00:00SPEAKERI just want to point out that directly prior to recording this podcast, you used one digital
00:05SPEAKERagent to deal with another digital agent?
00:08SPEAKERNo, no, that's not what I did.
00:10SPEAKERWell, okay.
00:11SPEAKERThere were a few steps in between, but I'm just going to suggest that perhaps there are
00:15SPEAKERtoo many robots listening in your house.
00:17SPEAKERLook, just because you think that the voice is listening to you is a problem and I embrace
00:21SPEAKERthe late stage capitalist nightmare that we all inhabit every day, look, my wife, who
00:28SPEAKERI love dearly, likes to use the timers on Alexa in the living room for certain things.
00:33SPEAKERAnd she's not here right now.
00:34SPEAKERSo when the timer at 3 45 went off, instead of me yelling, getting up and walking to the
00:41SPEAKERother room and telling Alexa to turn off the timer, I just yelled from my desk through
00:45SPEAKERa couple of walls and it worked because technology is awesome.
00:49SPEAKERIt did.
00:50SPEAKERI just want to point out that, I mean, the net effect of this whole situation is that
00:53SPEAKERnot 30 seconds after that you were then, Hey Siri-ing a text message to your wife.
00:57SPEAKERI did, Hey Siri, to tell her that her timer went off, which is literally the least efficient
01:01SPEAKERway to do a timer.
01:02SPEAKERI'm just going to tell you, I mean, look, objective third-party assessment here, look,
01:07SPEAKERwatching you talk to one robot and then another robot in the space of a minute, like it was
01:10SPEAKERa little eye opening.
01:11SPEAKERI have, I have desperately tried to change the usage patterns of the folks that live
01:16SPEAKERin my house with me, but despite the fact that she has a watch and a phone on her all
01:22SPEAKERday long, she insists on setting the timers on Alexa.
01:25SPEAKERIt's literally the only thing that it lives in the house for anymore.
01:28SPEAKERIt just takes timers because if you use it for anything else, it annoys.
01:31SPEAKERIt's like, it's like, Hey, while you're waiting for that timer to go off, do you want to listen
01:34SPEAKERto this audible book?
01:35SPEAKERAnd you're like, no, fuck off Alexa.
01:39SPEAKERShe continues to use Alexa for timers.
01:41SPEAKERShe's doing this verbally, right?
01:42SPEAKERYeah, of course.
01:43SPEAKERThe whole reason to have it is so you can yell at the computer.
01:46SPEAKERThis might speak to how long I've spent in shell configuration files recently.
01:50SPEAKERWhat if you could just alias in her speech, the word Alexa to Siri?
01:54SPEAKERWhat if you just could like find a place, if you could find a way to hypnotize her into
01:58SPEAKERjust power of suggestion, just plant a suggestion that instead of saying, Alexa, she says Siri,
02:04SPEAKERand then won't that probably just work itself out?
02:06SPEAKERI think it raises a whole host of other problems about free agency and free will and that probably
02:12SPEAKERare going to get me in trouble.
02:13SPEAKERIt's a good thing she never listens to the podcast.
02:15SPEAKERHow many agents are there these days?
02:16SPEAKERI mean, Siri and Alexa obviously like is, well, there's Google, Google has one.
02:21SPEAKERI guess I more specifically mean how many personified ones are there?
02:24SPEAKERLike it was always just kind of, Hey, Google, right?
02:26SPEAKERWell, Google doesn't have a name, but it still wants to be your friend.
02:30SPEAKERThey did not come up with a persona for theirs.
02:32SPEAKERNo, but like early on the persona names were just because they were phonetically discreet
02:38SPEAKERnames.
02:39SPEAKERThey're phonetically discreet sounds that are unusual at the start of sentences in the
02:43SPEAKEREnglish language.
02:44SPEAKERLike that's why Siri, because there's no words that start with Siri and you don't start a
02:48SPEAKERsentence with seriously, right?
02:49SPEAKERThat's fair.
02:50SPEAKERSo the, the Alexa is a similar, a similar situation.
02:56SPEAKERI don't, I don't actually know.
02:58SPEAKERThere's a, there's some open source projects going that do the same thing.
03:01SPEAKERThere's the Google one.
03:04SPEAKERI don't, I don't know.
03:06SPEAKERI feel like there's at least one other that I'm forgetting, you know, Jibo famously went
03:09SPEAKERout of business.
03:10SPEAKERPoor Microsoft.
03:11SPEAKEROh yeah.
03:12SPEAKERCortana.
03:13SPEAKERThere's also a Cortana.
03:14SPEAKERYou know what the first thing I do when I install windows on a new computer is I bet
03:17SPEAKERI can guess where this is going off Cortana.
03:20SPEAKERSorry.
03:21SPEAKERI like the voice actress.
03:22SPEAKERShe's the voice actor is great.
03:24SPEAKERShe's wonderful.
03:25SPEAKERBut but yeah, no, I don't but Cortana doesn't work on any devices.
03:29SPEAKERIt's just on windows.
03:30SPEAKERCause windows, Microsoft doesn't have devices.
03:32SPEAKERWait, does it not work on surfaces and surfaces or computers?
03:36SPEAKERWell, I mean, they run windows, windows machines.
03:41SPEAKERThis is, this is a real six of one half a dozen of another, but it's not like you can
03:44SPEAKERget, it's not like you can get Cortana on your watch.
03:48SPEAKERMaybe you can't.
03:49SPEAKERWell, okay.
03:50SPEAKEROkay.
03:51SPEAKERLook, I just want the chip that you embed in the back of your brain.
03:53SPEAKERI actually know that's the last, like there was a period in my life when I would have
03:57SPEAKERbeen probably first in line for the brain chip and part of me still thinks, Hey, having
04:02SPEAKERthe brain chip would make is essentially a superpower.
04:04SPEAKERLike being able to look anything up on the internet instantly is, is, is a, is a superpower.
04:09SPEAKERBut no, I don't want that.
04:11SPEAKERIt seems terrible.
04:12SPEAKERIt seems like a, like just inviting the dystopia into your house, into your brain.
04:17SPEAKERTalk about raising the issues with agency and free will
04:42SPEAKERWelcome to Brad well made a tech pod.
04:50SPEAKERI'm Will.
04:51SPEAKERI'm Brad.
04:52SPEAKERBrad, it's a banner day.
04:55SPEAKERIs it?
04:56SPEAKERWell, I mean, it's the, it's a Friday before a long weekend.
04:58SPEAKEROkay.
04:59SPEAKERThat's a feel good day.
05:00SPEAKERStarted to ask how you define a banner day.
05:02SPEAKERI think I'm going to put on like some, put on a summer jams playlist after this.
05:06SPEAKERI'm going to go sit in the backyard and drink a beer maybe.
05:09SPEAKERI don't know.
05:10SPEAKEROoh, that sounds nice.
05:11SPEAKERIs it on the summer jams playlist or just, uh, so, um, the summer jams playlist is, is,
05:17SPEAKERis, um, I don't know that I have access to it anymore because it went away for a little
05:23SPEAKERbit.
05:24SPEAKERHang on.
05:25SPEAKERLet me just type for the realist summer jams into Google and see what comes.
05:27SPEAKERIt was on Spotify and it disappeared for a little bit, but maybe it's back now right
05:31SPEAKERhere.
05:32SPEAKEROh, beautiful.
05:33SPEAKERCan tell you bicycle race by queen appears to have been the last song.
05:39SPEAKERUh, no, I'm sorry, this is in the other order.
05:42SPEAKERLet me scroll all the way to the bottom.
05:45SPEAKERWow.
05:46SPEAKERQueen bookending.
05:48SPEAKERI don't think that's an accident, Brad.
05:51SPEAKERQueen is both the first and the last musical act on this.
05:56SPEAKERSo I just shuffle it.
05:57SPEAKERI would often ask for it in the car, speaking to speak of our dystopian voice assistant
06:01SPEAKERfuture.
06:02SPEAKERUm, but, uh, but no, I, I, um, I made, I made like, it's the, it's the personalized
06:09SPEAKERWill Smith version of that, which are my summer jams for the last 30 years of my life.
06:13SPEAKERBasically.
06:14SPEAKERCan you give me a random sampling?
06:16SPEAKERSome gorillas on there.
06:17SPEAKERThere's an occasional outcast.
06:19SPEAKERThere's some spin.
06:20SPEAKERI like, I'm not going to, I'm not proud of it and there's some spin doctors on there.
06:23SPEAKERWow.
06:24SPEAKERSpin doctors was very, very important.
06:25SPEAKERUh, summer, summer of my senior year, after my senior year in high school, they're all
06:29SPEAKERof all of their whole two songs they made two, they recorded, it's weird.
06:32SPEAKERThey popular band that recorded exactly two songs and nothing else.
06:36SPEAKEROkay.
06:37SPEAKERI know.
06:38SPEAKERI realize you're a little bit younger than me.
06:39SPEAKERThat first album is okay, but they are not a good band.
06:41SPEAKERJust to be clear that my official stance on the spin doctors is that the, the first album
06:46SPEAKERis a really good pop pop album, but, but I've seen, I've seen them live twice and one time
06:52SPEAKERthey were okay.
06:53SPEAKERAnd the other time they were maybe the worst band I've ever seen live.
06:56SPEAKERWow.
06:57SPEAKEROuch.
06:58SPEAKERThat hurts.
06:59SPEAKERI mean, like you may not care for their material, but I assume they were at least competent
07:02SPEAKERmusicians.
07:03SPEAKERIt's possible that I had a pocket full of kryptonite when I was at the show and it just,
07:06SPEAKERit just set them off and they couldn't handle it.
07:08SPEAKERBut um, I see, you know, I, look, I remember the spin, I visibly remember the summer the
07:14SPEAKERalbum came out.
07:15SPEAKERI, yeah.
07:16SPEAKERYeah.
07:17SPEAKERIt was, that was like, that was like in high school, the summer jam was music that I listened
07:20SPEAKERto at the lake.
07:21SPEAKEROkay.
07:22SPEAKERLike you put a tape in the boat CD, the boat tape player and listen to some music while
07:26SPEAKERyou're tooling around the lake.
07:28SPEAKERIs there a more summer location than the lake?
07:31SPEAKERNot for, not if you grew up in Northeast Tennessee.
07:33SPEAKERYeah.
07:34SPEAKERYeah.
07:35SPEAKERIt's, it's the most summer, like going out to somebody's boathouse is the, is basically
07:38SPEAKERthe like the ultimate summer, summer day.
07:40SPEAKEROh, it just occurred to me that you guys didn't really have ready access to the beach.
07:45SPEAKERI mean, it was nine hours.
07:46SPEAKERNot that we exactly did.
07:47SPEAKERYeah.
07:48SPEAKERLike, I mean, that's a long time.
07:49SPEAKERI mean, it was less for us.
07:50SPEAKERI mean, at least, at least we were in a coastal state though.
07:52SPEAKERYeah.
07:53SPEAKERIf we, if we were driving, whether we were driving to like South Carolina or, or like
07:58SPEAKERif we went to Myrtle, Myrtle beach was probably the closest and it was like eight and a half
08:01SPEAKERhours.
08:02SPEAKERVirginia beach was nine hours.
08:03SPEAKERIt was basically the same distance to drive to like the Gulf coast of Florida.
08:06SPEAKERSo if you wanted to go to like Destin or someplace like that, that was like 10 hours.
08:10SPEAKERThat's too much.
08:11SPEAKERWell, I mean, we had lakes, our lakes are awesome.
08:13SPEAKERSo it worked out.
08:14SPEAKERThat's why for me, it's the beach for you.
08:17SPEAKERIt's like, yeah, the number of people that I knew that had probably never seen an ocean
08:22SPEAKERwhen they were in high school and high school was pretty, it was also not a super well to
08:26SPEAKERdo area, but it was pretty high anyway.
08:30SPEAKERYou know?
08:31SPEAKERYeah.
08:32SPEAKERLike when it's hot in the summer, you might just turn on the air conditioning and stay
08:33SPEAKERin and watch television.
08:36SPEAKERWhich is an amazing coincidence.
08:38SPEAKERYou bring that up because this week on the tech pod, we're going to talk about stuff
08:42SPEAKERyou plug into your TV, which does to be clear, relatively new invention in the great scheme
08:48SPEAKERof things.
08:49SPEAKERI think, I think that was literally how you proposed this episode topic was what if we
08:52SPEAKERtalked about stuff you plug into your TV, literally the document with our notes in it.
08:56SPEAKERIt's called things you plug into your TV.
09:00SPEAKERSo like in the beginning you plugged an antenna into your TV and then the TV came across the
09:05SPEAKERairwaves and there was no other way to get that, get stuff into it other than that.
09:09SPEAKERThat was, that was it.
09:10SPEAKERCorrect.
09:11SPEAKERThat was the alpha and the omega.
09:12SPEAKERIt was the, the one and then the two and then the three.
09:15SPEAKERAnd then eventually a long time after that, the four or five channels and, and there was
09:20SPEAKERno other world.
09:21SPEAKERBut then in the early eighties, wait, wait, wait, wait, I have to stop you.
09:24SPEAKERI'm sorry.
09:25SPEAKERCan you talk about this liminal space in between the three channels, which I'm familiar with
09:29SPEAKERand like cable when they're resilient, but when were there four and four was Fox, right?
09:34SPEAKERWell there was always, there was always PBS too.
09:36SPEAKEROh, was that the fifth?
09:37SPEAKERAnd if you live someplace that like in a big, in an urban area, you would often have like,
09:41SPEAKERlike non English language channels too.
09:43SPEAKERLike when I went to visit my grandparents in DC as a kid, there were Korean and Spanish
09:48SPEAKERand I think maybe Vietnamese channels cause there's a big, there's a big like post-war
09:56SPEAKERVietnamese community outside DC.
