That Time We Talked About Wireless Surround Speakers

This is episode number 82 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. This is Craig, and we are broadcasting live from The Homeowner Show bunker.

We're still here, y'all. We are still here. Man, life has gotten weird.

Yes, quickly.

Yeah, really, really quickly.

So good thing that we only have a cast of 2.

That's right.

8 more and we are at capacity and illegal.

Yeah, at that point there are a lot of families in the world that are over 10.

I was like, I know some guys that have 10 kids, man. Yeah, like they can't even be in the same room now.

Exactly. So Bizarre, man. But you know, we were talking about this just a minute ago, like that last show was more timely than we realized it was gonna be.

Yeah, I mean, like when we recorded the show, they hadn't started putting the kibosh down on cities and meetings and canceling Easter and— Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know if people realize that yet. I mean, if things stay the way that they are, you will not be gathering at your local place of worship for Easter.

Right, April 12th is Easter, and right now, schools in our area are out till April 13th minimum.

Ours is out to the 20th right now, and they just had a— well, actually, a couple hours ago they had another update, so they may have moved it again.

I don't know.

Okay, but ours is out to the 20th. Okay, so I mean, like, any, any churches that meet in schools are out.

They're done. Yeah, I mean, a lot, a lot of really, really weird things happening.

And no resurrection for you.

Not this year.

Easter Nazi.

We're just gonna have to redo Easter. Is that possible?

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, we'll have a like a faux Easter.

It's not like Christmas is his actual birthday.

Easter's a little more positive as far as the time of year with the Passover and everything.

But anyway, yeah, there's, there's grace there.

I hope so. Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of people worshiping with their neighbors, uh, from afar even.

Yeah, so, so it's, it's, it's weirdness all around, man.

Yeah, well, let me tell you something else that's weird, man. So, uh, I, I, you, you may remember from, I don't know, 10 episodes ago or so, whenever I had made a really poor choice of—

Kevin, let me tell you, I remember every word you say.

I highly doubt that. We probably wouldn't be friends if you did.

I have notebooks and notebooks.

Oh man, transcribed audio from Kevin Haggett.

Uh, creepiest co-host ever.

So, um, We talked about the fact that I had decided to switch homeowners insurance, right? And then it didn't work the way I wanted it to. And so we switched back.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Well, all of that was craziness. And I had to do all kinds of silly things. Like, thankfully, I had not cashed either one of those escrow checks, refund checks. And so I was able to just put those back into escrow and pay my insurance again, the one that I Stuck with. Stuck with.

Stuck with.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

Word of the show.

Yeah, stuck.

You stookin'.

Stookin' out. Uh, so, um, the one I stayed with. And so it's, it's time for our, our mortgage every year. You know, they reanalyze your, your mortgage. And, you know, if, if you're like us and we have— we work off of an escrow account And so they analyze that, make sure you have enough, they project, blah, blah, blah. Well, our insurance, and with everything going on, they reanalyzed our mortgage. And last year our mortgage went up like $70 or $80, which was kind of crazy to us. And then this year it went up another $50.

Hmm.

And I was like, man, we're— this is not where we bought this house at. We were not expecting to pay at this point, you know, close to $125 to $150 more than what we originally wanted to pay for this house. And so I got, I got online the other day and looked at my account because I had gotten a letter from our mortgage company that said, uh, we need your insurance documents. I was like, that's weird. Like, I'm pretty sure they had them, uh, but whatever, I'll call in and check. And so when I got online, I noticed that they had paid out my insurance for the year.

Mm-hmm.

I was like, I'm pretty sure that had already happened. Why are they paying it out again? Oh, by the way, uh, they had taken out almost $2,300 from my homeowner's insurance, and I know for a fact that my homeowner's insurance is only $1,300 a year. So I'm like, I— okay, I thought they'd already paid this, plus it's way more than it should have been. So I call in and they said, well, we don't have your, um, your new insurance documented. And I said, well, that's weird because you paid them.

Yeah.

And they said, well, let me go look. Oh, well, this is interesting. It happens every once in a while, but apparently, uh, you're— when you— when your insurance was reinstated, they didn't document it correctly, and it looks on our end like you don't have it, but I can see right how— right here, all of your doc— documents are here. Everything's here. It's just not in the right spot. And I said, so did y'all go buy insurance for me? And they said, yeah, we thought you didn't have insurance, so they went out and bought insurance for you. So I was like, so I got 2 homeowners insurances here, and one of them is really expensive.

