HomeTech.fm - Episode 341 - Absurdi-TVs

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

This week on HomeTech: News from Samsung about their 2021 TV lineup and plans for the future, Roku is watching you, 50% of homes have some type of smart tech, and of course, the Pick of the Week...Fan of the show? Want to support our efforts? Please consider becoming a Patron!SHOW NOTESHomeTech HeadlinesRoku buys Nielsen tech to better target ads on traditional TV | Engadget50% of US Households Now Own Smart Devices - CEPROLegrand Teams with Home Builder Taylor Morrison Home - CEPROC Seed Introduces Foldable 4K 165-inch M1 MicroLED TV - CEPROSamsung Announces Enhancements to TV Line - Residential SystemsSamsung The Sero smartphone-friendly TV is finally available to buyPick of the WeekCrestron Electronics, Inc.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 5th. Yeah, that's right. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson, and Home Tech Podcast is a podcast about all aspects of home technology and home automation. This week, we're going to dive into some home tech headlines that have popped up over the last week, talk about some new TVs that have been hitting the market from samsung and uh another one another absurd tv that came out this week um but first i want to ask patrons if you're a patron of the show if you sponsor the show you should have gotten an email a couple emails from me by now but i want you to head on over to um hometech.fm

support and click on that patreon image. It'll bring you over to the Patreon page where I think you can log in and you can vote on Home Tech Talk time. That's really, that's tough to say. I've got, I'm starting up a conversation. So here's what I want Home Tech Talks to be. Home Tech Talks, yeah. To be, it's a discussion, a round table event, so to speak. I want them to be short, concise, and frequent though. I want them to be, it's a discussion, a round table event, so to speak. I want them to be short, concise, and frequent though. I want them to be often enough where people can join in and listen in. They're going to be modeled around office hours type conversations. So general Q&A kind of at the beginning, if you have a question about home technology, home automation, you're doing

something. There are a lot of good questions today that came up in the hub about Wi-Fi and some broadcast storms that somebody was having issues with. And we're trying to figure that one out, trying to do some troubleshooting there. But, you know, it may be a better, it may be better if we have more hive mind people, everybody get together in the industry, get together, have a conversation about broadcast storms and what how you can best troubleshoot those and and figure them out. So check that out. Home tech dot FM slash support. That'll bring you over to Patreon dot com slash home tech.

That's probably the easiest way to get there. I'm looking for an hour of that time, and it looks like everybody's lining up 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern. That's kind of where the votes are headed. I don't want to preview the vote there or change anybody's mind, but if that doesn't work the best for you, I've got mornings, which nobody likes, by the way, afternoons, evenings, and then there are a couple of night owls who really want to see something done to join a conversation after 9 p.m. Eastern. So I can see how if you're out west, that may work a little bit better for you. But please check that out if you are in. And this is this is going to be limited to patrons only at first.

Now, the recordings, I will be recording them and posting them up on YouTube later. So you will have an option to listen that way. But keep in mind, like if you want to join the conversation, the best way to do that is going to be through the patron page. So check that out. And with that, let's go ahead and get started with our home tech headlines. Roku has purchased Nielsen's advanced video advertising unit, which will change the way ads are served on its platform in the future. The streaming hardware maker now owns Nielsen's automatic video content recognition technology and dynamic ad insertion system as part of the deal,

which is expected to be finalized in the second quarter of 2021. Eugros, sorry, I didn't even finish the story. This technology allows advertisers to detect ads as they come on and replace national and local advertisements with ones that target viewers watching on Roku platforms in real time. Wow. Wow. That is something.

I don't know what to think about that other than I'm glad I primarily watch on an Apple TV because, that, that just feels all sorts of gross. And, uh, you know, I, I know Roku subsidizes a lot of their development, a lot of their platform, uh, with these types of advertising dollars. And that's why the device, you can pick up the device in a, in a, where did I pick it? I picked it up at office depot for $30. Just a little, the little small Roku streaming stick thing. Um, 30 bucks. It was an impulse buy. I bought it. I plugged it in. I've used it maybe, maybe once or twice. Um, more as a troubleshooting tool than, than anything, but, um, it does have all the apps and everything that are on my Apple TV. Uh, but unfortunately it, it spies, it spies on you. So keep that in mind as you're watching Roku. Half of U.S. customers own at least one smart home device,

up 35% in January 2020, according to the latest Home Automation Ownership and Usage Report from the NPD Group. The NPD's retail tracking service data reveals the largest sales gains in 2020 were seen again in security systems, up 44%, trailing by smart garage door openers, 21%, and then smart lighting, up 19%. Security is still a key motivator in smart home purchases, such as security cameras. And so they're grouping security cameras in with security systems sales, I guess.

