HomeTech.fm - Episode 347 - Roku's New Kit

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

This week on HomeTech: It's officially over for Harmony, or is it? Samsung switches to OLED, Sony goes to Netflix, and Roku launches 3 new products and a whole new OS packed with new features... All this and of course, the pick of the week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 16th, I think. Nothing like adjusting your audio chain at the very, like, literally nine seconds. Time to figure it out. No, I'm not recording, but now I am. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology and home automation. This week, we've got a couple of headlines and some news from Roku. We've got some new gear out, which is kind of cool, and a new OS.

Roku OS X. They didn't call it OS X. I don't know what's going on there, but... First, as I do every week, I want to remind everyone about the Home Tech Talks that we have going on. Last week, we had a really good one that we did on the Unify Masters class. I don't think I published that up.

So I need to get back over there and upload that over to the patron page to make sure everybody has access to that. For some reason, I think I forgot to do that. But it was actually really good. We had a really good discussion about all things Unify and mostly centered around like how to set up the wireless access points and that kind of thing. Just kind of tips and tricks and things that we learned along the way. And we actually learned some new stuff, which is actually the pick of the week this week. So don't forget to check that out.

This week, we got to move from, I accidentally scheduled a training for some reason at work. So I won't be able to do it Thursday. We're going to move it to Friday. Same time, same that channel, that kind of thing. And we're going to talk about dashboards, which I think would be kind of cool. I'm dashboard curious and I've never seen a dashboard that I've liked too much. And I don't know. I think I'm missing something when it comes to dashboards and how to set them up. I do like the HomeKit, the Home app dashboard. And I guess just because it's so simple and doesn't really offer that much customization.

But when I get into like the other dashboard programs, even some of the other HomeKit apps that offer dashboard features, I get a little overwhelmed and tend to not do too much with those. So with that said, oh, I do have some announcements to make this week. Uh, we had a couple of new patrons come on at the $5 level. So I get some big shout out on the show

here and, uh, uh, new patron TJ. Well, actually new old patron TJ, but, um, TJ, TJ, uh, goes way back. TJ and I go way back. We we've, uh, he used, he was one of the first patrons of the, on the show, uh, moved away from Florida. He was here in Florida, I think. And he moved away and I go way back. He was one of the first patrons on the show. Moved away from Florida. He was here in Florida, I think, and he moved away. And I hadn't heard from him in a long time. Glad to have him back. He jumped in the hub and was having some good conversations in there.

And then a new patron, Russ Shank. Thanks, guys, both. Thank you both for helping out with the show and ringing the bell. There we go. And helping the show out. Totally appreciate that for supporting the show, both long-term and short the bell. There we go. And helping the show out. Totally appreciate that for supporting the show, both long-term and short-term. Russ is just joining us, but TJ's been around for a while.

Both are in the hub now. And both have access to those home tech talks right there. So be sure to take advantage of those guys. And with that, let's jump into some Home Tech headlines. Well, it's no surprise to anybody who's been listening to the show for the past two weeks here, but the news officially came down that Logitech has now discontinued a line of Harmony Universal remotes. It's over. End of the line. End of the era, I guess. In a post on its support site, Logitech said that its remaining stock of Harmony remotes will continue to be available through retail channels until stocks run out, which by some

accounts they already have. And that it will continue to support the remote for the foreseeable future. And here's a quote. We plan to support our Harmony community and new Harmony customers, which includes access to our software and apps to set up and manage your remotes. We also plan to continue to update the platform and add devices to our Harmony database. Customer and warranty support will continue to be offered. So it's almost like they're not shutting down, but they're just not making the hardware anymore. I don't know.

It seems like Logitech has a history of this. And I want you to kind of think back way back into like 2000, like maybe 2006, 2007, somewhere in there. There was this company, it may have been before that, this company that made this little thing called Slim 3. I don't remember. It's like a strange name to it. They were bought by Logitech and Logitech made the squeeze box or maybe the squeeze box came first. I don't remember the squeeze box. Logitech had this little streaming box called the squeeze box around and you could set this

thing up and it could stream from, from services like Pandora, uh, Rhapsody, uh, maybe like a few radio services. And, and I mean, it was an okay like an okay product people there was a lot of people that liked it um i think there was some they had the ability to like customize the software a little bit um i know that it was kind of like forked out a little bit later or development kind of kept going on it because i know of there was there was a lot of companies that were still using the Squeezebox APIs and technologies to be able to utilize streaming audio in their own products. And if you go to mysqueezebox.com, it's still up and running. And it's got ancient Logitech branding and a broken TLS certificate,

