Cord Cutting Keeps Getting More Expensive

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
At and T launches five G in more cities, But
can you use it connected dash cams?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Amazon employees listening to your Alexa commands?

Speaker 1 (00:12):
How to change that? And T Mobile launches TV. What's
going on? I'm rich Damiro. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to a fresh day on
the podcast. In fact, it's the first time I have
someone here to help me out with the podcast. So
this is my producer, Megan from KTLA. Meghan, welcome to
the show.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hello, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Megan helps me out at KTLA with producing the tech
report tech smart as it's said on TV, and you've
also probably seen her in some of my videos. She
is ready to high tel it out of here to Coachella,
so we're gonna probably.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Speed up this podcast for her. Yes. Excited to be
here to do some viewer questions today.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah, I'm so excited. Thanks for letting me read some questions.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
So, I know every week on the podcast I say
I'm going to bring back the phone calls. That is
definitely part of the rich on Tech podcast. Technically it's
just been a challenge. But I will tell you we
have Megan, we have new equipment, and we will be
getting those phone calls into the podcast. But for today,
you know, you guys send me a lot of emails, right,
So today I've selected a couple of emails and Megan's

(01:15):
going to read them and I'm going to answer them
as well, in addition to the normal tech news I
do here. So if you're new to the podcast, if
you found me through Leo or some other method, this
is the podcast where I talk about this stuff that
I think you should know about that happens in the
world of tech.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
It's not the podcast for you know, this specific tech nerd.
It's basically kind of just a lot of things that
I find interesting, unique, and kind of the tech stuff
that I think the average consumer should know about. So
let's start with the story kind of of the week.
And this is kind of one of those stories that
it's a no brainer, like we know this is happening,
but when it's put in print, all of a sudden,

(01:50):
people get up in arms. Right, And this is a
story about Alexa and Amazon workers listening to what you
say to Alexa. So how did you think that Amazon
was able to improve the Alexa service?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Right? This thing is not a vacuum.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
So what happens is, according to the Bloomberg article, Amazon
has thousands of people around the world that are listening
to these recordings that are captured in Echo owners' homes
and offices, and what they do is they make sure
that Alexa responds in the way that you might imagine, right.
So I gave the example of my video I made
for YouTube of if you say, hey, Alexa, play music

(02:25):
from the weekend, and all of a sudden, Alexa says,
you know, what time would you like me to make
your appointment this weekend? You know that doesn't make sense, right,
So that might be something that one of these employees
listens to and says, oh, interesting, the weekend is also
the name of a band, So we need to tweak
what Alexa says.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
And response to that. That's what's going on here now.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Obviously, in the process of listening to these things, what
do they hear, Well, all the stuff that goes on
in your home, right, kids screaming in the background, people
singing in the shower.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
In fact, some of the workers that they.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Picked up what they believed was a sexual assault, So
pretty crazy stuff. But as you imagine, with millions and
millions of people using these smart speakers. There's a lot
of stuff out there. So Amazon said to Bloomberg that
they take security and privacy very seriously. And here's what
I'm saying, you just need to know about this stuff.
Obviously Google's doing the same thing. I'm imagining that Apple's

(03:15):
doing the same thing. But if you do want to
turn off the ability of Amazon employees to listen to
your recordings, and they're not just doing this, you know,
like if I work at Amazon, I can't just be like, hey,
let me go ahead and listen to a couple of recordings. No,
these are teams that are doing this professionally, you might hope.
I mean, obviously people are probably laughing at some of
the things that they hear. They're human, right, and they're

(03:37):
listening to these things. But if you do want to
turn off these settings, here's the privacy options. Number one,
go to Amazon dot com slash Alexa Privacy and that's
your privacy page for all things Alexa. You can actually
listen to all the recordings that you've all the things
you've ever said to Alexa will be on there in
a list.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
You can listen to those. They're kind of funny.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
But if you want to change this privacy setting, go
to the Alexa Privacy manage how your data improves Alexa,
then help develop new features, and toggle that off.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
If you're on the mobile app, it's pretty much the same.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Open up the Amazon Alexa app, go to the menu,
which is a three bars in the upper left hand corner.
Then Settings, then Alexa Account, then Alexa Privacy, then manage
how your data improves Alexa, and then help develop new features.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Toggle that off.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
It sounds like a lot, but believe me, once you
get into the Alexa settings, it's pretty darn easy. All right, Uh, Megan,
do you want to do the first question because it
is related to this right?

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
So.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
This first question is from Kelly Russell, and she writes, so,
the Alexa app does keep a list of commands that
Alexa heard. It's a manual process, but you can delete
the commands in the app. So are they deleted locally
or on a server somewhere? That's her first question, okay,
And then her second question is in regards to Apple,

(04:56):
So she would like to know if Apple makes it
possible for SERI users to review and delete their Siri
commands or if this will ever be an option for
Siri users.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Best Kelly Russell.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Okay, Kelly Russell, Thanks Kelly, great question. So number one, yes,
when you delete, so first has to do with the recordings.
And it is nice that Amazon allows you to hear
your recordings, right, because it is eye opening to hear
what you've said in pretty private settings to this voice assistant, right,
And people probably say some pretty private things as well,
So that's number one.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
They do that.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Google does that, so you can also do the same
thing for Google. You can go in and listen to
all the things that you've said to Google Assistant and
you can delete them as well. Now you're asking are
they deleted locally? Are they deleted on the server? They
are deleted on the server, but we don't know what
the timeframe is.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Are they deleted instantly? Are they cued for deletion?