Yeah.

And she said, this is not a big deal, don't worry about it, I can take care of this. I see everything that needs to happen. This, this lady was phenomenal, y'all. Um, and, and so she said, um, I'm gonna get this put in the right spot. And oh, by the way, you're gonna get that almost $2,300 refunded.

Mm-hmm.

Um, it's gonna go right back into escrow. It's not gonna come to you personally. When it happens, I want you to call back in when you see the refund hit. Should happen within 14 days. Uh, when it happens, call back in and have them reanalyze your escrow. Okay, no problem. Today I just happened to think about it again, and I went in and looked. It had been refunded. They had already reanalyzed my escrow for me, and my payment dropped $120 a month.

Nice.

I— the moral of the story is this: If you're going to change insurances even once, let alone if you do it twice, make sure that your mortgage company has all of the documents in the right place.

Yeah.

And, and, and part of it was—

If that's how you do your insurance.

If that's how you do your insurance. I mean, some of you are going to pay it outright and you're not going to have an escrow. We have escrow. Um, so if you're using escrow, make sure you're— watch your escrow account. Because, I mean, they're going to do with it what they need to.

Yeah.

Um, they're going to require you to have insurance on your home, and so they're going to have to have all that information. And what happened for us was we had apparently gotten a letter from them a couple of months ago that we just didn't see. For some reason, it got buried underneath some other mail, and, um, we didn't see that they were asking us for our insurance documents. They already had it. But, um, anyway, it's like 2 months clicked on the right file folder.

Exactly.

So anyway, crazy, crazy stuff. I think we finally got that stupid mistake that I made back in December of like trying to switch homeowners insurance, which was—

See what you get for trying to help a friend.

I know, I love the guy, but listen, You need to make sure you cover yourself first. So how you doing, man?

Doing really good, Kev. You know, it's obviously, this is like a weird time for everybody.

Sure.

And I think people are still trying to figure out how they even feel about everything that's been going on.

Yeah, I mean, right now, right, it's interesting 'cause like there's more people walking around and like out in my neighborhood than there ever have been since I've lived there.

I've never seen so many joggers in my life.

People are active. They're able to do things around their house. Right now, it's almost as if this is kind of fun. I don't know how else to really describe it. People are just kind of like— they're talking about it. In fact, I was out riding bikes with my kids this evening, and this guy was walking around, and he said, He said, y'all doing okay? And we're like, yeah, we're doing good. He's like, I saw— he said, y'all, your kids hadn't driven you up the wall yet? And I was like, not yet. He's like, I saw a really funny meme on Facebook. I'm like, this old dude knows what a meme is. That's awesome. I'm pretty proud of him. And he's like, yeah, it said, if you see me talking to myself,

don't worry, I'm just having a parent-teacher conference. He was pretty proud of himself. I thought it was pretty funny myself.

Yeah.

But I'm like, it's almost as if these kind of interactions are normal. So to speak. And it's like people are just kind of having fun with it. What I'm really concerned about is like next week and the week after.

Yeah, I'm thinking, I'm thinking week 3 is when it could get a little, a little dicey.

Yeah, so people are gonna get just stir-crazy.

Yeah.

So, but I mean, business is, is okay for you right now?

Yeah, no, it's— I mean, I was, I was telling you today, we've been, you know, bringing new customers on. And, you know, I, I think for us You know, since everyone's at home right now, people are gonna be more acutely aware of the issues going on in their home.

Yeah.

And so I think, I think a lot of the, a lot of you guys out there in the service industry need to be paying attention to this. It, you know, I, I think we're gonna start getting a lot more phone calls and I think it's not because there's more wrong in people's homes. I think that there's just, they're at home now and they're paying attention because they have the time to pay attention to this stuff.

It's not just a Saturday and Sunday that they're home.

Right.

They're home for days and days and days. Yeah.

So, and like one of the things we're dealing with right now is this is when squirrels have started having young ones. And so they've started nesting in people's roofs.

I hate those things.