but it's still running. And that's like saying something because they shut down way back in 2012. So almost 10 years later, that thing's still up and going. I mean, it is, but it isn't. You can't really have broken certificates on the internet these days and expect stuff to work. But there it is. If you want to go look at a piece of history that is still up and running, mysqueezebox.com. I don't know. Logitech, there's been like even my speculation that somebody could come along and buy this. And I don't know, like Logitech could probably make more money licensing its control database than they did making the Harmony remote. So maybe that's something that they're going to do. It says they're still going to add device support and kind of keep the development up. And, you know, that's kind of my day job. If you've got the right developers and people that

know the software inside and out and you're paying them, I mean, it's not hard to do. And once they do it once, they really don't, it's not like they have to program a million Harmony remotes that are out there. They just have to do it once. And if somebody has that TV, the new TCL TV that comes out and they want to have those good IR codes, they can learn those in and put them into their database. And I think they could probably license that database off too. I have a feeling that's what they do. I don't know. Whatever happens, it seems to be the end of the universal remote.

There's no other consumer choices available. And, you know, it's kind of the end of the saga of Harmony, unless something happens in the near future. I don't know, this story's lasted us three weeks here on the show. So it's not so bad. But, you know, the march towards input zero continues at a rapid pace. And there'll probably be more on that as we talk about some of the new technology, the new stuff out from Roku. Rumors from Samsung. According to a report from the Korean broadcaster MTN, Samsung may start producing OLED TVs. I have to be careful here because they usually do QLED, right? And the panels are going to be sourced by rival LG. The two companies reportedly inked a deal for Samsung to buy up to 1 million OLED panels from LG in the second half of 2021,

with up to 4 million panels in 2022. And Samsung is famously stuck with its QLED technology for high-end TVs. And though it's still one of the biggest manufacturers for OLED displays for smartphones, they've stuck with the LED technology on their flat panels. And so meanwhile, LG is committed to OLED and they're doubling, tripling down. They want to be the number one OLED brand out there for flat panels. And they've committed OLED for their expensive, you know, their high-end TVs. And also they supply for Sony and a few other manufacturers for their OLED panels. So not only will LG be supplying LG TVs, OLEDs, they'll be supplying Sony, they'll be supplying Samsung now and a couple other smaller manufacturers out there.

So big, big changes coming to the smart flat panel business. It seems like this comes and goes in cycles. I can remember years ago working at Circuit City and seeing that Panasonic was probably like $22,000, $23,000, $24,000 for like a 50-inch plasma showing up in the system. And we all kind of like stood around the terminal looking at, you know, how much commission you can make on that if you sold it. But yeah, that seemed like it was yesterday. And of course, plasmas are out, LCDs are in, LCDs are out, OLEDs in, or QLED. And now, I don't know. Who knows what's next? It seems like OLED's got some legs to it, especially since Samsung's switching to it especially since samsung's switching to it but uh i was kind of reading this article we'll put in here from in gadget says uh

some of this actually makes sense because everyone's shifting away from lcd technology on their high-end models and the lcd supply chain is already like driven by a few chinese companies and they listed them out i've never heard of them they're're like three, two, three character initials. I've never even heard of these companies like TCL, but not TCL. It's other companies. And it's rumored that Samsung was actually producing a hybrid QD OLED screen and they had some production issues with that. So they were actually, may have been forced to order some stuff from LG. Don't know. They could also like use OLED as a stopgap until their micro LED technology comes in. So like we've been seeing them come out with those products for a while now

and kind of the larger format TVs. And I think maybe as soon as that technology works its way down in price and in production, they may be able to wedge micro LED into more consumer drivendriven panels. But it looks like for the next couple of years here, we're all going to be relying on LG for their production for the higher-end TVs. It looks like everything's going OLED for the next couple of years. Some news from Netflix here and Sony. Netflix will get exclusive streaming rights to

