The Uncast Show
Owning an Unraid server gives you the ultimate control over your data and reduces your dependence on The Cloud. Join host Ed Rawlings to learn how to get the most out of your Unraid server, stay up to date on relevant news and topics, and get to know members of the Unraid community!
The Uncast Show
Home Lab Wins, Vendor Lock-In Fails, and Tales from Japan
In this May edition of Ed & Stefano Unleashed, join us for a jam-packed discussion covering everything from Unraid 7.1's biggest new features to the frustrations of vendor lock-in in the NAS world, and much, much more:
Ed returns from Japan with tech stories, cultural insights, and a few surprises—including a deep dive into Japan’s electronics scene and safety culture.
We break down Unraid 7.1 features for home lab tinkerers and what ZFS pool imports mean for power users.
The gaming chat heats up as DLSS4 enters the spotlight—plus, Stefano shares why high-end graphics cards sometimes hurt more than help.
We talk Jellyfin vs. Plex, the end of the Self-Hosted podcast, and why community trust matters more than ever in tech.
Plus, personal updates, smart home debates, and a look at how the Unraid and home lab community continues to thrive.
Chapters:
0:00 – Intro & Ed’s Japan Trip
6:59 – Unraid 7.1: ZFS Imports, Wi-Fi Support
15:51 – Graphics Cards, DLSS4 & Gaming Talk
19:50 – Japan Tech Shopping & Cultural Reflections
43:38 – Synology Vendor Lock-In Discussion
52:53 – Farewell to Self-Hosted Podcast
55:01 – Jellyfin vs. Plex
1:07:52 – Smart Homes, The Last of Us +TV Chat (SPOILERS) & Viewer Q&A
What will you build with Unraid?
Get Started with Unraid in 15 minutes or less:
https://unraid.net/getting-started
The hosts of Ed & Stefano Unleashed are passionate about home servers, open-source tech, and sometimes going off on tangents.
The views and opinions expressed on the show are solely those of the hosts and guests and do not reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of Lime Technology, Inc.
This show is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research, experiment responsibly, and not hold the hosts accountable for any questionable home lab decisions. Most importantly, enjoy the show!
Discover how technology is reshaping our lives and livelihoods.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Other Ways to Connect with the Uncast Show
Hello everyone. So I think we are live. We are live, Stefano, Stefano is like trolling there as normal. So let's start. So step right up, all of you over the internet, whatever time zone you've escaped from you humans, cyborgs, nas nerds, dockerheads and data hoarders, lovers of everything self-hosted, welcome back to another episode. So it's another month, another excuse to procrastinate on our server maintenance. We've all been planning. So, stefano, how's it going?
Speaker 2:It's going good, man I can't complain, just working on the homelab trying to solve some issues. I don't know if you remember we talked about a dock last episode. I went to go buy one and it was scammed on ebay and so now I can't use it. Uh, so gotta deal with the repercussions there and stuff. What about for you?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, I'm pretty good, thanks, but let's just say a big shout out to everyone in the live chat. You know, don't be shy. Everyone out there say hi, tell us what's on your home lab bench today. Um, but if you're watching later on replay, well you just have to imagine, I guess, all the witty comments flying by. So, yeah, so I don't think they show up on replay now. I just want to apologize to everyone if you can hear something strange in the background at the moment. Um, across the street they've decided to, in the building across the street, test the fire alarm. So stefano says he can't hear it, but it normally takes two or three minutes, so hopefully that will clear up in a moment I think I can't hear it now yeah, it's very, very annoying.
Speaker 1:Um, I just want to ask everyone if they can actually hear me in the chat. Um, if my and ste Stefano's volumes seem okay and hi there. Marcus. Marcus has joined us. Great to have you here, Marcus. Hopefully the volume is loud and clear.
Speaker 2:Excellent, anyway, so what?
Speaker 1:have I been up to. Um, hopefully the volume is loud, loud and clear, excellent, anyway. So I think he's talking about the alarm. Uh, it is like it. There's a school across the road and, oh, it's going away. The first time I ever heard it it sounded like an air raid, um siren. I thought I had to like kind of run under the table and get ready for some bombs to drop, or something oh man, it sounds like it's stopped now, so you have ice cream trucks in the uk oh, we do yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean you could just lie to us all and be like oh, it's an ice cream truck and that's the siren well, pretty horrible ice cream truck that would be anyway.
Speaker 1:So, guys, I've, um, just made it back from japan. Now, it was a great trip. The return not really quite so great three flights, 22 hours of travel and a little detour through shanghai airport which, honestly, to be honest, it felt like a military boot camp. It was like stand there, no, not there, turn around faster. To be honest, I thought they're going to recruit me into the army before I got my next flight. Um, and just when I thought things couldn't get worse, got home, got food poisoning which then turned into a lovely secondary infection which swelled my face up so badly. I worried doing this podcast, warner brothers, might copyright strike me for looking too much like sloth from the goonies, but anyway, it's gone down now, so I was able to do the show. Um, the meds have all kicked in and I'm here. So, unless stefano decides to bail on me, which I thought he was going to earlier because he had a bit of a time constraint but I think you're all right now, stefano, aren't you?
Speaker 2:yep, we can, uh, thank the weather for changing so rapidly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're not going to have to cut the show short too much. So, anyway, welcome everyone. Let's just see who's in the chat.
Speaker 2:We got Fugazi.
Speaker 1:Did you make that dashboard yet, Stefano?
Speaker 2:No, I did not.
Speaker 1:No, stefano has not, he lied.
Speaker 2:I'm a big fat liar. I look man in my defense. I finally stopped playing tarkov. Okay, I bought space marine 2. I've been playing the hell out of it and then, out of nowhere, oblivion remaster dropped. So what am I supposed to do? Honestly, yeah.
Speaker 1:well, you got a little bit of an excuse there, stefano. We'll let you off a bit there, thank you. So, anyway, shall we unleash the nerdy goodness then, stefano? Yeah, did I take my pants off, or how does this work, Stefano? I always tell you you've got to behave yourself.
Speaker 2:Family approved. Okay, sorry.
Speaker 1:So let's kick it off. Basically, probably what everyone's been waiting for is Unraid 7.1, the stable release. It should be landing any day now. Right now, I think we're at RC4, aren't we, stefano? Is it RC4? That sounds right. We've got some great stuff in 7.1.
Speaker 1:The headline for me probably a lot of you watching is importing foreign ZFS pools. So if you've been thinking about jumping ship from something like TrueNAS, or if you're one of those poor souls wrestling with Synology's drive policies, maybe it's a good time to jump ship now. But more on Synology later on. But this is definitely going to make migrations much, much easier later on. But this is definitely going to make migrations much, much easier. And also for you hardware tinkerers um, battle mage gpu support is landed. So I think, card wise, with the battle mage cards, what we've got, stefano, is that the b580 and the b570 are out. Yep, um, I think there's like a rumor, is it? The b770 is rumored to be released, a much more powerful card with, I think, either 16 or 24 gigs of ram, but it's still mia that's what I hear.
Speaker 2:I I know that right now a big complaint is that 12 gigabytes or 16 gigs is not enough. Uh, nvidia thinks it is, but obviously we know it's not in real life, so it'd be really cool if they do release like a 24 gig version.
Speaker 1:A 24 gig would be super good. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we haven't seen it yet. You know, when Intel they're just teasing us. At this point, I think the real battle mage is just patience, isn't it really? Yeah, and there's a lot of other issues going on, uh, politically as well, yeah, yeah. Well, we're not going to talk about politics today.
Speaker 1:We'll leave it at that um, and just to mention as well, um other unraid news the unraid plugin system is coming in 7.2, like this is going to be a game changer really for developers and people like us who like tweaking things. But we're going to save that really, um, for diving into when 7.2 getsa little closer. But you can check out the talk if you've got the um unraid digest. There's a link there where you can actually um watch the announcement all about that and how to use it. So check that out, guys. Okay, just checking the chat. Oh, and anyone who missed it last month when we said about the Wi-Fi support and the VM graphics improvements like GL, they're also in 7.1. So I was wondering as well anyone in the chat, anyone using Wi-fi support at all? Um, let us know.
Speaker 2:And if you are um, let us know what you're using it for and why what so I mean, I could kind of make, maybe like some inferences, because a long, long, long, long time ago, back in like 2010, we, um, when we were mining bitcoin in the early days we were using so much power with our miners we actually couldn't keep one of our servers, our nodes, our bitcoin nodes uh plugged in anywhere on that side of that other apartment because we were overloading the circuits, right. So we actually had to move the server on the other side of the house with a wi-fi and then have it on a wi-fi adapter so that way it could still access the internet.
Speaker 1:But I don't know, like, aside from like an extreme scenario like that, I'm not sure why anyone would use wi-fi for their unraid server I've actually been using wi-fi for my unraid servers sometimes yeah, or for real life for testing really, because if you see behind me there, yeah, I've got that other desk behind me, yeah, but my all my network stuff is really on this side. I have got a little network switch underneath with a few wires, but it's such a hassle to plug wires in. So I've got a little usb wi-fi adapter. So when I move the service over there and I'm kind of fitting in a graphics card, I want to just fire it up and check it's recognized before I put it back in the rack and find that it isn't or something. I can plug that in the front connect by wi-fi, get into the gui, have a look. But I haven't really used it for a permanent connection myself. But you know, it's been pretty useful actually for something I never really thought about that it would be useful for it.
