters, and that trust appears to have been well placed. Warner Brothers is fast-tracking development of Wonder Woman 3 based on both its relative success at the pandemic-struck box office. They say that there's $16.7 million here in the U.S. and its HBO Max turnout. The media giant was unsurprisingly shy on the exact numbers, but made clear that WW84 was a big help for its fledgling streaming service. Yeah. It said nearly half of all retail subscribers to the service, so that's people paying the $15 per month.

So half of them watched the superhero movie on opening day. Said there were also millions of bundle customers who use their cable or phone subscriptions to watch. And viewing hours on Christmas Day more than tripled the average in November. So this does appear to have gotten a lot of eyeballs. And as you alluded to there, Seth, some of the exact numbers are still a little sketchy, but this was a big boon for their streaming service. And they've got a lot of competition. I mean, the story we just talked about with Disney and Apple and everybody else involved. So I'm sure they're really hoping they can continue that momentum.

Have you, have you seen this one yet? I have not. I have not either. It's only, it's only been a couple of days since this came out. So like, um, I know a lot of people that jumped on it and watched it. I've seen things flying by on Twitter about, you know, hot takes and that kind of thing. Um, but I, I, we want to see it and we just have to find the time. Guess what, Jason? It's a two and a half hour long movie. So it's going to be broken up into multiple nights, viewing nights. Yeah, that's a marathon these days.

Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, this story also mentions Pixar's Soul, which I hadn't heard a lot about. and obviously that's a Disney thing, but mentioned in the context here of just movies that would have presumably done very well with big theatrical releases and had to sort of switch gears. We did watch Soul this weekend. I didn't get all the way through it, but that was kind of an interesting movie, really visually striking movie if you haven't seen it yet. Visually striking and a very deep movie. Really visually striking movie if you haven't seen it yet. Visually striking and a very deep movie. It's a cartoon, but oh, man, they touch on some stuff.

Yeah, we saw that one too. So good movie. Yeah, agreed. It's got a cat. Big cat. Moving on from there, Sony Pictures saw a bit of a boom in interest from Hollywood creatives who want to work with a studio committed to theatrical releases, according to the company's CEO. The uptick in interest comes just after WarnerMedia announced its 17 movies planned for 2021 will premiere on HBO Max the same day they hit theaters. So lots of streaming news this week and Sony kind of sitting here without a streaming service to support. You know, they're in

a little bit of a different position where they can be a little bit more choosy because they don't have the same battles that, you know, companies like Warner and Disney do, where they're trying to build these streaming empires simultaneously while they're doing these theatrical releases. And so apparently Sony is attracting a lot of attention from Hollywood types who are very passionate about movies seeing the theater first. Christopher Nolan, the Dune director, Denis Villeneuve, I don't know how to pronounce that. movies seeing the theater first, Christopher Nolan, the Dune director, Dennis Villanueva,

I don't know how to pronounce that, both of whom publicly sort of came out against Warner Media's move. So an interesting niche for Sony here, given that most of these other companies are moving in the direction, at least for now, of those day and date releases. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what to think about the directors that, that if it seemed like they came out, they were, they were coming out with their prima donna hot takes, you know, like without really, without being like the world has changed. I mean, I'm sorry. Like I know Christopher Nolan likes to have these movies in giant theaters, but like time, I don't want to see movie theaters go away.

I don't want to see that experience go away. I do like the crowd. You know, when I go out to see a movie with a crowd, to have the same reactions and hear gas, you know, audible gas when something happens in a movie. It's great. It's a great feeling to be part of something, you know, part of a watching thing with a group of people, just like any concert, anything like that. So, like, I kind of think of movies along those lines so yeah i'd hate to see the the big screen go away um and i don't think it will but i you know these guys are still i don't know what world they're living in if they think that that's going to be around so let's see we talked about warner

media we've talked about sony studios which usually doesn't have anything the other one is uh which one disney disney plus disney okay so disney has a bunch of stuff wrapped up peacock which is nbc universal uh we're missing two we're missing netflix amazon and apple so it's like five or six big streaming companies that are just kind of like this is where all the media is getting consolidated into. And the question mark is going to be like, where are you going to watch what moving forward? This is interesting. It feels like it's like tightening up now. Yeah, it does. I agree. And this story here from The Verge talks specifically about Netflix, mentions that they've dipped

their toes into theatrical releases. Amazon has stepped back from theatrical in order to focus on Amazon Prime, according to this story. It says Apple remains a question mark. Would the trillion dollar company commit to a 40-day theatrical window if it meant working with top talent before moving titles to the Apple TV Plus platform? Interesting question. So, yeah, there's a lot of different high-level strategy things to think through when you start to compare all of these big studios. Like you said, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Sony. You got Disney, Warner.

