CES officially kicks off today but there’s a bunch of pre-show activities that take place before the doors open at the Las Vegas Convention center. In our first dispatch video we take a look at CES Unveiled, an event where well over a hundred tech companies gather in one place to show off their products. Watch it here!
Yesterday I visited Lenovo’s suite to get a look at a few new things they have on the horizon for next year. They had some cool stuff that demonstrates that there’s still a lot of new ideas to be had in the PC industry. I’ll have the full video of my visit up on the Extra’s channel in a day or two with a few selected items making their way into Dispatch 2 or 3.
Last night we went to my favorite event of the show, Pepcom. Pepcom is similar to CES Unveiled and we had another 3+ hour marathon running from one table to the next to find some more hidden gems of the show. That video will go up maybe tonight but most definitely tomorrow.
Today is our 12 hour sprint.. This morning we’ll be headed down to the show floor to see what we can find and then it’s off to one last showcase event called Showstoppers.
So it looks like I’ll have at least 3 and possibly 4 videos from the show this year. Stay tuned!
After a harrowing journey we made it to Vegas! I did a quick livestream update video on what our plans are for the next few days. Check it out here!
The harrowing part of the journey had to do with Southwest Airlines. In order to get to Vegas we first had to fly from Hartford to Chicago. The Chicago flight had a two hour delay which would put it on the ground long after the Vegas flight departed.
Oddly Southwest did not cancel the flight or rebook me. When I called customer service the advice I was given was go to the airport because they might figure out a way to get the Chicago plane out on time.
Tracking the flight via Flightaware I noticed that the aircraft for our journey was actually arriving in Hartford on time yet the connecting flight was not leaving for well over an hour after its scheduled departure.
I arrived at the airport just as flight 1424 pulled up to the gate well in advance of the Chicago departure time. At the gate was a ramp agent who directed the exiting flight crew to gate 4 where a new aircraft would continue the flight on to Chicago.
I struck up a conversation with ramp agent and he was very helpful in trying to come up with some options. During the course of the discussion he looked up the reason for the equipment change, citing a maintenance issue on the aircraft. He said that under the circumstances I should be eligible for a hotel voucher and he checked with his supervisor who concurred.
Armed with this information I walked over to the ticket gate and had a conversation with the supervisor. I am never aggressive in these types of interactions especially now given all that Southwest’s employees have been through. Sadly this manager could not have been more condescending to me – asking me why I decided to leave for the airport if I knew the flight wouldn’t make it and telling me my options were to pay for a hotel out of pocket or sleep in the airport.
She then looked up the reason for the delay and said it was an ATC delay due to weather – not maintenance – that was delaying the flight. While that was true for the replacement aircraft, the reason why there was a replacement aircraft was because of a maintenance issue!
She then rebooked my Chicago to Vegas flight for the following day and refused the hotel voucher along with denying me a refund on my “early bird” boarding fee. I ended up with a high “C” boarding number which is the worst possible number to get when boarding a Southwest flight.
But we had to get there and Chicago overnight was the only way to do it. So I booked a hotel room at Midway and got in line to board. When we were walking down the jetway the ramp agent I spoke with earlier along with his supervisor ran up and said when I get to Chicago take it up with the manager there and use their names. They were adamant that this was eligible for a voucher as it was a Southwest logistical issue – not weather – that landed me in this predicament. I really appreciated these employees going that extra mile.
But it all worked out in the end. As we were flying to Chicago my Google alert pinged a delay for that original Chicago to Vegas flight. Sure enough when we arrived it was still there and by luck it happened to be in the next gate over. Somehow it was still there after I got off the plane and the gate agent there was able to get us on right as the door was closing. A win!
It’s clear Southwest is going to need a serious overhaul. Their reliability has gone downhill over the years because they have not made the proper investments in their IT infrastructure. Thankfully they still have a lot of employees (minus the condescending manager) who do want to truly help customers. I hope the company realizes how lucky they are to have these people on the frontlines and equip them with the tools to help them do their jobs better in the future.
