Gadgetory

it's wednesday april fifth and are you ready for some football that's time at the 359 podcast and in the house today we have Alfred Inge and Ben Fox Rubin good morning guys I am ready forehand egg and egg and egg baby okay god damn it we're so nerdy this is really it is not football we're a little out of our wheelhouse here today no we're not I love football like one of the only sports that i watch I'm he's probably team sport i watch the Philadelphia Eagles giant bills okay all right the only real news or coasters yeah oh I I agree with that yeah sure I just I I only picked the Giants because they're the only team to stop Tom Brady from winning Super Bowl I mean I could completely agree with that sentiment for sure but unfortunately I think we've lost our entire tech audience yeah with all this talk about blue ball promise we're gonna bring it back full circle there a point to this this is this is about streaming so Amazon we're gonna talk about on the show they snagged the NFL games on Thursday night which is going to go live globally for about 50 million dollars and we're also going to be talking about care robots which at this point are going to be focused on helping out senior citizens and the elderly and yeah we'll get into that Katie Collins word about that earlier today as always send in your questions and comments and we'll get to as many as we can at the end of the show and that's about it for now we'll see you in three minutes and 59 seconds from 32 welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred Aang Amazon pulled in the streaming rights for the nfl's thursday night football games this upcoming season but it didn't come cheap for the one-year deal the company reportedly paid 50 million dollars five times what Twitter coughed up last season competition was tough this year with Twitter Facebook and YouTube all reportedly bidding also wanted to throw out a disclosure CBS our beloved corporate overlords also air thursday night football games along with NBC and the NFL network so Alfred 50 million dollars for the streaming rights globally you think it was worth it definitely not what it's stupid investment didn't even pay off that much for Twitter when they did it you you think so i think there was an audience growth for twitter and and the fact is is that you know for twitter it made sense because people love live tweeting budget and twitter integrated where was kind of on the sidebar we're like it would fit in with your tweets and people could search your comments and your games in the same way that you can do it on twitter now i may have so many reason to check out the games live on twitter to kind of see what people were saying live at the exact same time however putting it on amazon doesn't really change that twitter has often been a second screen for me if i'm watching like an Eagles game or you know the state of the union address or whatever so it doesn't take that about me but how often do you go on Amazon to watch something live very very little I think one of their only live shows is this thing called style code live which I'm not sure anybody watches and it's basically QVC for Millennials or something just made so much more sense if it were to go to Twitter or Facebook or even YouTube which all have the live chat capabilities on the side for me personally I still think Twitter makes the most sense because that's where all the pundits and the analyst you're gonna get you know like top-rated comments on there yeah as opposed to you know random person but they have no money jets they have no money that's the thing is that Amazon easily outbid them and it showed that these global streaming rights have enormous amount of value that they went up from 10 million 250 million it just doesn't make any sense I mean unless they're putting it on twitch like maybe twitch you know yeah that makes the most sense to me to put her on amazon it I don't get it at all yeah okay I mean tell me how you really feel Yin dollars come on you could send me to the space for that I hope you didn't want to go to space that was Brian by the way our producer also we wanted to get to this other story our own katie collins wrote about the emerging world of care robots which can help senior citizens with simple tasks around the house like closing the fridge or answering the door one example was this cute little rabbit dog thing called me row which works with a wristband to track your vitals there's also of course pepper the robot Alfred would you give this to Grandma is this something that you would actually feel comfortable using I mean like a senior in your life if I can get it for free definitely I don't actually for a robot for something that I could probably do for free do you think so I mean I think I could do it i just don't think i'd have time for it see that's the thing too is that there's going to be this enormous amount of devant demand with like more of the population getting older and graying and you know dying later and and uh you know maybe robots are actually gonna solve this issue I mean to be fair I love robots in the home like my Roomba it has been the greatest thing that I've done and then you know by I have an echo dot also that's not exactly a robot a robot it's been nice you know I get to talk to Alexa when I come home it does make me wonder if you put in an echo on wheels is it then a robot yeah I'm gonna glue my Jericho under my room and it just goes around them it'll be the party rumba so do you ever talk to your Roomba and like asking questions now try to teach you treat I mean I've run I've named it what's the roombas name sponge bot okay that makes sense anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm out burning thanks for listening in the chat right reason I was always waiting there isn't lowing up my spot I was losing my mind off camera