I don't know. It's interesting. And again, security cameras have been the leading volume driver for the past four years. This article is interesting. We'll put a link to it in the show notes here over at hometech.fm slash 341. Uh, it also mentioned something about pandemic projects, which could have helped play a role, uh, given that smart lighting was up 43% compared to in 2020 compared to only 17% in 2019. And I can't really think of another device or another group of devices that have come out and over the last year that would have skewed the

numbers that much. So it must have been everybody sitting at home kind of wondering what they will, they wanted to automate and, you know, throwing a couple of cameras, automating lights. It seems to be, it's kind of nice. It's getting to be low hanging fruit for a lot of people. MPD's future of tech report shows smart, shows smart home devices sales are forecasted to continue their growth in 2021, 2021 with sales up 9% over 2020 already. So it's encouraging. And it kind of piggybacks onto another story I want to kind of bring up, uh, about Legrand teaming up with home builder, Taylor Morrison here in the States. Uh, Taylor Morrison's like the fifth largest, uh, homemaker here in States. And, uh, they've, they've signed in, they've inked an agreement with Legrand AV. Uh, so customers now have the ability, the option of customizing their

residence with products from Legrand. So products like Luxul, OnQ and Pass and Seymour. Now, the Luxul is familiar with networking, but Pass and Seymour probably already existed in the house. So that's like your outlets. OnCue would be, I guess, they did some networking in the past, but I guess they would also do like structured wiring and that kind of thing. So interesting deal that we've seen these from time to time pop up. And what it means is if you are buying a Taylor Morrison home, a branded home, you'll have Luxor tech, or not Luxor technology, but Legrand, Legrand technology built into that house from the beginning. And it's just kind of a, kind of a package price, I suppose, that they can offer, uh, the home builder for those kinds of things. So big deals, bigger than, than, than what we can make is as lowly integrators. I remember I

worked for a builder in, I don't know, this would have been back in like 2007, 2008, somewhere around there that had inked a deal with, I want to say it was on Q at the time. I don't think they were owned by Legrand. Uh, but, but since we were, we were the only dealer in the area of this particular brand of structured wiring panel, they were, they would, they came to us and that's how we got all of their work. It's kind of, kind of nice. I don't think that kind of thing happens anymore, but back then when builders barely knew about structured wiring or what a network was or what Wi-Fi was, they would bring you in and let you take over the job if you could offer a certain product. I don't know if anybody's seen this, but Seaseed has announced a foldable 4K 16 165 inch micro LED TV. This is a story courtesy over at CEPro.

This thing is insane. And it, it, they've got a video of this thing. You have, you have to go see this video. This, this, this TV will fold out of the floor, like raises up out of the floor and unfolds into 165 inch TV in the middle of this empty living room. I'm not sure this, this video, these videos are really hard to figure out if they're like all CG. And this is just kind of like a concept video of what they want it to look like. Certainly the images are, but, um, we've, we've talked about these guys in the past. They used to have a, an outdoor version, um, that they, they made that I think cost $1.5 million, uh, which was just pretty wild. Uh, if you think about it, uh, that's, that's a massive, massive, massive TV. So, uh, and to have it motorized and kind of like come out of the

ground, uh, is, is, is definitely pretty wild. But if you are in the market for a million plus TV dollar TV, uh, that's 165 inches in your starkly empty living room. Mine doesn't look anything like this. It's usually, it has toys and stuff strewn across the floor and furniture everywhere. So I really don't know if you live like this and you need a TV to exist inside your empty room. Uh, CC has, uh, an option for you. Go check that out. So, uh, Samsung had this, uh, unbox and discover event, uh, this week where they kind of went over the tvs they announced during their um their ces presentation it was maybe a little bit before cs they kind of jumped the gun on everybody and i don't know this this seemed like a pretty cool like review they they released a video and

i'll put the video in the show notes where you can go back and watch it. It's about 10 minute video. If you want to see everything, again, this is a podcast and I'm kind of doing some streaming, but I'm not playing replaying the video. I'm just kind of like putting pictures up. So, um, it may be worth going to watch. Cause I found a video that they had kind of cut this presentation up into like the high points, uh, where they went over these micro LED TVs, the QLED, and they went over some soundbars. I'm not really going to get into those because it's kind of boring. I mean, it's just a soundbar. Uh, it's hard to get excited about that. Uh, but let's, let's go ahead and talk about a little bit about what the video technologies

