Thanks for tuning in to episode 50 of syntax error. We don't celebrate this milestone much during the episode, but want to take a brief moment and express our gratitude. Thank you to the listeners for taking time out of their days to listen to the podcast. This has been a great outlet for myself and Lou to chat every week about random topics and things that grind our gears, and we hope you enjoy listening as well.
Before we start episode 50, we do have three small favors to ask and would appreciate if you can help us out. Number one, if you have a topic that you'd like us to discuss or a question that's been bugging you, please let us know by tweeting at me at Adam underscore CGFM or Lou at Lou underscore CGFM. You can also use the submit follow up links in the show notes. Number two, if you have friends you think they like the podcast, it would mean a lot to us if you could share it with them better yet.
If you want to give us a mention on social media, even better, this just helps us reach more people and it would really mean a lot to us. Lastly, if you haven't already, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or recommend us on overcast. We appreciate any feedback you're willing to share. It only helps us get better.
We'd love to hear some new ideas and topics for the next 50 episodes. So if you've got some great ones, don't hesitate to send them our way with that on with the show. Here's episode five zero. We made it to 50, huh?
Yep. Is there any enthusiasm to that? Are you not excited about being a 50? Well, no, it's not a problem being a 50.
It's like, OK, cool. Episode 50, no one planned anything special. There's no like bells. There's nothing particularly exciting about this week's topic.
It's like, you know, when you plan a 50th birthday, Lou, you got to, you got to plan it right. You got to go out and style, you know, we miss the life crisis for the podcast. So I thought we'd live it up big for, you know, the 50th, but I guess not. No, I don't, I'm not a fan of big birthdays.
But if you are, you can, you can plan. I'm, I'm definitely just a go to work on my birthday, usually kind of guy. I don't, I don't really do anything extra special. I maybe go out to dinner that night if you want to get crazy.
And why did you even put this in the show? You obviously want to call attention to it. I mean, I figured you might consider it big, but I guess not. So I, you know, now knowing that 50 is not big, I won't plan anything special for 100.
If you don't plan something special for 100, then this is that will be it. That will be that will be the episode, the final episode, episode 100, the final episode 100 where Lou's watched all his movies and the entire podcast syntax air comes to an end. So 49 more to go, huh? Anyway, so we won't dwell on it anymore.
But I did see this week some exciting news and a little bit of follow up that Omni focus three for the Mac, which we all know you wrote a level letter to them is going to launch in just a couple of weeks, I think. So have you had a chance to even look at it? Adam, what do you mean? It's not out yet.
I mean, they do have an open beta for it. So you can run it if you want to. You think I want to live on bleeding edge software with, with all the stuff I have to do. Do you think I want to be on the cutting edge, a little on the bleeding edge?
Do you think I want to install Knightley's and I live that time? That time is passed. I let all the young whippers snappers, you know, do all that and send them on my bug so they can file them. And then I can just sit here on my nice stable software.
I mean, heck, I tried to live on Skype until, you know, classic Skype until I ran it, they ran it away. They're like, no, no, no, old man, you can't use a classic type anymore. You have to use this new crap. Ain't that the truth?
You definitely went down swinging with your walker and all. It's not that I'm old. It's just that I'm utilitarian. I don't I don't see the need for change just to change.
I mean, unless there's meaningful changes that are being done, but when arguably they make a crappier app by, you know, taking out all of the native chunks and turning it into a giant web app, which means that when I close it, it closes everything because, oh, it's all window because it's all one web view. I'm sorry, man, like web apps are not my friend. I don't I don't particularly care for web apps. And when Skype just wraps itself as a web app and never remembers my microphone settings, yeah, man, like I want stable stuff.
I want stability. This is where I'm at in my life. I can't blame you for running native apps. That's like right up my alley.
But so my question, I guess, is with Omni Focus 3 on the horizon, are you immediately going to throw your money at them or because there is compatibility between three and two, they can talk in some ways. Are you going to hold off? You have a free trial, don't they? I'm pretty sure they do.
I mean, most software companies do. That's probably what I'll do. And then we'll see if it's worth it. So at this point, no early predictions on yes or no?
I mean, I'm not going to jump the shark and say, like, yeah, I'm going to buy it, you know, because if it's, you know, not great, then I won't buy it. But I don't know. You always go down this road of like, well, you're going to buy this. Like, well, I don't know.
I haven't tried it yet. Like, I'm a big fan of free trials, right? I'm a big fan of trying something before you buy it, right? We were just talking about this earlier.
Like, I have to be smart with my money. Like, I have to budget and say, like, Hey, this is what I'm actually going to spend money on. And if it's something I use every day, which only focus definitely is, and I'm not saying that I'm not saying that I'm not going to put out something that I'm not going to like, I highly doubt that's going to be the case. But I definitely want to make sure I know what I'm getting myself into.
And that means I'm going to try it before I buy it. And you can argue, like, well, then, why aren't you trying the bait? It's like, well, no, no, remember, I want to try a release product. I don't want to try a pre-release because I don't need the software that I depend on day to day to be buggy.
Like, I don't need that in my life, right? There's enough chaos with, you know, kids running around and work and schedules and everything. Like, I don't need another one of those, another, you know, element of chaos in my life. So is now the time you want to bring up the topic of the week, which I threw in there was TV technology and where we're at kind of in the TV world today.
Um, you're not super thrilled with. So I kind of set the tone. I don't know if you noticed, I set the tone for basically my thoughts on this week's topic and just by talking about on the focus, it's like, Hey, man, I'm all about stability. I'm all about, you know, having something that's not going to break.
And I don't need to try new stuff because what I have works and what's the point of upgrading when I don't need to upgrade. So let's just say that if you want to get into TV tech, I will let you take the wheel and go from there because my TV is over 10 years old. Still works to this day. Do I want to buy new TV?
Mm. No, not really, because I don't need it. And you loo. Okay.
So quick question then. You said 10 years old. I definitely want to investigate in this a little bit. So are you, um, is there one TV in the house or more than one TV in the house?