09:58SPEAKERSure.
09:59SPEAKERYeah.
10:00SPEAKERI didn't, I didn't encounter that sort of thing until I moved out here.
10:03SPEAKERBut yeah, like there was Fox came around in the late eighties, mid, mid eighties, but,
10:10SPEAKERbut by that point cable already had pretty good penetration.
10:12SPEAKERI remember when Fox affiliates set up shop in our area, it was like, Oh my God, there's
10:18SPEAKERa fourth channel.
10:19SPEAKERThe fourth channel came to Greenville, which was like, we had to put a different, we had
10:23SPEAKERto aim the antenna a slightly different way to get that, to get that channel.
10:26SPEAKERUnfortunately I don't remember where WHNS Fox 21 was broadcasting from.
10:31SPEAKEROh, I can't remember what the code numbers were for five.
10:34SPEAKERIt was 39 though.
10:35SPEAKERI think anyway.
10:36SPEAKEROh my God.
10:37SPEAKERWere they out of South Carolina?
10:38SPEAKERNo, wait, hang on.
10:39SPEAKERI was watching South Carolina Fox, my whole youth.
10:41SPEAKERWhat?
10:42SPEAKERWow.
10:43SPEAKERIt's like, you've lived a lie your entire life.
10:44SPEAKERI feel, I feel filthy.
10:46SPEAKERShould we just lay out real fast for, for international listeners?
10:50SPEAKERThe networks are ABC, CBS, and NBC.
10:52SPEAKERI don't think it matters, but we can.
10:54SPEAKEROkay.
10:55SPEAKERThose are the classic American broadcast networks.
10:56SPEAKERAnyway, let's move on to things.
10:57SPEAKERYeah.
10:58SPEAKERPlug into your TV.
10:59SPEAKEROkay.
11:00SPEAKERSo, so at some point in the late seventies, in the seventies cable TV started getting
11:03SPEAKERpopular and it started it started as a solution to the, Hey, TV is hard to get in New York
11:09SPEAKERand big cities because of all the metal in the buildings.
11:12SPEAKERI didn't know cable proliferated that early.
11:14SPEAKERI thought cable was a mid to late eighties thing before it really caught on.
11:17SPEAKERWell, so my understanding is that the earliest cable networks were like shared antennas,
11:23SPEAKERshared access to antennas and buildings and met like Manhattan and downtown Chicago and
11:27SPEAKERplaces where there were lots of big, big radio interfering skyscrapers.
11:31SPEAKERSo they would just have a giant antenna on the roof and then they'd run coax wire that
11:36SPEAKERplugged into the back of your TV that shared that antenna with everybody in the building.
11:40SPEAKERSo we had that in the house I grew up in.
11:41SPEAKERIs that common?
11:42SPEAKERI assume that's common.
11:43SPEAKERWe had that outside of, I've never personally seen that, but this is something I read about.
11:47SPEAKERWe had a, we had a giant antenna on the house.
11:49SPEAKEROh, well we had a giant antenna on the house, but it wasn't like shared across all the,
11:51SPEAKEROh no, no.
11:52SPEAKERYeah.
11:53SPEAKERIt was in the house.
11:54SPEAKERIt just came down straight to the, straight to the TV.
11:55SPEAKERYeah.
11:56SPEAKERYeah.
11:57SPEAKERWe had coax in the wall though is what I mean.
11:58SPEAKERAnyway.
11:59SPEAKERWell, so anyway, in the eighties, like the cable TV stuff didn't really start proliferating
12:02SPEAKERuntil the eighties.
12:03SPEAKERThat was, that was when it started.
12:04SPEAKERAnd around that same time, VCRs and Betamax players, VHS, VCRs and Betamax players came
12:09SPEAKERonline and laser displayers shortly after that.
12:12SPEAKERYeah.
12:13SPEAKERYeah.
12:14SPEAKERSo those were the earliest things.
12:15SPEAKERThese things, we're not going to talk about this stuff for long.
12:16SPEAKERSo don't worry.
12:17SPEAKERWe're not talking about ancient hardware today.
12:18SPEAKERYeah.
12:19SPEAKERWe're not, we're not talking about the analog stuff so much.
12:20SPEAKERI will say real fast that YouTube has really given a second life to all of the crappy old
12:26SPEAKERVHS tapes that people use to record things off of TV.
12:29SPEAKERLike there are so many old commercials and news broadcasts and like, but like some, some
12:35SPEAKERpretty valuable stuff out there.
12:36SPEAKERLike capturing that stuff is really a science it turns out because there's a, there's a
12:40SPEAKERlot to it.
12:41SPEAKERLike Alex had to go on eBay and bought some kind of, I think discontinued or maybe they're
12:44SPEAKERstill making them like a basically a VHS or VCR with an MPEG-2 encoder in it.
12:52SPEAKERAnd I think a USB connection.
12:54SPEAKERBut also even if you have like an analog, like I have a VCR and analog capture stuff,
12:58SPEAKERbut you need specific kinds of VCRs cause you need to tune the heads and like the tracking
13:02SPEAKERis anyway, it's, it's hard cause the tapes, the data on the tapes is degraded and all.
13:07SPEAKERIt doesn't, it doesn't matter.
13:08SPEAKERWe don't need to get into that.
13:09SPEAKERYeah.
13:10SPEAKERThe thing is is that after I watched Chernobyl last year, the HBO series, I went and found
13:15SPEAKERTed Koppel.
13:16SPEAKERI found the episode of Nightline from the day that the Soviets finally gave in and briefed
13:21SPEAKERthe world.
13:22SPEAKERWow.
13:23SPEAKEROr actually it might've been before they admitted what was going on.
13:26SPEAKERIt might've been in that window where they had like the Swedish authorities had detected
13:31SPEAKERradiation in the atmosphere.
13:33SPEAKERBut before the Soviets admitted what was going, anyway, like there are just so many amazing
13:37SPEAKERhistorical artifacts because of VCRs floating around out there on YouTube.
13:41SPEAKERYeah.
13:42SPEAKERAnd it's because people saved like tapes of stuff and like, like Jason Scott talks about
13:47SPEAKERfinding tapes where people like recorded something and then fell asleep before they turn it off.
13:51SPEAKERAnd then there's like two hours of like weekly, the nightly news followed by whatever.
13:59SPEAKERThere's a, there's a Letterman, like early Letterman episodes were basically not archived.
14:05SPEAKERSo a lot of them were saved because some fan just recorded all of every episode of Letterman
14:12SPEAKERon a tape in his, in his basement for years and years and years.
14:16SPEAKERGood thing that fan knew how to program his VCR, ha ha ha.
14:19SPEAKERExactly.
14:20SPEAKERExtremely dated reference.
14:21SPEAKERFlashing twelves.
14:22SPEAKEROkay.
14:23SPEAKERBut anyway, so in the eighties you started getting a bunch of stuff.
14:25SPEAKERYou get cable boxes, you get VCRs, you get analog satellite at first, you know, the big
14:30SPEAKERgiant six foot dish, eight foot dish in the backyard.
14:34SPEAKEREventually digital satellites came on in the nineties that used MPEG two compression and
14:37SPEAKERsmaller disks, some small, smaller dishes.
14:41SPEAKERAnd then eventually like consoles and computers, you know, home computers, like, like your,
14:45SPEAKERyou could plug like TI 99 forays and, and a lot of, a lot of early home computers could
14:52SPEAKERbe plugged into TVs and use them as monitors, but then like the Nintendo and stuff like
14:57SPEAKERthat.
14:58SPEAKERAnd those all came across our RF modulators at the beginning.
15:00SPEAKERSo it was just, you plugged it in, you tuned the, tuned to the knob to channel three for
15:04SPEAKERsome reason.
15:05SPEAKERI have no idea why it was either three or four, I think.
15:07SPEAKERRight.
15:08SPEAKERI think you could pick.
15:09SPEAKERI remember.
15:10SPEAKERWe usually could switch.
15:11SPEAKERThere was a switch on the RF box.
15:12SPEAKERYeah.
15:13SPEAKERWe had a selector switch on our little RF adapter.
15:15SPEAKERYeah.
15:16SPEAKERBut then in the nineties, in like the mid nineties, TiVo announced this created, built,
15:21SPEAKERbuilt this box that was called a DVR.
15:23SPEAKERIt was a new idea.
15:24SPEAKERAnd the idea was it's a, it's a little box that you plug into your TV and it works kind
15:28SPEAKERof like a VCR, but there's not a tape and it always is recording everything you watch.
15:32SPEAKERSo you can like rewind and fast forward, live TV.
15:35SPEAKERYou could also say, Hey, it also connected to the internet and pulled down schedule.
15:38SPEAKERSo you could say, Hey, I want to record every episode of the Simpsons or every episode of
15:44SPEAKERthe X-Files or, or whatever, you know, every, every Tennessee football game.
15:49SPEAKERAnd it would record all of those.
15:52SPEAKERAnd then just as it ran out of space, it would delete the oldest stuff.
15:55SPEAKERAnd you do, you keep saving.
15:57SPEAKERIt was truly an incredible device.
16:00SPEAKERIt was revolutionary.
16:01SPEAKERNinety nine.
16:02SPEAKERI just looked up is when the first TiVo launched it is, it is astonishing to me to listen to
16:06SPEAKERyou describe the function of that thing.
16:08SPEAKERAnd then think back to the fact that those 1999 era hard drives were not just falling
16:12SPEAKERapart left and right.
16:14SPEAKERThey were like 14 gig hard drives was what the first TiVo shipped with, I think.
16:17SPEAKERBut because they were writing to themselves constantly for hours and hours a day.
16:21SPEAKERYeah.
16:22SPEAKERBut it actually, if you think about it, it wasn't all that much data because it was like
16:24SPEAKERMPEG-2 compressed SD video, so it was like, you know, that's fair.
16:29SPEAKERYeah.
16:30SPEAKERBut, but, but yeah, so they were working constantly.
16:32SPEAKERIt was the thing that stands out to me about the TiVo and the reason that the DVR, which
16:37SPEAKEReventually like the other cable companies and stuff started shipping DVRs with their
16:41SPEAKERin place of their cable boxes and, and like the technology took about five, five or six
16:46SPEAKERyears, but it filtered down across the rest of across a lot of other places.
16:50SPEAKERThe reason it was, it was noteworthy to me is that it was the first time that you had
16:56SPEAKERsomething that wasn't overtly a computer that was really a computer plugged into your TV.
17:01SPEAKERYeah.
17:02SPEAKERSo when we were talking about this episode, like you blew my mind when you mentioned that
17:05SPEAKERthat thing is just an x86 box, although now that I'm saying this out loud, what the hell
17:08SPEAKERelse would it have been?
17:09SPEAKERBecause there kind of was nothing else back then.
17:11SPEAKERRight.
17:12SPEAKERYeah.
17:13SPEAKERI mean, I know arm technically existed at that time, but I mean, they didn't have products
17:16SPEAKERthat could handle this sort of thing.
17:17SPEAKERI mean, I, I, you know, I, you say that and I meant to go back and look, but they just,
17:24SPEAKERthey just, they didn't actually ever list CPU's.
17:28SPEAKERI don't think.
17:29SPEAKERSo I'm I, the Wikipedia page explicitly says that it did run Linux.
17:33SPEAKERYeah.
17:34SPEAKEROh, sorry.
17:35SPEAKERIt was a power PC.
17:36SPEAKERIt wasn't, it wasn't a, it wasn't, it was a risk processor, not a, not a, not an x86.
17:40SPEAKERSo it's funny when I just said, what the hell else would it have been?
17:44SPEAKERI started to say, I mean, I guess it could have been power PC or myths.
17:46SPEAKERAnd then in fact, they shipped to those that used both of those things.
17:50SPEAKERYeah.
17:51SPEAKERI wouldn't have thought that myths would have been fast enough, but I guess it was, I guess
17:54SPEAKERthe, were the myths ones, the satellite dish ones series two was a MIPS series two was
17:58SPEAKERwhat my parents bought.
18:00SPEAKERSo, so Gina heard about this from a friend at work.
18:04SPEAKERAnd literally we went on, bought one the day that she, she was like, I want, I want this
18:07SPEAKERmore than anything else I've ever heard of in my life.
18:11SPEAKERAnd so we went on, bought one that had a 14 gigabyte hard drive and it had that gave it,
18:15SPEAKERit was like an hour per gig, basically.
18:17SPEAKERIt was an astonishing upgrade to the way that you watch television.
18:20SPEAKERYeah.
18:21SPEAKERCause we, we will like, we were, we were relatively young.
18:23SPEAKERWe both had jobs.
18:24SPEAKERWe were pretty active.
18:26SPEAKERSo we would often be out, but we still like to watch like, like X-Files was on Saturday
18:30SPEAKERnight or Sunday night or something.
18:31SPEAKERWe liked to watch X-Files.
18:32SPEAKERSo it just recorded it for us.
18:34SPEAKERWe'd been using tapes and if you didn't remember to put the tape in, then you just, the TV
18:38SPEAKERwas gone.
18:39SPEAKERYou'd never see it again.
18:40SPEAKERLike three months from then.
18:41SPEAKERYeah.
18:42SPEAKERAlso quality.
18:43SPEAKERI mean, like people know what VHS looks like.
18:44SPEAKERIt's not great compared to the original broadcast, but this was like, you're making a face.
18:50SPEAKERI mean,
18:51SPEAKERI don't know that the TiVo was that much better than the original broadcast.
18:53SPEAKERYou didn't have, you didn't have the weird little analog artifacts that you get with
18:56SPEAKERVHS.
18:57SPEAKERThat's true.
