The Tech Guy Episode 1853 Transcript

Please be mindful this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. 

New Speaker (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:12):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. The show originally aired on the premier networks on Saturday, December 18th, 21. This is episode 1,853. Join The Tech Guy podcast, supported by AT&T active armor. You spent the day staring at your phone, waiting for that one call from the job, the hospital, the family, and it finally rings. And guess who it is? A robot. Don't let fraud calls disappoint you. AT&T makes your security a top priority. Helping block fraud calls with AT&T active armor. It's not complicated AT&T active armor 24/7 proactive network security fraud call blocking and spam notifications. To help stop threats at no extra charge compatible devices, service required. Visit att.com/activearmor for details. And by BetterHelp online therapy join over 1 million people who've taken charge of their mental health. And as a listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/techguy. And by userway.org. Userway ensures your website is accessible, ADA compliant and helps your business avoid accessibility related lawsuits. The perfect way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with disabilities. It's not only the right thing to do. It's also the law go to userway.org/twit for 30% off Userway's AI powered accessibility solution.

Leo Laporte (00:01:57):
Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo LePort here. The tech guy, time to talk can computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, cord cutting cars, tech and automotive vehicles. That kind of thing. Anything with the chip in it, your microwave oven? Sure. Why not? If it's got a chip in an eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo is the phone number. That's this number should call. If you want to talk high tech with me 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 tore from anywhere in the us or Canada outside that area, you can still reach me, but you've gotta use Skype or so, you know, some sort of, some sort of do Hickey like that to call 88 88, ask Leo website tech guy labs.com gonna be a change coming to the website.

Leo Laporte (00:02:55):
The big change is that we are, it's gonna still be tech. I labs.com, but the software it runs on, which is a, a very popular what they call a CMS, a content management system. You know, WordPress is a content management system. Blogger is, there are ways that you can put, you know, your, your stuff on the, on the website, in our case the, the show notes on the website on a website but drool has made some big changes and we had not kept up. And now all of a sudden drools saying, it's not gonna be secure if you don't keep up, by the way, does that sound familiar? That's the story of story of the world. Isn't it. It's not gonna be secure if you don't keep up. So we in investigated how expensive it would be to take the website into the 21st century.

Leo Laporte (00:03:52):
And it was a significant amount of money. Number I heard didn't want to hear kind of, and I didn't hear it, but it's still stuck in my brain a quarter of a million dollars. So here's what we're gonna do. <Laugh> still gonna have tech eye labs.com, but we're gonna fold it into, and we are gonna have to upgrade this site as well. We're gonna fold it into the podcast site, twi.tv. Now this won't change things for you as essentially still go to tech eye labs. It'll still take you to the latest episode. But it means that I'm sorry to say the show notes won't have quite as a rich in experience we used, we had a pick of the week and, you know, product of the week and all that stuff, and we're not gonna have to leave that behind, but at least the most important part, which is the links, the things I mentioned to those will make it to the show notes.

Leo Laporte (00:04:39):
So I just wanna let you know, it's gonna look a little different. It also means, and I'm SA very sad to say this farewell to our loyal scribe of how many years it's been years, 8, 9, 10. I don't know how long you've been doing this. James, our loyal scribe, James Duo will be moving on because it's now an internal site. And so not really can't work the same way it did the old site. So I'm sorry. Say the shouldn't change the site too significantly, but I just wanna let you know, techguylabs.com and a Hardy, thank you over the years to James Duo and such a good job in writing everything down. I appreciate it. We <laugh> we'll do this all internally, which means our editors will be doing that. And and Mikah Sargent Tech Guy Two, will also be very much involved in that.

Leo Laporte (00:05:33):
Mikah also is not here because OFN you know, Mikah does the show in studio with me on a Saturday. And he has been doing that for the last few weeks months maybe. But because of OCN we've gone back into lockdown, which means no, no people in my room. I'm alone once again in my little room. So but you know, we'll get Micah back in as soon as <laugh>. I know, as, as soon as the, as soon as the pandemic's over. Sorry, my <laugh>, that sounds like a, that might be a long time, doesn't it? Yeah. One of these days the pandemic will be over and then everything will go back to normal. Oh, I yay. Yay. Yay. So couple of just little changes just to let you know of course the world is still reeling, reeling, IA reeling.

Leo Laporte (00:06:26):
I tells you from this exploit, they call it log for shell. Let me see how I can explain this to people who aren't like web workers, for those of you who run servers of any kind. You're probably familiar with a Java program called log for J servers, people who run you know, public computers, like to keep something called logs, which is just, you know, like the, you know, captain's logs star date, 54, 55 dot three, it's a log like the captain's log of what's gone on it's automated in almost every case. It is in every case because you know, everybody who visits your website puts multiple entries into your log. And so it obviously has to be automated as a result almost everybody who runs servers of any kind, it doesn just websites, but of any kind has to run a logging program. And the most popular logging program <laugh> is a little Java program called log for J J being JavaScript log for J has been out for a few years.

Leo Laporte (00:07:42):
Has a little bit of a bug. Maybe you've heard about it publicly disclosed on the ninth. So well, it's been nine days now that was a bad weekend, by the way, last weekend, for a lot of people who run log for Jay shells, that it was such a bad exploit. It was such a bad vulnerability that you could literally go to a, a, a website that was running this thing and, and trigger it. Not even, not just a website, it would be easy to trigger with just a short little bit of text and boom, what do you get? Oh, fun. You get absolute accents us to that server. You can get in, you can look around, you can search for things. You can plant stuff there. It's basically a nightmare. People are calling this the worst software vulnerability in a decade.

Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
I, I think actually I think it's the worst ever. And you've heard us talk, you know, many times about security flaws. This is the worst ever, because it affects so many machines and those machines in turn impact all of us. So the log for shell exploit has been a problem on every continent in every server, Amazon, apple Google, everybody, everybody has had to rush to fix this. Now the good news is the software has been fixed. It was fixed quite quickly, volunteers, by the way, not paid people work on that software along for Jay. So they all fixed it really quick, like in a couple of days.

Leo Laporte (00:09:21):
But that doesn't mean, of course, that the problem's gone away, cuz there's a couple of things. First of all, people, aren't great at applying these fixes, these patches. You've heard me say that by the way, you, you know, when the patch comes out, fix it. This case is what they call 0-day. They discovered it cuz people were using it including by the way, the Chinese government hackers with the Chinese government, many nation states. And of course just, you know, run of the mill, bad guys, all taking advantage of this. Cause it was so easy. It was just such an, it was easy. It was almost like I would, I was, I was tempted. I didn't cuz it would be wrong and against the law, but literally it was that easy that you could just, you know, boom, just do it, just do it.

Leo Laporte (00:10:06):
So everybody's gotta fix this. They're fixing it like crazy. They're working like crazy, but so many sites affected and maybe you've noticed I have kind of internet was a little wonky this week. Like a little just, you know, like not responsive. Sometimes servers were slow to respond. Things were going on. It seemed like things were kind of a little shaky. Maybe did you notice that maybe you didn't maybe I'm hypersensitive, but it definitely was going on as people were, you know, rapidly, rapidly kind of fix this, we fix this. It's a problem. So anyway here's the good news <laugh> I think it's been fixed, but the bad news is there's still plenty of bad websites out there who could who could cause you problems. So just, you know, just be patient with your friendly local <laugh> surfer administrator.

Leo Laporte (00:11:00):
They've been having a terrible, terrible, no good very bad week. And just so you know, what does it mean for you and me? It's hard to say. But it's, here's this, here's the nightmare scenario, which is probably occurring website. You and I visit all lot, you know, what's your favorite website runs a server runs log for Jay, almost all of 'em do didn't patch it in time. And this is the second thing. Maybe they patched it a day later, but meanwhile, before they fixed the problem, bad guy got in. Doesn't matter if you close the barn door, after the bad guy gets in, he's inside the house. So the bad guy got in your favorite website and is messing around with it. What can he do? Lots of stuff, including put stuff on that website that when you go to visit it attacks you, what do you do about this? Well, you're not, if you're not running log for Jay and those of you who are, you know, who you are, Minecraft runs it. I had five Minecraft servers running. I was like, oh my gosh,

Speaker 2 (00:12:04):
Gotta

Leo Laporte (00:12:05):
Fix this. So if you're are not gonna get impacted by the initial log for J problem, but if the websites you visit and it's chances are good many sites that people visit are actually now effect infected. They may have stuff on there that attacks you. What's the best solution for that. You keep yourself up to date, keep your, this is why we don't. We say don't use windows XP anymore. It's not being kept up to date. Make sure you're using an up to date operating system up to date browsers, and that you've checked and made sure they're up to date because they fix the problems that would let the bad guys who are on those websites, get into your computer, not log for Jay. They that's how they got into the website's computer. Now you've gotta protect yourself against whatever they put on there.

Leo Laporte (00:12:52):
And fortunately is nothing on on our computers that it is comparable. At least nothing. No one's discovered yet. <Laugh> no nothing. Anyone has discovered yet. But you know, that's why we patch patch, patch patch, always, always be patching, always be fixing anything that goes online. Anything on your computer? Sure. It's up today. All right. Let's take a tiny time out. We're gonna get the phones to hopping and to get our masked Avenger Kim Shaffer, the phone angel. We're gonna get her. Yes. We're all wearing masks again. Isn't that nice. She's our very own electric light orchestra. <Laugh> she plays all the instruments, including the telephone instrument. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kim Scher, our phone angel. Hello, Kim.

Speaker 2 (00:13:46):
Good weekend before Christmas. What? I know. How is this

Leo Laporte (00:13:50):
Possible? Wait a minute. Christmas is next Saturday.

Speaker 2 (00:13:53):
Yeah, it's impossible. This whole year flew, flew by <laugh> and yet didn't move, move to a snail's

Leo Laporte (00:14:00):
Pace all the same time. I'm gonna give you the weekend off. You're and a day. And January 1st, I guess you shouldn't come in then either. No, no.

Speaker 2 (00:14:09):
Well, you wouldn't want me here that day either. <Laugh> no, I can promise you that. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:14:13):
Merry Christmas, tiny Tim. And and then unfortunately professor Laura does have to come in because there will be a show. It just will be a reconstituted from <laugh> freeze, dried parts and and put back together again. And so late professor, Laura has gotta run now that, but so I'm sorry, Laura, that you have to of work on. No, the

Speaker 2 (00:14:36):
Hangover will have worn

Leo Laporte (00:14:37):
Off by then. Yeah. And we'll be back with live show. I'm gonna be here this weekend. This is real this weekend. And then January 2nd, we resume our regularly scheduled programming. So I feel bad. I should answer as many calls as I can today. Don't you think?

Speaker 2 (00:14:53):
Yeah, you should. And if you need a gadget before Christmas, today might be the day to call, but you're not gonna get it cuz there's supply chain issues.

Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
Yeah. If the gadget doesn't have anything in it, you know, it's just like a happy meal for McDonald's. Okay. Maybe, actually, maybe they're in short supply too. Who knows? Yeah, probably. Who should I start?

Speaker 2 (00:15:10):
Let's go with Kevin and Spokane.

Leo Laporte (00:15:12):
Hello? Kevin and Spokane. Leo. LePort the tech guy.

Speaker 3 (00:15:17):
Hello? Good day, sir. Hello, sir.

Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
Merry Christmas to ya. Happy holidays. How are you

Speaker 3 (00:15:22):
First caller on your last day? So I'm honored. So

Leo Laporte (00:15:26):
No, no tomorrow I'll be here too, but you're still the first caller. So that's all that matters. Okay. Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:15:32):
Great. I, I finally got my COVID ducks in row so I could travel overseas. Yeah. And yeah. Happy about that. Going to see some folks in Thailand.

Leo Laporte (00:15:43):
Are, are you allowed in?

Speaker 3 (00:15:46):
Yeah, they're they're open to tourists. Nice.

Leo Laporte (00:15:49):
Oh, Thailand's supposed to be amazing. We were, were supposed to go to Thailand next month, but that whole thing was canceled. So I'm glad you can still go. That's good.

Speaker 3 (00:15:58):
After all of the non tour year all the surf spots are been renewed. Yeah. So it's gonna be great.

Leo Laporte (00:16:06):
This is actually a good thing once in a while. So you go to the islands to surf,

Speaker 3 (00:16:11):
Go to the islands and the beaches. Nice. And they're all prestig and the coral reefs are restored.

Leo Laporte (00:16:18):
Hallelujah. Yeah. Wasn't all bad.

Speaker 3 (00:16:23):
So when I get there of course I'm gonna get my local SIM card. Yeah. But then I got the thinking, what does that do to my two-factor authentication?

Leo Laporte (00:16:32):
Well, it changes your phone number when you put a new SIM in, so you won't get those it won't affect things like the Google authenticator that'll still work, but it will affect any text message authentications. You won't get 'em

Speaker 3 (00:16:47):
That's my main sales of authentic.

Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
Yeah. You won't get 'em now. There's certainly ways to do this. Once you get the new him, you can, before you put it in you'll know the phone number the Ty phone number you can forward. I, can you forward text messages depends on what you're using on an iPhone. You'd have to you'd you'll still get 'em cuz it'll come through message Apple's messages on an Android device. If you're using Google's Android messenger, you can get it by tying it to your account. So these days I think maybe a little bit, yeah, a little bit better than it used to be. Generally what I nowadays, what I tell people is not to get a new SIM cuz of this phone number change, but instead get a, get a carrier that that will still give you connectivity. I use Google fi travel and it's the same price all over the world, including Thailand. 

Speaker 3 (00:17:39):
OK, well, yeah, I I'm I'm on Verizon. Well I'm actually on straight talk using Verizon. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:45):
So you need a new SIM. Cause I straight talk probably is not gonna give you connectivity at all. As you travel overseas, a lot of times these MV OS you know, Verizon simple wood, but for a fee, but the M V OS they only are us only usually. So check your contract on that.

Speaker 3 (00:18:03):
Right. so I'm assuming I'm not gonna, it's not gonna work.

Leo Laporte (00:18:09):
You'd have, if you forward it it'll work. Ideally, well, the problem with forwarding is you need a phone on the old number to be sitting there, sitting there forwarding. I don't know if the carrier, I, I wonder if the carrier for security reasons, but they probably shouldn't. They might do it anyway. Should, should forward to a foreign number. That seems to me like a recipe for disaster. That's the phrase that comes to mind. Because what if somebody, you know, from Russia hijacked your SIM and suddenly all your messages are going to a Russia number. That's probably something the phone company says they frown upon. So you're, you're, you're gonna be an interesting conundrum there. That's a really good question. You've not done this since you to rely on these text messages for authentication. No.

Speaker 3 (00:18:54):
Yeah. My last trip was pre cell phone, in fact, so, you know

Leo Laporte (00:18:58):
Yeah. Oh, you're gonna have so much fun. Oh, I'm so jealous. You know, I don't know. Let me let's put this out to the vast audience. What, what do the carriers do if you suddenly on a, on a Thai phone number, I'm gonna bet they block him. Leo Laport, the tech guy. That's a really, that's a, a question I hadn't considered. So you're gonna be putting in that sin. That's gonna give you a Thai phone number is sometimes it's no, but see straight talk. So you're you wouldn't be able to anyway, get any text messages from straight talk in Thailand.

Speaker 3 (00:19:30):
Yeah. I just assume that this has happened to someone sometime before.

Leo Laporte (00:19:34):
Yeah. And I'm hoping they're listening. It out, this is why in general anyway. Not why, but it's in general, why you want to use Google authenticator or ay or something that is on your phone only because then it's not a text message, which makes it harder to high hijack in effect you're doing what a Hijacker would do, which is you're getting, you're using a, a foreign SIM, a non-related SIM. And you're saying, and by the way, just send those authentication messages to me from now on. And that's exactly what a bad guy would do, which is why I'm hoping actually that straight talk is go, you know, goes, yeah, no, we're not gonna do that. Of course, given the state of security in general, probably they won't, but they shouldn't because so why don't you call them actually and ask them because, okay. I don't know how good their service is, but you might have a, you might be able to say am once you're in Thailand. Here's my new number. 0 1 8 3 9 4 9 7 3 9 4 1 1 C two CC Uhhuh stroke. I, and then please have my text messages forwarded to that number. They can do carrier forwarding. They might, might

Speaker 3 (00:20:51):
I that's gonna be, I'd have to call them from over

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
There. Yeah. Cuz you won't know your number until you get the SIM, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:20:58):
But so, so are you saying then I should, I should switch to Google authenticator

Leo Laporte (00:21:04):
If any service that you can do because that will work.