There's only one TV. Okay. Do you know, what tech is it using? Is it plasma, LCD, LED?
It's a LED. All right. Cool. So LED for 10 years old, not too bad.
I mean, at the time I feel like that was pretty cutting edge, I would imagine. That's one of the slim LEDs, uh, I'll name drop it to you. It's the Samsung series, uh, five or six. I don't remember, but it was one of the thin ones and it was LED and it cost a lot of money.
And I was like, okay, well, cool. This is going to, you know, last for a long time. And here we are 10 years later, over 10 years later. I said that over 10, right?
Here we are over 10 years later. And hey, we're good. Knock on wood. To the TV industry's credit.
I mean, I don't know what your experience has been like, at least mine. Most TVs seem to be pretty reliably made, which to the point where it's like, yeah, you can get, you know, seven to 10, maybe 15 years out of a TV, who knows. And people don't seem to need to replace them as often as, I mean, you go to the store and there's, you know, series six, seven, eight, nine, 10, you know, it's like every six months of a year or every like football season. There's a whole new set of TVs, it seems like.
So warranty wise or reliability wise, whatever you want to call quality wise, they seem to be built pretty well. But I don't think that's true at all. Really? No, absolutely not.
Because I think the TV industry has been one to find out like, okay, well, I'm the worst case scenario. I'm the worst customer for the TV industry, right? Because I buy one TV every 10 years. So that means I'm not cycling through new TVs all the time.
I'm not going out every Super Bowl Sunday to buy the latest thing. I'm not going out on Black Friday to buy their heavily discounted deals from whatever it is. Because I don't need to because the TV that I got is reliable. Now, I think nowadays you look at TVs, they're doing everything they can to kind of like tighten that cycle, right?
Like, hey, how can we get people to buy TVs sooner, right? How can we make that 10 years into five years or how can we make that five years into two years, right? They want an upgrade cycle for TVs because the more they can sell, the better it is for them. So I honestly think that TVs used to be really equality.
These are less forever TVs. Nowadays, you'd be lucky if they last as long as some of the other ones, especially when you start going into like the budget, you know, picks for a lot of these companies. But they're all using, you know, the same panels and the panels are just getting cheaper, you know, cheaper to make. And with that, you know, they take shortcuts here and there.
And I think the tech is old enough to basically be like, oh, this is passable, you know, by standards. So I think, you know, if anything, whatever they can do to make them last, I guess, have a shorter lifespan, right? Is beneficial to them because then people will buy new TVs or whatever they can do to, like, introduce features that are meaningless that don't have any effect on anybody, you know, that no one will ever notice. They put them in there and cram them as a mark of them as new things.
So let's talk, check a little bit. So I'm real old school now is like plasma. And I know there are some like diehards in this area because of, you know, like the benefits of plasma, but I know some of the negatives are oftentimes heat. I'm, are you familiar?
Like, did you ever have a plasma TV? Dude, OK, I said that I haven't upgraded my TV in nine years, which means that nine years before the last TV that I got probably doesn't mean that I had plasma. Now, OK, you made the argument for this whole thing being about sports and sports ball. So why aren't you like raving about plasma?
That should be like totally up your alley. You should be all over the plasma. I never run the plasma TV and you miss the RT TV is like, you miss that whole genre. Like, let's just I'm just throwing that out.
I mean, if you're if we want to start with like CRT, we might as well start with the model T when we talk about, you know, self-driving cars. It's important to know where you came from, man. Everything started from horse and car and horses had a mind of their own. And that was bad.
And so we know, like, how do we make a horse that listens to everything that we do? I mean, it's self-driving horse. So yeah, I definitely threw out the RT TV. That was gone before I even, you know, started writing the list, you know, plasma.
The reason I thought maybe you would have had a plasma is because really plasma was like kind of semi the beginning of a flat screen. I mean, it wasn't like the very, very beginning, but, you know, I can agree with you. You know, like, I mean, it has its benefits, especially in the sports world, but it's something that, you know, the heat and things like that are obviously reasons that I think it isn't holding on anymore. And with some of the advancements in LED, I think it's come a long way.
That's not to say that, you know, you Panasonic, I know, is like, you know, well, well known for making some of the best plasma TVs, I think. And, you know, I think that they still have kind of a pretty good hold in that market, but I'm pretty sure everybody else is pretty much moved to LCD or LED TVs. So anyway, so speaking of LCD and LED, I think, you know, most of the market today is an LED, but that's probably like 80 to 90%. But there was the brief stint of LCD and, you know, when that came that brought flatter and, you know, stuff that could be more easily wall mounted and set flush to the wall.
And all that could jazz and today, you know, we get the kind of brighter benefits of LED and the cooler side to all that. But I know sort of over the hill and not far away before you move on. I mean, let's just clarify here. So LCD and LED, I think those terms get, you know, mixed up a lot.
So LCD is still, I still have a liquid crystal display panel in my TV. The only difference is that it's edge lit by LED rather than like, what are they used to use? Like some fluorescent tubing or some other light source to illuminate the panels. Yeah.
Yeah. They're all still LCD, right? There's LCD and plasma. Like those are two totally different display technologies, but really the only difference between like what you consider, like traditional LCD and LED is the backlight.
That's it. Yeah. And what the backlight I think is comes the dramatic, you know, heat reduction that everyone so loves that kind of comes contrary to the plasma world. So people really care about the heat.
Is that like a thing that most people complain about? Because it's like, oh, my gosh, this TV, like the seating up my living room and it's in the middle of winter. I think that would be a good thing for some people. Well, yeah, I mean, sure, if you live in Boston, great, you don't have to have fireplace.
Now you have plasma, but the, you know, I mean, I guess maybe I grew up in the wrong area of the world, but, you know, I grew up in Southern California where there's wildfires and sun all the time. So yes, when your TV was sitting in your living room and it's 105 degrees outside and your house is, you know, set to 80 degrees at the AC. And it still feels cool at 80 degrees. But your plasma is pushing out, you know, nice 90 degree heat out of the fan out of the back of it.