Speaker 2:So I, I mean, I can understand like little nuanced situations like that, but like I don't know about long term, you know, like I don't, I can't think of a scenario where you might use it. There's probably like some cool things that people are doing with it, like oh, I just to test some. I don't, I don't know. But you know, maybe you should do what Dane is doing and switch over to SFP. Yeah, dane, are you using like a Mellanox for your Mellanox card, for your Unraid server?
Speaker 1:We should have a bit better latency on the chat this week, so I put it down to the ultra-low latency.
Speaker 2:You're doing copper connections for everything right Like just basic Ethernet yeah, yeah, yeah I'm just using cat6.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, same here. Yeah, um, 2.5 gig I've got on my network nice. So I've managed to go beyond um, beyond the one gig now and um I can't wait till you join us for 10 gig.
Speaker 2:I can't wait till you join us on a gig.
Speaker 1:I can't wait till you join us on a 10 gig I'd like to have 10 gig, but um, the switches are quite loud. That's what I don't like about it. Oh yeah, they can be, they definitely can't be I had a 10 gig switch before that I was using and it was just really loud and, um, I think I kind of like plugged in a power meter to it and it was using something like 80 watts and my server was using 90 watts.
Speaker 1:I thought now I'm not doing nothing I think my computer right now is using like 300, something we're just streaming but you know another thing I might use wi-fi, for we're thinking of moving house at the moment and um moving back to kind of where we used to live before actually, and this house, every single room is wired up with cat5 and cat6, so when I kind of move, um, I might need to have wi-fi until I can get the wires put in, so that'll be hear me out actually really useful video idea.
Speaker 2:I fly to the uk and help you install cat5 yeah or cat6.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I've got a better video idea what's that, yeah. You fly to the uk and wire the cat5 for me while I watch.
Speaker 2:That's, yeah, well that's the same thing that would be awesome yeah, I wonder if I could like hit up one of my regular content providers, like Alta Labs or TP-Link or somebody, and just hook you up with some awesome Wi-Fi. What Wi-Fi are you using right now? Ubiquiti.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, okay. Well, if you're already on Ubiquiti, you'll probably just stick with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty good Talking about hardware. This month's shiny new toys I think I've spoken about it last month, to be honest is I've got a 5080, no, sorry, a 5070 Ti and a 9070 XT and I'm trying to decide which one to keep. I've been having quite a lot of issues with the 9070 XT and pass-through. It does seem to have the reset bug, which is really upsetting that I can't use it for pass-through in a VM Not yet anyway. Hopefully that's something that will be sorted out, and this is all basically just to upgrade that this, upgrading my old um 3080 there, which is really still a really good card actually.
Speaker 1:But speaking of gpus, um, I've heard there's a new gpu being released any day now from amd, which is the r 9070 GRE, and that's launching on May the 8th, and it's China only for now. But if history tells us things, it might not stay that way. So I'm not sure if any of you out there remember there was another GPU called the 7900 GRE and that was back in 2023. And that was China only as well. But it did make its way slowly to resellers and system builders and it had really good reputation of like being, you know, really good bang for buck and it was a winner for a lot of people. So the 1970 GRR sorry, the 1970 GRE looks like it's going to follow the same kind of playbook. It's got 12 gigs of RAM, a few less stream processors, but it's going to be only $370. So a really nice mid-tier card. So I'm really hoping it does get a Western release sooner rather than later, otherwise we're all going to have to be stalking eBay for those gray market imports.
Speaker 2:I have two questions actually. One goes back to the previous topic about you moving. This is a big concern for me. If I come visit you, we have to be in walking distance of a pub, because where you live now is gray.
Speaker 1:Stefano, you're going to love it. It's in a village and there's an old pub and the house is actually joined onto the old pub, it's like. So I can literally walk out my front door and then kind of go out the front gate and go there.
Speaker 2:Then I'll be into the pub all right, let me know when you move it's even closer for you yeah, it is it, it's perfect. It means we can stay later and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it should be pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Okay. The second question, and this is serious, so I'm not too familiar with AMD graphics cards. Oh, okay, and I think the 970 GRE has fewer stream processors.
Speaker 1:It does. Yeah, Is that the same?
Speaker 2:thing as nvidia's encoding units.
Speaker 1:Um no, I think it's basically just more like the kind of like cuda in nvidia as far as yeah, so some does?
Speaker 2:does uh do amd maps cards like have uh dedicated encoders or yeah, they do, I believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but of course all of that's way too pedestrian for mr um, mr 4090 over there. Stefano's not stepping down to a mid-tier card unless it makes his morning coffee and mines bitcoin while he's gaming 100 and you can't mine bitcoin on graphics cards anymore. So highly unlikely. So anyway, you guys in the audience I don't know if anyone's ever imported a GPU or you'd ever consider getting the GRE model. If the price is right, Drop it in the chat. Love hearing about your questionable eBay purchases.
Speaker 2:In this case, wouldn't it make more sense? If it's $379 for the 9070 GRE, right, it would make more sense to just get the Intel Battlemage, because it'd still be cheaper and you'd still get 12 gigs of VRAM.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think the Intel cards are pretty good mid-tier cards. Yeah, so I just Justice has just said I have an unrelated question to Folder View 2, as it was not supported by Unraid 7. Has this changed now? Just check the App Store. Thanks for your comments. The Folder View 2 is is fundraised 7 and above. I believe it was the original folder view that wasn't supported in in 7. So this this one I think came out on the 13th of april, so it's been out a couple of weeks. Another developer's picked it up and is um is continuing it.
Speaker 1:And for those of you don who don't know what the folder view 2 is, your Docker containers like say, you've got Nextcloud all in one, for instance, which has I don't know, kind of five, six, seven, eight different containers you can group them all and have one icon for it, so you can have like Nextcloud and then you can expand that. So it's just like a folder where you can put different docker containers or vms into. So you can have all of your media containers in one, all of your r's and another or your downloaders in another. So people who have got pages and pages of of containers on their docker tab, you can actually kind of group them up and organize them a little bit and you can choose your own icons for the groups and that kind of thing. So that's what that is for those of you guys who haven't seen that before that's me.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen it before anyway, I want to talk about graphics cards. I'm afraid stephano a bit more, because I um, like I say, I went to japan recently and when I was there, um, I went all around japan, lots of different kind of cities, um, but tokyo I went to, um, akari bar, I think is how you pronounce it, which is the kind of electronic center of tokyo.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm gonna, I thought it was gonna be food related I'm gonna like um share my screen in a moment, try and show you guys, um, some photos. But, um, they've got the most awesome computer stores there that are like eight stories high and just each each floor has got kind of different things. Like one floor is just like motherboards, another one just like cpus, another bit you can just buy, like apple products and cases, everything you can ever think of, just like every cpu, you can think of gpus, all of them. Like you know, I've been complaining for months about how hard it is to get hold of my um 5070 ti and the amd card as well. Well, it's like a builder's paradise there, every single card you can just see straight away. So I'm going to try and share my screen with you guys.
Speaker 1:I'm going to show you some photos of some things that I think are pretty cool. In fact, what I'm going to do, I'm going to show you something first. I think this is the most cool CPU call I think I've ever seen in my life. Maybe there have been things like this before, I don't know, but it basically has a little screen on it that plays video and they love their anime in japan and this is like an anime themed computer and it's got like kind of anime video playing in the cpu core, so I'm gonna try and play that for you, if I can excuse me everyone, while I try and sort this sort this. Oh, it's a lot bigger than I thought it would be, so I try and zoom in. Do you see it there? Um, that the cooler um above the screen. Um, I just thought that was pretty awesome yeah, we have.
Speaker 2:We have those, but I think they the screens are smaller usually like that's huge it's just, I couldn't believe it when I saw it there.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, you know, I thought that was um pretty awesome myself it is awesome.
Speaker 2:I I kind of want one, but I don't. I don't ever know like I wouldn't be able to stick to a single thing, because it's essentially just a video on loop, right? Yeah, and I'm wondering how many different videos you could play on loop.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure. I wonder where the video actually comes from. I'm assuming it must be kind of onboard storage, because does it only start when the OS starts or has it got its own? It was very difficult to find out anything about it. I said, you know I was going to buy one if they sold them. But they said you had to buy the whole system. And one moment while I show you.
Speaker 2:Really Thank you. Our new egg? Yeah, it does that stuff. So you want this thing by this whole other thing that you don't need I'm going to try and share some photos here.
Speaker 1:So that's how much the computer cost. Yeah, in japanese yen um for that computer with the screen, and that's four thousand us dollars. So, um, I didn't buy it, but but it was pretty cool. It looks like it's on sale too. So anyway, there's just graphics cards on the shelves, like a whole bunch of 50s, 70s.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:I'm going to just go. I'm sorry these photos aren't in order. That was a little kind of like retro gaming bar, where you just go in and have a little drink and, um, they've got kind of retro games you can play. They come and give you like a little game boy and things like that. It's just really nice chilled out bar.
Speaker 2:I really that was like basically heaven for you, because you, you love retro bars.
Speaker 1:I love retro gaming. Yeah, hence the name.
Speaker 2:Space invader one um my channel was originally going to be about retro gaming, but it pivoted.
Speaker 1:Um, that's back inside the computer store again. That's kind of, you know, one of the flaws. You're going to see how much stuff there you can actually buy. It's just absolutely insane. Um, unfortunately I didn't take very many photographs. Most of what I did was just video. I kind of wore like um a gopro on a of this. I've got a lot of video footage but not so many still photos, unfortunately. Oh, there's like a car.