18:58SPEAKERThat's true.
18:59SPEAKERSo so they ended up making a bunch of different TiVos.
19:04SPEAKERThey had a partnership with DirecTV that just the DirecTV ones would just pull the MPEG
19:09SPEAKERstream directly from the satellite feed and save it to hard drive and not have to re-encode
19:14SPEAKERit.
19:15SPEAKERYeah.
19:16SPEAKERThere's no, no re-encoding.
19:17SPEAKERAnd so they, that also meant that they couldn't do over the air, I think.
19:18SPEAKERSo you only got local channels if you had local channels coming in DirecTV.
19:23SPEAKERInteresting.
19:25SPEAKERBut it was, it was like a big deal.
19:26SPEAKERAnd then like in the years after TiVo, starting in like 2001, 2002, there were a lot of like
19:34SPEAKERsoftware products for PCs that mimicked that behavior.
19:38SPEAKERSo there was like Sage TV and a couple of other, a couple of other things that came
19:45SPEAKERalong, Windows Media Center, a bunch of other similar outfits that did more or less the
19:50SPEAKERsame thing that you put a TV tuner in your card, you plugged into an antenna or your
19:53SPEAKERcable box, and then it would change channels and do all that kind of business to record
19:59SPEAKERanalog standard deaf TV.
20:03SPEAKERNow HDTV came along and there was a problem, right?
20:08SPEAKERBecause the content providers were all really worried that HD was going to provide too high
20:12SPEAKERquality signal and that piracy would basically destroy all secondary sales and like the downstream
20:20SPEAKERvalue of their content.
20:23SPEAKERSo they insisted that the cable people encrypt everything.
20:27SPEAKERAnd as a result, they built this, you had to run everything through a cable box or alternately,
20:34SPEAKERthey had the, I guess FCC or FTC, I can't remember which one, made them come up with
20:39SPEAKERan open standard so that you could add the encryption that your provider carried to whatever
20:48SPEAKERbox the user chose.
20:50SPEAKERLike it was part of a anti-competitive thing.
20:52SPEAKERDoes this have anything to do with cable card?
20:54SPEAKERDo you remember that?
20:55SPEAKERThis is cable card.
20:56SPEAKERIs that complicated?
20:57SPEAKERCable card is the outcome of this.
20:58SPEAKERInteresting.
20:59SPEAKEROkay.
21:00SPEAKERSo, so the unencrypted standard for cable in North America was QAM, Q-A-M.
21:04SPEAKERAnd then there was an encrypted standard that lived on top of that, that just basically
21:08SPEAKERscrambled the QAM signal.
21:13SPEAKERThe cable card spec always seemed to me like it was the kind of thing that was just designed
21:18SPEAKERto fail.
21:21SPEAKERIt was basically unwieldy enough.
21:24SPEAKERIt was unwieldy enough that when you called Comcast and said, "Hey, I have a TiVo that
21:28SPEAKERhas a cable card in it.
21:30SPEAKERCan somebody come hook it up?"
21:31SPEAKERAnd they'd be like, "Yeah, the guy who does that's on vacation for the next two weeks."
21:34SPEAKERBecause they only had one person in the office that knew how to work them.
21:37SPEAKEROf course.
21:38SPEAKERAnd so to be clear, you bought a cable card aftermarket and installed it into your...
21:43SPEAKERI mean, separately.
21:44SPEAKERLike you installed it manually into a TiVo or did it just come that way?
21:47SPEAKERSo your cable provider usually would hand you the cable card and the cable card would
21:52SPEAKERbe provisioned to be part of their network and with their local keys and all that stuff.
21:57SPEAKERSo if I took a Comcast cable card here and took it to a charter network, presumably it
22:01SPEAKERwouldn't work.
22:02SPEAKERI don't actually know what would happen.
22:03SPEAKERSure.
22:04SPEAKERWhat was the install process into a TiVo like?
22:05SPEAKERI mean, I assume I'm not envisioning-
22:06SPEAKERIt was a PCMCIA card.
22:07SPEAKEROh, okay.
22:08SPEAKERThat's quite-
22:09SPEAKERYeah.
22:10SPEAKERThat's easy.
22:11SPEAKERI mean, it may not have been exactly, but it looked like a PCMCIA card.
22:14SPEAKERI never tried to plug it into a laptop.
22:16SPEAKERSo PCMCIA card was basically like a little bit bigger than a credit card and as thick
22:19SPEAKERas probably like five credit cards.
22:21SPEAKEROh man.
22:22SPEAKERYou had a profound, we are old moment when you felt the need to explain what a PCMCIA
22:27SPEAKERcard is.
22:28SPEAKERYeah.
22:29SPEAKERHave you not?
22:30SPEAKERWhen was the last time you thought about a PCMCIA card?
22:31SPEAKEROh, well, I think about a lot of old stuff in the computing sphere.
22:34SPEAKERThe last time I saw one, God.
22:38SPEAKERWhen I emptied my garage before my daughter was born, I threw out a bunch of PCMCIA cards.
22:42SPEAKER15 years ago.
22:43SPEAKERDoes that sound right?
22:44SPEAKERYeah, that seems right.
22:46SPEAKERThey stopped being a thing around 2010 when MacBook switched the unibody design and USB
22:51SPEAKER2 got good.
22:52SPEAKERYeah.
22:53SPEAKERIt was a neat idea though.
22:54SPEAKERLike expansion cards for laptops.
22:55SPEAKERI mean.
22:56SPEAKERIt was a bad idea.
22:57SPEAKERYeah, fine.
22:58SPEAKERNever worked right.
22:59SPEAKERAnyway.
23:00SPEAKERSo the, the, having had several cable card TiVo's over the years, generally when the
23:05SPEAKERperson would come out to install them, if they'd installed a lot of cable card TiVo's,
23:09SPEAKERthey would bring at least two times as many cards as they would need for the device that
23:13SPEAKERyou had.
23:14SPEAKERHuh?
23:15SPEAKERSo like if you had a TiVo that could record two channels at once, you'd have to bring
23:18SPEAKERfour cards because at least one of them would fail.
23:21SPEAKERWow.
23:22SPEAKERYeah.
23:23SPEAKERReliable technology.
23:24SPEAKERIt was not a great technology, but but at the same time there was like stuff, there
23:28SPEAKERwas weird stuff.
23:29SPEAKERLike there were music streaming boxes that would plug into your TV or into your entertainment
23:34SPEAKERcenter.
23:35SPEAKERLike the squeeze box was this thing that did that, that Logitech I think ended up buying.
23:39SPEAKERSonos was doing music streaming to their speakers at that point, just speaker to speaker.
23:44SPEAKERWait, I'm sorry.
23:45SPEAKERDid you say Sonos?
23:46SPEAKERSonos.
23:47SPEAKERYeah.
23:48SPEAKERHave they been around that long?
23:49SPEAKERThey started in like 2002.
23:50SPEAKEROh my God.
23:51SPEAKER2005.
23:52SPEAKERI had no idea.
23:53SPEAKERYeah, Sonos has been around for ages.
23:54SPEAKERI would say when was the first time I heard of Sonos, seven, eight, maybe seven, eight
23:59SPEAKERyears ago at most.
24:00SPEAKERThe first Sonos used 802.11a radios with a proprietary protocol on top of that frequency
24:08SPEAKERspectrum in those radios as I recall.
24:10SPEAKERWow.
24:11SPEAKERI had no idea.
24:13SPEAKERSo XBMC was the thing that, the Xbox media player.
24:17SPEAKERYeah.
24:18SPEAKERSo that's, that's a whole other topic real fast before we get into that.
24:20SPEAKERCan we talk about the TiVo business model just a tad?
24:23SPEAKERYeah.
24:24SPEAKERYeah.
24:25SPEAKERYeah.
24:26SPEAKERBecause they charge a monthly fee for that thing for people who didn't have one or do
24:29SPEAKERnot know that.
24:30SPEAKERWell.
24:31SPEAKERYou're paying them, you're paying them for essentially their like access to their online
24:35SPEAKERinfrastructure for program listings and, and that sort of thing.
24:38SPEAKERYou're paying them for program listings is what you were paying for because that was,
24:41SPEAKERthat was privileged.
24:43SPEAKERThat was information that had cost associated with it.
24:45SPEAKERRight.
24:46SPEAKERAnd you couldn't program that thing without access to their stuff.
24:49SPEAKERYou could.
24:50SPEAKEROh, could you?
24:51SPEAKERYeah.
24:52SPEAKERYou could, you could not pay the service and just program everything by time.
24:53SPEAKERLike you do with a VCR.
24:54SPEAKEROh, I had no idea they let you do that.
24:56SPEAKERBut be, but the other thing you were paying for is if the football game went late on Sunday
25:02SPEAKERand you had the X file set to record the, they would, it would dial in and say, Hey,
25:08SPEAKERyou should, there's a football game before this.
25:09SPEAKERSo you should start recording like 20 minutes early just in case.
25:11SPEAKERGod, that's right.
25:12SPEAKERI totally forgot.
25:13SPEAKERCause it used to get it connected with a phone to your, to your analog phone or the phone
25:18SPEAKERcable to your analog phone.
25:20SPEAKERAnd you would dial in every night for like five minutes and download the new listings.
25:25SPEAKERThe, the, so the model was, they sold the hardware relatively inexpensively.
25:32SPEAKERThe more expensive models that had more space costs way more than the difference in hard
25:36SPEAKERdrive prices.
25:37SPEAKERSo like if you bought a 30 gig model, it would be 500 bucks.
25:40SPEAKERAnd the 14 gig model was like 200 bucks and the 30 gig model was just two 14 gig drives
25:46SPEAKERjammed into the box.
25:47SPEAKERThat is a laughable markup.
25:49SPEAKERWell, I mean, back then a 14 gig hard drive was 200 bucks probably.
25:54SPEAKERSure.
25:55SPEAKERYeah.
25:56SPEAKERSo it's not, it's not like that.
25:57SPEAKERIt's no, it's no, it's literally no different than buying the difference between 128 gig
26:00SPEAKERand a 200 gig iPhone.
26:01SPEAKERI know.
26:02SPEAKERI mean, it sounds like a difference of degree, but yeah.
26:06SPEAKERI think you mentioned, we were talking about this before, like they were selling those
26:09SPEAKERthings at a huge loss.
26:10SPEAKERThey were selling them at a loss and it's unclear how, how huge the loss was.
26:13SPEAKERBut yeah, the, the, the big thing, the, the, the like ultimately probably the biggest legacy
26:19SPEAKERof TiVo is that they invented the $10 a month subscription model because up until that point
26:24SPEAKERyou paid for cable and you might've had subscriptions attached to that, like HBO or something that
26:28SPEAKERyou paid 15 bucks a month for, but there weren't any, Hey, pay 10 bucks a month and get access
26:33SPEAKERto content type deals.
26:35SPEAKERAt that point, like there was music streaming, there was Rhapsody, which was a music streaming
26:41SPEAKERthat I think got bought by real networks.
26:42SPEAKERMaybe that was a $5 a month or $7 a month.
26:45SPEAKERAnd you got like access to 200,000 songs that you could stream or something.
26:50SPEAKERWho did happen to Rhapsody?
26:52SPEAKERI think they got bought by real.
26:56SPEAKERFound it here.
26:57SPEAKERI'm not going to waste time.
26:58SPEAKERYeah.
26:59SPEAKERYou're right.
27:00SPEAKERI believe, I believe that is in fact the case.
27:01SPEAKERCan I, can we have a quick sidebar here?
27:02SPEAKERYeah.
27:03SPEAKERYou just mentioned that HBO was 15 bucks a month.
27:04SPEAKERIs that, is that your recollection?
27:06SPEAKERHBO was always $15 a month as I recall.
27:08SPEAKERIn the eighties?
27:09SPEAKERI asked.
27:10SPEAKERWe didn't have HBO in the eighties.
27:11SPEAKERSo we did, we did not either.
27:12SPEAKERWe never had it.
27:13SPEAKERThat's why I asked because there was no way in hell that my dad was going to pay for HBO
27:17SPEAKERwhen I knew friends that had it.
27:18SPEAKERAnd I've just never thought to actually go back and look and wonder how much it would
27:22SPEAKERhave cost us a month because that was never going to happen.
27:24SPEAKERI, when I got, when I moved out and got an apartment off campus and I signed up for cable
27:30SPEAKERand it was like, Hey, you can get HBO and it's like, man, I've always wanted to have
27:37SPEAKERHBO.
27:38SPEAKERIt was like, you can get HBO for, it'll it's, it's free for the first three months.
27:44SPEAKERAnd then $15 a month after I was like, I can come up with $15 a month for HBO.
27:48SPEAKERI will just go to the video rental place three times a month less.
27:52SPEAKERHere to four unknown levels of luxury.
27:54SPEAKERYeah.
27:55SPEAKERThis college subscription.
27:56SPEAKERI had, but then, then the way they got you was you had to have the different cable box
28:00SPEAKERif you wanted HBO, because you had to get the one that decrypted stuff and not just
28:04SPEAKERthe one that anyway, it doesn't matter.
28:08SPEAKERSo yeah, TiVo, TiVo invented the $10 a month thing like that was the first time I ever
28:12SPEAKERsaw that.
28:13SPEAKERWell, Hey, thanks TiVo, look, we've, we've benefited from the $10 a month thing.
28:19SPEAKERI also subscribed to a lot of $10 a month services at this point.
28:22SPEAKERYes.
28:23SPEAKERAnd 10 bucks a month now, not quite what it was in 1999.
28:26SPEAKERNo, definitely the case.
28:28SPEAKERAlso in TiVo's case, you could pay, you could just pay 200 bucks once per device and you
28:34SPEAKERhad, you never had to pay again for that was a per device cost, which, which seemed pretty
28:40SPEAKERfair to me.