You're like, really, this is really, you know, annoying. It's heating up the room. So yeah, a lot of people, at least where I grew up, like as soon as the technology kind of turned and it was like, okay, we can't get better tech that isn't as hot. It was a benefit, at least for them.
I don't know. That's what I can speak to. That's what I can speak to like from friends, family, you know, that all kind of grew up right around me or were right around me when I grew up. So anyway, so what's over the hill?
What's sort of next? And we're starting to see, I think, the proliferation of OLED. I mean, it is really early days still, I think, but OLED is, you know, just starting to get here. And of course, the benefits of OLED, I think everybody loves the black levels.
That's the mythical thing I feel like most people are after in it, but it's still extremely expensive at this point and something that, you know, is probably going to be a five or 10 year transition, although it does seem like it is hanging on, which. Anything in the TV world, just hold your breath for a couple of years and make sure it does hang on because you probably remember HD DVDs. Oh, man. I was going to say, if you're going to talk about TV, just say you remember 3D TVs?
Yes, I do remember that. That was, that was like sort of a foggy memory of the past. But yes, I do remember that. Hey, you want to talk about something you see, you want to make sure to hold on for a couple of years.
And this is my concrete example that they're basically just out there to sell you more TVs is 3D TV. We just say that 3D TV. Yeah, there's a, there's a drop. Yeah.
Remember when you used to go and like where the, those glasses when you went to Disneyland and when saw Michael Jackson and Captain EO and he did his thing and you could see the things coming out of the TV. Like, Hey, you know what would be great? If we could put one of those in every living room, every living room in America. It's like, Oh, yeah, people, your TV suck.
Like your TVs only have two dimensions. What if we added a third dimension and you get to wear these dorky glasses even when you're at home? It's great and only certain title support 3D. Otherwise we're just going to try to make things look 3D, but we do a really shitty job at it.
So yeah, I mean, the whole TV industry is stupid. Yeah, I think, you know, with anything you really have to just hold tight and don't believe everything that's, you know, just the hottest and latest, which is why like, I don't know, if you're in the States and you go TV shopping and you go to the big box stores of like, you know, Best Buy or something like that. There's the whole like Magnolia department where they're trying to, you know, get you to spend like lots of extra zeros for everything that you probably don't need. Like cringe when you walk in there because a lot of what you see in there is probably never going to make it to the main floor where the rest of the TVs are 5 to 10 years later.
That's where all the 3D TVs were. And if you notice, they never really made it out of there. They just were like, Hey, look, we can tell you all these rosy things. And on top of that, and insult to entry is like, there's the content and the content never gets there either.
So it's, it's, you know, whole tight, you know, if it's something that is reliant on content being changed, really, really whole type because it's probably not going to get there. But the good news is OLED is not something content specific. So it is something that, you know, if your TV has it, it'll take advantage of it, which yeah, remember, OLED has been around since like 2005, even earlier, I think it's been around for a long time. Yeah, yeah, it's nothing like super, super new.
It's just something that, you know, I think, and you probably know this better than me, but like I'm assuming mainly cost prohibitive is been the issue, right? No, it's been size has been the issue. Like you can make the panels, small panels. Yeah, it's no problem to make a lit panels really small.
Like my Garmin, you know, navigation system had OLED panel, right? My interface, my audio interface has an OLED panel and they're small. So it makes sense. Like they're easy to do when they're small.
They're really hard to do when you get them, you know, Oh, hey, let's make a 60 inch version of this. Like, um, okay, let's see, how can we get a panel that big that evenly lit? Yeah, all of that. I mean, the reason I said cost prohibitive there is of course, if you, if you are willing to spend, you know, $5 million on TV, Samsung can make one of them and short off and see, yes, but the problem is no public is a person is going to walk in and say, I'll pay $5 million for that.
So it's taken a long, long time for them to get it to something that they can get to mass production and a rate that, you know, still is outrageous, but the public locks in and goes, I guess, you know, I guess sign my name on the line. So, you know, it's just getting to that point where I think most of the panels are still in the like three to $4,000 area for OLEDs, which is astronomical to spend for a television, if you ask me, but that's just me. So, um, if you're a die hard fan, by all means, please pave the way, be the early adopters so that, you know, in 10 years when I go to buy a TV, I don't have to spend that much money. So other people spend money, so I don't have to spend as much later.
Oh, yeah, great. Hey, man, you know, it's, uh, someone's got to be the early adopter and break into the market and help me out because, uh, I'm not willing to just spend that much money. So, and if, if I'm not willing to spend that much money, I know, damn, well, Adam's not spending that much money. Hell no, hell no.
Uh, I'm waiting for Ola to go down a price if we want to jump ahead to like, kind of what we get Adam to buy another TV is Ola has to come down a price, because that's the only thing that would make me want to buy a new TV, right? Because I think if I look at, you know, my panel, you know, which is a over ten year old, you know, LCD panel compared to like a modern day old panel of like, holy shit, pulled a butts, right? Like that is a way nicer picture. But same thing, like, yeah, I'm not going to throw down money if I don't have to.
It's like, well, this TV works. Like, why fix it if it ain't broken? Yeah, no, I'm, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not a huge TV consumer.
And the funny part about this is this episode, like of all things, I thought maybe you would be a little bit more interested in, I knew I was driving it from the perspective of sports, but you're the big movie person. You're the person that wants me to watch all this stuff. And so I figured, you know, I was like, all right, well, Lou never watches anything. You know, I mean, I basically use my television to consume a little bit of news and the one movie a month that I have to watch.
And that's about it. And the sports, I definitely do watch on my television, but I also watch on like iPad and Mac and other platforms. So I, because I'm using one of the, you know, streaming services, I use, I use it anywhere. And so, but it's like, it's so funny to me that, you know, you wouldn't want to invest at least a little more often considering how much of a movie person you seem to be.
