Gadgetory

good morning on Tuesday November 29th welcome to episode 145 of the 359 podcast with Ben Fox Rubin and I as akhtar good morning guys what are we talking about today well hey oh there I am well we're talking today about directv now a rumor about new echo like speaker or an Amazon echo speaker that may be coming out as early as early next year and also cyber monday sales I cyber monday sales figures as far as we're not gonna tell you about the deals that you missed but like I yes bulaga no you did miss some deals the echo died is no longer at forty dollars so that's too bad but you know maybe I'll get there at some point later I think we all live yeah so while Roger is out and Alfred's unavailable I have is here at the ready like that as long as its licensors dear guy Chris Wesley is very excited you hear is oh very cool alright so without further ado let's get started as always send in your questions and comments Brian will get to them at the end of the podcast and let's get moving and here we go for the start of the recording of the podcast in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Rubin and with me is a glorious guest I as the wolf akhtar that's me oh whoa the wolf first off AT&T this week is launching DirecTV now a series of skinny bundled cable packages with the cheapest plan offering 100 channels for just 35 bucks a month that's a limited time offer though folks so grab it if you're interested is what do you think of this well I was looking at that deal of 35 bucks hundred channels and the thing is you'll keep that price as long as you don't cancel right if you cancel anytime you get bumped up ty think it's a sixty dollars a month yeah so I think it's a really great idea to get people in the door because a lot of features are missing from the service compared to other ones but the channel lineup looks pretty good yeah when one thing will throw out there CBS our corporate overlords are not included I think one of the reasons is potentially that CBS has its own thing CBS all access so that might might be a potential issue over there will if they get added some time later also you could get HBO for just five dollars a month as an add-on which is a pretty nice addition there at that end Cinemax I think that's also five dollars a month if you want that so the pricing seems really aggressive and there's a lot of services out there there's the sony playstation view service which i think is pretty good but i think it's sixty dollars for the base one or around that price forty bucks thank you and the thing is when it comes to directv they also have that link with 1880s it's eighteen eighty owns them that they're not going to charge you any data if you're watching DirecTV now on you're eighteen t device on out work so that's a huge like huge great thing if you're on AT&T if you're afraid of net neutrality concerns that would be a whole other mess yeah but that's a real good hook that they've got that I don't think that else has so they do you have a couple of hooks out there another one to throw out there a sling TV their basic bundles 25 channels for only 20 bucks a month so there are going to be there are now a lot of new opportunities out there if you are interested in something that's not traditional cable or satellite which tends to be a little bit more money about sixty or a hundred dollars depending on what your channel packages are next amazon is reportedly planning a high-end Alexis speaker with a touchscreen that could live in your kitchen rumors are that this gadget could be cropping up later oh sorry rumors are that this gadget started cropping up late last year but bloomberg reports that it may be coming as soon as early this year sorry garbled that one yeah there's the wall street journal reports on around for a while there's a new bank lunenburg it's a 7-inch touchscreen with these high-end speakers that are supposed to be there so to be able to talk to this device that supposedly live in your kitchen it's at a tilt so you can stand your counter and talk to this thing is anything like that even necessary consider the fire tablet has alexa now and the alexis speaker works pretty well so if i if I'm like making a recipe and I need my laptop I'll bring my laptop into the kitchen if I need my tablet I can bring my tablet into the kitchen granted I don't have a mount or a dock onto it but what exactly this thing is going to do that's different than what's already available and when actually amazon already provides with a lot of its other devices that's going to be a really big question and on top of that according to the report it's it's supposed to be a higher-end device and I I think amazon has had a little bit of an issue with really convincing people to buy at a higher price level that and the fact they're trying to get a potentially a computer in the kitchen which never seems to work if you want a tablet on your refrigerator you can do that but nobody really does your hands are really messy so you want to be able to talk to something but a touchscreen you don't want to touch you after you touch chicken or something and it's really yes it's gonna be like a waterproof or really tough device yeah that's why voice has been so effective especially in the kitchen that's where my echo lives last cyber monday became the biggest online sales day in US retail history yet again no surprise there but if you miss the deals don't worry more are coming according to retailmenot better deals are usually available later in the season for gaming consoles toys and discounted gift cards oh my God we're out of time anything else you want to say I hope the cyber naming things over okay I'll see how that goes if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin am i as acts are thanks for listening I just want to say thank