And yeah, they're the worst. Um, and so we've been getting a lot of those kinds of calls and things like that. So, um, it's just, you know, in general, it's, it's usually a busy time of the year for us anyway. Um, so it's, it's not really a surprise that, you know, and, and I think people are, even though the market has just completely tanked, I mean, I was reading some numbers on it the other day that pretty much every gain that we've gotten since Trump's been in office, we've lost that now. It's all gone.

Yeah.

Um, but I think a lot of people are feeling, you know, feeling like they got a little bit of juice. If they still have a job, they feel like they've got a little bit of juice. And then they, you know, they're reading about the stimulus package that's coming through where like they're, they're planning on giving families, you know, thousands of dollars over the next couple of months. Um, and, you know, unfortunately, um, a lot of people spend money that they don't have yet.

Yeah.

And, and so, you know, I think one of the other things to, to, you know, be saying to, to business and operators and people who provide services for homes is, you know, like, don't take advantage of this moment, right? Um, you know, that you, you know, you're not building a business for this next week, you're building a business for the next 20 years. Yeah. Um, and, and those people who are in your community are your customers for the next 20 years. They're not your customer for the next week, right?

Well, and on the flip side of that, um, as a homeowner, you might just see what you can do yourself. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that— I mean, honestly, pest control is probably not one of those things. Don't, don't go buy a bottle of Ortho and think that you've done something good.

I don't encourage anyone to touch chemicals, period.

Yeah, but I mean, if you've got something that needs to be done, YouTube is still online, y'all. Yeah, there's a lot of things. Home Depot is open till 6 right now. There's still stuff you can do.

Well, it's a good time to get those projects done.

It is. I mean, a lot of—

I've A lot of my friends are being told to work from home.

Me included.

Yeah. And so like, you know, you can, you know, do your work, be a good employee, but you know what? You can subtract that commute time now.

Sure.

And you've got that extra time at home to tackle some of those projects you haven't had time for or the energy for.

That's right.

So it's, you know, like we discussed in the corona episode that we did, like this, you know, this is an opportunity. What you do with it is up to you.

Right.

If you squander it, that's on you.

Yeah.

If you use it to improve yourself, to improve your house, to improve your family, to improve your marriage, good for you, and for using that time valuably.

That's right.

And wisely. So, got a really cool episode for you guys today. We're going to be talking about some tech that I've been tinkering around with in my home. We're going to be talking about wireless surround sound.

OK, I'm really interested in this because Recently, um, I, I— when we moved into this house, I've got some really, really good speakers, and because of the way our living room is set up, I, I just can't put them in. And, and part of that is just the size of them and the configuration of the room, but part of it is because I don't have wiring to the back places that they need to go.

Yeah.

So one of the things I did do is I bought a component that allowed me to Bluetooth to my subwoofer.

Okay.

And so I was at least able to put a subwoofer in the back of the room and get a little bit of bass.

Okay.

But I'm really interested to hear what you're talking about.

Yeah, so I actually decided to experiment with 2 different systems. Part of the reason is because I needed 2 sets of surround sound speakers because we had a 7.2 system.

Yeah.

Um, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I haven't been able to take advantage of that since I bought this receiver. Never used surround sound with this receiver. Um, bought it for other reasons so I could do some other things that I needed to be able to do with it. I just happened to have that. And since we moved into the new house, never really had like a theater room. Well, since we remodeled pretty much everything in the house, um, we, we had to make some weird decisions on the downstairs that we talked about before with, you know, J-Hugh and JoJo over there at Affordable Air. And, and basically reconfigure that room and The way that the room's designed, similar situation, couldn't get wires to the back of

that room and didn't really know how we wanted the room configured after we had to make those changes. And so it was impossible to be able to run wires or any of that kind of stuff. And so I just had sort of made the decision, like, I know this technology is available now. I've heard it's not terrible. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna wait until the room is set up the way that we want it, and then I'm gonna come through with a wireless system and see if I can make it work.

Okay.

So, uh, yeah. And, um, so went with 2 brands as well. Um, went with Rocketfish and Insignia.

Oh, both really good brands.

Yeah. So pretty good brands, brands people know. I mean, like you can buy both those brands at Best Buy. You can order 'em off Amazon, all that kind of stuff. Um, the, the 2 main differences between these systems is the Rocketfish system is a, is a standalone receiver. transmitter system.

Okay, almost like a soundbar system that has its own thing. You don't need your— you don't need your other receiver for this system, right?