28:41SPEAKERYeah.
28:42SPEAKERThat's what my parents did.
28:43SPEAKERAnd TiVo is still hooked up.
28:44SPEAKERI, it doesn't really get used.
28:45SPEAKERIt's hooked up to the downstairs TV, which also doesn't get used much, but it still works
28:50SPEAKERin some capacity.
28:51SPEAKERBut there's no, there's no, it uses, it uses NTSC TV.
28:55SPEAKERThere's no, there's no terrestrial broadcast for it anymore.
28:58SPEAKERIn my, in my defense that TiVo may actually not be hooked up to anything, but it's just
29:01SPEAKERsitting there.
29:02SPEAKERThe TV down there.
29:03SPEAKERMy parents was sitting under the TV in the, in their basement for a long, long time.
29:07SPEAKERYeah.
29:08SPEAKERThe one that they don't ever use.
29:09SPEAKERAnyway.
29:10SPEAKERYes.
29:11SPEAKERThat's the exact same situation here.
29:12SPEAKERAnd then we've, we've talked about, you've talked about upgrading people's hard drives
29:17SPEAKERand TiVo's and blessing them before I've talked about the dot TiVo files I have that I found,
29:24SPEAKERI found those dot TiVo files on my NAS, like not, not more than like three years ago.
29:27SPEAKERAnd again, TiVo launched in 1999.
29:29SPEAKERI had to get my mom to sign into her old TiVo account.
29:32SPEAKERGet that media access key?
29:34SPEAKEROn the web.
29:35SPEAKERYes.
29:36SPEAKERAnd retrieve the Mac, the media access key, because I found a command line utility that
29:39SPEAKERwill decrypt those TiVo files, but I couldn't do it without her unique code.
29:43SPEAKERYeah.
29:44SPEAKERI've used that Python script to decrypt a bunch of old Futurama episodes, I think.
29:49SPEAKERAnd sure enough, she was still able to get it out of that account.
29:51SPEAKERAnyway, Xbox media center, originally known as Xbox media player.
29:55SPEAKERWell, but, but, but the other thing about TiVo is they got killed eventually by the
30:00SPEAKERHD, like the HD transition killed them.
30:02SPEAKERRight?
30:03SPEAKERLike the, the insistence on the cable card stuff meant that, and, and also the fact that
30:09SPEAKERlike Comcast and all the cable companies started shipping, like not good, but good enough TBRs
30:16SPEAKERwas enough to, to, to, you know, not entirely kill TiVo, but it's, it's a shell of what
30:22SPEAKERit once was.
30:23SPEAKERI'm sitting here looking at their website now.
30:25SPEAKERI'm not a hundred percent sure what their business model is streaming boxes.
30:30SPEAKERWell, yeah.
30:31SPEAKERYes.
30:32SPEAKERI mean, they've got, they've got what essentially looks like a Chromecast in the sense that
30:34SPEAKERit's a tiny box that plugs straight into the HDMI and hangs out of the port.
30:39SPEAKERThey've got a larger box that looks kind of like an Apple TV.
30:42SPEAKERYup.
30:43SPEAKERThey've still got the peanut remote, peanut shaped remote that sounds ever there.
30:50SPEAKERTheir sounds were not bad, like if we ever, I want to do at some point, I want to do the
30:54SPEAKERepisode about the best computer sounds we should do that because like that one is definitely
30:59SPEAKERon that.
31:00SPEAKERLike the, it had, it had a three-tone chime for fast forwarding because you could fast
31:03SPEAKERforward three different speeds and it made a different one each one.
31:06SPEAKERSo you knew exactly how fast you were going based on the sound it made when, when you
31:11SPEAKERwent kachunk, kachunk, kachunk, it's really good sounds and you doing your impression
31:15SPEAKERjust now has made me realize that the Roku sound set, I don't know if you have a Roku
31:19SPEAKERin the house.
31:20SPEAKERIt's pretty good.
31:21SPEAKERYeah.
31:22SPEAKERIt's okay.
31:23SPEAKERIt's kind of a, but it's kind of trying to do its best TiVo impression.
31:25SPEAKERYeah, definitely.
31:26SPEAKERLike the Roku sound set definitely feels inspired by.
31:29SPEAKERI'd always heard that a bunch of ex TiVo people went to Netflix and that's how, where Roku
31:34SPEAKERwas born.
31:35SPEAKERInteresting.
31:36SPEAKERBut I don't know if that's true or not.
31:38SPEAKERSo anyway, like the TiVo spawned a bunch of PC projects that were similar all the way
31:44SPEAKERup to like Xbox, sorry, sorry, to windows media center, the open source.
31:49SPEAKERWell what, I guess it became open source, right?
31:51SPEAKERThe XBMC.
31:52SPEAKERI don't know if it originally was.
31:54SPEAKERYeah.
31:55SPEAKERLet me see if I can put that, but that ran on hacked original Xbox ones.
31:59SPEAKERRight?
32:00SPEAKERYeah.
32:01SPEAKERSo at that time it was Xbox media player.
32:02SPEAKERYeah.
32:03SPEAKERAnd yes, you could soft mod your Xbox there.
32:04SPEAKERDid you do that?
32:05SPEAKERNo, I didn't.
32:06SPEAKERI trying to remember.
32:07SPEAKERI used the, was it the mecha salt two method?
32:10SPEAKERYeah.
32:11SPEAKERI didn't have the right game to do it.
32:12SPEAKERI don't think.
32:13SPEAKEROkay.
32:14SPEAKERI remember.
32:15SPEAKERI think I had to borrow it from somebody.
32:17SPEAKERIt was, you know, it was a good time to work at GameSpot.
32:19SPEAKERI'll say.
32:20SPEAKERIt was, it wasn't like I had two versions of the wrong version of mecha salt to do it.
32:25SPEAKERI think like it had to be the first run copy of the game because of course they found this
32:29SPEAKERexploit and fixed it in the second print run.
32:31SPEAKERBut you know, if you need to get a first run copy of an Xbox game, working game spotted
32:36SPEAKERand 2006 is a good place to do it.
32:39SPEAKERYeah.
32:40SPEAKERYeah, it was an Xbox media player originally became Xbox media center over time.
32:44SPEAKERI was completely blown away by that thing.
32:47SPEAKERIt was really cool.
32:48SPEAKERAt that, at that point I was running windows media center PCs on the TV, which was really
32:53SPEAKERstupid in retrospect.
32:54SPEAKERYou had a solution, but I think we've talked about this before.
32:58SPEAKERXBMC or Xbox media player, I guess at the time, like that was the first internet connected
33:01SPEAKERapp of any kind on a TV that I ever saw.
33:04SPEAKERLike I modded my Xbox.
33:06SPEAKERI installed that thing and when I fired it up the first time, like it had a little news
33:09SPEAKERticker at the bottom.
33:10SPEAKEROh, right.
33:11SPEAKERCause the Xbox had an ethernet port, right?
33:12SPEAKERYes, the Xbox was the first, so you know, you can get the ethernet add on for the PS2,
33:16SPEAKERbut they completely underutilized it because they didn't know what to do with it.
33:19SPEAKERWell, the Xbox shipped with an ethernet port and Microsoft had their networking background.
33:23SPEAKERSo the console did actual network stuff and yeah, seeing, seeing live data being piped
33:29SPEAKERinto this television app for the first time was just like a blow my hair back kind of
33:33SPEAKERexperience.
33:34SPEAKERI was like, Oh my God, this is so cool.
33:35SPEAKERThis is going to be so cool when they started leveraging this for real.
33:39SPEAKERIt's really funny because like you say that, and now I think back on it, I think that blessing
33:44SPEAKERTiVo hard drives was probably the first time I used Linux for something that wasn't just
33:48SPEAKERnoodling around with Linux.
33:49SPEAKERInteresting.
33:50SPEAKERSo wait, did you do that in a PC?
33:51SPEAKERYou had to hook it up to the IDE.
33:54SPEAKERYou'd unplug your other hard drives just for safety and then plug in the TiVo, the first
34:00SPEAKERTiVo hard drive, and then plug in the new TiVo hard drive and boot off of a floppy drive
34:05SPEAKERand then run a little boot off boot onto a boot off of CD into a live CD environment
34:12SPEAKERand then run a command line utility to bless the new hard drive with the key from the old
34:15SPEAKERhard drive.
34:16SPEAKERYeah.
34:17SPEAKERThe first copy of the files over if you want it, right.
34:19SPEAKERThis makes me realize like the first few years of the century were really an interesting
34:22SPEAKERtime for like computing extending beyond the computer.
34:25SPEAKERYeah.
34:26SPEAKERLike right up right up through the end of the nineties, like the computers were only
34:29SPEAKERin computers.
34:30SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
34:31SPEAKERI'm like, like you said, like the TiVo is kind of like the first major device, at least
34:35SPEAKERwe can think of right now, that was kind of a computer, but not in computer form.
34:39SPEAKERYeah.
34:40SPEAKERWell, I mean, the Xbox is another example for, you know, like the Xbox was basically
34:44SPEAKERa PC.
34:45SPEAKERWell, yeah, the Dreamcast was like a WinC, it ran Windows.
34:47SPEAKERKind of.
34:48SPEAKERYeah.
34:49SPEAKERThe light windows.
34:50SPEAKERBut yeah.
34:51SPEAKERYeah.
34:52SPEAKERBut the architecture was different.
34:53SPEAKERThat's true.
34:54SPEAKERThe Xbox literally was an x86 box.
34:55SPEAKERBut yeah, TiVo was also one of the, if not the first, one of the very first things that
35:00SPEAKERran Linux that was like a consumer device that was embedded and not just for servers.
35:05SPEAKERLike that's pretty early.
35:06SPEAKERLike Linux only, like Linux.
35:07SPEAKERLinux has been around for less than 10 years.
35:09SPEAKERNinety-two.
35:10SPEAKERYeah.
35:11SPEAKERNinety-nine.
35:12SPEAKERSeven years later, here is a commercial device, very popular running it.
35:16SPEAKERI want to say it was before the 2.6 kernel.
35:20SPEAKERIt was right around the time the 2.6 kernel came out.
35:24SPEAKEROr maybe it was, maybe it was when it, maybe it was when you started using the 2.62 kernel.
35:27SPEAKERAnyway.
35:28SPEAKERIs 2.6 significant?
35:29SPEAKERI feel like in my mind it is.
35:31SPEAKER2.6 was a big one.
35:32SPEAKERYeah.
35:33SPEAKERIt was, it was added.
35:34SPEAKERYou needed it for AG, you needed it for some hardware support.
35:39SPEAKERThere was some important hardware support that only was supported in Linux, in 2.6.
35:44SPEAKEROkay.
35:45SPEAKERDecember 2003 is when 2.6 came out.
35:48SPEAKERWell, then maybe I'm off by a few.
35:52SPEAKERAnyway.
35:53SPEAKERSo, okay.
35:54SPEAKERSo stuff chucked along for a while there.
35:57SPEAKERAnd then, like the XBMC project's interesting because Plex eventually forked from it.
36:02SPEAKERPlex started out as the OS, OS X version of XBMC.
36:06SPEAKEROh, is that how that happened?
36:08SPEAKERYeah.
36:09SPEAKERSo when, when, when the, the problem with XBMC was you needed an X-Box to run it.
36:16SPEAKERRight.
36:17SPEAKERAnd a lot of people didn't, but they wanted the UI cause the UI was pretty good.
36:21SPEAKERAnd they wanted the networked media playback for mostly playing pirated anime, it seemed
36:26SPEAKERlike at the time.
36:27SPEAKERTracks.
36:28SPEAKERYeah.
36:29SPEAKERYeah.
36:30SPEAKERAnd you know, then, then you had so, so people started forking it to put it on other platforms
36:37SPEAKERand they ended up realizing that they were, they needed to ditch the X-Box hardware because
36:41SPEAKERalso I think it only supported up to like 720p or something like that.
36:44SPEAKERIt was the original X-Box was mostly a, a SD console.
36:48SPEAKERRight.
36:49SPEAKERI believe it was topped out at 720.
36:51SPEAKERIt was component only.
36:52SPEAKERIt was pre-HDI, of course.
36:53SPEAKERIt was 1080i or 720p.
36:54SPEAKERMight have done 1080i.
36:55SPEAKERI forget.
36:56SPEAKERBut anyway, Yeah, and in fact they, you know, even the project called X-Box media center
37:04SPEAKERoriginal or eventually dropped X-Box support.
37:06SPEAKERAnd I believe that's when it became Kodi.
37:09SPEAKERYeah.
37:11SPEAKERI think that is correct.
37:12SPEAKERI think that was sometime later, but yeah, the original, so yeah, both, both Plex and
37:16SPEAKERKodi spawned from XBMC in different forms.
37:19SPEAKERYeah.
37:20SPEAKERAnd like your TVs didn't have TVs were still just screens.
37:24SPEAKERThey probably had some compute in them to manage the HD, especially the scan conversion,
37:33SPEAKERlike changing to run lower resolutions at non-native resolutions and all that stuff,
37:37SPEAKERbut it wasn't really exposed.
37:39SPEAKERAnd then the consoles, then the next gen console, you know, the X-Box 360 and PS3, and we launched
37:46SPEAKERand they came with apps that I think were probably developed by the console holders
37:50SPEAKERfor the most part.
37:51SPEAKERSo they didn't have it at launch.
37:52SPEAKERDefinitely the X-Box did not.
37:53SPEAKERI'm trying to remember what year, I want to say it was '08.
37:57SPEAKERThe Wii eventually shipped Netflix on a disc as I recall.
38:00SPEAKERYes.
