HomeTech.fm - Episode 393 - What the Flirc Did You Just Say?

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

On this week's show: More button follow up, Bond brings buttons, Switchbot gets HomeKit, Apple clarifies confusion, Gavin drops the F bomb as Plex launches HTPC software, Amazon is just getting creepy, our TV show roundup for the summer, and a beautiful UI Pick of the Week.

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 1st. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. From Powell, Ohio, I'm TJ Huddleston. And from Pickering, Ontario, I'm Gavin Campbell. Welcome to the Home Tech Podcast, a podcast about all aspects of home technology, home automation, all the good stuff. Got a bunch of home tech headlines here. Actually, we don't really have anything.

It's very, very very very slow right now um but but guys guys i don't know if you know but we we kind of got yelled at i felt it like i get depressed when richard gets yelled i don't know why when he yells at us i get depressed but i'll let you break it it's all my fault i looked up the wrong item got the the wrong price. You know, that, uh, that Leviton, uh, scene controller we talked about last week.

Uh, I mentioned that it was $110 and it's actually $65. So, okay. I'm glad it wasn't me that made the mistake. I'm glad I didn't make the mistake. Uh, Richard's mad at you.

Yeah. Well, it, it, it wasn't, I, I made the mistake of saying that it was also a dimmer and it's not a dimmer it's it's a switch and and the scene controller too so it kind of has the same features as the zoos that we were talking about um but I don't know I like the button layout a little bit better and the buttons are bigger so that's good but the price is better too at 65 like that's that's much fewer dollars a button uh i'm not gonna figure it out but what was it 16 a button or something like that yeah we broke it down and and it's engraved buttons too we have to include the engraving too so when the engraving yeah when the zoos worked out i think we said it was 11

something but then you add another five six bucks for for engraving. You know, it starts to get a little more than, you know, the price. So, you know, Richard pointed that out to us, too. It doesn't have the engraving price listed. Well, it doesn't have any price listed on here. See, this is this is what this is what I their website's not very good. So we we kind of jumped the gun on talking about the. Now, here's here's our other problem is we don't we're just like yeah it's that decor a smart wi-fi scene controller thing that's second gen no it's called the d2scs-1bw makes sense that just rolls right off the tongue i'm not saying uh that's hard to

remember anything but yeah anyway one of these like electrical part number companies came out with this cool product. We talked about it. Got a couple of details wrong. Sorry, but I'm blaming their website because their website's actually horrible. It's hard to figure read and figure out what the specs are on here. Well, if we're being honest, I blame Richard. He should have wrote this article and gave it to us so that way we could talk about it i mean even in the article it tells you that custom engraved buttons in any available color should cost around twenty dollars a set and blank color change kits are around six dollars so that's more information

the leviton gave us so exactly so is it was it 60 was it 60 plus 20 so it's 80 it's 85 then 85 um and what we got six buttons i know we got four buttons on there right that is going to bring $60 plus $20. So it's $80. It's $85 then. $85. And what, we got six buttons? No, we got four buttons on there, right? That is going to bring our grand total to $21.25 per button. That's good. It's not bad. And let's be honest. Half the people that buy this are never going to get it engraved.

It's going to be a $65 cost and that's it. Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you like the home, the, the, the, the, the control for stuff, like getting it engraved, like really finishes it off. It makes this stuff actually usable. Um, and for whatever reason, like it's never done. It just never gets done. So yeah, I was just trying to think, I think those control for dimmer keypad combo things are like maybe 250 bucks retail. Wow. Maybe they're, maybe they trying to think. I think those Control 4 dimmer keypad combo things are like maybe $250 retail.

Wow. Maybe they're $299. They're so expensive. I'm just going to say, let's just say they're $299 just for good cause because you're going to have other stuff. So each button, I know the engraving is $5 a button. So that's another $30 on there. So $329 for that. And we'll just say divide by six.

That's $55 a button for the Control 4. So that's what we're comparing it to, and that's why I'm like, I don't even think the $100 price that DJ mentioned is very expensive. It's still a pretty good deal compared to what is out there before. Yeah, and what other consumer option can you get engraved? Yeah, Levitan, the insteon stuff that we talked about and um i guess the zoo stuff i don't know can you get no no not that i know of just invest in a good label maker no one's gonna notice oh my gosh yeah i said that leave it on there for

20 years oh man well you know what i just want want to thank Richard who listens to the show for pointing out everything that TJ and Seth do wrong. I wait for it every week. I'm just sitting by. I'm like, oh, man. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. Actually, this home episode had one of the product managers from Leviton on there. So that's probably how you got a lot of the details yes um that we couldn't pull up but uh a good catch i'm gonna

put a link to that in the show note if you haven't if you want to go learn more about that product and what they're doing over at leviton i'd listen to that because it's actually pretty good i thought overall leviton actually it's kind of like a dark horse of uh like lighting control and just lighting in general like Like they have that, um, that breaker box system that is like a smart breaker box that exists, I believe, if I'm thinking of the right company, cause they all kind of the same, but like, it's, it's a really cool setup. And like there, I get like these, um, YouTube ads or Facebook ads or whatever for this, like company that's revolutionary, revolutionary is using the smart breaker box.

And they've got these like whizzing around in circle, like computer mock-ups of their product. And it's like, well, yeah, but you can actually go buy this actual product that exists right now that does everything you're just does at, you know, at the electrical, you know, the supply house right now. So I don't know. Levitan, pretty cool company. Check them out and check out the podcast over there. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. With all that said and all that follow-up done,

guys, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it. All right. Well, speaking of engraved keypads, Albrea, Albrea? Albrea? Is that how you say it? Anyway, the makers of the Bond Homebridge have

a pre-order on their website for a six-button engravable keypad called the Bond Sidekick. The keypad communicates directly with Sumfy, Roll-Ease, Duya, Nice, and other brands of wireless shades and mounts flush on the wall or in a work rock. So, got a couple of install options there for you.

The Sidekick also has up to five channel control and gives you the ability to set up shade limits without the manufacturer's remote. It's a $79 sidekick. It's available on Bond's website for pre-order today. And they have a funny little link to a third party engraving site and charges $40 for the buttons to be engraved. So this, this, this keypad without the engraving brings it down to $13 a button. But if you do get the engraving, it's back up to the $20 per button. So this is how the show is going to be. We're basically going to take any new equipment that comes out and take the number of buttons

that we see on it and divide it by the price. And that's going to be the value that we see. If your PPB isn't below $15, I don't want anything to do with it. That's our show title right there. Oh God. Yeah, this, this looks pretty nice.

