The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Episode # 734 – Sony RGB, HP PC’s and eBay targets Facebook

Episode: TBTT #734 – Sony RGB, HP PC’s and eBay targets Facebook

Podcast: Two Blokes Talking Tech

Date: 28 May 2026

Hosts: Trevor Long & Stephen Fenech

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[00:00:00] Trevor: Let’s rock and roll.

[00:00:02] Stephen: That’s not exactly what you said, but given the age rating of this program, yes, we’ll keep it non-explicit.

[00:00:09] Trevor: If you want to hear the two blokes cut loose a little bit, especially Trev, he’s a bit of a potty mouth, go to the private feed.

[00:00:14] Stephen: And that’s not a slight on me, that’s just the truth. I think the AI proved you were a much bigger potty mouth than me. I can drop a bomb. Yeah, that’s for sure.

[00:00:23] Trevor: But you won’t hear any such talk on this show. No, this is all about tech.

[00:00:28] Stephen: Although we hope— speaking of potty mouth and kids, if you’re listening, this is not for you. And hopefully your Netflix account is rated for kids because it won’t be in your feed. But I smashed the second season of Bad Thoughts, Tom Segura. Oh yeah, yeah.

[00:00:41] Trevor: I’m saving that for the trip, for the plane.

[00:00:43] Stephen: Yeah, yeah. Do you remember the first season?

[00:00:45] Trevor: I do.

[00:00:46] Stephen: How would you—

[00:00:47] Trevor: in two words, my favorite was the coffee shop bloke who didn’t need his milk. He went—

[00:00:51] Stephen: yeah. So two words, how would you describe it? The first season?

[00:00:54] Trevor: Oh, in two words.

[00:00:59] Stephen: Yeah. Or one.

[00:01:00] Trevor: Radical and unexpected.

[00:01:03] Stephen: Yeah. I’d use things like brutal.

[00:01:06] Trevor: Yeah. Violent.

[00:01:07] Stephen: So I’ll tell you this. I don’t think it’s as brutal, but I think it’s funnier.

[00:01:14] Trevor: Okay.

[00:01:15] Stephen: But here’s what I’m curious. And I’d need updates from you once you’ve done it. Yeah. I am obviously all in on the Segura universe. So I watch his Two Bears, One Cave with Bert. I watch his Your Mum’s House with his wife. I’m all in. There’s, I think there’s a couple of things that are a bit in, in jokes. Oh, a little bit.

[00:01:35] Trevor: Okay.

[00:01:36] Stephen: I don’t know if they’ll—

[00:01:37] Trevor: That are even included in the Netflix special?

[00:01:38] Stephen: Yes. Yeah. I’m just curious as to whether they matter or what, but I loved it primarily for that reason.

[00:01:46] Trevor: Well, of course you would, mate. He had you at hello there.

[00:01:48] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:01:49] Trevor: Of course you were gonna love it.

[00:01:50] Stephen: It was very good. It took me—

[00:01:52] Trevor: I still laugh at the other, the last season. It’s very funny and still I remember them quite well. Yeah.

[00:01:57] Stephen: And it is, it is as edgy is another good word, isn’t it? Like it’s just who allowed this to be made, you know?

[00:02:04] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:02:05] Stephen: But it’s quite worth a look.

[00:02:08] Trevor: Yeah. The coffee shop one’s my favorite.

[00:02:09] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:02:11] Trevor: Yeah. No, definitely. It’s on my list, mate.

[00:02:14] Stephen: You know, I am— we’re both flying out early next week and I luckily yesterday went looking for a battery ’cause it was wonderful to have the family here a few weeks ago helping me clean up. And I took everything, there used to be a bunch of stuff in this white cupboard over here, which was like charging cables and I just put it all in a box. I said, right, it doesn’t need to be up here. Like that silver trolley, I can just go downstairs if I need a microphone, I can walk down a flight of stairs, you know? ‘Cause why does it need to be up here? And I can’t find the batteries for my camera. So these cameras here, I have one of them that’s not attached and I use it to take my product shots and stuff. I’m like, I don’t have a battery for this. And I’ve got 6 batteries. And a multi charger. I’ve got the whole thing.

[00:02:52] Stephen: No idea where it is. And yesterday I was looking for it and then Harry goes, I think it’s here. It’s not. But I found a box which was also a bunch of stuff that was up here that I just gone into a box with and it’s like my travel box. So it’s got some adapters.

[00:02:52] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:03:06] Trevor: Can’t find them now.

[00:03:07] Stephen: But it’s all— no, no. I luckily saw it yesterday and took it out when I came because it’s got my iPad in it. I only use the iPad when I fly. Yeah, yeah. I don’t use it any other time.

[00:03:15] Trevor: I use my iPad all the time.

[00:03:16] Stephen: No, never.

[00:03:17] Trevor: For the movie podcast. That’s my main use of it.

[00:03:19] Stephen: Never use it.

[00:03:20] Trevor: And when I travel, when I’m on the scope, it’s my go-to.

[00:03:24] Stephen: Never use it. So I’m lucky I found that.

[00:03:26] Trevor: But I still use it as much as your Vision Pro.

[00:03:28] Stephen: Still haven’t found that bloody batteries.

[00:03:30] Trevor: You know what? I had my first cleanup of my new office.

[00:03:35] Stephen: All right.

[00:03:35] Trevor: So the office is only—

[00:03:36] Stephen: You dumped so much stuff in my bin. Yes, it sounded—

[00:03:39] Trevor: That was actually from my theater.

[00:03:41] Stephen: That sounded heavy.

[00:03:42] Trevor: Well, it was a lot of— it was like a— like paper and stuff and mostly recyclable stuff. Yeah, no e-waste. That I know of. It was all cardboard. But it was the first, ’cause do you remember when I renovated my office, I had to get everything outta my office, literally everything. And that filled my formal lounge room and half my theater. That little room, can you believe? And then when I’ve put stuff back in it, most of it went back in. A lot of stuff was thrown out, but this is the first time I’ve gone back in and thought, right, let’s rearrange a few things here. And there are things that I still can’t find in there that I was wanting to hope to find, but they’re in there somewhere. Yeah.

[00:04:28] Stephen: Yeah. There’s a lot of black plastic boxes have been purchased for another visit back here to clean up more of the shelves, which I just can’t wait to do.

[00:04:35] Trevor: Plastic box?

[00:04:36] Stephen: You know, those crates.

[00:04:37] Trevor: Big crates.

[00:04:37] Stephen: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, last night Jackson was wandering around and he asked his mum for, you know, cleaning fluid, like stuff to clean the desk. And I went, what are you doing? What? I went into the office at home and he’s moved everything. He’s cleaning the desk.

[00:04:52] Trevor: So this was the desk in your old office there?

[00:04:54] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:04:54] Trevor: Is that his room now? He uses that.

[00:04:56] Stephen: Well, we’ll get to that in a second. I went, mate, you know, you can’t see the floor in your room. So that’d be a better place to start. Just quietly. Yeah. But full credit to you, this is wonderful stuff. Anyway, I went in there late last night or this morning and had a look, I’m like, he did a good job, did a great job. But when we went in there last night and when he was kind of half done, he was contemplating where to put the PC monitor because it’s not his room, but ’cause we want Harry to be able to go in there when he’s doing tutoring online. So we want a quiet space for him to sit and do that. We also want a quiet space. So we’ve cleared a space up against under the projector on that kind of bench there where Vivi can sit if she just wants to sit and work quietly without anyone around and stuff. And so we were just talking about where things were going. And Amanda goes, well, you know, Jackson did it— It’s your desk. And I went, wait! Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!

[00:05:45] Trevor: My desk?

[00:05:46] Stephen: She looked at me when she went, You’ve got a whole office.

[00:05:49] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:05:49] Stephen: And I went offsite. I’m running a whole business. Okay. But yes, I think I’ve officially lost that room.

[00:05:55] Trevor: Oh wow. There it is.

[00:05:57] Stephen: Not even the 3D printer’s in there now because it’s been— Where is it? Bought a table for that. It’s in the garage outside of here still going hard on that. Oh man, it’s running 24/7. We had to do maintenance on it on the weekend. I did a YouTube video to grease and oil.

[00:06:09] Trevor: I did that myself about a month ago.

[00:06:10] Stephen: I went to Bunnings to buy that.