you MKV cinemas for buttering us up he says you're very handsome men and he think he's doing that because he wants you to answer question that's not related to today so well now we have to it works it absolutely worked when will Android one get Android seven point oh I don't know the answer that I don't know the answer to that I are available armani genius mobile guy Roger is not here today android seven point 0 supposed to show up till I think some Samsung devices no the Nexus devices December 6th is the rumor but that's Nexus devices so if they are upgrading the same time the Android one which I don't know offhand maybe as early december six but i wouldn't bet money on it for a while okay that's the best answer we have so far and thank you for saying we're pretty is male wants to know is there a full list of channels with the direct TV now i believe ya is listed in the article that will post in the show notes yep and you can find them there instead of us a lot of the popular one right now a lot of the popular ones that you would expect um like disney's on there i think Cartoon Network's on their disney junior ESPN that's in the base package USA's in there I think look what's the the next up package that you really really want to watch maybe ESPN news it's pretty good their lifetime movie network you know I know you guys love like my life like I do movie network and you see sports and then there's some like regional sports packages and other thing yeah like yeah yeah the problem with a lot of these is that it's still cobbled together services where you you kind of get a little bit of what you want in this service you get a little bit of what you want in the other service and it's not quite there yet I think and one of the problems too is that in some of these services like DirecTV now you don't get all the broadcaster's which which is unfortunate i feel like that should be at least the baseline and yes i will provide another disclosure that CBS is the owner of cnet so yes I want to make sure people remember that like you'll get the networks at least the broadcast networks NBC Fox ABC as long as they are the affiliates owned and operated by the network if they're not you'll get the on-demand version the next day later good silly it's got all these like because of the way television construct for so long there are all of these hoops and barriers yeah there's there's also in John salzman story today she also mentioned some issues like some wrinkles with the NFL oh yeah because there's an exclusive package with verizon wireless you can't watch NFL on mobile using DirecTV now so again this is a continuation of just a lot of hamstrung issues and a lot of asterisks involved in a lot of these plans but we do we know if CNN is on the list CNN is on the list there in the liberal little the original the $35 60 channel bundle so in the baseline million CNN if you want to watch CNN and we'll current directv subscribers get a discount on directv now I did not see anything about that did you know I didn't see anything about that it was really they were providing the limited time offer of 35 dollars for the bumped up package of a hundred channels so I didn't I didn't see anything specific about if you're a current member what you're gonna get yeah um shout out to Michael Brown our buddy in the chat oh he wants to revisit topic we were talking about yesterday yes it is it too late to mention how privacy concerns aren't as they were with the spectacles like it was with the Google glass I think that's coming i really do it's just too young right now well look at the way that they're selling expected basically they're making people wait for six hours in line to buy these things so um yeah they're really popular and they're really buzzy but snapchat has done a really successful job of really just sprinkling them in the marketplace like I was walking around with Alfred in the street and some guy literally stopped him and said hey you've got you've got spectacles so they're trying to create that kind of cool air around them of rarity but this definitely distinct difference between snapchat or snap and converse is google which is about taking all your information organizing it and everyone's concerned that Google is going to help build this huge database I don't think people worried so much about snap doing that on its face you know that's not a pun but it is I think what I agree but it's that's why they don't freak out yet but they will actually it's still the it's very much the same type of product so I think that's why it's a really good question for Michael that it's still a camera an outward facing camera on your face so and there were when when Google glass had come out it was banned from certain areas you couldn't bring it into like a casino or sits like that just for a little lens cap on them this little flip flip down lens cap so people can see that they're off like I think it would help well no like people were arguing that you should have had like the red button like the like on a camera order like just a red button that turns on to let you know that is something that spectacles have done where it'll it'll have like a word actually turns on yeah yeah there's like this these lights that like were around so you actually know when you're being recorded so that's good to know yeah I mean what about google glass remember the stories about what's the facetime camera on Mac computers getting hacked and that leaking information and they people have figured out how to get it so that it doesn't light up you don't know you're being watched kind of thing how long else I'd imagine it's on it's coming also what else is coming first person POV snapchat born Oh totally I has it not happened yet I mean I would expect it to already be you guys probably know let us know