So it really continues to be a really fascinating landscape. Yeah, Eddie's commenting in the chat room that yeah it's a little overwhelming if you ask me for a typical consumer yeah it it kind of is right now but at the same time it's it's it like i said it's consolidating so like you have a couple of big services that you can subscribe to on and off as you please like i'm not the reason i haven't seen wonder woman yet it's because i'm not subscribed to HBO at the moment. Like we canceled that one early in the year. We were not watching any movies off of it. Didn't see any value, um, and paying $15 a month for my daughter to watch Netflix or Elmo. And so like we canceled that one. Um, Elmo was not missed that much and turns out,

um, you know, you can watch them elsewhere, but then we can turn it back on and watch Wonder Woman anytime we want and pick up on whatever we left off on HBO anytime we want. So I think this is great for consumers with that respect. Yeah. And let's see. Ron in the chat room mentioned that Discovery Plus is coming soon. We haven't really talked. I don't think we've even mentioned that one on the show. But Discovery has their own streaming service coming out.

That'll be a little bit more limited, I think, in terms of content. The price seems to reflect that. That'll come out at $4.99 for that initial tier. But you're just watching like documentaries, nature documentaries? Is that what's... Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I don't know everything that they're doing there, but Shark Week is mentioned here. You've got, yeah, Discovery, let's see, Discovery Plus will include 90 Day Fiance series, Long Island Medium, Food Network's Bobby Flay, House Hunters. long island medium food networks bobby flay house hunters oh so yeah they have a bunch of channels wrapped up in that like the yeah food channel and that kind of thing yeah i mean i'm i i'm not gonna miss that like those are the channels that i did never those are the channels that i would like skip over when i you know was watching tv anyway like they've got them right in one streaming service okay so now you just get to skip over the one streaming service i mean instead of all the different some people that may be for

some people i'm not you know whatever whatever your thing is like it's great that you can have your own streaming service thing uh right and watch you know people cook food i mean those are really fun we i loved having that on in the showroom, like when we had a physical showroom. Like I would put the HD food channel on. I mean, you could sit there and watch great food being cooked all day. It was awesome. It looked brilliant on the TVs we had. So that's great for having for some people, but it's not for me.

Rasheed said those are the channels you put on to fall asleep to. I totally agree. That's funny. They should just name the icon. It should, you know, when you launch it, it's a ZZZ on it or something. That's right. That's funny. Well, moving on from streaming news, a new report out of Japan indicates that Sony plans to close its audio factory in Malaysia by no later than the beginning of 2022.

This move is likely a result of the previously announced strategic refocusing on businesses other than AV Electronics at the major consumer electronics manufacturer. So yeah, Sony talked about refocusing their business portfolio. I was looking at this graph that's in this story over, is this over at Strategy? Yeah.

Yep. AV, like when I think of Sony, I think of like Walkman. I think of electronics. AV is such a small part of their business now. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And so this is obviously unfortunate.

It says about 3,600 workers will be impacted. A company says it will try to move some, but most of them will likely be terminated. Also, just kind of to steal a word from Ted Green here out of strategy, kind of sobering news. Like you said, I'm the same way. I think of Sony and I think of TVs. I think of AV receivers.

I think of electronics, Walkmans, all this sort of thing. And this is really what they've built their global brand on, in large part, on electronics. But as you alluded to, that really represents a fairly small portion of the business now, and I'm sure one that has been impacted by COVID, although I wouldn't attribute this entirely to COVID. I think there are much longer-term forces at play here. So it does feel a little bit like not the end of an era because it's not indicating that they're going to stop completely, but it's sort of phasing out, right? Coming down to the sunset here of what's been a really long run.

