The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network. Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor. Everybody was tied up this week.
It's been a busy week.
For so many people, and we thought, you know, what, what are we going to do this week for the show?
You know?
And we decided where has tech gone in the last twenty years? Tech Talk Radio has been on the year since nineteen ninety six, and we went back. We found a show from this week twenty years ago. Now this is interesting because we cover a lot of technology that was just beginning twenty years ago became enormous and again a lot of it is still using. Some of this technology, some of it not being used anymore. Some that didn't really make the mark, like Adobe Flash that was kind
of big. But we got a chance twenty years ago to talk on the grand opening of Magnolia Home Theater at best Buyden you've probably seen them, well, they opened twenty years ago. This week they have their big grand
opening and what's cool about it. We talked with a couple of members of best Buy that came into the studio when we were doing the show to tell us all about what they had going on, and it's neat to hear where that technology was twenty years ago, with plasma screens, the size of speakers, the whole bit to where we are today. Oh well, he d we think about it. So many changes and all of these changes, all of this stuff that we have today happened because
of what happened back then. Also, a little later on, we're going to hear a discussion that I had with Blake Crekorian. Now, sadly Blake passed away back in twenty sixteen at the very young age of forty eight. But Blake was just so well loved in the world of technology, an entrepreneur, and Blake was one of the co founders of Sling Media, and that technology is still being evolved and used today, and what that company came up with was just amazing. So again they were at the forefront
of that. Also Email Google, you know Google Mail, It was a normal enormous and we were one of the people that were hanging hanging out the invitations for people to get Gmail accounts back then twenty years ago. So again, sit back, relax, listen to a twenty year visit. The twenty year look back with tech Talk Radio and Technology here with tech Talk Radio, and we begin the show with co host Randy Malick. So, how was the week for you?
It was good, A lot of stuff going on. Microsoft found another vulnerability.
Magine that this was like a nasty one too, Windows two thousands.
It was taking Windows two thousand. A lot of people, especially corporations, are still using Windows two thousand, and it just went one after it. I mean.
Wow.
And that's one that took them a long time to find apparently, but it's there. And they said something like forty percent to fifty percent of corporations now still use Windows two thousand.
Oh absolutely, And there's some limitations. You know, some companies that may want to do that. Their software is only written to specifically work with two thousand and investing in it to getting to work with XP or server. You know, suddenly you've got a whole different ball of wax and a lot of money exactly. And Windows is named their new operating system, Yeah, Vista Visa. It's going from Longhorn to Horn was.
The code name for what the past couple of years or so, keep it Longhorn.
I kind of like that kind of that Texas appeal. I could get into that but.
It's gonna be called Windows Vista and it should come out. They said late next year that it's in beta testing with ten thousand beta testers right now.
Have you had a chance to take a look at it yet.
No, I haven't been able to. I'm not on that beta test.
I've got the sixty four bit. We still. We're gonna get the board this week, I guess, and we're going to be trying Windows XP sixty four to see how that operates and what the difference is. So that should be kind of fun.
Well, it'll be nice once they get actually software out there were running at sixty four, and I mean, for all intents and purposes, just going to double the speed of everything, right.
Hopefully, I mean hopefully to sixty four. I've seen it, you know. But then now you're gonna need a new memory. You're gonna need, you know, a better graphics card. Of course, at least that's what.
Our peripherals won't work with it necessarily.
And I'm trying to tell my wife that's why I need a new graphics card so that my computer will work.
Yeah, you can come up with something better than that.
I'm trying. I want to show you something you can find out more information about this little puppy, I'm holding my hand. For those of you listening on the radio not watching the video version of this, yeah, you may have a hard time seeing this, but this is the Logitech V five hundred. Have you seen these? No, once again, we have a full review on our website, but this is available from Logitech. It's for those those that want to have a cordless, wireless mouse optical mouse for use
with a laptop. Blue ten is a blue tooth USB two point zero. Well, I'd like to be able to say it's Bluetooth, but this is the nice thing. It's very small, fits in the palm of your hand, and it has a a what, I don't know what you would call this. It's kind of a virtual scroll button. You can press the button up, press the button down, but there's no button. It just kind of works with
the movement of your finger. You can also go left and right, which is also very cool if you're looking at spreadsheets and that type of stuff, like using Excel. But it's a little button on the back. You push that button and then a little USB key comes out, plugs into your your your laptop and you're ready to go.
I was just gonna ask you what you're plugging to the laptop and it fits right into the mouse. It's just a little jack sit right out this right out the end of it.
If you're tired of using that little touch pad that's on your you know, laptops or notebooks, or maybe you want something small for a desktop computer as well, this is an excellent replacement. Long long battery life on this too, I think from what I've heard, it's almost a.
Year and the review is on tech talk radio dot com.
Yeah.
Check that out there and comes a nice little carrying case and that's kind of cool.
And that was your demo, right, this was, Yeah, they sent that to you and you have mine in the cars working on it. Yeah, I see. He gets all the toys.
Well, you know what, I would love to get this toy. I would love to be able to get a huge plasma screen. And my you know, because we had a new house built a couple of years ago and we're living in it now, but we have speaker holes but
no speakers. We know what kind of what we want to put in there, but we haven't been able to fully one hundred percent make the decision yet and sometimes, you know, finding how you're gonna put all that together can be kind of a challenge, and us, being the gear heads that we are, we could spend hours upon hours in stores looking at stuff, whether it be computers or audio visual. Well, there's now a new place you can go for audio visual. It's in Best Buy and
it's called the Magnolia Home Theater and its stores. And we've got with us a couple of representatives from best By, Sergio Rodriguez, who's a manager for Magnolia Home Theaters, and Brandon Kelly, a sales professional, to tell us a little bit about it. Welcome to the show, guys. Hello, thanks having us, Good to have you. This is something I wouldn't say, this is something new for best Buy because best Buy for years has had you know, large screen
TVs and stuff. What separates this from maybe the traditional just walk in and look at a TV? How is my Magnolia Home Theaters different sur jail?