[00:06:12] Trevor: Amazon, hello. I bought the grease and the oil.

[00:06:15] Stephen: I needed it right then.

[00:06:17] Trevor: Ah, yeah, okay.

[00:06:18] Stephen: It was in the diary. Clean printer.

[00:06:19] Trevor: Yeah, I’ve got some spares. I’ve ordered too much.

[00:06:22] Stephen: I should have given you some. Can you bring it? Yeah, I should have given you some because the grease, I’m not sure is the right grease because it’s a big tub and it’s, you know, whatever.

[00:06:29] Trevor: Yeah, you sort of wipe it on the screws.

[00:06:31] Stephen: And then the oil In the video I watched, he put it on and it didn’t drip, but my oil’s just dripping everywhere. So I’m like, is this the wrong oil?

[00:06:38] Trevor: No, I did watch the YouTube video too, and I took a list of, bought everything they suggested and did it only about a month ago. Yeah, it sort of, that’s how many hours I’ve been using it. So it’s okay.

[00:06:47] Stephen: Yeah. So my, when we were down in Griffith, I’m going to show you something I can’t show the public. I’m really sorry. But we were down there and my uncle, my uncle used to have In his back shed, like a proper shed, he had a sawmill. He could take a tree— tree—

[00:07:07] Trevor: Yeah, a stump.

[00:07:08] Stephen: Stump or trunk.

[00:07:09] Trevor: The trunk.

[00:07:10] Stephen: And turn it into anything. So he could—

[00:07:12] Trevor: Turning it into chip pieces?

[00:07:13] Stephen: Mill it. No, but he could mill it and make chairs.

[00:07:16] Trevor: Oh, wow. So cut it into planks and stuff.

[00:07:18] Stephen: Like gift wood, right? So now he’s moved, he’s gone to Toowoomba and he’s got a small— So he’s now more little stuff. And he goes, “Oh, I’ll make you a breadboard.” And the man goes, “Oh my God.” we’ve just bought a new breadboard, but we now need another one that shows that it’s celiac. So she said, what I want is a round breadboard. So it’s very clearly, that’s the celiac breadboard and this one’s the not, gluten and non-gluten, right? And then he’s talking about all these cheese platters he’s made. I’m gonna make this fat. And Amanda said, I, we only use a cheese platter when I go to baseball. And we were like, you should make a baseball version. Anyway, so Amanda hasn’t seen this, but I sent him a drawing. I sent him a drawing of, our local baseball field, right? Which is actually like the literally the local one. And it’s not like all baseball fields are broadly the same, but the differences are, so for example, the dirt around the Dodgers goes the whole way. And at our baseball field, it’s just dirt around each base, but it’s in a certain design. So I took a drone shot and I designed it. Anyway, so Uncle Ray has made a cheese board. It should, if it doesn’t arrive today, it’ll arrive tomorrow. So the one on the left is the, that’s the, The shopping board. And that’s the diamond. That is legitimately the Thornleigh Diamond. So we’re going to— she’s going to turn up to baseball this summer and do a cheese platter on the diamond. It’s like our diamond. I think she’s going to love it.

[00:08:32] Trevor: You’re going to lacquer it too, or is that—

[00:08:34] Stephen: It just needs to be oiled.

[00:08:35] Stephen: You just need to oil it.

[00:08:35] Trevor: Oh, that’s what I meant.

[00:08:36] Trevor: You do that or he does that?

[00:08:37] Stephen: He’s already done one coat. You just every 6 months give it a oil with some vegetable oil.

[00:08:41] Trevor: That’s how I treat my boards, mate.

[00:08:43] Stephen: And so the reason I say that is because now she’s printing. So he’s the one that just bought the Addo 3. And so I said, well, can you print him some umbrella hooks? Have I shown you those?

[00:08:51] Trevor: No.

[00:08:52] Stephen: We’ve printed these great umbrella hooks for the back of the Kia because we always have umbrellas in the car. And so, you know, the mounts for car seats.

[00:08:59] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:09:00] Stephen: The way you put the strap on the clip.

[00:09:01] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:09:02] Stephen: So you get these hooks and they hook on there and then there’s two like a gun rack. Fast forward to Wayne’s World. You can put two umbrellas off the back of the seat. Nice. Looks really good. So I just wanted to print him some stuff. So that’s running. I noticed I went to— I went and saw Jackson at Channel 9 the other day because he abused me once for not coming to see him when I was in there. And I’m like, I was trying to be the, you know, hands off, I’m not getting involved. So anyway, I’ll come around now and abuse you every time. And he’s got, have you ever seen the Logitech Creative Wheel? It’s a wheel and like a Stream Deck made for Premiere Pro. Anyway, he stole that from me ’cause he works in Premiere Pro and he’s 3D printed a base for that so that the Stream Deck-y thing, the buttons are here and the wheel’s there and a top for the wheel. It’s all 3D printed.

[00:09:45] Trevor: Wow.

[00:09:46] Stephen: There’s stuff, the stuff they’re printing is wild.

[00:09:48] Trevor: Yeah, oh, there’s so much stuff to do. I follow a couple of accounts, like the 10 things you could use every day, and all 3D prints, you know, whether it’s a paper towel holder or a hook for to put the lids of your cup, your pan.

[00:10:02] Stephen: The other day Amanda comes out with this pink thing and I go, what’s that? And she goes, it’s a paper towel holder. And Harry goes, there’s already one here, Mum. And she goes, this one’s for the laundry.

[00:10:10] Trevor: And it’s, you know, it’s a pink color that kind of matches the laundry. So she’s running the 3D printer.

[00:10:14] Stephen: Oh yeah, mate, I saw an order today on Amazon. She’s bought new filament. How good’s that? It’s her printer.

[00:10:21] Trevor: Joe would never do that. Joe would say, oh, can you print me this? Like, I’ve printed Joe stuff for the kitchen, as you know, but I also printed her like a Chanel tray. So yeah, you put jewelry in it and all that, and a Louis Vuitton coaster. And yeah, that’s all she’s getting.

[00:10:37] Stephen: I think it comes from the Cricut, the craft. Ah, yes. Because Amanda was massively into that. It’s essentially an extension.

[00:10:43] Trevor: Wow.

[00:10:43] Stephen: It’s DIY.

[00:10:44] Trevor: Yeah, oh great. Oh mate, there’s a, I reckon there’s a podcast in that. All her ideas and everything. And you know, imagine you and her knocking about on a podcast.

[00:10:56] Stephen: But the thing is, we’re still just in the bamboo handy stage.

[00:10:59] Trevor: Well, there’s like posts, I reckon you can do some social posts around.

[00:11:01] Stephen: We’re not designing anything. Well, just to say, here’s what’s possible. Anyway, she’s still paying for shit with a wand. I told you about the wand, you know, with the star on the end.

[00:11:12] Trevor: With the credit card in it or the—

[00:11:13] Stephen: The credit card, yeah. Tap and go at McDonald’s. Bip.

[00:11:16] Trevor: Is that right? She pulls out a wand and goes boop.

[00:11:19] Stephen: Still carries the wand most days.

[00:11:20] Trevor: That’s funny. Is it pink?

[00:11:22] Stephen: Pink handle, yellow star. Wow. Yep.

[00:11:25] Trevor: Amazing. And when she pays with that, do they look at her funny and go—

[00:11:28] Stephen: Most of the time, yeah.

[00:11:29] Trevor: What’s happening?

[00:11:30] Stephen: Most of the time.

[00:11:30] Trevor: But then they see the money appear, they go, oh, okay.

[00:11:32] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:11:32] Trevor: It’s worth something, this wand.

[00:11:33] Stephen: They don’t care as long as it goes ding.

[00:11:35] Trevor: As long as it goes ding and there’s money goes in.

[00:11:36] Stephen: Speaking of which, and we’ll get to the show. Sorry to all of our YouTubers that are waiting to put down the actual show starts. There was, you know what, hang on, call out, call out. There was a great comment this week about that exact thing, because as we’ve mentioned before, there’s one dear and loyal listener who likes to tell everyone when the show starts. But there was someone this week that went, actually, the real, the fun started at 0:00. And I thought, good on you. What a great, you know what I’m saying? Yeah, comments.

[00:12:07] Trevor: Uh, well, didn’t we get a— we got a really nice comment, uh, on the show from Signature Inc.