was because Michael Brown and we've got our new hashtag I love my boy Alfred but I'd be more excited for Amazon catching Alfred's man button being cut off for 50 million dollars oh oh definitely and son should absolutely pay 50 million dollars for that man button if they paid me 50 million dollars I'd cut my hair on the way the first time I wanted on the show next Kickstarter yes the fair enough Michael Brown is a regular viewer so he knows about Alfred's man button but you're right it hasn't been on the show that's because my I cut my hair like a few weeks ago and I was waiting for it to grow back Rio it has its return of the bun I actually thought it was kind of funny it was kind of funny because people were making fun of your man bun on this show and then you got your hair cut pretty soon afterward and you were telling me you were like I really hope our YouTube viewers don't think it's because of them it's an honor cut no I got cut because I'm like I I plan out how long I want me to grow by a certain month and the way that I had planned I why were talking about is not really a technology only derail Sorry Sorry every don't care but basically I move on I have you don't refer to be along in September in the way that I had it was like oh it's gonna be long by like August you've now lost me all right moving on let's let's get to the questions before we talk any more about the man bun but Michael Brown always good to have you on the show she said the shout that out thank you very much Freddie and you definitely I mean you cracked up Brian like while I was trying to get through my script so well done to be paid me 50 million dollars I'll cut it for maybe 15 we got fifty dollars an hour would i would definitely also cut off on my hair for 50 million dollars a lot of people are really in favor of this amazon acquisition i think it's a smart move to I know last year two years ago forget how long ago was a lost all sense of time but we watched a the game that was in the UK oh yeah broadcast on on yahoo and it was actually a pleasant experience like I had to put yahoo on my xbox but in that was that was definitely one of the earliest iterations of this concept right obviously the NFL and probably the other uh sporting networks sporting groups well call for fellows Sport sport appreciation organizations again house with their they're all realizing that these streaming rights probably have an enormous amount of value and the NFL obviously gave Twitter a pretty awesome deal for 10 games for only 10 million dollars I mean like a million a game I mean if I think sports games are the biggest reason why cord cutters like don't actually go all the way because it's like I want to be able to watch you know the football game live and that's why I still have a TV otherwise everything on my computer one thing that is a little unfortunate about Amazon getting the rights to this is you have to be an Amazon Prime member to actually watch these games globally so that is with Twitter all you really needed was to get a twitter account and you know just yeah you just needed to be an egg and then it was lonely as the rest of the world rolls their eyes and goes america that's not actually football bright yeah i called it hand egg that size or an american football you want to call an american football that's that's perfectly reasonable i stopped fun to watch by eat wings amazon is obviously gating this behind its prime wall because they want to be a big enough money for it yeah and they want to be a bigger player in video and the reason for that is mostly to get more people to join on to prime so why not try to get people to pay that at ninety nine dollars a year the u.s. curious to see what that crossover is and how much this acquisition will actually pull a new audience into prime people who are football fans who weren't already prime subscribers yeah and to be to be frank about it I cover amazon and i really think that amazon spends this enormous amount of money building out its original shows this is 50 million dollars for 10 games just for one year this isn't going to be added to their catalog it's not like you're you're going to be able to like watch the NFL games like a year time down right yeah yeah that's not going to have them so this is this is a really expensive form of customer acquisition if that is what they're doing with video which is you know they want they want to get you in the door with video and then you're going to start using their two-day shipping and before you know you're going to be buying everything from amazon i mean like that's their general yeah way Danny expands on that idea he says maybe amazon will throw in a chat window auction window or deals window to display beside the game run special sales during the game one touch by yeah it's a smart move it's a smart buyer tebow jersey smell like it rolls in seneca lolz i had for bud light and then you just Bud Light yeah yeah yeah and get it through prime now so and then shows a war yeah but the thing I don't know alcohol but I don't know they do deliver alcohol in a couple of different cities oh really yeah I don't see the I don't see the live streamed games like being able to attract people to go to Amazon and by and get a prime account though because if it's something that i can already watch for free on like CBS or you know shout out to the company shout out to less um you know it's unlike CVS are like NBC are on TV in general why would i shell out ninety nine dollars a year just to be able to watch that watch it online i mean obviously there's well this is nice for come with it but cord-cutters who don't have yeah right or line it is on the waters of what is an evidence on see it attracting like new subscribers hey and it might not and it might not I think it's definitely a nice make good for those of us we already departed that