I mean, this plant in Malaysia that they're closing down sounds like it was really the main factory for electronic components and TVs. And so it's a big deal, a big deal for Sony to be doing this. Yeah, look at that graph that I posted over there, segment by segment contribution to operating profit at Sony. I mean, look at that where you see how powerful electronics was back in the 90s. And if you think back before that, like electronics in the 80s was basically all Sony. Yeah. But they've moved into other services, like financial services. I knew that they had this around if you need a loan or something like that in Japan, you go to Sony.

They're almost like a banking service there. And they've got a big financial services wing. Movies has kind of remained the same. look at video games look at video games yeah 1997 to now how much video games has just kind of blown up um and semiconductors of course they manufacture a lot of like um i'm guessing that's all like iphone uh from 1997 to 2020 i think there's all iphone cameras that basically make up that entire red part. But yeah, electronics is just, it's less than movies. Maybe music? I don't know.

But it's amazing just to see how much of Sony actually is not electronics now. That is wild. Yeah, that video game one is really striking. Well, you can see there's so much money in video games these days, billion-dollar titles and that kind of thing. Yeah. It's the biggest slice, and I know we're audio-only show here, so we won't talk too much more about this graph,

but it does represent the biggest chunk on there, even bigger than their financial services. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say if you put video games and maybe semiconductors together, that looks like it's about the same as what electronics were back in the 90s, 97. So like it's,

and we're just kind of going off a little tiny graph we have here, but it's just wild to like see this represented this way where the business has kind of just moved and changed and evolved over the years and yeah it's close closing down this plant could mean even bigger things you know as we move to you know through the next decade yeah a couple uh looks like says also reports sony will shutter one other factory in Brazil, which also produces TVs and audio products. So these are old factories built in 84. And so, like I said, pretty, you know, serious, serious moves from Sony and

restructuring and remains to be seen exactly what it means for the typical custom integrator who's doing Sony's a very popular brand. I mean, their TVs are very well regarded. All of their components are very well regarded in the channel. So I'll be very curious to see how this plays out in the coming years. Yep. Yep. Well, in our final headline here this week, Cedia held their annual State of the Association Report for Members. Topics included the organization's educational portal, recapping Cedia Virtual, organization revenues, and more. Of particular note was the organization's membership numbers. Nearly 600 members dropped out of Cedia in 2020, the largest ever one-year drop according to Strategy. This is another story we pulled from Ted Green's site. So interesting numbers. It's hard to know really what would attribute to that other than

COVID is the obvious candidate. But I don't know. You and I were talking a little bit about this before the show, and I have a little bit of a hard time drawing a straight line to an integrator who's still around, but just COVID came and they were like, oh, well, I need to drop out of Cedia now. Like, I don't know what that correlation is. I mean, we've remained busy as an industry. So, you know, the belt tightening that I think a lot of us were worried about when COVID first hit, like a lot of companies I know, us included, we were bracing for the worst and we were looking at all of our expenses and making sure that everything was tight. And so maybe that attributed to some of it, but that's, I mean, this is still a significant drop. To put this in perspective really quickly, the member numbers for 2020, 3,364 and in 2019 3,900 so it's it's hard to know what to what to attribute that

to yeah um i we talked about this a little bit in the fireside chat was that you know i heard somebody say that i really wish i could go back and attribute this to somebody that's way smarter than me but like covid accelerated everything around us. So work from home, it was already happening. That trend was already happening. Now it's here. Like everybody's working from home and everybody needs, you know, good wifi and that kind of thing. This is kind of, to me, like some of this may be contributed to COVID in the fact that like, maybe these businesses were already not healthy and, you know, COVID rolls around, the world gets put on pause and the owners are just like, yep, I'm out. I'm done.

Yeah. And they throw their hands up. You know, maybe that is the case. It seems like a lot, though, like 600. It's a good question, though. I would love to, I wonder if Cedia has the data on how many of those companies that left are still in business. Right, right. has the data on how many of those companies that left are still in business. Right, right.