My last video of 2022 is my monthly sponsored video for Plex! This month I’m revisiting the watchlist feature that we first looked at a few months ago. You can watch it here.
Watchlist is like a “to-do list” of the content that you want to watch, both on your local Plex server but also on other services. Plex will constantly monitor content offerings on other platforms and let you know where your favorite shows and movies can be seen.
What’s changed is that Watchlist now has its own position on the Plex sidebar (before it was integrated into the Discover feature). Another welcome change is that Watchlist will now keep track of individual episodes watched in a television series – before it would mark the entire show as watched even if a single episode was marked seen.
In the video I also show you some useful tips and tricks for searching for content and adding it to the list along with filtering options to help narrow down your choices.
I love thin and light laptops! This has been a great year for this product category because there are so many good ones to choose from. This latest one from Lenovo, the Slim 7i Carbon, is another worthy of consideration. You can watch my video review here.
It comes it at just over 2 pounds (969 grams), has great performance from its i7-1260p processor, and even manages to pack in a 2560×1600 (2.5k) 16:10 display running at 90hz and 400 nits of brightness.
Like any thin and light laptop there are a few compromises. Downsides on this one are its 720p webcam and some performance throttling under heavy load (typical for laptops of this size). You’ll hear the fan kicking on quite often on this one to keep the processor temperature in check.
Battery life isn’t bad for an Intel based machine, expect about 9-10 hours of usage with display brightness down and sticking to basic tasks.
This form factor would be a great candidate for a more efficient ARM based processor. I expect in the very near future we’ll see more options in this form factor which should improve its battery life significantly.
For Windows fans looking for something ultra portable without many compromises this is definitely one to consider.
I begin the video with an overview of the great Atari 50th Celebration compilation (affiliate link). The compilation is a virtual museum of all things Atari including their arcade games, computer systems and all of their consoles (including the Lynx & Jaguar!). There are dozens of playable games on the compilation but many of my favorites didn’t make the cut primarily due to licensing issues.
There are lots of great videos on the Atari 2600 on YouTube so I focused on a few favorites from my childhood collection in the second part of my video. Most of the games featured are my original 2600 cartridges! Surprisingly they all booted right up.
For the games I couldn’t find cartridges for I was able to play them using a flash cart called the Harmony Cartridge. The Harmony cart can play just about every game ever released for the 2600 including some titles that make use of special chips like Pitfall 2. One of the things that I love about living in the future is that we have great new hardware for legacy systems!
The Atari 2600 era was a time of great experimentation where every idea was made into a game. Many of these experiments fell flat but many others became timeless classics that influence modern game mechanics.
In a comment, viewer Yuan Chang best summed up the 2600 : “Gaming distilled down to its purest elemental form and even in that form, it provided countless hours of fun.”
The Nvidia Shield TV is one of the longest supported Android devices ever made. The original 2015 Shield TV is still getting updates and support from Nvidia. But it will be losing its Gamestream feature in February of 2023.
Gamestream allows for streaming PC games to the Shield from a PC running with a Nvidia GPU. You can learn more about it in my latest video.
Gamestream is a free feature that works in conjunction with the GeForce Experience on Nvidia GPU equipped PCs. The GEforce experience scans hard drives for compatible games irrespective of where they were purchased from and automatically optimizes the game’s settings for streaming. The game reverts back to its prior local settings after the game quits.
The only officially supported Gamestream client is the Nvidia Shield TV and their now defunct handheld and tablet Shield devices. But the open source Moonlight app has for many years worked with Gamestream to allow this to work with just about any device. To their credit Nvidia did not do anything to restrict Moonlight from doing this even though the feature was designed to sell more Shield hardware.
The Moonlight team is now putting some resources in to help the Sunshine project get its open source server up and running. Once that happens Moonlight won’t be dependent on Nvidia’s software any longer and non-Nvidia GPUs will also work.