though right and you're probably a prime member right I'm definitely paying the 99 bucks so this is a nice additional better view on top of that and I don't know much about this by Prime members in Germany or Japan or some of these other major countries where amazon has a lot of penetration maybe this actually makes it easier for that worldwide audience to see american football if that is what they want to do the superior football the superior the best football ever I mean I tried to watch soccer more than once very boring this is a good comment i'm sorry if i'm going to screw up your name but it spell or Pele I need the biggest pack TV to watch the sport I need to watch with streaming I can't worrying about hmm what thats constrained to like this is just yeah football right yeah so he's talking about like what it's not gonna stream it like 1080p or 4k let's do they know what the picture quality is going to be for this be at least ten eighty well at least I think he's taking a lot of our perspective where it's like usually with streaming you think of it as like a sigh screen kind of thing where it's like it's on your laptop screen or you're looking screaming at my phone which is a smaller screen but like on Twitter when the when the game's first started they were giving out capabilities to kind of like they they released like apps for it on like the roku and Apple TV people could watch it on their TVs easily chromecast like it was very easy to do that with to fire stick yeah yeah game consoles so yes I our sake I wonder what Amazon's gonna do with that um as far as like streaming goes cuz they have a virus yeah yeah the probable that do ya you think it'll be an isolated app no but maybe I mean that's what Twitter densha Lee was it yeah I never watch the game with your full disclosure I I I messed around with it and I tried to get it to work on my fire TV and didn't I saw some people doing it I watched it on mobile that's that's basically how I got it to work and yeah as we mentioned before it made it it gave you more of a reason to go on Twitter yes you could watch the game it was kind of small but then you could see a bunch of people come but they were yeah that and they were looking Twitter was more so looking for like the the mobile audience where like I was watching the final four game on Monday on Twitter but like I was following it like on my Twitter feed while I was at the gym mmm no I mean that I think they were trying to catch more of that audience but i think what our commenters asking for he's more of like the guy that like wants to sit down on the big couch with like it big TV yeah the big bowl popcorn yeah yeah but like I don't think streaming is going to take anything away from there I mean there may be like solid a issues with that especially depending on how you're like me then the same okay well that's a hesitation you have with any kind of streaming platform I think that's yeah there's lag and fall off it's gonna happen but you also have interrupted signal you have cable fail yeah you know there's always flaws but the thing about that feels like it's okay for that with like Netflix because it's not alive you know I can always like rewind or something like that as far as like a football games goes it's like that's live and I think that's why people want that like on interrupted experience right and not have like the stream yeah degrade it but I think like if any like of the four that were on there i think the only company that that like bid for thursday night football i think amazon probably like had the second or first best like capabilities to you know hold a steady stream on that considering like don't like half their servers run the internet yes yeah AWS yeah good point yeah i mean like the only ones likes run its entire business through AWS yeah last time I checked so that's that's definitely a good point and maybe that'll give our commenter more reason to use this like I could only see like Google and youtubing would compete with that maybe YouTube will get it next year for like a hundred million I'm welcome darting off of that youtube live right the TV light is expected to come you know pretty soon actually look at the monday night games i don't know i mean like it's just money sitting out there for the NFL uh uh folks well yeah how does that work like so if YouTube live has like a basic like channel like let's say it has NBC on it or something mmm and NBC airs thursday night football games they usually blacked out that's so that's so really and I really diving all that NBC really yeah right but that makes no sense there's agreements agree that the sketch out what platforms it's gonna be available right like syndicated radio programming that pick up from national distributors they have to blackout games on that and they black out games if I mean like I'm an Eagles fan I'm like you know eagles games get blacked out all the time yes you know because here's the Jets games because the Jets games the Giants games and also the bills game like the better let sometimes okay cheese this is this is tough but you know who does it the best is CBS I just get out no they do it always they always do it right I'm just kidding now they're uh going back on a point you had before the show imagine soggy says the funny thing is these thursday night games are so low quality in football terms that it really isn't worth the 50 million dollar price tag terrible fan experience it's JV and a fell games that's what I told them out that's the only reason why they were up for streaming I didn't okay I mean the whole reason they started thursday night football games is to just get you watching more games as opposed to like trying to cram more and more into them of them into Sunday because they've got like the three different slots on Sunday think I got like the early game the afternoon