Okay, Well, thank you very much. Actually it's a very good question. I know out there there's a lot of competitors. But one of the big things about Magnolia at the store within a store that offers home theater enthusiast state of the art experiences in the home like environment.
Now, when you say that this way, you'll be able to walk in and not only see how it'll look, but here maybe the sound that would come out of that, or maybe some speakers that you would want to get as well.
Exactly precisely depending on for example, you said that you had a home with hose, you want the speakers in the wall. We have both the speakers in the wall that are ready to demo as well as maybe floor standing or even speakers that hang on the wall.
So, now do you also have this set up so that when somebody comes in, they're going to be able to kind of almost replicate what their home environment would because not everybody has a home theater. Some have smaller living rooms, maybe some have brighter rooms, some have track lighting put in. Can they kind of see how that looks inside the Magnolia home theater.
Well, you can't do everyone's house because it's almost impossible.
To bring your house down.
But we have in our speaker room, we have different setups. I mean, you can move stuff around if you really need to to find out try to replicate what you would have in your home.
Also, now, Randy, I don't know what kind of system you have. Did you go for the plasma?
We'll see. We're in the midst of a little remodeling project at home. Unfortunately, the wife does not consider a plasma screen part of a remodeling project.
Although when you get the refinancing you always throw that in.
It's like, we came out about Oh, I think we came out four or five thousand dollars under what we thought it was going to be, so I thought, wow, hey, that's certainly justification, right exactly. Unfortunately, she has this thing about like saving the money or something. I have some crazy scheme like that.
Brandon, I'm wondering, why are we seeing the huge dropping prices for some of this home entertainmentertainment type of hardware.
Well, the technology is getting a lot cheaper. They're perfecting in the art of the plasma, the DLP, all that kind of stuff, so prices are coming down and it's a lot easier to buy them now.
No, Sergio, having a store like this within a store is that kind of a challenge, because now do they still have the TVs in one section or basically all of that audio visual is now part of the Magnolia Home Theater.
It's a well, basically the department is one, but we carry brands for everyone. So if you're an enthusiasts once it's a particular brand name, let's say Premium and Audio Video, we have that as well as we have every other brand and product that we've carried in the past.
So now you would be carrying them the Elite series, yes, excellent. Now tell us about some of the brands that you're carrying.
Brandon, Well, we do the audio end, a video portion, and the video portion. We do Mitchebuc Diamond Vision. We also have high end plasmas like Fujitsu, Pioneer, Elite, a lot of different types of speakers. Where we normally carried only Sony Yamaha clips that type of thing, we now do Vienna Acoustics, Martin Logan, Boston Acoustics, Definitive Technologies, and also Dennin receivers.
Even now, are these products that you're going to see adding incredibly? I mean, let's talk Elite system I know the price point in those can be kind of up there for the real enthusiasts. Are they still going to be able to find stuff for people that are budget minded?
Well, yeah, I think so, especially when it comes to like the receivers, the DNA. We have their full line. We have anywhere from their one of their cheapest stereo receivers all the way.
Up to their flagship model.
I mean yeah, we carry quite a different, large assortment of price points for everyone.
So really what so basically by this being different, it's basically that you're offering more product and you have professionals now that are trained specifically, like you, Brendan, you can answer answer those questions people have, like some of the misconceptions regarding plasma or what is a better situation DLP versus plasma As a matter of fact, what is the
deal with plasma? We've heard, you know, for years, Oh you want to go to DLP, and now we're finding out Wait a minute, now, maybe plasma is what you really want anyways, a better picture, lower costs.
And heard things about or I one lasting longer than the other. And you've heard that a million times.
Right, I mean I've been dealing with plasmas for four years now and there's a lot I mean back then there it was an untested technology kind of Now they have TVs that have half lives of thirty four thirty or twenty to thirty years they have. They're a lot more affordable too, because you can hang them on the wall older styles where you know, when they first came out, we're fifteen thousand dollars and people were scared that kind of technology to hang on your wall. It's a little scary.
But now, I mean, the technologies come so far. The pictures are absolutely amazing.
There.
We have a.
Trained staff that know how to hang them up the right way. And I mean there were myths out there that the gas leaks and it's poisonous, all that kind of stuff that's not really true.
Now, what about HD is can somebody come in and learn all about HD and maybe even get their home equipped for this type of technology?
Oh yeah, HD is definitely here in Tucson. It's not as where it could be, but I mean definitely. There's a lot of channels and we usually have high DEF programming playing at all times at our store.
Oh awesome, I don't know, Randy Celtics mynd Wane, Well, that's.
Kind of what I was thinking. What if what if let's let's talk costs a little bit? Yeah, okay, let's say yeah, look, look at the manager. Let's say somebody somebody comes in and of course not very often do you have people probably walk in and say, yes, I I was wondering how much I could say, how much I could actually spend? Uh, What's what's the upper limit I could spend on this? You probably have people come in saying, gee, I'm on a limited budget, how can I get into HD.
That's a very good question. And we get that question a lot. Yeah, you know, it is the best buy. We we do have a price point for everyone. The biggest thing that I do want people to know is when you come in here, we'll ask you some questions. And not everyone's gonna be able to come in here and buy the whole entire package it once. So we have expert people as well as installers. They can talk
you to it. We can do consultations when they can come out to your home see what is uh we can fit and what's perfect for your home and then we can go from there.
Okay.
Now, one of the other things that people when they go in they want to be able to do it one stop. They wouldn't be able to look at you. Well, they don't want to buy their stereo there maybe get their their sound system somewhere else. Again do it one stop and that's what make Nolda a home theater at best Buy is kind of bringing to them. But also things like you know, power power is very important, especially when dealing with plasma. You gonna have power protection on that.