no please don't let its yes or no it's not your legs here is direct TV now going to allow users to sign in like the ESPN app and with the sign in and have a loophole like that with NFL games that's an interesting God I don't know that's that I want to say yes sign on with other networks you don't use just their apps if you're watching VOD you'll be able to use their their stuff I'd imagine it's a somewhat out of my league as far as as far as that's last cast icity I think it's messing with it right now you'll see if we can like you hook up an apple TV and do it yeah well it doesn't come out until tomorrow actually so we'll have to wait on that answer yeah under lock and key yeah doesn't would be here and I'm I think that's funny amazon questions I'm surprised nobody cares about us in here cares about the the kitchen thing okay I guess everybody that once an echo already has one I know that's not possible what i've done is i have a look an old nook that i wouldn't be afraid to get splattered with grease or food or whatever that I took and I i modified its case so it's got magnets on the back and i mounted it to my fridge brilliant yeah see and i can show your five you DIY did ya like 180 or whatever it is probably how much is that Samsung is the Samsung fridges has five grand it's like I've gotta lose 4-3 a blow for it there's a fridge that's a very good lot of money for a friend exact don't say as cameras in the insights you can actually see what's inside the fridge right and right look later on from supermarket and a nap i'm not making up any of this is why I'm laughs I have seen the fridge in person and I will say this that it is really a WoW fridge like people walk in and like that's a real centerpiece that you can show off if you're if you have a lot of money to spend on a fridge but one point Alexa was rumored to be built into that fridge and then they backed off of that entirely which was really weird Samsung was gonna do that in January and then look up we don't know what happened to that yeah look I i think the the smartest thing amazon has done so far with alexa is creating the echo died they made it only forty dollars during black friday to cyber monday basically sprinkling the market like so much with alexa where they're gonna make it a little bit harder for the google home to actually break in granted you just told me that you have Alexa and yeah because I've got one echo I've got two dots and I've got a google when I to stop myself from buying a second second google oh man I don't know what did you want to ask questions like if you want to go some work better for something who's the guy in that movie directed by Tarantino and at least Google will give you something with celexa going sorry I don't know the answer to that which I still think is weird it should be something built in and Alexis really or echoes really old the two years old now right so like it should be able to do some of this room comes to lighting and things Google's not so bad and Amazon's got some decent things like 4,000 skills but I don't order domino's pizza you know through I haven't done that yet I haven't done that yet I have ordered like one or two things using the echo it's a little frustrating like order more garbage bags and sometimes she gets a right sometimes she gets it wrong okay she's still learning from eggs and a bicycle shows up yeah one thing to close out on let's wrap let's wrap it up here mr. Rivera and Dominic want to know what the impact of directv now will have on PS view if think it's going to leech some users off of that how it stacks up function wise okay so PlayStation view the cheapest package is forty dollars a month for more than 45 channels okay so at the moment at least they're offering directv is offering more channels for less money could could that cause more people to like jump over to directv now it's hard for me to say because all these services are so new that like everybody's still just getting a feel for them so it would be hard for me to believe that like too many people would all of a sudden jump ship and switch over I could see that happening because the PlayStation view used to have via comm channels like comedy central and that's gone now yeah and those are actually on dish on direct on DirecTV now excuse me so you're gonna get some of the Viacom channels that you can't get on view because I don't know what happened with that deal but something went bad with Sony so now you have if you want these networks you have to pick one or the other right which is actually you know that's a big differentiator that you actually have that exclusive content would you have content that you can't get somewhere else right so I think that could get some turnover I would think that if anything the network is going to make way more money because there's enough competitors out there going yeah there are there's a market they're willing to pay fifty sixty dollars a month and they're actually handling these bundles because we all want it all a cart like I want like these 12 channels I'll pay you like 50 bucks just at 12 channels but I want these 12 don't put it in this package in this package but that's not gonna happen for another like I'd say five years I don't know that that would ever happen we are at the edges of a cord cutting Renaissance I think is gonna happen they want you to keep buying those Milky Way's they want they want to bundle all the other crappy stuff with your snickers bar that's that's what I think I think there's a chance no gateways are better than Snickers okay all right what what did you say that tumor death thanks everybody it's time to go okay uh 359 podcast is available on iTunes tune and stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and of course on cnet we'll be back tomorrow thanks for watching