Speaker 3 (00:21:08):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:21:08):
Do it now do it now any service that you can switch away, the problem is unfortunately, banks especially seem tied to this very insecure method of authentication called SMS text messaging. It's not a good, yeah. And you can see right here why it's not because if you change phone number and change country and can get text messages, that's a problem. <Laugh>

Speaker 3 (00:21:31):
That's some of them, they offer the alternative of either your phone number or

Leo Laporte (00:21:36):
Anyone who lets you do that. And most, and now people are cuz they're realizing how insecure that is. Anybody lets you do that, do that now. And that will continue to work no matter where you are

Speaker 3 (00:21:45):
Switch, switch to email

Leo Laporte (00:21:47):
Email will also work best one though, is authenticator. Okay. Actually I use, I use athe but this is the same thing. A U T H Y it's a free app. But the thing is that's all done on phone. So it doesn't matter where you are as long as your phone it'll continue to work. Right.

Speaker 3 (00:22:03):
And that was kind of a general question. How does information find, find you when you do that? You switch certain cards in

Leo Laporte (00:22:12):
General. Well, that's a good, so web wise, you know, you're just giving 'em a new IP address, not a big deal with things like authenticator, it's not on the internet. It is off. It is completely just in your phone, it's doing a calculation. The, the problem is exactly what you just highlighted, which is text messaging, which is not over the internet. It's not IP based if you were using you know, WhatsApp, you could just say, oh yeah, this, you know, I'm gonna keep using WhatsApp and that's over the internet. So it doesn't care what your phone number is. I mean actually WhatsApp does, but, but technically it doesn't need to and you could change your phone number. So that's the problem with this SMS based messaging. It is tied to your phone number and it doesn't even use the internet. It uses its own backend. Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:23:02):
So I need to get off of that

Leo Laporte (00:23:03):
If whenever, yeah. That will solve a lot of problems, you know? And your bank is the first one to look at, cuz it been my experience banks really? Cuz I think they think their users are dumb. <Laugh> they wanna just keep using text messaging. They don't want the, they don't want the tech support calls. So, but if anywhere that lets you use an authenticator program, Google authenticator or author, whatever, shift that over those, those will no longer be an issue. It's only the ones that want SMS, text messaging. And that's I think you're gonna have a problem with that actually.

Speaker 3 (00:23:37):
Okay. All right. I got it.

Leo Laporte (00:23:39):
Good luck. Appreciate it. Have a great trip. How long are you gonna be there a week? I'll be back next year too short, but have fun. Yeah. Have fun. You too. It's gonna be beautiful. I'm so jealous. The tech guy podcast brought to you this week and often by at and T active armor. You spent the day staring at your phone, right? Waiting for that one. Call from the job, the hospital to family. Finally it rings. And what guess what your auto warranty is running out last week? You've been approved for financial aid. Oh thank you. It's a robot. Nice. Just what I want to talk to. You know, it's nice. I didn't have to answer that call. I got the, you know, the text message, but I didn't have to answer that call cuz I have at and T active armor. Don't let fraud calls disappoint you at and T makes your security a top priority.

Leo Laporte (00:24:37):
Helping block fraud calls with at and T active armor. It's kind of fun. When you look at those text message and go, oh, I didn't have to answer that at T active armor, it's not complicated. 24 7 proactive network security fraud call blocking and spam notifications to help stop threats at no extra charge. You gotta get this compatible devices, service required. Visit att.com/active armor for tales. Thank you at and T now back to the Jeti he's our tuba Christmas guy, Mr. Scott, Wilkinson home theater geek. Scott was I watched you in your driveway or your friends' driveway?

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:21):
My friends' driveway. You watched the show.

Leo Laporte (00:25:22):
Oh, it was beautiful. You know, when you say tubas and Christmas, Carol, you think, well that sounds Leggos <laugh> but it wasn't. It was it was felicitous it was wonderfuls.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:35):
Yes. It's glorious.

Leo Laporte (00:25:36):
Well, there's something, it turns out, first of all, you've got a variety of tubs. You've got the yeah. Sopranos and the bass. You gotta the small ones and the big ones. Yeah. So you got some, you know, it's not like all woo woo. But right. There's a smoothness to the two. Yes. That's beautiful.

Scott Wilkinson (00:25:52):
Yes. Yes. And I have to tell you, the players that we had on that show are some of the

Leo Laporte (00:25:58):
Best in the world. Oh, I believe that it was, it was harmonious.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:02):
Very harmonious. The intonation was beautiful. The ensemble was beautiful. I was honored to play with them. I mean, so any clam, any clams you heard were probably me <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:26:12):
Is that what they call 'em when you play a bad note in the, when you play bad notes, tuba world. It's a clam. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:17):
In the music

Leo Laporte (00:26:18):
World. Yeah. Oh, right. So this was on a podcast. So I'm on a YouTube show. So I presume you can still watch it. You

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:27):
Can in, so you go, it it's a basically you can go to 20, 21 dot tuba, Christmas la.com. And it'll redirect you to, to that

Leo Laporte (00:26:39):
Page. So this was because here in LA, we, you couldn't do the tuba Christmas this

Scott Wilkinson (00:26:43):
Year. We couldn't do real tuba Christmas. The, the venue, the indoor venue that I normally use would let me be in there, but they had so many restrictions and they had everybody had to be vaccinated and masked and I really didn't want to be the vaccine police. No.

Leo Laporte (00:26:58):
So, and I should mention tuba Christmas is a national event all over the country. There's correct different concerts. And in many of those are still going on. So if you want to go to a local one, go to tuba, christmas.com and they'll have listings locally of where it

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:12):
Is. Right. And the only ones that are happening now are outdoors. Of

Leo Laporte (00:27:15):
Course, that's right. But the folks at Conal supremacy decided to make it Christmas tuba extravaganza. It's a great, <laugh> great thing. You must listen an hour of. Thank you. Fabulous. Tuba music,

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:28):
Fabulous tuba music. Really great.

Leo Laporte (00:27:30):
Yeah. So Scott joins us every week to talk tubas. <Laugh> it's our new segment on the tech guy. Show our show. New segment. That's tech guy. Tuba. No, he joins tuba. It would actually. No, no, it's not. It is. There are no chips in tubas. Are there electronic tubas?

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:46):
No. There are electronic valve instruments and electronic woodwind like, like saxophone, like

Leo Laporte (00:27:52):
You could, yeah. They're mid clarinets. You can play or mini saxophones. You can play.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:56):
And they're even sack mid trumpets. You can play valve instruments and you could play a tuba sound on that. Just as well as anything else. You still

Leo Laporte (00:28:04):
Need the Ture. The

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:06):
You don't, you don't, you just blow into it. So it's

Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
Really just a keyboard fashion to look like a clarinet. Correct?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:14):
Yeah. That is exactly

Leo Laporte (00:28:14):
Right. Okay. <Laugh> okay. It's kind

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:17):
Of cheap. So we could talk about that at some point, but that's interesting but

Leo Laporte (00:28:20):
Nuts. Instead. The other reason you're here, your second, I don't know. If's your vocation, your advocat. He's a home theater geek contributor@techhive.com and elsewhere, and joins us every week to talk big screen TVs and surround big screen TVs. Yep. What's the latest you, by the way, you're going to CES in a couple of weeks.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:40):
Actually. I'm not.

Leo Laporte (00:28:42):
Oh, you, you took, you decided not to. I

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:44):
Decided wise for a couple of reasons. I'll,

Leo Laporte (00:28:46):
I'll tell you wise, man, but we will. No, honestly, I think with OCN you'd be pretty much guaranteed to get it vaccinated or not. Let's not. Yep. Let's not, let's not. And it's

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:58):
An international show, you know, people from all over the, all over the world.

Leo Laporte (00:29:01):
Oh great. Be there. Nice. Yeah. You know, normally that's a wonderful thing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:06):
It is. That's right. And I've, I've heard now I've talked to a bunch of people, some of whom are going, but I've been told that a lot of journalists are not going. Yeah. So we're gonna get a lot of coverage

Leo Laporte (00:29:18):
From afar, dejavu all over again. This would happened last year. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> we did have CES in 2020, cuz it was a couple of months before the that's right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:27):
Jan and I was there.

Leo Laporte (00:29:28):
I was too, we were lucky because COVID was also there, but it wasn't widespread. That's right. Okay. But the reason I mentioned that is because you have said, and you cannot speak of it. Not yet. There will be a new TV technology announced mm-hmm <affirmative> January 5th.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:46):
There there will be. And I will talk about it the next show that I'm on after

Leo Laporte (00:29:50):
That. So that means I guess the eights, January 8th show, we'll talk about it. Right? Correct. So just a little put a pin in that one. Cause right. First of all, you don't get new TV technologies very often. I mean the last one, no, you don't micro E D still hasn't even come out yet.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:07):
Well, it is out, but it's very expensive. Yeah. You know, it's tremendously expensive. This, this technology that I will talk about next year is gonna be, it's gonna be expensive at first. Of course, all new technologies are, are, but as you know, dig with digital technology with volume comes a price reduction.

Leo Laporte (00:30:28):
So it'll be something to watch for.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:30):
It'll be something to watch. Is it gonna be,

Leo Laporte (00:30:32):
I, I, I don't wanna push you cuz I know you have an nondisclosure agreement. Is it gonna be that's right. So just say no, is it gonna be transformational? Is it gonna be that important?

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:40):
It is gonna be the, that important. Okay. I think it's gonna be really important. Oh, I'm so

Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
Excited. We don't, it's so rare. <Laugh> no, really these days in the tech world that there's anything transformational to announce because it's all incremental improvements. So I

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:53):
Mean it's still TV, you know, it's still a flat panel that you're gonna put in your T you know, so I would

Leo Laporte (00:30:58):
Hope so transformation. Can I hang it on my wall? I would hope so. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:01):
Yeah. You, you can, you can, it's gonna be a flat panel TV, but it's a new technology. That's gonna offer many big advantages over what we have now and what we have now is so fantastic. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:31:12):
Oh man. So it, I wa when I watch some of the stuff that's on in 4k, U H D mm-hmm <affirmative> with H D R high dynamic. I just it's like, you're sitting there, it's like, you are in the room with these things. It's amazing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:29):
And to tell you the truth what I consider I was gonna mention, what I sort of think is the big TV news of 2021. What's that eight K. Yeah. Now, you know, we have 4k now, right? Which is very common. You can't almost can't buy a TV. That's not 4k, but eight K, which is four times the number of pixels as 4k is coming on strong. And the reason I mention it is that TCL just announced that they are go offering a free month trial subscription to a service called it's called the explorers and it offers eight K content streaming, eight K content basically shot around the world. So it's nature. This is topography.

Leo Laporte (00:32:19):
This is what we saw. When 4k came out there was, there was the initial and even HD. I remember mark Cuban because there was no HD content created an HD channel. Yep. Mostly bikinis <laugh>

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:35):
This is not gonna be that.

Leo Laporte (00:32:36):
No, but the nature's better, frankly. Nature is

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:39):
Better. Yeah. And it's being contributed to, by people all over the world. Nice. And you know, again, because there's so little eight K content, there is some on YouTube, there is some on Vimeo, but it's hard to find. And it's, you know, you don't know really what it's at, where it's at, but this is gonna the first one it's gonna be available to anybody on Roku. Although not in eight K cuz there are no eight K Roku boxes yet we should find we should, they should happen sooner or later. Probably. So

Leo Laporte (00:33:11):
This is a, a, this TCL TV has a form of Roku. That's actually not available otherwise. Correct? Interesting. Correct. Correct. PCL pulled some of their Google, Android TV TVs off the market last week and the speculation know what? I didn't hear that. Yeah. They they were only being sold in best buy the, they were, I think five and six series. They pulled them out and everybody said, well, maybe there's something wrong with Android. But I think that the smart money is the deal with Amazon, nobody's admitting that TCLs building Amazon's TVs. Correct. But I think that that's, that's what it is. That's what it is. So I think probably they have a, that fi, Amazon said, you're gonna put our fire stick in your TVs and you are not gonna put our archival Googles and Android TV. <Laugh> in your TVs.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:59):
I'm I would, I would bet money on that. I thinking,

Leo Laporte (00:34:03):
Yeah, so CES not canceled. You're not going, that's all it takes for me. Aunt wanted to go. I said, let me think about it. No, he's not going either. Because it's just not right. Not the right time. No, not the, but the good news is that we have great TVs and surround sense systems to watch things at homes safely. Scott Wilkinson it's thanks to you. Home theater geek. <Laugh> it really is. I mean, I, I just, I don't, I'm not incentive to go to the movie theater anymore.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:38):
I'm not either to tie the truth. I, I did go to see dune. Yeah. You know, I, I just felt I had to, but I didn't go to see any of the other blockbusters

Leo Laporte (00:34:48):
That are, I kind of wish I'd seen doo now because I don't think it's gonna be

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:52):
It's probably not in the theaters anymore. I mean, that one is a, is a spectacle. It really deserves a giant screen. Yeah. I'm gonna watch the matrix at home when it comes out later. This month. Me too. I am. So what a world? What a

Leo Laporte (00:35:06):
World? What a world? What a, I'm sorry. You're not gonna get to go to CES. That's I

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:10):
Am too bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:35:13):
Well but I think you're wise. I mean, I, I, I think it's really clear at.

New Speaker (00:35:17):
This point because of the nature of Ry and I've got my booster this, yeah. Thursday, but I just feel like even with the booster mm-hmm <affirmative> <inaudible> is so contagious. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I just don't want to risk it.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:30):
And apparently it's milder symptoms than that.

Leo Laporte (00:35:33):
You, the jury's still out on that. That is not clear. The jury is still out on that. People are still being hospitalized. You're right. Not at the same rate as before, but that's because we've mostly been vaccinated. Right. I don't

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:46):
Know a lot of people have. Yeah. I don't either. I'm I'm playing it safe. Yep. I think

Leo Laporte (00:35:50):
You were quite wise actually. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and Anna, who has not been boosted. I said, well, aunt, you know, is booster appointments after CES. I said, you know, that's foolish. Oh no, you'll get, you will get COVID and you will bring it back. And I don't, I don't want you to be <laugh>. I do not want you to

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:10):
Bring it. Please do not bring it back with you. I mean, I get the CES crud every year almost.

Leo Laporte (00:36:16):
Yeah, exactly. You,

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:17):
You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it. There, there is another reason why I'm not going to ES that's the main one, but there's another one that I want to convey to you is that we are moving.

Leo Laporte (00:36:32):
Are you moving on up to the east side?

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:34):
We are moving on up to believe it or not. Santa Cruz,

Leo Laporte (00:36:38):
California. I do believe it. Why am I not surprised at all? <Laugh> the first, as soon as you said moving, I thought he's going to Santa Cruz. I'm going to Santa Cruz. Good for you. We'll see more of you for one thing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:49):
Yeah. Yeah. I'll be able to

Leo Laporte (00:36:50):
Drive. I think Santa Cruz is awesome. Of course. I grew up, you know, went to high school there, but you went to high school there. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:57):
I still have a lot of friends there. We, my, my, our very close friends have kids and they now have kids. We're all gonna be able Joanna and I are gonna be able to plug in as you know, uncle Scott and auntie

Leo Laporte (00:37:08):
Joe. Nice. Perfect. That's great. The, yeah. I love Santa Cruz. And I think because Silicon valley is so proximate there's a lot of money has poured into Santa Cruz and yep. You know, I think it's you know, it's, it's expensive. It is expensive. It used, used to be inexpensive. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:24):
Yeah. No, but once we sell our house down here, we'll be able to buy a house up there. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:30):
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:30):
Good. We're gonna rent. We're gonna rent for a while first. Yeah. Get

Leo Laporte (00:37:33):
To know the, get to know the area. Yeah, right? Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:36):
We're we're, we're gonna be moving up there first week of February. So it's coming right

Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
Up. Nice. wow. Good for you, baby.

