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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss Apple’s new 16″ MacBook Pro, social media ad effectiveness, Broadcom Masters winners, space collaborations, James Dean new movie, Airbnb’s verification efforts, and more.
Our guest this hour:
Bob Kittell, Professional keynote speaker on tech addiction – Ultra Memory Systems
Steve in Tyler, Texas listens on KTBB and asked: “I’m looking into getting a home security system. I do not have WiFi and I’m wondering what my options are, other than getting some type of satellite dish or something along that line.”
Steve, you don’t need WiFi for a home security system, but you will need some kind of internet connection if streaming it to your phone or anything else outside your home.
If all you’re concerned about are cameras that you can look at or record from within your home, that’s easy. You can still buy regular wired cameras and plug them into a central DVR and watch them from a screen.
If you’d like to use wireless cameras you can get a WiFi access point even if you don’t have internet access at home and spare yourself the task of wiring you home for the cameras. WiFi can create a local network, it doesn’t need to speak to the outside world. Just keep in mind that you will need it if you want to watch your cameras from outside your home.
For internet access, if you’re in a rural area your options may be limited, and you may be looking at satellite. Just keep in mind that whatever you choose has no data caps or at least high data caps because streaming video is data intensive and you don’t want to end up with overages or using up all your data on just cameras.
James in Nashville, Tennessee listens online and asked: “With the advent of the newer VR headsets, Oculus, HTC Vive and some of the other ones that are 8K, do you think now is a good time to buy one of these headsets, or should I wait until the next generation?”
James, no one here is a big gamer so maybe gaming fans know better or would disagree, however, it looks to us at least like you really have to want to like the current VR games.
Lots of people are very impressed and get into them when they first play them, the question is, are they still interested in playing them 48 hours later? Our guess is that the novelty wear off pretty quickly.
All games end up having to be relatively static, your range of motion is limited for obvious reasons, and it’s kind of awkward to use your body to look behind you but press a little button to run, so you mostly stand in one place when you play VR games.
That makes for decent puzzle games, but it can be awkward for other things. That problem has actually led Oculus to stress live concerts and streaming videos as one of the main uses for one for their standalone VR set.
We’d wait for future generations before buying any hardware, but if you’re really tempted by them now at least you’re already not a first gen adopter and can get a reasonably functional product.
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