[00:12:14] Stephen: Quality content begins at 0.00. Bravo!

[00:12:19] Trevor: Is that on— is that on the Two Blokes?

[00:12:21] Stephen: On, uh, it’s on YouTube. Okay.

[00:12:23] Trevor: Yeah, well, on, uh, the podcast app, uh, we had a 5-star from Simon from G-Town. Shout out! If podcasts were measured in horsepower, Two Blokes Talking Tech would need engineering approval. These two legends somehow make tech news entertaining, informative, and feel like you’re overhearing a conversation between mates at the pub who also happen to know everything about gadgets. Don’t go to the pub much, none of us drink. The banter is sharp, the insights are solid, and every episode leaves you either wanting to buy something expensive or pretending you understood the NBN discussion. Most importantly, the boys are clearly doing very well, and frankly, it shows. Confidence levels are high, microphones are polished, and the carry-on is elite. Highly recommended for anyone who loves tech. Laugh, and hearing two blokes absolutely thriving. Oh, isn’t that a great comment? Good work. Well, Simon, you’re a legend.

[00:13:17] Stephen: Simon, get in touch. I’ll send you a bloody umbrella or something.

[00:13:19] Trevor: He’ll send you a little— what is it, the bee holder?

[00:13:23] Stephen: Stubby holder. I’ll send you a stubby holder, a lanyard, and a pen.

[00:13:26] Trevor: Yeah. And there was another one. Did we read this one? Josh Smithovsky: Great podcast, good level of banter and information. Reviews are clearly not paid for, and the two blokes know their stuff. Well played. Yeah, very good.

[00:13:39] Stephen: All right, well, I’ve got good news about the show format. I hope it’s in your inbox as well. And we’re ready to roll. We’ve been, we’ve been padding for an email. Not really, but it feels that way, doesn’t it?

[00:13:52] Trevor: Well, it took a phone call.

[00:13:53] Stephen: Yeah, we did record our private feed before the main show because we were struggling.

[00:13:58] Trevor: Boom.

[00:14:01] VOICE OVER: Welcome to Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:14:03] Stephen: Not a bad price.

[00:14:04] VOICE OVER: With Trevor Long from eftm.com.

[00:14:07] Trevor: Really handy device.

[00:14:08] VOICE OVER: And Stephen Fenech from techguide.com.au.

[00:14:11] Stephen: Great to have your company, episode 734. Thanks to the great people at Netgear for all your home networking needs. They’ve got you covered at netgear.com.au. And Arlo, the great people who do home security like no one else. So if you’re looking to upgrade your home security or expand your home security, from doorbells to floodlights to everyday cameras indoors or out, Arlo’s got you covered. And all we ask as we say regularly, is that you give them a consideration when you’re in the market.

[00:14:38] Trevor: Absolutely. It’s— we— our sponsors across all our shows have been quite loyal for many years. We ask you to show some loyalty to them.

Sony True RGB TVs — hands-on briefing and comparison

[00:14:47] Stephen: That’s it. Now, Stephen, I will preface this by saying to people, I know we’ve talked about TVs a lot. We’ve talked about RGB though a lot. Yes, I know, but I feel like we’ve I feel like maybe, maybe this is the same as other years, you know, LG, Samsung, Hisense, Sony, maybe. But we’ve talked about RGB a lot and we’re going to do that again right now. Yeah, because this morning Sony announced their True RGB televisions. Now, for clarity, we have Hisense calling it Mini LED RGB, we have Samsung calling it Micro RGB, we have LG calling it Micro RGB, and we have Sony calling it True RGB. The concept behind them remains the same. If you don’t get it, listen to a previous episode. Instead of white or blue lights behind your LCD panel, it’s a set of red, green, and blue little tiny pixels that light up and illuminate through the screen to show you what you want. But it is not as many RGBs as there are pixels on the screen, and therefore it is not— the contrast is not as strong or good as OLED, the blacks to color ratio. But there is a wider gamut of color visible. Now, we’ve explained that before when we talked about what Samsung did for us a couple of weeks ago. We’ve talked about seeing Hisense’s launch. But Stephen, Sony really went balls out on this one for us, didn’t they?

[00:16:07] Trevor: Definitely. Yeah, this was, um, well, normally we get a briefing, we were told about the technology, and, uh, in some cases they do compare another brand, and some brands hide the other brand, they don’t let us know. Sony had a really a big room set up with, uh, their two new TVs, uh, two new models, 9 Series, and, uh, also some some competitor TVs along the bottom. And it was a really honest, open look at all the TVs. They put everything in standard mode and then put everything in vivid mode. And so it was like, like-for-like comparisons. And it was, it was really interesting to see the differences. And look, it’s not every day you’re gonna have 5 TVs in front of you. Each of these, if you look at them individually, think, that’s amazing. And that, look, they all are.

[00:16:54] Stephen: Let’s preface this whole discussion by saying every single one of these TVs, yeah, on its own, because I spent a bit of time staring at one that I thought might have been the worst of the 5 and staring at it going, what a great picture. Like, what a great picture.

[00:17:06] Trevor: Of course.

[00:17:07] Stephen: But head to head, tough to give it a vote, right? Absolutely. And so what were the 3 at the bottom?

[00:17:11] Trevor: There was an LG OLED, there was a Samsung, and in the middle was Samsung Micro LED in the middle. But at the other end, and the other end was another LG, LG, LG C Series.

[00:17:23] Stephen: Yeah, LG G Series and the Samsung Micro LED R95. So they’re, so they’re flagship, their flagship with the glare-free coating.

[00:17:30] Stephen: Um, LG LG’s G Series has their anti-reflective.

[00:17:30] Trevor: Yes.

[00:17:34] Trevor: Yep.

[00:17:35] Stephen: And Sony’s 9 Series has their anti-reflective. Because I want to talk about this first before we get to color. Yeah, it’s fascinating because I’ve said on record plenty of times, I think LG have missed the mark with this anti-reflective because the glare-free is amazing. Yeah. But then you look at the Sony and you go, hang on a minute. Yeah, it doesn’t have that gray kind of look when it’s off, which doesn’t really matter, but it does.

[00:17:56] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:17:56] Stephen: And it does definitely kill more reflection than the LG without the diffusion.

[00:18:04] Stephen: That the Hisense and Samsung does. Yeah.

[00:18:04] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:18:06] Trevor: It’s remarkable. They did a couple of good tests with the, with a light up close to it and everything.

[00:18:10] Stephen: But the biggest simple one was just someone standing in a white shirt and seeing whether you get the reflection. Don’t you think?

[00:18:16] Trevor: No, exactly. Because that, I think they were trying to recreate true viewing conditions. Like someone might be wearing a light-colored shirt and watching a TV. And how often have you seen in dark scenes watching an older TV, let’s say, where you’re looking at yourself in the reflection.

[00:18:30] Stephen: It’s a mirror. Yeah.

[00:18:32] Trevor: But in this case, yeah, remarkable anti-reflective properties.

[00:18:35] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah, they did a great job. And so outside of that though, the challenge is how does this true RGB stack up against micro RGB as an example, but RGB generally from other manufacturers. And they did it— excuse me, they did a couple of things. Firstly, they had the Samsung there for us to see, but back at their factory, so not in Australia, they pulled apart some competitor products. And we don’t know whether these are Australian competitors or just some random Chinese brand, we have no idea. But they pulled apart some other competitors in the RGB space, and they actually cut the backlight out, rewired it in, and made it work so they can hang it over the front of a TV to show what it was showing. And look, in some cases, when it was at its brightest or dullest, it was just one color. It wasn’t actually showing the distinct outline of a picture. And in other cases, they zoomed in so far they could see the, the RGB lights, and they were sometimes oriented RGB, other times oriented upright, you know. Yeah, RGB from top to bottom, otherwise backwards. Like, it was a strange thing to observe. Yeah, but they also talked about how their TVs have like a little chip, a little controller chip. Yeah, for every— basically every— every—

[00:19:43] Trevor: yeah, every cluster of cells. Yeah, RGB. Because I think Samsung was saying that they have two processors, so one one that’s controlling individually, controlling the RGBs, and then another one to control everything else, the LCD. Yeah, but in Sony’s case, they’ve got several chips on the backlight board, on the board, let’s say, with all— and it’s controlling only what’s near it. Yeah, so that’s a processing power that’s pretty decent. And in the demonstrations they showed, and look, the things that when we review TVs, the thing we look for are the obviously color quality, color accuracy, the clarity. We also look at detail in bright areas, dark areas. We look at things like bleed, color bleed, and blooming, those sorts of things. And in every one of those areas, they, they put their TV up against the opponents, and most of the time theirs looked as good, if not better, than their opponents. And the emphasis on Sony was that they’re a movie company, they’re a movie studio. So from the get-go, from lens to lounge room, they know the deal getting accurate color. In fact, the monitors, the color monitors they use to color grade films in Hollywood are Sonys, the Sony TV, Sony panels.