Right. It's got its own power. Yeah. And everything. Um, and I will warn people right at the front end of this is really pay attention to what it is that you're buying, uh, for your system, because some of these wireless— in fact, I'll even say from what I found, a majority of the wireless surround sound systems are intended to be paired with a very specific system, usually a soundbar system, but sometimes they're brand-specific and they have, you know, specific components in them that are meant to be paired with only that brand's other devices.

Right.

And so you really have to pay attention to like how this system communicates. And that was one of the ad— you know, advantageous things about the Rocketfish is it was universal. You could really plug it— I mean, the way it hooks up is with speaker wire, and that the transmitter and the receiver both hook up via speaker wire. Oh, um, so, uh, the, the Rocketfish I, I ended up using as my main rear, uh, set of speakers, and I had a nice set of bookshelf Polk— I think it's like a 4-inch bookshelf with a, you know, sub and a tweeter. And I was actually a little concerned that it might be a little much for this

because, I mean, like, it's, it's a pretty low-profile box that the Rocketfish sends you. I mean, it might be, you know, 4.5 inches by 3 inches box. No, that is the power unit. Okay, the speakers. And You know, all it really has is a volume dial on it.

That's it. Okay.

Um, and then you— and, you know, it's got left and right, you know, you know, black and red speaker ports on the, on the back side, and that's it.

Wow.

Um, I know I take that back. It does have like a pairing button.

Okay.

If you're having issues getting it—

Does it have a remote with it?

No remote. Oh, no remote. So I think it— which to me I'm actually really okay with, um, you know, as far as it being like rear speakers, like I want my receiver to be managing the volume level of those speakers.

So it's still running through your, uh, through your receiver?

Yes.

Okay.

So the, the transmitter hooks up to the receiver, and then the receiver for the speakers and the power for the speakers is actually the, the receiver.

Okay.

So it's kind of a confusing way to talk about it because the receiver is usually like the home theater system, but this is also a receiver that receives the signal from the transmitter. transmitter that's connected to the main receiver.

It's almost like a hub.

It is a hub.

So it's, it's a hub that plugs into your receiver. So let's back up for a minute because we're using a lot of terms that I think some people may not understand. Let's talk about a receiver first.

Okay.

Um, so one of the things that, uh, if you, if you do not just have a television hooked up to power that you're running your, you know, just regular sound comes out of the speakers on your television. Some people have a soundbar system, right? Okay, within that soundbar system, there's some sort of receiver because you've got to get audio from your TV to the speaker, right? And so that's— that device is called a receiver.

Mm-hmm.

Now, there are bigger receivers out there Um, more like what you're talking about. The one that I've got, it's a Yamaha brand. What brand are you running?

Sony.

Sony. Um, Onkyo is also a really, really good one. Pioneer is a good one as well. Um, and so a lot of it will route not just audio but also video, right? Um, so you can have multiple sources coming in that all feed into your, your, uh, video source, which is your TV. And then also multiple sources that run everything to your speakers. That thing is called a receiver. So what you're talking about is you've got a whole nother device here that is powering speakers that plugs into your trans— in, into your receiver that is spitting out audio to those speakers. So one question that I've got is, in order for what I was talking about

earlier, so the Bluetooth uh, deal that I'm running, it's basically a hub that plugs into the subwoofer port, Bluetooth to the other hub, right, that plugs into the, uh, to the subwoofer to get sound. In order for that system to work, I have to have both power for that hub and power for my speaker because that's just the way it's set up. It's got to be a powered subwoofer, otherwise it doesn't work, right? Do these surround sound speakers have to be powered? Do you have to—

Independently?

Independently?

No.

Oh, that's amazing, right?

I mean, that's why I was concerned that it might not be quite powerful enough to operate these speakers, because they're pretty good size. I mean, like, the— these Polks, I mean, like, a lot of people buy them for like smaller home theaters, and they could be like your main left and rights.

Okay.

Um, you know, my, my main left and right lights are 2 12s, a 4-inch, and then a tweeter. Okay, so like they're big— yeah, they're tower speakers. Yeah.

Um, so those are the old, uh, Technics.

They're our Technics.

Yeah, nice.

I love them. Yeah, they're fantastic.

Yeah.

