The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Caavo Booth Interview at CEDIA Expo 2019

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Caavo Booth Interview at CEDIA Expo 2019 See them at Booth #3259 Caavo.com

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com, the Chris Voss Show. Hey, we're coming at you here live. Holy crap, we're at Cedia Expo 2019 in Denver, Colorado, and we're at the Kavo booth. We're interviewing Andrew, the CEO of Kavo. How are you doing, Andrew? I'm doing real well. Thanks, Chris. How are you? Nice. We got you guys early in the show here at Cedia. And tell us who you guys are and what you do. So we make a product called Control Center.

It's available in every Best Buy on Amazon, Walmart, et cetera. It's a device that you plug into your TV and makes it super easy to control everything connected to your TV. One simple interface. Awesome sauce. So you make them for both consumers and businesses, correct? So the reason we're at Cedia is we're showing our first custom install solution that we've done with Crestron. So we're super happy to show that off. But right now it's in retail as a consumer play, consumer brings it home. They disconnect everything connected to their TV, plug it into control center. We auto detect everything that's connected, make it super easy to control, so you get one great universal remote control experience.

And I'll show you all the great features. But today, we're showing with the Crestron system, you get all that same functionality plus Crestron remote and video matrix. So what sort of problems do you solve for consumers and what they're dealing with? So because we know about all the devices that you're connected to, we make them really easy to control with one remote. But we also know about all the services you subscribe to, so we can provide one great universal search across every single device that's plugged in.

So we can give you results on live TV, streaming, web, and we've even added some music search as well. So if you have a Sonos system, you can control that as well. We're the first works with Sonos certified solution for the TV. Awesome sauce. So, uh, you know, if my biggest problem that I've had, and we talked about this before this is, uh, if I want to find like a movie or a TV show that I want to take and watch, I got to like sometimes go to the internet, search for it. And then like most people, I've got a, you know, Roku, I've got an Apple TV, I've got a Chromecast.

I'm like, oh my God, which show is this thing on? And you guys help resolve that problem, right? Yeah, so we've built super robust search that searches across everything. And you can even use bizarre searches that you might have typed into a Google search bar to find a show, and we'll go right to it. Irrespective of what device it's on, irrespective of what service, we'll find that show and take you right there. Now, if you guys are at Cedia Expo here in Denver for 2019, come to booth 3259. It's back by the food court, and you can find these guys.

They've got a booth set up. I think they're giving away some HDMI cords. Is that what you're giving away? Say that again? Are you giving away some HDMI cords. Is that what you're giving away? Say that again? Are you giving away some HDMI cords? Yeah, we got some HDMI cables that we built in-house. They have lights on both ends. They light up when they're connected between a sink and a source. You can press that light on either end.

It'll do a cable trace. So you'll never be trying to remember what's connected where. Awesome. So you can come to booth 3259, check it out. So let's get a walkthrough. Yeah, let's give you a demo. Sure. Let's do that. You can see some of the setup they got here. So here is the Crestron remote control connected to control center. I can bring up our lightweight UI that sits on top of, in this case, it looks like we got our Roku. When I pull up the devices

menu, it shows me everything that's connected. It's not HDMI 1, HDMI 2. It's actual logical device names. This is nice. I like this. So I can go select my TiVo. And once I'm into my TiVo, obviously I get universal remote controls. But if I'm super lazy and I don't even want to press a button or look down,

I can just say something like send pause and we just pause the tivo can you do that again for me send play there you go voice technology right and so you know like let's say i'm looking for the thumbs up button send thumbs up so whatever button you want to press you can just just do it with voice. You never have to look down again because we're lazy. We want to keep our eyes on the TV, right? And for instance, if I go in and want to access search, you know, in most of these universal remotes, I'm stuck typing in words with keyboards on screens, which is no fun at all, right? So what if I want to look for the young and the restless?

There you go. Boom, boom. The young and the restless. There you go. Automatically type it in. Take your voice. Turn it into a dictation right then and there. And maybe these are all the TiVo results over here that I

can see, but I could also do a universal search across everything. The young and the restless. Let's see what Kavo results have to say. One moment. There's four seasons of Young and the Restless. See which episodes I might want to watch. There's 47 seasons

in case you missed one. Let's see where it might be available. Doesn't look like there's much streaming right now. But maybe we can go see what's available on the web. Oh, it looks like some good nuggets. So now we're going to go launch it right on YouTube on your Roku. Nice.