[00:21:12] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:21:13] Trevor: So from that, they’ve got that legacy already because they are a studio, whereas, you know, Samsung and LG, they’re electronics companies. So Sony’s bringing this legacy into play here and using that to make it look amazing.

[00:21:30] Stephen: It’s remarkable. And what I think came through to me a little bit too obviously was Not that OLED looked dull, but that it didn’t have the color. Like, it’s, it’s still, it’s still playing with my head.

[00:21:43] Trevor: It also didn’t have the brightness. So brightness equals color. Brightness equals color.

[00:21:47] Stephen: Well, I don’t think it does.

[00:21:49] Trevor: Well, I think it does.

[00:21:50] Stephen: I think that you don’t have the brightness, you can’t have the color. No, but you can have too much brightness and not enough color. Well, and you end up with this just flat green.

[00:21:58] Trevor: True. Yeah.

[00:21:59] Stephen: So, so what I saw, and that’s the thing, if you focus on an OLED, you go, stunning picture. Stunning picture. And in the right room, who cares about brightness, right? But if you’re trying to push, you know, a nits number in terms of measuring brightness and in a bright Aussie lounge room, then, you know, RGB is really going to shine through in that sense. And so to me, it was vastly obvious that RGB is a brighter picture, but it was also obvious that it is a different set of colors. And there was a couple of times when there were skin tones, like someone on the screen, and you’re like—

[00:22:27] Trevor: I mean, that I found a lot of difference between the brands on the skin tones, Correct. Huge.

[00:22:33] Stephen: But here’s the challenge, right? Which one’s right?

[00:22:36] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:22:37] Stephen: And I said to them, I said, the only thing, you know, the only way I know, because then they opened up, they were going to show some football and they opened up the Stan app. And I said, I wish you could pause it right there. You know, when you open Stan, blue screen, Stan logo, right?

[00:22:48] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:22:49] Stephen: I said, you know what I need? I need a color swatch from Bunnings of the Stan logo.

[00:22:54] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:22:54] Stephen: And go, well, I asked the question, which one’s closest?

[00:22:58] Trevor: Yeah. I asked the question about Pantone validation.

[00:23:01] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:23:02] Trevor: And, you know, Samsung have it, but only with their OLEDs. Their OLEDs are Pantone validated. So Pantone is like a color authority.

[00:23:12] Trevor: And they can— they decide on the accuracy of color. Yep. And so the Samsung OLEDs are Pantone validated, but the micro RGBs are not. Right. So they were saying that Pantone is very much basically a print color format. So they look at Pantone is mainly for print. Yes. But yeah, it’s only a Samsung OLED. But in terms of the color accuracy, then they sort of harked back to, well, we’re a movie studio, we know what color is, we know what the right colors is. We know, well, what the industry decides is color. That’s on us.

[00:23:12] Stephen: Yes.

[00:23:47] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:23:48] Trevor: So that’s where they’ve got their saying, right? Well, if it’s red, if we say it’s red, that’s red.

[00:23:52] Stephen: It’s interesting because they did show— I mean, you referenced this a couple of weeks ago, the Samsung chart about the, you know, yeah, BT.2020 or BT.2025 or whatever the hell the stupid number is anyway. Sony showed a 3-dimensional chart, right? Color volume. It showed color volume in every angle. And it’s like, it actually was a great demonstration that doesn’t make sense unless you understand what it is to say we’re pushing every part of the color.

[00:24:17] Trevor: I wanted that slide.

[00:24:18] Stephen: Yeah, I know. I said that.

[00:24:19] Trevor: That’s a great, great slide. I want that.

[00:24:21] Stephen: Yeah. So price. This is fascinating, right? So Sony BRAVIA 7.2, so the 7 series.

[00:24:29] Trevor: Yep.

[00:24:29] Stephen: Let’s just— there’s a 50-inch, but don’t worry about that. The 55-inch is $3,000. Now that’s their— it’s a premium TV, but it’s their entry-level RGB, right? A, a 55-inch for $3,000, that is more expensive by $500 than Samsung’s entry-level 55, and by $700 more than Hisense’s. Yeah, the 75-inch entry-level, the 7 Series, is $5,499. Hisense’s premium is at 75 inches is $3,999.

[00:25:05] Stephen: That’s actually not the U9 that doesn’t come in 75. Samsung’s U9 doesn’t come in 75? Hmm.

[00:25:05] Trevor: Wow.

[00:25:11] Trevor: I thought it was 65, 75, and 85.

[00:25:13] Stephen: Maybe it does. Maybe it does. The Samsung 85 is $4,000. I mean, they’re pretty much on par, it seems. That’s probably what, what, where to go there. They’re sitting on par.

[00:25:29] Trevor: Similar to other brands. So like Samsung’s got its R85, R95.

[00:25:34] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:25:34] Trevor: LG’s got its C-Class and G-Class OLEDs.

[00:25:37] Trevor: Hisense has got its UR8, UR9.

[00:25:37] Stephen: Yep.

[00:25:40] Stephen: Yes.

[00:25:40] Trevor: So in a similar fashion, you got your 7.2 and your 7 and 9.2. Is it 7.2 or 9.2?

[00:25:46] Stephen: You got your both 7.2 and 9.2.

[00:25:48] Trevor: 7.2 and 9.2. So 7’s obviously your affordable, and is 9 the one that has the glare-free? The 7 doesn’t.

[00:25:54] Stephen: I don’t know if the 7 does.

[00:25:55] Trevor: The 7 doesn’t, no.

[00:25:56] Stephen: No, right, okay.

[00:25:58] Trevor: But I think it’s remarkable how, yeah, it’s the same, they’re sort of, but the basics of the technology are the same, but it’s how they use it, how they alter it, how they process it.

[00:26:09] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:26:10] Trevor: And that’s always been the case whenever there’s a TV, right? It’s like, you know, Kogan sells their TV saying, oh, these are Samsung panels, don’t they, when they’re with their TVs?

[00:26:18] Stephen: Which is irrelevant.

[00:26:19] Trevor: The processor does the work, right? It’s one thing to have a panel but it’s, it’s like a Formula 1 car. It’s a Formula 1 car, but the driver makes a difference.

[00:26:26] Stephen: You can have a panel and the operating system. Yeah, doesn’t matter.

[00:26:29] Trevor: Exactly. It’s still got to have a processor, and that’s the secret sauce that makes the difference.

[00:26:34] Stephen: Samsung’s 95H RGB, so their premium at 75 inches is $8,000.

[00:26:39] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:26:40] Stephen: The Sony at 75 inches 9 Series is $7,500. So they price themselves just spec there below Samsung, basically. Yeah, which is kind of fascinating.

[00:26:51] Trevor: Pretty good. Yeah, it’s, uh, I think I was very impressed with the demo. And you know what, the demo is really in-depth. I love the fact that they were unashamedly showing the other brands. I said, look, judge for yourself. This is— and they took the trouble and they showed us in the settings, standard, standard settings on all of them. And then they went to vivid and all those different modes.

[00:27:14] Stephen: Daniel said to me It’s Daniel, isn’t it? The young bloke that does the— Dan. Yeah, Dan. He goes, he goes, when he bought this yesterday, like they literally bought those TVs.

[00:27:23] Trevor: They purchased the opposite.

[00:27:24] Stephen: Good on them.

[00:27:25] Trevor: No Hisense though. They never had Hisense. No. Yeah.

[00:27:27] Stephen: Don’t know why. Well, I think they’re just going, look, I think Samsung’s probably got the RGB credentials.

[00:27:35] Trevor: Yeah. And they wanted to also demonstrate against OLED too, which LG’s are the ones to beat, aren’t they? Yeah. But yeah, I’m like, isn’t Would you agree though, would you agree that Sony has been a little, in the last couple of years, they’ve a little been backward in coming forward with their, I’ve hardly heard of them, from them.