But like I said, the TV works, right? Like, and that's the thing with content, right? You have to have content to take advantage of it. It's like, for the time that I watch a movie, am I really going to be that much more engrossed in the film and grossed in the media when it's, you know, let's say a different color or if it's a sharper image or, you know, deeper blacks or whatever, it's like, am I going to be that much more invested in the story?
Sometimes, no, I mean, I'm sorry, I want to live in the world where, you know, movie stars have flawless skin and, you know, have zero imperfections and all that kind of stuff because it's a movie. It's fantasy. It's not real life, right? It's needs to start bump up the resolution and, you know, making the colors super accurate and you start looking like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
These people look like I do. Like, I must say, I look like a movie star. I'm saying that, you know, they look like normal people. They don't look like, you know, the fantasy, you know, people that, you know, they're, they're kind of made out to be and, you know, that could be painting a horrible picture for, you know, standards in, you know, body image and stuff like that.
And that's what I want to get into is like, when I watch something, I want to get kind of like engrossed in story, right? And we've talked about this numerous times is the more I can get lost in the story and basically forget about real life, the better, right? Which is what we talked about with AR and VR and everything like that. It's like, when I'm watching something that's produced, I want to be engrossed in it.
And anything that takes me out, like the uncanny valley, right? Like any CGI movie or any CGI video game, if it's kind of close to looking like real life, but not quite like real life, or this looks a little too real and probably shouldn't be real, that's kind of where I sit. And I don't see the benefit in investing in something when what I want to do. It's not, it's not contributing to the things that I want.
It's just, yeah, you're not concerned as much with the picture. You're more concerned with the plot and the content itself and the, not the quality of the content, but the, not the quality of the picture in the content, I guess. So, yeah. Okay.
So we talked a little bit about our lead. The other sort of corner of this market is projectors. And I kind of talked a little bit about like, I have some experience with projectors, but I'm kind of curious, Adam, have you ever done, like, the home theater set up with a projector or anything? I've had friends that have set up like home theater projectors.
And that's one thing that I could see, like, okay, projectors aren't going to give you the best image quality. They're not going to give you the best color. They're not going to give you the best image or not. You want to fill a 120 inch, you know, wall with a, with a picture.
Oh, here you go. This is how you do it. It's like, you want to build a movie theater in your house, you get a projector. So, I mean, if we're talking about the experience, like, if I had my way and I could build a house and I had an extra room that I didn't know what to do with, and, you know, didn't want to build a chamber, didn't want to build this.
And I wanted to build a movie theater. Heck, yeah, I get a projector and throw it in there because that would be freaking awesome because it wants to go to the movies when you can, you know, just walk, you know, down, you know, the hallway and say, like, Hey, I'm going to watch a movie tonight. It's a super funny that, you know, that viewing experience of the movies, man, it's, it's more lucrative at home. Like the older I've gotten this out of it is like, I definitely want to just stay home, watch a movie so I can get on board with what you mean there that like a projector in the house would be nice because honestly, if they could charge me, you know, $30 to sit at home and watch a movie that came out, you know, today, or, you know, or say any Friday and, and, or go to the movies, I would pay the 30 dollars to sit home with my family and my own comfort and, you know, do whatever.
So I don't have to like, you know, go pay the overpriced popcorn fee and so to feed and deal with all the people, I just watch at home. So projectors could be a way to the future on, you know, for a lot of us, if, you know, that becomes a thing, if it doesn't, I don't know, I think the only people that jump into the projector market are the people that are big movie people, you know, if you're a movie critic or something like that, you better have something like that. So anyway, so that summarizes a little bit of like the tech that's out there and a few of the kind of like big, you know, arenas that the, that the tech itself is using in the, in the televisions. But there's like a myriad of other things to, I guess, see, and like, I would say buzzwords are used and thrown around when you walk into a store.
I mean, any of these guys that are like sales guys are going to just like, you know, toss these buzzwords in and, you know, to the untrained person, it's like kind of sifting through stuff and you're kind of sometimes confused. So I thought it'd be interesting just to talk for a couple minutes about, you know, things to like watch out for, because this is sort of the mindset I stepped through when I went looking for, you know, my television earlier this year. So the first thing I always am concerned with is like number of HDMI ports. And I know, I feel like that's less concerning today than it was maybe years ago, because we had, you know, DVD players and we had, you know, cable boxes, and then we had sometimes like a Tivo and we had, you know, an Apple TV and people ran, you know, servers connected to their, you know, television.
So there's just, like, you think this is like a normal thing? Yeah, people ran servers like their TV. That was just a normal household. Like, no man, you miss the whole category is the reason, you know, you need more HDMI ports as soon as game consoles went HDMI, as soon as game consoles went HDMI, boom, if you were a gamer, there weren't three ports on the back of your TV, right?
Like at any given time, if you were a serious gamer, you had now three ports gone, right? One for your Microsoft product, one for your Sony product, and one for your Nintendo product. Well, Nintendo took a while to catch up. So you might have only had to, you know, burn two for a while.
I was going to say it was like Nintendo? Do they actually get on board with that? I mean, because that was only in the last couple of years, right? It took them a little bit.
No, it was a little you, that product that didn't do too well. But yeah, you know, they made it there. They finally made it. So, but now you're talking three ports gone.
Yeah, okay, and fair point, fair point, like gamers were a huge thing. Yeah, I mean, there was a reason to have like sometimes, you know, I mean, if we like scroll back to 2005, 2005, 2010, I feel like yeah, it really was a big thing to have, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of like four to six HDMI ports on your television and, you know, today, I don't know that that's a hundred percent the same that we need exactly that many, but you know, it is something that you definitely don't want to be the person that walks in and realizes walking out that you only have one or two HDMI ports on your television, because you are going to find yourself at some point, probably looking in more than that, and it's going to be painful to be rummaging around behind your television, trying to, you know, unplug plug in just to get to the right input. So, you know, I would say just be mindful of that. And like I said earlier, you know, be cautious of the fact that a lot of times, if they're trying to make something cheaper, they cut HDMI ports.