Speaker 2:Is that like a? I think that's a Subaru BRZ maybe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd just come back from you can go and do these. They have like a meetup, a car meetup at what's basically a service station in Japan, on the motorway and you just get literally probably hundreds of custom Japanese cars and even other supercars as well. There's like Lamborghinis there and custom trucks and lots and lots of GTRs, nissan GTRs.
Speaker 2:Well, custom trucks, that's a first, because in Asia trucks are more like utility vehicles, right, so they don't actually yeah like.
Speaker 1:This was like a big kind of like us style truck and the doors opened upwards oh, no way, lots of bling on the on the wheels and like lights, and it was really awesome.
Speaker 2:I gotta see that because, like you know, here in the us, you know people drive trucks as like more like a luxury vehicle, yeah, and so it would be interesting to see them blinged out like that um, here here's, like you know, kind of in some of the they have like retro gaming shops where you can just buy all sorts of retro gaming stuff.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I've got a whole bunch of things that I've kind of bought when I was there how's your japanese, are you? Uh, oh my japanese is really bad just like I kept trying to.
Speaker 1:I kept trying to say thank you all the time and, um, it's like arigato grass or something and I would always kind of like say it and I could see like the taxi drivers and stuff kind of like, kind of like laugh a little bit. But yeah, I think they did appreciate I did try. Yeah, but a lot of it was. I was kind of like, um, you know, typing into um chat gpt on the phone where I want to go and saying please can you make that into japanese? Then I'd like show it to the, to the taxi driver where I wanted to go yeah, yeah, I'd say that's pretty common.
Speaker 1:But ChatGPT really let me down when I was away. A lot of times I would say I'm here at the moment and I want to go here. How far is it to the hotel? Oh, it's just a four-minute walk, four or five-minute walk, okay. So it was my son and I that went. So I said to my son I said we'll walk here, it'll be okay, and chat GPT totally lied and it was like 40 minutes walk.
Speaker 2:And then.
Speaker 1:Then I'd like tell chat GPT off, you know, say excuse me. Like you know, it's taken 40 minutes. Oh, sorry about that. I said I asked you to double check and he goes. Yeah, I know you did ask me to double check and, um, I can understand why you've lost your trust in me. When I do things, I think, oh, shut up, I don't this apology, just tell me how far it really is. It's only two points on a map, but yeah, anyway, let me just show you a few more photos while I'm here for people who might like retro gaming. Yeah, there was just a whole bunch of things. I'm sorry I haven't got more photos to show you.
Speaker 2:Mario the Juggler? I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1:No, there are some very, very interesting kind of games I've never, ever heard of. There's your GPU. Look, stefano. Yeah, I'm not sure how much.
Speaker 2:that is interesting kind of games I've never, ever heard of um there's your gpu, look, stefano. Yeah, um I'm not sure how much that is, I don't know. It looks like those numbers are so large, but I'm like it's like three thousand dollars for a 4090, I think.
Speaker 1:I think I worked out when I was there. I think it's about 2000 or something, I'm not sure. Let Holy that's. That's fine, I'm going to find out how much that is. Give me one moment.
Speaker 2:You know it's it's crazy seeing just the vast number of electronics available, cause, like I remember, at one point you could walk into Best Buy. The shelves are full of graphics cards, full of power supplies and computer cases and accessories. And now it's just like it looks like the stores have been robbed or ransacked for their goods. I mean just everything's a mess. They have virtually no stock. They don't even bother locking the cages anymore because they have nothing to protect. It's just like what happened to us.
Speaker 1:But this graphics card actually $2,600 US.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:So if you're a tourist you do get the tax off, but that is pretty expensive. There were a lot of different shops and some were quite a lot more expensive than others, but this was a kind of touristy area that people go to. So I think some of them they kind of jack the prices up a little, a little bit I mean honestly, like you can't get a grass card right now.
Speaker 2:So I would understand if you just happen to be in japan for some reason. Like you know what it's here, it's available.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna get it like if I hadn't bought my other cards, I would.
Speaker 2:I would have bought a card when I was there, for sure, oh wow okay, do you know, is there like any sort of like a import tariff, like, if you?
Speaker 1:were to bring hardware with you back to the UK, probably officially, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I know you didn't, but I'm just curious because, like when I came to visit you, I was worried about, like I had all these electronics with me and I was worried about them, them being like hey, uh, why are you importing this into the country?
Speaker 1:I think I think if you bought like a two thousand dollar graphics card back into the uk, you really should go in. I've got something to declare customers channel and then they would charge you 20 vat on that.
Speaker 2:So you know, it would be quite a lot extra on the top well, thankfully, all the stuff I brought to your country was for work and I brought it back, so yeah, I tell you, I wanted to buy loads when I was there, um, but my wife had pre-packed both my son and i's suitcase before the trip.
Speaker 1:So let's say there was no wiggle room, um, um, between his stuff and my stuff and what the wife had packed in, just in case. I think my suitcase was heavier than all of my servers put together, so I'd have had to buy another one. Nice, but you know, no trip would be complete without a bit of chaos. I visited an island near Hiroshima called I'm going to probably pronounce this totally wrong near Hiroshima, called I'm going to probably pronounce this totally wrong um, my Jarima island. It's absolutely gorgeous, really beautiful place. You go on a little ferry to get to that. It's very small, our island. It has, like you know, lovely torii gates, um, but you can see the sun setting behind um. The sun just goes down behind um from over, which is really nice, across the kind of like bay. And I brought my laptop bag with me. I've got it somewhere here. There's no reason for you to see it, but I had my M3 MacBook Pro in there, I had my camera in there and I had an iPad Pro in there.
Speaker 1:I got off the ferry and thought, well've got to find the hotel. There was no taxis because it's too too kind of like, um, really a small island, really, um. And so I sat down on some benches, took my rucksack off, put it on the floor and I had my suitcase with me. I had to push the suitcase along kind of up this kind of quite steep hill, um, to get to the hotel and anyway off, I went up to the hotel, you know, checked in, you know, asking the staff loads of questions, taking loads of time, went up there and I thought, oh, that's a nice view out of the hotel window. I'm going to take a photo. And I thought, where's my camera?
Speaker 1:I thought and then like, basically I'm not sure if anyone's ever had the feeling where you go from really happy to like, this kind of feeling of panic and dread inside of you, and it feels like, you know, your stomach has actually kind of like fallen out of your body and hit the floor and I realized I haven't got my laptop bag. I thought, oh my god. And I knew the insurance like wouldn't cover it, like I think I checked my travel insurance before I left and they only pay up to 500 pounds per article. So you know, obviously a macbook pro is worth a lot more than that. So I was thinking this is going to be really disastrous. So, anyway, I said, said to my son, let's just walk back and trace the steps back. And I got back to the bench where I was about an hour later and the bag hadn't been touched. It was there, people just walking past? Absolutely yeah, you know just the so lack of crime. It was absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2:I was just my understanding is is that because the uh like? So south korea is similar in a lot of ways to japan, in the sense that, like you know the country, the countries aren't as diversified like population wise, like like here in the united states, we're a melting pot, right, and so you tend to have less crime because of that. I don't know how true that is, but that's like one of the primary reasons that, like, you could just leave. Like how many times you see someone just leave their phone at their table and then go to the, go to the bathroom or whatever yeah, that would never happen in the united states?
Speaker 1:no if I, if I'd left my, if I'd left my bag in bristol um, just in on the street for five minutes, well, I'd worry about putting it down next to me yeah, I'm not, I'm not looking at it but it might not be there when I turn around, you know. But yeah, that was something about japan, absolutely awesome that is awesome the culture that I loved it. The people were so friendly um.
Speaker 2:It was very, very, very nice how did your son like being in japan?
Speaker 1:he loved it. Yeah, um, you know he he loved, he loves the car culture and you know he's quite into cars. So, um, that was kind of his favorite bit, I think, when we went to the car thing. But yeah, he really enjoyed, really enjoyed going there. Um, he deliberated for ages about in the computer shop what mouse he should buy. There's probably a lot of options.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of options and then, like you know, you know when he deliberated for ages about in the computer shop what mouse he should buy. There's probably a lot of options. There's a lot of options, and then when you're kind of young, $10 makes a difference between which one you choose. Yeah, yeah, so he's going. Can we go back to the other shop? And I just want to see how much it was there.
Speaker 1:So we had to go to about three different shops until we found the one he wanted that was at the cheapest price of all of them. How long were you guys there for? Like a whole week, 12 days, I think, 12 days. Is it 12 days? I think 12 days, but a day each side was traveling.
Speaker 2:So 10 full days over there.
Speaker 1:So if anyone else ever had a tech travel nightmare, let us know you know. If anyone else ever had a a tech travel nightmare, let us know. Um broken hardware, mid-trip left gear behind, you know, so let us know um.
Speaker 2:Anyway, moving on to kind of ai stuff, I guess you could call dlss for ai yeah, I think technically, or at least the technology, was AI trained or something to the matter to the effect so I believe um you know, dl excuse me, dlss4 is rolling out in more and more games now yeah, and then, uh, you can, and with nvidia you can also override uh dlss on some older games, so you can can use DLSS for technology, which is really nice.
Speaker 1:Oh wow Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the game doesn't actually have to support it natively.
Speaker 2:Not technically. No, there you can still run into some issues, especially with whatever the anti-cheat software, like anti-cheat solvers, might detect that and you could, you know know, get blocked and stuff. So it's not like the perfect thing. Um, I think we're really hoping that nvidia kind of figures out a way to allow that technology to work with older games and also where anti-cheat won't detect it and, you know, block you or ban you from the game do you?