[00:27:53] Stephen: Yeah, yeah.

[00:27:54] Trevor: It’s great to see. And, you know, shout out to, you know, they’ve got a new PR company, so good luck to them. That’s a good, and I remember the reaction that I had to that news. And like, I know the people at this PR company. I said, well, I hope you’re gonna tell us more about their stuff. ‘Cause I’m a fan. Their cameras are great. I’ve got a massive Sony 4K projector in my theater. I’m a fan. We need to know more. So really good that this is a product that they can be proud to stand by.

[00:28:21] Stephen: And there’s also no sign this has anything to do with the TCL buyout either. This, this, this would have been well in the works before that. So this only, it only bodes well potentially for investment in the TV brand. Yeah. And for TCL to potentially pick up this RGB technology because remember TCL have also launched with no RGB. Yeah.

[00:28:39] Trevor: They’ve got their own sort of unique tech. They’ve got an event coming up in a few weeks.

[00:28:42] Stephen: So well, it’s just a demo. Like it’s not They’ve already, they’ve already launched and there’s no RGB. It’s a, it’s a mini LED with a super quantum dot to overexaggerate the colors apparently. So, you know, I think it’s fascinating. And look, I haven’t reviewed it, haven’t seen it, but I’ve got to say, if you were to make a call based on what we saw, I think it’s a struggle for the others. I think Sony has something very good here.

[00:29:07] Trevor: And we haven’t reviewed the TV. We’ve only seen them in the hour-long session that we, that we had. And from that demonstration, I’m thinking, wow, that’s a huge difference. Yeah. And really opened my eyes literally to the differences and improvements that they can demonstrate. And look, what we saw was perhaps what you’ll see in a store. You may see a Sony over here and a Hisense and a Samsung and an LG, and you can make your comparison. But I think On its own, it’s good. Look, all these TVs on their own, you can think, wow, that’s amazing. But seeing them quite dramatically beside each other really, really highlighted the change, the differences. And, and like you sort of referred, like, who decides what color’s what and who decides what’s good and what’s bad? But there was some real call-outs in sort of, you know, yeah, detail and the shape of things. And that was obviously better. Okay, that’s better because you can see more and it’s not quite as blown out. Or so there were those things that are indisputable. I always say picture quality is very subjective. Like, you— how you tune your TV compared to mine could be completely different, and our taste and our view could be completely different. But there is a lot of common ground that Sony appear to have got right to make their picture quality superior.

[00:30:26] Stephen: I think we should make one other potentially negative call out, which was what we— what you mentioned last week of the week week before about Samsung’s greens. Yeah, the green that jumped.

[00:30:35] Trevor: Yeah, it stood out again on Sony’s, on the Sony TV.

[00:30:39] Stephen: Yeah, looking at the comparison. Yeah, it’s the Samsung.

[00:30:42] Trevor: Yeah, because I think, I think, look, I, you know, the example I think I spoke to you about, yeah, it was when, you know, when you’re taking a photo on a Samsung phone. So this is what Samsung, they do this when you, when you’re looking at through the viewfinder of your, of your Samsung Galaxy phone taking a photo and the colors look amazing. They pump up the greens and the blues and you think you’re taking the world’s best photograph.

[00:31:06] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:31:07] Trevor: And when you, when you take the picture and put it onto a neutral territory like on your computer, you think, oh, it’s not a— it’s not how I remember it. So I think in some areas where Samsung and even other brands would do this, where they, where they know that weak on some colors, they tend to pump it up. They tend to overcompensate. They try to compensate. Is that what you’re talking about? The greens, the Samsung greens?

[00:31:32] Stephen: It just, it just, yeah, it seemed like it blew out. Yeah, it did.

[00:31:36] Trevor: I reckon that’s because they’ve sort of— that’s probably a difficult area of the BT.2020 to get to. So they’re thinking, well, we’re going to give it, we’re going to give it a bit of a pump up. Yeah.

[00:31:46] Stephen: I hope for their sake that they’re doing— that they’ve been to Harvey Norman or JB’s and they bought a bunch of TVs. TVs and they’re seeing this and they’re going, you know what, firmware update, just tune it back because it could, it could, it could be bad for them. Yeah, I think a lot of Aussies watch a lot of sport. If the greens look artificial.

[00:32:03] Trevor: Also though, you got to, you got to remember it also, it’s also where the content comes from.

[00:32:09] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:32:09] Trevor: There are some, some I think are like Disney, they broadcast sport, you know, they got ESPN, Stan, how, how they stream it has a big effect as well. The bitrate of the, of the stream, I think Disney’s wasn’t like— I think there was other people in the room saying Disney’s bitrate was, was a bit low, so it’s hard to watch some of it.

[00:32:30] Stephen: Yeah. Hey, was Ray there? No, it’s the only person that would bring up—

[00:32:32] Trevor: no, it’s Steve Lambrecht from Tekra. He was mentioning the bitrate, and he and I have had this discussion many times because he’s a massive movie fan like me, and we buy discs. So we were all— we’re all that, you know, disc wins, you know, whenever, over streaming because of the bitrate. The bitrate, the higher the bitrate, the better. So streaming live sport with a good bitrate can have a massive effect on what you see, color and clarity as well. So that, that’s what else you’ve got to take into account. But the TV has to have the platform to display those colors in their proper format.

[00:33:08] Stephen: Yeah, yeah, fascinating.

[00:33:11] Trevor: It is, that’s amazing.

[00:33:12] Stephen: All right, well, it’s exciting.

[00:33:13] Trevor: You know what, I’m really looking forward to seeing this TV.

[00:33:15] Stephen: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I think I’ve said several times every time we talk about TVs, this is the most exciting year to be reviewing TVs.

[00:33:21] Trevor: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s a, it’s another year where we, it’s another level. They’ve hit another level of quality, another technology that, that’s, that’s come to market. And yeah, if you’re in the market for a TV, like, this is the right time if you’re looking for a new TV to, to go shopping.

[00:33:37] Stephen: Very good. Uh, you can read about and see the photos of Sony’s, uh, new range at techguide.com.au and eftm.com. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech, and we did all thanks to the great people at Netgear, netgear.com.au. You, uh, you would have read mine and Stephen’s articles this week about the NBN and how people’s issues with the NBN are very much in their own corners. So if you’re, uh, if you’re paying for 500, 1000 megabit speeds and you’re not getting those speeds at home, it’s on you, it’s on your home equipment. Frankly, it’s your fault. People have got modems that are way too old. If you’ve still got the modem that your ISP gave you when the NBN first came out, do you know that modem might not even be capable of more than 100 megabits per second? So it might actually not be able to deliver you higher speeds. So upgrading is what you do, and you’ve got to upgrade your home. You’ve got to upgrade the, the infrastructure on the streets. The councils have to do it. You should do it in your home. Wi-Fi is fundamental to your home’s network, so Take the time, invest in a better Wi-Fi network, and that’s what Orbi is with their mesh system. The mesh system connects multiple devices together, a router that connects to your NBN and then 2 or more satellites in your home, and those devices work together to provide a dome of Wi-Fi over your entire home for fast speeds in every room. We were testing this on the weekend because I swapped out my Orbi for a different one, and I said to Harry, go into the playroom now, do a speed test. And he said, it’s about 120. I said, well, mate, we’re getting 500, uh, 1,000 in here, 900. I said, now let’s go and set the satellite up. Set it up, and he was getting 800 on the on the other side of the house. That’s what you need. You need the speed you’re paying for in every room, and Netgear can deliver that through the Orbi system. And you can find out more at netgear.com.au.

[00:35:16] VOICE OVER: Everything about tech you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

HP PCs — NPU vs GPU, AI on-device, and the OmniBook range

[00:35:25] Stephen: I had an epiphany. Did you? At the HP Hotel, which is actually the W Hotel in Sydney, but HP took it over. Yeah, look, they took us in a couple rooms to show us a bunch of laptops and a bunch of demos, and it was good. I enjoyed it. It was a demonstration that the latest laptops are great and they’re doing good things. But here’s what happened to me. I realized that the NPU had been oversold. Yeah, to me. You know, I was at the Microsoft launch of the Copilot Plus PC range, and they talked about tops and 40 tops and having this, and every PC with more than, more than this many tops is going to be delegated a Copilot Plus PC. It’s ready for AI. Here’s what can happen on your computer using AI, and it was kind of burnt into my mind that the neural processing unit, the NPU, was doing all this work.