Um, I, they're— I've actually had them since— well, they weren't mine, but like they've, they've been around me since I was like 6 or 7 years old.

My, my dad has had a, uh, Technics system since before I was born.

Yeah, they're so good. If you can find this, you can find like— you can actually find the speakers pretty reasonable online. People get rid of them all the time, like $100. They're fantastic speakers. Yes, they are. Um, so anyway, uh, yeah, so, so in comparison to my main left and right and my center channel, they're not that big, but they're pretty big speakers. And so I was, I was concerned I was going to be getting, uh, some distortion or that I might have to like downgrade to a smaller speaker, you know, because typically people for their, you know, surround sound don't use that big of speakers, right? But why not?

Well, and, and again, it, it all depends on what you're looking for, right? I mean, I, I, I tell people, if you really want to hide the size of your speakers, get a Bose system, right? Because, uh, you know, my, my motto has always been, no highs, no lows, must be Bose. Um, they're great for just a mid-range. You want some surround sound and you want it to be inconspicuous, they're fantastic. But the reality of it is, uh, the bigger speaker you've got, the more accurate sound you're gonna get produced out of them for the most part.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know if you've ever heard the, uh, the sound system we have out on the party deck, but those are, those are Bose towers.

Yeah.

Uh, and they, man, like, and they're older.

Yeah.

And so they're older Bose, but they're, I mean, those are big tower speakers and those put out a lot more, you know, beef than your typical Bose.

Um, I'm not knocking Bose. Well, no, I'm just saying if you're, if you're gonna put small speakers in, go with Bose.

Oh yeah, I know, they're fantastic little speakers.

The big ones you've got out there, they are great.

So, man, you can hear those clear across the pasture. So, um, but I, I think those are, I think those are an oddity in, in the Bose family.

Yeah, well, I've never seen another pair like them.

So, um, I forget where we found those. It was like a resale shop or something like that. Um, really cool, really cool looking speakers.

They are.

But, uh, so, so that was— that experiment turned out really well.

Okay.

Um, honestly, like, I have, I have zero complaints. Like, and so I think, I think anybody looking for like a typical home theater setup with like a smaller set of speakers will be more than, more than happy with the performance of these. And I think, well, I think when I started shopping for these, they were like $100. It was $100 For the wireless setup.

Okay.

I think it's significantly less. I think it's like $80 now.

Wow.

For that. Or I may have just caught it on sale, 'cause I think I ended up paying like $84 for that setup.

Nice.

Not that and the speakers, just the transmitter and receiver.

Okay.

So, and it's not difficult to find. It's difficult to find if you go looking for it in the store. It's not something that they put out front.

Is it just called a wireless rear speaker kit?

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, I, I—

what I found right here is $119.

Yeah, and I, I've seen them more than that, but like, it's, uh, you can, you can find it cheaper if you, if you find— if you're looking for it Amazon, Amazon's usually got a way better price. Um, and but if you just have to get it from Best Buy, if you take the Amazon listing in, they'll match it. Sure. Um, they're real good about that. So up to $400. Yeah, up to $400.

Yeah.

So, okay, not gonna go crazy, right? So the, the next, uh, the next setup is, is cool in its own right in that you don't have to have speakers. It comes with speakers.

Okay.

And it— but it comes with a traditional size of what you would normally think are like a surround sound size speaker.

Okay.

Um, and so transmitter, receiver, and speakers and the wire. Um, and that was, uh, I'm trying to remember how much that one was. Ah, I, I wanna say it was, uh, it, it was like another $100 or something like that.

Okay.

For that setup, which still isn't bad for, you know, the, the whole shebang, but not, not nearly as, as much power. Um, or, you know, and I don't think that you wanna stray too far from the speaker size that they provide. So, you know, and I would— I need to go back through and read the literature on it, but I would imagine there's language in there that says, you know, do not, you know, exchange speakers for addition— for different speakers or something. I imagine there's something in there like that. Um, so, so the sound quality on it is not, you know, it's not going to knock your socks off.

Sure.

Is, is really what I'm trying to say. That being said, it's very functional. It does the job.

Okay.

You know, and so what, what I was concerned with is because like I'm, I've got a pretty distinct ear when it comes to audio. I'm, I'm not crazy particular. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm not looking for like crystal clarity or anything like that, but I tend to be kind of picky because I was trained to be picky when it comes to audio. Um, but at the end of the day, pretty happy with the performance of these things. So, um, yeah, I think that's it.