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:47):
Thank you. You're gonna be packing. I be, I'll be packing and I may be unavailable one or two Saturdays speaking to which quite all right. We're not on next week, obviously. Christmas,

Leo Laporte (00:37:59):
Nor are we on the January 1st, obviously. Okay. The,

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:02):
The schedule on the twit TV website says tech guy on January 1st. Yeah. But it's recorded. It's a recorded one.

Leo Laporte (00:38:10):
Okay. Yeah. Actually we should take that off cuz it isn't gonna be anything to watch or there won't be a podcast either. There won't be a new one. No, the, the first you will return on the eighth to tell us all about that new two TV thing. Yes, indeed. Yeah. And you can't miss that episode? No,

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:24):
I can't. In fact, I will be in Santa Cruz that weekend, but I will call in from there.

Leo Laporte (00:38:29):
Oh good. That'll be fun. I will. Santa Cruz. Wow. Yeah, man kind of jealous. I boy, when I was a teenager, I couldn't wait to get outta Santa Cruz, but now I <laugh>. I don't like it. All right. You wanna stick around for the top? Sure. Happy to. All right. Thanks. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number back to the lines we go. Steve is on the line from downtown. LA sounds hit. How you doing? Sounds with it.

Speaker 3 (00:38:55):
Yeah. Sitting here taking the size blur by high velocity at 12 miles an hour. 

Leo Laporte (00:39:01):
High speed. <Laugh>

Speaker 3 (00:39:02):
Hey anyway. Yeah. Since you're not going to a CES, I wasn't sure that was by invite, but if you're not going, I'll take your ticket.

Leo Laporte (00:39:09):
I don't have a ticket cuz I would never plan to go. So, but it's nice of you to, to offer. I know, I think that the way it works, it's not transferable anyway. They, you know, if you're going it's because CES is not open to the public. It's only open to the press and mostly to dealers. It's still a show where dealers go to find out about new stuff. This is not gonna be a year to go to CES. Honestly. I think it's gonna end up being quite shrunk shrunken down. Hey, just means

Speaker 3 (00:39:37):
I get to move through the line

Leo Laporte (00:39:38):
Faster. Oh man. That's the other problem with it's one of the reasons, a lot of people my, I don't like to go to CES. You can't get anywhere. It's painful. <Laugh> have you ever been

Speaker 3 (00:39:50):
No though. It's been wanting to go, but just never had it

Leo Laporte (00:39:52):
Is it is kind of a bucket list item until you do it, then it's off the list. <Laugh>

Speaker 3 (00:39:58):
Oh, well anyway, I have,

Leo Laporte (00:40:01):
What can I do for

Speaker 3 (00:40:02):
You, Steve? Okay. Well, when it comes to technology, I'm a bit of an AIST and I only recently acquired a 4k television thanks to the nice lady, moving out, moving across country and sold it to me cheap. Nice. I, if you had any film titles that'd be worth watching, you know, I mean, as far as I don't wanna see a Dr or something, I wanna see some real action adventure. You

Leo Laporte (00:40:23):
Like action adventure. Okay. You know, who's here with me in the studios of course, Scott Wilkinson. And now did you get, what TV did you get an HDR 4k? Do you know? I guess it is probably right. I,

Speaker 3 (00:40:38):
I believe it is is a Samsung. No, yeah. It's a Samsung.

Leo Laporte (00:40:42):
Yeah. So Scott and I both agree. I know that HDR is as big a improvement in the picture. Quality as 4k is it really makes a difference and the two together make it very vivid. What's what and Scott likes action movies. So what, what's your recommendation? I know you lose master and commander to to judge TV spot. I, I did. I, I have used master and commander. Good Phil. I, yeah, it's about Naval good Naval adventures and yeah, exactly. Right. Russell Cru captain. I, I I really like gravity. Oh, perfect example. Yes. Oh, okay. Which is great. The blacks of space and contrast exactly to the brightness of Sandra Bullock's smile or scream. Oh cool. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:41:32):
Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm I'm looking, blow me away. When I got, when I got my first flat

Leo Laporte (00:41:36):
Screen I got a speed racer and it was just like, holy. Wow. You know, it's funny cuz I, I remember getting my first CD music CD player and I had the same thing. What's CD what's that first CD gonna be to blow me away. So I completely understand that his first 4k experience,

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:55):
I gotta tell you another, a movie, a title that to blow you away with color and, and action. And so on is Dr. Strange?

Leo Laporte (00:42:04):
Dr. Strange would be good. Oh, okay. If you like the Marvel universe.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:08):
Oh man. I love the

Leo Laporte (00:42:09):
Marvel universe. If you don't mind. Primarily sand colors. The, the newer mad max is very beautiful in this oh mad max fury road actually

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:18):
Fury road. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:42:20):
Excellent. How about the transformer films?

Leo Laporte (00:42:22):
No, that would probably be okay. Sure. If you

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:24):
Probably would. I I'm, I've never been a fan of those,

Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
But if you like transformers, they're gonna look good. The truth is anything is gonna look great. Now the best way to watch it, you may not want to go out and get a Blueray player, but to get a UHD Blueray player will give you the best quality.

Speaker 3 (00:42:40):
In fact, I don't think you can buy a Blueray player today. That's not

Leo Laporte (00:42:43):
4K. That's right. That's right. That's correct.

Scott Wilkinson (00:42:45):
Yeah. And the, the four, the 4k Blueray player, the ultra HD Blueray player that I recommend generally is from Panasonic. They make several, I think any of them are fine. You're gonna cost. You're gonna spend about a hundred, a hundred bucks or so on

Leo Laporte (00:42:59):
That. That's I mean, first Blueray players were like thousands of

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:03):
A thousand. Yeah. Yeah. The first bucks Blueray player was a thousand bucks. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:08):
Yeah. So 

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:10):
More streaming streaming is great too streaming

Leo Laporte (00:43:12):
Game. So that's a question is streaming as good though as the disc?

Scott Wilkinson (00:43:17):
No, it's not. No.

Leo Laporte (00:43:18):
Okay. Okay. I mean, I watch only streaming I don't, I have a UHD player, but I'm, I'm just not gonna buy the discs. So I only watch streaming, but so I don't, I'm kind of missing out probably on the little extra. Gotta have the disc.

Speaker 3 (00:43:33):
Yeah. Well I said I got LP as I got dis I'm driving around. There you go. Mercedes, because the cassette player still works and I got

Leo Laporte (00:43:42):
<Laugh> Your cares that the traffic's moving at 12 miles an hour. You got the BGS cassette. You're good. I

Speaker 3 (00:43:50):
Put the down and I put the top down. I put on the beach boys. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:43:54):
That's very man. That's

Speaker 3 (00:43:57):
I'm I'm annoying as Helen traffic.

Leo Laporte (00:43:58):
<Laugh>

Speaker 3 (00:44:00):
Dude, you wanna get hook up to the star ack phone. That's built into this thing.

Leo Laporte (00:44:03):
Oh, come on. You don't really have a star ack in there. Do you? I have a

Speaker 3 (00:44:07):
Star ack phone. It's got the little buttons and everything else. It just keeps saying no signal. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:44:11):
That's yeah. Bet. <laugh> that's his hysterical. Oh my gosh. Oh man. Did you buy that used from from a movie star or what? That's a, that's a great you've had that since day one.

Speaker 3 (00:44:27):
No, no, no, no. I bought it about six years ago. Everybody's been like, how can afford a Mercedes it's like you go to the dealership, you buy the luxury, you find the luxury car that you want and then you wait 16 years.

Leo Laporte (00:44:38):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (00:44:39):
Anything. Wow. Want you want a

Leo Laporte (00:44:41):
Porsche? No, you're right. They'd appreciate so fast. Partly that's cuz they have star tech phones built in some <laugh>. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:44:48):
Well, well it'ss the it's a cassette player that blows everybody away. I got like 30 cassettes here in the box. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:44:55):
One of those boxes of the cassettes. Are you all? They all orang.

Speaker 3 (00:44:59):
I, I got the little brief case.

Leo Laporte (00:45:01):
<Laugh> I got my queen cassette. Let, just put that in.

Speaker 3 (00:45:05):
Yeah. But to be sure I got a five CD changer in the trunk.

Leo Laporte (00:45:08):
Nice. In the trunk. Of course. Where else? Yeah, because

Speaker 3 (00:45:12):
That's why you still saw car phones.

Leo Laporte (00:45:14):
Yeah. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you, Steve. I'm sorry. I can't give you my ticket. You know, I, there, there is a virtual CES going on. You could go to the virtual CES, but I don't, but what's the point. I mean, that's just press releases online. Maybe some streaming keynotes, the point point of CES. And it's gonna be, I don't know if it's gonna be next year. I don't know when it'll be, but that's to go and be like in a cattle, you know, market full of millions of jammed in geeks, looking at the latest stuff. That's the fun of it. Well, it's

Scott Wilkinson (00:45:45):
It's the face to face time too.

Leo Laporte (00:45:47):
Yeah, I guess I can remember for me, severals the most important thing going to around with you, Scott elbowing our way. Excuse me. Excuse me, outta, outta the way over to, you know, the Sony booth of the Panasonic booth to see what's new, then there's, it's noisy. There's a million people jammed all jammed together. So I'm times square and new year's Eve. It's just that's right. Packed. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:11):
Cab lines are an hour.

Leo Laporte (00:46:13):
It's so much fun once.

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:15):
Yeah. <Laugh> and I've been going for 30 years.

Leo Laporte (00:46:19):
You always, Scott always wears a speedometer to measure his and you walk miles of course. Miles.

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:25):
Yeah. Over the course of four or five days. It's 25, 28

Leo Laporte (00:46:28):
Miles. Something like that. Yeah. Well not this year. No, you know? No, it's just not it's not worth it. Not time. It's not time yet. If you always get, come back sick anyway, like with a cold that's right. That's right. So let's not, you know, let's not push it. Let's not get,

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:44):
Let's not get COVID

Leo Laporte (00:46:45):
This time. Let's not let's let's and, and honestly, again, once you've done it it's not, you know, that's not that much fun me. Well, it's not that much

Scott Wilkinson (00:46:54):
Again for me. It's the face to face time with people. I normally only communicate with

Leo Laporte (00:46:59):
Over email. Yeah. I saw marque Brownly once that's about it. Oh yeah, yeah. Walking by. He said, who are you? So you know this I think you're right. And actually it's not once, but once every, for me, once every five years that's enough. That's enough. Hey Scott. Thank you. It's I appreciate you sticking around to answer Steve's call. And now ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Scott Wilkinson show. Well, I go

Scott Wilkinson (00:47:38):
Get a cup of Joe. Get a cup of Joe R <laugh>. It's not talk like a pirate day. Hey, everybody. So nice to see you. I'm so sorry that IRC is down. Is it still down? Yep. It's still down. So thanks to discord and nice to see you all in discord. I will be here and you can ask me questions if you want. Mike S said the first OMG moment with high Def was being able to see texture of people's clothes or the blades of grass on the baseball field during broadcast games. It's true. And 4k gives you even more of that. And eight K gives you yet more of that. The downside local news, BR news, broadcasters of a certain age that need the Barbara Walters filter. <Laugh> remember when HD first came out, it was like 2000. It was like 20 some years ago.

Scott Wilkinson (00:48:35):
And I remember how much newscasters hated it because they, you could see every wrinkle and you could see the, the pancake makeup that they use. I even remember, I remember seeing something there was some demo. I can't remember what it was exactly, but there was a woman who had had shall we say, enhancement surgery and you could see the scars <laugh> in on the side of near her arm. So it was yeah, it was very strange scooter excess plus the CES adjacent events like pep com show stoppers. That's exactly right. PCOM is actually really fun. I enjoyed going to that and I met up with Leo and and D D Bartolo and Padre SJ there. And you know, it was really, that was great fun.

Scott Wilkinson (00:49:41):
So let's see. Scooter re says the apple TV 4k box has amazing 4k HDR output. It's true. It does. It's really great. Oh, good point. Outta sync, some people like the fifth element for testing. That's true now, interesting story about the fifth element. The original Blueray was mastered very poorly and it was actually it was soft. It just, you know, it was like, this is Blueray, it's more like blur Ray <laugh>. So they fixed it, but Sony, that was one of the first blue rays to come out too. And everyone was really excited about it, but it, it was super disappointing. House, I think it was house of flying DERs was also like that. And once it was fixed, it was a great, great demo. I haven't seen the 4k version of fifth element. But you're right. It was, it was a very popular demo thing. Oh, Mike man, Mike Klein. Thank you. Did you see that KTTV Fox 11 switched to ATSC three last week. I did not. This is the first major in an LA market. Wow.

Scott Wilkinson (00:51:00):
Wow. I did not hear that. That's amazing. That's big news. That is big news. I don't know why I didn't see that. Knox Harrington has a great question. How far are we from the point where the human eye simply cannot detect differences in resolution we're there now eight K is, is, it is beyond what the human, you know, unless you got your nose up to the screen. Now I'm talking about regular seating distance. I mean, at a regular seating distance 4k is beyond what human resolution, what human eye can detect in resolution. So, you know, we're, we're already there and past it. So the question be then becomes, well, why, why even go beyond that? One reason is that if you have sharp shallow diagonal lines the higher the resolution, the more crisp those look because as I'm sure, you know, with a digital display pixels a diagonal line will have jaggy.

Scott Wilkinson (00:52:08):
If you get up close enough and at low resolution, you can see those at a normal distance, normal viewing distance and the higher resolution you get, the less, the Jas become apparent until at some point they disappear from perception. So that's one reason to, to go to higher resolutions. Another, is that with better upscaling you can get a, a better picture at a higher resolution than you can at a lower resolution. So I don't think there's, I, I, I absolutely don't think there's any reason to go beyond eight K except in a, a all sized unit or something like the light field lab, solid light system. I talked about last week where they have millions of pixels, tens of millions of pixels. But that's because it's a true holographic display. That's something completely different for a regular 2d display. You don't need to go beyond 4k really or eight K certainly. But will they go to 16? K? I was just thinking about this last night, will they go to 16? Will they go to 32 64, 1 28? Probably.

Scott Wilkinson (00:53:25):
You know, because a higher number is better and we can sell you another TV. That's that's my cynical view on it. So anyway, let's see here. Yes. Item from 2007, I Def digest Sony announces offers new fifth element. Blueray mm-hmm <affirmative> exactly right. It's like Mike guess exactly. It's like looking through a window, a very, very clean window. Exactly. Exactly. Now, Mike man is, has posted something about the HD home run, connect 4k from Silicon dust. I haven't tried that yet, but it's actually very interesting and I, I, I look forward to it. Let's see, scooter X had the original fifth element blue, right? So recalled it and sent me a new for exactly. OHT, TWI stream, crooked house. Do you hang the flat screen TV level or align with walls and ceiling? I would say level pres at least level with how you're sitting. I mean, is your floor tilted? Are, are you sitting? You, you want, you want the TV to be square with your view? So if the walls are crooked, I mean, where do you live? The mystery spot in Santa Cruz. <Laugh> oh, your

Leo Laporte (00:54:58):
Favorite? Your new favorite hangout.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:00):
Oh man. I'm gonna go to the mystery spot. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:55:04):
I don't know how it is now, but that's all you'd ever see is a bumper stickers and signs are the mystery spot, Uhhuh all over

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:10):
Santa Cruz. You know, I haven't been there in so many years, but when we move back, I'm probably gonna go <laugh> where gravity doesn't behave as normal.

Leo Laporte (00:55:22):
It's just one of those classic, like 1940s or fifties, roadside of track actions that just kind of made up

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:30):
It's fun. Well, it's optical illusions too, right?

Leo Laporte (00:55:33):
We have you know, the petrified forest near us. <Laugh>

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:40):
Three weeks. Well, yeah, it's, it's gonna be amazing. And here we go. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:55:46):
So happy for you. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Have a great week. We'll see you two weeks. Happy, happy Christmas.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:52):
Yeah. Merry Christmas. Happy new year to everybody. See you in a couple weeks. See you January 8th.