Speaker 1:do you use it yourself, stefano? Is it something you've you've tried out on your machine or? Um, I guess you're 40, 90. You could probably brute force minecraft at 16k resolution anyway, couldn't you?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, most games are just brute force. Um, I am actually not really a fan of dlss because and and this isn't about dlss4, this is my previous experience.
Speaker 2:I haven't tried it yet, so things could have changed but I would get headaches when DLSS was enabled, because it just looked like everything was smeared or something was off with the picture that I don't think I could visually see with my eyes, but my brain was able to pick up Right, and so I've never I've always turned DLSS off, um, cause for me it's, it's almost as bad as, uh, a motion blur Like I also, motion blur also makes me feel uncomfortable, yeah, and so I've never used it. Um, and DLSS four maybe has improved some of the smearing or issues, but I still haven't tried it. I'm kind of scared to try it. And the one new game I have that supports it, which would be no, no, no, I don't know if Space Marine 2 supports DLSS 4 or not. I don't think I have any games that actually support DLSS 4.
Speaker 1:I thought about enabling it, forocko says love you, love you back, man I I thought about enabling it for uh escape from tarkov.
Speaker 2:But escape from tarkov has anti-cheat, so I was like all right I'm not gonna do that, so why is it considered cheating then? Uh, because I you so, at least for the case of Escape from Tarkov, you have to replace one of the DLLs to use DLSS4. Dll DLSS4, anyway, and so the anti-sheet will detect that modification. But other titles I don't think that's necessarily true. It's more like a checkbox to override and I don't really know what it's doing under the hood, necessarily, but I think it may also be swapping dlss or dll's if you are uh you know, overriding it, which would make sense.
Speaker 1:I got it. Yeah, you know, anyone out anyone in the chat tried um, dll, dls s4. You got me doing it. Now, stephanie, you know um, or you know you know what do you guys think about it? If you're gamers, um, you know I'm not a bigger, as big a gamer as um, as stephanie, but, um, one thing kind of worries me a little bit about um, this dl ss4 um, is it worries me that we can end up, if it becomes very, very, very good and everyone kind of loves it, it kind of locks it, vendor locks things into just NVIDIA cards. If lots and lots of games support DLS4 and it's like you know you need to have this to play it really well, especially with lower tier cards then it's going to push everyone, I think, towards NVIDvidia and intel and amd cards may then kind of like not be so competitive, but I'm sure they've got things in the pipeline, you know, for similar, similar things with um, with those vendors as well.
Speaker 2:This is why I mean, I tell everybody, you know the gaming experience is more important than the graphics, and so you should turn the graphic settings down before you use DLSS technology or things like that, because a lot of the times, like going from medium to high, the differences are so minuscule that you would have to be actively looking for it to detect them Minus, of course, shadows and things like ray tracing and lighting. But generally speaking, you know the difference between medium and high is almost undetectable unless you're looking for it. And when you're actually playing the game, you know you're probably enjoying the experience too much to not even notice those little differences. But you know, and then even changing to low, like a lot of like good games, the world that they build um and the gaming experience that they provide, you won't even notice graphics issues because you'll be too busy just having fun with the game and graphic. Having great graphics does not make a game good no at all.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like. It's like a movie, isn't it like? Um, lots of my friends, they're obsessed with movies and it's got to be 4k, it's got to be kind of like the best ever sound, it's got to be the best ever this. And I turn around and say I'd rather watch a good movie in 1080p than a really bad movie like a kind of 3d cinema yeah I mean on the best screen ever, I don't know, because it's the game or the story that is the most important thing.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I'm the same way like I have a media library and a lot of my stuff is just, you know, plain old 1080p. There is some 4k content, but it's not like ultra hd, you know, lossless encoding or whatever it's like. I you know, if it's a good movie, I'm gonna enjoy it, no matter what. Because, like, growing up in the 90s, you know, we had tons of movies that were filmed on digital, digitally and on film, and so, like you just grew up with like a really good mix of things that were like really grainy or had that like kind of like look to it, you know, and it was sometimes it's great, sometimes the grain is quite nice, like a lot of people.
Speaker 1:I agree. I think they they remastered what was it? Aliens recently I think they remastered aliens quite a few times. Yeah, and a lot of people prefer the unremastered ones. Um, because I think the colors they kind of slightly changed the colors in the remastered version and it kind of just didn't look quite the same.
Speaker 2:And you know, I think some of the gray was taken out, you know, because it adds like a bit of like you're, I don't know to me it kind of like adds a bit to the immersion effect. Yeah, and when it's like super crystal clear and just like everything's perfect, it all just looks superficial and fake. So which is weird, to say, oh, did you lose power? Did I lose power? Stream should still be going.
Speaker 1:Is the stream still going. Are you still there?
Speaker 2:Oh no, oh, bessie, is it just me now? That's not good.
Speaker 1:I can see you.
Speaker 2:I have no idea if Ed is here and I have no idea if I'm here. Hello, stefano, all right, looks like I am going to be carrying the show. I'm pretty sure I'm still alive. Yep, I'm still alive. So anyway, I don't know about you guys, but I still really like that film grain or like the old or like what not older movies, but like classic movies would have, um, even the imperfections in the film or even in the digital recordings, like added a lot to the show, uh, or to the movie, in my opinion, and when it's like too real, it it almost takes away from that like immersion, that or that sense that I get of like connecting with the movie and stuff. So I haven't I haven't seen the new alien remasters, because I have the original ones and I still watch those uh, to this day. I have no desire, I guess, to get like more fidelity out of those movies because I think they were filmed really good. I do like seeing the extra content that they typically add in with like remasters or directors cuts and stuff like that, but I'll just look that stuff up on YouTube because I don't think it's going to change the film enough for me to want to get like a higher quality version.
Speaker 2:Um, so, uh, anyway, so I guess we'll move on to talking about this analogy hard drive controversy. Thanks, marcus. Thanks for confirming that I'm actually here, because it would be really awkward if, for like the next 30 minutes, I'm just sitting here talking to the camera and it's like, well, I look like I'm live to myself, but I have no idea. So you guys have all left and I'm just like rambling on going through the rest of the show. Oh, that would be terrible. Hopefully Ed gets back in here. I'm just gonna, I guess, continue on without him and we'll we'll probably circle back if we need to about anything.
Speaker 2:Um, so, one of the things ed wanted to talk about was the synology hard drive controversy. Uh, obviously, this is a big deal for everyone, because no one likes, uh, having to buy specific parts for their hardware, right, and in this day and age, like it's 2025, right, it makes a lot less sense to be vendor locked to specific hardware like Dell has done this for a long time where, like, if you buy an Intel SFP plus NIC for your Unraid server and you didn't buy it from Dell, he did anger the DLSS gods. That's revenge, see, this is why you don't say anything bad. You'd have to buy their vendor or Dell's version so that way your fan speed wouldn't ramp to 100%. But what's the difference between an Intel X540 that you bought from Intel or a third-party vendor and Dell's? Literally nothing. They're exactly the same, except for whatever little firmware thing they may have done, and that's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:But from a business side, I almost understand where Synology is coming from, because they're trying to break maybe not break, but better support the enterprise and to guarantee certain features or guarantee like hey, when you buy a Synology product and you buy our drives, we guarantee that these features are going to work. We guarantee that these things are going to work. We guarantee that these things are hello, stephanie, can you hear me?
Speaker 1:that was strange. I could see and hear you all the time. You were still in my riverside. Yeah, you were still there. That was very, very strange. I don't know what happened then, um, so I went out the studio and came back in and, um, then you could hear me. So I was kind of laughing along to to what you were saying and and, anyway, I'm glad to be back.
Speaker 2:Sorry about that everyone yeah, I think spoko was right. I think you just made the dlss gods angry with your amd and intel talk I'm very sorry, dlss gods, I promised to behave myself.
Speaker 1:Please don't cut me off again. I won't say anything bad, but thank you very much, stefano, for um. Um, you know, taking hold of the slack whilst I stepped out there no worries so what are we talking about then? Stefano sonology are we, yeah, we're dunking on sonology ah right, good old vendor, lock it, lock in, and the thing is as well. I wouldn't mind it so much if they made their own drives, but they don't. They just stick a label on someone else's drive, and so you've got to use this.
Speaker 2:So to me now this is everybody does this dell hp everybody yeah, um, it's just really bad this.
Speaker 1:Obviously this is my own opinion, um, and not the opinion of lime technology, but I just think it's a cash grab. In my opinion, um, nothing else. It doesn't benefit the consumer at all. Um, I really don't like it how it seems more and more nowadays you can buy a product, you pay full price for the product, but you only kind of almost get renters rights. So it's like buying a house but you're not allowed to do anything with the house, like you're renting a property. That's how it feels to me. You know you're not really owning it. If I buy something, I can do what I want with it, and so that's why I love unraid, because I can use whatever hard drives I want. You know, whatever cpu I want, and I guess that's why a lot of us you know we we like to build our own servers so we're not locked in with hardware vendors.
Speaker 2:But I was playing devil's advocate while you're away and saying like how this could make sense from a business perspective.
Speaker 1:You know, Well, yeah, because they make more money, Stephanie.
Speaker 2:Well, they obviously are going to make more money. But you know, I kind of imagine you know the, the Dells of the world. You know, kind of imagine you know the, the dells of the world. You know, if you're offering tier one support, like on-site support, for your products, you want to be able to guarantee, like hey, this stuff, if you buy this brand, this specific brand, from us, all the features will work, the warranty will work you know things?
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm gonna, I'm going to stop you there, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Right, what car do you drive?