Do you guys carry all of that plus you're cabling and the whole bit.
We do pretty much the whole enchilada. I mean we do. It's one person.
You come in, we can talk to the people and we can be their their person from from when they start looking all the way till it's they're happy in their home and everything set is worked up perfectly.
So we offer the complete package installation.
Ah good, the Panamax search protectors, all the cabling because those are extremely important components in that system.
Excellent.
You can have a little fourteen inch television and some killer speakers, still not everything you want to have kind of the combination of it. Yesterday was the grand opening here in Tuson of Magnoldi, a home theater, which you can find at best Buy. They've expanded these. They have them at in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Hartford, Miami, Philadelphia, Providence, and again here in Tucson, and Sergio Rodriguez who is a manager of the Magnolia Home Theater in Tucson, which
you'll find on the Broadway location. And Brandon Kelly, who is a sales professional there. Let's let's talk about the experience when somebody comes in to do their shopping at the best Buy Magnolia Home Theater. What sets out apart from maybe some of the competition that's out there, is what is Mangoli Home Theater striving to do well?
Our biggest thing is we have the single point of contact. It's always my guy or my girl. Whoever you deal with, they go to you for everything we have. We give out cards of course, with our names, our email addresses if they need any questions and stuff like that. It's one thing that you have to deal with a lot of different people. You deal with your salesman with installation, but it all comes down to the one person you
talk to the first time. We can get things done for you that most people can't.
And you'll kind of carry it throughout the whole sales process from them helping to decide what system they're gonna have to maybe after the installation of follow up letting them know, hey.
How is everything.
Everything's going? Well, that's one thing I've I've liked about kind of the philosophy. But behind this, what about the technology though? The technology has got to be pretty amazing because stuff comes and goes, and you know, we hear about new stuff all the time. TVO has become huge DVR that capability. Where are we seeing in terms of sound and video.
And sound and video.
We got a lot of new different types of receivers and types of speakers that we normally haven't seen on a normal best by floor. New speakers by Martin Logan. We have electrostatics. They're amazing speakers that just have a great range of sound. We have bipolar speakers from Definitive which actually do omnidirectional sound, so you put it away from your wall a little bit and the sound comes from everywhere because it bounces.
Off the walls.
There's drivers on both sides of the speakers. And even stuff like the new TVs we're getting. We're getting ten ADP, which is a very high resolution brand new technology just came out. We only have what two TVs right now that can even do that.
It has been in the past what seven seven eight? I right, what's what is that?
Uh?
Do you get?
Oh?
Dude, the bike Polish speakers get better with prozac? Engineer, Well, I'll stop to crack the mic legs next time. That's all right.
Yeah, we got a funny engineer here. Ruh.
So I was thinking I was good. I was thinking that I just did ask. So you got all these feakures, You got this this ten ten eight. Now that gives you a better experience, a better video experience. But really, can it get any better than that?
It will someday virtuality maybe one day.
Yes's what I'm wondering. You never have like three D type of television down the line?
Possibly, doubt it with the way technology.
Moves now, how about picture size? Screen size?
You know?
Because let's face it, you know again, I said, the guy watching on a nineteen inch television with the great sound system not getting the best experience. I understand that the screen sizes now are getting even bigger.
Yeah, depending on the type of technology. I mean, we have plasma TVs that we can get up to an eightiance plasma. We have dlps that go sixty one. Sony even puts out of seventy. Also, projectors. We do in focused projectors, they can get up to three hundred feet big for if you really want that big a screen.
Wow. So if somebody wanted to do like a backyard you know, drive in type movie, they could do.
That backyard or a dedicated home theater room.
Oh wow, movie theater.
You get a lot of people that actually come in asking for that. You know, they're like, hey, you know what I'm remodeling or I'm refinancing. Then what I want to do is me and my family. What we do is we we do family knights. We do family movies. That's what our family does. So they come in and they dedicate one just one room for that, and the projection systems are perfect for that.
Now. Yeah, I was gonna say, somebody, you know having a house built, do they want to come see you guys before they lay their plans for their their their framing and everything else. I mean, can they get into you that early or do they have to wait till the walls are up and everything else.
You can actually start the as early as you want. But if you ever want to do a consultation, it doesn't matter if you're not at that stage, if your walls are up. You already painted. Our installers still can go from there.
Tell us when it comes to somebody wanting a warranty or something like that, what type of warranties are offered on some of this hardware which you're talking in eighty inch you know plasma.
Yeah, Well, on most of the brands we carry, their higher end products, their high performance parts, they usually offer a two year manufacturer's warranty. Sometimes those might not be able to you might have to set it off to them, or there might not be the the facilities here in Tucson that they could get them fixed, so they have to send them off. But we also do offer a
in home service on our TVs. We offer different types of performance service plans, make nolly agreements that they can purchase along with it to get not't necessarily extend a warranty, but a little bit more protection on their stuff for longer amounts of times. Because I mean, you're paying a lot of money for these products, and we definitely offer that kind of service too.
Excellent and you offer that one on one service. You got the warranties and it sounds like you guys have all the hardware. How often does this stuff change out that you suddenly get a call, hey, we've got you know, something new from Pioneer. We get something new in the line of speakers that you guys will put it on the show roup.
We get stuff new all the time. I mean, they just came out with the ten ADP. We have one of those TVs on the on the floor. We can get another one. We're just waiting for it to come in. Technology changes so often that they all of a sudden we look in the back and there's a new product and we're like, oh great, we get to play with it. We put it out, play around with it to make sure we know how to work it for when the customer has a question about it.
We're gonna be able to be on top.
Of it real quick. I don't want to get two technical, but what is the difference between DLP and plasma.