That looks—

Yeah, that's it.

Okay, I'm just showing him something.

Sorry, he was showing me a pic. He was, he was asking— he showed me a picture of it.

They're actually on clearance right now for $53.

$53? Yeah, that's probably what I paid for them.

They're normally $130, so they're on clearance.

That's what it was. I, I bought it on clearance.

Yeah. All right, um, So you, you've been picky about audio because you're trained to, but they're, they're not bad.

They're— no, I mean, like, they're, they're gonna get the job done. And these are my— so for like a 7.2 system, what you have is you've got, you know, center channel, left and right, subwoofer, and then you have a midsection of surround sound and then your rear section of surround sound. So I've got my big rear section surround sound in, and so these guys are my little tiny ones in the middle. And for my living room setup, they were actually perfect because they're very discreet. They're easy to, you know, kind of stow away. Like, I was able to actually hide all the wiring and cabling for these actually underneath my couch.

Okay.

And actually put the speakers like right next to the couch.

Nice.

And so you kind of get that feel of the speaker right there next to you when you're sitting on that in that space.

Right.

So the— my— so upside, upside of, of all— of both these units is, uh, they're very functional.

Yeah.

They absolutely do the job, you know. And I was, I was concerned about, you know, latency. I was concerned about clarity and haven't had an issue with either one of those. Yeah.

Yeah.

Which are the 2 big ones that I think most people ought to be concerned about.

That's the biggest thing, especially with my sub. I was thinking, man, this is going to take some time. And if it, you know, if there's like an explosion, it's like delayed, it'll be the weirdest thing ever.

Yeah.

And I personally, I have not had that issue.

And that can really throw off, you know, the movie experience that you're trying to capture in that moment or experience in that moment. And, you know, maybe, you know, maybe this isn't that big of a deal to you, but like, I think for a lot of people, you know, I think, I think the home theater experience over the next few years is going to be amplified more and more as we get into streaming services and 4K streaming. I don't know if most people realize this, but most of the movies that you stream, the audio that you're getting on those downloads is surround sound.

That's right.

Your home audio experience on these streaming services is top-notch.

Yeah, it is. One of the weird things that has happened with all this coronavirus stuff. Have you seen the movie stuff going on right now? Well, they're pushing back a lot of movies, I know that. They are, but the movies that are being released and that are out, mm-hmm, with, with the theaters closed, shut down, they are working on— by, by the time this comes out, this show comes out on Tuesday, My understanding is that it will already be in place to where you can download current, um, current movies that are in the theater.

Oh really?

At your home for like $20 for a 48-hour rental period.

Dude, that's awesome.

I know.

And that's worth it.

Absolutely it is. I mean, because, you know, a ticket's roughly $10, and if your whole family— I mean, movie theaters are going to take it in the shorts, but I mean, well, But yes, they are, but they're still trying to find a way for you to, A, have an experience.

Yeah.

That's one of the things I'm honestly just loving about this right now, like the way people are stepping up and saying, hey, I'm gonna give you this free for a month, or I'm gonna give you— I'm gonna throw this out there and just kind of make this available for a while. Um, people are trying to figure out, you know, I'm gonna deliver the food to you now.

Yeah.

I'm trying to find ways to make this work for, for people. And so these theaters have said, look, I can make a little bit of money by offering— and, and, and honestly, it's going to go a long way with people to say, look, I want a movie experience. I'm sitting at home, I've got nothing else to do. I've been really looking forward to seeing Onward, for example.

Yeah.

Like, I want to see that in my home. So, uh, you know, when you download that or stream it for that 48-hour period, it will be in surround sound. There's no doubt.

Well, let me tell you, man. So like right before this coronavirus stuff hit, my son and I had been reading Call of the Wild together.

Yeah.

And so like the incentive that I use with my kids to read books is I usually try and pick a book that has a movie that they'd be interested in seeing. And so like, look, if we read this book, then we can go see the movie.

Yeah.