Leo Laporte (00:55:56):
That's your next time. All right.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:58):
Take care. Got it. Bye.

Leo Laporte (00:56:01):
Hey, how are you today? Leo? Leport here. It's tech guy, time, time to talk computers and the internet and home theater and digital photography. And you know, all the stuff, all the gizmos and gadget. I should have mentioned this with Scott and I forgot to if you use YouTube TV, which is not YouTube, but it's the, it's their streaming TV solution where you get it's like cable. It basically is basic cable. It's CA basic cable price, 65 bucks a month. And you get all your local channels in most areas. And you know, you get a lot of the basic cable stuff in the ESPN, things like that. Well, not anymore. First of all, good news. It's now $50 a month. <Laugh> the bad news is that's because Disney has yanked ABC, ESPN, all of their channels Disney owns ESPN and ABC. And of course the Disney channels, the FX networks, apparently the, they own them too. The national geographic channel, all of that disappeared from YouTube TV at noon yesterday.

Leo Laporte (00:57:12):
Because they, this is, oh, I hate these and that we're seeing a more and more these carriage disagreements, carriage, you know, who gets to carry those stations. Roku's had a number of TIFs. You probably have seen many local cable companies will say, yo on Thursday, you're gonna lose your S E football. If you don't send a note to, you know, then they battle in public, back and forth worth and eventually one side CAS, almost always. This is the first time despite many, many threats. The first time I can remember that a a channel's been booted just kicked right off. Actually Scott's still here. How important is this to YouTube TV? The ESPN, I would imagine is a big deal. It

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:08):
Big, it's a, yeah, it's huge. All the Disney channels, national geographic, you know, in my I'm thinking about doing a cord cutting thing. And I was thinking about going to YouTube TV, and now I'm not so sure, but

Leo Laporte (00:58:20):
Almost always these get resolved usually before it does get resolved usually

Scott Wilkinson (00:58:24):
Before they happen. Yes. But not in this case. And we don't know how long it's gonna take.

Leo Laporte (00:58:30):
What you have is two giants Google on the one hand and Disney on the other. Yep, yep. Yep. Like dinosaurs battling and we're the little people running around at their feet going don't stab on me. Don't stab on me. That's that's right. We're the collateral damage. I don't think either company really suffers from this. Not particularly. I wonder though, except in PR. Yeah, yeah. Certainly bad for PR both for both sides. And I wonder if, you know, you kind, I guess, depending on your allegiance, you know, you blame whoever the other guy is, but we don't know who's at fault here at all. Don't we can't tell really, right. I mean, YouTube

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:08):
TV wants more Disney wants to pay less. I mean, isn't that

Leo Laporte (00:59:12):
The way of Disney gives them money, right? No, it's the other way around YouTube gives Disney money to run their stuff. Oh yeah. That's why it's 15 bucks less. In fact, I think Google did that on purpose to, to tell, to tell its subscribers, you know, a lot of this cost is not us. ESPN's the most expensive, basic cable service out there. I think it's almost 15 bucks a month by itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By itself. I, yep.

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:41):
Okay, so YouTube is paying Disney. So YouTube wants to pay less. Disney wants to get more. No,

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
Disney's paying YouTube <laugh>

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:48):
Oh God. Yeah. Right. Sorry.

Leo Laporte (00:59:51):
Then. And then we paid YouTube to watch Disney. Now in the note that Disney sent out, they said you could subscribe to our Disney bundle, $14 a month. You get Disney plus ESPN plus in Hulu on demand with ads. Ah, it's a mess. This is this it's a mess. I've talked about this before. This is, we are in a transitional period between traditional first, there was broadcast and there was cable. Now we're in internet land. And as we, and everything's gonna move to internet land, I mean, everybody, it is in the meantime broadcast and, and cable is just, you know, clawing as best they can. And of course the streamers, I mean, Disney plus is a huge streaming channel. The streamers are saying, well, we want more too. I mean, it's just a mess.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:36):
It's a terrible mess. And then you have to subscribe to all these different streaming searches.

Leo Laporte (01:00:40):
It's bad for consumers. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (01:00:42):
It's very bad. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:00:43):
Afraid. So yeah. ABC local, ABC news live Disney channel Disney, junior Disney XD, freeform FX, FXX, FXM national geographic national geographic wild P N two, ESPN ESPN two ESPN, three ESPN, Ocho, ESPN. No, I made that one up. ESPN, you ESPN news CC network and the AC network all gone all gone oh, from YouTube TV. And here's an interesting thing, you know, YouTube TV has. And I really I'm actually a YouTube TV subscriber. I love it to me, it's the best cord cutting option. They also have a DVR and you can have all the members of your family get their own kind of personal DVR. Here's the thing. It's not really a DVR because guess what? All of those channels are gone from your DVR as well.

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:29):
So anything you recorded your

Leo Laporte (01:01:31):
Recordings cause you didn't really record them. 

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:37):
This makes me think I'm still gonna go back to satellite or,

Leo Laporte (01:01:42):
Or cables. It's not, you know, I as anyway, thank you Scott. I appreciate it. I, I can't sure Scott, I love it. Can't get rid of him. <Laugh> but you know what? This is a common topic for all of us. I just feel like when dinosaurs battle it, who, who, who it's the cavemen that gets stomped on, we are the ones suffering and, and by the way, th this will be fixed. This will be fixed. I think one of them's gonna blink. It's a game of chicken that went a little too far. One of them's gonna blink and eventually, you know, I think because it's a big college football weekend, right. I suspect that ABC was playing hardball saying, well, we'll see how your subscribers feel after Saturday anti Saturday and Dr. Mom points out that dinosaurs and cavemen not coexist at any time in space. Okay. I know it's an analogy. It's a metaphor. <Laugh> 88 88. Ask Leo back to the phones fle on the line from Groveland, Florida, hella fledge.

Speaker 5 (01:02:56):
Hi, you doing Mr. Leo?

Leo Laporte (01:02:58):
I am great. Now are you ledge?

Speaker 5 (01:03:01):
Not too bad, but I have a perplexing problem. And a perplexing question for you.

Leo Laporte (01:03:05):
A perplexing problem from the para fledge. Okay. What is it? <Laugh>

Speaker 5 (01:03:13):
Okay. First of all. So I have an iPhone at 11 Promax man. I have been using all, all my smartphone life. Yeah. And just love 'em to know. Yeah, they're great. So I had the one and my wife had a craft fair. She's gone through and I walked around. She dared texted me. I picked up my phone, tried to do it and it dropped and hit the ground. Oh yeah. So now I have a big ELO looking thing on the lower left hand corner on my screen, but I'm okay because I have apple care and I'm awesome.

Leo Laporte (01:03:43):
Oh yeah. You didn't look at the deductible yet. Did you? <Laugh>

Speaker 5 (01:03:46):
Well, it's like 30 bucks. OK, good. I'm like, I'm happy. That's

Leo Laporte (01:03:50):
Worth it. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:51):
So yeah, I would think so. So I go and I, I look it up and say, Hey, you know, if you go to best buy, they'll go ahead and take care of the screen for you. And you're good to go. So I truck on over the best buy, you handle those AppleCare stuff apparently. And drop it off there. And a little while later, they come back and say, Hey, you know what? One of the screws on the bottom of the thing is stripped. And so we can't use our little machine to get it open. And since it's stripped apple, won't honor the warranty anymore that you have with

Leo Laporte (01:04:18):
Applecare, like you were messing with it. And

Speaker 5 (01:04:21):
Like, I was trying to, I, I told him, I said, I don't even know where the screws are. What are you talking about? And or maybe I took it to the, you know, you break, I fixed or whatever. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:04:30):
But have you ever taken it in for service?

Speaker 5 (01:04:33):
Never, ever, ever, ever.

Leo Laporte (01:04:35):
It has. Now I'm thinking best buy did it. And then they didn't wanna own it. And they said, oh, look,

Speaker 5 (01:04:40):
That's what I was wonder, but I, I, I'm kind of stuck rocking a

Leo Laporte (01:04:44):
Hard place. Yeah. Cuz you can't call him a liar. They're gonna throw something at you. But I have to say, if you have never had this phone in for repair, never, there's no way that that screw would be stripped. You don't have access to it. It's you'd have to have a special tool anyway, if you've never brought in for repair, they did. There's no question in my mind.

Speaker 5 (01:05:04):
So my question though is, I mean, I'm gonna go to apple and I'm gonna say, Hey, you know, we gotta go with what our dealers say or am I just

Leo Laporte (01:05:12):
I'm I would bring it to apple and say, dude, I, this something went wrong because I bought it to best buy. I had never done anything to this. It was pristine. They say the screw is stripped. How would it be stripped? They must have stripped throw yourself on the mercy of the apple genius, by the way, they have a lot of leeway. And I think you can make a strong case. There's no way that's stripped. It was either there's one of two possibilities. It was either stripped at the factory, which is possible it's possible or was stripped by best buy. If it was stripped at the factory it's Apple's problem anyway, was stripped by best by its really best buys problem. But apple might given that you're a good customer and they want you know, they want good PR. They might fit. They probably have different machines than best buy. So the apple, apple, apple does allow third parties like best buy. And, and you break, I fixed people like that. They're called apple authorized repair centers and they can do the repairs, but I don't think they have all of Thea. The apple store has.

Speaker 5 (01:06:19):
Oh, okay. Then I will do that. We have an apple store in in Orlando. So I'll just go there and

Leo Laporte (01:06:25):
Check that. Yeah, I'm sorry. I have to go all the way there, but I think that's your, and I can't promise cuz again, it's, don't come in confrontational. Don't come in jets hot, be be, you know, these guys have hu huge amount of leeway in what they do. And if they really feel, as I do, this is not your problem. You never brought in for pair anyway. And now they say the screw is tripped either they did it or was done at the factory. It's not your problem. And they should give you a new phone or, or they may have, and this, they probably have a machine that they can handle this with anyway, that best buy did on that. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:06:59):
Okay. So my next question, this is an easy one. And that is that a few weeks ago I called and told you I was buying my wife a MacBook pro or I was going to and get her the M one and all that kind of fun stuff. Yeah, yeah. I remember. Yeah. Yeah. So in lieu of that since it was gonna be like, won't be able to get into February or something because of the back order best buy. I had a great deal going on on the high end, current MacBook pro oh, curl

Leo Laporte (01:07:23):
I

Speaker 5 (01:07:25):
That, and the problem is that she's fall in love with that touch bar. Ah, and I know, and I know what they're going away on the M one. Yeah. So my question actually really is why all the hate for the touch bar? What am I missing?

Leo Laporte (01:07:40):
Well, if she loves it, she loves it. I mean, you can't, you can't tell somebody that something that, that apple put on there that they love that, but I'll tell you why I hate it cuz I keep hitting it by accident. And it, and it's not that useful to me. But you know, everybody's D so if she loves it, she loves it. There's and, and I think Apple's taken it out because people do complain about it. The, the new configuration, I have the new MacBook pro 14 inch, the new configuration is much bigger function, keys, a bigger escape key. I use all of those and I never use the touch bar. So to me it was a bad trade. Oh, okay. Yeah. Something I didn't use for something I do use. And I think that that's probably generally the feeling I would co you know, I had to turn the Siri thing off the touch bar, cuz every time I went from the backspace key and admit, Siri would say, what do you want? I said, I don't want anything. I just want a backspace please. So that, wasn't a good, a good experience for me either. And even then, even after I've changed that the calendar would pop up, you know, turning it off really is the only thing that would keep it from popping up things. When I mistyped, she's probably a better typer than I am type. She's pretty good.

Speaker 5 (01:08:54):
Yeah. Yeah. It just, the only problem is that it, it made me not be able to get a, a MacBook pro because she's gonna gimme that one. Once she gets the M one now she's like, I don't

Leo Laporte (01:09:02):
Want the, no, give her the I nine, you got a deal. What the hell?

Speaker 5 (01:09:05):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:09:06):
That's fair. See honey, you wanted the touch part. I look what I got you. <Laugh>

Speaker 5 (01:09:11):
Fair

Leo Laporte (01:09:11):
Point. Yeah. I mean it's, I, apple has said, they're gonna continue you to support those Intel max for some time to come. It probably is not. If you got an M one, it would probably have a longer lifespan, but is a difference between maybe eight years and five years or something like that. I don't, I don't Intel will be around for a while.

Speaker 5 (01:09:30):
Okay. Fair enough. And they're,

Leo Laporte (01:09:31):
They're very fast. They're good. They here's what you miss out. When you get an Intel Mac, especially a laptop, the battery life isn't as good by, you know, 50%. They, so they run hotter. The fans run a little hot and the M ones are very, very fast compared. But the I nine was the top of the line and the discount you're getting, cuz that's, you know, the old Mac, it's not an old model yet. I guess it is now isn't it? Cuz they have a 16 inch. So, but the discount should be fairly significant. They want to best way doesn't want to carry him anymore. And given that she loves a touch bar, go for it. Why not? Right. I think that's that's a perfectly sensible thing to do.

Leo Laporte (01:10:16):
How you feel, how are you feeling? I'm gonna guess if you're really honest, you are feeling like a lot of us, a little unsettled, a little anxious these days. Yeah. we've been through some tough times. The thing that is great to know is there is help out the, there there's somebody you can talk to, you can get without shame, without embarrassment, without a huge cost. I'm talking about better help online therapy, better help.com/tech guy. And I know there's a, maybe a little stigma against therapy, but let me tell you from personal experience and the experience of many, many of my friends and family members, a there's no shame in it. B it can make a huge difference. It's like getting your car tuned up. Not cuz you have a problem, but just cuz you need a tune. You know, you go to the gym, you work on your physical wellbeing.

Leo Laporte (01:11:18):
Why not your mental wellbeing? You keep your your house clean. Don't you, you know, you sweep up. That's all. We're talking about a little sweeping up of the mental com webs routine maintenance for your mental and emotional wellness. And I think now more than ever, we need that. We're going through some anxious times and it's a great way to prevent bigger issues down the road to give you a happy, healthier life. You wanna live your best life therapy doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It means you're investing in yourself to keep your mind healthy and better help is the easiest way to do it. It's not just any online therapy. It's custom for you using offering therapy in any way you prefer of course, video conferencing. You can do it via phone. You can have live chat sessions with your therapist. Sometimes people feel more comfortable just typing, right?

Leo Laporte (01:12:09):
So you don't have to see anybody on camera. If you don't want to, it's much more affordable than person therapy. And I can tell you from personal experience, it's much more effective. It it's just great. Cuz it's when you need it. It's on time. Just in time. In fact, you can start communicating with your therapist in 48 hours. There's a nice onboarding process to help you find the therapist. And if by the way, it's very easy. No stigma attached. If you said this therapist is not right for me, in fact, they encourage you to find the right person and you have to right. Just the first therapist you that they come up with isn't necessarily the one you want. It's true in, in any situation, find exactly the right person that matches your way of thinking it smart as you.

Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
That's not gonna take any G from you. Maybe that's what you want or maybe you want somebody who's just gonna be kind and listen, you that's the person. You can find a better help. I don't. We all, we invest in everything in our lives except sometimes not ourselves in our mind and our thinking. I think it's time. Better help. The no stigma it's private. You can do it whenever it works for you and at a much lower cost than in person therapy. Tech guy listeners get their 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com slash tech guy. It really works. It really works. I can vouch for it better. B E T T E R help E H E p.com/tech. I get 10% off your first month. There's no reason to suffer in silence. If you're feeling a weight, anxiety, if you're uncertain about something maybe the parts of your life that aren't just, aren't going the way you want. You deserve I everything to feel better to go the way you want and there's help out there. I, I cannot recommend this more, highly better help.com/tech guy. We thank him so much for supporting the podcast and supporting you, our listeners and you support us. Of course, when you use the address, so please do better help.com/tech guy. You owe it to yourself.