They're kind of two different types of things. The plasma is a gas injected TV. Usually they're flat panel, so they're roughly about three inches thick. It's a type of TV you can't really fix or work on, but it has the best picture, great contrast ratio, so very very bright picture. Or as a DLP is they call it a micro display. It's not as thin, it's usually about twelve to sixteen inches deep. It still uses a projection. It's a rear projected unit. It uses the DLP chip
by Texas Instruments to create a really lifelive picture. Not as bright, you can't see it from all angles. But it's definitely a great technology.
Excellent and the minimum somebody is going to spend now on getting some kind of a plasma, let's say forty two inch plasma, just to give them an idea of that and sound. And I'm sure I know it's going to be dependent on what they combined, but say minimum ballpark, they want to come into Magnolia Home Theater and take a look.
Well, we have plasmas on the best buy side too, We still offer both of those. We have some very cheap around two thousand dollars all the way up to we have a pioneer for you know, was it thirteen thousand dollars. I mean, we have a lot of different things there now to fit any budget.
Well.
Our listeners be able to access this information on the best buy a website. Yes, actually there is.
It's on the best buy a website and has an attachment to the Magnolia website as well.
Magnolia website. What's that address? It's a Magnolia HiFi dot com, Magno High Fight dot com and of course best Buys. What is that?
That's actually Magnolia ht dot com.
Oh oh, there you go, magnoliahd dot com and of course best by dot com. Uh. Sergio Brandon, thank you so much for coming in, for having us. Thank you. We will be back with another segment, a twenty year look back tech Talk Radio. That's standing by.
Now back to tech talk Radio.
It was this week twenty years ago. What was happening in the world of tech Now with Randy Mallick and Andy Taylor.
That's me on tech Talk Radio.
I want to thank you guys from Best Buy Mangolia Home Theater for coming in and talking to us about technology and everything. Here's an email we got for Steve from Steve for you, says Randy. I was listening to your program while driving and I wonder if I can still get the Gmail offer we talked about. Did we end up giving away a ton of those?
Yeah, I gave away By the time this show aired today was airing right now, so far twenty one.
Wow.
Yeah, twenty one people sign up for Gmail. Got a comment back from a couple of them. I'll just take that email from you and we'll make sure make sure that Steve gets one of those Gmail accounts, gets those Gmail accounts. I did have a guy comment all right what he was looking to do with the Gmail. And for those of you weren't listening last week, Gmail is Google Mail, and it's it's in beta test right now, and it has been for a better part of a year.
And it's by subscription only, by invitation only, and I just happened to have invitations I can send you. So if you'd like to get a free invitation to Google mail, and it holds two gigabytes of storage space. That's one of the big big deals about it, just email me at Randy M Randy M at tech talk radio dot com, randym at tech talk radio dot com, just say hey, I want the email.
The nice thing about it is I've got forty nine invites to give out. I gave away one, so if if you go over they can you can just send those to me and I'll go ahead and send the invites from tech talk radio at gmail dot com.
That would be fine, we can do that, so that'd be neat. And the comment he had was, you're not able to check your popmail server is like you and I will check your email through Outlook or your normal email through Google Mail. That's true, it doesn't have that feature like Yahoo does. But what I do is I forward all of my email. I take all my email from like my Yahoo account, my normal just Comcast account, all of that, and just forward it right into Google
so it all comes into the same place. That way I can get it anywhere I'm at. Also, Google has an outstanding spam filter. I mean I rarely, rarely have anything slipped through, and that just since yesterday it caught almost ninety spam messages that would have gone into my inbox. I mean, I'm seriously bombarded with spam on a regular basis. Now what I did.
Don't know how dangerous spam is. When we think, you know, spam is just stuff in a can, it's really I mean, that's where your spam should go in the can.
Get it.
How bad is spam?
Oh, it's it's terrible. I mean because it's taken many, many forms, some of them look like legitimate offers and can fool an unsuspecting person. Bottom line of I don't I don't give anything out to anybody that comes in an email unless I absolutely know that person's email address
it came from. If something comes to you from your bank, something comes to you from outside source saying hey, sign up, or or put your email address in here, or give us your credit card number or anything like that, it's it's bound to be bogus. Just don't do it, because your bank will never ask you to enter any of your account information on an email they send you. Absolutely if you go to their website, then that's a different story,
right even then if you seek them out. Be careful, you just do be careful.
Just be like you're you know, you're driving on a unicycle down the freeway.
Be careful well, and spam. Of course, you've got your normal You've got your normal porn stuff that comes over and droves, you've got I mean goodness, I don't know where I picked this stuff up. My email address long ago, got on a list somewhere, and it's just it's just endless, and it could come from anywhere in the world and you can't stop it. You gotta be carefu about a filter. Filters works, filters do work.
Now.
We got an emailing from Jim. It says Jim. Jim says, I would like the personal antiviras software you were speaking of on eight fourteen's show, Thank you very much. At the last week's show, were you talking about antivirus software? I'm trying to remember what antivirs software co be talking about?
Grysoft, boy, I don't think we discussed that last week.
May maybe we mentioned something, and I'm sorry I couldn't remember. If you're looking for an anti Anavira software you'd like to try out, there's a lot of people that recommend Grysoft g r I s O F T dot com. Now, from what I remember, wasn't grysoft software free? I mean, I wasn't freeware where it's it's not like trial where it was free.
Well, it used to be, and maybe they had an upgraded version you could purchase. Was that the deal, the basic version and the special version was for.
That's what I thought. I don't see anything on here now about it being free. I see it the ABG anavirus editions from Grisoft now available with no obligation for trial period of thirty days and during that eval period you get a test at the full functionality, and then you'll also have access to the tech support team as well for the duration of the trial license. So if
you have any questions or anything comes up. But I remembered it is, I kind of sworn it originally was a freeware program that was supported by people making donations, and it looks to me like maybe that's maybe that's not the case anymore. Find out for yourself. Go to grysoft dot com, g ri I, s o ft dot com and you might be able to get some more information about that.