This one happened to have a new version of the movie coming out with Harrison Ford, and so I wanted to go see it and Gatchell wanted to go see it. So I'm like, let's read this book. Well, we finished the book like the day before they, you know, did the self-quarantine stuff. And, and so like he's been after me now for like days like, hey, when are we gonna go see that movie? Like, we read the book, when are we gonna go see the movie? I'm like, bud, check tomorrow. I'm so sorry.

Literally tomorrow. Yeah, it will already have happened.

Tomorrow will already be past by the time you hear this, but But I'm stoked if that's the case.

Well, I'm waiting to see if it's gonna happen, but my understanding is that it is happening. And by the way, it's an awesome movie.

Oh yeah, because you went and saw it.

I went and saw it, dude. It is really, really good.

I'm stoked. So it's one of my favorite books.

Yeah.

So I'm a little distracted. There's like this mutant moth outside the studio window right now trying to get in and attack Kevin.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's quite large.

Like, you, you might be able to hear him over the microphones, he's so big.

It's huge.

He's like the size of my hand.

Oh, he's, he's really wanting to get to this light too.

Good grief. So anyway, um, so yeah, with the, with the changing landscape of, of the home theater system, uh, and honestly, we probably need to get a home theater expert in here to kind of talk about how all that stuff's changing because I'm sure it's, it's It— I, I know that it's, it's, it's changing so rapidly that the experience is going to be far beyond what we're even thinking about right now. Um, I mean, like, just, just for instance, I mean, like I mentioned that I bought the, the receiver that I bought for a specific— the reason I bought that theater is at the time it was one of the only, uh, 7.2 systems that could manage 3D.

Yeah.

Um, and like nobody's doing 3D anymore.

Nope. Um, outdated technology.

Yeah.

Which is weird because you would think out 3D would not be outdated yet.

Yeah. They're technically still making 3D movies, but people could care less about watching them in their homes. They only want to watch them in theaters. I enjoyed watching them in my house. My 3D experience was pretty top-notch. If I still had a 3D TV that worked, we'd probably still be watching them. You think about all the iterations that we've had now. You think about curved flat-screen TVs, you think about backlit LED TVs, you think about now 4K TVs. I think they're coming out with 8K here pretty quick. It's just going to continue to progress, maybe. It's probably going to slow down a little bit with everything we're going through right now. It's just going to be important to

you know, be able to be a little flexible.

Sure.

With, with your home theater system. And for me, like, man, this offered all kinds of flexibility. And I'm like, because this is the way that we— that I did this system, we could reconfigure our living room, no problem.

Yeah.

And, and be set up well in minutes.

It's really interesting to me because I don't know whether or not this Rocketfish solution would power the speakers that I've got.

Mm-hmm.

Um, the rear speakers that I've got, uh, have 5 speakers in them.

Oh wow.

So they're big and, uh, they're amazing, uh, but they're hang-on-the-wall speakers.

Okay.

If I, if I could find a way, a way to hang these on the wall and be powered wirelessly, uh, that would be unbelievable. It would completely change my experience.

Yeah.

And, and then, you know, I've got, I've got my floor speakers that, um, they're still a little bit of an issue, but part of the issue is if I, if I set them up right now, I would have speaker wire running on the ground.

I'm not doing that.

So this could provide a solution. I'm pretty pumped to, to check it out.

Yeah, no, it's, it's been a good solution for us. Um, I mean, I can show you the size of the the speakers that we plugged into these. I mean, they're not, they're not, I mean, we can look at the load on 'em and all that kind of stuff and see if they're comparable. But man, I've been stoked with the performance of them. I mean, and it could just be, it's possible that because I went from nothing to something that I'm just happy that I have, that I don't have nothing.

Sure.

But And it could also be that because my rear speakers are a pretty high-quality speaker, um, and I'm just getting good performance out of those as well. Um, but both systems, man, have, have served the purpose that I wanted them to serve.

Yeah.

And, you know, in like, in, in buying 2 systems like that that aren't necessarily compatible with one another or any of that kind of stuff, you know, and I, I bought them thinking like one of these I'll probably be happy with and the other one I won't.

Yeah.