Speaker 1 (05:49):
And in the case of let's say, any sort of
crime or any sort of police you know, if there's
something where the police want a recording, I bet that
they can pro probably magically bring those recordings.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Back to life.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
So just because you hit that delete on that weird
question you asked Alexa, does not mean in my brain
that it goes away forever. So that's number one and
on Google. When it comes to Apple, Apple is a
little different than these other companies. As you know, they're
much more private, They're a little bit different in the
way they handle things they say.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
They take privacy very seriously. As far as I know,
you cannot access the things that you say to Siri.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Now. I think part of that maybe is that they're
doing some local processing on the phone and they're not
necessarily sending it to the server. I'm not sure about
that part, but at this point, no, you cannot get
a listing of anything that you've said to Siri, and
you can't delete them from Apple standpoint.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
So thank you, Kelly. I do appreciate that question.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
All right, now, let's talk about YouTube TV. So I
was at the launch of YouTube TV about two years ago,
and they promised and I loved it back then, by
the way, and I still do.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
I still think it's pretty amazing. I think what YouTube
did was awesome.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
They basically built a cable box into an app and
a web version of TV, and they when they launched
it was thirty five dollars. There was just a couple channels.
There was a couple dozen channels available. There were some
that were good, there was some. Here's the thing, like everyone,
when it comes to cord cutting, all they really want
to do is subscribe to the channels they want.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Right.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
I don't need fifty I don't need one hundred channels, right,
I just want right now, I just want two channels,
which is Disney Junior and Nick Junior for my kids.
And guess what I have to pay fifty dollars a
month just to get those two channels through direct TV
now because it comes with eighty other channels that I
could care less about?

Speaker 4 (07:35):
Right?

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Are they nice to have? Sometimes? Sure?

Speaker 1 (07:37):
If someone's like, oh, there's this great show on Investigation Discovery,
sure it's nice, But I don't need that, right And
I can certainly get that show a la carte if
I need it. So what we really want in our
world is a la carte channels. Clearly, nobody's giving that
to us, except for things like HBO and Showtime and cinemas.
But those are really expensive, right, So people just want

(07:57):
ESPN for five bucks a month or ten dollars a
month some of these channels, Bravo for a dollar a month, right,
CNN for a buck a month, but we're not getting
that anyway.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
I digress.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
But YouTube tv is raising prices once again, showing that
it's really tough to compete with cable. So their price
is going up to now fifty dollars a month. So
in the past two years we've seen from thirty five
to now fifty dollars a month. And YouTube is defending
it by saying, look, we're adding discovery channels, So now
you get Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery,

(08:28):
Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and Motor Trend. And as if
that's not enough, Oprah Winfree Network is coming later this year.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
But is it good enough?

Speaker 1 (08:36):
And here's the thing everyone's complaining on Twitter that like,
oh see these cord cutting companies, none of it matters.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
It's all the same price.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
And I agree with that, But here's the difference to me,
and I've said this before, I'm not cutting the cord
because of saving money.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
I understand that.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
If you're Time, Warner or Warner Media whatever they're called now,
and Discovery and HBO and all these big companies, they're
not just gonna let their business go by the wayside
by saying okay, fine, We'll give you whatever channel for
a buck a month. You know, Animal Planet, We'll let
you have that for a dollar a month, because we
understand that you want to cut the cord and you

(09:10):
want to save money. No, they sell these things as
a bundle for a reason, because they need to keep
up the costs to do their programming right. And so
the reality is that I did not cut the cord
for the money savings, right. I don't think I'm saving
any money. I'm paying fifty bucks for DirecTV now, I'm
paying sixteen dollars for Netflix. I'm paying let's see what's

(09:33):
the other one I do, and then I do sixty
five bucks a month for my internet. So I mean,
you add all those things up, and yeah, it might
be cheaper than what I was paying for DirecTV before,
but it's still it's to me, it's not about saving
the money. It's about the fact that I can cancel
at any time I want. If I don't want that,
I can get rid of direct TV.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
Now.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
If I don't want HBO, I can get rid of HBO.
If I don't want Stars, I can get rid of Stars.
It's also the interface of the software. It's way better
to have the interface from these apps than it is
on a cable TV box. Have you used a cable
TV box lately? They're terrible, right, I tried to use it.
We're in a hotel room last week and they had Spectrum.
Sorry to call you out, Spectrum, but the box was

(10:12):
like navigating something from the eighties or seventies. I kept
pressing buttons on the remote and it like didn't even
respond to me, and so I kept like mispressing everything
because it was so slow. I don't find that on
my Apple TV or my Fire TV. And so that's
why I enjoy having even direct TV now, which is
still you know, big conglomerate. At least the software on
DirecTV now is way better than what direct TV was.

(10:34):
It was so bad when I had that. It was
like this is what I'm paying like three hundred bucks
a month for. So anyway, now you got a big
price increase if your YouTube TV and Netflix. This month
was a rough one because you got an increase on
Netflix and an increase on YouTube TV as well. Now,
speaking of TV, T Mobile is starting up TV once again.