You know, it looks like the same form factor as the Lutron Caseta Pico remotes. You just install it on top of, you know, a LV one or another electrical outlet, whatever you have there. It doesn't have any physical wiring. It just talks wirelessly to the shades. Looks like a nice solution. I don't know if it's worth getting a grade for forty dollars, but if you're using it and you have a lot of shades to control, then why not?

Yeah, I could see if you had more than one window in a room and each one of the buttons either was assigned to one of those windows or did something special with scenes um you know like you wanted your shears open but the other one's closed like you could you could definitely you can definitely don't want to have a bunch of buttons there that somebody's just mashing on and with shades it's kind of slow you kind of have to wait for them to like move around so um i i could see engraving would be kind of helpful here. What I do like is this replaces that ugly, like, Somfy wand thing. So ugly. So ugly.

If only you could just replace Somfy with it. Just the entire company with this keypad. Yeah. Yeah, the Somfy wand mounts to your wall with, like, a screw. It has, like, a little hanging thing, like a coat hanger thing. And it's a little circle on the end of the remote, and you just dangle the remote right there on the end of it. And you can press it on the wall, I guess, if you want it to, but I guess it's designed to where you can pick it up and walk across the room and, and use it. But it's not a good remote, first of all, and it

doesn't mount very well either. So Gavin, what do you think about this? I think it's kind of cool because I don't have any of the compatible blinds, i do have some hunter douglas blinds and what they give us is this little round puck type thing that you melt on the wall and it's not it's kind of ugly i would like to replace it with something like this this is so much nicer looking in my kitchen so i can see a need i can see a need for this but i don't have any of these. I should check if I'm on there as the compatible. Yeah, it says check. I was looking through the FAQ to see if there was anything on here that tells you exactly what it is.

It only has like Sumfee, Duya, Rollies, and Nice on here. But it says Duya and Nice are in beta. So that's not helpful. RTS only for Sumfee. But yeah, Hunter Douglaslas would be great because yeah that i forgot about that one just kind of blanked it out of my mind but yeah if the something one's ugly that one's horrendous like it's not a very good remote um and this would look way better like this this is a much easier like the i think both of those have like blinking lights on them that you have to like press to select the right channel. And then that's how you open and close the window.

Like on the Sumfee, it's got one through four lights. And if you can press this one button to toggle the lights. So if light one is on that shade one, if light two is on that shade two, and you can press it until all the lights light on and that's all the shades. So yeah, it's, it's kind of a, just, just a horrible, I mean shades. So, yeah, it's kind of just a horrible. I mean, it makes sense, but it's just not a good remote. I hate that. It does not make sense. Somfy is like every time that I have to do a Somfy job, it always takes like two or three times as long.

I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm just inept or something, but. No, no, I can tell you what it is. It's the shade installer that installs them just like leaves you with the technology. All right, here you go. Set it up, buddy. And they walk walk out that's that's what's happened to me every single time um and like oh you're you're automating it here you go and he just leaves and now you're stuck setting up the you know the the how far the shade yeah a little

box oh my god 485 kill me now i remember when i got my hunter douglas you know i asked the lady about um you know automation like she came to the house to measure and give us samples and i said hey what's the automation like in this you know do you have a hub how does it work and she had no clue she had no clue i went and did the research and i had to let her know this is what you sell right you sell these hubs that now allow me to integrate it into blah blah you know so i love automated shades ever since we've had it i loved i love them um i i also by looking at the faq i never really occurred to me but yes they do work when the power goes out

in my case because everything's battery powered so like i never ever thought about that so it's kind of cool like that but if if anyone's considering getting automated shades do it it's a game changer it's a good point yeah that that yeah that's a great great point because yeah the hardwired shades would would go down but the battery powered ones just gotta throw a really really big ups on them not yeah it's only like either like 24 volts i think or 12 i don't know how much actually draw my mine go through um i think each one has about 12 batteries in it but i changed them once a year right so i have three of them 12 batteries once a year i just look for batteries on sale throughout the year and grab them and always have them in stock i was trying

to find a picture of this uh sanfi remote mounted on the wall and i think they're actively trying to hide it i can find that i can find a picture of the little like knob thing it hangs on but i can't actually find a picture of it on the wall so pretty pretty ugly yeah that's pretty cool uh it also communicates uh or it also can communicate back to the bond bridge pro and provide feedback into that like state feedback into that so um there's all sorts of stuff you can do with that because the pro kind of has a bunch of integration options that kind of hang off of it. I know it integrates with a bunch of the control systems that are out there.

And maybe even the Bond Bridge does as well. But the Pro has like the PoE power thing. It's a lot more expensive, but it's kind of like their integrator version. But the Bond Bridge is kind of like the consumer $100 DIY version. But I think other than like range, they're basically, and PoE power, they're basically the same. But a cool company.

They're always doing fun things. I like to keep an eye on them and I'm glad to see this float across the moat today so we can talk about buttons again. It's always good to talk about buttons here. Well, moving on here here speaking of talking about buttons and impressing them uh right ahead of the big matter launch switchbot is announcing home kit compatibility for no not not the toilet thing it's just the switchbot plug mini um so yeah

you can't say siri flush the toilet yet. It's going to happen though. Yeah. The $15 plug is probably the lowest HomeKit compatible device I've seen. I really can't think of anything else that's cheaper than 15 bucks, but it also works with Alexa, Google Assistant, If This Then That, that, that, that, that, smart things, Clova. I don't even know what that is, as well as some other integrations like Siri shortcuts, which probably isn't really relevant or needed anymore now. It's gone full HomeKit, so that's pretty cool. The SwitchBot

plug mini is now shipping and can be purchased over at SwitchBot's website. $15 and you can get a 2-pack and a 4-pack or something like that as well. Not bad. It looks nice. I wonder if it actually takes up like two outlets that's one of the problems i have with a couple of the singlet wi-fi outlets i have right now is they just take up two plugs um unless you get like one of the little tiny extension cables or something i thought they

had designed it to not like cover um both outlets yeah the pictures of them show it's pretty small like it's it's smaller than the wemo ones which were pretty small as well no no use for me but they look like a nice solution for somebody well i know that somebody might be gavin because he's absolutely in love with with switchbot right i i just find that they're accompanied with some of the ugliest devices but most practical devices so like their lock is with some of the ugliest devices, but most practical devices. So like their lock is like it's the ugliest thing, but I get why it works and why people would buy it and why they would install it if you're living in a condo or something like this. Right. I watched a video recently this week where they were interviewing their CEO. I can't remember where I saw it, but he was talking about, you know, devices they're working

on coming out with. And some of them are like, you know, those switches that you overlay your old switches, you know, they're coming out with some of they're working on those. They're working on their own blinds. Of course, everything looked ugly, but it's so practical, you know, and I wouldn't be surprised if they come out with the switchbot toilet flusher or something like that or you know you can integrate it with alexa so alexa listens for when you're done and auto flushes the toilet you know like you know when you're finished you say ah my leg is dead my leg is dead you know then that's the sign for it to flush the toilet i mean don't they have i think they have, they don't have them yet. I thought they had like air quality sensors, but I don't,