that they're, they're releasing. And I think everybody was excited about this micro LED TV, uh, that, that they've been talking about. They confirmed smaller form factors. Now, this is a small child of the, what was it, 290-inch wall TV they announced back in 2018. I think they've had some smaller sizes that came out kind of in the past few years, but these are going to be smaller than that. So we're talking 110 and 99 inch that they're releasing now. Later this year, you'll get an 88 inch option and a 76 inch, which will be on the roadmap. And it's a very interesting technology. These are those panels that you see kind of snap together to form a larger panel. Used a lot in the digital signage world, but if you've probably seen one of those signs

as you're walking down the street, the pixels on those are rather large. These micro LED TVs have really small pixels, and as you get closer, you'd probably notice them, but further away, it's easier for everything to kind of blend in, especially on a TV as big as 110 inches or 200 inches. You want those to kind of blend in. It's got 4K resolution, I believe, on these. So it's a pretty nice TV set. And kind of the same thing is the same thing that the Seaseed company is doing

for their folding TV. They're just breaking those panels up into sections. And then as the TV unfolds, the sections all come together and make their own larger TV. Speaking of which, this TV can actually has a one of these, get four TVs, four image sources at once on one of the TV screens. So that's kind of nice. Right now, a lot of TVs don't have this built into it. I can't really think of one that does, but I know that there's a lot of third-party devices. We sell a couple at work that have them and they'll have a way that you can overlay and do like what we call picture in picture back in the before, you know, way back in the day, we called it picture in picture.

But now it's kind of like tiling is kind of the in vogue thing that you call those devices. And typically you can do more than just, you know, a single picture over a picture with those devices. You can kind of mix, match, and overlay them in whatever form or fashion that you want. The interesting part about these though, the 110, the 99, and the 88, and of course the 76 down the road, is that they don't require professional install and assembly, uh, really the, the, the, the, the wall TV, uh, required a certified technician to go out basically to, to put them together, uh, and, and assemble it on to the wall. Uh, these are, these are getting down to be like consumer grade devices. So I think that's very interesting. Of course, there's no price tag associated with this. I've talked to a couple

of people about how much the wall costs. And I, I don't actually, I don't remember what they say. So if anybody is in the chat and you guys remember how much the wall cost, um, post it in there and we'll, we'll mention it. But, uh, I, I know a couple of jobs that have gotten them, uh, everybody, it's one of those, um, pieces that everybody wants. They have to actually absolutely have to have. It's one of those bragging right pieces, but you know, it's in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's that big of a deal to have one of those TVs. So next thing up, they have these Neo LED, Neo QLED TVs, which promise better backlighting and brightness performance. Thanks again to this mini LED technology Samsung is pushing out. The largest of these new cameras will be in 8K, 65, 75, and 85-inch sizes, and they'll be priced from $5,000 to $9,000.

So pretty normal pricing there. The 4K TVs come in two ranges, include 55-inch to 85-inch, and the prices start at 1600 and go to uh five thousand dollars so those are those would be the new i i saw images those they actually looked pretty nice they have some small but smaller bezels on them they've done some design work on them to make them look good um not not bad looking tvs at all Then we got what I call boring TVs. The frame TV lineup, they added a new 75 inch model, I think. So they made them thinner. They're 25 millimeters thick, roughly. There's a 55, a 65 and 75 inch models, all ranging from $1,000 to $3,000.

And they're really laying hard into the artwork aspect of these. They've added up to six gigabytes of storage for that. And they've teamed up with Etsy to allow people to buy and purchase artwork off Etsy. So, and display it on their TV. What, it is a neat technology. You know, I'm calling it a boring TV because it's, it's, it's not a great TV. The, the picture on them is, is definitely not as good as what you're going to get. If we talk about one of these Neo, Neo QLEDs, not, not quite the same, but it's really not designed to be a performance driven tv it's more for aesthetics and i think if you're in one of those applications where you need to have just

like it blend in with artwork this is the way to go absolutely the way to go because it's it has it um it has it has that that frame that can go around and look good and i think they even said that they were teaming up with some third party vendors to offer more options with frames this year. I also, they say they had a, a my shelf accessory that you could purchase separately and it would frame out a shelving unit, like almost like not so much a built-in, but like almost like a little shelving unit around it.