all of Sony's upcoming movies. The company has announced a new agreement that gives the streaming giant exclusive rights to Sony's upcoming theatrical releases beginning in 2022. And according to The Hollywood Reporter, the five-year agreement will pay Sony about $1 billion. I bring up the pinky for that. With the deal, new Sony movies will go exclusively to Netflix following their theatrical release. So kind of a pattern that we've seen in the past. The deal covers blockbuster releases like Morbius Uncharted, as well as the new Spider-Verse sequels and a couple of other Spider-Man type movies that are coming out. Those are big blockbusters for Sony, big movies. So great deal for Netflix to keep people on their platform. It also includes some older films from Sony's catalog, but they didn't actually outline what those were. And Netflix will actually get first pass

at Sony's direct-to-streaming titles, which Sony has already said that they're going to have a number of those in the pipeline. So like I said, good for Netflix to keep people in, in the, uh, in their, in their, in, in house and watching. I know if there's a Spider-Verse, uh, I'll probably go see the Spider-Verse movie actually in the theater. Uh, now that we can, we can actually start getting out in two weeks, I can actually go out and into public, uh, public and, and, and, you know, not worry too much. I had my second shot on Monday. Woohoo! So yeah, hopefully you can get back to a theater. And we've got a couple

of dinner theaters around here that have been open for a little while at half capacity. So maybe we'll start partaking in those a little bit more. But good for Netflix and good for Sony for inking these deals and getting a billion dollars. All right. So big news today. This week, actually, Roku has introduced a trio of new devices this weekend, a new OS. And first, we'll talk about, all right, there's three new hardware pieces that we're going to talk about. First is a new $39.49 Express 4K Plus streaming device. It ships in mid-May. The Express 4K Plus replaces the Roku Premiere, pretty much, as the company's entry-level 4K player.

It has a faster processor, dual-band Wi-Fi, and increased internal storage. And plus, the Roku says now that you can attach a micro-USB Ethernet adapter if you prefer a hardwired connection, which is probably a good idea. Well, you know, unless you can't. Express4K is also the first Roku player to support HDR10+, which will come to the Roku Ultra as well after a future firmware update in that OS X. A stripped-down 4K Express player will be exclusively sold to Walmart for $5 less, $35. This model will also make its way to Canada, Mexico, and the UK. The only real difference is that it ships with a basic remote

rather than the voice remote that comes with the Plus. And the voice remote is actually something they came out with as well. They've had this for a while, but the big news on this one was Apple has worked out a deal with Roku that'll give the streaming video service its own shortcut button on the Roku Voice Remote Pro. And this is the first time the branded Apple TV Plus button has appeared on any remote control. Other than, you know, the custom remotes, I guess. Custom, you know, like the Neo remote. I know you could do that there. The remote, which features a rechargeable battery, a headphone jack for private listening, and two programmable shortcut buttons, and the usual branded buttons like Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and now Apple TV+. I did like seeing that they had a rechargeable battery.

I think that's a new feature on this one too. So it's kind of nice that you can recharge it rather than swapping out like some AAAs or something like that. The third last thing that they came out with was a soundbar. They're calling StreamBar Pro. They've had a StreamBar out before. They called the Roku Smart Soundbar. And this one is refreshed. It now includes Roku Voice Remote that we talked about

and a new virtual surround feature. And this one prices in at $179, $180. The StreamBar Pro will also be available to order from Roku's website in May, late May, and should start arriving in major retailers in June. And they said the virtual surround, well, we'll get to that here. The virtual surround is also coming to the smart soundbar with the software update as well. So I don't really, I'm like squinting at these. I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between these two things, these two products. And really and really maybe it's the price i don't know it just doesn't seem like there's much difference but

they roku also announced latest software roku os 10 which began rolling out and and start making its way to all supported vice devices in the coming weeks they got a couple new feature features here instant resume and so this is this is an interesting feature. Now streaming apps, they'll pick up right where you left off when you last exited. So if you're watching something, you exit the app, you come back a couple of days later, you pick back up, boom, you start back kind of like you'd expect to rather than having to go back through all the menus and work your way through. They noted that this seems to require some additional work on developers part, like to get, because it only works with a few apps, like the Roku channel is offering it, but none of the big players like Netflix or Prime Video

are supporting anything like that yet. So we'll have to see how that plays out. It sounds like a neat feature though. It sounds like a smart caching idea, like it downloads the movie and it's just sitting there ready to go when you get back into the app. Seems nice. Automatic Wi-Fi detection. Now, this is actually a really cool feature. And I'm not sure, I mean, if Apple did anything like this, maybe, but I don't, I'm not sure. This is, this basically, when you're setting up the Roku device, it, it, it, it looks at the wifi options in your house. And if you've got two networks that are running like 2.4 and a 5g network, um, Roku will recommend which one's the better option. And you may think, well, the 5g has always got to be the option. It's not actually. So if you've got the 5g router on the