Like what percentage of that drop was companies who, like you said, were just like, here's my sign, I'm folding up. And then what percent were people who just left but are still around? Companies who just left but are still around. Also, it also says they gained 453 new members. So, you know, kind of like taking... Yeah, I mean, they talked about some international growth as well, so some strong growth in the international space. So it wasn't all bad news there.

But overall, yeah, in aggregate, a significant drop. Hmm, interesting. I don't know. I would like to find out answers to more of these questions. You know, maybe we'll know, maybe we'll never know. I would like to, I'd like to, I'd like to find out answers to these questions. You know, maybe we'll know, maybe we'll never know. But man, 600 seems high, even for this wild and wacky year that we've had. But I don't know. I don't know. I did see a lot of good things in this story. And I wish I had seen the 40 minute Cedia presentation thing. I wish I had seen that. Because it sounds like it was pretty

good, but the, the, one of the things I really, you know, focused on was that the e-learning thing that they've, they've rolled out this year, not knowing that we were going to have a global pandemic that made everybody kind of like not be able to travel to a trade show. Um, so they were like, it was awesome that they were ahead of the ball on that. I still think they're behind. Like, I think they should have done it 10 years ago, but like, I, I, I, I'm so glad that the organization is like, seems to be singularly, I don't know, singularly is the right word, but like very focused on education and bringing in new blood into the industry. Um, because that's really how we're going to advance. Uh, you know, if we're losing 600 members or 600 companies are shutting up shop and something like this, we're going to need some new

blood in the next coming year. So it'll be good to have people who are educated and able to do good work and have sustainable businesses and maybe get some tips and tricks from a well-run trade organization after that. Yeah, indeed. Rashid saying people seem to not understand the value of Cedia. I do get the sense that there is some disconnect there. I don't know. I think from my vantage point, I feel like Cedia is focused on

the right things. Education, engagement with the architecture and design communities, standardization, I'm a little bit less bullish on personally, but I won't dive into that. But I think generally speaking between education, training, workforce development, and relations with design architect building communities, those to me seem like the pillars to be focusing on. And so far as I can tell, that's exactly what Cedia is focused on. But I think Cedia is just, and I suspect this is not unique to our industry, that like in any industry where you have this sort of central trade body, I suspect they're always kind of at the brunt of frustration if things aren't going well and there's probably always this sort

of perpetual feeling of like they should be doing more and when you're cda you can't please everyone it's just not going to happen they're not doing my pet project so it's not worth paying yeah so it's interesting because i like i look at cda and i've been a fan of the direction that it's going and then i see these numbers and it's, they had their biggest loss in, in members in a single year. So I don't know where the disconnect is. I don't know what I'm missing. So, uh, Eddie, Eddie in the, in the, in the chat says, don't forget standards. They're actually important. And, uh, Eddie, I don't know if you heard Jason say standards is not important. He doesn't like standards. Just putting words in your mouth. Yeah, it gets into a more nuanced conversation.

I think standards are great. There's nothing inherently wrong with them, but I think a lot of times people use... The word standards means different things to different people. And I think that there's a... It's kind of a fine line between healthy standards that sort of set the bar for quality and execution, and then standards that are so overwrought that they're useless, like trying to teach people the best way, you know,

the best way, air quotes, to wire wire Iraq. Well, okay. Like I get it, but every situation is different. And you, so there, there's this gradient and there are things that you can standardize. And there are things that to me feel like, like you shouldn't even try. So that that's what I meant was more specifically, like, it's easy. I think i'll sum it up this way i think with standardization efforts it's easy to get into it's easy to go past the point of diminishing returns okay yeah where you start doing all of this work to focus on standard standard standards and it becomes it can easily become standard standardization for the sake of standardization and i'm not necessarily saying

that i think cd is doing that but as a whole that's where i'm always a little bit uh leery of conversations about standards does that make sense yeah it does it does in one respect it does the other problem i see with that is like our industry has been kind of like shoot from the hip for so long and it served it well because technology has not exactly been um static like if i if i think of our industry related and related to like uh an electrician it's like okay electrician has a light switch the light switch technology hasn't changed in 100 years um our technology has changes um every six months like we've been installing a completely new system.