Hey, there's some ratings out for satisfaction surveys.
What is that.
Well, Google and Yahoo lead in customer satisfaction and Google's a little bit ahead of Yahoo when it comes to when it comes to that they're they're big rivals, of course, But according to Americans in an e BusinessWeek study released this week, they said, it's according to web porthole, search engines, all that sort of thing, and Google came out on top. That's no surprise, and Yahoo was right in their second.
And then among PC companies highest satisfaction rates. What do you think top one is one of my favorites.
Dell Well, No, no, how about the.
HP, Well one you're not going to think of because we don't always refer to a well, no, we don't always refer to it as PC as a PC. Oh, oh, technically it is, I mean Apple.
Apple really yeah, wow, that's kind of cool.
But Apple users are adamantly Apple users, and they're fiercely defend their their products. So that's no surprise because it's it's almost I mean, people that like Apple, they love it, and they're anti PC in many cases.
I honestly, I've never had somebody call me and say, and I know what happens, yeah, and you know, but I've never had anybody call me and say, my Apple's crashed.
That's true.
I mean honestly, it's like, I don't know I have a blue screen on my Apple.
However, you even heard that? To be fair, how many people do you know? How Apple compared to the uh probably.
Percentage would be only about five percent of the people that I know.
I know one person that has an Apple really and I don't like him very much, and I don't talk to well because he well, I just don't like him. I just saw an Apple sitting at his desk. You know, someone's into like really into Apple if they've got an Apple laptop on their desk.
Oh yeah, well my my using the graphics business, my co hosts for another project that I do has an Apple Mac and it's yeah. The only downside for me is like if I come across something really cool that I want him to be able to see, it's it's a little more of a challenge for me for him to be able to check it out. Exactly like Windows Media files. You know, I can't no quick time. It has to be quick time, and I'm sure there's a way he could do it, but you know, not that way.
But in reverse, quick time works very well on PCs exactly. It's they just speaking. They're speaking a whole other language. But great machines, outstanding. But the second one, as far as leading the PC race, Uh, what do you think's top there?
Uh?
The IBM, you know type computers?
Well I would I don't think it would be IBM. Uh problems to HP or is it? No? Not gayway?
It would be Dell, Dell see Dell and then HP right after that.
Yeah. People have asked me, Andy, what do you recommend when it comes to laptops? And I'm sorry I tell people Dell, I just do. Dell is a steady line. They seem to be, you know, on the ball when it comes to that, and there's so many different we're both using Dell's in here. Which what's your model?
Mine's a Dell Latitude so they're a little older. Yeah, we have I don't on laptops, tell you the truth. I don't really always keep up to date. Yeah, you know, our other toys, our main computers at home, we're always tinkering with and always have the latest and greatest. But when it comes laptops for what you use them for, guys, you can get by with a one point five gig processor.
Now, the other one I like process. The other one I like is Toshiba. Tshiba is very good. I like their wide screens, which is, uh that's kind of a neat thing to do. And and then probably uh Panasonic for its sturdiness, uh Panasonic handline. Then you know, honestly, I haven't looked into it for a while to see what they're doing with their tough books. But the tough books are generally I think what is what the military uses?
These are like really sturdy, sturdy laptops. If you're somebody in the construction the construction trade, or you know, you're somebody that hauls this stuff everywhere you go. H tough book is something you would want to be thinking about. All right. We did get an email in it's just what is the name of the program you guys were mentioning last week for your home computer that causes all new windows to open full screen? Did we get the information on that?
We did?
Hold on, I think I have here. You sent me an email on this.
I did, Yeah, we'll have that.
It's called ie New Window Maximizer, that's right. And when you click a link that causes a new window to open, it always opens full screen.
Uh.
And it installs itself in the startup section of Windows so that it runs automatically. Uh. And there is a weblake here. It is it's www dot Jisoft Jiisoft dot com. And your friendly Anne sent you that information.
So that you know she did, and I forward that to you and that it does work real well. I've seen it work on her machine.
If you're somebody that's out there that it's looking. We got some emails this week from people who are looking to use their digital video camera and maybe do a little more with it and be able to because you know, now you can take all these images. And it used to be you'd throw them on a videotape and you'd throw them in a closet somewhere. Once in a while, you'd take them out when relatives came and you'd.
Watch them exactly.
But now people want to do so much more with their video cameras, and that includes editing, adding titles. And before the titles you would add would look really you know, cruddy, and you had to buy a character generator for eight hundred bucks. You know, Now you can do this stuff
all with software on your PC. And Sony announced this week a new package that they're putting out, the Home Studio line from Sony Media Software and Sony believe it or not, develop some software for the high end, for the top end professional for video editing that you could use to create an entire you know, documentary, if you wanted to, you know, do a short film, you could
actually do it using this software. Well, this software is geared more at the home consumer user, somebody with a video camera that wants to get a lot of a lot of use out of that. The products are putting out is the Vegas Movie Studio plus DVD and what this does is allows you to import an edit video from a DVD. HANDICAM allows you real time audio and video event reverse. There's more tutorials as a part of
this audio video synchronization, detect and repair. So in case it loses sync when you're bringing into the system.
That's annoying, isn't it that happens?
That happens, and the way to fix it usually as you describe it, or you can spend a lot of time to get it to match. Also native VST and DirectX audio plug and support. So if you run a high end or or I want to say, maybe even mid level audio editing programs that have DirectX features which give you sound effects like the flange and reverb and some of ney things, you can now input those into your video presentation.
You use this, don't you like it?
I use the high end program Vegas Video.
What is this thing? Run?