(10:56):
They are starting something called t Vision, and this is
kind of a relaunched version of something called Layer three TV,
which they bought a couple of years ago, and they're
relaunching this cable service in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Philly,
San Francisco, and Washington, DC, all on April fourteenth. Now,
I thought that they were going to deliver this via wireless,

(11:17):
right they bought the company and Layer three TV pretty
much delivers it through regular conventional cable right. But they're
big thing T Mobile is saying because this isn't much
cheaper than cable. It's one hundred bucks a month. There's
a little discount if you're a T mobile customer, and
for people that sign up early, if you sign up
right now, you actually get the T Mobile customer discount,
which is ten dollars a month. So that's available to everyone,

(11:39):
and you get all the channels. But here's the magic
they're doing. They're saying, look, we're going to give you
the best of cord cutting and the best of conventional
cable TV because you get all these channels plus all
your apps or a majority of the app or I
shouldn't even say majority because I'm not really sure, but
they're promoting that they have Netflix or they're going to
have Netflix they're going to have Amazon Prime Video and

(12:00):
also Pandora. Now this is an unknown I'm not sure
I'm gonna get some hands on time with this thing
next week, but here's my thoughts on it. My thoughts are,
this is a good in between, Like if you're not
ready to one hundred percent cut the cord and go
to Apple TV or fireTV or antenna, this is kind
of an in between technology, right because you're still getting
all that goodness of cable but sort of packaged and

(12:22):
delivered in a relatively newer and better way. You're not
saving much money cause I alread said it's a hundred
bucks plus you have to pay for your Internet, but
it's smarter. The software is way better, so what it
looks like on screen is much better than.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Your typical cable box. But what I don't like about
this is that.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
You're not on one of those platforms and being on
an Apple TV or a Fire TV or even a Roku.
That's where all of the progress is right now with
these apps. So you really think that the Netflix of
the world really cares that much about their app for
T Mobile t Vision, which like one hundred thousand people
are on versus Rope who where like a million people
are on or more. So That's why to me, it

(13:04):
pays to be on one of these big platforms because
you're getting the latest, greatest features, the optimizations much faster
than you are if you're on something that's a much
smaller platform like Android TV.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
People give me a hard time, like Android TV is
perfectly good.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Well, guess what, nobody's using Android TV, So the apps
on there are kind of forgotten and the selection is
not very good. All right, Megan, I haven't forgotten about you.
Oh hello, So do we have any more questions we have?
Have you selected the next best question?

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Have you? Have you put placed these as a special order?

Speaker 4 (13:34):
No, it's it's not in any particular order. But now
that I know that there should be an order, well, I.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Mean, you know they're all good questions.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, they're good.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
You have another good one for yes.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
This next question is from rich Landryth and he writes, Hi, Rich,
I have a Pixel XL and I have your phone,
and I have a problem with my track phone coverage.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Where I live, I get poor reception.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
Is it possible to switch to a VoIP when I
am home and use track phone on the road?

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Ooh, good question. So let's see. So track phone. Okay,
so you're using Trackphone with a Pixel too XCEL. So
the good news about Pixel two XL. What's really cool
is that it is unlocked, so you can pretty much
use it for anything. So it sounds like you're saving
some money by going with Trackphone.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
And the coverage is not very good at your house.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Okay, so what i'd recommend is number one, the vope
calling thing is kind of a pain because you're gonna
have to switch numbers and everything. There's not like a
way to just turn on voiceover IP calling on your.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Pixel two easily.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
It supports it, and yeah, you can use something like
Skype or a Google Voice or whatever. But the reality is,
I think that's going to be a very annoying thing
for you to do. Every time you get home, you
got to use this thing to call people and this
and that, and every time you leave you got to
use something else the track phone.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
So what you need to do is you need to
figure out. I'm on the Trackphone website.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Right now and it says that that Wi Fi calling
is supported for track Phone, So that's good news.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
And I think.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
It looks like you have to be eligible for it,
so it's not just like a given where you can
be eligible, but Wi Fi calling most of the phone
support it these days. Basically what happens is is with
AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile, all these carriers, once
you're in a Wi Fi place like your home that
has a good signal, it says, oh, we can route
these calls over Wi Fi instead of our cellular network,
and we'll just do that, and it's very seamless, you

(15:28):
don't even notice. Personally, I don't like Wi Fi calling.
I don't think it sounds as good as traditional cellular calling.
But so I leave it turned off on my phone.
My wife does leave it turned on on hers, and
she seems to have good luck with that.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
I don't like it.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
But there is a place where we go, my in
laws house. They do not have cell phone service in
their home.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
I don't know why. It's been ten years and they.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Just it's just clearly for some reason, AT and T
and Verizon just have not found their way there. Only
T Mobile and Sprint work there. So when I go there,
my phone just basically does not work. The Wi Fi
does just not the calling, and I'm fine, I'll take
no calls anyway. Looking on their website, it does say
that they support Wi Fi calling. But here's the thing.

(16:10):
It just depends on the phone. So the phone has
to support it, which I know the pixel does, but
does it support it for the track Phone network. So
all you have to do is go into your phone settings,
turn on Wi Fi calling, see if that works. And
also you go on this Trackphone website. It looks like
you can just enroll in Wi Fi calling by entering
your phone number. And then after you enter your phone number,

(16:31):
rich you just type in this mobile code to confirm it.
And it looks like you're all set up. So it
looks like there is something a little bit of setup
that you have to do, but I think it will work.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
So, Megan, do you have good service at your place?