I don't see one on the website right now. I think it was built into one of those other sensors. The little, yeah, the little meter things that they have. Yeah. I think so. I think you might be right. Yeah. Cause there's like a humidifier too. Yeah. I don't know. This seems like a pretty cool product. I also see that it includes like a, I remember the, yeah, I don't know. This seems like a pretty cool product. I also see that it includes like, uh, uh, I remember the, the, the, the marketing for this when they announced it a couple of months

back, it had an energy chip inside of it and you can do energy monitoring as well, which is not supported on matter. No, no. But one of the things you can do with this is it can tell if, if, if something is turned, like a lamp has turned physically on or off, uh uh you know so like it's kind of like the reverse of of the lighting control that we're you and i are thinking of like if you had just a lamp that you wanted to turn on that could actually trigger something in automation if if that is surfaced in home kit or any any of the other um devices it may not be surfaced in the main home kit app but it might be surfaced in like other third-party apps that can get down and find those variables and watch them that kind of thing so cool product 15 bucks not not a bad price i i'm i'm loaded up on wemos though so i

don't i don't need any of these uh for whatever reason i ended up with like four or five of those wemo like little small skinny ones yes yep yeah and they work they work well enough but i never i like i think i have one on one lamp that's actively being used but the rest of them are for like christmas time where the christmas lights are up and tree lights are up and that kind of thing so they just kind of disappear and then i have to install them and firmware update them every year. It's part of the holidays now. Yeah. I usually have all the smart outlets I need, but for some reason around Christmas time, I never have enough. So, right. Right. Well, you go over here and get like a, a 10 pack of these things and yeah, you'd be good to go for a while. All right. Well, let's move on here. Um, speaking of HomeKit as well, kind of like a bunch of little small stories here. Um, we discovered back when

they announced iOS 16 that the, for, for iPads to be a home hub, a HomeKit home hub, uh, was going to disappear in iOS 16. Uh, so it turns out that's not quite the full story it's going to be going around back and forth and finally Apple has kind of come forward and tried to clarify I think this may be the second or third time I've seen Apple try to clarify what exactly they're doing here and they're being shifty about it guys so let's I'm going to read what they wrote here and in this story but listen to this it's kind of weird they're not losing support for what it can already do, but you won't get an important update. That'll be available later. So here's a quote from the company, quote, iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 will continue to support the iPad as a home hub

with no loss of functionality. Okay. This is Apple spokesperson, Catherine Franklin said in a statement to the verge and says, while this seems promising on its face, there is a big asterisk there. Apple is planning on planning to introduce a new architecture to the HomePod app and iPadOS 16, and the iPad won't be able to support that architecture while being a home hub. So it's kind of like, is this the Matter thing? Is that what they're talking about? Can these iPads not work as a home hub with Matter? This doesn't make any sense.

iPads are incredibly powerful. I don't know what the difference is between what a HomePod could do and an iPad. This is so strange. It sounds like they're trying to say something without saying something in this, you know, they're trying to say, yeah, you can, but we can't tell you why it's not going to work in the near future. So we'll just wait. I'm sure it will come out soon enough a couple months from now i was kind of always surprised that they allowed you to do that um to use the ipad as a home kit

hub i just kind of always assumed they would make you buy an apple tv um just because it's another sale on an item um and it's a dedicated device for like an iPad, but it obviously works. So what does it make sense to me is there's not like there's not like a HomePod that has like a more simple version of iPadOS or something on it where it just kind of does like the home stuff and notifications, that kind of thing. Like that could be something that exists because it obviously exists with with Google products. It obviously exists with Amazon. Seems to be pretty successful with them. I don't understand why that doesn't exist with, with Apple. So maybe, maybe they're coming out with that and that's why they're pulling back on the iPads. They're just going to have this different experience, um, based on a

different device. Uh, and yeah, you can trigger stuff from the home app on your phone and you can still do that essentially with with the iPad. But those those devices are going to be more interface driven rather than functionally driven with like like as a hub. It's weird to me that the iPad can't do it. It's just it's so strange because the iPad is like very, very powerful. Like it's, I have a computer here that essentially got an old iPad chip put, you know, put in it. And it's like the fastest computer I've ever owned. So it's just, it's really strange that they would go this way. But, um, I don't know. It's this new architecture that they keep talking about. And it says it's more efficient, more reliable experience. Um, so they're, they're going to pull back on, on, on letting you do that. And it's not the end of the world. Like it's more efficient more reliable experience um so they're going to pull back on on

letting you do that and it's not the end of the world like it's a to get a home pod it's like 100 bucks these days right maybe a little bit less um if you catch them on sale but it's it's just strange that i they're they would pull back a feature that's kind of been around since the beginning maybe because the ipad can like wander off or turn off or go into like a, a low power saving mode and the home pods, they, they're always plugged in. Like, so that that's a solid hub that you're always communicating with. I don't know. It's weird. Just a weird one. Yeah. And there's been some rumors floating around too,

that they are working on a newer, a big home pod, you know, kind of replace the original one that came out. So maybe they're waiting a little bit and they're going to do both changes at the same time. They should, the, the old home pods are pretty good. There was a lot of hype around them when they first came out. I went, I went and bought one at the Apple store, listened to it and said, okay, I mean, it sounds as good as it sounded as good as like a Sonos S3 to me. Cause I have like three of those. So I knew exactly what those to sound like. And, and it, it, it does as good as like a Sonos S3 to me because I have like three of those so I knew exactly what those to sound like and it does a good job

but it wasn't worth the price, the premium that they were attaching to it. So I ended up returning them and then I bought two of them for like the same price later on. So I've got two of them and they work fairly well but not actually as good as the little HomePod Mini so whatever the technology they have in the HomePod

Minis, they slap that into a HomePod, a bigger speaker or something, I think it'd be pretty good. And I think they really do need to put some kind of interface on there, whether it's like a dumbed down, like Apple controlled interface for home and like home automation, notifications, calendar, that kind of thing. They could easily do that and just have like a countertop, like iCountertop OS or something, you know, not iPad OS, not iOS. iCountertop. I'm leaving that there for Apple marketing. They can have that one for free.