For alternatives Nvidia suggests subscribing to their GeForce Now subscription streaming service. The service connects to a subscriber’s Steam, Epic and Ubisoft accounts and streams some (but not all) of their game library from Nvidia’s cloud data centers to the Shield and many other devices. Not every game works with GeForce Now as many publishers restrict streaming of their titles – even for purchased games.
For a free alternative Nvidia suggests installing the Steam Link app that allows for streaming games from a PC’s Steam library. But Steam Link has its limitations and requires additional work to load non-steam games from the Shield.
My gut on this is that Gamestream was not a heavily used feature and a bulk of those who were using it did so with the Moonlight app vs. the Shield TV. Hopefully progress on the Sunshine server will be swift over the next couple of months and we’ll have a better alternative than before. Stay tuned!
In my original review of the 3rd Generation Amazon Fire TV Cube I said that Amazon’s top of the line streamer is not something I can recommend for enthusiasts due to issues with lossless audio passthrough in Plex and similar apps.
Enthusiasts running Plex typically stream rips of Blu-Ray movies with lossless audio tracks containing Dolby ATMOS True HD audio or one of the many flavors of DTS. The only name-brand box that does it perfectly is the aging Nvidia Shield so many enthusiasts were hoping that Amazon would offer something to meet that need as well.
And then I got a DM from my friend Elias Saba at AFTVNews.com who passed along this story about those issues being addressed in a firmware update. So, I bought another box (I sold my original one to a viewer) and posted this followup video to see if they got it fixed.
The good news is that Dolby TrueHD ATMOS audio is passing through correctly now. The bad news is that no flavor of DTS audio is passing through and it looks like Dolby Vision support for enthusiast media that was working before is no longer working. All of my titles defaulted to HDR10 even with an embedded Dolby Vision track. Dolby Vision continues to works fine in streaming apps which is probably 99% of this product’s audience.
I am going to hold onto my Cube though as it appears Amazon is trying to address this enthusiast need. As new firmwares come down I’ll continually test things to see if anything changes. Stay tuned!
This is a quick one that is the subject of my latest YouTube Short. If you’re using Plex on an Apple device you can bring back the old Plex icon for the app if you’re not crazy about the new one.
It looks like this mini-feature is limited only to Apple devices at the moment. It did not appear to be an option on Android mobile or Android TV at the time of posting.
A few months ago I started look at ways to follow Indieweb principles in how I produce and consume content. On the consumption side I spent some time freshening up my RSS reader with a blob of feeds that I have been tracking for almost twenty years now. As for creation I set up this blog and looked at ways to syndicate content from the blog out to other places.
In my latest video in this series we take a look at how it’s all working six months later. I also look at some ways to decentralize other parts of my work, including video using a federated platform called Peertube.
It’s been fun exploring how open source developers are engineering ways to replicate the experience and reach potential of centralized platforms but in a way that’s completely decentralized. Join a server if you want or spin up your own – either way you’re in control of your content and data. And the best part is that there’s no owner who can pull the plug on it.
The past few weeks have shown the perils of centralization with Twitter’s ongoing drama and the collapse of centralized crypto exchanges. In many ways centralizing things on the Internet runs counter to its design doesn’t it? With the proliferation of much faster upstream broadband there’s a lot of opportunity in the decentralized “fediverse.” I think this will likely be as much of a focus in the 2020s as centralized networks were in the 2010s.
The Gamevice Flex controller for Android and iPhone (compensated affiliate links) is the subject of my latest video review. If this looks like the Razer Kishi that I reviewed a year or two ago it’s because Gamevice manufactured that device for Razer. Razer went in a different direction for their version 2 controller.
The biggest challenge any of these slide-in controllers have is finding a way to make things fit properly given how every phone is a different size. Phone cases complicate this problem further. Gamevice attempts to solve this problem by including dozens of slide in adapters to ensure a snug fit. They also have a compatibility guide on their website to provide further peace of mind.