Leo Laporte (01:14:18):
Yeah, I was I was seven years old. I'll never forget. <Laugh> 88, 88. Ashley actually, that's a perfect age for Christmas. Isn't it? You'll never forget those those special days. Leo, LePort the I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number. If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion. You wanna talk? Hi, tech Richards on the line from west LA. Hello Richard.

Speaker 6 (01:14:43):
Hi Leo. How are

Leo Laporte (01:14:44):
You? I am great. How are you?

Speaker 6 (01:14:46):
Oh, I'm pretty good. Just to tell you, I about 20 years older than you are. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:14:53):
My God. How do you survive?

Speaker 6 (01:14:56):
Well, a lot of carrots. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:14:59):
Good. I'm gonna start eating carrots right now.

Speaker 6 (01:15:02):
<Laugh> here's my situation. Yes. Even my age, I test pretty well for my eyesight. I don't think it's perfect, but the, the doc says I'm fine. That's awesome. Even for my hearing, because of what Scott has suggested a few years ago, I have a VI P 55 dash C1, TB. My question basically is this. I'm not rich, but I have some funds. Is it worth my given my age? And I'm I'm okay. Financially for me to improve my television set with some of the stuff you guys have been talking about, I would say so

Leo Laporte (01:15:42):
And all the rest of that stuff. I mean, I don't want to be ageist. And given that I'm also a senior citizen, it would be foolish of me. But when I sent my mom a TV, I didn't send her state of the art. I figured, you know, she'll be perfectly happy with a TCL and she is for her. I can't speak for you, but for her ease of operation is more important than picture quality she wants to be. And it has a Roku built in. So it's easier for her to use. If you care about picture quality then I think you should get a new TV. Absolutely. The good news is 4k HDR. Tvs are inexpensive, relatively speaking. I mean the prices are a lot lower than they were, and I think you would benefit from an nice O led screen. You have an LCD screen right now. Did you? Right? Did I missed it? Did you say that yours was 4k?

Speaker 6 (01:16:35):
I don't know. I was just going through the book while waiting to talk with you.

Leo Laporte (01:16:38):
It's not, if you, I don't see that. I suspect it's not,

Speaker 6 (01:16:42):
It's a, it's a P 55 dash C1, if that helps. Yeah. VI

Leo Laporte (01:16:46):
Yeah, great TVs. In fact, we recommended them for a long time. There's nothing wrong with them. They are LCDs and that one actually, I'm, you know, you got kind of the top of the line, so that one is a great picture quality, but I don't know if it's 4k, I'm thinking. Yeah, it might be 4k coming to think. When did you get it? 20, 20, 15, 20 16?

Speaker 6 (01:17:13):
Maybe a bit later than that, but okay. Yeah, I thinks about

Leo Laporte (01:17:16):
Eighteens. I think that that's a very good TV. Gotta take a break. Hang on for a second. I'll talk to you off the air. Leo Laport guy. I honestly I think it is a, I'm looking, you said the P 55, right?

Speaker 6 (01:17:34):
P 55 dash C1 season Charles one. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:38):
I think that actually the P series is their high end.

Speaker 6 (01:17:41):
Right? Well that's thanks to Scott and you. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:45):
So we recommended that a long time. Aren't you? The only issues whether it's 4k or not now an Ole will be better. It'll have a better image, but honestly, if you're for no, that's an HDTV. So it is not 4k. I didn't think so. Yeah. So you will get a higher resolution. You'll get HDR, which actually is a huge difference. That just means a bigger, you know, difference between blacks and, and bright white is more dramatic, more realistic. And I think an old lead would give you a lot better picture. The good news is you're under two grand probably for how, how big is this 1 55 inches.

Speaker 6 (01:18:24):
Yeah. 55. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:18:27):
I would even go bigger to be honest. How do you sit to it?

Speaker 6 (01:18:32):
I'm looking at it right now. I'm seeing you in fact hi, I would guess 10 feet, maybe a

Leo Laporte (01:18:37):
Little less. Okay. You could get a 65 LG OED for under two grand, about 1700 dollars that has 4k and HDR. I think that's a big difference. It really depends has nothing to do with age. It has to do with what you are looking for. And if you're looking for a very crisp display, that looks as realistic as possible as there's no comparison if you're just watching you know, the, the evening news, it doesn't matter. But if you would watch movies on it,

Speaker 6 (01:19:17):
I watch movies. I watch sports. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:20):
Sports and movies are gonna look great. Sports are not

Speaker 6 (01:19:23):
With the 65. I think that's too big for my room and what,

Leo Laporte (01:19:26):
Okay, well you can get 55 and then it'll be even less. Yeah. I, I, I always say, tell people get bigger than they think if you can, if you can, obviously, if you fit it, but the bigger you get, the more immersive it is. And the LG OED 55 is 1400 bucks. I think it's gonna make a big difference. Yeah. You know what else will make a big difference is getting some decent sound on it. Thet, the sound built in the TV is really inadequate. So at least I

Speaker 6 (01:19:55):
Use speakers in fact. Good. A few weeks ago, I called you cuz I was getting a buzz. Do you remember this at all? Oh yeah. Getting a buzz on movies. You did. You figure it out. You said I stumped you. You couldn't figure out what was going on. Do you remember that at all? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:20:08):
Yeah. Did you figure it out? Nope.

Speaker 6 (01:20:11):
Still buzzing in touch with somebody else. Sorry. I wanted a second opinion. Yeah. No hope.

Leo Laporte (01:20:17):
Well, I don't know if there's no hope idea. What the no hope is a little stronger than I was. I hope <laugh>

Speaker 6 (01:20:24):
No, it was really it. You know, one of the things I found, I found that buzz. I'm sorry to digres but I

Leo Laporte (01:20:30):
Did. I mention, did I mention putting a choke on the, on the wires? I think I did one of these little magnetic chokes on, on the wiring, cuz that's not a lot of times where that buzz comes from.

Speaker 6 (01:20:41):
Well, it I didn't, I'm sorry. I, I don't remember you saying that, but you may well have my memories is gone. That's worse. That's worse than my eyesight. I can tell you, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:20:49):
My mom says the best thing about that is she can watch the same show, you know, kind of in an endless loop <laugh> she watches succession. There's three seasons. By the time she gets to the end of it and starts it over she doesn't remember any of it. So that's nice. I have the same experience by the way. It's great. I go, what did that happen?

Speaker 6 (01:21:07):
What is a joke?

Leo Laporte (01:21:09):
<Laugh> so you can get 'em online. They're cheap. They're little basically. They're Phite coils that you put on wires that reduce interference and typically buzz means you're getting interference. It's called a 60 Hertz buzz cuz that's the power is 60 cycles a second. So it's a low, I think a, I asked you this kind of a lower buzz.

Speaker 6 (01:21:31):
More than that it's

Leo Laporte (01:21:34):
Oh, all right. Maybe that's why I didn't say no. I

Speaker 6 (01:21:35):
Only get that understand. I think I told you this on movies. Most of them for Netflix, some of them I notice on something else, but I,

Leo Laporte (01:21:43):
I think a new TV is a good way to fix this. I never hear it. Get a new TV. Yeah,

Speaker 6 (01:21:49):
Definitely. You should. I don't know. It's it's not on the TV. No,

Leo Laporte (01:21:52):
I'm getting it's on the speakers. Great

Speaker 6 (01:21:54):
TV. Yeah. Regular TV. Richard,

Leo Laporte (01:21:56):
Hang

Speaker 6 (01:21:57):
On basketball. I'll never hear that. That's so weird.

Leo Laporte (01:22:00):
I gotta do Johnny here. Do you wanna hang on? Or our traveling guy is back. Johnny jet helps us travel better with technology every week. Johnny jet.com is his website. He's wearing red flannel. So I think you're either in your jammies or you've been to Canada.

Johnny Jet (01:22:16):
Neither, neither. This is actually a shirt. My wife gave me for Christmas. For Christmas

Leo Laporte (01:22:21):
Photo. Aw. Is it the jet tartan?

Johnny Jet (01:22:25):
Yeah, I guess you can call it

Leo Laporte (01:22:26):
That. The Mickey jet family plaid. The, it looks great on your kid. Listen,

Johnny Jet (01:22:32):
You look good. We got a photo shoot. Here's a shirt.

Leo Laporte (01:22:34):
This is cute ago. Cute. Oh really? She is a, you know, she's an influencer, she's a Pinterest influencer. So she's all about, you know, fashion and how it looks and all that. So did you all have, oh, was that for your Christmas

Johnny Jet (01:22:46):
Card, but yes. Did you get it? Yes, I loved it. Okay, good. The, this was in it. Oh, although I think I had a sweatshirt on because it was, you

Leo Laporte (01:22:52):
Looked great <laugh> and so does Natalie, by the way, what a beauty and those two children, I'm very fortunate. Oh, I loved your Christmas card. Thank you. Thank you. And by the way,

Johnny Jet (01:23:02):
Speaking the Christmas card, there's a service that we use for this. It's called Flytographer and it's a great service it's for travelers. You, we used it around the world, full disclosure. They, they we've worked with them before, but you know, we've taken photos in Paris, in Hawaii, in London. And so, you know, one of the best things about traveling is getting a really cool photo. But instead of asking some stranger to take a picture, you hire a professional photographer for 30 minutes, they meet you at wherever you want to go, or they'll tell you the best spot. And then you get these incredible photos, which we now have up on our wall of all our vacations. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:39):
Cuz I have lots of vacation pictures, but I'm not in any of them. Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:23:44):
So fly photographer. It's a great she's based in Vancouver, the woman who started it and she has over 500 photographers around the world. That's

Leo Laporte (01:23:52):
Really cool. And including LA I guess definitely only Manhattan beach,

Johnny Jet (01:23:56):
So good. Definitely. They have all over it's well it's

Leo Laporte (01:24:00):
A great service. It's a great Christmas card. I really like it and I love it. That Natalie art directed it. That's great. Oh,

Johnny Jet (01:24:06):
Are you kidding me? When it comes to clothes? You know, I'm, I'm always about comfort and she's all about style and looking good. I'm like, listen, I don't care. You know, I'm married.

Leo Laporte (01:24:16):
<Laugh> I love that. That Christmas plaid you're wearing looks great. Well

Johnny Jet (01:24:20):
Thank you. But I don't know. There are a lot of people's traveling yesterday over 2.2 million people. Wow. Checkpoints.

Leo Laporte (01:24:27):
Now you said that the day, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year, but I gotta think something around this time or maybe going home is gonna be very, very busy too. So

Johnny Jet (01:24:37):
The two busiest days for this holiday coming up is the 23rd. And the third, January 3rd will be the two busiest days of the next. And they have to be ranked in the top 10 of all year. I'm not sure exactly where they fall because I know the Thanksgiving Sunday after Thanksgiving's number one.

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
I wonder if Democrat's gonna hit this hard or if people are just gonna, I suspect people are just gonna throw up their hands and say, well, let's go anyway. Let's just take a chance. Well,

Johnny Jet (01:25:03):
Americans are domestically, but internationally they has just dropped off a cliff because number one, all the restrictions. So many countries are now tightening up either. You know like Canada this week came out, they all thought they were gonna close the border. They did not at least yet who knows that they will. But they did say they urged their citizens not to travel abroad. Well, it's not like

Leo Laporte (01:25:25):
We haven't been through this. We kind of now know, you know, here comes a variant. It's very contagious. This is what you do proactively. You don't wait till the hospitals are full. This is what you do proactively.

Johnny Jet (01:25:37):
That's what they're doing. But France lockdown on, on the UK. So they just came out saying, you know, you cannot come in from the UK, unless you quarantine. They

Leo Laporte (01:25:47):
Called off their big, good, a new year's Eve thing as well. I hear. Yeah. So

Johnny Jet (01:25:52):
Europe's a mess. We usually follow them. So it does make me nervous. And you know, you look at all these professional sports, these athletes who are mostly all vaccinated and they're all now in quarantine protocol, it just, it does make you think. But they all say that, you know what? If you've been vaccinated, it should be mild. So they're worried about the people who are UN vaccinated. And if you're UN vaccinated, you're gonna have a very difficult time traveling outside of the United States.

Leo Laporte (01:26:16):
Yeah. So if you're thinking, going to Paris for the new year's Eve fireworks, Hey,

Johnny Jet (01:26:20):
Aint gonna happen. First of all, they called.

Leo Laporte (01:26:22):
Yeah. And you're not gonna get there even if you do. Yeah. Oh, that's too bad. I mean, it's always sad, but we also, you know, this is the live, the reality we live in. We can't,

Johnny Jet (01:26:31):
It is. But if you are traveling and I do have some tips for you, especially if you're parking at the airport. I mean, I don't know if you've seen the news lately, but airports parking has become a real premium number one, you know, a lot of the workers are not showing up or haven't showed up. So they don't have the staffing. And number two is that people have changed. Their habits, travelers have changed their habits. They're afraid to either, which doesn't really make much sense to me, but either taking a taxi or a limo or a Uber to the airport because they want to be safe. So they drive their own car sometimes. But yeah, for, and then, so people are staying longer now because they don't have to be home for work cuz they can work wherever. So there's not a lot of empty lot. So if you're already going to the airport, make sure you book your, your spot in advance there's websites, you can go airport parking reservations.com, almost every airport. You can just log onto theirs. Lax. They have a brand new economy lot if you book in advance 50%. Wow. So it, it it's advantageous

Leo Laporte (01:27:28):
To you to do that. And they guarantee a spot. If you book in advance,

Johnny Jet (01:27:31):
They do. But I still recommend showing up extra early because I have actually rec reserved a spot once before the pandemic. And they said, sorry, lot's full. I'm like, what are you talking about? I, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
That's what I'm asking. It's like the old Feld bit, you know, <laugh> he, but you reserve a car, but you get there, there are no cars. Well, I don't think you understand what a reservation means.

Johnny Jet (01:27:53):
Same thing and, and definitely with cars too. But I mean, for airports you wanna show up early, don't just, you know, just show up in the last minute because you might not be able to find a parking spot. Wow. Best, best advice is to take public transportation or a private car or however you get there or have a friend drop you off because that

Leo Laporte (01:28:13):
Sometimes it's actually cheaper than parking. Definitely. Well, mass transit certainly would be, but even a car would sometimes it's cheaper than parking. If we're gonna go for more than a couple weeks, it's usually cheaper just to get a car. Now I U usually do the off airport. Third party parking. Is that also in the same situation?

Johnny Jet (01:28:31):
Yes. But always call up in advance, find out. But you know, during peak times like holiday travel, it's a, it's a premium and you know what? There are also some hotels that offer that are close to the airport. Yes. I've done offer. They offer one night, you spend one night and you can get like a week free depending on the package deal and you leave your

Leo Laporte (01:28:49):
Car there and then they get the shuttle to the airport. I've done that. Yeah. Especially with an early morning flight, I'd stayed just right off SFO. There got many hotels there and they'll let you park there.

Johnny Jet (01:29:00):
And again, we talked about this before. Do not leave anything of value in the car. I mean, I read an article. I dunno if this is true Europe in San

Leo Laporte (01:29:07):
Francisco area, they're saying that some people are leaving the hatchback open the trunk opened the show that there's nothing in the car. Is that true? <Laugh> you know, I don't know. I haven't seen that, but I wouldn't be surprised. I of course, for years in New York city, you'd put a big sign in the window that says there's no radio in this car. <Laugh> don't try to, don't break the window.

Johnny Jet (01:29:24):
So never leave anything of value or especially insight. But I

Leo Laporte (01:29:29):
I'm at Burkes saying yes, it is true in San Francisco. They're leaving the trunks up and open just so you know, if you, if there's anything you want, come on and get it. Look, there's nothing inside. Well, it

Johnny Jet (01:29:40):
Makes it easier to steal the, a car. Now they're saying that the car, well, yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:29:43):
Cause then you just get in the trunk and you push down the seat and you're in the car. So you can't win. It's a,

Johnny Jet (01:29:48):
It's a crazy world. You know, yesterday I was at the Manhattan beach village shops and all with my kids, all of sudden a helicopter was circling. Cops showed up a security guard game out. I said, what's up? He's like, there's an active shooter. I said, what, what? And I, I was like a deer in headlights. Turns out it was a rumor, a worker overheard another worker saying that there was an active shooter. And they called and the cops showed up. I mean, UN honestly, Manhattan beach Hawthorne, El Sago, no police departments showed up within seconds

Leo Laporte (01:30:17):
And seemed like, oh yeah, I

Johnny Jet (01:30:18):
Guess they take that. They don't mess around. So it's very safe. But it was unsettling. I, I didn't have a plan. I didn't know where to go. You got kids.