Speaker 2:Tesla.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm not sure how Tesla's brakes work. But okay, let's say you drive a Ford. Okay, yeah, you threw me a bit there by saying Tesla, would you be happy if you could only buy Ford brake pads?
Speaker 2:No, of course not. I don't agree with it.
Speaker 1:What's the?
Speaker 2:difference really, I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's like HP as well. They had a printer I can't remember which one it was, but if you didn't have any ink in the printer and you had to buy HP ink, you weren't able to scan. Yep, so the scanning feature, come on, man.
Speaker 2:Look Ed first okay only boomers buy printers and use printers to this day. That's problem number one.
Speaker 1:Problem number two is my mom. Most of her life problems of my mom revolve around her printer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think in high school I was like this was like 2006 era. I was like I am never going to buy a printer for the rest of my life and that has basically worked out extremely well for me my entire life. If I had to use a printer, I would just pay like the five cents or ten cents to print whatever I needed to, because it was far easier to let someone else have those problems than me. A printer. I would just pay like the five cents or ten cents to print whatever I needed to, because it was far easier to let someone else have those problems yeah, but um, I find it useful just for printing shipping labels, to be honest, like when returning things and stuff.
Speaker 2:I totally get it I'm there, I hear you, but it's just not worth the trouble. I guess now, like we have brother, do you have a brother printer? Um mine is, I think, epson I've got at the moment I did have a brother, it broke down um, I think epson's probably like a decent brand, but like there was a point there for a good strong minute where you had canon hp and like one other, mine's canon.
Speaker 1:Actually it is canon, it's a canon, yeah yeah, and then you.
Speaker 2:You basically didn't have a choice and all the vendors are doing the same thing. Right, but no, no. So, anyway, to go back to Synology, I completely agree. From our perspective, I think we're right, but from their perspective, it probably still makes sense to do this, and obviously they can charge a bunch of money, like Dell does, because have you tried buying a hard drive from Dell Like with their servers? They're like hundreds of dollars. Like a one terabyte hard drive is like $200 in 2025. Why? Oh, because it's Dell branded and you have to use their hard drives on their servers. It's like okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty crazy. They have a lot of other hardware as well that's locked in, don't they as well?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, everything.
Speaker 1:I mean graphics cards, uh, additional network adapters. You often see cpus like um for sale on um ebay, like I'll kind of be looking for kind of thread ripper cpus and stuff like that. Then I think, well, that's quite cheap. And then you notice it says it's only for adele something. So because the cpu is actually vendor locked yeah, that's what I've almost. I've almost kind of bought something before by mistake and thinking, oh you know, not reading the advert. Um, clearly enough that's uh.
Speaker 2:I don't like that either.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, spock has a canon pixma from 2002 and it works. Wow, that's pretty dude. Old, 23 year old printer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, yeah like anything basically before, maybe about 2000. I think that the trend started about 2004, so anything basically before then is still like god tier as far as printing goes. Anything after that, man, there's no way. I, I refuse. I will never, ever, ever, ever buy another printer again. They've lost absolutely 100 of my potential, uh, buying.
Speaker 1:How about a 3D printer? Do you have a 3D printer, Stephanie? I do not.
Speaker 2:Is that ever something?
Speaker 1:that's tempted you.
Speaker 2:I have been tempted to get a 3D printer. I really want one, but I'm always afraid to buy one because to me the technology is still evolving and I'm also afraid to get locked into a specific vendor and then be like, oh, oh man, this other printer has all these cool features and this one doesn't, and so it's for me. It's like a very expensive hobby that I'm not really willing to to tack on to my already very expensive hobbies. So, yeah, I don't. I don't know if I'll ever get into 3D printing, honestly.
Speaker 1:Also, I'm not smart enough to be a 3D printer? Yeah, dane Down Under says you know, just go open source for a 3D printer. You know definitely.
Speaker 2:I don't really even know what that means, because you still have to buy something Open source hardware.
Speaker 1:So you know the designs and stuff, you know you put it together yourself and build the hardware yourself from various parts okay, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:That stuff kind of scares me. Open source stuff kind of scares me sometimes because like you could lose support at any minute. It's like man, it's like some of the applications we have like uh, nerd tools, great for years disappeared and it's like who's going to pick up this slack?
Speaker 1:yeah, anyway. So sonology, um, that's our kind of opinion on that, yep, um. So you know it's obviously had a lot of backlash in the community other than us talking about it today, so I'm going to move on. There's some rather kind of sad news in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure how many of you guys out in the chat you listen to the self-hosted podcast. It's a huge resource and a favorite for many of us. Unfortunately, it's coming to an end. Chris and Alex announced it in a huge resource and a favorite for many of us. Unfortunately, it's coming to an end. Um, chris and alex announced it in a recent episode and their final show, episode 150, I think it's dropping later this month. So yeah, that's pretty sad. You know, to be honest, I didn't catch every episode, but I've got to say I always love tuning in during long drives, you know, down to kind of visit my parents and things like that. You know great conversations, lots of practical tips and they really help grow the home lab and self-hosting community in my opinion. So you know, do you ever watch the self-hosted podcast yourself, stefano? Is that something you've watched yourself or no? I never have. It's not something you ever caught yourself, or or no?
Speaker 2:I never have I honestly, I don't really watch any podcasts. To be honest, it's pretty. They have to. They have to talk about something that I'm extremely interested in in order for me to catch an episode, but I I honestly don't watch anything so you would watch it.
Speaker 1:You would watch a podcast on escape from tarkov.
Speaker 2:Then I guess probably not. Actually, yeah, it was if it would have to be a dedicated video about a very specific thing and I'd watch just that like. But yeah, I don't. I've never been a podcast kind of person. I think it's because I have add and like my attention just can't deal with it so you know, I know I'm alex from this self-ing podcast.
Speaker 1:he's a bit of a Jellyfin fan and, talking of Jellyfin, that is our app of the month this week and there'll be a video on the Uncast show beginning of next week. All about Jellyfin, installing it, hardware encoding, et cetera. So look out for that. So what media server software are you using yourself, stefano? Are you a jellyfin user? Plaques, mb, yeah, yeah, so you're 100 jellyfin or do you run anything else?
Speaker 2:no 100, jellyfin, that's awesome I've been super happy with it, uh, ever since I switched uh from plex from plex forever ago and, uh, I think we talked about it a little bit before. I was just about to buy Plex Pass and then they made yet another change to their policy and I finally had enough. I was like I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I said before, I'm not a Plex user myself, I'm an MB user and I run jellyfin alongside the mb. Um, basically because mb was jellyfin originally, yeah, and then jellyfin was a fork of mb when it went closed source um. What I think might happen um, I don't know what your thoughts are, stefano is you know, mb's got its lifetime pass etc. And all of those kind of things as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see in maybe kind of six months time, they look and see how the land lies with um, you know, and the dust settles from the plex, price increases, and then they increase their prices but make it a little bit cheaper, um, because they're gonna. They must have the same problems with funding that plex because obviously, if you buy a lifetime pass for Plax 10 years ago and you paid like $100, it's cost you $10 a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you can't pay developers on $10 a year, can you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not I have no problem with paying for software, but I don't. There's just, for some reason, reason, companies just can't keep your data out of their hands and not and wanting to share with their friends, and obviously the only reason why they want to do that is to make, to subsidize costs, and it's like and I understand, like unraid, for example, they need to make money. They have a team of people, so I don't have a problem with paying uh, unraid for their licenses. But I tell you what the day unraid is like. Oh, we're gonna start looking at whatever. How are you using our operating system and and using that for to help us develop software and we might share it with your friends. But you don't know, that is the day I will drop unraid in a heartbeat. I promise you that yeah, like.
Speaker 1:So I lost trust with um pla, with Plax, when I found out they were you know, not that I was a user, but when I found out they were saying, hey, so-and-so watched this last night. And then you read their terms and conditions and it says we don't know what you're watching at all. I think okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Imagine.
Speaker 2:Unraid's like hey, ed Stefano installed this container. You should check it out too.
Speaker 1:And I'll be like goodbye, hey, Stefano.
Speaker 2:installed Escape from Tarkov container. They actually do have some containers, by the way, but careful, ed, that's a whole other topic for discussion.
Speaker 1:Anyway, like I said, I am an mb and jellyfin user and I just wondered like how many of you guys out there are thinking of maybe jumping across to you on jellyfin, because it's the only open source, I think, media server that we've got. But what worries me a little bit is do you remember cody at all? Stefano?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure everyone in the chat remembers Kodi as well. It's just like a media player. It's not the same as kind of Plex, mb, jellyfin that will stream, but it's just a player, a dedicated player on a piece of hardware, but basically because of the plugins that people used to kind of stream things on it. So kodi becoming like a streaming device to stream, um, you know, copyrighted material and you could buy like kodi boxes and stuff on on amazon and ebay and all sorts of things like that, that, um, although it wasn't like illegal to run Kodi and to develop Kodi and they didn't actually get it taken down, it kind of got soft banned, didn't it like?
Speaker 1:yeah if you, if you type, I think, even if you do it today, if you start typing Kodi into Google, it won't auto complete the word.
Speaker 1:I kind of forgot they literally got told, you know, literally, yeah, they told google, um, the kind of movie people you've got to kind of stop this from happening. I thought that's pretty hypocritical really, because obviously you know google, lots of things are searched in google that kind of are harmful um, and it seems that they kind of pick and choose what they you know they'll enforce things for for one, while they kind of do exactly the same yeah, I mean just look at youtube, look at how google treats youtube or youtube treats itself with creators.