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Do not get me started on this.

Speaker 4 (16:46):
I have the worst service, like ever I have AT
and T, and.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
So a're using Wi Fi calling at home? Okay, to
use Wi Fi calling? Do you notice a difference that
it may be better with AT and D.

Speaker 4 (16:57):
Sorry? Sorry, yeah, I mean it's fine, but Wi Fi
calling is just what I have to do.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, And then it says on the top of your
phone like msell or something like that, or like, yeah,
Wi Fi calling or whatever. We used to have actually
my in laws house the micro cell so it was
actually a little mini cell phone tower that you'd install
there and that would route the calls through the internet
that way. It's kind of funny because now that's just
basically built into cell phones, so you don't need that
extra piece of equipment, which is really cool.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
All right, good question, keep them coming.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
I'll let you prepare for the next while I talk
about AT and T being the first to offer mobile
five G in seven more cities, including Los Angeles and
also Austin, Nashville, Orlando, San Francisco, and San Jose. But
good luck trying to use this. This brings AT and
T's five G now to nineteen cities across the nation.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
And what do you know about five G? Me? Oh god,
you just know it's faster, yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:56):
And that you can do like cooler things with it.
Like I can't really elaborate, but you can do cooler
things with it.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
It's gonna be better. Have you gotten that little icon
on your AT and T phone? Because they started rolling
out like a five GE icon. Has that happened on
your phone?

Speaker 4 (18:10):
No?

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Okay, So someone emailed me and said, oh, is this
mean and I have five G if you have that
little five GE.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Icon on your iPhone. No, it does not. It just
means they're using a slightly faster LTE network in your area.
But it's not really true five G.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
We do not have true five G yet for reals,
because there's no phone that supports it on the AT
and T network. Later this year, we will see the
Samsung Galaxy S ten five G.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Remember we went to that event, so we will.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
See that good times.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
And right now, the only device that you can use
to access this is the Netgear Nighthawk five G mobile hotspot,
which is five hundred bucks. By the way, five g's
also going to cost you more money on your monthly bill.
Verizon's charging ten dollars a month. Here's the thing about
AT and T launching this. They're so proud to send
me an email and say, hey, Rich you know, can
you cover this? This is AT and T is launching

(18:59):
five G. But there's no information about it. You go
on the AT and T website, I can't tell you
how to sign up for it. I can't tell you
how to find it on a map. There's no coverage map.
I can't figure out which device I need for it.
So right now, all these wireless companies are doing is
bragging about five G, but they're not truly delivering in
a meaningful way. So you hear all the hype to me,
you're hearing it from rich on tech today.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
It is twenty eighteen. Wait, it's twenty nineteen. Yeah, Rich,
twenty six guy, I doesn't even know what the year is.
It's twenty nineteen.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
You do not have to worry about five G until
twenty twenty, mark my words. Rest of this year it's
a throwaway. Even next year it will be touch and go.
We may have it in a meaningful way, we may not.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Don't get me wrong. I can't wait for five G.
I cannot wait to have this on my phone. I
can't wait to have it at my house. It's gonna
do things for the home, like you can maybe potentially
replace your home internet service with wireless five G, which
is gonna give some competition to the Spectrums and the
other companies. And also someone doesn't have to come to
your house to install cable or a cable connection. But

(20:05):
I can't wait for five G, So don't get me wrong.
I'm not pooh pooing it. I'm just saying, like, just
just hold your horses with five g Let these companies
build up the networks before we actually get all hyped
up about this, all right, speaking, I think I said
that last time.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Speaking of.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Dash cams, we did a story this week on these
new dash cams, a new breed of dash cams that
have cellular built into them, right, and so we looked
at two of them. One is the owl Cam. Got
to go a little bit hands on with this at CS.
I did not test this personally, but this is kind
of the Rolls Royce of connected dash cams. They invented
the genre, kind of like Ring invented the video doorbell.

(20:43):
So they're the best, but they're also the most expensive.
They have the most features. So basically, what happens when
you build an LTE connection into a dash cam is
you get a couple of benefits. The first benefit is
that your video files are automatically sent to the cloud,
which is really cool.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
So let's say, worst.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Scenario, you get into a really bad car crash and
your car's damaged, your windshields damaged, and your your dash
cam is damaged. Like you can't recover the files off
that you're okay, thank god, right, but the dash cam
is damaged. So now it's like, oh my gosh, you
got into this terrible accident, obviously got to go through
insurance all this stuff, and I can't even see what happened.
So that's the number one thing is like basically now,

(21:22):
of course you might say, rich, well, I mean, if
the dash cam's damage, how's it gonna get the video
up to the cellular connection. Well maybe it's doing it, like,
you know, quicker than it gets that it fries out.
I don't know, but stay with me here. So again,
your your video clips are sent to the cloud in
real time. So for instance, if someone bashes your front
windshield with a baseball bat, your little video camera will