But I have seen over time, like, okay, we can all agree Cat 5 is good. Oh, Cat 5e is good. Cat 6 is good. Like a category cable, getting it in the wall is good. And maybe having like standardizations on like what the cables are for, what they do isn't it. But like maybe like symbols that go on, on CAD drawings and that kind of thing would be great. You know, just, just like a standard agreement as to what, um, something is called. Like, uh, I, I, I got in fights with builders, you know, it's like, no, I'm putting in two cat fives in your wall and you're, and I don't

care about the coax, but I'll pull it too. You know, it's like, but we wanted to make sure that we had everything go in the wall. But like there was no, there was nothing to point back and say, okay, your TV jack needs to have this Cat5 and a coax at minimum. And there was nothing that said that anywhere written down. electrician and it's like, okay, uh, you have to have, I don't know if I'm going to make something up like 14 gauge wire run for this because this particular outlet requires it. Like we don't have that. We have nothing like that. So I really, I really do think it'd be great to have something codified somewhere where you can go back and say, well, this is what I'm selling and this is why I'm selling it. Right. And not have somebody down the street go well you you don't need that fancy outlet right there i can pull that with you know um what is it called the lamp board i can i can use lamp board and do that yeah i think there's a good a good it's not a metaphor

but a concept that an example that you could put there of like standard good standard maybe hey if you're gonna have a tv outlet here's the type and gauge of wires that's the standard that you should run to me a standard that would go too far would be um you know here's exactly how much wire you should leave in the box and here's how far back you should uh trim back the the jacket and oh yeah and i think that sometimes when my perception is sometimes when people talk about standards they're literally going to that to that extreme and maybe my antenna is just too sensitive like maybe maybe most people don't go there but anyways that that was all i meant by that was that sometimes standards to me if you start to really put that as like put it out there as a very broad term without a precise understanding and definition of it then you get people talking past each other

right and it just becomes like a very circular conversation you say, here's a standard. No TVs over the fireplace. There you go. See where that goes. Yeah. Yeah. Good. And Eddie's in the chat room saying, you know, there, there are some new standards, audio standards coming that will be impressive and approachable.

And I love it. I think if they're done thoughtfully and done well, they, they can be a good thing for the industry. There's no question. It, to me, like having those kinds of standards would would be like this is a confirmation that this industry actually exists you know like it's not it's not something made up that some guy in a white van you know with a couple of tv mounts in the back calls himself an integrator it's like well yeah we have that but we also have like full-on companies you know people who make their living doing this for years and decades. It's like, yeah,

yeah, we run the game. Yeah. What I would love to see is some sort of standard around the sales process. And I say that because it's so nuanced with technology that it would be good if we were held to some sort of standard of, you need to do a scope of work that needs to be written in plain english and blah blah and have some general guidelines around that that sort of thing like i feel like i feel like the sales process is so all over the place and it creates problems for clients because you don't really know what you're getting it becomes very difficult in my experience to go compare two or three integrators in your market. You're almost always comparing apples and oranges. Yeah. So if there was some way that like standards could kind of address that at a more macro level,

but again, the example of it going too far would be, okay, well, your scope of work needs to look like this and your proposal needs to look like that right so again it's all about that spectrum right you can only install products that you have a complete like a and e written up on and like yeah it can get kind of crazy um yeah i i i don't know about i mean if i if i i just have to compare to other industries like there are electricians and hvac guys that i've worked with i mean like you know i call them up on the phone and they're just, they're like, yeah, that's, you know, I'll come over and do that. And it's going to be like five grand. And it's like, okay, you know, you kind of, you kind of do it that way. And there's no, like, there's no quoting process to it. But I do agree that it's

very hard for someone building their first home, you know, to say, I need a smart house. And they kind of like lean on builders or friends or brother-in-laws that, you know, may have a white van with a couple of TV mounts in the back and call themselves an integrator, um, to like lead them down a path of making a smart home or something, you know, a hobby or something they may want to make a hobby out of. Um, and I, I, I do think that that's hard to do. I was just on Reddit today reading somebody, you know, like, I'm building this house, and where should I put the wires? You know, that kind of thing.