I tried a couple of phones, some with cases, some without. I was able to get all of them to fit snugly, unlike the Kishi that always felt a little loose. It’s not all that difficult to slide out the spacers and put new ones in. But you’ll definitely want to hang onto the original packaging so you don’t lose them. Gamevice says they can fit up to the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra but it’s not big enough to accomodate larger devices like tablets. So the iPad Mini is a no-go here.
Gamevice accounts for nearly every variation in phone size
On the Android side you’ll need a phone that has a USB-C port that supports OTG data devices (most meet that requirement these days). The iPhone version uses a lightning connector and it will fit everything from a small iPhone 6s all the way up to the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Both versions offer a passthrough charging port, with the Android version supporting USB-C and the the iPhone version using a lighting connector. You’ll also get an actual 3.5mm headphone jack on the left-hand side of the controller!
The controller interfaces with its USB or lightning connector to the phone, meaning it’s not using bluetooth. It therefore doesn’t need to be charged and it shouldn’t draw all that much power from the host device. This will reduce input lag a bit but the performance will vary based on the phone and the USB controller in use. I have found even some of the best phones are not great when it comes to input latency, however.
From a gameplay perspective the Flex solves a lot of the problems I had with the Kishi. Gone are the analog deadzones and oversized thumbsticks. Controls are very sensitive and begin responding with just a slight movement on the stick. The d-pad is better too but still not perfect. I found that it would sometimes register errant diagonals when playing 8-bit NES games.
All in I found the Flex to be very competitive with my favorite mobile controller, the Backbone One for iPhone. The d-pad is better on the Backbone but the Backbone won’t work with phones in a case. The Flex appears to be a nice improvement over the original Razer Kishi design.
My latest video is a review of the Anker Powerhouse 90 – this is a portable powerbank that has an AC outlet! You can see my full review here.
If you’re shopping for one of these you’re going to find another one called the “Powerhouse 100.” I think the “90” is the new version of this product with a slightly smaller battery. This may have been required so it can be under the minimum for airline carry-ons, or they were looking so shave some cost. The difference between the two is about 10 watt hours.
The Powerhouse 90 advertises about 87 watt hours – meaning if you had a 1 watt draw it could run (theoretically) for 87 hours. The real-world longevity you’ll get out of the battery will vary but I think if you had a full load of 87 watts through the AC outlet you’ll likely see far less than an hour due to overhead of the inverter, etc.
The powerbank can deliver a maximum of about 160 watts simultaneously budgeted as follows: 12 watts for the USB-A ports, 45 watts for the USB-C port, and 100 watts for the AC outlet. In the video we plugged in a large studio LED light that draws 36 watts via the AC outlet, had a Steam Deck drawing about 33 watts out of the USB-C, and plugged in two smart phones to the USB-A ports. It was able to provide consistent power to each device.
The power bank charges via the USB-C port at a rate of 45 watts. A full charge from empty will take about 3 hours via a 45 watt USB-C power adapter.
So what’s the use case here? For me it’s about charging the devices I have in my production bag that can’t charge over USB. For example my Canon and Sony camcorders I use for remote productions need to be charged using their AC adapters. This pack will allow me to keep things topped off (or even fully powered) as we walk from one location to another when shooting a dispatch video.
My latest video is the third in a sponsored series exploring how to use a Synology NAS device as a backup solution. This new video focuses on how to back the NAS up offsite once you have data on it through their Hyper Backup solution and via Snapshot Replication. You can see the video here.
Hyper Backup is something we’ve covered in the past. It takes data stored on the NAS and backs it up to external media or cloud destinations. It can be configured to store multiple versions of files so if somebody messes something up it’s relatively easy to “roll back” to a prior version if it was included in the back up job.