Speaker 2:Some creators can get away with oh, big tree. The audio is great, that's good, not like last time, that's awesome good, but like yeah, I mean it's it kind of sucks like they can pick and choose when to apply their rules oh, spock is sorry.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I'm going to interrupt xbmc. Yeah, that was um xbox media center, wasn't it um spock? I remember I modded my xbox and um installed that on that.
Speaker 2:That was like must be kind of 2002 man, the original xbox was a game changer I've still got my original xbox, the one I had when I was young did you install linux on it, so you get even more features out of it I didn't, to be honest.
Speaker 1:No, I um, I modded it, um, and put a hard drive in for certain reasons. Um, yeah, um yeah, but it was great. You know, um yeah, that that was cody originally. Then they, I think they changed the name about 2014. I think they dropped the name and then changed it to cody to be not kind of like associated with xbox. I'm not sure if, um, if they were kind of made to drop the name because it was too similar to xbox or or maybe just because it went cross-platform.
Speaker 2:I don't know oh yeah, I don't know either. I can't speak to any of that normally with like. The only reason why I stuck with plex for so long is because I like to see what the competitors are doing and the direction they're going, and and so I personally I feel like I stuck with plex for way too long and should have joined the Jellyfin train sooner. But now I always get worried because it's like you know Plex became popular, you started charging money and then they started becoming more and more like a business and then you know now they've gotten to the point where nobody will trust them anymore. So we've all, we're all leaving and we're going to Jellyfin or wherever, and it's like how long until jellyfin follows the same model? And it's just like what?
Speaker 1:why? What I worry about why I kind of like went off on my tangent about cody is that's what I worry about jellyfin is are they going to get soft banned, you know, when you're a, when you're a company and you've got kind of like you know I'm sure plex has got its lawyers and all kind of things like that. You know, even though plex is used, you know, by some users to stream things they don't own, I think it's going to be very much harder to kind of like you know tackle kind of Plex and say you know you can't sell this software. Then it would be something like Jellyfin and just the fact, seeing what happened to Kodi, I would hate to see that happen to Jellyfin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know. I don't think Jellyfin has an official Apple TV app either.
Speaker 1:I think it does. Yeah, it does now. I'm pretty sure it does.
Speaker 2:Oh, did they just add it.
Speaker 1:I'm still using some line. I'm pretty sure it does. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm using somebody else's Jellyfin app. I'm looking at it right now because I'm like, oh yeah, finally, oh, maybe they did finally add one nice. Oh, that's desktop client lightweight day and down under saying.
Speaker 1:He used plex when he was using synology and um switched to jellyfin when he started unraid. Switched to Jellyfin when he started Unraid.
Speaker 2:Nice. It's funny, you know I was really close to getting a Synology NAS at one point, but it's hard to want to get a dedicated device like that because Unraid is super flexible and I know Synology allows you to do a lot of things too. But I've always enjoyed building my own own hardware, and synology actually at one point did reach out and was asking for me to make some videos for them. Uh, but somehow, like they never committed to actually sending the equipment that they they said they would, and I'm kind of glad they didn't, because it'd be like hey, this is, this is great. Oh no, they're suddenly locking everybody out of using their hard drives.
Speaker 1:Ronald is saying that he used to use well, he said not he used to. He does use a media player called Dune HD and it works great for local streaming. I'm just looking that up now.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard of Dune HD. I used to. When I first started streaming media to myself, I just had a laptop next to my TV and then just like the whole folder view of my media library and would just use VLC to play it. So, depending on how the future goes, I might just go back to VLC streaming. To be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in fact sometimes I still do use vlc. Um, I've come to play things sometimes and, um, I think, some things that have either dolby vision or hdr sometimes I'm not sure if you've ever seen it and the picture looks kind of green. Have you ever played a file and it looks kind of green? It has all weird colors, um that might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was, when I was in support atr or something. Yeah, when I was an mmb.
Speaker 1:You know, on mb, I think.
Speaker 2:You know I don't think I haven't seen it happen for a long time now, but when that used to happen, I used to um, just open the android vlc ah, yeah and then, just you know, browse to the um unraid share, take forever scrolling down through trying to find, yeah, what it was, because obviously going through a folder is much more difficult than that's exactly how I got into plex, because I remember it was like, as my, my library started grow, as I was ripping more and more of my dvds, back then it was like this is becoming unmanageable, um, and so I finally was like, all right, I'll duplex.
Speaker 1:And then it was a game changer yeah, spock is saying that the apple tv um jellyfin app is kind of bad um it is a third party app. I knew it right, are you sure I, I'm pretty sure it is. I want to double-check this because I'm sure.
Speaker 2:I think only on Apple TV. I think it's a third-party app.
Speaker 1:Oh, is it called SwiftFin? Is that the one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the one. That's the one Got it Right. I don't know why it's bad.
Speaker 1:It works perfectly fine for the way I use Jellyfin, which is to just Doesn't it just kind of like use like it kind of wraps like the web GUI version of Jellyfin. So it's not an actual, proper app, it's like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's just a rubber You're using?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so.
Speaker 2:And it works great for me. I mean, I don't, I have zero complaints. I go to play, I just go look for the content I want to see. It's there and I play it and it just works. So, yeah, cool. I always kind of get worried, like you know how, with Unraid you'll we'll see a lot of complaints about, about certain things and it's like what are you guys doing with your Unraid server to have this many problems? I'm always like I've been running it for years and it's just, it just works.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm not doing something right, maybe I'm just using it too, I guess too vanilla basically maybe not enough, I don't know anyway, like um, before we delve into kind of audience question and answers, let's talk about entertainment a moment, as we've been talking about jellyfin yes what have you been watching lately, stefano?
Speaker 2:anything, anything good uh, you probably have never heard of it. Um, it's, you know, not really like really big in the mainstream. It's called last of us two. I just started. We're just finished episode two, right okay, hang on, hang on everyone.
Speaker 1:Before we speak about last of us two. This is a major spoiler alert, because I'm going to speak about something that happens, and if you haven't played the second game or you haven't watched the second series yet, then please mute this for probably the next two or three minutes.
Speaker 1:So whoa, you got to give them a chance to find the mute button so find the mute button and I'm going to talk about another program, or we call it programs in the uk, I don't know if you do in the states you call it series, I think. Um, I've been watching. I started to watch a couple of episodes of a show called mob land by guy ritchie. Um, I'm not sure you've ever seen the gentleman and um lock stock two smoking barrels. I've seen that. That's a great. He's the director of that. So by Guy Ritchie.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if you've ever seen the Gentleman and Lock Stock, two Smoking Barrels.
Speaker 1:I've seen that that's a great movie. He's the director of that, so it's kind of very much similar to that Nice, and my friend Adam told me about that and I watched the first episode the other day. It looks pretty cool. So anyway, moving on to the Last of Us, I am actually really really enjoying the Last of Us 2. I think they've done a fantastic job of adopting the game's atmosphere and story. But I was kind of wondering really how were they going to kind of like approach the second season, because the first season was very popular and obviously Joel was was a very popular character he's a popular actor, yep, so I was thinking like you know, in the second game he gets killed off right at the beginning.
Speaker 1:So I was thinking, in the second season are they going to do the same? I was kind of thinking they were probably going to um set it kind of almost between between the first and second game maybe, and they weren't going to um set it kind of almost between between the first and second game maybe, and they weren't going to do that because I was thinking, well, if they kill him off they're probably going to get quite a lot of backlash yeah and if they don't kill him off?
Speaker 1:then, the people who love the game. They're going to get a lot of backlash. And, to be honest, I I came into it watching again. I don't think I'm going to really like this because they're going to kill off Joel. I don't think I'm going to really like the series after he's gone. You know, I love both the games, but I was thinking, will I really like the series that much afterwards? And actually I think it's actually being really awesome.
Speaker 1:And the funny thing is actually is I told a colleague, adam, I knew, I knew, I actually knew that he had played the game. So I thought, well, he knows about Joel dying in the game. Yeah, so so, um, he had watched episode two and um, and I and I said I said to him um, I wonder if they um are going to kill off Joel. And he goes what do you mean kill off Joel? What you mean Joel dies or what? You haven't played the game. He goes, no, I went, oh man, I'm really sorry. And he goes oh, um, oh, yeah, no, I didn't, didn't know that he's going. Oh, maybe he'll get killed off later on. So then I went to watch episode two yeah thinking that joel doesn't die in episode two.
Speaker 1:So I'm thinking, so I'm still thinking.
Speaker 2:Maybe he gets like saved deus machina they're gonna.
Speaker 1:they going to change it. He's not going to die. Maybe the whole series will be about those people looking for him. They never find him. He might die right at the end of the season. That's how they finish the season, basically. He psyched me out there, that's awesome Uno reverse card. I think it's really great. I actually enjoyed the um third episode the other day. I thought that was really awesome and, on a lighter note, I'm really looking forward to watching andor season two now. I haven't started it yet hold up spoilers over oh yeah, spoiler over everyone.
Speaker 2:Spoiler over all right I'll put it in chat you can, you can um, you can listen again all right, like I say on a lighter note, and or season two.
Speaker 1:I haven't actually started watching it yet. I did try to start watching it um last week, but um, I ended up falling asleep while watching it, not because it's boring, that's only because I was terrible.
Speaker 2:Why would you say that I literally went? No, it's just not because it's boring a couple of times.
Speaker 1:Last week I actually fell asleep at my desk as well.
Speaker 2:You're working too hard, man but yeah, yeah, more important question did you watch revenge of the sith, episode three? No it's out in theaters. What, yes, no, maybe not the uk.
Speaker 1:How come? I don't know about this. Because, you're not a Star Wars fan man, Definitely You've seen my office room.