It's kind of like the Microsoft Surface. David in the chat brings up a good point, you know, internal battery life concerns in regards to using the iPad as a home kit hub. And that kind of makes sense to maybe, maybe that's an issue. I know that when we were using like the iPort docking systems, you know, after two or three years, they would overcharge and possibly have the battery swell on them. So maybe, you know, maybe that is a real concern that nobody really pays attention to. Right, right. You think that the devices will be able to better manage that? Or maybe Apple could figure out that, hey, it's been three years and this device has never been taken off the charger. Maybe I should, you know, exercise the battery here so it doesn't explode. But I don't know. A weird story.

A bit of a mystery. We'll just have to wait and see what happens with matter this later on this year. And, and maybe, maybe we'll get some different, I, um, I home, what are they called? Uh, HomePod devices, uh, that in different form factors, but yeah. All right. Here's another strange one. I don't get this. It's time to party like it's 2008 because Plex has announced this week that they're going to release a home theater PC app, HTPC. Is that really a thing in 2022? Don't hate on the HTPC. All right, so here's what they named it. I'm really killing it with the marketing names tonight it's

called the plex htpc app okay um it can run on a dedicated mac windows or linux computer and gives users access to plex over the over the air dvr service your personal media library and plex's own free to content catalog um it offers the same full screen interface as plex existing apps for smart tvs and streaming players and you can navigate with a keyboard or game controller i just i this is really really a weird one gavin uh i have some notes here about like what plex has done over the years but like like you, you, you actually, out of all of us, you probably are the only one. I don't know. TJ may have one, but like, you have a home theater PC on just about every single TV. Yeah. Yeah.

All my TVs are like little mini Dell boxes running windows and Cody has the front end. And I don't, what happens? It sounds like Plex wanted to get away from this, right? And the HTPC community, you know, was up in arms and made a loud enough noise that Plex said, okay, okay, we'll release an app for you guys. And that was great of them. I don't think the HTPC is dead. I still think it got a lot of life in it. I wish more people would release better apps for it. I'm looking when I think of Netflix. Netflix has, they have a Windows app, but you can't control it via like a keyboard or remote or

anything easily. Like you need a mouse, right? For the Plex, for people that are thinking about it, you don't necessarily need a keyboard. You can get a Flirk adapter for your PC if you ever wanted to. What did you say? Flirk. You've never heard of Flirk? I mean, this is a family show, man. What the Flirk?

No, it's a little USB dongle. And all it does is it translates any remote button into a keyboard key press. So you can assign any button to any keyboard key press. And you can then control. That's how I control Kodi. You can control your Plex with that. Honestly, it's one of my favorite devices because I use my Harmony remotes with it. And it leaves me with unlimited programming of the remote. I can do almost anything on my PC with it and it leaves me with like unlimited you know programming of the remote i could do almost anything on my pc with it but um good on plex to acknowledge the htpc crowd and the fact that they

put all that effort in to release a new app shows how big the market is for it still yeah i mean it for the most part it looks like the front end for plex right i mean it looks actually looks a lot cleaner um but here's here's what I'm getting confused. You said you use Kodi for the front end. Yes. So obviously there's something else that you – so you use Plex as well. You've talked about it in the past. Plex for just media management.

No, I use MB as my media manager. So on the server, I run an MB server, and that does all the media management. So it keeps my libraries in check, keeps my users in check, et cetera, et cetera. And then Kodi, the front end just presents the information because I prefer the customization and how it presents things on the front end. And it works a lot better on the PCs than their app. Got it. Okay. So I'm wondering if they're going to tie in like with with with cody you can

tie in mb yep does cody have any kind of like cody server where you can manage your movies or no it's just a front end piece no cody doesn't have a you can get a docker that's like headless but it's not the nicest thing to work with especially when it's a shared database etc etc not the nicest thing to work with, especially when it's a shared database, et cetera, et cetera. So the best thing to do would be to run like a server management software. Like you can do Plex, you could do MB, you could do what's the other one, Jellyfin. And then they have integrations with Kodi that will sync the data when you log into Kodi. And then you can use Kodi as your, to present the information. Yeah. So that's what I, it has me kind of scratching my head on this because Plex is kind of like, so Plex started off as you're just your media server and you put, you ripped a movie off of a disc, a DVD or Blu-ray

or whatever, and put it in a folder or actually just, you just named it right. It's, it's really comes down to the name with Plex. It can go out and figure out what that movie is based on the name and download all of like the cover art and all the pretty stuff. And it gives you a nice, pretty interface there. Um, and, and can somewhat organize things for you too. There's, there's a bunch of different plugins and things that were kind of like hacked together over the years that, that go on top of it. But, um, slowly they've been kind of like expanding out recently and, and recently and changing what they do. We talked about a little bit about the, like the, the, the streaming, like you don't even have to have a media server. Like you don't have to have hard drives and, and, and figure,

have to figure out how to rip your discs or anything like that anymore. You, all you have to do is download Plex and you can get in there and you can like start watching their library of movies that are like ad supported. And what else they, they added like, Oh, if you do have the hard drives, then they added like over the air recording.

And I think you can actually hook that up to like one of those like a cable card versions here in the States and, and record cable. Maybe I'm not, I'm not sure. Yeah. So it's like, it's almost like a TiVo at that point,

like your own personal TiVo. So, I mean the whole goal of Plex has been like a one-stop shop and have everything kind of like built into one place with a nice interface. But what I just don't understand about this home theater PC part is like, okay, well, so that app runs on like tons of devices, like tons of like client devices. It runs on like all, all the media players, like Roku, Amazon, Apple, it runs on TVs. Like you'll see it on like LG TVs. You can just run it natively there. And it connects to that, that server that's

holding the files and, and reads the library off of that and makes a nice interface up on the screen. But this thing, this home theater PC app, is that interface that would normally run on your TV, but it's going to run on a dedicated computer. And I just don't know what, like it seems like that dedicated computer could be more robust in how it works. Like right now, if I go to my Plex and I have like that TJ, we were talking about that,

like, I forget what they call it, like a universal dashboard guide or something like that. You go into that and you hit like, whoa, I want to watch this movie. And it kicks you over to Netflix. Like now I'm out of Plex because I was watching it on Apple TV and it automatically launched it over to Netflix. But now I'm in the Netflix app. And to go back to the menu, I was, there's no like navigation on the Apple TV. You got to close the Netflix app.

You got to go back into Plex, You could pick up where you started from. And it's kind of a pain. But it seems to me like that home theater PC could actually launch, possibly launch something in it that plays the Netflix video natively within Plex. It could be within a browser or whatever. But like you wouldn't have to see any of that skin or Chrome around the edges of the browser. It would just be like full screen video straight from Netflix.