I don't know. Talked a lot about a boring TV, but there you go. If you're in the market for a frame TV, Samsung's the one to get, I guess. And of course, we got Terrace TVs, which is the outdoor, water, weather-resistant, waterproof TVs that Samsung's offering. 55, 65, sorry, and a new, yeah, 55, 65 and a new 75 inch is due in the summer. I really don't have much to say about these TVs other than I wish I had the terrace that they put them on in all their marketing shots because it's absolutely gorgeous. I, I don't have a place for a TV like this as much as I'd want a TV like this. I don't have anywhere to store to install

something like this. I wish I did because, uh, I wish I had that outdoor fireplace and seating area. I would be out there. I'd be out there tonight. It's gorgeous outside. So, uh, and then one more product I thought was pretty interesting that we don't hear too often about, and I think we need to hear about them more, is a Premier 4K short throw, ultra, ultra short throw projector. So these projectors are designed to sit basically right up underneath where they're going to project. And you can get, within 12 inches, you can project an image as large as 130 inches with these. So it is a really slick product.

There's a ton of these. Well, there's a number of these on the market. I won't say there's a ton, but there's a number of them. And I'm glad to see that Samsung is getting into this market because if you're shopping for this kind of thing, there were only a handful of vendors that you could get them from. Sony makes one that's like the size of a bookshelf, a bookcase. It's massive. It sits on the floor. It's very heavy. It looks great, but it's priced

with Sony pricing. No pricing on this one, but the 9T,, so they've got an LSP 70, which does 120 inches and the LSP nine T it's really hard to say. So is the first one that supports HDR 10 plus. Uh, so that's kind of a Dolby vision competitor, uh, that Samsung is pushing, uh, again, no pricing on these, but, um, I find it interesting and I find it interesting that somebody started somebody else in the video marketplace started making those things. So that's pretty cool. One more one more TV I've got to mention. Got to mention this. The TikTok TV. Why is nobody talking about the TikTok TV? I haven't seen, I've seen a couple of news articles on this, but no one mentioned the Cero TV. Uh, and, and, and there's probably a reason why it's

a 43 inch $1,700 television with built in 4.1 surround sound. The stick with this one though, is that it can go from horizontal and you can swivel it. I guess you press, uh, I didn't see anything about motorized, but like, I guess you can move it yourself and kind of swivel the TV to be in portrait mode. So you can watch Tik TOK and it's got a ton of streaming, like casting ability built into it. Um, it's a neat looking TV. Uh, it's kind of, kind of small for what I thought it would be. You can buy wheels for it, so you can wheel it around your house if you want to wheel your 43 inch TV around the house and watch your TikTok videos in a larger format. It's got built-in Bixby, Alexa, and Google. I don't know. What do you guys think about this thing? It seems kind of funny. I'm

calling it the TikTok TV, but I don't think this is going to be, I think this is probably the biggest second screen I've ever seen. And Sterling is saying in the chat here that the video he saw said it was motorized. And I and I, I thought I saw that too. Um, at least in the video, I did see that. Um, but I'm wondering if that video was just kind of, um, mocked up. Oh, okay. It does. It automatically rotates the screen to match your phone. So if your phone is in the horizontal position, uh, you can actually sw can actually swivel the TV by turning your phone. So no more of those portrait videos will show up on your TV and give you black bars. They've solved the issue. Notes here in the article, you can also do it manually by voice app or with the good old-fashioned remote control. So there we go. There's a burgeoning conversation starting in the comments about TikTok,

and I don't know. TikTok's fun. There's very creative things happening on TikTok, I can tell you that. It is a fun platform, but not, again, not for everybody. So all the links and topics discussed tonight can be found in the show notes, hometech.fm slash 341. While you're there, don't forget to check out how you can join us live as everyone here is giving a lively conversation here. You can check out how to do that, hometech.fm slash live.