(21:43):
record that and send it to the cloud immediately. And
they're like, oh, shoot, someone just captured that in the camera.
Let me take that camera too. Well, the clip is
already gonna be in the cloud. She'll at least see
the person who did it. Also, they have an on
star feature in the owl cam, which if you get
into an accident and you're unresponsive, it will call an
operator to you know, get you help. So that's kind
of nice. Owlcam is three hundred and fifty dollars a

(22:06):
year that includes a year's worth of Sorry, Owlcam is
three hundred and fifty dollars that includes a year's worth
of subscription fees, and after that it's ten dollars a
month or one hundred bucks a year for the connectivity features.
It's pretty useless. Don't get it if you're not going
to do the subscription, because it's useless.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
The other camera I tested is called the pure Gear
Pure Cam, and pure Gear is a company known for
its mobile accessories. This camera, this device has two cameras
as well, so it records inside and outside your car simultaneously.
The other cool thing is you can live stream from
this camera, so you can see what's going on inside
or outside your car from your phone, which is a
new concept, kind of like when we got the Ring

(22:41):
video doorbell, same thing. You can check on your house
from afar. This has GPS so you can see where
you parked. And the setup process was pretty simple. I mean,
the toughest part about installing these cameras is really running
the cable from the power cable from the camera itself.
Kind of gonna have to do it like you kind
of like move your I don't know your car, like
insulation or whatever like that. It just it goes in

(23:01):
there though pretty easily. I was able to do it myself.
And you plug this into your car's obdport and this
is like your onboard diagnostic port, so not your cigarette lighter.
That's where I wanted to put it in, but it
does not work with that. You have to have a
certain amount of voltage. And also it does draw some
power when your car is parked to keep this thing
alive in case of, you know, if it notices something

(23:23):
going on. So with that said, there is a g
shock sensor in this, so it automatically starts recording if
it notices any movement around your car. This was my
favorite part. So every time my car is touched or
moved or whatever this little sensor, I get an alert
to my phone. And it's really cool because it's like, oh,
there's motion by your car, and you can look at
the video and you can see like, Okay, was it

(23:43):
just you know, someone threw a ball at my car
or did someone just take my car.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Right and on the flip side.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
When I brought my car in for valet parking at
the Burbank Airport. The guys who got in my car
to park it like, I got a little video clip
of them sent to me, which cracked me up. So
you find some funny things with this stuff. It also
doubles as a Wi Fi hotspot, which is good for
the kids in the back seat.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
And that's basically it. I mean, the pure cam I'm
pretty impressed with. It's two hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
And the benefit of this one versus the owlcam is
that you can bring your own network. So if you've
got a SIM card, you can pop in that SIM
card as long as it's GSM and it will work
inside this. So GSM is things like AT and T
T Mobile. Basically everything except Sprint and Verizon is GSM.
So if you want a prepaid SIM you can do

(24:33):
that with like something like you know, Trackphone or Family
Mobile from Walmart, whatever, Cricket. You can put those SIM
cards inside and it will work. So I'm a big
fan of the dash cam. I think it's in between
technology because in the future, the cameras that are already
built into our cars, hopefully we'll take over this functionality
because you have them on the front of cars, you
have them on the back of cars, you have on

(24:53):
the sides of new cars. So hopefully car manufacturers will
start building in DVR functionality for basically twenty four to
seven recording of everything that's going on in your car.
I think Tesla already does that, but other cars that
would be nice. And also the wireless functionality so that
when something does happen, when there is movement detected, it
will send that video straight up to the cloud kind

(25:14):
of in the same way.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
I also wonder if car insurance companies are gonna want
to make sure that everyone has a camera in their
car now, because then they'll be able to see, oh,
you were texting when that turn happened, and that's why
the crash happened, or you know what I mean, which.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Is scary for privacy.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
That brings up a huge privacy concerned because a lot
of people are thinking from the way I was thinking of, oh,
protecting me, but oh, hold on, what if I get
into an accident and I'm like, oh, shoot, I was
on my phone. Not that I would be because I'm
on my phone while I drive, But now it's like,
now my insurance company is suing me because They're like, well,
we want to see that video from inside your car, right,
and yeah, that's an interesting another side of this. I

(25:51):
actually got rear ended coming out of the airport one time,
and I knew the lady was on her phone.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
I watched.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
I saw it in my cause I could see she
was like on her phone behind me, and all of
a sudden, I just saw a slam.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Into the back of my car.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
And sure enough, I'm like, oh my gosh, if I
had my rear camera on the back of my car
recording this would be like I would just show that now.
I was okay. Anyway, Like I still she gave me
the money whatever. We worked it out through insurance. But
like the reality is her insurance company is probably pretty
angry because they're like, shouldn't be on your phone and
now you just cost us like ten thousand bucks or whatever.

(26:24):
You know, you get the smallest ding on your car
and it's like three thousand dollars to repair it these
days because.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
They're so expensive.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, Okay, so good point producer Megan. Who's next with
the questions?