[00:36:10] Trevor: Yeah, doing the heavy lifting.

[00:36:11] Stephen: It’s not, it’s the GPU. Yeah, and it was described to me in this way. And so this came about when they were doing a demo in Adobe Premiere and things like this, high-intensity things like masking out a subject in a video, which allows you to do some pretty cool creative things, something that used to take hours of manual labor. And he was— it was a graph of the performance of the PC, and I’m looking at it going, the NPU’s not moving, mate, what’s happening?

[00:36:34] Trevor: It’s the GPU.

[00:36:35] Stephen: He goes, oh mate, this is the GPU.

[00:36:36] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:36:36] Stephen: And I went, what do we need an NPU for? And he goes, well, actually you use that when you’ve got longer time and you want to use less power. So for a command that you’re willing to wait for, that might mean seconds, not minutes, but for a command you’re willing to wait for, the NPU can be handed that command and do it. And then come back and use a lot less power. So the power efficiency is there, which is how we get the great battery life.

[00:37:00] Trevor: The NPU is like the super sub, comes off the bench when it’s needed to do the hard— take a hit up and then go back to the bench.

[00:37:08] Stephen: Yeah, but GPU— but you know, it’s not doing— it’s not scoring tries.

[00:37:11] Trevor: No, but the GPU is the one who’s sort of doing all the work.

[00:37:14] Stephen: The GPU is your quarterback and your winger.

[00:37:16] Trevor: Just get the ball, putting the points on the board, 100-meter run, unbelievable. Yeah, the NPU is sort of your off-the-bench superstar.

[00:37:24] Stephen: And so it kind of Yeah, honestly, it took me by surprise.

[00:37:27] Trevor: But it’s really not— you did it to me too. And I think the whole approach, so HP and all computer companies apparently for that matter, is their approach now is— it used to be, okay, yeah, there was some Intel. The Intel’s got their new, uh, Core processors here, the 3rd gen or whatever it is. Um, the whole approach to it is now emphasis on everything happening on device. You know, all the on-device AI, it’s all about privacy, security, and just speed. Like, being able to speed now isn’t just a matter of having the top Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processor. It’s about the guts of the computer too, the AI abilities of the computer as well. You know, the GPU, the NPU as well. And HP’s approach too was sort of our approach to working has changed, so how we work, where we work, and that both all their new consumer and enterprise products address this, that we were often collaborating, we’re often, you know, working remotely, we’re doing all these things and it’s addressed all those things. But yet at its core, it keeps the strength and speed and everything we need in one place, right on our lap on these amazing devices. And well, Powell was remarkable.

[00:38:42] Stephen: I’ll pick you up on something you just said, and it’s a critical point. You said the Intel third generation or whatever. I don’t know. I’ve got no idea. Yeah. And I think, look, that’s not on Intel PR. It’s more on— it’s, it’s a difficult thing to explain.

[00:38:57] Trevor: Process Intel Core Ultra Series 3.

[00:38:59] Stephen: But my point is, I don’t think we have fully understood the advances they’ve made.

[00:39:04] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:39:04] Stephen: They— I mean, they had a launch, they do all those things, but unfortunately, Intel was— I learned differently. And so I need someone to sit down with me and go, mate, you need to understand that we’ve come this far with this thing and this, this is now what we can do with that. Because the demo I got was, and you would have seen this, you know, F1 game running on a laptop with an Intel processor and integrated graphics, which means it doesn’t have an NVIDIA GeForce 5080. It’s got Intel’s chip, latest chip with integrated graphics, and it’s running sensationally well. Yeah. So you kind of have this moment where you go, hang on a minute. So now I’ve just learned that I don’t need to get an NVIDIA GeForce buddy chip if I’m just playing the odd game. Obviously, if you’re a massive gamer, yeah, go for your life, I get it. But for casual gaming, this thing is unbelievable, out-of-the-box integrated graphics. And at the same time, oh, the TOPS number on these NPUs hasn’t gone up, up much in the last couple of years. It’s because 40 is fine. Yeah, it’s all you need.

[00:40:01] Trevor: But it’s, it’s like, it’s like the RGB chat on the TV, we’re talking about TVs. It’s one thing to have it, but it’s how you use it. It’s how that it— the computer runs it. It’s, uh, yeah, it’s not— I didn’t say it’s the size that matters, it’s how you use it. I just said how you use it.

[00:40:17] Stephen: It doesn’t matter what you have anyway, but it’s, um, you know, they’ve got—

[00:40:22] Trevor: they all combine their— the CPUs and graphics. That’s the thing with this processor, but they’ve also got their dedicated AI engines that can when they needed to handle stuff intelligently in the background on device.

[00:40:34] Stephen: I’ve got a really important question.

[00:40:36] Trevor: It’s an amazing new approach, and they’re good looking. Good. These— I think that one of these is waiting for me at home to review. The OmniBook.

[00:40:41] Stephen: Did we talk about bringing photos to life already on a podcast?

[00:40:44] Trevor: Yes, you did.

[00:40:44] Stephen: Oh, we did.

[00:40:45] Trevor: Yeah, you did.

[00:40:46] Stephen: That’s how it was. It was the end of last week’s show that we realized that we hadn’t talked about HP.

[00:40:51] Trevor: Because remember that we mentioned the bloke with the beard. They animated the beard.

[00:40:55] Stephen: I still don’t feel great.

[00:40:55] Trevor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I love the demo, how they did this. It was, it was really interesting day. How, well, you know, a couple of hours and they, we were downstairs and then, you know, you check in, you got a little key and there’s the QR code on it for all the materials. And then they took us up to the suite, which I think was the same suite that I reviewed the HiSense.

[00:41:15] Stephen: Yeah, it was the same level, same type of suite. Exactly the same suite.

[00:41:18] Trevor: And they had 4 stations where you looked at the different—

[00:41:21] Stephen: too close together.

[00:41:22] Trevor: Yeah, they were a bit tight. But that was interesting. They had a desktop too, the Omni— what’s that? Omni Studio?

[00:41:27] Stephen: Yeah, it looks nice.

[00:41:28] Trevor: The X27 all-in-one.

[00:41:30] Stephen: He was, he was like, you need to realize this is an all-in-one. It’s not just a monitor.

[00:41:33] Trevor: It’s not just a monitor.

[00:41:34] Stephen: That’s a computer in there. Yeah, yeah. So thin.

[00:41:36] Trevor: That looks really good. That would be— and what they got too, they’ve got this new way to connect your computer, the Thunderbolt Share.

[00:41:44] Stephen: Yes.

[00:41:44] Trevor: So say you got your laptop, you got a, like, a whole ton of data you want to transfer, photos or whatever, plug in the Thunderbolt Share and Yeah, yeah, really. I think— can Apple do that already? Can they? Has Apple got a function like that?

[00:41:56] Stephen: Yeah, Thunderbolt transfer is absolutely—

[00:41:57] Trevor: is that— is that— but that is—

[00:41:58] Stephen: that’s not a piece— it’s not a piece of software that syncs like that.

[00:42:02] Trevor: Hardware too.

[00:42:03] Stephen: Great. No, the hardware’s there. Yeah, but if, if we plug the Thunderbolt cable from this computer to this computer, we could transfer data fast. Yeah, yeah. But the difference was in Windows, there’s the Thunderbolt share software goes name the folder and do you want to sync it up? Yeah. So you could basically just go, I want to sync this folder every time I plug it in, sync it up.

[00:42:18] Trevor: Yeah. So that’s really smart.

[00:42:19] Stephen: So that I’m in, my devices are literally in sync. That was pretty cool. Yeah.

[00:42:23] Trevor: Well, you got to remember it’s a desktop and a laptop, which is often, I think, you’re sharing files and stuff. I know I do with my MacBook and my Mac Studio.

[00:42:29] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:42:30] Trevor: But yeah, interesting. Was there a woman drawing a picture with the camera that does the desktop view?

[00:42:36] Stephen: Top down.

[00:42:38] Trevor: Yeah. Apple has that already with their iPhone. You could do that through.