So I just jumped from TiVo over there. Awesome. So you got the Roku, you got the YouTube, you got your Amazon TV. What are all the different services that work with this that you guys have set up? So let me pull that up. So just like I showed you here, all the devices. And in fact, one of the new features we're showing is if you have multiple control centers, you can see what's playing on the other control center in the other room.

So what are the kids watching right now? It looks like they're watching some live sports there. And I can even talk to them through the remote. Oh, can you really? Yeah, yeah. You can yell at the kids, hey, kids, get off the couch or whatever. I don't know. So, but we also know all the apps.

So these are all the apps that we have. Oh, wow. And we'll go launch them on the appropriate device. You can set it up however you want it set up. So basically when I click on like Amazon Video off that menu, it's going to take me to the one that I chose to be the one for me. Cool. Awesome sauce.

So this makes it real easy. You get a good deep search of the movies, shows, TVs. You don't have to sit there and try and figure out which one has it. I've had times where I search through Netflix and then, oh my God, it's not on Netflix. Then I got to go to Hulu and Amazon. So one of the things that we've done to make search even easier so let's say I'm trying to remember

the name of a Disney movie. Disney movie about Day of the Dead. Let's see if we hit it. There it is. Coco, right? And so let's say something even more abstract like Nightmare Before Christmas. So I love this movie. I've watched it many times, probably too many times.

But actually, I want to see something similar. So we pull in all these third-party editorial lists. And here is, let's see, 15 Christmas horror movies ruined my holidays. That's actually what I'm in the mood for. Let me see. Oh, Gremlins. I haven't watched that forever. That's awesome. There it is on Netflix.

There we go. Now, do you guys use an AI system for that, or is it all curated? This is all in-house. Awesome. So search is AI, but the curation, we work with all these different partners to pull in great content. And customers can also make their own lists too. Okay. So it's going to basically slowly figure out what I like,

what I like to watch, and it's going to make suggestions for forming a list. That's awesome, Sauce. And one of the more recent features we added is our Sonos functionality. So, you know, let's say I turn on the TV. I can see exactly what's playing. Awesome. Wow.

And you can play your stuff. Does it with say Spotify or the different things well I suppose the Sonos would be hooked through my Spotify note right so we we pull in all of your favorites playlists okay so here's my Sonos oh wow so here are my playlists here are my favorites so this is across everything pandora spotify amazon everything i can go hit the red hot chili peppers on pandora right now nice so i don't have to get out of phone connect to my sonos it's just persistent so you've got several devices here that we can see there's a big unit over here that i yeah that's our eight port pro unit okay we got a four port pro unit right there. Okay.

But these setups, you just plug in whatever you want to enjoy with your TV. Mm-hmm. Syncs with all your Sonos. Give you ultimate voice control over everything. Awesome sauce. Well, this is pretty cool. Do you guys have retail on the consumer product you guys want to put out? I'm sorry. Do you guys want to put what's the retail price on the— Okay to put uh what's the retail price on okay so you can uh get the product for 149 all in um or you can buy for 59.95 and then

pay a service plan four dollars a month that's a really cheap deal i was expecting a much higher price so that's awesome yeah yeah you hook it up we want it we want to make it really easy for people to watch tv tv should never be broken again yeah and and people a lot of people have that dilemma like what i want to watch yeah and it's kind of like it's kind of like when you're hungry and you want you're like where do i want to eat and you go through yelp you can't find anything to eat but this is kind of good because uh maybe you find like i have different favorite movies i like and i'm always searching on netflix like oh man what's a movie like that uh Can I search by directors and

genres, I guess, too, as well? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. I'm a big Akira Kurosawa fan, so I like a lot of his movies and then any movies like his movies. So having that suggestion really helps. So where can these guys go to check this out? What's the.com? So you can go check it out at Best Buy. You can go to Amazon.com. You can come to our website, cavo.com, C-A-A-V-O. Okay. Anything more we need to know, Andrew? No.

I think great to meet you, Chris, and thanks for having me on the show. Thanks for being on the show. And if you're at Cedia, come by and see the Cavo booth. You can come to booth number 3259. They're in the back by the smart stage and the food court. So, you know, you're going to get a good bite to eat. You can come by and kick the tires of this unit. It looks

pretty good, and it's awesome. Combines all your stuff into one place. Thanks for being with us, Andrew. Thank you very much. Thanks to my audience, and we'll see you next time. Watch. There'll be like a whole mess more interviews today. So watch for us from the CDS Show Expo. Thank you for tuning in.