Speaker 2:Don't you ever say that again. I see a moon and I don't even know. I don't see anything Star Wars related back there, buddy.
Speaker 1:Well, even just behind me you can see the Death Star there.
Speaker 2:That's no moon. That's what you're supposed to say I missed that jack uh, let's see episode three re-release. Is it in the uk? I don't know. It's out here and you can go watch. Uh, revenge of the sith. It came out april 25th, yep cool. It says international territories but it doesn't specifically say anywhere. You should look into it you can, I will yeah oh, you get to watch, re-watch the anakin. And uh obi, uh obi-wan, is that right? Obi-wan kenobi, yeah, that's right. Fight again in the lava scene. Uh, the epic music so when?
Speaker 1:when did you go? When did you go and see it?
Speaker 2:uh, when it came out when I was a kid oh no, recently again oh no, I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it. Actually, I want to go watch it because I I didn't know it was out until this morning and I was like how is this not marketed?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah. So have you watched any of, and all season two yourself yet, or?
Speaker 2:um, I have not. I've kind of you're gonna hate me for this. I've kind of fallen out of love with star wars oh yeah, but, and all's just so good. It's like I know like it's good the way that episode seven, eight, nine were handled and just this like back and forth of like who is star Wars for? Like it, it's just, it's really just pushed me further and further away and I I hate to say it, ed, but I I just don't care anymore, like that's.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm at I'm sorry about that they could release rogue one or I don't know. Like I just I don't, I don't know, I don't think I'm gonna watch and or two I and, honestly, like I really want to go see revenge of the sith. I'm probably not gonna do that either, because then I'll just be disappointed being like, wow, this is what we had. And you know, what's funny is episode one, two and three, I would argue, were like when I was a kid I didn't really enjoy them. I only enjoyed the one part I enjoyed about episode three obviously was that epic fight scene, the wonderful music, obviously, um, I also really enjoyed just like, uh, the world building that they did. It was like absolutely just like gorgeous to see they did. They did that really well for all three episodes.
Speaker 2:But, um, I was, I was. I think the reason why I didn't join them is enjoy them is because I have add, and it's just hard to pay attention to like a lot of the, the, the chatter, the world building. You know the politics that was going on, um, but with my adult brain I enjoy them more now obviously, um, but man, I just again, I don't know, man, it's star wars is kind of I just don't care, I just don't care.
Speaker 1:Uh, that sounds so terrible I know you mean like it's kind of lost its way a bit, but with andor I thought you know I really did enjoy the first season I might.
Speaker 2:The first season was great. I love the first season. I might give the second season a go, but I just I'm gonna. I'm gonna play something.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be playing video games, so anyway, you guys in the chat don't know.
Speaker 2:You know what you're watching lately so Marcus said he's watching the pit. I've seen that advertised a lot what's that about? So he says it's the day in the life about er doctors. The whole series takes place in one day. Each episode is an hour of the shift oh wow, sounds crazy yeah um, do you know?
Speaker 1:I've never I've never seen 24 I've never either no, I told a friend of mine that the other day and he goes what he've never seen 24, because that was set in one day, wasn't it an hour?
Speaker 2:I think so yeah, I just uh like I've never really been a big television fan because I feel like they've always added a lot of fluff between episodes. Um, and they have trouble, they and they always. There's always cliffhangers, like right, so I've never just been. Why do I need to wait until season two? Game of Thrones. I didn't watch Game of Thrones until they were on season eight. I just started season one by the time season eight came out. I hate cliffhangers. This whole need to just like oh, we'll finish it in the first 15 minutes of the next episode. Why, that's the game to watch the next one.
Speaker 2:That's fine. Yeah, but the er from the sounds of, from the sounds of it, it looks like it might be pretty good. Yeah, I hope that. Oh, this sounds terrible. This is gonna sound really terrible when I say it, but like in real life, uh, if someone dies in your ambulance, right? Uh, you still get a bill for the services really and so if they do that in er, that would be I'm gonna use the word hilarious, but that's clearly not what I mean.
Speaker 1:That would be hilarious because that's what happens in real life and that's what I like to see yeah, because don't you guys in the states you have to pay if you call out an ambulance, don't you?
Speaker 2:brother, right, you have to pay for everything. Wow, literally everything. And if the insurance doesn't pay for it, you're paying for it out of your own pocket oh, dane, dan under's watching mob land as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I've only watched the first episode, but, but I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen.
Speaker 1:Mobland, I haven't seen the Chicago series. That'd be one I have to check out. Justice saying the same.
Speaker 2:The pit's on Amazon, isn't it? Is that true? Or is that HBO? I don't know who knows. Who knows these?
Speaker 1:things Google will know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, hbo, who knows, who knows these things.
Speaker 1:Google will know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I have two computer screens, three keyboards in front of me. You think I could just Google it. I've been doing that with everything else we've been talking about, so it's like the pit and Mobland. I think I'm going to check out Mobland because I really liked Two Smoking and Mobland. I think I'm going to check out Mobland Because I really liked Two Smoking, or? I'm sorry, you should watch the.
Speaker 1:Gentleman as well. If you like Lockstock, watch the Gentleman. It's really good. It's kind of like a series. Guy Ritchie's stuff's quite similar. A lot of it.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard about this either.
Speaker 1:This came out in 2019 ah, chicago, chicago Fire, chicago Med Chicago PD got it oh, it's Chicago series my dad watches a lot of those. He really likes them.
Speaker 2:I've never seen any of them, to be honest yeah, so it looks like the pit is rated pretty well between uh on imdb and I mean you can't trust rotten tomatoes for anything anymore, but I so rotten tomatoes is hilarious to me.
Speaker 1:Um, I can't share my screen but it's available on max, by the way, in the us okay, max.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got max. I. We get it through our uh bundled with our phone service. Um ed, have you ever watched the movie the Last Action Hero?
Speaker 1:Arnold Schwarzenegger yeah.
Speaker 2:So my personal opinion is that movie is a masterpiece, um, and I think IMDB rated it like horribly and and then you look at that movie and then you go look at like a genuinely bad movie like uh uh, naruto or the Last Airbender or something, and it's rated really well and it's like, do you people even watch these movies? Because the Last Action Hero is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really good. Spocko's saying here he's re-watching the Star Trek series in order Awesome, Starting next generation. Here he's watching um re-watching the star trek series in order awesome, next starting um next generation. Spock, have you ever seen? Star trek continues. It's a fan-made series of star trek. It ran, I think from 2014 to about 2017 18 um. It's really, really awesome. I watched it when um I traveled to Japan on the plane and stuff. I just downloaded a whole load onto onto my computer um to watch on the plane and it's really, really awesome. Um. It's kind of set on the original enterprise and just pretty much has, like you know, Spock um Kirk obviously pretty much has, like you know, spock um kirk, obviously with different actors, but it's really really well done and some great stories.
Speaker 2:I'd highly recommend checking that out if you can I, I really wish I, when I was a kid, I watched star trek. Um, because I feel like I really missed out on what all the star trek enjoyers enjoy about star trek. And now I feel like it's I'm so far detached, so far removed from Star Trek that, um, I won't be able to get into it and unfortunately, I would have to take my medication and watch it just because, like, if there's too much talking, I'm just like, like you know, so you, we were talking about last of us, episode three. I couldn't watch episode three.
Speaker 1:I couldn't watch it because it was just um my brain, just I, I just couldn't, I just couldn't focus. I mean right, that must be really difficult. What that?
Speaker 2:must be really difficult. Yeah, yeah, and I also don't like being on my adderall, because then I hyper focus on stuff and it doesn't actually really allow me to enjoy the content, right.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I think let's start wrapping things up and open the floor to a bit of question and answer time about anything from the audience.
Speaker 2:If you guys got anything you want to ask either Stefano and I, please put it in the chat to ask either Stefano and I please put it in the chat Are you going to try and go see Star Wars or episode three, now that you know that's?
Speaker 1:out? Oh, yeah, for sure, yeah, do you guys have?
Speaker 2:I'm sure you have IMAX UK yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it's available on IMAX. I really want to. I want to take my kid to watch it, but I he's like seven years old, so it might be. It might be, uh not good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's quite, quite young. I can't remember how old I was when I first saw Star Wars. Yeah, you'll really enjoy it. Um, spock, it's absolutely awesome. Like you, you will thank me in the next podcast for telling you about it.
Speaker 2:I thoroughly enjoyed it all. Right, here we go, from dane down under.
Speaker 1:I'll let you, I'll let you talk any chance of getting a guide on home assistant out the box and nginx? I know tail scale is an option, um on your phone, but leaving it on I debt all day will drain the battery. So basically, reverse proxying. Reverse proxying home assistant in a box. Yeah, um, that's something I can definitely do. It's um actually pretty easy to do. You just have to um in one of the config files in home assistant pretty much tell it what domain is accepted to come through. Then you just reverse proxy it to the IP address of the VM and the port and it works really really easily. That's what I used to do for years. Spock said he hated Star trek when he was a kid and um didn't like start sci-fi until he was in his 30s.
Speaker 2:Wow, you know it's funny, I was a very terrible movie connoisseur as a child and or even tv as a child. Like I hated, I hated things that were like everyone loved. And and then I, when I got into high school, like something switched in my brain and I just and I started to learn to enjoy things. Uh, because I also hated star trek as a kid, but I I hated it because it was boring, but I was so young, I didn't understand anything about the world, right? So like I feel bad when I like it's unfair to say like, oh, I hated it because I was basically too stupid to understand it. You know what I mean. And now, now with my adult brain, I feel like I would enjoy it, but again, I think it would be so hard to watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'd be difficult to start now, I think, without having ever seen it before.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If I'd never watched Star Trek before, I would probably start with the Next Generation.