The product that they have out You can find out more information on the Sony website. But you can buy all three of the programs. I'm going to mention here for about one eight nine. Now for somebody who if you'd like to be able to use. You've gotten, You've spent you know, five six hundred dollars on this camera that has you know, FireWire and USB streaming, then this is something you want to be looking at because you've spent all that money. Now why not make it look
really good in your PC. They've also as part of the package included Acid Music Studio and Acid Music Studio. Great program, very functional and allows you to create with beats you can buy and there's a huge Acid library that you can actually go online and purchase what they
call beats and musical instruments and create music that you've done. Basically, you've done, You've laid out the sound and honestly you don't have to be have a music degree or really know how to play music to be able to put this stuff together.
What kind of machine would you run this on? What's kind of the minimum?
Then? You know, I would say at least a Pennium three. I mean I've been able to get the previous version of Acid to run on a Pennium three seven fifty, so you'd be fine with that. You have your memory, and also if you're gonna do any video editing, you want to have a lot of hard drive space. That is one thing you want to make sure you have. But with hard drives, you know, coming down and costs.
You know, you buy one hundred and sixty gig by hard drive, you'd be fine, you know, and that's not that much money.
I wanted to buy it. It's funny you mentioned that about a hard drive because I went in the other day to fix my brother's computer, which he conveniently didn't have plugged into a surge protector. Lives in the Midwest and they tend to have thunderstorms on occasion there, just on occasion. Yeah, no APC, no tripping, absolutely nothing, and it just took out the hard drive, just destroyed it. And I went out to he had a forty gig
hard drive, which is fine for him. I want to have to try to buy a replacement, the smallest one that they sell in the store right now, just most generally at most stores, one hundred and sixty gig to start. So I looked around and went down to our friends down at s WUS and they set me up able to find an eighty gig.
An eighty gigi, got a decent price on it.
All bit exactly cool because he's not particularly savvy when it comes to computers, and I didn't want to have to go through one hundred sixty gig and partition the thing and all of that, because it's easier just to have it. Here's your sea drive there you go. Yeah, absolutely, and that'll work out just fine for him. But one hundred and sixty gig the minimum you BUYO razing.
But now now with three hundred it's becoming Uh.
That's true.
The problem is that in a lot of systems, like say, if you're installed XP, then you have to get you know, some kind of partitioning software to be able for it to see all of that. Because that that happened with me about a one, no, about a two hundred and only saw up to a certain amount. Then you'd have to I had to repartition it.
And it was just it.
Was a nightmare to make it do. If I if I was someone who didn't know what I was doing, which is most of the time, then you.
Know, all right, exactly all right.
To tell you about the other piece of software that's in this Sony.
Package Tangent, Yeah, sorry, the.
Sound Forge Audio Studio, uh, and the sound Forge Audio Studio basically everything you need to produce a professional quality audio on your home PC. So if you would like to speak into a microphone and record that audio and then have it mixed with some music you've created from the ACID Studio program, you can do that. So you can create a real nice narration and then lay it down on your video with the video editing software program.
It's pretty neat one two three is what they're they're saying you could do it with you know, as far as uh set all this stuff up and going the price again one eighty nine to ninety five. And you can find more information at Sony's.
Webs Is there a demo on that like a trialware? You know what?
I believe you can and you check out Sony's website. I'm pretty sure you can demo the stuff out of if it's fifteen days or thirty days, just to see how well it works. You may not be able to save your ACID projects, but at least you'll be able to lay the stuff down and see how it'll flow on your PC, which is really kind of a it's kind of a neat thing to see. It's good stuff. Also got some email from this is.
As a Bubba Bubba Bubba Bubba listener out there, Bubba says, I'm thinking about learning how to create websites, and i'd like to have these websites have flash elements and other things like that on it.
Macromedia studio, what could I get?
Well, you know, Macromedia got sold right or yes they did, yeah, by Adobe. Is it still available? Can you still purchase Macromedia Studio out now?
I saw it in the store the other day. Oh good, Yes you can. Now if there's something that could be an old, old copy they have, but I saw it for sale right now.
If they're maybe, if they're they're not well versed on how to use, you know, and create a website. What are some things that we could probably recommend that would make it a little easier.
Well, you mean to do flash and all that sort of thing.
Yeah, or.
Well, I mean I had a Macromedia Studio. Is is a little If you're a person that's used front Page and those type things to create websites before, Macromedia Studio is a whole different level. It's it is. It could be a little bit tough sometimes.
I was gonna say front page is very easy.
Page is great. I mean that if you want to throw together a website that looks really nice. Uh front page is very very user friendly. But that Macromedia studio that has flash and hash has uh what a shockwave and those type of things build in that just make just dynamic sites.
That can be a chore that can Here's let me give you a link to try this one Www dot mixhfx dot com. And what they do is they provide a program that allow you to input your text and try different elements that are pre done and put it within a flash file and then save it out to your website. So you don't have to be a flash programmer to be able to do this. But that website again is www dot mix FX. That's FX dot com. It's our twenty year look back this week twenty years ago.
Well it's happening in the world of tech. We continue with more coming up on tech Talk Radio and now back to tech Talk Radio and now more of the twenty year look back this week in two thousand and five with tech Talk Radio. Here's this new product that allows you to watch TV over the internet.
Now, like what kind of TV.
We're talking television, your cable.
Okay, so multiple channels.
Right now, I'm sitting here in a studio. I can log in to my my computer here on the notebook and fire up a program that's right on my desktop, and I can watch with TV at home. And I want I want to change a channel, I can change it right here from the remote the remote control.
So like if you have all the cable channels, HBO or whatever the hell right, you can watch any of them.