And it's like, well, man, that's what I used to do day in and day out. It's like, you know, if this homeowner only knew that he just needed to grab an integrator and just go in and have a couple of conversations about what his actual needs were, he would be able to just quickly tell him right off the bat, like, yeah, put some wires here, here, and here,

and call it a day. And maybe there's a charge for that. Maybe it's just the guy is being nice. I've certainly done that a couple of times, just have rough shot conversations about where to put some wires. And they go off and do their thing, and then they come back to you later on, you know, that was, that was, there's nothing wrong with that,

but yeah, I don't know. Like it's, it still feels like the wild west and as far as standards go. And I do think we should lock down at least like, you know, that we have an outlet for TV. What exactly does that mean? Like what, how, how you get video from point, you have a video jack on the wall. Like what, how do you get video from point A to point B? What does that mean to the homeowner? What does that mean to the builder and the contractor and the architect? And I think with that knowledge, if that's out there, like from a standards body like Cedia or a standards body like ANSI or whatever, then like it's codified, it's written down

and they can point back to it. And it was like the education process, like just takes – it gets built up through the homeowner, through the builder, through the contractor, through the homeowner. And eventually, we'll be able to compare those apples to apples, and we won't be like apples to oranges anymore. But yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say when you were talking about that. It's always apples to oranges. Nothing is ever done the same. Yeah. So it's interesting. One other good one I think would be some sort of standard around framing the service relationship.

And I mean specifically, I'm being very careful with my word choice because I don't mean that every integrator out there needs to be selling recurring service plans, for example. But I do think that conceptually, it would be interesting to explore the idea of saying, look, if you want to be this level of excellence, this certification, that's sort of an aspirational thing, you do need to have some sort of policies in place that are aimed at educating clients about the true nature of owning an integrated technology system. Because what I saw happen over and over, what I still see happen over and over is clients assume because of the price tag on these systems, that it's going to be like bulletproof, like it's just going to work. They're spending a ton of money on it. And then when things happen that are typically out of the hands of the integrator, so the cable company has an issue, there's a power problem, whatever the case may be. My printer doesn't work on your network.

My printer doesn't work. It's this unpleasant surprise for clients who came into the relationship never understanding that that's just part of the deal. And then that gives the industry a black eye. Right. And so I think that again, Stan, the word standards means so many different things to so many different people. And this is a perfect example, because I'm just, I'm way out there talking about this stuff. And I have no idea if anyone else is even thinking about these things when we talk about what CD is doing. So I need to dig in and get a little more educated there.

But ultimately there are, just to put a bow on this, I think very appropriate applications of a central standards body. And then there are also places where it can just become kind of central planning that falls apart

and nobody adheres to it. And it's just too much. So, yeah. Yeah, like those punch down colors for cat5 nobody from my experience nobody pays attention to those it's just like whatever blue green yeah just punch them down if it works it works oh my god exactly all right well all of the links and topics that we've discussed on this week's episode can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 333.

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 333. And don't forget,

you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. Yeah, you can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth. Looks like we got a double, a twofer pick of the week. All right. All right.

So both of these are HomeKit related. Before we get into this, though, did I mention that the single person that owns uh that owns a uh portal facebook portal did contact me oh really you didn't he did he did he was a it was a it was a nice conversation i had on twitter uh with one a gentleman who who says that that they uh they they must be the single person uh that we're talking about. But he listens to the podcast. His name's Jordan. I'm not going to say his last name because it may be like OPSEC or something. I don't know. I just want to get this in for the end of the year here. So yeah, I now know one person that owns a Facebook portal. And he says he has Echo's shows throughout the house, but uses the portal in his office now.

And now that he's doing work from home, it has some native apps that work with WebEx and Zoom. It was a gift. He didn't buy it, but he does use it. So there you go. All right. The one person who we know now that uses Facebook portal. And now they're coming out of the woodwork. Because look, Rasheid's got one what

what what oh my gosh well it's still in the box though so like until i see it out of the box i'm not sure all right well this would be great if this podcast like inspires people to go get facebook portals oh he found it in a client's house okay oh that's hilarious it's still in the box he he saw the box on the floor and he was like i can just see him like quickly scrambling to get his phone out of his pocket before it like disappears right get the photograph oh man this is too good but it's still in the box the client never opened it or installed it it's like i don't about this thing. I'm not sure if that counts. Oh, that's too good. That's too good.