38:01SPEAKERYes.
38:02SPEAKERThe Wii didn't have much provision for installing software on it.
38:04SPEAKERBecause it was just like an SD card for storage or something, right?
38:07SPEAKERYeah.
38:08SPEAKERBeyond very rudimentary WiiWare stuff, which you probably could have run a Netflix app
38:10SPEAKERoff of that, but yes, they straight up, you straight up could get Netflix on a disc for
38:14SPEAKERthe Wii.
38:15SPEAKERAnd then the PS3 didn't launch with that stuff either.
38:17SPEAKERI don't know.
38:18SPEAKERI didn't have a PS3 launch.
38:19SPEAKERI think, I want to say it was 2008 because the 360 got that dashboard makeover.
38:24SPEAKERYeah.
38:25SPEAKERWhen they ruined the blades.
38:27SPEAKERWhen they chucked the blades into the dustbin of history.
38:29SPEAKERYeah.
38:30SPEAKERThe last good X-Box interface.
38:32SPEAKERSorry.
38:33SPEAKERSorry friends who work on X-Box.
38:35SPEAKERIt's fine.
38:36SPEAKERI just liked the blades.
38:37SPEAKERYes.
38:38SPEAKERI mean, I didn't particularly love the blades at the time, but now I have all kinds of,
38:41SPEAKERa lot of people have blade nostalgia, it turns out.
38:44SPEAKERLook, I'm sure that there's probably some, some thing that I wrote in like 2007 that's
38:48SPEAKERlike, man, this blade interface sure is shit.
38:50SPEAKERYeah.
38:51SPEAKERI mean, I, I found at one point I found a 360 around the office that we hadn't touched
38:55SPEAKERin months that still had the blades on it.
38:57SPEAKERAnd we made a video out of it.
38:59SPEAKEROh, that's precious.
39:00SPEAKERBecause it was like, okay, well, we should probably upgrade this thing so it can get
39:03SPEAKERback online because we need X-Boxes in here.
39:05SPEAKERGoodbye blades.
39:06SPEAKERGoodbye blades.
39:07SPEAKERLet's document, let's document this process.
39:10SPEAKERLet's see, let's do one more video of these blades before they go away.
39:13SPEAKERThere was, there was a period of time there when finding an X-Box that continued to work
39:16SPEAKERwas a real, was a real blessing.
39:19SPEAKERThat's a whole other story, but yeah, I think it was, it was when that dashboard came along
39:24SPEAKERwhere they moved to the kind of panels scrolling left to right motif, I believe is around the
39:30SPEAKERsame time that Netflix showed up on the console and like apps that were not games on consoles
39:36SPEAKERwas mind blowing at the time.
39:38SPEAKERLike it was just unheard of up to that point, you know, using a console to watch television
39:44SPEAKERstreamed over the internet.
39:45SPEAKERI mean, you bought a console to play video games at that time, you know, like it was
39:48SPEAKERjust Netflix on the 360 was like this watershed.
39:52SPEAKERAnd prior to that, so prior to the X-Box supporting that, like the way you watched Netflix, if
39:58SPEAKERyou didn't, like Netflix was a place you rented discs and they mailed them to you.
40:03SPEAKERThat's right.
40:04SPEAKERI'm sure people know this, but like you, they mail you a disc and a little mailer and then
40:08SPEAKERyou'd watch it and you put it back in the mailbox and it would go back and they'd send
40:11SPEAKERyou another one.
40:12SPEAKERSorry.
40:13SPEAKERWhen I, when I said that's right, just now, I wasn't talking about them shipping discs.
40:15SPEAKERWhat I was thinking about was, I guess the 360 was the first and only device I had that
40:21SPEAKERI could do Netflix streaming on, like there was nothing else then.
40:24SPEAKERSo what I was going to say is the early Roku's were the other one.
40:27SPEAKEROkay.
40:28SPEAKERSo the Roku existed then, but like why the problem, because we, we covered this at either
40:33SPEAKERmaximum PC or test.
40:34SPEAKERI can't remember what, what I think it was at, at max PC probably.
40:38SPEAKERYeah.
40:39SPEAKERYeah.
40:40SPEAKERThat makes sense.
40:41SPEAKERBecause the quality of content that was available on the streaming site for Netflix wasn't worth
40:47SPEAKERspending 200 bucks or whatever the box cost.
40:50SPEAKERRight.
40:51SPEAKERBut when, but once you had a box in your living room that already did it, that they were using
40:56SPEAKERto play other games, the, Hey, the thing, what I play Halo with will let me watch bad
41:02SPEAKERmovies from stars because I'm already paying for right.
41:05SPEAKERFuck.
41:06SPEAKERYeah.
41:07SPEAKERCause that's the other secret thing is if you had a disc subscription, you got the streaming
41:10SPEAKERstuff for free.
41:11SPEAKERRight.
41:12SPEAKERGod, I forgot about that.
41:13SPEAKERIt was already there.
41:14SPEAKERI forgot about that.
41:15SPEAKERYeah.
41:16SPEAKERSo like it was, this was, this was like the con, putting the apps on the consoles that,
41:22SPEAKERyou know, millions of people already had basically bootstrapped the entire idea of, man, it's
41:28SPEAKERkind of nice to just watch a video straight through this box.
41:30SPEAKERThat's already in my house.
41:31SPEAKERYes.
41:32SPEAKERLike that's why it was such a huge deal for market penetration because yeah, like why
41:35SPEAKERwould you have bought a Roku prior to that?
41:37SPEAKERBut once your Xbox could do it like, Oh, this of course I'm going to use this.
41:41SPEAKERWell, and then around the same time, Apple released that first gen Apple TV that looked
41:45SPEAKERlike a big Mac mini, big white Mac mini with a, that ran some weird apps and mostly was
41:50SPEAKERused for watching stuff that you bought from iTunes.
41:52SPEAKERWait, was the original Apple TV really white?
41:54SPEAKERIt was white.
41:55SPEAKERIt was white with a silver trim.
41:56SPEAKERI think it was analog only, no HDMI.
41:59SPEAKERWow.
42:00SPEAKERI think didn't we have one of these lying around the office for something?
42:03SPEAKERYeah, we, I brought by probably brought my I'd bought one years before repurposed for
42:08SPEAKERsome around the office use at some point we, we piped we piped screens to it.
42:14SPEAKERYeah.
42:15SPEAKERBut, but yeah, so it basically looked like a Mac mini that that one and there were no
42:20SPEAKERthird party apps.
42:21SPEAKERSo it wasn't, it didn't use any of the phone architecture or anything like that.
42:24SPEAKERLike the current Apple TVs do.
42:26SPEAKERIt was just a box that could play stuff from Apple and then they would build, they had,
42:32SPEAKERI want to say they had a Netflix app, but I don't even remember if that's true.
42:34SPEAKERIt's, it's been a long time.
42:35SPEAKERShould I assume that first Apple TV was arm based or are we doing arm at that point?
42:39SPEAKERProbably.
42:40SPEAKERI have no idea.
42:41SPEAKERI don't even know if they would have told us.
42:42SPEAKERWe probably, somebody probably had to take it apart and look cause Apple wouldn't have
42:46SPEAKERtold you at that point.
42:48SPEAKERSo, so like the, the consoles directly begat like Microsoft, the Netflix on the, on the
42:56SPEAKERconsoles led to Hulu and, and a bunch of other streaming, you know, now familiar streaming
43:04SPEAKERservices launching on the consoles.
43:06SPEAKERAnd it was when Hulu came around, I was like, who's this upstart well, what do you mean?
43:11SPEAKERWe need another streaming service.
43:14SPEAKERBut like the thing you don't remember is that it was such a big deal that Microsoft did
43:17SPEAKERtheir entire Xbox one strategy around the idea that it was going to unify the apps and
43:22SPEAKERyour cable box.
43:23SPEAKERAnd you've watched it all through this one, what Microsoft provided interface.
43:27SPEAKERYes.
43:28SPEAKERThe third screen is what they called it.
43:29SPEAKERThe entire, the entire concept of the Xbox one was built around the popularity of media
43:34SPEAKERapps on the 360.
43:35SPEAKERWell, well, and when Microsoft talked about the Xbox one, they talked about computing
43:39SPEAKERin terms of three screens, your computer screen, your phone screen, and then the third screen,
43:45SPEAKERthe one that lives in your living room powered by the Xbox.
43:48SPEAKERWhole idea of the name one is that it's, it's going to be the one box that you have in your
43:53SPEAKERwhole living room.
43:54SPEAKERCause it does everything.
43:55SPEAKERDid you ever actually do that?
43:56SPEAKERDid you run your cable box through the Xbox ever?
43:59SPEAKERI never had cable in that era.
44:00SPEAKEROh, we had cable.
44:03SPEAKERI did.
44:04SPEAKEROnce they added a USB over the air tuner support, cause I mean, there were a ton of good HD
44:10SPEAKERchannels in San Francisco over the air.
44:12SPEAKERI got one of those and plugged an antenna into it and use those features for over the air
44:15SPEAKERTV.
44:16SPEAKERAnd it ruled.
44:17SPEAKERSo we, we had, we plugged the TiVo through the Xbox one for about a month and the amount
44:24SPEAKERof lag that it added was such that I was instructed to disconnect that and make it back.
44:29SPEAKERSo it was good again.
44:30SPEAKERThat's terrible.
44:31SPEAKERYeah.
44:32SPEAKERI remember, I remember at the time when the Xbox one came out, people were like, they
44:36SPEAKERwere like, aha, I'm just going to plug my PS4 into that thing and just play everything
44:39SPEAKERon the same console.
44:40SPEAKERAnd it was like, nope, you are not going to, if I, if you had done that.
44:44SPEAKERSo my Xbox and PS4 lived in a cabinet that had one fan blowing in and one fan blowing
44:49SPEAKERout.
44:50SPEAKERAnd if I had done that, it probably would have lit a fire in there because those machines
44:52SPEAKERran so hot or PS3, PS3, not PS4.
44:55SPEAKERYeah.
44:56SPEAKERWell, PS4 came out around the same time.
44:59SPEAKERYeah.
45:00SPEAKERYeah.
45:01SPEAKERSo so that, but that led to like a whole proliferation of boxes, cable, like streaming boxes, streaming
45:06SPEAKERTV boxes, the Roku.
45:08SPEAKERYeah.
45:09SPEAKERWould you say that was the beginning of the modern era of boxes?
45:11SPEAKERI think, I think the modern era is just TVs probably.
45:14SPEAKEROh, well, sure.
45:16SPEAKEROkay.
45:17SPEAKERI mean, we're getting ahead of ourselves, but are you saying you think the set-top box
45:21SPEAKERis going away?
45:23SPEAKERI think the set-top box is going away with an asterisk.
45:26SPEAKEROkay.
45:27SPEAKERWell, sorry.
45:28SPEAKERI jumped the gun.
45:29SPEAKERLet's, let's get it in order.
45:30SPEAKERSo, so yeah, the Roku, then the second gen Apple TV, the one that had HDMI, the Chromecast
45:37SPEAKERcame on later, the Fire TV came on around then, that Google TV thing that four companies
45:43SPEAKERmade boxes for and they all had terrible remotes and it universally sucked, came out and went
45:47SPEAKERaway almost immediately.
45:48SPEAKERWas that on the market at the same time as Chromecast?
45:51SPEAKERChromecast came after that just a little bit, I believe.
45:55SPEAKERThat may not be true.
45:56SPEAKERChromecast may have come out around the same time.
45:57SPEAKERI can't remember.
45:59SPEAKERChromecast needed, Chromecast needed a certain wifi to work because it, it was because of
46:07SPEAKERthe way the, the video piped over and it came across wireless.
46:10SPEAKERThere was no way to plug it in.
46:12SPEAKERWhereas the set, like the, the Google TV was more of a traditional set-top box.
46:16SPEAKERNow, of course, that Google TV and the current Google TV, now that I'm saying it, I'm thinking
46:23SPEAKERthat might've been called Android TV, but I didn't, I didn't actually look this up before
46:26SPEAKERwe started.
46:27SPEAKERI couldn't remember.
46:28SPEAKERIt's like, it's in concert, it's, it's so inconsequential.
46:32SPEAKERWe shouldn't, I shouldn't have even mentioned it like, Sony shipped this box.
46:36SPEAKERWe did a video on it on tested.
46:38SPEAKERAnd before we got the video up, they'd almost, they'd pulled software support for it.
46:42SPEAKERAnd they were like, we're not doing this anymore.
46:43SPEAKERThis thing sucks.
46:44SPEAKERWow.
46:45SPEAKERThat's a real HP touch pad kind of situation.
46:47SPEAKERYeah.
46:48SPEAKERIt was, it wasn't great.
46:49SPEAKERWere these kinds of boxes a major area of coverage for you guys?
46:52SPEAKERWe spent a lot of time talking about them because, well, cause the, the, like, it wasn't
46:55SPEAKERjust, there was, there was, they were interesting to talk about because the remote battered,
47:01SPEAKERlike the remote design really was important.
47:02SPEAKERIt turns out like a bad remote would sync, would sync one of these devices.
47:09SPEAKERBut the other thing is this, this is when everybody had exclusive deals for content.
47:13SPEAKERSo like Amazon wasn't on the Apple TVs because Amazon and Apple had beef and Hulu was on
47:18SPEAKERsome things, but not others.
47:20SPEAKERAnd like, like MLB would have an exclusive deal with Roku or somebody one year or Google,
47:26SPEAKERand you wouldn't be able to get the MLB app on the non, the other boxes.
47:32SPEAKERSo what that meant was you ended up having one or two or three of these are like a console
47:37SPEAKERand one other may be plugged in if you were a normal human being.