other side of the house, sometimes you can have slower speeds because 5G doesn't penetrate through walls and the signal doesn't go very far as opposed to 2.4, which can punch through walls. You get slower speeds, yes, but at the end of the day, you really don't need the full, you know, 600 megabits a second or whatever it is from 5G that you're getting from 2.4. So like you just need a little bit of that bandwidth, but it's got to be a good, solid piece of bandwidth. You can't be sporadic in and out like the 5G band is if it's weak. So also as part of this smart automatic Wi-Fi detection that they're offering, if there's any buffering or stream interruptions, the device itself may pop up and say,

hey, why don't you jump over to the other network and get a better signal and be able and watch the show that you're trying to watch. Um, so I think this is really smart. A lot of people set these up, want to get on the 5g network or, you know, there's just setting it up. They don't know that they're setting it up on a 5g network and it may not have the best signal. And so this is a really smart on Roku's part to kind of like eliminate that confusion from, from the end user. And I just kind of like push it as an option. Like if you, if you want to, you know, want to connect to it later, if it may work out better, if you, if you need to use two and four or say, say it sees that your 5g signal is better, maybe it wants to switch to that.

Maybe it'll switch over to that. So, um, automatic games console configuration. So here, here's more of the death to the harmony type thing. Starting with Roku OS 10, when you plug in a console into Roku TV, a tile will change to the right name and the Roku TV will enter game mode. So depending on the Roku TV model used, the settings will get automatically configured and may include like HDR gaming, auto low latency mode, variable refresh rate, high frame rate, and THX certified game mode. All that may get turned on by plugging in the console. That's smart. That's automation right there. So it's all built right into the Roku TV and part of their software package. Great. AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support

will be extended to more devices. So I think they were on whatever the previous devices are. Now it's going to go on HD Roku streaming devices as well as the Roku Express and select HD Roku TV models. And then another couple of options here that you get to customize the TV channel guide for OTA. And so if you've got an antenna, you can go in and customize that guide a little bit and maybe delete a few channels that you don't want to watch. HDR 10 plus for Roku Ultra

and the new Roku 4K Plus, Express 4K Plus. And it also adds virtual surround, as we talked about, for the Roku Smart surround bar and the Stream Bar Pro. So a bunch of stuff from Roku. I am really excited to see them kind of moving stuff along. It's not often that you get so many new things out of one company in one week. It's

been quiet for a while, and Roku comes along and drops quite a few things. I noticed it from the remote story that came along, and then started digging deeper. And it's like, Roku's really knocked it out of the park. I think this is just getting better and better. And of course, yeah, Eddie's over there. You're still talking about the remote? Thanks, appreciate that. So there you go.

Still talking about the remote? Yeah, yeah, I'm still talking about the remote. It's unfortunate. But things like this, things like this remote from Roku and software offering are some of the things that are killing off, that have killed off the Harmony remote altogether. So, yeah, I'm still talking about it, but Harmony is kind of like, in my opinion, it's kind of like a canary, right? And I think as integrators, we kind of need to keep an eye on that because if the harmony goes, then all of the single room solutions go, right? Like you don't really need to have a control four remote anymore. And then, you know, at some point

you say, well, what is the point of having a control four system? And then, you know, things start, things start disappearing off the plate for the integrator to sell and install. So I know that you get a lot more options out of there than you do out of Roku, but you start mixing in things like HomeKit support. I don't know. All these point devices are getting pretty close to what you could do with a basic control four system, you know, and may be better for some people in some cases. So something to keep an eye out on. We'll, of course, we'll, of course, keep following the Harmony Remote, Eddie, just for you. We're going to keep on that and keep watching what's going on. If something happens, you'll hear about it here first. You know, all the links that we talked about tonight can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 347. Yeah, that's right. Don't forget, you can join us live starting

on Wednesdays, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. Pick of the week. Pick of the week here. And I may have to adjust this a little bit. Yeah, I do. Okay. So pick of the week in our home tech talk towards the end, I was like, well, I need to go look at the UI website and see what's going on over there. And I went over there and I scrolled down to the bottom and found this configurator thing that they have. So this is called the UI Designer, I think is what they're calling it. Yeah, Design Center, Unify Design Center. This is wild. This is like, if you do a lot of Unify,