So it seems like they could really lock down their interface if they, if they really wanted to. And the interface looks way better than what I have for Plex media too. It looks really, it looks really good. Oh, that home home theater PC can also serve multiple purposes. So it could be a gaming PC as well. And they just want to use it for a plex you know most of the time and then when they want to kick in a game they just exit plex and play their

game on it right so it's instead of having multiple pcs in that room they just have one right so it's not a dedicated thing it's just in this case it's just a program that's running on windows mac or linux and they just they fire that up when they want to watch plex yeah yeah and you kind of with a home PC, you also have a lot of control. Like, if you buy one of those Android boxes that, I guess a lot of them may support HDR now, for example. I don't know if they all come with the HDMI 2.0 or 2.1 or whatever you need to support HDR. Will they play HDR? I don't know. But if you have a home theater PC, you just throw in the right video card and you got HDR content now on. And I'm a big

fan of HDR now. I was just introduced to it like literally last month. And I'm now loving my HDR content. And you have control. I upgraded my little HD PC. I got HDR content of 60 Hertz, 4k, and it's beautiful. Yeah, that's a good point. I can't upgrade the video card in my Apple TV or my, my Roku stick thing that just has an HDMI output. Like if, if I want to go to the next greatest technology that, that comes out with HDMI, those video cards are probably, the bleeding edge most of the time. Uh, and, and it's just a driver update for those. Whereas the Apple TV, I mean, they'll never update it, but finally they'll come out with something that's compatible and charge me $200 for it or $300 for, for it. And it's only going to work when they decide it needs to work. So yeah,

that's, that's a good point. TJ, do you have any home theater PCs? I don't. You know, I've always kind of wanted one, but I knew I would regret it because I'm just a simple user. You know, I just want to buy a small little box. I want to plug it in and use, you know, a dedicated remote for it. And I know you can do that with an HTPC, but it's just a lot more effort than I want to put into it. I just want to go to like some random app store and download whatever app I need, log in and then be done with it. And whenever I think of HT, you know, an HTPC, I always think of like a larger, you either go like with a larger custom computer, that way you can upgrade like the graphics card and the solid state and everything like that. Or you go with something like the like an Intel Nook, which is great, but you're not

going to upgrade at all outside of like the memory or the storage. So it's just a little bit more investment that I usually want to spend. And if you want the simple, yes, those little boxes, little Android boxes, you can't beat them. Right. But when you want to start getting a little more advanced, and this is why I have HTPCs on my TVs, because I do things like if the doorbell rings, it shows me the cameras all on my TVs. Right. That's all done through Kodi interface. I created it, et cetera, et cetera. You know, a little more advanced like that. My HTPCs, I mentioned they were small little Dell boxes. I run a Dell 3060 where the GPU built into the chip can handle HDR, et cetera, et cetera. The only extra thing I had to do was buy a little HDMI port for it.

Right. And that just goes in the back. And that gives me HDMI 2.0 that allows me to stream that stuff to the TV. But it was relatively inexpensive and it works really well. Yeah. I mean, this product is is I'm like kind of laughing like who's this for and it's like the power users that are inside the power users like because if you're dealing with plex and going through all the complications like it's not a complicated program once you understand what they're doing um it's actually they've done a really good job making something quite difficult really easy to to use when it works, because

sometimes mind breaks and I get, you know, hey, I can't watch cartoons. But they've done a good job of making something that generally when you go sit down and watch TV, it's there, it works, it's reliable. And the app is easy to navigate through and figure out. And it works. And if you have a smart TV, you know, you don't even need a box at all. You'll have the MB app. You'll have the Plex app on your smart TV and you can just watch it through there. And it will do HDR and all the fun stuff because it's built into the TV. So that's one thing to consider when you start looking at things like this.

If you just want the basic thing, look at the apps in the TV and then you don't need to buy any other extra box. No, don't tell people that they need a separate streaming box. The built in TV features are usually awful. And one of the advantages, I think, when you buy a streaming device, especially if you have multiple TVs, is that the TVs kind of work the same way. You know, if you buy like a Samsung now and then you already had one that was three years old, you know, it's almost guaranteed that the software or the interface is going to look completely different or it's going to function different in some way. Whereas if you know, you buy a $50 Roku stick for every TV, they all work the same then. So I'm going to, I'm going

to go against the grain and say, never use the smart TV feature. Plus it'll spy on you and send all that. That's right. What isn't though? Well well if you really want to get into it there's urls you can block to get away from all that just look that up in the lg forums and people post the urls to block to get all the spying done so but all yeah the interface on every tv i have harmony remotes the same way on all tvs the same interface like you're right i i've like made it look the same way on all TVs, the same interface. Like you're right. I've like made it look the same no matter what TV you go to. I'm going to give a big shout out for the Nvidia Shield Pro TV. That's what I've been using for the past year now.

And I love it. And I think it's got the best remote out there. It's got backlit buttons on it. It's triangle, which I was, you know, a little worried about at first, but I like the way it feels in your hand. And, you know, because it's Android, you can reprogram the button to basically do whatever you want it to do. Yeah, it looks pretty cool.

One of the things TJ you brought up there was the performance of like the TV apps and everything. And I imagine like talking about this, like if they're using a gaming PC with the gaming graphics card that you're talking about, Gavin, like all of those animations on there are just going to be smooth and like instant. You're not going to have stuttering or, you know, it'll be like full

120 frames per second animations between, you know, uh, bringing up a movie and the transition from the little, like, instead of just like clicking on the movie and it goes dark, they can do all sorts of fun stuff with that. If that's what they're going to do with this. I have no idea. Like, I don't, this could be like a playground for them to like do more advanced interfaces and that they can try on some of the other devices. But for the most part, the Plex app that you get on the TV, the Apple TV, the Roku, it all works and looks relatively the same. It's just kind of like scroll through, click a button and it plays like it's really all it has to do. Um, but this could be, this could be pretty like this could be just

really performance driven and, um, done right. It done, done really nicely. If you have all of those resources that we talked about available to you. Well, and think about it. If you get one of those recessed TV boxes that professional installers use and put your custom HTPC in the media box and then throw some RGBs in there, you get some free TV backlighting. Yep. Some bias lighting from your RGBs, just fans twirling around back there, making all that noise. It's always rainbow, but at least it's nice. Exactly. Exactly. All right. right well let's move on here uh this is a funny one uh at amazon's and i guess it's reinvent mars conference i'm not even sure what what that is but anyway they had a conference recently

the company announced that it's working on a feature that can synthesize short audio clips of a person's voice and then reprogram it as longer speech. Amazon's senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, showed off a demonstration where, as TechCrunch described it, quote, the voice of a deceased loved one is used to read a grandson a bedtime story. Okay. Prasad noted that the company can do this sort of audio output with merely a minute of speech before continuing. He says, quote, the way we made it happen is by framing the problem as a voice conversation task and not as a speech