I can watch any of them and say I'm sitting in a hotel room and Washington, DC, and I want to watch HBO or watch something I captured on my DVR. This gives you the capability to do it over the internet. All you need is a broadband connection. And I got a chance to talk to Blake Gregory in last week. He's the CEO for a company called Sling Media. You're
going to see a lot about this product. It was so popular in the first you know, when it first came out that flew off the shelves two hundred and fifty bucks a pop. But you gotta find out what this technology is about. Here's the interview we did with Blake Grecory. Blake, I gotta tell you it's rare that I find a product that is going to keep me up till one o'clock in the morning, just playing around with it and reading about it and finding out why this is the coolest new technology.
On the face of this planet.
I might be stretching it a little there, but really streaming video has now come of age with sling Media, we.
Think so as well. It's it's finally bringing I think a lot of the uh, the promise from from so many years to actual reality and in a pretty inexpensive and simple to use product.
Now, tell us a little bit first about the company, sling Media. When was the company founded and was this your intention from the start?
Yeah, so, so sling Media was was founded a little over a year ago, though actually we had been incubating the sling Box as well as a couple of other
products for for the past several years. And uh, and our intention, you know, has been and continues to be a pretty grandiose, you know vision, and in what we really want to become is a new kind of consumer electronics company that's really focused on just delivering this great digital media experience is for consumers at real attractive price points. The way the Slingbox just just just for all the
listeners out there, this you know, sling box, personal broadcaster. Basically, you take the product and you put it in your house and you plug whatever TV source you have into it. And whether that's I don't care if that's direct TV or a cable box or a TVO replay, whatever it is. And basically what we do is we we redirect that signal, that living room experience to wherever you happen to be
in the world with a broadband net connection. Now, now there's plenty of different scenarios sitting in the office and
watching TV back home. It's it's a wonderful thing to destroy office productivities in the workplace and uh, you know, actually today, for example, the PGA Golf Championship is on the first the first round and not sitting here, you know, in the in the office and uh and and tuned in and watching it and watching it through the weekend, you know, sitting on the on the on the couch in in my back in my backyard, I have a little little bungalow in the back and just sitting there
watching it. I think there's plenty of different applications. Some people who just use this around the house, turning their laptop, any laptop into a wireless LCDTV that rooms around the home. That's how my wife uses it. She actually never uses the darn thing outside of the home.
Wow.
And we've got a TVO downstairs in the family room, and just about every single night now she's upstairs in our little office or just laying in bed, checking email and continuing to watch and control the TVO from downstairs. So there's a lot of just applications around the home. Same thing I had left for rook this morning, and what was the laptop doing. It was sitting there in the kitchen when we were getting the girls ready, our
daughter's ready for camp. It's sitting there in the kitchen being a wireless TV and they're watching Teletubbies or something. I don't know what it was. But then clearly, you know you have the work applications people using it at work all the time, especially people who are even like news junkies who just have CNN or CNBC or something going on in the in the corner window. But then obviously the mobile professional person who's traveling, either either domestically
or traveling abroad. Wherever you are in the world, with the broadband net connection, you can watch and control your living room TV.
For example, say you're at a hotspot like maybe one of the coffee houses whatnot, and you don't want to watch what they're watching on TV.
You can fire up and watch.
Whatever you want and you that's the thing I think that's amazing about this. You're not stuck. And that's the question people ask me. They say, well, are you stuck with one channel?
No? Yeah, not at all, I mean, And that's where That's where There's been a lot of a lot of streaming video services, and most of them have some monthly fees, but they also give you a very a subset of what you really want. The beautiful thing about this product is that it gives you exactly what your experience is in your living room. So all the channels all the same channel guide if you happen to have a DVR, gives you that DVR experience and watch pre recorded shows.
You know. I'm a big Daily Show fan as an example, and I was traveling in Singapore a few weekends ago, and I got stuck there and I was sick of watching the you know, the darn you know, CNN World News in my hotel room or whatever or whatever. That is exactly exactly and I'm sitting there. I'm in a hotel room. I have broadband access actually was even free
in my hotel. What did I do? I fired up my laptop and I logged into my TiVo back at my house and I watched in real time pre recorded shows of the Daily Show that I had from my from my living room TVO. The sling box itself has an infrared emitter or an infrared blaster. So what happens here?
For example, I'm sitting here at work right now, and when I look at my sling Player that's on my laptop, my remote control that's on my client, on my sling Player client that's on my PC looks very different than yours. So mine, I actually have a real TVO, a direct TV TVO from remote control. Oh and I it looks exactly like the remote that I have back at my house. And I basically click a command like here, I'll click
the TiVo button. And as I did that, what happens is my sling Player, my PC is sending a message back to the sling box, and the sling box is actually telling the TiVo to go issue this command. Nice, so you can just you know, control exactly whatever commands you have in your living room, you get you know, wherever you are.
So if somebody wants to sit in their backyard and have coffee but still watch the news, well out being tied with being inside, they could do that with even a wireless connection exactly.
I mean, how to be honest, The way that I use it the most is kicking back in the hot tub in the backyard with the with the laptop. I haven't lost the laptop of the water yet, but it does. It does work great and that and this is one of the things that you know, the product I think finally delivers on on what streaming video has promised for a while. The beauty of the sling box is that
it worked in existing infrastructure. So most people have said, hey, you eto two eleven eto two eleven, b there's no way in heck you can you can stream video reliably over that signal. Well, in fact, our core technology, which we've we codenamed Lebowski, it's kind of now called slingstream. But the way that I want to keep calling it Lebowski because well, my marketing guy's fighting me on it, But Lebowski, Lebowski, that's what it is. The big Lebowski.
So the way Lebowski works is we have core technology that's in the sling box is stream optimization technology that will dynamically adjust all automatically dynamically adjust the video bitrate in a vari video parameters to deliver a smooth video experience to the consumer, regardless of what network they're on, and regardless of what network congestions, network congestion or network
conditions occur. At a certain point in time, Lebowski will automatically adjust the video so you see smooth video.