game and then Sunday never bad so I don't actually agree that they take the crappiest sunday game and then make it thursday night football in many ways it's like you know like they try to like play it up it's sort of like a like a watered down version of Monday Night Football so i I don't I don't actually agree with that I think like I just said it was a watered down version though yeah but monday night football is usually the one that they save like this is like the really big marquee one so it's just like a slight step from there it's still a step down though okay but I still think it's I i would give it more credence than that our comment or did okay we can agree to disagree i think i've been different I think it's just the experience in itself is just kind of a fun kind of but I'm a very casual fan go figure it like the bills I can't be that pageant if I had my hopes up that high I wouldn't still be here that's like I mean like the Eagles have I wish the Eagles had lost that many superbowls like that would have been nice I'm just like I mean there's more premium content and isolated apps to like the NFL as a firestick app and everything you can go and get X interviews games lovable yeah and verizon has always had like they also have like their deal with the NFL to where you can stream like local games through your verizon like go 90 I think it's I don't even think it's gone i D oh yeah I think it's a good the NFL game it's also like three NFL network app or like a verizon a person there's another network syndicator app that I tried the other day called fubo maybe I've I heard a FUBU no it's similar to like it plays out like it's an actual cable provider type thing right down to like the navigation screen and all that like if he got dish network or whatever but it was again major network kind of stuff mm-hmm so that was actually kind of cool to see that there but that's very you know young it's not a household name yet amazon bringing football like that's headlines everywhere yeah yeah and they're they're really trying to like do a big push and video all their earnings calls they talk about how they're going to be spending a lot more money in in video and original content so I would expect this to be like a really big headline for them this year but there's probably going to be more to come in 2017 from amazon as they try to like beat out netflix or at least be a stronger competitor against netflix they have expectations that youtube is going to be doing more stuff so they mean like it makes sense yeah i mean i try to get something like the NFL live streaming is where everything is heading because you know of all these cord cutters and this is testing water yeah more than anything else is seeing how well this kind of plays out Ryan testing technology seeing with the server capacity could be what the audience retention is going to be you know how to better serve because it'll probably change the format like the delivery of the game we're so used to the the timed out the commercial breaks it so probably change that that's a good point like ultimately if it gets off broadcast they don't need to take FCC regulated commercial breaks it'll be integrated into that I I've seen like tournaments on Twitch before like they they do the a stream evo every year and if like out of lot it's like a fighting game tournament mm-hmm and it's like a three-day affair and it's like they do a pretty good job with the commercials there and you know basically like I guess the commentators people talking analysis and all the stuff they do a pretty good job like streaming it on Twitch so I have no reason I think Amazon will do a bad job with this I just don't think it's a smart investment at all it's definitely a dollar it's definitely had the money to blow yeah try this out and then ultimately when they get their footing they'll make it a smart business me now if you're gonna spend that kind of money you do it on something splashy like the NFL exam so to me it makes sense 50 million dollars is not a ton of money for Amazon and they were obviously able to blow Twitter out of the water whatever with that kind of money order is doing there live streaming for baseball now too late link they announced they 10 games that they have on schedule for that that might I I think Twitter is a better place for baseball than it is for football but just cuz it's so slow paced yeah and it's open for a lower conversation yeah commentator sport yeah that's a good point I'd like to see this direction continued bringing more and more interactivity into the sport yeah um jump the actual interface yeah I think that's a that that could really be a good thing because like again as a cord cutter I do have an antenna but I live in the basement apartment I have terrible terrible reception so it's usually like me standing on top of the back of the couch holding the antenna out the window hoping for the best you know the gate picture on a game so actually being able to like screw it hope my internet holds up yeah that's a much better solution for me there's like one tree outside of my apartment that's blocking my antenna for getting NBC which is very frustrating ouch that tree was planted by CBS all right probably gotta wrap it up that's been a good long discussion about yeah something that's not usually on this show right right well it was amazon related so also if you'd like to buy our our stream for 50 million dollars just let us know or watch it for free on YouTube and keep your eyes out for the Kickstarter to cut off Alfred's man bun right I'm not starting that again start now we'll see if that happens okay the 359 is available on itunes tune and stitcher SoundCloud feedburner and google play music i think i've seen it development cnet it is a check horse for sale on CBS I hate you alright thanks everybody say tomorrow go bills you