It's the easiest thing to cut. No, you know, the thing that pisses me off is they cut full featured HDMI ports, right? And especially now when you get into high resolutions like here, we'll give you one HDMI port that has all of these great things. The rest of the HDMI ports, they're like second-class citizen HDMI ports.
Like they're not as good as HDMI one, right? You got to plug in what you really want an HDMI one, and that pisses me off. It's like, if you're going to go, you know, all out and give me a TV with all of these fancy features, and then put a little asterisk next to one, say only when plugged into HDMI one, like fuck you. No, like just give me all or nothing.
Like don't pussyfoot around the issue. Like just throw in the HDMI ports. It's going to add $20 to the cost of the thing and $50 to the cost of the TV. Like fuck it, that's fine.
Like, I think that's a better selling point than saying like, well, only one of our inputs has all the special stuff. The other ones, nope, because once again, that's not future-proofing your TV. That's just getting you to come back in two years when everything's, you know, 4K, HDR, whatever new color profiles out there, 3, 3, 7, or who knows God. Yeah, I definitely think that we definitely see a lot of that.
It is sad how petty that gets, but I'm in your camp at him on this one. Like I fully support what you're saying that charge me the extra $50 and just shut up and take my money and make them all work. Don't do this like, you know, game where it's like, you know, one and two do it, but three through six don't or whatever. Whatever it is, even just one does it.
It's a pain in the ass either way. So the other thing I guess to bring up are just a couple other ones are, you know, you hear the word UHD thrown around or the phrase UHD thrown around and, you know, ultra high definition to be honest on them. I know nothing about what that means other than to say that I think if I'm not correct, it simply means it's 1080, not 720. I'm not 100% on that to be honest, but it's just one of these like, you know, buzzwords.
I mean, if you go to Costco or any of these like big brand sites, it's like, it's listed on every one of them. So I don't even understand why it's not at this point, like considered like, okay, that just comes with the television now. So why do you need to market it as that? So one thing I looked for specifically was CEC support.
And this is, you know, what allows me to basically live in a single remote world for whatever I need to turn on. So you come over to the TV and you press, you know, the remote for whatever box you want to turn on, and it turns the television on and switches inputs to that television. So I'm assuming this is not something your television had on it being 10 years old, or did it have it on it then? Oh, hell yeah, I have CEC.
Come on, man. Nice. That's actually pretty good because like at the time that was probably pretty revolutionary. I mean, I know it's been around, I knew it to be around at least like six to seven years, but I didn't know how far it back it stretched.
So that's really cool that it is on your television. So I think that's a big win. That was a must for me. And I definitely saw it on a couple of televisions, like the lower end ones, where it didn't actually support it.
So the other one big for me was, at least for me was, you know, 4K is kind of a big thing right now. A lot of TVs are 4K today. And of course, sadly, I think 5K and 8K are probably, you know, it's only like what one or two TV seasons away. And then they'll be like, oh, yeah, we're shipping 8K TVs now.
You all need to upgrade, you know, and it's like, no, we don't need to upgrade. But it does seem like 4K is going to actually stick to a degree and may actually be a thing. And isn't going to be what three TVs are. I did specifically do a 4K HDR panel in my television.
So I do have the HDR support because I think that actually might stick to. We'll see that's, you know, that's a little tough to say. Like I spent, I don't know, maybe $50 more, maybe 75 max to get the HDR. And if it sticks, it sticks.
If it doesn't, yes, I've lost the money. But it's a little early, I think, to say whether that's going to be a thing for sure. Okay, let's pause really quick because the 4K 5K 8K thing needs some clarification or some a deeper look. So you have a 4K TV.
How big is the panel that you have? The panel I have is 43, I believe, or 47, something like that. Just under 50 inches somewhere. And where is your TV?
Is it in your bedroom? Yeah, it's in the bedroom and it's, yeah, you're getting into my viewing distance. Oh, yeah, you know, that's exactly where I'm going. Yeah, I'm actually like probably only like about 8 to 10 feet from the actual panel.
You won't notice a difference. The human eye cannot tell the difference. But this is a thing, man. This is why TV companies are crappy and this is why they, you know, market all these things in convoluted language because they won't tell you that, hey, if you buy an 8K TV, the only way you're really going to notice is if you get an over 60 inch panel and you sit two feet away from it, right?
Like that's the only time you're ever going to see a difference between the resolution in 4K and 8K, right? But if you have a 55 inch TV and like every normal American household, I want to say, I don't want to generalize every normal American household, but let's say on average, people sit around, you know, 6 to 10 feet away from the TV and they have a 55 inch panel or, you know, 16 inch panel. Like you're not going to notice a difference. You're not going to.
There's always going to be compression, especially when we talk about things going over the air, right? Oh, yeah, big, big, big compression too. It's not even funny. Everyone's moving away from buying like actual Blu-rays and, you know, high-death stuff.
Everyone wants the convenience of that because no one cares because they can't tell the difference. And when you can't tell the difference, people are just selling you snake oil and say like, hey, look how much better it is? 8 is better than 4, right? You know math, right?
4 is twice as, you know, 8 is twice as good as 4. I 100% agree with you. Like the first thing, you know, I shouldn't say the first thing. I probably waited a month, but I actually did do like a, you know, like I went to, you know, download a 4K version of a movie and stream it.
And I mean, I verified it was streaming in 4K and it was like, okay, I guess it's better. You know what I mean? Like it's like, I didn't discernibly right away go, oh my God, this is amazing. You know, it was like, yeah, I guess it's maybe a little better.
But if I noticed any difference at all, man, like it's really questionable. But this is one of the things that it's like when you go a lit shopping, you know, if you go a lit shopping the next like year to two years Adam, like you don't even get the option of buying an OLED TV without getting 4K and HDR pretty much. Like they just, they're gonna come with it. It's like, you know, you know, you know, you know, you have enough money to spend on OLED.