generation path. It says there aren't many more details beyond the initial description and Reuters reports that, uh, Perhad mentions the goal of this technology is to quote, make memories last after so many of us have lost someone we love kind of dark and uh kind of uh i don't know it is this is this like creepy or cool uh dj let's start with you yeah this is creepy beyond belief like i don't i don't see any situation where i would want this myself and i just i don't i would feel weird if i went into somebody's house and i heard their alex Alexa talking like oh yes my grandma she passed away two years ago uh but I made her sit down in front of this this uh this tube and then talk into it and now she can talk to me like you know I always thought like the you know sometimes they do those like those bears with the recordings and stuff

like that like that's cool to me uh but this is going to like another creepy level that i just i i don't see i just don't know how i feel about this like it seems like it's a line they shouldn't cross but i can see why in certain situations for therapy i guess they can cross it but i don't know if i personally would want that because it would be really freaky to hear that i i don't know like what's the next step are we gonna be hanging out in the metaverse with our deceased loved ones you know like is that gonna be freaky at all too you know then people would never leave the metaverse try to create a like this is like some uh a movie playing out here where people stay in the metaverse and they never want to leave

because their loved ones are in there that they lost years ago in a car crash you know like i just feel like this is a line i don't know if we should cross or even allow them to see is it is it weird that i thought that i would never do this like i don't know if i'd want to hear a deceased loved one's voice on my amazon Alexa or my Google assistant. But when Gavin said hanging out with like a deceased relative in the metaverse, I was like, ah, you know, that one doesn't sound too bad. I could see that one, I guess. I don't, it's kind of similar. If you think about it though, imagine like you're watching home movies of your deceased one, right? Like you're listening to them talking, but you're not actually interacting with them at that talking but you're not actually interacting

with them at that point you're not saying granny you know read me a bedtime story and you know hearing her read you a bedtime story you know it's one thing to watch memories with them but the next thing to interact with them here are a couple of things that i found on the internet. You say, Hey, Alexa. And it's like, what? When you think about your inner, if you're interacting with them, I, again, they may take this to another level where they're building a profile on people based on your shopping, based on, you know, what they gathered about you so that when you do interact with them, there'll be more and more realistic. I don't know if I want any remnants of me being left around and what I've been surfing on the web in Amazon at all for somebody to interact with.

I want that to die with me. Like when I die, my bookmarks are going to self-destruct. That's all I'm saying. I just thought of, uh, whenever you said, uh, talking to him and stuff like that, I was like, you know, uh, it'd be creepy if you got like a notification on like somebody's birthday. And I was like, you know, this would be really nice on such and such birthday and you have to like buy an item or something i i i just like the the whole story and and how this was presented just seems like the strangest like the strangest thing to me like i understand how this works. The deepfake technology, it's coming. It's going to get here. You're talking about, you talk to your Alexa all the time.

You talk to her in her sleep. So she already has got those recordings. They already know who you are. They already know that you got that 75-inch LG TV, or 55-inch. So yeah, they already have your voice and so you you can be synthesized already um and i can probably you know asking for kitchen timers when i had mine they probably can synthesize my speech as well um but like i just don't understand the way they framed this story as being like around like your people

who died like they should have taken and said that like they have this really amazing technology that you can you know put your kids voice on the the echo or you can you know put a family member's voice or you can you can put a celebrity's voice like and all they have to do is go record like samuel jackson saying like a minute's worth of stuff and it's in the site like that would be really cool like do that do celebrities I don't I don't want to talk to dead grandma on my Amazon or even even somebody that's like extended family that they can't like come over all the time they live on the side of the country or somebody that's in the military and they're gone for like a couple years or something like anything else i just the the whole presentation of this just has me baffled as to why they thought that was the way to to bring this and market it to

people i don't know it's it's these tech companies are weird we'll leave it there like they do some strange things sometimes it is weird it'll get even weirder when your alexa starts barking like your old dogs you know on you you know like and then you can buy gifts now that you never did in the past, you know, to make up for all those years, you know, like, or it starts meowing at you. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the night at three o'clock to bring back memories of your cat that used to do that to you. Oh, gosh. That's a genius idea. Can it make the little scratch under the door

sounds too like yes or where they jump up and hit the knob or yeah or they're able to like get a little bit of grip on it and just like bang it back and forth like like suddenly like that that one that one's not jarring at all like if alexa can do that in the middle of the night um yeah and then i'll jump into the metaverse and pet him and hang out with him and we'll throw the ball around and I'll have a grand old time in the metaverse, you know? Then your ring alarm system calls the cops because it's not sure what's going on. At three o'clock in the morning. Oh, man. Yeah, I don't know about this one. I think they should have gone with Celebrity Voices

and have Tom Cruise talk out of your Echo device rather than this direction. It's just so weird to be talking about. Then they have to pay Tom Cruise a lot of money. They don't have to pay your grandma anything. But they only have to pay him for like 20 seconds of recording time. They got it down as a system.

They just feed some voice recordings of him and Top Gun, and they're good to go. There's not much to do here. Well, you can get celebrity voices right now. So you could get Samuel L. Jackson, if you wanted, for your Amazon device right now. But do that with like, okay, maybe let's talk about deceased celebrities.

Like, I don't know, like Humphrey Bogart or old movie stars or singers. John Lennon. That'd be kind of cool, right? John Lennon is now my personal assistant. That's kind of cool. I don't know. At least they could pay them money, too. It just seems kind of weird.

Anything else? Oh, man. Amazon amazon you're weird so it sounds like nobody here is doing that i wonder if anybody in the chat will yeah yeah anybody listening to the show if you plan on um entering some personal recordings or data or having grandma speak into the uh the echo tube uh so that this this thing work, let us know. And let us know any other unique use cases we're not thinking of this. Because there's probably a way that this is a really cool technology.

I mean, it really does actually sound like a cool technology where I think we talked about there's a podcast editing suite out there that can transcribe each one of our tracks. So we have three tracks, and I can upload it to that. And if TJ says something, and I want him to say something else, I can just type in there just the words, and it'll make him say it. It's really cool. So that stuff exists now, and Amazon seems to be getting pretty good at it.

But it's just weird that they can record. They want to do this with disease relatives. That part I don't get. That's what is really tripping me up here, I guess. So wrong. All right. Well, all the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found at their show notes at hometech.fm slash 393.