I’ve been using Hyper Backup for quite awhile now and have multiple jobs running on my personal NAS. One job maintains a full backup to a USB hard drive at night, while another sends my important work offsite to Amazon S3. The NAS settings gets included in that as well so it’s pretty easy to do a full restore should one be needed on existing or new hardware. The data is encrypted before it gets sent to the cloud provider for added security.
Snapshot replication works in a different way. It will keep everything on one Synology NAS mirrored on another every time a snapshot job fires off. Should there be a hardware failure a relatively quick switchover can occur without the need to run a full restoration process first. You can even switch back to the original hardware once everything gets resolved. And because it works on an incremental basis you can get the initial data load done on your local network and then relocate the destination NAS offsite for smaller incremental updates.
It’s really crazy how many features Synology’s developers have packed into these boxes. I could devote an entire channel to this topic and never run out of things to cover. This series was great because I learned some new tricks that I didn’t know my NAS could do.
You can see my growing collection of Synology videos on this playlist. I want to thank them for their ongoing support of the channel!
Each year I take a look back at all of the products I reviewed and pick a few that I think stand above the rest. Some of these are not terribly exciting but are now a useful part of my workflow! Check out the video here!
From a tech perspective this was the year for handheld devices. The FPGA-based Analogue Pocket and Valve’s Steam Deck are the most innovative devices I looked at this year and are now a regular fixture in my gaming world.
While not as revolutionary, Apple’s M2 Macbook Air was easily my favorite laptop of the year. It checks all of the major boxes reviewers and consumers look for in a laptop: excellent performance, seemingly limitless battery life, and in a thin and light weight package that comes in under 3 pounds. While the performance gains are marginal vs. the M1 Air, the hardware improvements make it a great upgrade from the prior model.
There are a few other items of note in the video including some neat smart home devices, a great screen cleaner, and more.
I have been looking for an affordable 4k gaming monitor that could go north of 60hz while also support Nvidia G-Sync. The 28″ Samsung G70A fits the bill for me and you can see more about it in my most recent review here.
It can run at up to 144hz and supports both Nvidia Gsync and AMD freesync. In the video we tested it with both a gaming PC with an Nvidia graphics card and an Xbox Series S in its variable frame rate mode. Since the display supports HDMI 2.1 the PS5 should also work but I do not own a PS5 to test.
I was impressed with its raw performance, both in its ability to deliver high frame rate 4k video and its very fast 1ms response rate. Even 8 bit NES games ran with barely a hint of image blur with the lowest input lag I’ve tested so far on a display.
But it’s otherwise a barebones display – something I would expect for the price point. It’s not color accurate for content creation, meeting only 90% of the DCI gamut. At 400 nits it’s not incredibly bright either, but fine for late night gaming sessions. The display does support HDR10 but because its maximum brightness is only 400 nits it gets super dim when HDR modes are enabled. So I’m not going to recommend this for 4k media consumption either.
It does not have speakers on board but does have an audio output for connecting speakers. That’s how I have it configured on my gaming PC right now. But it does have RGB lights where speakers would otherwise be located if that’s your sort of thing.
One thing I learned the hard way during a livestream the other day is that cable choice is super important when pushing 4k video beyond 60hz. So for HDMI connections an HDMI 2.1 rated cable is a necessity while DisplayPort users should look for a 1.4 cable. You may get an image initially out of lesser rated cables but once a game gets booted up you’ll likely see the video drop.
My latest video is an overview of what I’ve experienced so far on the Mastodon social media “federation.” I say “federation” and not “network” here because Mastodon is designed to work in a decentralized manner that no one directly controls. You can find me on Mastodon at @lonseidman@indieweb.social.
Mastodon’s federation consists of a growing number of servers located throughout the world that host users and their content. Servers share that content with each other, allowing a user on one server to follow content created by a user on another.
The result is an experience that feels similar to Twitter but does not have a single decision maker or management team moderating content. Each Mastodon server is run by volunteers or a single owner, and those server administrators have total control over who does what on their servers. In other words you could get kicked off a server on a whim, or your server owner could decide to shut everything down one day when they’re sick of paying for it.