47:42SPEAKERIf you wanted to be able to watch everything.
47:43SPEAKERSo like you had a fire TV to watch Amazon stuff, and then you'd have an Apple TV to
47:47SPEAKERwatch Apple stuff.
47:48SPEAKERAnd, and, and luckily that time has kind of passed for the most part.
47:53SPEAKERI think it's still, it's still rear sits head here and there.
47:56SPEAKERI mean, I think it's only the last couple of years that Roku and HBO have still had
48:01SPEAKERissues, I believe.
48:02SPEAKERUh, that was, it's been four or five years at this point, but yeah, HBO max wasn't on
48:06SPEAKERRoku for a minute, but that's all resolved now.
48:08SPEAKEROkay.
48:09SPEAKERUm, yeah, it's, it's, it's, um, it's, it's weird cause like you have that stuff with
48:15SPEAKERcable companies too, like charter won't want to pay Viacom.
48:20SPEAKERAnd so then they'll have a, you know, the local cable company will run a thing on the
48:24SPEAKERbottom of all the Viacom channels that says, Hey, this channel is going away on September
48:28SPEAKER22nd.
48:29SPEAKERThey'll take this call Viacom and tell them that you're going to cancel your, your, your,
48:33SPEAKERyour upset.
48:34SPEAKERSo that, you know, like they're getting their customers to apply leverage to the negotiations
48:38SPEAKERor whatever.
48:39SPEAKERUm, and meanwhile they have Julie Chen or, or, or, or, you know, uh, uh, what's his name
48:45SPEAKERfrom two and a half men coming on the TV saying, Hey, hello charter customers.
48:50SPEAKERWe just wanted to let you know that your cable company are being dicks and they're going
48:54SPEAKERto turn off your two and a half men if you don't call them and complain.
48:57SPEAKERSometimes like inciting violence, it was, it's, it was grim times.
49:01SPEAKERI remember they, uh, the local cable company in Bristol when I was a kid, tried to cancel
49:06SPEAKERMTV.
49:07SPEAKERHe tried to stop paying for MTV and the MTV, like they brought VJs down to Bristol rallies
49:14SPEAKERand shit.
49:15SPEAKERIt was bonkers.
49:16SPEAKERYeah.
49:17SPEAKERWait, which era was this?
49:18SPEAKERThe eighties.
49:19SPEAKEROh my God.
49:20SPEAKERWe're eating mid to late eighties.
49:21SPEAKERIt was like Kurt loader and Adam Curry showing up or it was, I don't know if Adam Curry,
49:24SPEAKERI remember Kurt loader was there.
49:26SPEAKERI didn't actually go to it cause it seems stupid.
49:30SPEAKERIt's incredible.
49:31SPEAKERBut yeah.
49:32SPEAKERUm, anyway, uh, so the, the thing that happened around this time is TVs started having apps
49:39SPEAKERtoo.
49:40SPEAKERSo you had this weird choice, right?
49:42SPEAKERLike you could buy your TV, like our Panasonic TVs have them.
49:46SPEAKERUm, uh, they would have really terrible apps, like slow performing, never updated, like
49:53SPEAKERsearch would take forever because the key pressing the keypad takes so long to change
49:57SPEAKERthe letters and it didn't integrate with your phone or an app or anything like that.
50:02SPEAKERClearly whatever TV or sorry, whatever hardware was in the TV running these apps was absolutely
50:06SPEAKERjust not up to the task.
50:07SPEAKERIt really pathetic.
50:09SPEAKERUm, or you could spend a hundred bucks and get a pretty decent box that would do that
50:14SPEAKERthing but better, but it would take up one of your HDMI inputs, which was, they're precious.
50:20SPEAKERAnd then around 2015, 2016, the TVs, I mean, starting in like 2014, realistically the high
50:26SPEAKERend models, but by 2015, 2016, like the apps that were built into the TVs just got pretty
50:31SPEAKERgood.
50:32SPEAKERLike, like they were fast, the controller, the remotes were pretty good.
50:37SPEAKERYou know, you didn't really think that there was a problem with them as, you know, as,
50:41SPEAKERas, as the, the lesson has been shown over and over and over and over in mainstream media
50:46SPEAKERthat good enough is good enough.
50:48SPEAKERLike if the apps in the TV are good enough and the majority of people are going to be
50:52SPEAKERjust fine with that.
50:53SPEAKERTo the point now that like the modern TVs are running mostly Google, Google TV or Roku.
51:02SPEAKERSo like if you, if you go buy a cheap TV from TCL or Hisense or, or Vizio, you can often
51:09SPEAKERchoose between the Roku version of the TV and the Google TV version of the TV when you
51:13SPEAKERpurchase it.
51:14SPEAKERRight.
51:15SPEAKERThey're, they're different models, different skews, but it's like, there's a 55 inch with
51:17SPEAKERthis screen that runs Google TV.
51:19SPEAKERThere's a 55 inch with the same screen that runs Roku and they're more or less the same.
51:23SPEAKEROh, I didn't realize they were like equivalent models otherwise.
51:26SPEAKERThat's yeah.
51:27SPEAKERLike same port, same, same, same feature set, same same like, you know, HDR status, same
51:33SPEAKERDolby vision support, all that stuff.
51:35SPEAKERI'm kind of surprised that's worth their while, worth the engineering effort to actually,
51:40SPEAKERand we're all the effort, distribution design, everything to put out to basically identical
51:45SPEAKERTVs with different platforms.
51:46SPEAKERLike, do people really care that much?
51:48SPEAKERWell, so what I was gonna say is people do care because the phone integration with the
51:54SPEAKERdevice is depending on how you use it, if you're just using the remote, it kind of doesn't
51:58SPEAKERmatter.
51:59SPEAKERRight.
52:00SPEAKERBut if you have an Android phone, having the Google TV is a significant upgrade because
52:06SPEAKERthe remote and stuff are just built in.
52:08SPEAKERLike the phone integrates with the remote in such a way that like when you're watching
52:11SPEAKERTV and you pick up your phone, the remote's on the lock screen of your phone, right?
52:16SPEAKERIt's the same thing that the Apple TV does with the iPhone.
52:19SPEAKERSo if you're in the living room and you're watching TV on the Apple TV in the living
52:23SPEAKERroom, the remote's just on your lock screen and you don't have to have, like, I haven't
52:28SPEAKERused the Apple TV remote in two years, probably.
52:33SPEAKERThe downside of all the integration with the TVs is that they are collecting an insane
52:38SPEAKERamount of data and also they're an advertising delivery mechanism.
52:43SPEAKERSo you buy a cheap TV, the reason you get a 60 inch TV for 500 bucks now is because
52:49SPEAKERthe company that makes the TV knows that they're gonna make this much money in data sales and
52:53SPEAKERadvertising on you over the five to 10 years that you have that TV.
52:59SPEAKERAnd also you opted in without realizing it and the way to opt out is fairly difficult
53:03SPEAKERand onerous and usually involves sending mail, email to an address someplace.
53:07SPEAKERIs that a passive opt-in process?
53:09SPEAKERIs that legal?
53:10SPEAKERI mean, passive opt-in is what the country is built on, Brad.
53:13SPEAKEROkay, I guess so.
53:15SPEAKERYeah, there's no GDPR for TV stuff in the US.
53:19SPEAKERI'm curious if GDPR had any impact on this in the EU, I'd be interested to hear from
53:23SPEAKEREuropean listeners.
53:25SPEAKERIs that some situation where, like, the language is, like, by turning the television on, you're
53:29SPEAKERconsenting to our data collection policies or something?
53:31SPEAKERWhen you agree to the terms of service, when you sign up, when you start a new TV, at the
53:35SPEAKERbottom of it, it says, "If you'd like to opt out, you send a note with this and your serial
53:39SPEAKERnumber to this email address and we'll opt you out."
53:42SPEAKEROh, I thought you were gonna say at worst it was, like, maybe you needed to access some
53:45SPEAKERkind of service menu to turn off the data collection.
53:47SPEAKERI didn't realize you'd have to, like, bail someone to do it for you.
53:50SPEAKERSo on my Visio, which is a 2014 model, you can say, "I don't want to have ad tracking
53:57SPEAKERon," but if you want to opt out of the data collection, you have to send them an email.
54:02SPEAKERI'm trying to think, like, realistically what kind of data is being harvested here.
54:05SPEAKERLike, Watch Habits, obviously, like, probably some advertising interaction.
54:09SPEAKERSo Watch Habits, but not just Watch Habits about, like, the shows you're watching.
54:14SPEAKERThey're also able to harvest and see, like, oh, you spent this much time playing an Xbox.
54:18SPEAKERBecause they can, because of the way HDMI CC works, when you plug an Xbox in, they know
54:22SPEAKERit's an Xbox now, right?
54:24SPEAKERSure.
54:25SPEAKERThey know it's a PS5.
54:26SPEAKEROh, that's gross.
54:27SPEAKERAnd because they have the audio and video, they can print it and they can be like, "Oh,
54:30SPEAKERDad played four hours of Ghosts of Tsushima this week, but he played 16 hours of some
54:37SPEAKERweird hentai game on Steam on the same TV," right?
54:39SPEAKERThat is foul.
54:40SPEAKERLike, do you know for a fact that they are, like, profiling the image to see what you're
54:44SPEAKERdoing?
54:45SPEAKERI don't know how they're profiling it, but I do know that they can get data on the content
54:49SPEAKERthat is being watched across all media.
54:51SPEAKERThat's creepy.
54:52SPEAKERYeah.
54:53SPEAKERSo, yeah, and, like, this is going into rating stuff, like, the rating, like, you can often...
54:59SPEAKERThis started with TiVo.
55:00SPEAKERYou opt into TiVo to be a Nielsen TiVo family and you would be part of, like, an aggregate
55:06SPEAKERviewership that was the TiVo viewers on Nielsen for ratings purposes, right?
55:12SPEAKERThe TVs just do that now.
55:16SPEAKERIt's bad to the point that when I replaced the main TV that we use, like, the Vizio TV
55:23SPEAKERthat's in my bedroom, I set it up, I updated the firmware, and then I did a reset on it
55:28SPEAKERand didn't hook it up to the Wi-Fi after that.
55:30SPEAKERWow.
55:31SPEAKERYeah.
55:32SPEAKERWynton, hang on.
55:33SPEAKERAnother sidebar.
55:34SPEAKERYeah.
55:35SPEAKERWhen will you replace that Panasonic Plasma?
55:37SPEAKERI've been looking and it still doesn't seem like the right time.
55:41SPEAKERWell...
55:42SPEAKERWait, does that mean you're on the hunt?
55:43SPEAKERI mean, I kind of always sniff around, right, like, you know, Super Bowl time, you're looking
55:50SPEAKERat the sales and you're like, "Oh, you know, I could get a 65-inch LG Plasma, LG OLED."
55:58SPEAKERThat looks pretty good.
55:59SPEAKERSure.
56:00SPEAKERAnd then it's like, "Is it going to be better than the TV I have?"
56:05SPEAKERProbably not.
56:06SPEAKERI mean, the higher resolution, the HDR seems nice.
56:09SPEAKERIt will not act as a low-grade space heater.
56:11SPEAKERI mean, look, that is probably the number one reason I replaced the TV in our house
56:15SPEAKERright now.
56:16SPEAKERYeah.
56:17SPEAKERBecause the big Plasma is hot.
56:18SPEAKERIt does.
56:19SPEAKERYou walk by it and you feel it on your arm as you go by.
56:21SPEAKERYes.
56:22SPEAKERYou can feel some warmth coming off the TV.
56:24SPEAKERYeah.
56:25SPEAKERIt sure still looks good, though.
56:26SPEAKERI will tell you when we were playing the Switch sports game a few weeks ago and the kiddo
56:32SPEAKERdidn't put her wrist strap on, I was like, "Maybe it's okay if you don't put your wrist
56:36SPEAKERstrap on.
56:37SPEAKERLet's live on the edge a little bit here."
56:39SPEAKEROh, man.
56:40SPEAKERWhen are you going to replace yours, Brad?
56:42SPEAKERI don't know.
56:43SPEAKERLike, I keep telling myself if I were to move a long distance, I don't want to move that
56:47SPEAKERthing.
56:48SPEAKERPlasmas are hard to transport.
56:49SPEAKER100% true.
56:50SPEAKERThat is absolutely.
56:51SPEAKERIf we move back east, then we're not taking the TV with us.
56:53SPEAKERNot that I would lay down any TV necessarily for shipping, but you cannot.
56:58SPEAKERPlasmas have to stay vertical.
57:00SPEAKERI forget what it is about the construction of them that they are very prone to shattering
57:04SPEAKERif you try to lay them horizontally.
57:06SPEAKERWell, it's because they're frigging heavy, too.
57:08SPEAKERYeah, maybe that's part of it, but that would probably be the major one.
57:15SPEAKERYeah.
57:16SPEAKERI've been on the soapbox before, and I've been so heartened to see people like John
57:21SPEAKERLinneman from Digital Foundry also getting on this train.
57:25SPEAKERIt's the low persistence aspect of plasma is the reason because I play so many games
57:30SPEAKERon it that I cannot get rid of it.
57:32SPEAKERLike that is the one aspect of that TV, but that translates to motion resolution.
57:36SPEAKERThat translates to, and I think we've talked about this before, but how clear it stays
57:40SPEAKERwith fast motion, like nothing on the market OLED or LCD can match.
57:45SPEAKERLike it basically does not lose detail in fast motion.
57:48SPEAKERIt looks really good when you're playing games that move fast, it is awesome.