Leo Laporte (01:30:24):
Right. And you know, I, it's sad that you have to, before you go to a public place, plan your exit in case somebody has a gun. That's not what we wanna do in

Johnny Jet (01:30:32):
Life. <Laugh> unfortunately this is the new reality. So I mean, I've been doing this for years. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I'm always looking at the door. I I seat towards. Yeah. I sit,

Leo Laporte (01:30:41):
Sit with your back to the door. Yeah. Right?

Johnny Jet (01:30:43):
No, no sit, no, sit my sit with your back towards

Leo Laporte (01:30:46):
The wall, back to the wall. So you can see the door I'm facing. Exactly. I've been getting this wrong all this time. I also put the mask on my kids' face first. I gotta get this stuff straight.

Johnny Jet (01:30:54):
Well, you do have to put the mask on your kid's face first, actually. Sorry. Not on the plane. Yeah. See? No you don't.

Leo Laporte (01:31:00):
You see Johnny jet. He's got it wrong too. Johnny jet.com/newsletter for his newsletter. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. He knows. He always puts his mask on first. He's not he's he's a smart traveler.

Johnny Jet (01:31:12):
I never had to do it. Knock

Leo Laporte (01:31:13):
On what? Knock on what mean either Leo LePort the tech guy. You're right. I've never had to do that.

Johnny Jet (01:31:22):
And I gotta tell you, I ever want to.

Leo Laporte (01:31:25):
I honestly think, oh, it looks like the chat is back. Everybody go on and get in

Johnny Jet (01:31:29):
The chat there. I was gonna say, I couldn't get on

Leo Laporte (01:31:31):
The chat. It was down. The server was down. It looks like we're we are back in, in charge here. Okay,

Johnny Jet (01:31:38):
Good. I always like to read the chat and see if anyone has any questions know, but

Leo Laporte (01:31:42):
I know I don't happened. The server went down or something, but everybody everybody go on back in the chat, get outta here. It's closing time. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. No, no. You could stay there. Yeah, apparently I hadn't seen this people across the bay area and the police say, it's a bad idea. They're leaving their trunks open.

Johnny Jet (01:32:07):
I would think so.

Leo Laporte (01:32:10):
That's crazy.

Johnny Jet (01:32:12):
Get in the chat rooms. I I'm

Leo Laporte (01:32:14):
Shocked at former SFPD, deputy chief, Garrett, Tom. There's so much that can go wrong here. At least your window's not broken, right? Yeah.

Johnny Jet (01:32:25):
Hmm. I'm glad to hear that. They are. They are.

Leo Laporte (01:32:27):
I'm glad you know, we're gonna be a nation of a agoraphobics. If this keeps up, nobody's gonna go anywhere.

Johnny Jet (01:32:36):
It's crazy. I can't get in the chat by the way.

Leo Laporte (01:32:39):
Well, it's up. I see it. I don't know what the problem is. Oh, it takes a while because yeah, you have to get voiced. There's not an instant voicing of the thing. Okay. Yeah. But you'll be in there. It takes a, it takes 70 seconds up. Kim just got in. Mike B is in, I just got to channel operator status. I am golden. There's a that's a safety thing. We have a 72nd delay before you can I see to prevent the drive by spamers <laugh> you don't want any drive by spaming.

Johnny Jet (01:33:15):
I, I don't blame you. I mean, I, I don't know how you regulate it because is I got so many comments on my website that are so many are spam. I know it's ridiculous.

Leo Laporte (01:33:25):
And you gotta

Johnny Jet (01:33:26):
Do it in real time.

Leo Laporte (01:33:26):
Well, yeah, we have a lot of mods and they're very, very, very good. But also you know, the spamers are determined, I guess is the problem they're determined. Well, Johnny, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. You no show till the

Johnny Jet (01:33:42):
Eighth. Okay. And actually I'm, I'm flying on that day. I'm planning on it. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:33:47):
And then no show to the 15th for you. <Laugh> unless you, it sounds you change your plans.

Johnny Jet (01:33:52):
Yeah. Well hopefully we won't, but we'll see what happens with this ALN. You never know that's the whole thing with today. Yeah. You gotta be flexible.

Leo Laporte (01:33:59):
Yeah. And I think this thing is we've been through this before. We kind of know, and I think it, prudence is dictated. You know, we don't technically because we're in Sonoma county have to do masks indoors, but I'm having everybody wear masks when they come to work. And we're also discouraging people from coming to work and all that

Johnny Jet (01:34:16):
Stuff. So I, I understand. Well, yep. Listen, hope you have a healthy, happy you

Leo Laporte (01:34:21):
Too. Lots of love to all of the fam. You've got a great family. Thank you for that Christmas card. It was so sweet. I'm glad you got it. Yeah, we got it. And I would show everybody, but it's at home and it's just wonderful. So that's

Johnny Jet (01:34:35):
Right. You don't need one. All right. I try to block my kids eyes out of their photos online. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:34:42):
I don't know

Johnny Jet (01:34:42):
If that's gonna help. I put, I put big sunglasses on. Oh, that's cute. So many. I had so many people steal my identity. Have you really? They, well, they pretend they'd be me. And they're like Phish and I, I don't know. So many girls have comment sent me emails or letters and saying that I they've had been taken for money because people have pretended they're my pretending to me and my lifestyle. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:35:04):
God. So I feel terrible. So, hi, this is Jody. I've been askeded, but I lost my passport wallet. Could you just wire me 1500 bucks and I'll give it back to you. Well, they

Johnny Jet (01:35:13):
Don't say Johnny jet. They make up the names and they, oh, establish a relationship and say, Hey I would love to come visit you, but can you pay for my plane ticket?

Leo Laporte (01:35:21):
Wow. Wow. Then they wire the money and that's it. Well, don't do that.

Johnny Jet (01:35:27):
I'm trying. That's why I'm like putting the glasses on my kids at least protect them. Take

Leo Laporte (01:35:32):
Care. Thank you, John byebye, Leo Laport, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Why you're still there. Richard. You are, you are determined. You are a determined fellow. Richard asked a great question though. Is it worth getting a new TV? And my answer is yes. Make sure you got good sound. And then he's the one who has the buzz, which I forgot about from weeks past. We were too talking about the buzz. Do I, I'm not sure we want to get back into the buzz. <Laugh>

Speaker 6 (01:36:05):
No, let's forget that. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:36:08):
But I do think a new TV, if you like watching movies and sports, those are two things that will really benefit. The sad thing about sports, unfortunately is almost all of it. Is an HD. Very, I don't, there's very rarely will you see 4k sports so sports, you may not get much of a benefit from but certainly movies streaming stuff. If you, who do you stream Netflix?

Speaker 6 (01:36:33):
Yeah, yeah, no, yes I do. I'm sorry. Netflix is

Leo Laporte (01:36:36):
4K. Most

Speaker 6 (01:36:38):
That's where I get the buzz. I don't really wanna deal with that too much. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:36:41):
That's only on Netflix.

Speaker 6 (01:36:44):
No. As, as a matter of fact, when I called you originally, it was only on Netflix, but since then I have it on another I had it on another spreading

Leo Laporte (01:36:52):
It's spreading. Is it a Roku? It's really weird. Is it

Speaker 6 (01:36:55):
A Roku you use, it's only other place I've seen it. Everything else is fine. Good sound. You know, good for my ears. I, my ears. Aren't your aren't really that great, but they're good.

Leo Laporte (01:37:05):
They're mine. I test. Well, yeah, they're probably better than mine. 

Speaker 6 (01:37:09):
Maybe not. <Laugh> I do a hearing aid occasionally. Not all. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:13):
Yeah. oh wait, I think you, I think frankly, you owe it to self to have a great TV and great sound because why not have, you know, enjoy, live

Speaker 6 (01:37:26):
It up? How much does the box from direct TV matter Leo?

Leo Laporte (01:37:32):
Is that how you get your local stations as direct TV? You have a satellite dish. Yeah. it just depends, you know, honestly you can get everything over the internet now that you're getting through the satellite dish and it will be higher quality, but it will not necessarily save you money. For instance, we were just talking about YouTube TV and how they lost ESPN and Disney they'll get those back. But one of the things YouTube TV offers for a $20 surcharge per month. It's not cheap is 4k content where available. And so a lot of college football college football for some reason is 4k not NFL yet next year, probably the year after it'll be 4k. None of your direct TV stuff is 4k because it's coming in office satellite's too expensive. So streaming will be a, a improvement in almost every case.

Leo Laporte (01:38:28):
Even if it's not 4k, it'll be an improvement. And certainly streaming over HBO, max, Showtime, Disney, plus Netflix, all of those are 4k apple. If you buy movies on apple TV, in fact, apple TV, I buy a lot of movies on my apple TV because apple has a nice little, I don't know if it's expressed as a policy, but they've been doing it when you buy an HD movie. And the movie then is upgraded to 4k as it happened with all of order, the rings and the hobbits movies, they replace your HD version with a 4k version without additional charge. And so a lot of the movies that I bought years ago in HD are now 4k, which is a really nice thing. They really look good.

Speaker 6 (01:39:08):
Now you have said in the past many times that when you go to a store, like best buy, they jazz up the pictures on various. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
You can't judge a TV in the, in the showroom. Yeah, I was,

Speaker 6 (01:39:20):
I was afraid of that. I was cuz I was thinking I would go to a showroom and see if I can see the difference. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:39:25):
Well you will. You'll see the difference. What they do is they put 'em in dynamic mode, which is brighter and more vivid colors. The colors are more saturated cuz that attracts the eye. Sure, sure. You know, you wear like monkeys, we'll go with that's pretty, but you'll know that you know that. So that's not you, it is apples to apples cuz they've done that on all the TV. So if you compare an HD to a 4k, you're comparing, you know, apples to apples different, the content is jazzed, but it is still that's the difference and it really should look a lot better to you. I think it, will you read books?

Speaker 6 (01:39:56):
Yeah I do.

Leo Laporte (01:39:57):
Okay. So your eyesight's good enough to read you're you'll notice, you'll notice the difference. Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (01:40:03):
Now in terms of money is concern. I, as I said, I'm not, I'm not rich, but I

Leo Laporte (01:40:09):
1399 for a, for a 55 inch 13. Can you afford 1399?

Speaker 6 (01:40:14):
I could handle 1499. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:40:17):
That's the cost. And which,

Speaker 6 (01:40:19):
Which brand would you recommend or what Scott's LG,

Leo Laporte (01:40:22):
The LG O L E DS mm-hmm <affirmative> those are, those are very, very good. Samsung makes alled so does Sony. But I think, you know, just in general, you know, there's a, this year in the in the shootout, I think the Sony's won for EDS, but there's a infinite Tamal difference between them and I I'm just a fan of the LG TVs. I think they're really great. That's what I asked my,

Speaker 6 (01:40:43):
My room is fairly right. I'm in it right now watching you. I can darken it, but I can't get it totally dark during the day. That's fine. That's fine. That's not a problem. Okay. Yeah. L

Leo Laporte (01:40:54):
So your LCD is brighter, so it's less of an issue with an LCD. An OED is not as bright, so it's more of an issue more to me, the issue is reflections. So I will draw the curtains on the window behind our EDD, just cuz I don't wanna see the reflection in there, but it doesn't have to be darkened.

Speaker 6 (01:41:14):
Just dim. Do that. Just draw the curtains more

Leo Laporte (01:41:17):
Or less dark. But yeah. And at night it's gonna be fine. Yeah. Yeah. That's mostly when you watch movies anyway, right?

Speaker 6 (01:41:25):
No actually I watch a lot of movies during the day. Yeah. I can't wait

Leo Laporte (01:41:28):
Story. That's my, the minute I retire, it's full time movies, movies, movies. I got, you know, what I love is the criterion channel. Now that you're not gonna get any benefit on cuz these are old movies, but actually I think they look pretty darn good. I have to say you know, so they do good, good restoration of these old black and whites. It's great TCM. They're not 4k. They're HD. Right, right, right. You'll have fun. Richard, you owe it to yourself. You earned, you know,

Speaker 6 (01:41:55):
I, I don't necessarily wanna spend the 1400, but if I think it's gonna improve things in my old age, I'd like to do the best I can that I can afford. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:05):
Go. It is not a bad idea. Go to a best buyer somewhere and look at them side by side, you know that they're tweaked for brightness and stuff, but you're not judging it. You're judging to see if there's a difference between your LC, your, your HDL C D and your 4k OLET. And I think that will be apparent.

Speaker 6 (01:42:22):
Okay. Well I'll do that. You know, I, I, I'm hesitant to do that because of what you've been saying about the, how they jazz 'em yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:28):
That, but you already know that and it's apples to apples cuz they jazz. 'em All up the same. Right. and, and it's not an ideal viewing circumstance anyway, you're in a giant fluorescent lit room. So, you know, in some ways it's not gonna look as good at home in some ways it's gonna look better. It's not gonna look as good cuz it won't won't hurt your eyes with its vivid brightness. But on the other hand, it'll be much more realistic and you won't have to compete with fluorescent lighting. So if you think the ed looks good in the showroom, you will think it looks good much better even at home

Speaker 6 (01:43:00):
At home. Okay. Good suggestions. Thank enjoy Richard.

Leo Laporte (01:43:04):
Yeah, I got I bought the ed in, in fact Scott came over cuz he's a TV calibrator, his THX certified calibrator. And I had him calibrated and Robert Harron, another friend of mine, also a calibrator. They came in said we didn't, we couldn't, we didn't have to really change anything. It was pretty much perfect. Okay. <laugh> I like that. It came out of the box. You don't leave it in dynamic mode or showroom mode. You put it in cinema mode. And at first, you know, you might rebel a little bit when you get this new TV, it's so bright and vivid, you put in cinema mode, it seems drab, but it's actually attempting to duplicate the actual color, reproduce the movie as delivered instead of juicing it and it's, and it's true for football. You know, sometimes you're watching a football game and, or a baseball game and the field is bright green, man.

Leo Laporte (01:43:57):
It looks good. That grass looks great. It's not natural though. And so you put on, you know, cinema mode or sports mode and okay. Maybe it's not quite as bright, but it looks like real grass, not fluorescent grass. And you get you ideally you do that because that's how the, that's how the filmmaker wanted it to look and it, and it honestly, it looks great. Whenever possible I watch, I have a number of TVs. Only one is the 4k and whenever possible that's, that's where I watch it. It looks good. Really looks good. All right. Time, take a little break, get ready for some news at the top of the hour more calls coming up an hour. Number three of the tech guys show,

Leo Laporte (01:44:52):
I really want to talk about our sponsor actually user way, cuz there's we were just talking of course, to a blind call. And you understand now you can hear a little bit about the challenges if you're blind or disabled in any way doing things like, you know, checking out the internet. Well, there is a good solution. It's called user way. It's more than a good solution. It's the right solution for any company that's running a website. You need to understand a website is deemed by the federal government as a public entity and as such, it has to adhere to the law. Particularly the Americans with disabilities act, it has to be accessible. Is your website 88 compliant? When somebody asked me that chill went down my spine, I thought, oh no, that's gonna take some time, some effort. But then I found user way, user way.org user way is amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:45:42):
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Speaker 8 (01:46:57):
Trusted by more than 1 million websites and 60 million users with disabilities visit user way.org to learn how one line of code can make your website accessible

Leo Laporte (01:47:09):
User way can make any website fully accessible, ADA compliant. It's not just the right thing to do. It's also the law with user way. Everyone who visits your site can brow seamlessly, customize it to fit their needs is a great way to show your commitment to millions of people with disabilities. Go to user way.org/twi. And right now we get you 30% off user way's AI powered accessibility solution, user way, making the internet accessible. Gosh, darn it. That's just the right thing to do user way.org/drip. Checking out today. Hey, Hey, Hey, how are you today? Leo LePort here. The tech guy time talk computers in the internet and home theater and all that stuff. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is my phone number. If you wanna talk high tech, 88 88, ask Leo website tech guy labs.com. And that's where you'll find all the show notes and everything sad farewell to our good scribe.