[00:42:41] Stephen: It’s the Center Stage camera that can see the—

[00:42:43] Trevor: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:44] Stephen: See the desk?

[00:42:45] Trevor: I thought I’d seen that before. Yeah, but you know, I didn’t say anything. A smarty pants would have said, oh, Apple does it already.

[00:42:52] Stephen: Oh, he wasn’t there?

[00:42:54] Trevor: No, I didn’t say anything. I know who you’re talking about, but yeah, it could be a number of people. Several people.

[00:43:03] Stephen: Could be a few.

[00:43:05] Trevor: We won’t name names just now.

[00:43:06] Stephen: It was fascinating. I learned a lot. Most importantly, Yeah, I kind of realized that, that the integrated graphics is not a bad thing and that AI relies on graphics as much, if not more. Yeah, especially in the ways I’m going to use it on software, Premiere and stuff like that, much more than it does NPU. So there we go. Like years ago, I thought when they announced Copilot+PCs and 40 TOPS was the, was the minimum standard, I assumed we’d have a TOPS race. It’d be, you know, it’d be HP and say we’ve got 50 TOPS and ASUS used to say we got 100 tops and then Dell would say we have—

[00:43:39] Trevor: Take off your tops. No, because—

[00:43:41] Stephen: All righty, you didn’t have to go there. But it hasn’t come out that way because in reality the things we want the AI for is actually more GPU-based AI. So there you go.

[00:43:52] Trevor: They’re changing. But the enterprise side of this I saw in New York that was announced at that event. I was in New York and they had a lot of real enterprisey features where A lot of collaboration. Like, say you and I are at a meeting and we’ve got our HP computers, it’ll show a little map and say Trevor’s over here, right?

[00:44:11] Stephen: And if there’s a—

[00:44:12] Trevor: I can drag and drop a file or a document, it’ll take notes during the thing. And yeah, it’s a real good collaboration tool on that one as well.

[00:44:20] Stephen: All right, you can, uh, you can read more about HP at techguide.com.au and eftm.com.

[00:44:25] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

eBay drops seller fees for casual sellers — targeting Facebook Marketplace

[00:44:29] Trevor: Well, uh, big, big change at eBay recently. And for someone who, uh, I buy and sell a lot of my comics and collectibles on eBay. Yep. And one thing that hits you on eBay are the fees. The seller fees are pretty solid where they take a percentage of what you sell it for and boom, you hand that over. And look, that’s the price of being on a platform that’s really secure and that’s— it’s got reputation.

[00:44:55] Stephen: Yep. And you know, like where we’ve come from, we gotta remember when we were young, the trading post was where you sold stuff. If you had something that you thought was of value to someone else, you’d put in the trading post and it would cost you $5 or whatever to put it in the trading post. That’s how they made their money. So it’s not unusual for eBay then to come along and go, if you wanna sell something here, we’ll clip the ticket. And then they charge you more to list it higher and all that kind of stuff. But mate, in a world of Facebook Marketplace.

[00:45:18] Trevor: Yeah, exactly. They’ve decided now eBay, free seller fee. So for casual sellers, if you’re running a business on there—

[00:45:25] Stephen: which is, by the way, less than $25,000 a year. Yeah, that’s a lot. Like, if you’re doing $25,000 a year on eBay, you’re doing very well.

[00:45:33] Trevor: So then you’ll get— you’ll pay on top, you’ll pay the listing fees. So I’d fall well under that.

[00:45:37] Stephen: Yes, samezies.

[00:45:38] Trevor: Yeah, so it’s brilliant.

[00:45:40] Stephen: But is it too little too late?

[00:45:42] Trevor: Well, I wish they had had this a while ago. I would have saved a bit of money, but It’s all on the buyer though, ain’t it? The buyer has to cop the cop, sorry, the seller has to cop the hit. And, but I think this is a smart move because I think Marketplace and Gumtree and these other services, while not being very well anymore. Yeah, while not, well, Facebook Marketplace, while not being as reputable, like all the stories you hear on the news are some idiot.

[00:46:09] Stephen: There’s a million negative stories about Marketplace, but Marketplace has become the, in the lexicon. It’s like, I’ll sell on a marketplace.

[00:46:16] Stephen: Like basically if you’ve got something you don’t want that’s of value, your best bet is to put it on Marketplace because you’re likely to find someone local, which means you don’t have to dick around with postage. The buyers get a better deal ’cause they don’t have to worry about postage. They’re finding it locally. They can get it quicker. You’re essentially, it’s a better system if you’re okay with trusting Facebook.

[00:46:16] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:46:36] Trevor: Yeah, no, you’re right. And the thing I love about eBay is yes, you get a lot, I think a lot more choices and you can really drill in, drill, drill down. And there’s a lot more people selling what you want.

[00:46:47] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:46:47] Trevor: But then there’s the rating system where if you, if you like, I’d likely buy something, if someone’s got 100% rating, I’m thinking, well, they’re reputable. They’ve got a big score, big rating there. Let’s go. And that was something that sellers really valued.

[00:47:03] Stephen: You know, I think, I think eBay, is too much. In the same way that I think Amazon could do with a site redesign, a new UI, I think eBay’s biggest problem is when you search for something, you get rubbish. So what I want— and I know it’s all there because I’ve done it on eBay— like when I was trying to buy some Apple products for the 50th anniversary, I’m like, I don’t care if it’s in the US, I need it here. So you’ve got to go to another thing and go, I want it only from Australia, um, you know, I want, I want— or I want to look at what’s already been sold so I can get those things.

[00:47:32] Trevor: I look at that a lot, like that, that helps me value if I’m looking for something, I think, what’s the going rate for this sort of thing? And that’s a really handy feature.

[00:47:40] Stephen: I feel like it should have learned by now that I always go Australia only. So can you just make that my default? Like, just don’t show me stuff.

[00:47:47] Trevor: With mine, it puts Australia first unless I, you know, stuff around with the filters and say, you know, highest and first. And normally it gives me closest.

[00:47:57] Stephen: Normally got to work harder to get a better set of results, and I think that’s a bad thing.

[00:48:00] Stephen: Okay, but here’s the thing. Yeah, I’ve never used Facebook Marketplace. No, I have.

[00:48:00] Trevor: Thing.

[00:48:06] Trevor: Yeah, I’ve only used Facebook Marketplace to give away stuff. I’ve never had a paid trade. Oh no, I did. We sold our old lounge just to get rid of it. We put a couple hundred bucks on it and just to help someone take it. Yeah, it was a good condition, everything. They said, yeah, we’ll take it, $200 or whatever it was, $300. Yeah, here we go, take it off your hands. But usually it’s to Like, I put— I think when I remember when I redid my theater, got rid of all my shelves to get rid of all the discs, I put them on Facebook Marketplace and the bloke, they sold in 2 hours.

[00:48:35] Stephen: Yeah, right.

[00:48:36] Trevor: Yeah. And when the, when the bloke picked it up, there were 4 sets of shelves and they were— I had them in, you know, I had them on top of the driveway and he had his van backed in and I went to pick up the other one and the wind blew one over and broke it. It blew over and it sort of broke apart. Yeah. I went, oh, sorry, you only got 3 now.

[00:48:57] Stephen: Sorry, mate.

[00:48:58] Trevor: Yeah. He’s had fault, he should have held onto it, mate. I was lugging them up the driveway for him.

[00:49:02] Stephen: He should have.

[00:49:03] Trevor: Anyway, it was free. So what are you gonna say? You want your money back?

[00:49:07] Stephen: Marketplace is the modern garage sale really, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. Especially for garage sale hunters. People are looking for things that they can upcycle, resell.

[00:49:15] Trevor: And the thing with Facebook too, I get pushed a lot of stuff too. It’s in my algorithm. Through them. So there’s a little, you know, when you see you’ve got a notification, like Marketplace has a little notification because it’s often someone’s selling stuff. Some new Star Wars things appeared on there, or it knows me.

[00:49:29] Stephen: Typical.

[00:49:30] Trevor: So it pushes out, hang on, have you seen this? Yeah.

[00:49:32] Stephen: So I mean, I just don’t use—

[00:49:33] Trevor: they’re always trying to sell me something. I don’t—

[00:49:35] Stephen: just don’t use Facebook enough to see this stuff.

[00:49:37] Trevor: Yeah, I use Facebook a lot.