Another issue involves the federated network itself. If a group of server owners decides they don’t like the content coming out of a particular instance on the federated network they can choose not to carry content from that server. So while you can still have a presence, the reach of that presence could be significantly restricted. This is something Anil Dash discovered on the instance he chose to plant his flag on :
So choosing the right server to start on is an important decision point. While it’s possible to export your content to another one it’s definitely a pain point for the fledgling network.
I decided to start on indieweb.social which is managed by some followers of the Indie Web movement. I picked this server because I’m passionate about independently produced and hosted content and this community is all about that. So on my server I can converse with people I may not know but share my passion for independent content while also having a broader experience with the rest of the “fediverse.” You can see how that works in the video.
Some users are opting to choose to run their own servers, but the cost is certainly much higher (and more complex) than running a simple WordPress instance. And of course this is a heck of a lot more complicated than signing up for a Twitter account.
I see a lot of potential with Mastodon especially as it seems to be attracting many new users lately. I think they’ve added more in the last couple of months than they added in the last several years. Can it scale to the size of a Twitter or Facebook? That remains to be seen – especially given the burden of cost that will be put on the server operators to support the users and content.
Over time we may also see multiple federations that are completely walled off from each other for various reasons. Mastodon’s code is open source so there’s nothing preventing this from happening.
Mastodon’s decentralization is a fascinating approach to social media and it’ll be interesting to see how this federation of independent servers operates and scales. I expect a lot of bumps in the road ahead and it’s questionable if the non-techie public will adopt a platform that is more complex than a centrally controlled corporate platform.
Amazon added a pen to their popular Kindle reader with the new Kindle Scribe (compensated affiliate link). It is a great note taker but there’s definitely some room for improvement on the software side. See my full review here.
The pen works really nicely on this device. The screen is not too slippery and feels very close to a pen on paper. The Kindle’s e-ink display adds some additional realism to the note taking experience. It of course also functions like the other Kindle e-readers and its large 10.2″ screen that works much better for large text vs. the smaller Kindles.
There are two pen choices available. For my review I went with the version with the “Premium Pen” that has an eraser on the back and a button on the side that can switch to a different virtual pen type when its pressed in. The standard pen lacks those features. Both pens do not require batteries or charging and will magnetically attach to the side of the Scribe.
My big issue with the Scribe is all on the software side. If you’re reading a book you can only place handwritten notes in a small box that embeds in a highlight on the page. The handwritten notes do not sync back to other devices but typed out notes do.
If you have a PDF that you brought over via the “send to Kindle” mechanism, you can write directly on the page. Like the books the handwritten annotations will not sync back to your Kindle library but you can click the share button and email the PDF back to yourself with notes embedded.
The Scribe also has a notebook/sketchbook feature. This has a number of templates that include lined paper, graphic paper, etc. In this mode the notes sync in their entirety back to your Kindle account and you can view those notes on any platform. But you can only edit them on the Scribe.
This definitely feels like a first generation product. But its limitations feel mostly software-based as opposed to the hardware.
August has put together a nice “bolt on” smart lock for existing deadbolts locks. Through their app you can create revokable virtual keys for guests, house cleaners, etc that can allow access on a certain schedule. You can see my full review here and find one here at the best price (affiliate link). These go on sale from time to time and I’ve seen it sold as low as $179.
I reviewed the prior model in this product line and this new one definitely feels more refined. It’s more compact, has better battery longevity, and integrates Wi-Fi in addition to Bluetooth for connectivity. It supports the “big three” (Apple Homekit, Google Home and Amazon Alexa) but the Wi-Fi connectivity doesn’t work with Apple Homekit. So you’ll need an Apple device like an Apple TV or an old iPad within Bluetooth range to access the lock remotely.