Yeah, I noticed that it was Now my upstream is only about three hundred and fifty six K, which is a basic cable, that's sure, and then my download here is one point five. I would assume that even with a greater upstream or even a greater download, it's going to look even.
Clearer, even even clearer. And that's where there's there's consumers now that are getting really excited. You see on the forums guys that are going and upgrading their service. You know, like Comcast, as an example, has if you're in a Comcast area, I think you pay another ten dollars a month and you get I get seven hundred and sixty eight kilobits upstream. Boy, the quality you want to believe.
And actually, one thing I'm really excited about this morning is that we just have an internal release of software that we'll be probably releasing next week sometime that actually
bumps the speeds up when you're outside the house. So now I'm sitting here in my office right and I have theoretical seven hundred and sixty eight upstream, right, But usually you don't get anywhere close to that, right, Yeah, But actually, with this new firmware built, I'm sitting here right now watching seven hundred and forty kill a bit per second on average video coming out of my house.
Oh, that's it's unbelievable.
That's awesome.
The quality is just it's it's actually pretty darn good.
Well, it has a lot of practicality.
The other the other benefit too is you know I can stream video, I can stream audio from my home.
I have no problem streaming audio.
Uh, you know, setting it up and trying to explain to somebody how to set it up can really be quite a challenge streaming video.
I wouldn't even think about it.
But this makes it all very easy, step by step and has a well laid out guide the software to install on the host and of course your your laptop or wherever you're going to be working at. Now, can you install it on multiple you know, I want to say client PCs that you know you won't have one on the laptop, maybe another one in the house.
Yes, absolutely you can. You can install the sling Player client on on a countless number of PCs. Now, So for I have a desktop PC here at work, and I have the sling Player loaded there, and I have you know, we have a couple of laptops in our house. All you need is your sling Finder ID, which each sling box has its own unique ID. You need the Slingfinder I d in your password and you can get
in and watch it. And eventually in the coming months will actually be showing and announcing support for other devices. So now imagine you have your sling Player on your PDA, we're on your cell phone, and you'll be able to watch and control your sling box and your TV from from a handheld device.
Well, that was going to be one of my next questions, and I noticed the company is very sharp. You're calling it sling Media. But the benefit I see here also is you know, I talk about streaming audio. Is somebody who wants to have this capability with radio not every radio station is streamed over the internet, and somebody who is in maybe stuck in Florida working for three weeks.
Is that something we might see down the line.
Yeah, well there's well there's two things. One, there's nothing precluding you from just cooking up an a MFM radio to the to the slingbox right now, so you could sling your your audio no problem. The one thing that we have thought about is maybe just coming out with a dedicated product that maybe just did radio. But a simple thing is right now, take an AM FM radio and receiver and plug it into the slingbox and away you go.
What's the minimum requirements they're going to have to have to be able to get the most out of the sling box experience.
Sure, so, so we first off, actually along the lines of listening to our customers, we just released a new version of the sling Player that also works on Windows two thousands. A lot of our a lot of our early customers were screaming at us for not supporting two K because a lot of people have still their work PCs that are on two K. So we're Windows two thousand, Windows XP. What we what we do say is you need a Pentium four equivalent. I think at a I
think at a giggahertz is what we say. But but we've had people that have been using on you know, on on lower end celerons Pentium three laptops that were running at five hundred megahertz. It basically, if you can stream an audio video file like from Windows Media Player from the Internet and you and you're happy with that with that level of of of CPU utilization, sleen Player will work just great.
If our listeners want to get more information about Sling Media Blake, where can they go, Well.
They can first off go to our website which is www dot slingmedia dot com. And again the product is available nationwide in all Best Buy and all CompUSA stores. We actually had had sold out when we released the product that went on and they went really really fast, and now we're we're happy to say that that we've we've caught back up and I think over ninety ninety something percent of the stores now should should have product in stock.
So I know I'm going to have to get this unit back because I know the media pool is clamoring to get a look at it.
Yeah, we have to pry it handy.
Well, thanks a lot, and we're really glad you enjoy it and it's been great also. I mean there's places to go that we have even links on our website that bring you to places like AVS forums, some other community third party forums cool where you can see for yourself how consumers are using it and how delighted they've been. You know, we really want to do things differently here
at Slings. We want to be a real sort of approachable company and really transparent and you know, we're a bunch of consumers here and we want consumers to know that we just want to provide just great experiences and you know, well we'll have places where we fall short, and there's places where we can improve the product, but we want to listen to our customer base and and be again really transparent about it.
Blake or Corey and CEO of Sling Media, thank you so much for coming on the show with us.
You sound like a cool guy. You're ever in two son love take you out for beer?
Hey, that sounds like a plan. I've been I've been known to travel places for for free beers.
There you go. Good deal.
Well, we'll keep an eye on the company once again. Thank you very much.
Hey, thank you, and we'll have more of tech talk Radio standing by and now factor tech talk Radio.
I do hope you've.
Enjoyed kind of a look back twenty years ago this week two thousand and five. That's what tech talk Radio was talking about. Now for us today, I wanted to make sure I mentioned this Notebook LM. We've talked about this before now. Notebook LM is the kind of the AI introduction for studying. It's a lot different. It's a study buddy, it really is, and it does it in
a different way. You could take a website and maybe take a web page for a company that you work for, and copy that link or copy the text into Notebook LM. And what it will do it will then break it down and have a discussion between two hosts. It sounds like a radio show talking about whatever you wanted them to talk about. But what's interesting about it is when you listen to it, you tend to pick up more of what is happening and be able to retain more.
This can be a great way to help study. We love your comments.
You can email us tech guys at tech talkRADIO dot com and to betime again. Have a great week.
I'm Andy Taylor. This is tech Talk Radio.