Speaker 2:The Next Generation.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll give that a shot, because that's kind of new enough to still look quite good. I think if you kind of started watching maybe the original series because you'd never seen it before, you might just think, oh you know, this looks kind of terrible with the special effects and things like that, and it just looks a bit weird because it's very 60s, you know I mean I can get past a lot of that stuff because, like I mean I like godzilla and like the old godzillas are terrible as far as special effects goes.
Speaker 1:But you know well, I watched the other day talking of old stuff, like when I was ill, because I kept falling asleep all the time. I was kind of lying about I thought I'm going to put something on just to kind of watch, and I watched the um, black and white, um, the outer limits and some of them. Some of them are actually really really good because I thought, well, I don't mind if I fall asleep in it and kind of miss stuff, you know, because you just wake up and there's another one on, but some of them are actually really really good stories actually.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, special effects were terrible, yeah, yeah, but you know, um, one of my favorite movies of all time is uh attack of the 50 foot woman I've never seen that, never seen it terrible, terrible everything. But I love it and I I actually forced my wife to watch it with me, uh, maybe a year or two ago, and she was like I can understand why you would like this not for me you ever seen the forbidden planet?
Speaker 1:that's an old sci-fi one I have not actually that's really good yeah, I should add that to my list it's actually based off a shakespeare play about me oh well then. Yeah, then it'll be good with with the yeah, it was kind of it, or whatever. It's a really, really good and the special effects are pretty good for a 50s movie. Oh wow, it looks pretty good even today, I think speaking of special effects and movies, all right.
Speaker 2:How do you feel about people using their cell phones in movies? What like in the movie theater no, no, like in the movie the actors are like on their phones, like, do you feel like being on a cell phone? Like characters being on a cell phone detracts or adds to the movie at all I don't think either way.
Speaker 1:It depends if the story requires it, you know so well, that's true, that's actually a good point.
Speaker 2:Um, so, so for I guess for me obviously that I think your point's really good, but, like, generically speaking, there's something about seeing cell phones and movies that makes me less interested in the movie, and it's really hard to say why exactly that is huh it's kind of weird, but you know, maybe maybe you just don't like seeing people on cell phones generally I mean, I don't know, I'm on my cell phone all the time, this whole time, this whole time we've been in this uh, this uh podcast, or I guess, like I've been on my phone, um, here you go.
Speaker 1:Marcus says he's a star trek voyager fan I love voyager as well marcus, next generation of voyager, two really great series. One star, star Trek I've never seen, and I've never seen Deep Space Nine, and a friend of mine keeps saying I need to watch it. I think I've watched Deep Space Nine a few times, like the first five episodes, and then not watched it for years and then thought, okay, I've forgotten the first five. So I've keep watching the first five lots and lots of times, and now if I went back and watched it again, I'd have to start from the beginning again.
Speaker 2:So did you ever watch, uh, star wars, the clone wars, animated series um, some of it, yeah, not, not, I didn't get through all of it, to be honest yeah, I, I didn't watch any of it for years and then they released the last episode, like a couple years ago, a few years ago, and I was like I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and sit down and watch this and the first season I couldn't even get through it, so I stopped, I just gave up on it. And I was reading about it on reddit and somebody was like just start watching from season four. It'll still be tough, but it gets better and better. And, holy cow, that is probably some of the best star wars I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1:My camera likes to follow me around, ai man, I'm gonna just change the subject a little bit. Yeah from from. I'm sorry. Are you a home assistant user, stephanie?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I'm not. You've never tried it.
Speaker 2:No, I don't. So I have like a couple of smart things, but I don't like smart things if that makes sense, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:I do, I do. But my problem with smart things is the technology is rapidly changing, the standards are changing and like we can't just pick one, and also I'm too lazy to program all of my different smart things to work with home assistant, like I just honestly, ed, I just want to buy a thing that recognizes my things and it just works and that just doesn't exist. Like I'm too lazy to just figure it out, right yeah, I I thought I'm surprised to hear that.
Speaker 1:I thought you were going to say, yeah, I've got, like you know, loads of automation set up and nope, my uh.
Speaker 2:I have a an iq panel, uh, for my camera's doing it. I have an iq panel uh, it died like couple of years ago and I haven't replaced it and it was great because it actually integrated with my smart things and it just worked. But I can't replace it with the same thing because it doesn't exist anymore and I'm afraid to buy a new one because I feel like it won't support my old environment and I don't, and there's everything's so expensive. So I'm just like you know what. I'll just get my lazy tail end off the off the couch and turn the light off or whatever. I'm like the worst person to ask about smart things yeah, oh, um must sound quite quite surprised for yeah, and a techie person.
Speaker 2:You haven't tried it everything is really expensive too.
Speaker 1:So, like you know, it's not, you know, not at all.
Speaker 2:I totally disagree well, okay, okay, maybe it's not the stuff I've looked at, like, yeah, you know, 30 for a light switch is like no, 30 for a light bulb. No, no, thank you. And yeah, I have, I have a kid that I can make get up off the couch and go do the things. So go change the channel over there, young man, and turn the light off while you're over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember my sister still doesn't forgive me for this like I used to, um, we had like a color tv and it just had like four buttons. Um, we only had four channels in in the uk and I would always tell her I'd let her have a go on a bit, on on, like you know, the video, the console or something. If she kind of will do like a, like a favor for me, so I'd say, right, she had to sit in front of the tv because we didn't have a, our tv didn't have a remote. Um, my parents um wouldn't buy a new tv, that this one was like fine. They always said, you know, even though new tech came out. So I just get my sister to sit in front of the tv, I'll go one, three, two and she'd have to turn it over. She always brings this up every christmas and she goes um. Then I'd ask for a girl like mario or something. If you just turn around and say, say no, sorry another time.
Speaker 2:So yeah, she never forgave me for that yeah, I'm like, I'm like weird about smart things, like I'm anti-smart things, uh like, even so, we went to go buy a um washer and dryer and everything. It was like oh you know, it's got bigsby and you can connect it to your wi-fi and all this stuff I would never connect like a washing machine or, and I'm like why dishwasher to?
Speaker 2:it's just no point and it's weird because I understand, like as a consumer. I understand why you know, oh man, I forgot to turn the dryer on before I left my house. Let me just do it for my phone. That convenience is great, don't get me wrong, but I just don't understand. Just leave it in the dryer. If you have to rewash it or whatever, then soapy it Like it's not. Why are you going to spend extra money and have the extra headache Cause the day that you need it to work? There's going to be a connection issue and it's not going to work. Just give me a dumb dryer and washer, please.
Speaker 1:There's one more thing that's going to break too what I like using a lot of home assistant things for is kind of maybe more kind of like um weird things, I would say. So I like to kind of like set things up so if, um, someone comes to the front door and the camera sees like movement there, it can like flash the light in my office red, because then I know that you know, and then I have it through certain hours to do that and I know it's an amazon delivery. Um like, I think you've seen my stairs when you came around to visit.
Speaker 1:That's got the kind of glass on the stairs yeah and like what home assistant does is when it's after midnight it changes that to red. So there's leds and different different times of the night. It's a different color so I can know what time it is without having to kind of look at a clock. Um, I know it's either kind of before midnight, after midnight um, but or kind of after, after 10 or before 10 kind of things like that.
Speaker 1:And once I used to do, as well as when I was re-encoding all of my um, re-encoding a lot of my um movies into h265, and I was using um, I was using various different computers in the house to do that um with tdar is I've got like solar in the house and so that is linked into home assistant and so what it would do is if the solar was kind of generating um like too much and my house batteries were full, it would turn on um one of the servers with a gpu on and then it could do its transcoding and so it was using the surplus electricity yeah, like so all that stuff, so I didn't have so I didn't have to kind of, like you know, pay to do it because electricity being expensive here.
Speaker 2:But yeah, but don't get me wrong, I love automation, all that stuff is really cool, like what you just said. That's fascinating, like genuinely fascinating. But I guess I'm just like something's wrong with me mentally. I'm like it takes two seconds to just for me to do it. You know what I mean. Like I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know what you mean. Like you know, a lot of people when they use things like Alexa and stuff go Alexa, turn on the light. I think I would never use things like that. No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2:I'd rather so. Home Assistant makes a lot more sense than using, like Alexa or Siri or literally other products. Like I'm there, like I fully support Home Assistant, like I think it's a great product. Everything I've ever ever seen anyone do with it is amazing. Like I love it. But there's just something wrong, fundamentally wrong with me, and I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know no, there's nothing wrong with you, man, it's just not. It's not for you, is it?
Speaker 2:apparently not. I mean, I just I did just the idea of sitting down to set it all up, just like I'm like like no thanks it is.
Speaker 1:It is like um, it's a rabbit hole and it's horrible setting it up when you've never done it before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've never done it before, so it would be extra work, and then, once you do learn it, I'm sure it becomes easier. But then what if something changes, and now I've got to relearn? It's just not for me. It's not for me, all right. So shall we end the show here then?
Speaker 1:yes, I think I think you know it's pretty much time to wrap up. There's no more questions from the audience, so thank you very, very much, guys, for joining us today. It's been great to have your company, and thank you very much to stefano for, you know, taking the time to be here as well. And thank you for when the stream broke, um for um continuing. So, anyway, um, until next month, guys. Um, take it easy. Um, we'll catch you in the next episode.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye.
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