So we're just going to shove these in there anyway. Well, but that's a good thing, right? It's like once you once you patch that threshold of the cost, right? So once, you know, you get to that point, it's like, hey, you know what?
Like, it doesn't cost this much and it's better for us to market these TVs as being, you know, having everything, right? Because once you get into that upper echelon of cost, it makes sense, right? And this goes back to your idea of short cutting everything, right? It's like, there's the cheapest TVs where if you want something that's cheap and you just need a TV, go with the cheapest route.
The mid range is where you get fucked over big time, right? Because that's where, like you said, they're releasing special editions or cutting corners. But then once you start spending too much or a little bit more, I don't want to say too much, but a little bit more and you're going top of the line. It's like, hey, you know what?
It's to their benefit to throw in as much as they can, right? As much new tech, which is when I got my LED TV, like I paid over $1,000 for that TV. I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's a 40 inch TV.
So it was a lot, right? It was a lot and I financed it because, hey, man, I, you know, had kids and I didn't have a lot of, you know, to spend or, yeah, expendable income. So I was like, you know what, fine, I'll build some credit and, you know, do this whole thing. But it, the more expensive it is, like that's where they can fit in these goodies.
So when you say like, hey, yeah, I'm going to go OLED and I'm going to get HDR and I'm going to get CC and I'm going to get, you know, for fully featured HDMI ports, it's like, yeah, I'd hope so because, you know, I'm spending this much money. But just watch out for that middle ground, man. Like, they'll, they'll, they'll bend you over backwards. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And it's like, it's, it's not. And I mean, the other thing you do is, I mean, when you jump in at the OLED price of, you know, if you build OLED without 4K and without HDR, if, you know, the difference is like, okay, now we can get it to instead of 3 grand, it's 2 grand. It's like, at that point, man, if you're, if you're spending 2 grand on a television, like they're like, like, we can put it on HDR for like $25 more and 4K for like $50 more. And, you know, it's like all these little things and you're like, well, I mean, I'm already here.
So I might as well just do it once and be done with it, like you said, for hopefully 10 years, because you're buying quality, like hopefully quality or future proofing it, you know, and you know, I totally agree. The other thing that's really, really big that I threw in here is refresh rates, like refresh rates have changed significantly. And I know this is something that is, you know, depending on what you're doing, you know, what you're consuming can be a big, big deal, you know, a lot of times film, you want refresh rates to be a certain, you know, number, I think they film mostly at like, what, 24 frames per second or something like that. And so that ends up changing into the refresh rates and hurts.
And like, there's a lot of math behind all that. But you know, and then sports, you want something different. So it's, it is really, really, you know, sort of gimmicky to a degree, because you can't, there is a point at which you just, you're throwing money away that we don't really notice any difference. But there is a need, I think, for refresh rates to kind of continue to, you know, move forward.
You mentioned like refresh rates just need to go up more. It's like, well, no, not necessarily, right? Because all film is filmed in 24 frames per second. And maybe you haven't experienced yet because you haven't gotten to watch the Hobbit, that'll probably on your list for next year.
But if you watch the Hobbit, which I believe is like 120 frames per second or a faster, right? I forget exactly what they filmed it in, but it looks funny because it looks too smooth. It doesn't look like movies, right? You've been conditioned to watch all these movies a certain way for so long.
A different refresh rate doesn't look good per se. It looks almost bad, right? Because it makes it too real. It's like, no, no, no, like my fantasy world, like the illusion is ruined, right?
Like, now I just think like I could go outside and see the stuff and that's not what I want. That's true, that's true for movies. But I mean, like for sports and stuff like that, you definitely could take advantage of like, hey, for instance, like it is huge. It is just mind-boggling.
I mean, some of these cameras today, like, you know, like that they're able to, you know, look at instant replay like for like tennis when a ball is moving like 150 miles an hour. Like, I only say this just because like the US Open and New York just happened and then, you know, like golf, they're doing like crazy stuff with like, they're able to like slow the swing down and show you whether the clubface is open or closed or, you know, there's just football, you know, it's the same thing. It's all nuts. These guys are, you know, extremely fast and extremely talented.
And so to be able to slow that all down, I mean, it creates a better fan experience. So that's where I think refresh rates do need to keep moving forward. But there is sort of this upper echelon, like anything where you are throwing money away at some point, like to say, you know, 240 Hertz today, it's like, I don't know that there's anything out there that's actually using 240 Hertz right now. You know, I think most of the market is still either, you know, 60 Hertz or maybe 120 is where it's kind of headed towards knowing that really refresh rates are I think are kind of important.
There's a couple last things I want to hit on and I know one I think you're probably a little passionate about is sound bars passionate about these things. What? Well, you said nothing wrong with these in the show notes, so better than the shitty, tinny speakers, you get inside those small TVs. I'm 100% angry with that.
That doesn't mean I'm passionate about it. Like, no, I'd rather have like fully featured 5.1 surround sound system online. You know, I would rather have that over a sound bar, but you through sound bars in here as like other things to watch out for. And I'm like, watch out for there's nothing wrong with sound bars.
Like, they're perfectly fine. Okay, so my question then is like, in terms of, so 5.1, of course, 5.1 would be great. Of course, there's like, in there's like 7.1 and there's a ton of, you know, all of these, there's way more than I can even keep track of. But what's your thoughts on, like, was it Dolby Atmos sound where the sound bar is like, trying to analyze the room and essentially mimic like a, I think it's like a 3.1 setup or something like that.
So it's, it's trying to do that all in software. I mean, you think there's any value in that? So I think the more you see audio molding to the room that it's in, right, if you've ever had to set up like a high end stereo system, or one of the receivers that can actually do digital signal processing and shaping of analog signals on certain channels to kind of manipulate the sound. Yeah, it's super beneficial at our house down in Southern California.