Speaker 4 (26:34):
Okay, next up we have David Moore. The subject is
cell phone insurance. Hi, Rich, my new s nine is great.
Thanks again. I have a question. My son has a
few mishaps with his iPhone. Se can you recommend cell
phone insurance companies? Verizon wants thirteen dollars a month, Thanks
Rich David.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Oh great, So I must have recommended David his S
nine a while ago, so I'm glad you're enjoying that phone.
My favorite, so most people when they think of insurance
for their phones, they go.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
To two places.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
They go to Apple for Apple Care and they go
to their carrier, which the carrier insurance is always going
to be the most expensive, but there is and I'll
tell you my alternative, but there is a caveat. So
my favorite is Square Trade. So Square Trade is a
third party company. They are actually just recently bought by
all State, which is really funny because now the car
insurance company is also the insurance company for your phone.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
But the good news.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
About Square Trade is they're very simple, Like you basically
go online, you can sign up in literally minutes. It's
nine dollars a month, no matter basically whatever phone you have.
And they do have some coupons out there, so be
on the lookout for like promo codes like do a
little Google search because you might be able to find
like even cheaper than eight nine bucks a month. But
you buy your plan, you buy it online, and that's it.

(27:51):
It basically covers you for everything. And here's the caveat
Like I mentioned, so with the cellular plans, and Apple
has this as well, if your phone is lost or stolen,
you can still get it replaced through the cellular plans.
That's why they're so expensive, right, So the way Square
Trade saves money is that if your phone is lost
or stolen, they're not going to replace it. So the

(28:12):
only way they will do your phone is if it's
physically there. So in the case of my dad, his
phone was ran over like ten thousand times by a
truck the other day a couple months ago, so if
he was not And by the way, he lost it
on a highway, so he actually went back and found
his phone like a day later.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Wait, so how did that fits?

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (28:32):
How did it happen?

Speaker 1 (28:33):
He left and he's like, rich text me. He's like,
I was in New York City. I put my phone
on the roof of my car and I drove away.
I'm like Dad, He's like, and I think I know
where I lost it. It had to be somewhere in
between the city and the Lincoln Tunnel. I said, all right,
let me go find my iPhone. So I turned on
Find my iPhone on his phone, and sure.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Enough I saw it.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
I pinpointed it on the freeway from between where he
lives in New Jersey and New York. But it was
still there, so I think it was the last known location.
So long story short, he went back, can found it
and it's this.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Thing was crushed.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
You can look on my Instagram and go back a
little bit. But his phone was crushed into a million pieces.
It was still like, sorry, the screen was crushed into
a million pieces. The phone was actually safe because he
had a spec case on it, which is my favorite case.
I've got my phone right here.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
So and of course this is my dad. No, it's
not sponsored. This is my dad. Being the older generation.
He actually took the case that was run over a
billion times and put it on his new phone.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
He's like, are you serious? Right now?

Speaker 3 (29:28):
That's funny.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
I bought my mom her case and she's been using
it for the last two years and it's like a
ten dollars case from Amazon.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Oh my mom, same thing.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
I bought our ten dollars case from Amazon and it
was like the thing was like all grimy and stuff.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
I'm like, Mom, really it's like where you bought it from.
I mean yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Anyway, so long story short, even if you bring your
phone to All State in like a plastic bag filled
with pieces, as long as they can identify that that
was the phone that you ensured, they will give you
a new one or you know.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Replace it whatever. But that's it.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
So my recommendation, David is to go with Square Trade.
I think you'll save some money, especially for kids. And
also you don't necessarily have to send your phone in
if it's something like a crack screen. They work with
a lot of suppliers around towns where you can just
go on put in your zip code and it will
they can do the warranty service like at a little
local shop that they work with, kind of like autobody repair.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Right, you can just go to your lot.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
You don't have to always bring it to like the
All State you know, auto body shop. You can bring
it to like any autobody shop that works with them.
So great question. All right, a couple more stories. We'll
move a little bit quicker here because these are the
smaller things, but Audible changing the way they do their
memberships now and specifically membership credits.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
So I love Audible, I love audio books.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
But what happens is with Audible, I subscribe, I get
really pumped around, you know, Prime day when they have
these great deals. I get a bunch of credits, and
then all of a sudden, I have too many audiobooks.
I can't listen to them all, so I get rid
of my membership. But they let you keep your credits, right, well,
I didn't realize, but your credits expire after six months.
I didn't know that. Wait what yeah, so you can

(31:01):
you only have six months to use them. Now they're
changing it where it will work up to a year,
so that's nice. And this is all this is an
Amazon being kind. This is actually a class action lawsuit
against Amazon, and so that's why these things changed.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
So the suit alleges that Audible.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Was not transparent about how it charged the customer's card,
which I do agree with. And they also moved to
a secondary card on your Amazon file in case the
first one didn't work, which, oh, that's not very nice.
And also I will say that this is the thing
about audible. If you don't look at your statement, you
kind of forget because you don't get an email that says, hey,
we just charge you for another month, and you kind

(31:37):
of forget, and that's part of their business plan.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
I am sure.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Well, now monthly members are going to get an email
statement every month saying how many credits they have, and
you know, saying that they're going to get charged and
how many unused credits they have along with their expiration dates.
So I think this is I hate that it took
a class action lawsuit to change these things into the
consumer's interest, but they did a pretty nice job. All right,

(32:00):
but do you we have one more question?