And I was happy with both of them. And then, and they, you know, they, they do have their downsides. They weren't the easiest things to discreetly plug in. And if you've seen my— if you saw my living room and how my home theater system's set up, it's a, it's a little different. Um, but they weren't as easy to get back there and, and be discreet with being out in the open enough to, you know, have that transmission you know, alleyway basically. So it's got a clear line of sight, which you don't necessarily have to have a clean line of sight. I just know that it works better if you do. Sure. Um, so, you know, all in all, you know, 2 thumbs up from me. It's, you know, it's, it's got minimal

downside. Um, obviously there's limitations as to the size of speakers you can use, and, you know, with the, with the, you know, all-in-one system, you're not really ever going to be able to upgrade those speakers. Yeah, you're kind of stuck with those. Um, you could probably trade them out for similar speakers, um, and, you know, and maybe if those are Bose, you might get some better performance out of them that way.

Yeah.

Um, but that's yet to be seen. I haven't, you know, I haven't played around with that. Um, so, but, you know, as far as it being accessible and, um, you know, flexible and all those different kinds of like above and beyond what I expected. Sure, you know, and that's awesome. Yeah, so, and I'm usually pretty, pretty critical when it comes to this, these kinds of things.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah.

Cool. Well, man, I'm excited. I'm gonna, I'm gonna check it out. The other thing is, uh, we will make sure that, that these are— at least some iteration of these are, are linked up on the, uh, on the show notes. So just, uh, look below You'll be able to find some information about those.

Yeah. So to transition a little bit quickly, I had a crazy stop today at a house that had been flooded 4 times.

Oh yeah, that sounds horrible.

It was horrible. So, and this was, this is somebody that's been a customer for a long time, and this was an investment property that she had inherited. And so anyway, the house had flooded 4 times, and this particular particular instance, the upstairs commode had leaked into the ceiling of the kitchen. So seasoning everything. Um, and so that was, that was just unpleasant. Um, and I, I got called in because they were having some other issues. But like, I was there and I was, I was sort of observing. They, you know, had to rip the ceiling out and, um, and then kind of walking me through all the different floodings that they'd gone through, and like flood—

internal floodings, like the hot water heater busted and, um, something else, you know. It's like all these different things just kept causing water to come in the house. And the thing that came into my brain is like, oh my gosh, if they just had Paul come and hook everything up, right, none of this would have ever happened, right?

Right.

I mean, like, they'd be saving thousands and thousands of dollars by not letting their house get flooded by all this water and bursting pipes and sewage coming in the house that they're having to now pay thousands of dollars to contractors to not just fix the pipes and the plumbing and the fixtures and all that kind of stuff, but the drywall. And oh man, I mean, they would have saved thousands of dollars.

Goodness gracious.

By just having the right professional plumber come in and install everything properly the first time.

Call Paul.

Call Paul the plumber, for the love.

Please, people, make good decisions in life.

So, and you know, and as you're at home, Right now, like Kevin and I mentioned, you're, you're going to be at home and you're going to be noticing things that are not quite right. And if any of those things are plumbing, you need to give Paul the Plumber the call. So you can, you can reach out to them in the office. You can call them at 832-521-3252, or you can email them at deborah@paultheplumberllc.com. You can also book them online at paultheplumberllc.com. And I did not realize this, Kevin, you can book them on Facebook.

Really?

Yeah.

Huh.

You can book an appointment on Facebook. They've got a little button on their homepage on Facebook that says Book Now.

Well, that's super easy.

You click it. Oh, and then you get Paul or one of his professional licensed and insured plumbers to your door.

That's amazing.

Yep.

That's easy. So why would you not do that?

We don't even do that in our business.

You should, apparently. No, good stuff, man.

Anything else we got going on today, Kev?

No, I think that's about it. We've covered a variety of topics. Hopefully, there are more and more people out there, as you're staying home, working on projects, putting those earbuds in and turning on the Homeowner Show. Thanks for doing so.

We'll get you through this crisis.

That's right. We're going to continue to put out episodes. Thankfully, Craig and I are social distanced right now across the table. We live close enough together, though, that we can make this happen. And if worse comes to worse, we'll call in, man.

That's right. There's a, there's a partition of Lysol between us right now.

That's right. So, you know, keep tuning in, sharing with your friends. Hopefully we will all make it through this together. Stay safe, be smart, don't do stuff that's stupid. And that's my best advice.

But yeah, we're gonna be here every Tuesday, you know, lest the crick don't rise, you know. Earth does rise. God willing, and the creek don't rise.

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, thanks for staying with us. Until then, we'll see you next time.

See ya!