What I like the most about the August products are the virtual keys you can assign to users. These keys are revokable, meaning you can delete them without having to call a locksmith, and you can set them to be valid only during certain days or times of the week. Guests accessing the home will need a smartphone (iPhone or Android) running the August app, however.
The lock also comes with a sensor that will detect when your door is ajar or open.
While most of the door locks I’ve reviewed run on AA batteries this one runs with an odd size – it requires two CR123 lithium batteries. Battery life will depend on whether or not you’re using the Wi-Fi and how often the lock is triggered to open and close.
It runs on CR123 lithium batteries
I did have to use the included trim piece (the black circle you can see behind the silver lock) because the lock was so small that it didn’t fully cover the hole cut for my deadbolt lock.
If you’re looking to make an existing dumb deadbolt smart this is a good solution. You can keep your physical keys for yourself and share virtual keys for those you want to grant access to your home.
We don’t often associate Chromebooks with gaming but Lenovo thinks there’s some opportunity with the rise of game streaming services to bring a gaming focused Chromebook to market with their new Gaming Chromebook (affiliate link). You can see my full review here.
What makes this Chromebook better for game streaming? Its display. It has a nice 16″ display running at 2560 x 1600 (a 16:10 aspect ratio) that runs at 120hz. Right now only one streaming service supports that frame rate (GeForce Now), but the faster refresh rate does provide a zippier overall experience even when not playing games.
And of course no gaming laptop would be complete without a RGB backlit keyboard. This might be the first Chromebook with one although the controls are limited to a few colors and there doesn’t seem to be a way to customize colors to a specific range of keys.
What struck me in reviewing this device is that it’s probably one of the better Chromebooks on the market overall even for non-gaming. Beyond the nice display it has a great 1080p webcam, a number pad for spreadsheet power users, and great performance in both Chromebook functions including running Android and Linux apps.
One shortfall though is that its Intel processor will have some compatibility issues with popular Android games like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile. Both of these popular games crash constantly on the device similar to how they perform on other Intel based Chromebooks.
It’s pretty reasonably priced at $599 for the i5 version. A lower cost i3 version was loaned to the channel for review although it does not appear to be available at the time of publication.
Every month I produce a sponsored video for Plex (affiliate link) showing how to use one of the many features of their media application. This month’s video looks at their Discover Credits Feature.
Discover Credits works a lot like IMDB but it’s built right into the Plex interface. So as you’re watching a movie you can select a cast member and see what other films and television shows they appear in. And if that show or movie is available to watch in your own Plex library or on a streaming service you can jump right to it with a single click! Very cool for exploring the work of your favorite stars. You can also add specific pieces of content to the watchlist feature so you can catch up at a later time.
Those of you who read my blog or subscribe to my email newsletter already know about the condition my local power company Eversource left Comcast’s fiber optic cables in the other day. Eversource replaced a broken utility pole but cut out the portions of the old pole where the communications cables were attached. They then tied that remaining portion of the old pole to the new pole with a rope!
In my latest Weekly Wrapup video I take you further into this mess and show you some other examples of a number of other damaged poles that Eversource and our local phone company Frontier have blighted my neighborhood with.
Some have come to the defense of the electric utility saying it’s not their job to fix any of this. I disagree. Eversource, Frontier and Comcast have been granted the right to profit from poles placed on public and private right-of-ways that they don’t have to pay to access. Frontier and Comcast were even able to get regulations on their business activities lifted allowing them to stay on those poles forever without any government interference into their prices or practices.
So I really don’t care whose responsibility it is – all of these companies should see an issue impacting their customers as a problem they all need to collectively work to solve. Why? Because we provide them free access to public and private land to place the utility cables that they profit greatly from. It wasn’t that long ago that a broken pole immediately resulted in all hands on deck to fix it properly. Sadly that’s not the case anymore.
Comcast did reach out to me following publication of this video to say they will be working to fix the problem. I’ll let you know when that happens.