Speaker 4 (32:02):
Yes, we have one more question from Carol Hamilton. She writes,
let's see Prime savings at Whole Foods. I do not
have a smartphone, only a flip phone, but I am
an Amazon Prime member. Tell me how to get a
Prime membership card to show at Whole Foods when I shop.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Ooh, good question.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
This is a little bit on the outskirts of like
tech questions, but it's true. If you're a Prime member
and you go to Whole Foods, you will save a
little bit of money on your purchases.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
I find that it's kind of a joke.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
So every time I go to Whole Foods, which, to
be honest, is now I'm not going his office and
I used to because you know, I've got this thing
called Milk and Eggs.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Which I've talked about, which I love.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
They deliver fresh produce to my house and I love it.
So it's actually cheaper than Whole Foods. It's in the
LA area. I'm sure there's something similar in your area
if you're listening outside La but I so anyway, when
you shop at Whole Foods, if you're a Prime member,
there is a little code on the Amazon app that
you scan it checkout, like a QR code that gives

(33:04):
your discount, which is ten percent off of anything that's
on sale, which for me, I don't think it's ever
been over eighty cents off my entire bill, which is
kind of stupid. But anyway, if you don't have a
mobile phone, you say you have a flip phone, the
second option is to just basically link your mobile phone
number with your Prime membership and that will serve as

(33:25):
your membership card. So if you ever go to something
like Ralph's or all these grocery stores, you know they
all they ask for your phone number at checkout, you
type it in and you get your Rauph's Club or whatever.
Whole Foods does the same thing. It's just not as advertised.
It's not widely advertised. So to do it, just go
to Amazon dot com slash Prime Savings and there's option
number two, which is update your mobile phone number. You'll

(33:46):
link up your phone number and next thing, you know,
when you get to check out, you can just say, hey,
can I pop in my phone number?

Speaker 2 (33:50):
And they will let you do that. All right.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
A couple more stories here too that deal with speakers.
Ikia and Sono's teaming up for a new line of speakers.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
So they've got two. It's you. You had to help
me pronounce this, Megan, sim fuonesque.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Let me see it, sim funness, sim fun.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
Esque, sim funesque.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Okay, I don't know why I say it with a little.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Bit of sim simp fun esque. So two things.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
You've got a table lamp for one hundred and seventy
nine dollars and a bookshelf speaker for ninety nine dollars.
Both are shipping in August. I cannot tell you how excited.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
I am for this.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
It looks really cool.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
They look really cool. I have sons. Do you have
Sonos at home?

Speaker 4 (34:28):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Okay, do you know about it? Yes, it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
And I know it sounds.

Speaker 4 (34:33):
Whenever I hear people's like Sono speakers, I'm always like,
why don't I have this?

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Because it's expensive. It's super duper expensive.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
And I've built my collection of these speakers over the
past like seven or eight years, so it's it's an
expensive thing to have. But I will say I've my
speakers I bought from Sonos. I've had now for going
on eight years, like some of the earlier, the older
ones right, but again, great quality. I love how it
all works. It's seamless, and I get it. We live

(35:00):
in a world of you know, Amazon.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Google, Alexa, but this is just.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
There's something about every time I come home, I open
up the Sonos app, I pick something from all the
different music services I have, I select all speakers, and boom,
I have the same music playing throughout my house.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
I love it. It's one of my favorite things to do.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
So now the fact that I can get speakers, I'm
already thinking for the bedroom on the night stands. I'm
going to get one of these speakers on each side
because you need a light, right, you also want some
music in your room, so that's cool. Then the bookshelf
speakers will be awesome for the office. And then I
can reuse some of my Sonos speakers in rooms like
the kids rooms, or maybe put them in other places
in the house, so you can never have too many

(35:38):
speakers in one.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Room, right, and in tech center.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yes, I would like to get some here at KTLA.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
I will bring a speaker in here for KTLA as well,
But again, these come out in August. I have not
seen the quality, but since Sona's is putting their name
on them, I'm assuming.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
They're pretty good.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
And the other side is, yeah, they're more expensive. One
hundred and seventy nine dollars for a table lamp is
very expensive. But you're getting to me. It's all about
one less cord, so I only have one thing to
plug in. Now I get a light and I get
a speaker. I wish, wish, wish these had a.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
USB on the phone.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
I was gonna ask, so there's no USB.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
I don't know, I am you know, I'm looking at
these press pictures here and I don't see the USB,
but that would have been the million dollar thing to have, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Because then you can plug in. Maybe they have it,
we don't know. That would be epic, but we'll see.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
And another speaker, the home Pod, which is also a
really nice speaker, but super duper expensive. Talk about expensive.
It was three hundred and forty nine dollars. Now it's
two hundred ninety nine dollars. So Apple has cut the
price by fifty dollars.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
On that speaker. The HomePod is really cool.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
If you are an iPhone world you don't mind spending
a lot of money on a speaker, It's great. And
my favorite feature of the HomePod is that you can
transfer your iPhone call to the HomePod and use it
as a speakerphone, which is really fun. So I've done
that a couple of times and it sounds amazing. If
you have this thing in your office, you basically have
a nice, beautiful speakerphone in a day to a speaker.

(37:01):
But I find that the HomePod is a little limited
because you have to airplay everything to it versus sons.
That sort of works as as the other speakers do,
which is through the Internet. And finally, Microsoft confirms that
you don't really need to safely remove USB flash drives
anymore by ejecting them. So if you've ever used a
Windows computer, you know that it always or any computer basically,

(37:24):
and this is a pet peeve of mind because I'm
always moving.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Do I move really fast? Megan, Yes, I'm like always
kind of like going.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Yeah, You're like, what's next, what's next, What's next?