57:52SPEAKERYeah, because it strobes at 600 Hertz, like it literally is drawing and it's not drawing
57:56SPEAKERnew frames, obviously, like it's afraid 60 FPS game, it is drawing each frame 10 times
58:01SPEAKERto the screen, but still like that maintains some pretty goddamn nice clarity while it's
58:06SPEAKERmoving around really fast, which is amazing for games.
58:08SPEAKERWell, and the other thing is now when you plug in, like when I plug the PS5 into it,
58:13SPEAKERlike that thing has no problem doing 1080p 60 rock solid and basically everything I play.
58:18SPEAKERYes.
58:19SPEAKERYes, exactly.
58:20SPEAKERAs now that we are getting so many 60 FPS, I genuinely mean this when I say that, like,
58:26SPEAKERif you've seen, you know, high refresh monitors on PC, 140 Hertz, 144 Hertz, like that's kind
58:31SPEAKERof what it looks like.
58:32SPEAKERLike a 60 FPS game on a plasma perceptually is very similar to playing a high frame rate
58:37SPEAKERgame on a monitor.
58:38SPEAKERIt isn't, yeah, it's, it's, it is, it feels really, it looks really nice.
58:43SPEAKERYeah.
58:44SPEAKERObviously it's not, you're not getting as much information, like it's not literally
58:46SPEAKERabout the same frame rate, but like the, the, the impression you get is of a similar smoothness
58:51SPEAKERand clarity.
58:52SPEAKERAnyway, that's my little plasma minute.
58:53SPEAKERI will get rid of that thing eventually, but well, so I mean, look, I regret getting rid
58:58SPEAKERof the 24 inch Sony Trinitron CRT monitor that I, that I had for a long time.
59:03SPEAKERWait, was that a PC monitor or a PC monitor?
59:05SPEAKERYeah.
59:06SPEAKERDo they make 24 inch?
59:07SPEAKEROh, wait a minute.
59:08SPEAKERThat wasn't the one, was it?
59:10SPEAKERYep.
59:11SPEAKERYou have the one?
59:12SPEAKERThe 16 by nine, 16 by 10.
59:14SPEAKERThis exact, super flat.
59:17SPEAKERWhen, when, when we stopped using it at the maximum PC lab I was like, Hey, does anybody
59:23SPEAKERwant this?
59:24SPEAKERAnd everybody's like, no, I don't want a big giant CRT on my desk.
59:26SPEAKERAnd I was like, okay, I'm taking it home.
59:28SPEAKEROkay.
59:29SPEAKERWe, we have had this exact conversation.
59:30SPEAKERYeah.
59:31SPEAKERWe've had this conversation before.
59:32SPEAKERIt was a lovely monitor.
59:33SPEAKERThe, the GDM FW 900.
59:35SPEAKERYep.
59:36SPEAKERYep.
59:37SPEAKERYes.
59:38SPEAKERSo to test video cards for a long time, cause it had variable refresh rates.
59:40SPEAKERWe could, we could crank it up to a really high refresh.
59:43SPEAKERAnyway, it doesn't matter.
59:44SPEAKERSo was that, was that your one, was that your one time to get rid of a screen you should
59:48SPEAKERhave kept and now you will cling to that while you're clinging to the plasma.
59:53SPEAKERNo, I'm cleaning the plasma cause I'm cheap more than anything.
59:56SPEAKERAlthough it does feel stupid.
59:59SPEAKERI'm probably spending, I probably spent more money in electricity in the last three years
1:00:02SPEAKERwith that TV than it would cost to replace it with a much nicer TV now anyway.
1:00:06SPEAKERI don't know about that.
1:00:07SPEAKERI mean, that's, I don't know if you've spent thousands in electricity on that thing, but
1:00:10SPEAKERyou can get a pretty, pretty nice 55 or 60 inch TV for like 500 bucks now.
1:00:17SPEAKERI get what you're saying.
1:00:18SPEAKERFor sure.
1:00:19SPEAKERYeah.
1:00:20SPEAKERThe other thing is I'll have to replace everything in that chain because the receiver won't do
1:00:24SPEAKERwhat I need with like, I have to get a new receiver and maybe I just, maybe I don't need
1:00:28SPEAKERa new receiver.
1:00:29SPEAKERMaybe I just only plug one console and the Apple TV into it and call it a day.
1:00:32SPEAKERI don't, I don't know what the future looks like.
1:00:34SPEAKERI'm basing this on nothing, nothing other than gut feeling, but I'm starting to worry
1:00:37SPEAKERa little bit that the AV receiver might be, I think it's a, I think it's a specialist
1:00:42SPEAKERitem these days.
1:00:43SPEAKEROkay.
1:00:44SPEAKERThat's a better way to put it.
1:00:45SPEAKERI was trying to think of how to phrase like on, I started to say on its way out, which
1:00:48SPEAKERis premature.
1:00:49SPEAKERI don't mean that, but the way you put it is exactly what I mean that like, it's becoming
1:00:53SPEAKERa niche item again, becoming a niche thing that only, I'm not going to say lunatics,
1:00:57SPEAKERbut enthusiasts say have a need for, so it seems like, it seems like the vast, vast majority
1:01:03SPEAKERof people plug all the HDMI into the TV now and then just run some kind of line from the
1:01:07SPEAKERTV, like an eARC or something to a soundbar.
1:01:11SPEAKERYeah.
1:01:12SPEAKERThat, that, that is the thing that most normal people do, but I cannot, I cannot give up
1:01:15SPEAKERmy floor speakers.
1:01:16SPEAKERSo I need something to drive those.
1:01:17SPEAKERGina would love to get rid of the floor speakers.
1:01:19SPEAKERAh, floor speakers are great.
1:01:20SPEAKERThey're furniture.
1:01:21SPEAKERThey sound so good.
1:01:22SPEAKERThey are furniture.
1:01:23SPEAKERThey are, they look awesome.
1:01:24SPEAKERAnd they are shelves.
1:01:25SPEAKERLike we have, they're part of the decor.
1:01:27SPEAKEROkay.
1:01:28SPEAKERWe've got like some nice decor, got a plant on top of one of those speakers.
1:01:32SPEAKERIt looks a little bit like a, like a 25 year old dude's house.
1:01:35SPEAKERWhen you walk in, like I just need a rec room to put the floor standing speakers in and
1:01:38SPEAKERthen like having in the living room, which is the first thing people see when they hit
1:01:42SPEAKERthe, hit the house is a, is a bit much anyway, like we were talking about the ads and the
1:01:49SPEAKERdata collection, all that, how you avoid it, the real way you avoid it is by not using
1:01:52SPEAKERthe built-in interface for the TV.
1:01:55SPEAKERRight.
1:01:56SPEAKERSure.
1:01:57SPEAKERLike, like Roku sells a lot of data.
1:01:59SPEAKERThat's, that's part of the cost of doing business of having a Roku box.
1:02:03SPEAKERIf you buy $150 Apple TV, they don't sell data.
1:02:06SPEAKERThat's that's the way you get out of this problem.
1:02:09SPEAKERSure.
1:02:10SPEAKERI, I mean, there are, you know, there are certainly ways to defeat Roku's communication
1:02:15SPEAKERwith various, well, yeah, you pie hole them and whatever else, but, but ultimately the,
1:02:22SPEAKERyou can block ads, but you probably can't block the data collection going back unless
1:02:27SPEAKERyou just firewall the Roku so it doesn't have any network connection, which means it's not
1:02:30SPEAKERgoing to be able to use apps, which means you're not going to, it's not going to work
1:02:34SPEAKERright.
1:02:35SPEAKERAnyway, the other one is Google TV, the Google TV box, they sell a Chromecast now that is
1:02:43SPEAKERa Chromecast plus a remote.
1:02:44SPEAKERSo you don't have to have Chromecast on the apps that you use to stream TV and you can
1:02:47SPEAKERactually have an interface that you browse.
1:02:49SPEAKERThat's pretty good.
1:02:50SPEAKERI used it a little bit last year.
1:02:51SPEAKERI ended up not keeping it for a multitude of reasons, but mainly it's that we don't
1:02:55SPEAKERuse Android phones and that the iOS integration with Apple TV was better than the iOS integration
1:03:01SPEAKERwith the Android box.
1:03:05SPEAKERAnd then like there's a bazillion apps for all the platforms now, like, like you, you,
1:03:11SPEAKERwhen you buy a Sony TV, you get a Google TV interface for it.
1:03:15SPEAKERIt also has an airplay app so that if you want to airplay stuff to your Sony TV, you
1:03:19SPEAKERcan just open it up in your phone, you play it, blast it up there, just like you do with
1:03:22SPEAKERan Apple TV box.
1:03:23SPEAKERI still cannot believe we live in a world where airplay just works on the non Apple
1:03:27SPEAKERdevices.
1:03:28SPEAKERLike the Roku has it too.
1:03:29SPEAKERLike the, the, the, the day that the airplay option just showed up on our Roku.
1:03:33SPEAKERYeah.
1:03:34SPEAKERWas like something I genuinely thought I would never simply just think of, think about how
1:03:38SPEAKERclosed and exclusive Apple was as a company for so long.
1:03:42SPEAKERWell, that was one that they said they were going to open at the beginning and then it
1:03:44SPEAKERjust took them a really long time to do it.
1:03:46SPEAKERDid they?
1:03:47SPEAKERI think they waited until people had reverse engineered it pretty sufficiently.
1:03:50SPEAKERI don't know that the current there's a there's, there's multiple levels of airplay support.
1:03:55SPEAKERI don't know that the current top tier is supported on anything that's not Apple devices
1:04:01SPEAKERor Apple licensed.
1:04:02SPEAKERLike, like LG has a deal with Apple, Vizio has a deal with Apple and there's an actual
1:04:07SPEAKERApple airplay app on those devices that pops up when you airplay to it.
1:04:12SPEAKERThe one that was on my Roku, at least the old, I have an old Roku three or four, I think.
1:04:18SPEAKERAnd that one seems very much like the, you know, we reverse engineered the last version
1:04:21SPEAKERof the protocol.
1:04:22SPEAKERIt's still supported.
1:04:24SPEAKERBut it works great.
1:04:25SPEAKERSo who cares?
1:04:26SPEAKERYeah.
1:04:27SPEAKERYeah.
1:04:28SPEAKERThe one on our ultra is airplay branded.
1:04:29SPEAKERIt uses the Apple and everything and you can do screen mirroring and as well as music, but
1:04:34SPEAKERI think you're right that it is like a previous version.
1:04:37SPEAKERWell, the other thing is like the, the apps are all across, like the people put their,
1:04:44SPEAKERthe places that are making content, put their apps everywhere.
1:04:47SPEAKERSo like you can watch Apple TV exclusive plus exclusive shows on an Android, on a Google
1:04:53SPEAKERTV because there's an app and you can watch your Amazon stuff on the Apple TV because
1:04:58SPEAKERthe, you know, the rising tide lifts all ships.
1:05:00SPEAKERIt's we've, we've moved mostly past the era of exclusive stuff now, which is good.
1:05:04SPEAKERYeah.
1:05:05SPEAKERIt's kind of, it's kind of the opposite of what the streaming platforms themselves are
1:05:07SPEAKERdoing.
1:05:08SPEAKERRight.
1:05:09SPEAKERLike the, the state of the state of content delivery platforms is pretty lamentable because
1:05:11SPEAKEReverything is so siloed and, and there are more of them popping up every day.
1:05:14SPEAKERYeah.
1:05:15SPEAKEROn the hardware front, you have the apps have pretty much spread across, like everything
1:05:19SPEAKERis kind of device agnostic now.
1:05:21SPEAKERRight.
1:05:22SPEAKERPretty, pretty much.
1:05:23SPEAKERYeah.
1:05:24SPEAKERI haven't hit something that wasn't accessible on an Apple TV or like I unplugged the Roku
1:05:29SPEAKERand the Chromecast a few months ago and just put Apple, put a, put a second Apple TV on
1:05:34SPEAKERthe bedroom TV and, and have, haven't had any problems.
1:05:37SPEAKERIt's been okay.
1:05:38SPEAKERAlso you wrote those in the notes, but we probably don't even need to say that all of
1:05:41SPEAKERthis is because of cheap ARM processors.
1:05:43SPEAKERYeah.
1:05:44SPEAKERLike all of this happened because the ARM processors got good enough for every, everybody.
1:05:49SPEAKERThat made me wonder.
1:05:50SPEAKERI actually went and pulled up like the LG C2 specs.
1:05:52SPEAKERThey don't say anything about what kind of computer hardware is in their TV, which bums
1:05:58SPEAKERme out just from a curiosity standpoint, but you know.
1:06:00SPEAKERWell, I mean, presumably it's all the same processor, like it's the same one as doing
1:06:07SPEAKERlike they have one SOC that does everything for the TV, because like modern TVs have an
1:06:11SPEAKEROS, right, they're not, they're not just, it's not just a screen anymore.
1:06:16SPEAKERRight.
1:06:17SPEAKERIt's, it's the whole thing's weird.
1:06:18SPEAKERMaybe it's like some kind of Qualcomm chip or something in there.
1:06:22SPEAKERI mean, maybe Samsung is probably Samsung hardware.
1:06:25SPEAKERYeah, of course.
1:06:26SPEAKERI was thinking more LG or TCL.
1:06:28SPEAKERI want to see Sony does, Sony does Qualcomm, right?
1:06:32SPEAKERMaybe.
1:06:33SPEAKERI do not know.
1:06:34SPEAKERI can't remember.
1:06:35SPEAKERAnyway.
1:06:36SPEAKERIt's a, it's a, it's a weird world.
1:06:38SPEAKERLike I, the thing that's interesting to me is that I have to imagine a few years, people
1:06:42SPEAKERare going to start rooting their TVs and like weird stuff will start happening with old
1:06:47SPEAKERTVs.