All right. Well, I just, I did want to mention that before the end of the year, Jordan did reach out and say the integrations that they have with WebEx and Zoom is what he uses it for. So he says he can stream live CBS news or ABC news. That works well. And he said the camera tracking as you move around you know how they have a put like a higher resolution camera in and and if you move around the room it'll follow you in pixels it doesn't actually rotate it's kind of a

virtual pan tilt zoom camera so he said that's pretty cool got it other than that that's all the feedback i got and then we have the box laying on the floor that Rashid happened to see. So that's, that's too funny. Gosh, that's funny. Oh man. It's good stuff. I'm going to have to get one of these. All right. Picks of the week. Um, so these are HomeKit related. I thought they were pretty cool. First off, I want to mention this website I ran across called HomeKit helper. Um, this is, this is something that, uh, that it has like HomeKit related stuff, like how to kind of get started with a HomeKit, uh, HomeKit house. But if you go into the networking tab, like it's, it's like literally everything I have ever, you know, done with networking in my own house,

in my client's homes, like it, this is, this is, uh, really just really good advice and things to think about when you're setting up a network for HomeKit or for really anything else. I mean, it's really good informational website and how things are put together around HomeKit. Like, you have this stuff, but it just kind of is like a good uh we were debating on this is it primer or primer primer primer i don't know primer i'm going primer primer primer it's like primer paint like you put the primer paint on first and then you sand it or whatever and then you put the the real primer do people actually say that i have no idea we'll go with primer it's like inflammable and flammable i don't know um anyway yeah this is a really cool website i'm gonna put it in the show notes just say we mention it and maybe get some traffic yeah it's cool because uh they put a lot of work into this it's really nicely done nicely

laid out there's not it's just all solid information and really good information so that's good stuff. You know, some people might say Primer. I mean, I'm thinking about Greg and Zed. It's a Canadian thing. Right. Maybe it's similar. Exactly.

Greg will have to fill us in. No, this is good. This looks like actually really useful. And I like it. It's written in very direct kind of plain style that I think just about my mom couldn't read this and make sense of it. Right. But she's on a pretty far end of the spectrum. But I think somebody with a any sort of moderate level of comfort with technology who is not quite at the level where they feel totally confident going in and configuring their network for a home kit system or just kind of making sure things are optimal because generally speaking i think home kit's going to work without any special configuration on most average people's networks you're just going to be able to plug it in but um yeah if you're looking to sort of optimize things or you're just you're like me and you want to kind of check the boxes and make sure you thought of everything this looks like a really good resource yeah it. It may bring, you know, if you're, if like the guy I was talking about with doing, you

know, his own smart home or whatever, he wants to know where the wires go. Like this may be a good article for him to read just to kind of go over what he can do and check out all the devices. If he is going to do a home kit home, like what he can do. But I just, I ran across this, I don't know, a while back and I thought it was just a great little like PS-type website. Like you said, it's written where most people can read it and kind of understand.

It's kind of like HomeKit for dummies. There you go. All right, you've got another one on here, Scene Cuts. This one looks cool. Yeah, HomeKit. So HomeKit program. And so the HomeKit app in Mac on the Mac is like the same that would be on the iPad. It's not very good. It's just like it doesn't doesn't fit or flow very well. I don't know. I don't like it too much. But this is like a little utility app that goes up on your Mac menu bar. And it allows you to control like HomeKit devices and automation and automation routines directly from the Mac menu bar. And you can assign little shortcuts to them and everything.

Yeah. So hotkeys. Hotkeys are involved, Jason. There you go. Now you're speaking my language. You can launch a scene in your room with a hotkey on your computer. You're sitting here. You don't have to take your hands off the keyboard.