Speaker 2 (37:33):
All the time, So pretty much that's me.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, And so for me to have to eject, to
take that extra fraction of a moment to eject a
flash drive out of my computer really annoys me. So
on Windows ten, you basically don't have to do that anymore.
They've admitted this because back in October when Windows ten
version eighteen oh nine came out, they quietly changed the
default flash drive setting between So it used to be okay,

(38:02):
let's see, it used to be safely remove hardware and
eject media. So let's see, Okay, there's something called quick removal.
So quick removal is now the new default, and quick
removal means that the computer knows that you're in a rush,
and so it will allow you to remove it at
any time. That is now the default now here's the caveat.
You still don't want to remove this drive while it's

(38:24):
writing files or you could lose stuff. And so that
was always the danger in removing the flash drive is
that it could have been the state of we're ready
to write a file at any time. Now it kind
of puts it in a sleep state. So I'm sure
that by changing this setting, things are a little bit
slower when it comes to accessing the flash drive, like
for the first.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Time when you go to drag a file.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
But on the flip side you can just pop it
out at any time and you're good to go.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
So are you excited about that?

Speaker 3 (38:50):
Well my question, Yeah, I was just about to say so.
Hopefully Apple will add that next I think.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
So.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
It's one of those things always I agree, so do I.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
And it's like and I and I used to I
used to literally always take it out without worrying every
single time, be like, come on, yeah, I'm a tech guy.
I don't really need to listen to these little warnings.
And now, of course, when I showed someone I think
I did like a YouTube video or something, and someone
saw me do that and like, no, rich actually, or
maybe I tweeted and it, people are like, no, no,
you really need to eject it. So there is a reason.

(39:22):
On the Mac you still want to do it. And
on Windows unless you've updated to the latest Windows, if
you're all up to date, then you're probably okay. Personally,
I'd still want to go into those settings of the
flash drive and just make sure that that's the setting,
but you should be okay.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
That's gonna do it all right for today? Thanks Megan,
that was fun. Thanks for coming on the show. How
can people get in touch with you? What's your oh?
On Twitter?

Speaker 4 (39:45):
I am on Instagram and Twitter. Megan mcmonagall is my name.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
And I'm gonna have her change that to producer Megan.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Producer Megan much easier fun.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
I mean, yeah, my last name is a little bit
difficult to remember.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Professor mcgonagalls. You know, it's like that.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
But with is that a Harry Potter reference?

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Yeah, yeah, you know Harry Potter.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
I know.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
I only read the first half of the first book
to watch all the movies. Yeah, I watched all I
didn't watch the movies.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, I grew up with Harry.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah see I did not Harry Styles or Harry Potter.
Oh I your generation, right.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
No, it is it is both. It's definitely both.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, for sure, we digress.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Well, thanks so much for listening to the podcast. Follow
Megan she we will see. We'll see how she does
on this show and then if we'll see if you
want to be.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
A recurring character.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
Right, yeah, we'll take a poll.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
I like the I like the questions from the emails,
so keep those coming. Hello at rich on tech dot tv.
You can find me on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter.
I am at rich on tech on most places. And
the newsletter. Have you been reading my newsletter? It's a
brand new thing. Every Friday, I send out basically a

(40:53):
letter to you personally, well you and like nine thousand
other people, but it feels personal because it's coming to
your inbox, right. So if you want to subscribe, go
to rich on tech dot substack dot com, or go
to my website rich on tech dot TV and click
the newsletter. And every Friday I send a little summary.
It's kind of like this podcast in a newsletter form,
but I also talk about like what I did that

(41:15):
weeks and behind the scenes pictures and just tell you
what's going on that you need to know in a
newsletter form. It's a lot of fun and I love
the response I'm getting. If you wrote me a response
to my newsletter, yes, I've read it. But I get
so many responses when I send this thing out that
I just can't write back to everyone. So if it's
an emergency question, text me. My number is three one Oh.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
No, just kidding.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
Wait, Can I just say that my mom loves the newsletter? Say, well,
me too, but like you know my mom more? Yeah, yeah,
she's a fan.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well thanks. Megan's mom, Maggie, Maggie's out. I'm putting Meghan's
whole family to work so far.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
He's on Instagram. You can follow her at Megan's Mom.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
Megan's mom was in one of our viral videos, the
rain video that went viral, her dad was in one
of our segments on KTLA, and Meghan, of course, is
now on the podcast. So your whole family is like,
you have deep connections to KTLA.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
We'll get into that.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
We'll unravel more of Meghan as we get into this podcast.
This weekend, I'll be filling in for the one and
only Leo Laporte on his show The Tech Guy. You
can listen on kf I AM six forty Saturday and Sunday.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
That is, let's see.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
The thirteenth and fourteenth of April from eleven am to
two pm. If you don't listen, you can download the
tech Guy podcast, or you can go to tech guy
Labs dot com to find a station near you because
it is syndicated across the US.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
So that's very exciting. Thank you Leo for giving me
that opportunity.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
And if you've found this podcast because of Leo, I
am forever indebted to you. Leo for bringing me so
many podcasts, folks.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
That's gonna do it for today.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Rich on Tech dot tv is the website to go
to for all things rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cord Cutting Keeps Getting More Expensive