All right. We're going to continue our descent into keypad madness here, but we were talking about label makers at the beginning of the show. And TJ, you got a good pick of the week here. Why don't you tell us what this picture is? Oh, man, this could almost be in like a like a professional AV installation business as well, because I've I've seen stuff like this. But this is a setup of four switches. It's one switch that has uh two buttons on it to

control the front porch and the driveway one is for something else and another one is for some kind of hall light um it looks like one of the switches is installed upside down uh no no no actually it could be a three-way i guess so oh no no because it would be it would no you're right i think it's upside down it would matter in a three-way so i don't know maybe they just have it marked so you keep it off like that i don't know no no but that would be on so i whatever but it looks like one of those switches is upside down the other switch is uh covered with a sticker that says do not switch off and the other ones just have off off on them uh one two three four five six seven eight nine different stickers on four different buttons to tell you everything

that is going on and it makes me sad but to the uh to the reddit users uh credit they are looking to fix or replace a lot of this so yeah at least they weren't like proud of their setup. This is common. I mean, this is extremely common in the homes that I was in because when I was working, we were mostly in the mansion homes and they didn't do any lighting control here. They would build like $2 million homes and just like deck it out with lights

and fixtures and everything. And then, yeah, in your kitchen, you'd have at least three or four six gang keypad, you know, not keypads, uh, of dimmers and controls that you had no idea what they did. And so I would see this all the time. Like this is extremely common here in Florida. Um, the, the off one, the, the, the off stickers actually take the cake for me though, because I haven't seen that, but I have seen plenty of them labeled and I've seen plenty of them like doubled up, you know,

where they, they like, Oh, we can split that off and we'll put the driveway in the front porch on two different light switches. Um, and then you have the two labels, but,

uh, the off, the office truly unique to this. And I, I, I really, I really liked that. They spent the extra time to indicate on this keypad, which, which button, the top or the

bottom that you need to press to turn that particular light off. That's, that's really good. All I'm going to say is invest in a $2 switch cover. Like if you have to leave your switches on all the time, for some reason, that is perfectly fine. There's plenty of actual reasons to do that. Like if you're installing like a ring floodlight camera and you don't want somebody to turn it off totally legit install a two dollar cover you can still turn the light switch off if you absolutely

need to but it just makes it to where you can't just walk up and turn it off and it looks insanely better than just putting stickers all over it that say do not turn this off you know if richard was yelling at us last week, he's yelling at this guy this week because I could just hear him now saying, it's not centered properly. It's not straight. It's all over the place. The color is wrong, but at least your screws line up somewhat horizontally. You know, that's even at least, you know, there's one positive in there.

I don't know i think i think i think richard might find some humor and i think he did kind of like put it like a a particular emoji or something when we posted this in the hub but i think you know he's he's he's a user interface guy and i think he's got to respect that somebody took the time and made their own user interface you could walk up any one of us can walk up to this and say i know what this does except they're the ones that are both off like what is off off there's no on like well but the off is the like it's a double switch oh it's two switches that oh yeah yeah and and they're both rockers it looks like so you just you know record like a regular decor switch. I have one of these in my bathroom. Like the top light is the vanity light.

The bottom one is the bottom switch is the fan. I've never seen one of those before. So, OK, makes sense. Yeah, they're a big pain to find like home automation replacements for. Actually, you have usually have to do like the in-wall double relays that they have because nobody really makes a double button. Whatever this is. Yeah, no, it's it it's, it is a pain. I think, I think, was it not Zeus, but Innaveli had something or may have been talking about

doing something. It was a duel in one box. The most common suggestion is to add another switch. Yeah. Yeah. And it's probably the easiest thing, honestly, because when you get those little relays, like the little Shelly relays, I've tried to put that in the single game box and it ended up breaking like this, the old single, the box that was in there. I just destroyed it. Like the, the, first of all,

I had to retrofit a wire in there. So there was already a hole in it and it was kind of compromised anyway. But then I started messing around with the thing and like parts of this plastic from 1969, the house was built, just starts falling down on the wall. And I'm like, well, this isn't safe now. So I had to retrofit a box in there, but yeah. Um, not, not, not as, uh, I think, I think you have to respect that you can walk up to this and intuitively know what everything here does. And it's fairly easy. Like I am not going to switch that switch off. It says, do not switch. It's got a big sticker. It says, do not switch off even. And it tells me where the office is. Like it's on. So I don't know. I know it's ugly.

But honestly, I've seen this so many times in my career. It's kind of embarrassing. And for those of us that have been dealing with Windows app all these years, we're used to ugly interfaces. So that's all I have to say. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you have like the Insteon or the Zeus, the Intervalli or something like that, or

one of these engravable systems that we're talking about, like Control 4 or Levitan Now or something that you can put the buttons and say what it is on there, that's like the Mac, right? It all looks nice and pretty. It's all put together. Uh, this, this is windows. Yeah, here you go. I bet you could play mind sweeper right there in the corner. All right. It's a good analogy there. If you have any, uh, feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week or great ideas for a show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at home tech.fm, or you can visit home tech.fm slash feedback and

fill out the online form. All right. Well, that wraps up another week in Home Tech here, guys. I got a question. I've been watching the latest seasons of For All Mankind and Physical, Tehran. Those are all on Apple TV. I'm just kind of like sitting around and popped up the other day, stranger things, Netflix. I think that wraps up this, the end of this week are when July 1st.

Yeah. So by next week. Yep. So yeah, I should, I should be wrapped up on that as soon as they come out. What are you, what are you guys watching right now? What's, what's on, what's on the tubes at home in terms of my list? I'm the usual, you know, some of the popular Ms. Marvel. I'm a big fan of'm the usual, you know, some of the popular Miss Marvel.

I'm a big fan of the Orville. You know, I'm a big fan of Strange New Worlds. I've been watching that. Westworld just started back up. We just finished Obi-Wan. I watched one show called Night Sky that was pretty good. And then one of our little dark horses that I've been really enjoying is a show called The Man Who Fell to Earth. You know, me and the wife been watching

that one and it's been a really good show. So that's just some of the more popular ones. I have a whole backlog of other stuff that I'm going to watch during the summer, but those are ones we just caught up on. Interesting. Yeah. I guess I forgot to mention I've seen the Obi-Wan one. I haven't seen the Ms. Marvel one, though, so I'm glad to hear that that one's pretty good. I want to check it out. I'm just looking for more stuff to watch. I haven't finished Discovery yet.

And the Orville, I have them. I just haven't watched them yet either. And we've been binging this one recently. We started this weekend called, um, insatiable. It's from 2019. Right.