You can hit Control-Apple-H or whatever, and and boom your space heater turns on i like that yeah i think i'm gonna have to go get a home kit dimmer now for my office because i'm often sitting at my desk and i don't have smart lighting down here right now um but i like to have the lights in here set at different levels like i find that if i'm you know if i'm in meetings or I really want to be kind of active, I'll have the lights totally up. If I'm trying to be a little bit more Zen and focused maybe on a bigger task or something, I find that just turning the lights down, like kind of puts me in a different headspace a little bit. Um, so I'm frequently getting up and walking back to that light switch. You can see right there. And, uh, if I just had a hot key for that all day yeah i love

that just back and forth toggle that's a good idea you could do control apple z for zen mode and then uh there it is control apple w for work mode or something i don't know i don't know it looked like a little nice little program and uh the fact that you can attach hotkeys to your HomeKit scenes, a brilliant idea. And since it lives in the Mac little menu bar thing up there, it's kind of up and tucked out of the way. It doesn't present itself as a large thing that you need to get to. So no desktop clutter, I suppose.

But I thought it was a pretty good program, so throw that in there. Yeah, good stuff. Get you a HomeKit stuff get you a home kit get you a caseta kit indeed i'm going on amazon right now i've already got caseta so all i gotta do is buy a dimmer oh there you done done yeah i just haven't uh i just haven't like um expanded it out because like i mean you know eddie's in the chat room talking about like my hard drive

so give me about like six months i'll have this done oh i have so many projects laying around the house right now 2020 oh my gosh i started so much and have not finished any of it it's it's bad it's really bad all right well if you have any feedback questions comments picks of the week or ideas for a show topic or guest give us a shout our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech. our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm support to learn how you can support Home Tech for as little as a dollar 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 to talk about, oh man, it's been all over the place lately but uh all good discussions we've had some

really interesting discussions about patch panels in the last couple of days and uh james was actually posting some really cool pictures of some like behind he had like behind the scenes work um that he was doing uh that kind of spurred this conversation off about patch panels so really cool it sounds boring but it's really cool. I promise. Hey, not with this crowd, it's not. Nope, nope. Love it.

Awesome. And if you're looking for other ways to support the show, we would appreciate you leaving us a review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you find value here in the Home Tech Podcast, please take a minute to go leave us a review. We would really appreciate it. Well, that wraps up. I was going to say another year, but it's kind of starting off a year by the time we publish this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Happy New Year, Jason. Yeah. Got any big plans for today, tonight? No. You know, like I said, we're going to do another prime rib and then we're going to hang out, lay low. That's it. We got a lot of really good food in the house. That's kind of the biggest thing we got to look forward to. We got some fun stuff for the kids to do. And my wife and I were talking about,

we might try to stay up until midnight. I think we managed to do that last year. It was difficult. Some big plans there. We might try to make that two years in a row, but as you know, man do that last year. It was difficult. Some big plans there. So we might try to make that two years in a row, but as you know, man, it's tough. It's tough these days. Oh yeah. Yeah. Any, anytime I sit down on the couch and I just kind of, if there's nothing on TV and it's just kind of quiet, my eyes just close. I'm like, yeah, it's nap time. It's nap time. I'm going under. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. No, I totally get that. I think we're going to, I'm

going to try and see if we're gonna get some uh some big noisemakers and maybe put those outside uh play with play with noisemakers and sparklers and that kind of thing there you go and then i don't know i'll try not to kill the family this time that was yeah good yeah i was gonna i was gonna ask i ran across that i didn't want to insult you yeah yeah i'm gonna try and avoid shooting fireworks directly at my daughter. It's generally a good idea. You could put a standard around that. Aim fireworks away from family.

Got it. Check. See, that is a good standard. Light fuse. Check. Run away. Check. All good standard. Light fuse, check. Yeah. Run away, check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All good stuff. Yeah. I'll have to not, I'll have to spring for a better way of making sure that those fireworks lay down on the ground and don't tip over or whatever.

So, and. Greg said, well, Seth is in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's it's it's a state it's a state of something state of state we're gonna see seth on a upcoming edition of florida man florida man florida man burns down house celebrating the new year yep yep all right man well have a happy new

year seth you too thanks everybody for listening thanks everybody for joining us in the chat and have a happy new year, Seth. You too. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, everybody, for joining us in the chat. And have a great new year.