Leo Laporte (01:48:07):
James duo. We're moving the web site over to our podcast website for a variety of reasons, which I explained at the beginning of the show, but I don't want to get into again, basically cost issues upgrading our software. And so we already have the podcast website@twi.tv. So we thought, well, we'll just put the tech guy stuff there. We actually always have been. So that'll now be the source for your tech eye notes and it'll still be a tech eye labs.com. Thanks to the miracle of DNS redirection, 88 88. Ask Leo Michael's on the line from Torrance, California. Hi Michael.

Speaker 9 (01:48:47):
Hello, Michael.

Leo Laporte (01:48:50):
How are you sir?

Speaker 9 (01:48:52):
Good. I'm I'm good. I'm Dr. Mike,

Leo Laporte (01:48:56):
Dr. Mike. Good to see you. What kind of doctor are you Mike?

Speaker 9 (01:49:01):
I'm a doctor. We, we had a confirmation that was doctors in you know, technology.

Leo Laporte (01:49:10):
Oh, so I won't mention this pains all up and down my side. That's for a different kind of doctor. No, I can't.

Speaker 9 (01:49:15):
I can't help you.

Leo Laporte (01:49:16):
<Laugh> OK.

Speaker 9 (01:49:18):
And we are all Mons your last call. That was 

Leo Laporte (01:49:23):
All

Speaker 9 (01:49:24):
Mons. We are Mikey. Yeah. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:49:27):
What can I do for this Mikey?

Speaker 9 (01:49:32):
Okay, so I'm running log four, J

Leo Laporte (01:49:38):
Apache. No, you're not stop it now. Come on. I, and by the way, if you are, I have no help for you. I'm so sorry. Good luck. And God bless.

Speaker 9 (01:49:49):
Yeah, no, no. I'm the the question is you know, Carbonite was a sponsor for

Leo Laporte (01:49:57):
Years, for years and I've

Speaker 9 (01:49:59):
Used yeah. Used them for and I still do.

Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
They're perfectly good, nothing wrong with them. Good friends with the fam under the only thing that's really changed besides the fact that they wouldn't give us money for advertising anymore. But that was chiefly because their business model changed. They really wanted to focus on business as opposed to consumers. Exactly. And they made a lot, you know, they, this is true by the way it happened to last pass. Two, they've just kind of rejiggered their business. It isn't unusual. Unfortunately it happens to a lot of our advertisers where, where they realize, and we're making more money by selling the businesses than we are to consumers. So we're just gonna drop that consumer advertising.

Speaker 9 (01:50:38):
Yeah. Correct. And I, and I tried, I drive a few times

Leo Laporte (01:50:43):
And they're very much focused. They do have a business plan. But I think they are still focused on consumers, which is why I'm really happy to have them as a sponsor customer. They are, they,

Speaker 9 (01:50:53):
They, they seem to be very battle with

Leo Laporte (01:50:58):
Me. <Laugh> yeah. I really like them. Nice guys

Speaker 9 (01:51:00):
Too. So I've got, you know, two main office computers and one is running Carbonite. Both are running eye drive, so I've got backups and I've got, obviously I'm OCD, I've got SSD drive. You

Leo Laporte (01:51:18):
Know what? This is one area where OCDs not a bad thing, no Felton suspenders, you don't wanna lose data.

Speaker 9 (01:51:28):
I've got stuff in my state deposit box.

Leo Laporte (01:51:32):
It's a nice, honestly, it, it may be overkill. You you'll never know till something goes wrong, but it's just nice to not have to think about it. Like, I don't worry about losing data. And so that's really a nice feeling. It's and it, if I were just relying on one way of backing up, I might not. So Sangu, I, you know, if it's just external drives or just a high drive I, I might not be so confident that I'm okay, but I have so many copies of everything. Like you, I feel fairly sure that if anything were to go wrong, I'd be able to get it back.

Speaker 9 (01:52:04):
Correct.

Leo Laporte (01:52:05):
In fact, when we had these big wildfires up here a couple years ago, when we were packing our go bags, it, oh yeah. It made me feel good to know, you know in days gone by, I might have been throwing the photo albums in there and stuff like that, but I know that everything I have is, is backed up in the cloud. So it's, it's gonna be okay. Fortunately, we did not get, you know, have to leave the house, but it, it was something that I had to go through a process I, to go through when we make packing this

Speaker 9 (01:52:33):
Five it's reality.

Leo Laporte (01:52:34):
Yeah. And it's terrifying. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:52:37):
So I've got two computers my main business computers one running windows, 11 updated. The other is the backup running windows 10. So Carbonite, I'm gonna cancel after it's time to, yeah, you

Leo Laporte (01:52:57):
Don't, you probably don't need both Carbonite and eye drive. I think that is spell well, I, I

Speaker 9 (01:53:02):
Only because I with Carbonite for many years. Sure. And I drive seems to be

Leo Laporte (01:53:10):
Well, I'll tell you one big difference. Carbonite is attached to that computer. You can't run it on multiple computers. You have to have an account for each computer. That's correct.

Speaker 9 (01:53:19):
Yeah. I drive. I've got on everywhere computer. Yeah. So the second backup is you know, it's backing up, but it's not backing up the data from my main computer. So the question is if it goes to hell I can get all my data backed up from, I drive on to that window. Yes. 10 yes. Machine.

Leo Laporte (01:53:49):
You don't have to worry about where it came from. That's your data. That's in your iDrive account. You can restore it to anywhere.

Speaker 9 (01:53:55):
Okay. All right. That's

Leo Laporte (01:53:57):
That's again, that's the advantage. Carbonite would be a little different because each account is attached to a machine. So each machine exactly good restore the data from that machine, but you'd have to go. You could, I mean, you'd have to log out then log into a new account, then download that, then log out and log into the new account, download that. So you could get all the data on a machine. It's nice though, that with iDrive, it's one account for everything that way, just log once, downloaded all. And you're good.

Speaker 9 (01:54:23):
Car Carbonite was great until late turn to the you know, business. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:54:29):
And I think they're probably still great. And as I said, I'm friends with the founders, so I'm not gonna say anything bad about Carbonite at all. Oh, okay. <Laugh> no, I like 'em a lot. And I think that they they're they're, they were a great company. I was very glad that they'd be doing business with 'em for a long time. And it often happens in this business. You advertisers change. Does it mean you know, you're cutting all ties with the previous guy. No. Yeah,

Speaker 9 (01:54:52):
Of course.

Leo Laporte (01:54:53):
Yeah. Carbonite. We did Carbonite ads for maybe a decade for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I have to say, I drive and remote. PC's the same company. They've been a very supportive and you know, I really appreciate them because they've been supportive during COVID where a lot of advertisers just said, you know, we don't know what the future's gonna hold. We're just gonna stop advertising until this all shakes out. And so it's nice, nice to have a company that says, you know, we know consumers are still gonna have to back up maybe even more important during COVID so

Speaker 9 (01:55:25):
Correct. I've got one one in, do you have time? 

Leo Laporte (01:55:29):
37 seconds. <Laugh>

Speaker 9 (01:55:32):
Direct TV. Yes, sir. There was a guy that called in, I think he had,

Leo Laporte (01:55:38):
Yeah, he had direct TV. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:55:40):
Yeah. And cutting the cord. The secret is called the retention department. Yes. For TV. Yes. You've been there for a long time, which I had DirecTV since. Well, I started listening to you in 94. You can get,

Leo Laporte (01:56:03):
That's a very good tip for almost any subscription service, your cell company, your cable company, almost all of them have special customer service reps for people who are about to cut the cord about to quit. The retention specialists often can give you some pretty good deals. In fact, I remember going into hundred dollars off.

Speaker 9 (01:56:24):
Yeah. 

Leo Laporte (01:56:25):
I remember going into my Comcast store cause I really prefer to deal with these people face to face. It's hard to do it on the phone. And oh, the, the Comcast store said, you know, you should just come in in here every year and check because we have incentive programs and they always expire after a year or two. So every year, just in and say, what's new. What can you do for me? And we'll be glad to switch you to the new incentive program. And so you'll keep those savings. Their presumption is, people just are never gonna check and never gonna update their account. And so when in a year or two, and it varies that that incentive program expires and it, and your price doubles, most people just go, oh wow. That, that was a big increase and keep on paying. So that was good advice. Actually. I appreciate that from the, the lady at the Comcast store, she said, come back in in 11 months in 20 days. <Laugh> and, and we can talk about what we got next. My pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Leo. Leport the tech guy. I only wanna be with you rich. Robert in St. Claire shores, Michigan. Hello, Robert.

Speaker 10 (01:57:43):
Hey Leo. Well, you know, Hey Leo, it's been so long. The last time I seen you was I'd watched a dag on my computer. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
That has been a long time. We haven't had a dag in years. <Laugh> yeah. Well, but

Speaker 10 (01:58:00):
Late nineties, right? There's the television show. That was

Leo Laporte (01:58:03):
That's right. That's right. We would say everybody dag. Now everybody dag. We don't have to do that anymore. Yeah. Hey

Speaker 10 (01:58:11):
Leo, you're a good man. I've been listening to you for a while. I told my buddies, Hey, Cassie, I heard on the radio. Aw, I'm a big a and M guy, you know? So I'm, that's Leo, so great. Nice know, I got a question

Leo Laporte (01:58:23):
For you. I like the a and M too, by the way, God bless you. You know.

Speaker 10 (01:58:28):
Well, let me tell you, Leo, you get in a room or a party. I'm probably one of the most well read in my secret am radio. I listen to more, listen, I've listened to more interviews from experts, every field you. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:58:41):
Great. Yeah, no, I, that's why I got into this way back when, when I was in college, I just, there's something about radio and I hope it, I hope it survives this internet era. Thank goodness for podcasts. I was thinking about that. I got in a podcast 15 years ago, actually longer than that now, 17 years ago. And and who would've thought when I was starting in radio, back in the seventies that someday, you know, you wouldn't need a radio station. You just need the internet, you still have a microphone, but that's, that's not changing, but it's pretty amazing. And, and it's really, it's what it's done is it's mean, it means not only do you have am now, but you've got all this wealth of information from podcasts. It's I think it's all to the good. I really

Speaker 10 (01:59:25):
Do. Yeah. I've gotta get into it more. I lost all my eyesight about three and a half years ago. So I'm kind of, you know, gotten away from everything. Yeah. You

Leo Laporte (01:59:34):
Listen, but, but to, gosh, your ears are really good way to get information into your head. They're right next to your brain. It's amazing. And so get into podcasts. I mean, I'm not, not to dismiss am radio cause it's fantastic. The thing about am is live. It's local. It's right here right now. But if there's something you're interested in, there's no topic in the world that isn't covered by a podcast of some story. If you like listening, oh, you're in luck.

Speaker 10 (01:59:58):
My brain is overflowing. I

Leo Laporte (02:00:01):
Mine overflowed years ago, <laugh> stuff was sloshing out of it. It was terrible.

Speaker 10 (02:00:07):
Well, I haven't gotten, I haven't gotten into jaws on the computer and none of that, it I've listened to it and kind of I've been stressed lately. And it, that seems like a lot of stress. And one day I'll get back into it. When I get somebody to sit next to me and help me out a little

Leo Laporte (02:00:23):
He's he's talking about this, the screen write reader program it's used by most blind people which makes it accessible. Cause obviously you can't see the screen, but the reader will read you all the functions of trolls. It's a little, you know what, for somebody who's never used it or doesn't, isn't used to it, it's a pain in the butt, cuz it's reading all the menus, all the window names and stuff. But, but it's amazing because it really does open up a world to people without sight. And that makes a big difference

Speaker 10 (02:00:48):
When I used what I had site and I would use a computer. I didn't have a lot of sight, but I would use that the magnifier on. And I remember my computer buddies would come over and their they're up down to looking up, get this thing off and Oh anyway, I could see

Leo Laporte (02:01:04):
It, read it, Hey, whatever it takes, you know, but I'm glad that you listen. I'm really glad that you listen this we have a lot of blind listeners and I think it's a, it's, it's really a great resource. So I'm thrilled that you're listening

Speaker 10 (02:01:15):
Leo there, you know, there's, there's re there's talking books for the blind. So I don't know if you've written any books or if you think there's anything 

Leo Laporte (02:01:22):
You would not wanna hear my books. I wrote about a dozen books back in the day, boring as heck all about computers. I don't think, and, and the problem is it was back in the day. So nothing's the same every once in a while. I'll look at one of 'em go, boy, boy, is that dated? <Laugh>

Speaker 10 (02:01:39):
Yeah, that way I was in a, I was in a, a, a special I got picked to be in a little science project. This was 1971. We had a modem, we hooked it up and we called down at what? Wow. Computer. That was the internet for just the scientist or something. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:54):
Wow. Darpin it? Yeah. 1971. Yeah, that was the early days of the internet. It really, it really was born in 1969. So you were one of the earliest users. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:02:06):
And then in 1979, I went to this thing for the blind, you know, and over in Western Michigan, Western college. And I met the guy, I believe he is blind. Who, the talking you type and it talks 1979. Yeah. And I remember I typed my name into it and it pretty much said my name isn't that awesome. It wasn't bad. You could hear, you

Leo Laporte (02:02:30):
Know, and now whether you cited or not, we're all talking to our computers and they seem to understand,

Speaker 10 (02:02:37):
Well, you know, since we're going through topics, what bugs me is all these touch screens on appliances. How much more would it cost? This, made it talk.

Leo Laporte (02:02:46):
Right. I think that's coming. I think that's coming. What? Yeah. What

Speaker 10 (02:02:50):
Kinda, what can it cost? 50 cents

Leo Laporte (02:02:52):
A board? Well, Amazon licenses, their echo technology to a lot of people you're seeing in cars. You're seeing in a lot of devices, including appliances. I think that's gonna happen more and more. I was

Speaker 10 (02:03:05):
Looking at a thermostat. It was called a V I P well, I won't give the name, but anyways, you, you touch it. It's standalone. No Bluetooth, no. You know, you touch it. And the button says what it is and touch it. What you did. It was 180 bucks, three years ago. Now it's three. I'm just gonna ask my paper to come set my service.

Leo Laporte (02:03:24):
Yikes. That's a little bit of a price increase. Wow.

Speaker 10 (02:03:28):
Everything's going up. You know what? I don't wanna take all your time, but I wanna take the question I had.

Leo Laporte (02:03:32):
Oh yeah, you better cuz I'm running outta time here. What? I forgot you called to ask something. Go ahead.

Speaker 10 (02:03:37):
<Laugh> I got an iPhone. I got an iPhone stick and if I were to upgrade, would I get any better, you know, use out of it being blind?

Leo Laporte (02:03:50):
That's actually a great question. This, you are still getting the latest version of iOS. This is the last year you will though. So I would wait as long as your battery life and everything are next year, you're gonna have to upgrade anyway because you won't get, you won't be getting the latest iOS. All right. It's funny. Normally iOS does improve accessibility every year. And so you would appreciate the new features. You probably see some, but you're getting almost all of them. I think you are getting all of them ironically. And no one has explained this yet. Apple took some critical features from Siri it's voice assistant in iOS, 15 features a lot of blind users use, like read my email to me. And this is inexplicable. Apple has not explained it. The, the blind communities up and arms over this. It's I can't remember a time when they took features out, but they've started doing that. So you might wanna stick with that old phone. Come to think of it. Leo LePort the tech guy, Leo Laport, 88, 88 as Leo as always. Thank you, professor Laura for always playing great music. Interesting music. Never the obvious, right? Always something the little off cuz we're well, you're a little off, but that's okay. We like it that way. Thank you, professor Laura, back to the phones we go Robert's on the line. Oh no. I talked to Robert. That was St. Clare. Robert from St. Clair shores. Yeah. Chris in Los Angeles is next. Hi Chris.