And some of the jokes in it are inappropriate, but funny. Right. So it's worth a watch. Like we didn't know what to expect. We started the first episode and it was just, we were laughing and we just kept continuing and continuing, continuing continuing so that's another show that we're currently going through all right well that's gavin and gavin's talked about all the mainstream tv tj what like

bounty hunter seeking cake uh are you watching i don't know why why you hate all my tv choices all the time cake wars i think you're just jealous, you know? Pig Wars, yeah. You're over there watching lame Star Wars and whatever else you got going on. Yeah, that's true. That's probably why I'm like I need more. I need some more TV. I gotta find something to watch. We just finished the first season of

Umbrella Academy and what was it? The Boys. And The Boys started off very rough. If you haven't watched it yet, I'm not going to give you any spoilers or anything, but I was not expecting the first three episodes. Um, but the umbrella Academy I've really liked so far and I'm really looking forward to how it develops. Um, and it looks like they just launched the third season as well. So, uh, two more seasons left to watch on that. My wife started watching that and I, I would, it was kind of, I thought it was one of those like

magic show things that you see on Netflix that have like witches and vampires or fairies and stuff in them. And I was like, I'm not interested in this. And I was like, Oh, I sat down later and I was like, Oh, this is actually kind of interesting. But I think she was really far into it. And I was like, well, maybe if I want to see this, I'll have to come back to it. But that is a good pick. You get a bunch of good picks here. And The Boys is good, too. I would give it.

I would give Umbrella Academy a shot if you haven't seen it yet. I think it's pretty good. The Boys is The Boys is really good. Like the that's a that's a well, it's it's not about boys, I guess. It's about like superheroes. Right. And is that the one I'm thinking of? Yeah. And they, uh, it, the, the question it posits, I guess, is like, what if superheroes were actually just real people

who do real things like, and, and make real mistakes. And it, it goes down a bunch of rabbit holes that, uh, some things I wish I hadn't seen, especially that, that, that first scene, I think is probably the first one was kind of like the roughest ones. Like this guy can run really fast though, man. Jeez. Yeah. That was, that was brutal. Yeah, exactly. All right. We're starting to like this. I got it. It can only go up from here. Right. It doesn't. Um, but no, the, the story is actually pretty good and, uh, they, they've got some good writing on that. And I think, what is it, two seasons now? It's in there?

It's over on Amazon, I want to say. I think it's three. I think both of them have three, but I might be wrong. While you're over on Amazon and you're talking about uploading your deceased relatives to Amazon, check out the show Upload as well.

I've seen that. It's like a little dark horse of a show no one talks about. But the premise is just that. They have figured out how to take your brain and upload it into a computer. And you can spend your days kind of at a resort with all the other people that have uploaded. And it's a one-way trip. You don't get to go back. And they don't really know how to make you go back.

But everybody in there can kind of hang out inside of a computer. all the other people that have uploaded. And it's a one-way trip. You don't get to go back, and they don't really know how to make you go back, but everybody in there can kind of hang out inside of a computer, a bunch of computers, like a resort that is at this computer, and all the shenanigans and things that happen with that. And there's plenty of shenanigans because it's a computer, and computers crash, and it's a comedy. It's a dark comedy, but it's still a comedy mostly it's pretty

good yeah and if you're looking for movies to watch uh we watched uh this weekend on netflix the man from toronto right uh that's kevin hart i thought that was about you nope the the thing that everybody you know is hating on this movie is how they say toronto because they kept saying toronto toronto you're the man from toronto and we're all like that movie is how they say toronto because they kept saying toronto you're the man from toronto and we're all like that's not how you say it but you know we let it slide it's it's been popular and there's one other movie i watch i'm halfway through called crimes of the future now if you just look at the trailer it's disturbing and the movie it's just weird but i keep watching it for some reason so if you just want like those weird kind of movies take a look at the trailer crimes of

the future all right i've got some i was writing everything down so i'll put links to all this in the show notes too like this will be my my summer catch-up on on a bunch of tv shows that i haven't seen i've got quite a few here and definitely need to go back and revisit the umbrella Academy. So, um, it seems like it's a pretty good one, but if you guys have any,

if anybody listening has any, uh, I, uh, show suggestions, I'm up for them. I'm, I'm ready to watch stuff now.

Like finally getting over some projects at work and more coming, but I don't care. I'm just, I'm, I'm saying I'm done. I'm like, I'm finished. So you're never finished. I'm not going I'm saying I'm done. I'm like, I'm finished.

You're never finished. I'm not going to be as busy anymore. Yeah, exactly. But I'd like to be able to turn something on, you know, once again and start watching some TV. So there's plenty of stuff out there. It's good time for TV. And I just want to see if I haven't, I've missed something

because there's a lot of good stuff out there that I don't, there's so much going's a lot of good stuff out there um that that don't there's so much going like so much good tv out there right now that it's like if you you miss something you'll find out about it like a year later or something like that like counterpoint have you guys seen that one yeah counterpoint good saw that yep never heard of excellent like I think I've recommended it before but it's uh an old showtime it was canceled off showtime and then somebody bought it and moved it. I don't know.

They paid for the second season, but like it was, saw this before the pandemic and it kind of has a pandemic-esque vibe to it at some point during the show. But that was a, that was a really good one. And I forget what it's on. Maybe Amazon. I'm not sure. Maybe Hulu, but definitely check that one out. And I forget what it's on. Maybe Amazon? I'm not sure. Maybe Hulu.

But definitely check that one out if you haven't seen it already. Anyway, we 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 to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $ bucks a month to get your big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub where you and everyone else

can get in there and make fun of, you know, us making mistakes on the show, but also talk about TV shows. Cause I'm up for that. There's been a lot of conversation recently. I've barely been able to keep up with it, but it's been, it's been really active in there. So come join us. We do have a lot of fun in there. And also, if you're in there on Thursdays, question mark, or maybe Fridays, I don't know. We're going to have these home tech talks and anybody in there can just hop in, sit around the water cooler and talk and complain complain if you're greg he'll he'll have some complaints and grumbles in the background and if you if you show up late he'll be done complaining he'll be happy greg but he gets it off of off his chest and and and at the first parts and and then after that he's good to go um so it's it's kind of like therapy it's home tech therapy we should just rename it

home tech therapy and and and call it that. Wouldn't you have to change the initials at least? No, it's perfect. It fits right in. All right. If you would like to help out but can't support the show financially, totally understand. We just appreciate a five-star review on iTunes, our positive rating in the podcast app of your choice.

That wraps up another week on Home Tech. For everyone here, have a great weekend, and we will see you next week. Take care. I've stopped saying things. And you're leaving that in, Seth. It's like I don't even try for the middle part anymore. I'm just like, eh, whatever. You can say, happy 4th of July.

You can say something like that. That's funny.