Usually we start between 7 and 7 30 PM Eastern. I'm trying to bump that back a little bit so we can get it more of the international crowd, European crowd in here to help out with the show. I've got a big pick of the week that is, is custom integrator related. And man, it is,

it is actually really, really slick. This is the, the Crestron DM in a X. And, man, it is actually really, really slick. This is the Crestron DM-NAX. This thing is absolutely amazing. So here's the picture of it on the live stream there. Eight zones. It's got Spotify Connect, AirPlay built in, Pandora, SiriusXM, iHeartStreaming,

Amazon Alexa is built in. So you can just say, play such play. I don't know, Cardi B in the living room. And, and there you go. It's blasting away with 150 watts per channel power, a hundred, 500 watts in bridge mode. Holy moly. This is crazy. It looks like it has AES 67 IP audio. Is that Dante? I think that is. So like Dante digital audio built in. So you can actually put this on a Dante network or an AES network and send and receive the sources from this thing that you've got plugged into it around the house on the network. There's no more of like wiring a million,

you know, RCA cables in to loop them in and out of these amplifiers. This is every single thing I've ever dreamed of in an AV amplifier. Oh, yeah, check it out. It's got two coax and two digital inputs on it. And all these analog inputs and some Keystone ones or Phoenix ones for custom integration, $6,000, $6,000. How can that not be the pick of the week? Uh, amazing. That's, uh, the Crestron DMNAX and it's got a longer model number. I can't remember

it. Uh, it looks like they have, uh, if you go down to the bottom here, they've got a, Oh, here it is. N A X eight Z S a, and it says coming soon. They also have a 16 channel version on the way as well. This thing's amazing. This is, this is, this is great. You may say $6,000. That's expensive. But if you think about it kind of to do the same thing with Sonos, you'd, you'd pull up a Sonos amp times eight, I guess you need eight of them, uh, times what is it? Six 50. So that's about what? $5,200, something like that. $5,200, um, for eight Sonos amps. And you still got to rack all those up. So it's more than two are you, uh, to start off with. So I, I think. So I think that's a heck of a deal

for something you can integrate in with the rest of the Crestron system. It's got a full DSP built into it. I forgot to mention that. Man, what a cool piece. I wish more integration companies would follow along with that because that's really cool.

Chris Gamble in our chat saying, $6,000? That's a face bomb. No, that's a great price. That's a great, it's expensive for an eight zone amplifier, but with everything built into it, I think it's a good price.

Eric Brown bringing up, is this impacted by the chip manufacturer that burned to the ground? Um, I, I don't know. I would say, I would say I've heard some things about that. Um, there's a certain company that you can buy touchscreens from right now. And there's another touch touchscreen manufacturer that you can't buy any touchscreens from right now. And the reason for that is because the one, the first one decided they were smart and they would, they would buy all the, they would just buy all the chips. So from what I'm seeing, and this is kind of outside

of our industry news and industry reports is that these chip meant that there is a, a serious, serious, uh, issue with chip manufacturing right now. Um, and we're going to start feeling that pain. Um, we're going to start feeling that pain this week, uh, this year, uh, as we see products not being available, um, in general. Uh, and I was kind of warned about this kind of towards the end of last year, beginning of this year with some of the manufacturer partners. And I mean, there's, there's things that, that, that just the entire supply chain is kind of weakened by COVID. And then there's the, I can't remember. I think it's, there's a,

there's that foundry that did catch on fire in Japan. Definitely talked about that on the show before, but that happening, that was the only foundry that was making all these DSPs, but what it does is it puts a strain on the rest of the system. And there weren't too many other places to buy those from evidently. So I'm not sure if this is going to be like impacted by that particular DSP manufacturer in Crestron smart enough. They probably bought what they need, uh, to get this out into people's hands. So I wouldn't worry too much about that with Crestron other brands, keep an eye on them because we're going to be short people's hands. I wouldn't worry too much about that with Crestron. Other brands, keep an eye on them because we're going to be short product this year. I can guarantee that's going to happen. We already are.

We're already seeing some touchscreens not being on the market. So if you have any feedback, questions, comment, picks of the weeks or great ideas, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or you can visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out that online form. Do you want to give the big thank you to everyone who supports the show and especially

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Just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. And with that, I think we're going to call it a show this week. Thanks everybody for joining us. Looks like we had a handful of people join us in the live chat. Appreciate the conversation over there and keeping things going. I'm going to keep trying to bump this back a little bit more every week and see if I can get to that four o'clock hour Eastern. Maybe too early. I may have to bump it back into the middle of the night for some people, but if this doesn't work for you for the live feed, let me know and I'll see what I can do to accommodate it. Of course, the podcast will always exist on demand when you want to watch it. And of course, this video gets published on Facebook and YouTube

on demand as well. So with that, thanks very much, everybody. And we'll see you next week.