this may be something to check out because it kind of mirrors a lot of the design tools that I had as a professional integrator and I continue to have like access to as a, as a distributor for, I mean, we do like heat maps and stuff where ruckus all the time we pay for software to do this with. So yeah. This is something to keep an eye on because it's actually pretty good. You, you can, it's kind of hard to describe and see in here, but basically you drop in a floor plan into it. You can go in and then basically set up your walls and your dividers. So here I'm going to just draw this, whatever, this long 59 foot divider thing. And you know, you drop on your access

points. They've got all of their products in here actually. So you can drop in the routing switches, access points, cameras, their access control system that I keep forgetting that they have that looks actually pretty cool. Voice over IP, you can actually run your cables and show them, you know, mark on the plans here where the cable routes are going to go drop in a rack, put in wall sockets, that kind of thing. It's kind of just a basic design tool. But then what you get out of it, it's actually, you know, it's basic design tool, but also get you over here to the sales tool, right? So like you can actually purchase all of the products if they're in stock, the little caveat there, if they're in stock,

you can actually, you know, just go in and, uh, and buy all the products for there. But what it does do as well is, um, there is a download, you can export it as a PF. And let me get back over to that. And the PDF will actually have all the, you know, the sales materials on it, like for the heat map and everything on there. And I think that it's just, it's just a really good looking thing here. So like you've got the floor plan, you've got your heat maps, it can show you kind of where the dead spots might be. You can see on here, like the greenish areas are probably too low for the, this is the 5G coverage. And for 5G, you want to have more than 65, negative 65 dB. So, you know, a higher value than that,

or you're going to start having problems. And you can see that even with, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six access points here, there's a couple of spots that you wouldn't expect to be dead. And then you may want to add in another access point or one of their wall access points just to get a little bit of extra signal in that area. And it may help out. It also does the surveillance, like video surveillance coverage. And it does something really cool that I used to do on my quotes when I was drawing in Vizio. I would draw these little triangles out and I would extend them out and basically try and show what the coverage would be for the cameras.

Because cameras are tough. It's hard to explain to someone who's not seen a camera. So I would actually go out to most of the homes I worked on, grab a ladder, grab scaffolding, whatever I needed, and climb up to where the camera would be, take a picture and basically adjust that picture to the, you know, the zoom range it was and attach it onto something that looked like this, where it had like the effective range of what that camera is going to be. Because not all, you know, you may see 200 feet with your camera, but the detail is going to get cut off at 40 feet. So kind of, you know, there's, there's ways to visually express that. And I think this does a pretty good job. Um, pretty good job of showing that off. Um, and then how, you know, there's walls and stuff that can actually block cameras

mainly. And it just does a pretty good job of that too. And then of course you get a little rack, uh, elevation on here all in all for a free tool. Uh, pretty good, pretty good. I can't, can't complain. Um, I wish something like this existed when I was an integrator for me that, you know, Oh wait, D tools did. So yeah, I did a lot of this, the manual, manual and hard way. So, um, I don't know, thought it was pretty cool. Um, thought I'd suggest throwing out there and see if anybody hadn't seen it, uh, maybe go check it out. Cause I hadn't seen it. And until we had our Unify masterclass there in our Home Tech Talks, I don't think anybody that was in the call had

heard of it either. So yeah, check it out. It's pretty cool. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for the show, give us a shout. Email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. And with that, I want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as 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

at the Hub and our home tech talks. So check that out. And thank you again, TJ. And there are two patients at the top, TJ and Russ for jumping in there. If you can't help the show financially, totally understand that. I appreciate just a five-star rating

in iTunes or a positive rating in a podcast app of your choice. And with that, I think we're going to wrap it up. Looks like everybody's getting in. Greg says he's late, but not pregnant. I'm going to go ahead and add that to the broadcast. There you go. And Gavin, thanks very much. Gavin's saying good show as usual.

Appreciate it. Hey, Greg, there you are and gavin thanks very much gavin saying good show as usual appreciate it hey uh greg there you are thanks for swinging by made it just in time for me to wrap it up so appreciate it guys thanks for uh thanks for popping into the show here at the end and uh we'll talk to you all next week have a good one