We actually put in wall speakers in for the 5.1 system that we had and the sub and the receiver that we got, we specifically got one that did this dynamic shaping of signals. So you have to set up a microphone in the room and basically say like, hey, play this tone and have this microphone pick it up and then dynamically adjust these speakers based on how the sound is reverberating and how the microphone is picking up the sound waves and tune that speaker to where it's pointing the sound on that channel exactly where it needs to go. And when you throw something like Atmos in there, which is like, hey, now we have multi-directional audio, right, we're used to have, you know, front right, front left, center, you know, surround right, surround left. Now you have, like, upper surround and lower surround and they try to shape the signal kind of in a dome right around you to kind of give you more depth, especially when you come into movies that have a lot of action going around them or different things.
And I mentioned, you know, like you're looking at one thing and you want to be engrossed on that one thing. But one way to kind of pull you in that is by enveloping you in sound, right, to kind of put you in this bubble and say like, this is what you're looking at. This is what you're listening to. So I think there's a huge benefit when it comes to sound.
You can tell I like sound more than I like picture because I will rave about this and say like, I won't rave about sound bars per se, but I'll rave about the fact that they're getting ways to shape the sound because I think we've seen what speakers, speakers have definitely evolved a lot more in recent years, right, especially when you talk about these connected speakers and the way that they're analyzing sound and massaging sound to sound better, right, because they're not working against the layout of the room. They're making the layout of the room work for them. Whereas, you know, used to have to say, like, okay, well, I know that my subwoofer has to be here and if I have it too close and it's putting out this much, it's going to, you know, mix with this frequency, it's not going to sound good. And now it's like, Hey, you know what, human, you're stupid.
Like, I know how to figure all this stuff out, just put this microphone in the middle and press the button and walk away for five minutes and then come back and it'll have your surround sound and great. Yeah, I mean, it's nothing beats a like true professional setup or anything like that, but I couldn't agree more like for the like mass public, like sound is kind of a long way with this sort of idea that, you know, you push a button and it just kind of does it itself because engineers have figured out that nobody wants to do that. And so they've, you know, made this easier. And I couldn't agree that more that sound bars are a great kind of mid solution for, you know, people who don't want to do exactly what you did, which is, you know, setting up a whole like, we drilled into, you know, we got the drywall and we, you know, made speakers and in the wall and all that stuff.
If you don't want to go that far, sound bar can get you, you know, most of the way there without having to, you know, invest in all that work, I personally don't have one and that's just because I don't consume a lot of movies. So sound for me. I mean, most of what I hear is like, just quick news, you know, it's like the reporter telling me whatever, so I don't have one, but it's not to say that I don't value sound. I do think if I was more of a movie person, I would invest in something that did, you know, something like a sound bar or goes far as, you know, mess with the drywall, but I don't do it.
So sound, I definitely value it. I think it's for you. It's not a surprise for me that you love that because you love audio. So that's a huge piece of your day to day listening to or watching a movie with Bluetooth headphones.
Oh, so, so nice. The last thing I wanted to kind of touch on is like, there's a lot of like, ancillary equipment that they will try to hit you with at the register and there's all this like, Hey, do you want the warranty? Do you want a line conditioner? Do you need to buy these like special HDMI cables?
They're gold-related, like, they're so great. They're like, so good. And it's like, just do the double check that like, if you are trying to watch 4k content, like, you know, make sure you got the cable that supports 4k, but please don't buy it probably from the place that it's trying to sell it to you because they're probably going to tell you that you the special HDMI cable that is like, $90. Like, I've literally heard HDMI cables being $90 and I just laugh in their face and tell them no thanks, but no thanks because I don't just spend $90 on any cable in my life ever.
So yeah, don't listen to that stuff. Um, receivers is something we didn't even get into at all, but like, I think as a whole another debate. It's not worth it. You got to laugh more about the cable thing because let's be honest, like you have a six foot cable that's a copper cable, right?
And this copper cable runs six feet and their claim is that it's so well insulated that you don't have any interference from the outside. Interference from what? I'm running this behind a wall with my TV and I'm sending signal a mere six feet across it to another device. How much am I going to lose?
Right? Like, what is going to be the issue here? Now, if you were telling me it's going, you know, 500 feet, which I don't even think HDMI is spec'd to go that far, but if you were telling me it's going this far, then sure, I might believe you that a better insulated cable and a higher, you know, signal output with less impedance is better. But then for anything that's six feet, which most HDMI cables come six feet, six or seven feet, just by the cheapest one, like you said, the only thing to watch out for is the actual specification.
So yeah, make sure it's, you know, if you're getting 4K that it is HDMI spec, three point whatever they're on now. And if you're getting CEC that it is a HDMI spec, you know, three point whatever, four, eight CEC. So that's the only thing, but the nice thing about the HDMI specification is it's a specification, meaning that if someone, you know, adheres that specification, it's going to work. Otherwise, they're asking, you know, it's grass.
So by the cheapest cables, you can get, like, I know, I made fun of you last time for not getting a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack or headphone cable, you know, that's, would cost arguably, you know, less than 50 cents to make because, hey, it's a cable. It has to go six feet. You're not going to lose any audio quality and you're not going to notice anyway. It's fine.
Yeah, it's a joke that they even try to upsell you on all that stuff, but they definitely do. And just politely decline, go home. And, you know, if you were Adam, you probably would just open a web browser and look at Monoprice or Amazon and order your cables and be taught. Monoprice.
That's where you get that bulk pricing. Right? That's why I say you buy HDMI cables to last you for the foreseeable future. Adam goes and buys like six because he's like, you know, we just might need six extra.
Dude, you never know, right? And let's be honest, I haven't had to buy new HDMI cables until like a month ago. And the only reason I had to buy new ones is because I got a sound bar and the actual HDMI cable I was using wasn't long enough and actually one of the thinner ones because I had thicker ones before. And yeah, like, I spent less than, I think, $3.