1:06:48SPEAKEROh, that's exciting.
1:06:49SPEAKERYeah.
1:06:50SPEAKERSo if you, I, I kind of poked around to see if I could see any projects like that.
1:06:53SPEAKERLike, cause I assume that some of the older TVs especially are like the encryption keys
1:06:57SPEAKERand stuff were janky enough that they, that people have been able to brute force them,
1:07:00SPEAKERbut I haven't, I didn't, I didn't find anything.
1:07:03SPEAKERThat sounds like a nightmare, like the compatibility matrix for a project like that just sounds
1:07:07SPEAKERlike a nightmare.
1:07:08SPEAKERI mean, that's pretty moving target because TV, I bet the internal hardware changes year
1:07:12SPEAKERto year.
1:07:13SPEAKERI bet each year model is the same though.
1:07:16SPEAKERFrom top to bottom.
1:07:17SPEAKEROh sure.
1:07:18SPEAKERYeah.
1:07:19SPEAKERYeah.
1:07:20SPEAKERBut I mean, year after year, they're probably, things are probably changing.
1:07:21SPEAKERI mean, oh yeah.
1:07:22SPEAKERIt's a consumer like that, that kind of consumer electronics is a terrifying business.
1:07:27SPEAKERTo the point that if you were going to try to support a bunch of TV models in an open
1:07:30SPEAKERsource project, that would be bad, that would be a nightmare.
1:07:35SPEAKERYeah.
1:07:36SPEAKERAnd I think what ends up happening in that is you have, you have projects for LG TVs
1:07:41SPEAKERand you have a project for Samsung TVs, you have a project for Vizio and whatever.
1:07:45SPEAKERYes.
1:07:46SPEAKERThat would be more manageable.
1:07:47SPEAKERAll right.
1:07:48SPEAKERLet me, let me loop back around to my question.
1:07:50SPEAKERYeah.
1:07:51SPEAKERDo you think the boxes themselves are going anywhere anytime soon?
1:07:54SPEAKERNo.
1:07:55SPEAKERBecause those TVs are getting better?
1:07:56SPEAKERI think, I think so.
1:07:58SPEAKERI think that Roku at some point in the future, it doesn't cost Roku very much to keep making
1:08:04SPEAKERstandalone boxes.
1:08:08SPEAKERAnd it doesn't, Apple's going to keep making standalone boxes just because they like making
1:08:12SPEAKERstandalone boxes.
1:08:13SPEAKEROf course.
1:08:14SPEAKERI mean, you know, the rumors about the Apple television are almost as persistent as the
1:08:18SPEAKERrumors about the Apple car.
1:08:20SPEAKERYeah.
1:08:21SPEAKERI mean, I think it's much more likely that Apple licenses their stuff for high end TVs.
1:08:25SPEAKERRight.
1:08:26SPEAKERYeah.
1:08:27SPEAKERYou're probably right.
1:08:28SPEAKERLike, I think the, the like, who knows when Google's going to kill the Google TV again,
1:08:34SPEAKERit's in enough, like they have enough market penetration now.
1:08:36SPEAKERCause they're in Vizio, sorry, TCL, Sony, and a bunch of the other like big TV manufacturers
1:08:45SPEAKERthat I think that that they'll probably, that's probably a live product now that they'll not
1:08:50SPEAKERkill.
1:08:53SPEAKERI really like I'm, I'm really curious what the future of this looks like.
1:09:00SPEAKERRight.
1:09:01SPEAKERLike does, does Roku eventually become a piece of a company that just sells software to TV
1:09:05SPEAKERcompanies?
1:09:06SPEAKERMaybe.
1:09:07SPEAKERI mean, obviously Google's not going to do that and Apple's not going to do that.
1:09:10SPEAKERSo maybe, I mean, Roku's even in the content production business though.
1:09:14SPEAKERNow like that, that weird owl, that weird owl Yankovic biopic is being made by Roku
1:09:18SPEAKERor well, yeah, you can watch that on an Apple TVs.
1:09:21SPEAKERThe like, you just download the Roku app, you can watch that in any box you want.
1:09:24SPEAKERIt's not like you have to buy a Roku to do that.
1:09:26SPEAKERRight.
1:09:27SPEAKERI mean, Plex has free content too.
1:09:28SPEAKERYou can watch it.
1:09:29SPEAKERIf you, you know where the, you know, if you want to watch the nanny where you have to
1:09:33SPEAKERdo that, it's on Plex.
1:09:34SPEAKERWait, what?
1:09:35SPEAKERYeah.
1:09:36SPEAKERHuh.
1:09:37SPEAKEROkay.
1:09:38SPEAKERYeah.
1:09:39SPEAKERIt's, it's like, I don't, I mean, we're starting to see, well, first off some of the things
1:09:44SPEAKERare that used to be standalone hardware becoming apps now, right?
1:09:47SPEAKERSo like XBMC with Kodi and Plex and all that are now apps that you just download on your
1:09:51SPEAKERdevices because it didn't make sense to have those, those be long running apps.
1:09:56SPEAKERAnd now the, now that the hardware is on a server someplace, probably I'm, I'm curious
1:10:02SPEAKERwhat the longterm outlook is, but, but also like, I want to highlight that we live in
1:10:07SPEAKERa kind of magical world because like you can start watching something in one, like, like
1:10:10SPEAKERthis is one of those places where that AT&T commercial from the nineties, where it's like,
1:10:14SPEAKERyou know, you will hear something unimaginable that couldn't happen in today's technology
1:10:20SPEAKERand we're there.
1:10:21SPEAKERRight?
1:10:22SPEAKERLike you start watching TV in one room, you switch to your phone and then you walk and
1:10:27SPEAKERsit down in the living room and the same show comes up and exactly where you left off in
1:10:30SPEAKERthe place that you left.
1:10:31SPEAKERI mean, nobody watches TV anymore, so it's kind of useless, but here we are, it works.
1:10:37SPEAKERSo I guess that's, we got that going for us, I guess.
1:10:39SPEAKERIndeed.
1:10:40SPEAKERAnd then the last little thing I want to mention here real fast is like how ironic it is to
1:10:45SPEAKERme that the 360 was, I believe the first console that got Netflix and the, and that era, the
1:10:50SPEAKERXbox was as closed as it was well.
1:10:53SPEAKERAnd that now the app marketplace on current Xbox is, is about the most wild west situation
1:10:58SPEAKERI've ever seen.
1:10:59SPEAKERYeah, it's buck wild.
1:11:00SPEAKEROn an app store.
1:11:01SPEAKERYou can, you can get anything like you can publish anything on that thing.
1:11:04SPEAKERYou can run just about anything on an Xbox now.
1:11:07SPEAKERWhat about an Xbox one emulator?
1:11:08SPEAKERHmm, I don't know about that just yet, but you can go get Cody or even VLC on an Xbox
1:11:14SPEAKERnow and just plug a USB stick full of videos into your Xbox and just play them like that.
1:11:20SPEAKERLike if you had gone back to 2008, when like they were at the height of their, like this
1:11:24SPEAKERis our closed platform.
1:11:25SPEAKERWe have to monetize everything on your USB drive in then to though, cause it was a media
1:11:31SPEAKERplayer.
1:11:32SPEAKERYes.
1:11:33SPEAKERBut it was not like it had to be WMV or something, right?
1:11:34SPEAKERI can't remember what the parameters were there.
1:11:38SPEAKERLike it's not as simple now as it is now where you can just go.
1:11:40SPEAKERI mean, I get like part of that, part of that was also like media format, like format and
1:11:45SPEAKERcodec support.
1:11:46SPEAKERLike the point there is VLC plays literally anything you throw at it, right?
1:11:50SPEAKERYeah.
1:11:51SPEAKERSo that means an Xbox now will play anything you throw at it on a USB.
1:11:53SPEAKERI mean, look, we give Microsoft a fair amount of grief here for being goofy sometimes, but,
1:11:58SPEAKERbut the, but the living room as a place for computers was a thing that they were pretty
1:12:02SPEAKERearly on.
1:12:03SPEAKERYeah.
1:12:04SPEAKERCause I, I had multiple conversations in the early two thousands with people on the windows
1:12:08SPEAKERteam about what TiVo, like, like their, their whole thing was TiVo hiding the computer part
1:12:16SPEAKERbehind a, like a friendly interface was, was smart, but also not the way it was going to
1:12:24SPEAKERgo in the longterm, like the, eventually that was going to become a more general purpose
1:12:28SPEAKERdevice.
1:12:29SPEAKERAnd they weren't wrong.
1:12:30SPEAKERYeah.
1:12:31SPEAKERSo the, the, the general purposeness is in, it's still a, it's still a one way content
1:12:37SPEAKERpipeline, but you choose the content much more explicitly now and the interfaces are
1:12:43SPEAKERdesigned around simple, simple UI.
1:12:45SPEAKERSo as much as, as much as some things about TV watching are irksome these days, overall
1:12:51SPEAKERpretty good.
1:12:52SPEAKERYeah.
1:12:53SPEAKERWell, I mean, I, I only watch, I exclusively watch things that I'm excited to watch now,
1:12:59SPEAKERwhich is the big change anyway, I think that's a place to wrap it up.
1:13:03SPEAKERYes.
1:13:04SPEAKERThere's a lot of ways you can do it.
1:13:05SPEAKERThere's a, there's the other thing that we didn't like, there was too much to get into
1:13:08SPEAKERhere.
1:13:09SPEAKERBut there's a lot of weird little projects that just kind of like came and went, or were
1:13:17SPEAKERvery, very small or were super niche.
1:13:19SPEAKERThere's like, like the popcorn hour is something that we didn't get into in this episode, but
1:13:23SPEAKERlike there were a bunch of things that were built almost exclusively for, like I said,
1:13:27SPEAKERfor people who wanted to watch anime on their TV.
1:13:30SPEAKERWestern Digital had a series of boxes that were very similar to that, that would just
1:13:33SPEAKERlike some, some, they had some SOC in it that would be, that had a decoder that would play
1:13:39SPEAKERliterally anything.
1:13:40SPEAKERIt was like the, it was like hardware VLC basically.
1:13:44SPEAKERAnd there's a, there's a lot of interesting stuff.
1:13:46SPEAKERIn fact, actually, if I think about it, they probably were using VLC libraries to play
1:13:49SPEAKERthe videos on those devices.
1:13:51SPEAKERYeah.
1:13:52SPEAKERThere's, there's a, like, it's a, it's a fascinating time because there was like a great big rush
1:13:57SPEAKERto release all these things.
1:13:58SPEAKERAnd a half of the people were just making it because they thought it was cool.
1:14:00SPEAKERIt seemed like.
1:14:02SPEAKERSo anyway.
1:14:03SPEAKERSpeaking of making it because they think it's cool, like I came in here thinking like, oh,
1:14:07SPEAKERwe should do a little segment on like, what are the, what are the DIY options out there?
1:14:11SPEAKERLike open source projects for this stuff.
1:14:12SPEAKERBut I think there's too many to get into.
1:14:14SPEAKERI think that's a whole episode if people are interested in it, probably.
1:14:16SPEAKERI googled that, like there's, there's the Geek Box, OpenPLI, YBox2, a number of projects
1:14:25SPEAKERcame up when I googled it.
1:14:27SPEAKERThere's basically, I like, I think that there are, there are potentially, there were a few
1:14:31SPEAKERspinoff episodes that I thought of when we were talking about this and I'm curious what
1:14:36SPEAKERpeople come up with.
1:14:37SPEAKERIf anybody else thinks of the same ones.
1:14:39SPEAKERSo I made a, I made an episode suggestions channel finally.
1:14:41SPEAKEROh, there you go.
1:14:42SPEAKERPerfect.
1:14:43SPEAKERBeautiful.
1:14:44SPEAKERI've been putting that off.
1:14:45SPEAKERWow.
1:14:46SPEAKERThere are a lot of, Oh my God.
1:14:47SPEAKERThis is a gold mine.
1:14:48SPEAKERPerfect.
1:14:49SPEAKERI made it this morning and there are several dozen suggestions in here.
1:14:53SPEAKERBeautiful.
1:14:54SPEAKERYou said it slow mode?
1:14:55SPEAKERI did.
1:14:56SPEAKERThank you to our, to our wonderful patrons.
1:14:59SPEAKERYeah.
1:15:00SPEAKERThis is a great time to thank our patrons.
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1:15:02SPEAKERPatrons.
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1:15:04SPEAKERPatrons.
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1:15:17SPEAKERSo we keep doing the podcast.
1:15:18SPEAKERWe appreciate you all so much.
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1:15:22SPEAKERAnd if you are one of our executive producer tier patrons, you get a shout out every week
1:15:26SPEAKERon the show.
1:15:27SPEAKERThat's true.
1:15:28SPEAKERAlmost without fail.
1:15:31SPEAKERSometimes we forget.
1:15:32SPEAKERYeah, it's true.
1:15:33SPEAKERAnd we're about to prove it.
1:15:34SPEAKERYeah.
1:15:35SPEAKERSo thank you to Paddle Creek Games, makers of Fractured Veil, Andrew Selosky, Octo Thorpe,
1:15:40SPEAKERWedge assistant to the Thread Club manager, Joel Krauska, Twinkie has a new pick and place
1:15:45SPEAKERand James Kamik.
1:15:46SPEAKERThank you also so much.
1:15:47SPEAKERYeah.
1:15:48SPEAKERThank you.
1:15:49SPEAKERAnd thanks to everybody who supports the show.
1:15:50SPEAKERWe do really appreciate it.
1:15:51SPEAKERAnd we'll be back next week with another edition of The Tech Bot.
1:15:59SPEAKERGoodbye, everyone.
1:16:21SPEAKERBye.
1:16:51SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]