Speaker 11 (02:05:32):
Hey Claire. How are you? Leo? I

Leo Laporte (02:05:34):
Am great. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 11 (02:05:36):
Thanks so much. Happy holiday. Thank you. So question first those two clocks that you have the differential between them. Is that your time delay

Leo Laporte (02:05:46):
<Laugh> no, no, no. So I have, there's actually three clocks. If you watch our streaming video. I, I see that. Yeah. Yeah. We realize that there's nothing more boring than seeing some guy talking into a microphone. It's not exactly an action broadcast. So we, but we do stream and make podcast video available. So we try to address it up. And there's a lot of junk <laugh> in this, in the picture, including not one, not two but three different clocks. The clock, the digital clock over my left shoulder is probably the one to pay attention to that. One of those radio controlled clocks, you know, it gets the, the time from WWV, it should be pretty accurate. I put it in the window every night when I go home, I kid you not. It's like, it's like Mr. Rogers, you know, puts his shoes on and takes off his card again.

Leo Laporte (02:06:33):
When he goes home, I, I put my shoes on and put the clock in the window to get the time. Then there are, then there is a nix tube clock, which I have mostly cuz if it's kind of, you know, archival interest, nix tubes are giant tubes with numbers in them. They, it looks like it's almost like neon. This is horribly inaccurate. I <laugh> and worse. It's really into set. So don't pay any attention to the time on that clock. And then, then there's another one down here. I don't, you might not even notice it. This is not a nix tube clock. It's a fake nix tube. It's a LCD screens that kind of look like nix tubes and that's, that's pretty inaccurate too. So the only one there's only it's just because to make this an action shot, the clocks that tells you how boring it is watching me do the show that the clocks are the point of interest. Yep. <Laugh> <laugh> hi, watching Leo do a radio show is like in watching a clock tick. Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:07:36):
But all of your clocks are wrong,

Leo Laporte (02:07:38):
FYI. Well, well, no, no one of them's. Right. <laugh> and, and th and that's this one. And if you do, by the way, that is a case, there will be a difference between that in actual time where you're watching, because for several reasons, mostly because in order to stream video, you have to compress it. And there is a delay depending on where you're watching it, we stream to YouTube Twitch, you stream. And each of them has a different amount of delay depending on how fast their servers are, et cetera. So the compression is the difference. And yeah. So if you look at this, it's, it's 1 36, 7 seconds, and it's 1 36, you know, where you are, it's 1 30, 30 seconds. That means there was 23 seconds of compression and STR, and then it has to go out on the internet. So there's some, there's some delays that's ex so you nailed it. That's exactly right. Chris, you figured it out the secret. So,

Speaker 11 (02:08:28):
So great segue to my question. So looking for a platform that you can stream to Facebook specifically, or YouTube for them, or both at the same time I have a Mac mini M one that I use to run OBS on it as a multicam. So I have several black magic

Leo Laporte (02:08:50):
Boxes. So you know, all about this streaming thing then. Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:08:53):
Yeah. So the problem is that core that I tried with restream and some of the other applications, once it gets to, if I, if I stream directly on Facebook directly, it's in ten eight with the three 20 audio. Perfect, awesome. The moment I use something else like restream or some of the other applications, <affirmative> it just degrades the video quality and the audio quality. I little, I did a bit of research about restrain, where they bounce the signal to all of their servers. So the, that the signal just keeps going back. Like if you are in New York, I'm in LA,

Leo Laporte (02:09:33):
But there's more than that. So I, I would guess the number one issue is your upstream bandwidth.

Speaker 11 (02:09:41):
I don't have a problem with that at all.

Leo Laporte (02:09:45):
So if the system you're using I, is it OBS studio, you said, or is it something else? Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:09:50):
The Mac is using OBS.

Leo Laporte (02:09:51):
If OS studio is streaming to Facebook and YouTube and at the same time, no, they're

Speaker 11 (02:10:01):
Not. Okay. No, it's not. The only thing OBS is doing is running my cameras. I'm taking HDMI out, out of my Mac, mini into my MacBook pro I nine, and then I stream with that computer.

Leo Laporte (02:10:15):
Okay. So again, if you are sending one stream to multiple sources, a number of things is happening first, that software, it may be making different versions of the stream probably is for each endpoint. And then it's using your bandwidths, which I know you say is ample, but is it really ample? Cuz remember most of the time when you are quoted bandwidths by an internet service provider, they give you a big number and a little number. They may not even give you the little number. The big number is how fast downloads, but suddenly you are a broadcaster from your house. You are streaming. So it's the upload that matters. And that's usually a fraction of the download. So you wanna look at that upstream and remember, you know, do a little math for each high Def stream. You wanna send out, you're gonna need 10 megabits, maybe five megabits depends.

Leo Laporte (02:11:13):
You'll have to do the math per stream. You're sending out four streams. You're sending out four times the bandwidth it's cl it could very easily clog your upstream bandwidth. So the computer itself has to do more work. That could be slowing it down. You, you have a perfect single stream, but when you send multiple streams, it goes down and it's likely in fact that that's due to your bandwidth and the work being done. Now, there are solutions, you kind of intubated this, there are solutions out there that're much more expensive where you send a single stream and then it multicasts out from its servers. Then it gonna be that services bandwidth. And that service is hardware, how much hardware they put into it. And some of them are, you know, designed for exactly this situation. Chances are in most cases, there'll be there'll be a better you'll get better results than you would if you were doing it outta the house.

Leo Laporte (02:12:13):
So that's, you just, just have to think in terms of, you know, what's really going on. And if you're trying to send multiple streams from the same computer over your same bandwidth, usually it's an issue at home. And then if you go out to a third party, you send a single stream to third party, then it's gonna be up to them to split at your streams, to devote the right amount of hardware. It's gotta be encoded. That takes a lot of, you know, I, I wouldn't be surprised if your I nine Mac is getting is choking on the amount of encoding it has to do, right? So I, I understand you, you moved it off the main machine, so that at least the game you're streaming has full CPU. And it's just putting out a little pipe out to that Mac. But the Mac now is the, is the bottleneck. This is why it's complicated. <Laugh> you know, and the thing that's amazing, really, if you think about it is that we can do this at all is amazing. Here you are sitting at home streaming, a game streaming your content or I'm streaming a radio show podcast. And we're able to stream it to everywhere in the world.

Leo Laporte (02:13:19):
And it started with just audio. And now you're streaming high quality HD video to any computer in the world that wants to watch it and at, and here's the best part. It doesn't cost you a penny. I don't, even if you told me that 10 years ago or 20 years ago when I was starting out in radio, if you told me, oh yeah, pretty soon you won't need a, a transmitter. You won't need a tower. You won't E you won't need a boss. You don't need a big corporation backing you. You could do it from your house for free. And for some reason, Google and Facebook won't charge you for the bandwidth you're using. I would've said you're crazy. <Laugh> you're nuts. That's not well, it's. It is. And it's amazing. This week, YouTube announced 1 trillion hours of Minecraft videos watched 1 trillion hours for free Leo port, the tech guy, Dick it it's Dickie D he's a disco fool. Giw.Biz. It's the holiday Dickie D show. No rock hits this year, but Dick is just kicking up his high heeled shoes.

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:36):
Absolutely. I'm making up for all 36

Leo Laporte (02:14:39):
Of them. <Laugh> wow. It's it's a Christmas in New York city gonna be a little different again this year, but that's okay. That's okay. We're gonna get through it. You probably don't go wow. Much.

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:54):
No no,

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
You got all the gizmos and gadgets you need right there. Right here. Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:14:59):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:14:59):
Exactly. Dick joins us every week to give us the latest Gimo or gadget. That's why he's our gizmo wizard. What do you have this week for Dick? Okay, so

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:10):
I have two ho the gift suggestions last minute. Oh, good. One of them, we talked, we talked about like six weeks ago, but now there's a new version of it. And also it made the consumer reports list of one of the best coffee makers. Oh, of 2021. Oh, okay. I talked about the chef men, Insta coffee, max. I went to check the price, and now there is an Insta coffee max plus, right. So of course I had to buy one, even though a month ago, I bought the original,

Leo Laporte (02:15:42):
How many coffee makers do you own?

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:45):
Let's see. 1, 2, 3 foot. Well, next to my microphone, I have six <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:15:50):
You can only drink one cup at a time. Dick, unlike you though. I have a bunch of different coffee makers under the, oh my

Dick DeBartolo (02:15:57):
Gosh. Yes. It's ridiculous.

Leo Laporte (02:15:59):
It's ridiculous. So this, this is a cake cup coffee maker.

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:02):
Yes. Yes it is. And it's fast. Okay. This one starts, starts brewing in 25 seconds. And you have the cake cup done in about 96,

Leo Laporte (02:16:14):
But so that's, you know, one of the things I don't I worry about with cake cups is the waste. It looks like you can kind of make your own cake cups with this.

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:21):
You know what this is, what's great about, about the, the, the new max is it used to come with a tiny little filter for your own coffee grinds. Okay. That fit in where the cake cup fit. Okay. The new one, the entire holder that holds the cake cup comes out and you can put in a big filter that holds three and a half table spoons. Oh, yeah. Of your own grind.

Leo Laporte (02:16:46):
I like, I like that. I cuz I like a strong cup

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:48):
Often. Yeah, exactly. And you can then make 14 ounces of your own blend plus really fast,

Leo Laporte (02:16:55):
No plastic waste, which is good.

Dick DeBartolo (02:16:57):
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And Leo, it it's 39. I, I looked on Amazon today and it still says lowest price in 30 days. It's 40 bucks. 39 99 is

Leo Laporte (02:17:09):
So, you know, we use K cups at work because the worst thing in a business is, you know, that, that coffee pot that's been sitting on the burners is four in the morning and it's smells terrible. It's awful coffee. And you throw it out. And I just think that that's not a good, so K cups are great, cuz there's single serving. Everyone makes a fresh cup. But I, I feel terrible about the waste. There's a lot of plastic. You just going in the landfill. So this is a good solution. You could still use cake cups. Yes. But you can also use ground coffee. And a lot of our staff prefers their own coffee anyway. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:41):
This is, this is a way to do it. And, and very inexpensive, very inexpensive. You know,

Leo Laporte (02:17:46):
We should, we, we just replaced our cake, our ke cuz it, it Oak and we got a new one, but now I wish we'd gotten this. This is a good instant coffee max. Plus this would be a good gift

Dick DeBartolo (02:17:55):
Max plus. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the other thing was a friend of mine said I was talking to you Mon zoom. And every time he leaned forward, he vanished. And I said, you know, you need a, you need a light for you clip on your monitor. And he said, well, I don't know what to get. So I, I search around on Amazon. I found a neat kit for 24 bucks. Okay. So it's, it's a very small, it's a four point six inch circle. It's a

Leo Laporte (02:18:22):
Ring light, but that's what all the kids use the, all the tick top.

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:25):
Totally. Yeah. Adjustable from 32 K 3,200 K it's 500 K that's the

Leo Laporte (02:18:32):
Color of the light. Whether it's warm. Yeah. Or exactly daylight.

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:35):
Yeah. And then within there, there are five illumination ranges of brightness.

Leo Laporte (02:18:42):
How bright does it get? Cause my experience sometimes are these is, they're not very bright. You know what? This

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:46):
One gets too bright for me. I just lost. Are

Leo Laporte (02:18:48):
You using it right now?

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:50):
Yeah, I am. Oh, it's pretty bright

Leo Laporte (02:18:52):
Off to the, can you powder your head because <laugh>, I'm getting a lot of glare. Wait a minute,

Dick DeBartolo (02:18:58):
Wait a minute. Wait

Leo Laporte (02:18:59):
A minute.

Dick DeBartolo (02:19:00):
That was, that was low. That was low.

Leo Laporte (02:19:03):
You look like a ghost now. Okay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:19:05):
Yeah. And the thing that I found is that I run it off a little external battery pack and we do video. It's like up in dentist's apartment and one, we need a light. It's real easy to use this as a, as a backlog.

Leo Laporte (02:19:18):
This looks like a good and you can clip it on your laptop and just plug it into the laptop power supply.

Dick DeBartolo (02:19:23):
Exactly. Yeah. Cause it's USB powered or use one of those little plugs. I'm just playing with the control here. Yeah. And 24 bucks for it. So that

Leo Laporte (02:19:30):
That's very reasonable. And that's from the appropriately named self feel first, the self and all of us self feel <laugh> yes, exactly. Exactly. Two good picks. Now the best way to find these is just to go to website. I said he's our gizmo wizard. That's why his website GI whiz G I Z w I z.biz because I don't know why. Cuz you're in the biz of being a GI whiz. G I Z w I Z dot B I Z and then click the button that says the GIZ Wiz visits. The tech guy that ain't the only button you could see gadgets he showed on ABC world news. Now does that every month you could see blog and log his gizmo. Ajo the GIW garb and mad collectibles and match game collectibles. And also something just for all of us. The GIW what the heck is it contest the chance to win an autograph copy of mad magazine by identifying the most obvious you sketch it ever done you've ever done. How many right answers do you have so far?

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:34):
Oh, probably 70.

Leo Laporte (02:20:36):
Cause most people are smart. Now they know, you know, you're competing for six copies of mad magazine with the right answer. You're competing for 12 copies of mad magazine for the wrong answer, own answer. Right? Double your chances come up with a clever, wrong answer. So knowing what it is is not of a, not of value probably

Dick DeBartolo (02:20:56):
No, especially this time. No, because there's just everybody be a, a lottery to see which sex people.

Leo Laporte (02:21:02):
<Laugh> 18 autograph copies of mad magazine autographed by this guy right here, which extra? <Laugh> invaluable. <Laugh> actually I'm always proud to have this. Thank you. And you sent Michael one too. So he's he was really happy to get the autograph copy and we don't even have to play the game. In fact, I don't think we're allowed to play the game, certainly. Oh no, not this month.

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:29):
Both relatives can play the game. I no rules.

Leo Laporte (02:21:31):
<Laugh> I have no rules. There are no rules. It's not a lottery. It's just for fun. Dick, I hope you, are you gonna do anything? You've got your Christmas tree, your famous L E D Christmas tree up.

Dick DeBartolo (02:21:44):
Anything. I'm probably just gonna do the pineapple upside down cake. Nice. And may, maybe at two in the morning will run by and see the Christmas tree. When at Rockefeller center when

Leo Laporte (02:21:52):
No one's around, you know, they still, they haven't called off the gathering in times square, but that has to be imminent.

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:02):
I, I think so. I mean that first of all, how do you check the ID and the cards from a million people?

Leo Laporte (02:22:10):
Well, and I don't know why anybody would want to go because you get no, that's what you have to get there early, right? Just to get us. Oh, we

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:17):
Have to get there by

Leo Laporte (02:22:18):
Four. And then they put you in a fenced pen that you can't leave till midnight. Yes. No, I don't know about you.

Dick DeBartolo (02:22:27):
<Laugh> till sometimes two in the morning still do it because what they let people out slowly because they overwhelm the transit

Leo Laporte (02:22:35):
System. So you're basically going to new year's Eve jail. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why anybody does this, but they do. I have a feeling because of Aron and I know New York city has actually gone through a big outbreak. The good news is it's not as dangerous cuz most, mostly everybody's vaccinated, but it's still a lot of people are getting sick. So I think it would be prudent probably not to do this. And I suspect it will be mayor de Blasio's last act. <Laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:04):
I think so with,

Leo Laporte (02:23:05):
Be forget about it.

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:07):
I know it's the new pin. Your pants celebration.

Leo Laporte (02:23:11):
Go home. <Laugh> go home, stay in New Jersey. We're not doing it this year. So but do I hope you have a wonderful holiday and you'll be back as we will be January 8th. We'll see you then I will yeah. Have

Dick DeBartolo (02:23:25):
A the holiday. It's great. Being your friend for another year.

Leo Laporte (02:23:29):
I agree. It hasn't been that long. Okay buddy. Take care of Dickie D that's it for me. I'll be back tomorrow. I hope you will too. Leo Laport the tech guy and if not, have a great holiday week. Well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't at TWI T I T. It stands for this week at tech and you'll find it@twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS, today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all at twit TV and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.