No, not less than $3. Less than $3 a piece, probably less than $10 total on three different HDMI cables that were all eight feet because I got longer ones. Dude, Monoprice is is pretty awesome. And I know you were saying like, hey, you know, politely decline the sales person's like, who's going and buying their TVs and stores anymore?
Oh, dude, I think I think a lot of the mass public still goes to stores to buy TVs. I think that's just because I want it now. Well, yeah, I do think that is the case. But I mean, I still think a lot of people do walk in because they're so confused by the numbers and the jargon.
So they walk in, they just get hit with a low-leaf sales guy and, you know, they just buy whatever he says to get pretty much. I mean, they tell them all I'm going to spend, you know, $500 and the guy tries to, you know, hit him at, you know, six or seven for something higher. But I don't think a lot of people do what you and I do, which is, yeah, we're, I mean, a TV is a big purchase. So we're going to really, really, really look into it and make sure we like everything about it.
And we know it's going to last. And so I think this is a tech podcast. So people invested in tech are probably going to, you know, use their tech to shop around. If they're not, shame on you.
Shop around. Big box retailers don't need any more money. Don't give Walmart more money. So I couldn't agree more that our listeners hopefully are not doing that.
But you said, you know, who does that anymore? Meaning, you know, doesn't order it online. And I'm going to tell you that I think like 80% of people don't order it online. Oh, I was going to say who listening who listening right now doesn't do that.
Okay, there it is. So anyway, so I do want to see what soundbar you ended up picking up. So we'll drop a link in the show notes. And I'll have you give me your TV specifically model number.
And I'll include mine just for the listeners. I'll give you one guess where my my soundbar came from. Oh, yeah, it came from a wire cutter review, I'm sure. But I was pretty confident in that before I even know now before you get into it, which wire could review?
Was it here's a soundbar you should buy? Or was it one of the other ancillary picks that they go through? It was probably like the budget, like anything you got it. All right.
Yeah, Adam does this search wire cutter scroll to bottom of page. Perfect. That's the one. It's only $100, not $249.
Like the other one is also also they have this one at Costco. And it was $40 cheaper than the wire cutter price. So yeah, you know, when that when that comes on, what's for sale is what's for dinner, I think as your dad put it. So yep, that's definitely true.
Yeah, that's a pretty good I mean $40 cheaper. I mean, as it is, they're not that expensive. So that sounds like you pretty much all but stole it. This is why you do your homework, man.
This is why you do those things. This is why people listening probably do their homework already because they want that $40. That's like 40 cups of coffee. Well, I guess not 40 cups of coffee.
I shouldn't get cheap ass coffee, but yeah, you gotta be getting cheap ass coffee. But in my, you know, world, I don't drink coffee. So it's like 40 extra dollars to spend on something else, right? So apps for this year, we can call it.
It's like four extra in and out burgers for you. Anyways, you have anything else to add to television? I have to say I felt like it was decently productive conversation wise. Yeah, I guess so.
I don't know. I've been grumpy lately. Yeah. So you said you want to expand on why you've been grumpy?
So I feel like the last couple episodes I've been like just really grumpy and probably a little mean to you, which is, you know, par for the course, I think as we go. But let's just say that it's, I'm not an angry person, right? And my grumping is usually fades after like two minutes of hanging up the call with you or after I, you know, send you a message. But I don't know, like these topics for me are, are not doing it.
But I'll try to be in a better mood for the next week, providing the topic is better. But if these topics are great and everyone listening is like, Adam, you're stupid and you should love these topics and why aren't you contributing more? And why are you being so mean? Then they can definitely direct that feedback to me via Twitter or via links in the show notes or on the website or whatever they want to get in touch.
Those who know me will know how to yell at me. I also want to say, okay, just let me get this out of the way. I swear I'm going to be done talking after this next point because the rest of it is going to point this is you're doing a TV episode in what, September when CES is in January, and that's the big TV Expo when all of the new TV fancy, you know, schmancy stuff comes out. I'm like, why didn't you do this in like February?
Why now? So all you would not know why now? Why now? There's a big sport which Americans tend to watch that started this past weekend.
I know you probably know a little of it, but it's called football. And it requires oftentimes a very large TV. Even soccer? No, this would be called American football, you know, so the sport that has an oblonged brown shape or brown color ball.
Yeah. And lots of concussions. And lots of yes, you're 100% correct there. They're walking and chatted up with their caddy, you know, like, yeah, man, you know, like, cool.
And then they put down the other quarter, you know, but that mark where their ball is. The quarter. It's nothing. Don't put the quarter down if they're balls in the way.
Why is it a quarter? It's a ball marker. It actually has like, it's not like, it's like a metal coin, like coin S. I get that.
It's not going to buy these things. Are they more expensive than a quarter? They probably are. This is fucking stupid.
What benefit does this book golf ball marker give? Does it have like special etchings? Like, is it smart? Does it like tell you the slope and the pitch and the angle of?
Yeah, see, like, it's a quarter. It's an oversized quarter. It's not even oversized. It's usually smaller than a quarter.
It's like more on the scale of like a penny, you know, two holes to the left of the hole is where I want to aim. And so you can kind of put a line on the ball and align it up. That's it. That's all you got your balls when they get dirty?
Yeah. How do you wash your balls, Lou? Well, there's a ball wash, like, sometimes at like the next hole, like usually at the start of the next hole, there's a contraption which you put the ball in and it has brushes on either side of it. So you put your dirty, filthy balls in this contraption and yeah, you're having a good old time doing this, right?
Yeah, well, you keep going into it, man. Like you can tell me like an intricate detail is how you're washing your balls. And I'm just like, all right, man, you're not like not even induls me in this. But if you want to keep going, go, yeah, so use your brushes.
I mean, it's just it's something that I've you act like I've never had this conversation with someone before that doesn't like golf. So yep, I'm fully okay explaining to you how you wash balls. I hope becoming weeks are in my favor. And may the odds be forever in your favor.
It's another movie reference. You don't understand though. Yep, I'm lost. There.
See what you mean, video? Look what you mean, video.