[00:49:38] Stephen: No, nothing. Yeah, couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

[00:49:40] Trevor: It’s my age, my demographic, mate.

[00:49:43] Stephen: I know, I was about to go there. I’m glad you did.

[00:49:45] Trevor: It’s the mums and dads platform, innit? Is it how many kids are on Facebook?

[00:49:48] Stephen: Isn’t it a grandparents platform? No. Yes, it is. It is as well, but yeah, pretty much just a grandparents platform.

[00:49:54] Trevor: Oh, whatever, mate. It’s a good— I keep in touch with my, my relatives in Malta through Facebook.

[00:49:59] Stephen: I don’t keep in touch with relatives.

[00:50:00] Trevor: Often share, often share.

[00:50:01] Stephen: So that was just a broad blanket full stop statement.

[00:50:04] Trevor: Yeah, Trev’s an island. He just on his own. He’s not, not doing anything else. We’re, uh, no, no, my relos, they often comment on my stuff. For example, is my first cousin Manuel Fabri in Malta. Shout out, mate. It was his wedding anniversary. He shared a nice little photo, him and his wife was there, you know, 40th wedding anniversary or whatever it is. And I said, congrats, cuz, happy anniversary. Boom. And he often comments on my stuff too. He likes a lot of my stuff and, you know, reads my Souths reports and my other, all my other cousins too. I’ve got so many over there. And that’s how we connect. Keep in touch. And when I’m going to Malta, when one of my kids or my mum’s going to Malta, mate, that’s where I tell everyone. I send them a little message on Messenger to say, look, mum’s in town, this, this. And so book in for when you want to see her. Yeah, that’s how we roll. My son Aaron’s going to be there. He’s going on his big honeymoon next week.

[00:51:02] Stephen: Oh wow.

[00:51:02] Trevor: He’ll leave on Monday.

[00:51:04] Stephen: Excellent. Where are they going? Europe. All around Europe.

[00:51:06] Trevor: They’re going to start in, you know, going to start in London.

[00:51:09] Stephen: We’ll go to dinner.

[00:51:10] Trevor: Well, no, they’re actually, when I’m leaving London is when they arrive in London. So they’re there that morning that they arrive, I’ll be there to go.

[00:51:17] Stephen: Oh no.

[00:51:18] Trevor: So we’ll probably be in different terminals, but anyway, I’ll text him and say, mate, where are you?

[00:51:22] Stephen: That’s hilarious.

[00:51:23] Trevor: Yeah. But yeah, they’re going everywhere then including Malta.

[00:51:25] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:51:26] Trevor: So mate, they’re going to have a great time.

[00:51:28] Stephen: That’s awesome. Yeah. All right. Two Blokes Talking Tech. eBay seller fees gone.

[00:51:34] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

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[00:53:23] VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

Apple Sports launches in Australia — no NRL, AFL or cricket yet

[00:53:26] Stephen: Oh, Stephen, um, Apple Sports just launched in Australia. And it’s funny because— hilarious— I kind of had forgotten that it hadn’t launched here, and I got excited, so I downloaded it, and I’m like, oh, this is cool. Because the idea of Apple Sports is it’s, it’s probably the best app that they make that uses live activities. It’s, it’s phenomenal. And so you log in, you go, okay, well, I like Formula 1, I like NASCAR, and then you pick teams. Like, I like Australia in the World Cup, I like the Dodgers, I’ve also chosen the Guardians, and you get these live updates. But the elephant in the room straight off about before I talk about how good the app is. There ain’t no Aussie stuff in here.

[00:54:00] Trevor: No NRL, no AFL, no cricket. Cricket’s not just an Aussie sport, cricket’s a world sport. Yeah, not there. Conspicuous by its absence is cricket, NRL, AFL, the 3 biggest sports in Australia. And look, I went into the NFL app and chose— I’m a 49ers fan, I thought, yeah, I’ll check them out. Season hasn’t started yet, but anyway, uh, and you no doubt of course chose the Dodgers. And what was the other team?

[00:54:25] Stephen: I chose the Guardians because Bazzana plays for him, so good to know how he’s going. But Formula 1 and NASCAR, mate, on Monday morning my phone was going mad because I had NASCAR— or IndyCar’s on there actually, IndyCar’s not there because the Indy 500 was on, but I had NASCAR coming up, I had the Formula 1 was showing, and then I have the MLB on pretty much every day. It comes up and that’s not it there, it comes up differently. But mate, it is so, so accurate. So in the Formula 1 it shows like the driver that’s leading and then a time difference to the driver that’s second, then a time difference to the driver over that’s third and whether or not there’s a yellow flag.

[00:54:59] Trevor: So that’s a little widget you see?

[00:55:00] Stephen: It’s just the widget on the home screen.

[00:55:02] Trevor: And how up to date is it? It’s like real time. Really? Wow.

[00:55:06] Stephen: Yeah. Wow. Like just earlier I noticed a home run score on that before it came up on the TV, which is streamed. So it’s, you know, 30 seconds behind, but it’d be 20, 30 seconds. Who cares? But so I can’t imagine why. And if they’re not working on NRL and AFL, because it’ll go nuts. People, iPhone users will be going, going, mate, have a look at this. Now there’s plenty of apps out there, to be clear.

[00:55:28] Trevor: Yeah, I use League Live.

[00:55:29] Stephen: You’ll be yelling at the screen going, oh, I’ve got this for that and whatever. Yes, I get MLB scores the same way. F1, they have it everywhere. But you know what, to just do it in one, and I’ll be honest with you, the design, the user interface, and to have all your scores come through the same way and same design, it’s pretty good.

[00:55:45] Trevor: Can I ask, and I’ve been discussing this on the radio all week, is it a digital rights issue that they can’t have scores for the NRL and AFL? Mate, it’s just sharing the scores. It’s like they’re not like they’re showing the game.

[00:55:58] Stephen: They’ve got the Premier League. Okay, so they’ve got every sport in the US.

[00:56:02] Trevor: Okay, so it’s not a digital rights thing.

[00:56:04] Stephen: There may be a fee to retain access to the data.

[00:56:08] Trevor: I think Apple’s good for it.

[00:56:09] Stephen: I think they’re good for it. And I think if they wanted to, wanted it, they would have it. It’s probably the case. Here’s my theory is they want to have Australian data. They’re already working on it, but they went, holy crap. Yeah, we need to launch Apple Sports before the World Cup.

[00:56:24] Trevor: That’s the timing. The FIFA World Cup is basically the timing window for Australian users.

[00:56:29] Stephen: And you know what? It’s the best use case. So forget NRL and AFL fans. You will love it when you get it. But right now, if you’re a massive fan, you’ve already got a solution to this. But for a soccer fan and what I said a lot on the radio this week, and we’re all once every few years— most Aussies don’t love soccer, but we love the Socceroos. And so this is the perfect thing. Do you know when their first game is? Do you know if they’re playing right now? No, but if they’re playing right now, it’ll be on my home screen.

[00:56:53] Trevor: Yeah, nice.

[00:56:53] Stephen: So you can, you can guarantee that when you look at your screen in the morning, it’s like, oh my God, the soccer is on, turn on SBS, or the soccer is on, I’ll just follow the score on my phone, depending on how interested you really are.

[00:57:03] Trevor: There you go. And is it true that if you, if there’s something you’re following and you have a subscription to that particular broadcast, it’ll lead you there through Apple TV or something, or is that a, it’ll lead you to the stream?

[00:57:15] Stephen: I, if there is one, I don’t know about that. I think maybe if it’s an Apple TV product, story, if it’s an Apple TV product, maybe. Okay, let me have a look because I don’t know how the Apple would know about my MLB subscription. Okay, to get the broadcast through the MLB, I think it’s probably linked to MLS and Friday Night Baseball, which are the sport, and Formula 1, which in America they have on Apple TV.

[00:57:37] Trevor: During the World Cup, fans can jump from Apple Sports to the Apple TV app and find live matches on connecting stream services during connect to stream services during the tournament.

[00:57:47] Stephen: Yeah, I think that won’t apply in Australia.

[00:57:48] Trevor: Right, okay, because I’ve been saying that all week too.

[00:57:52] Stephen: Yeah, I think you’ll— I mean, unless, unless SBS On Demand is really well integrated into Apple TV. You’ve got to remember, Apple TV, the box and the platform in America, is vastly different to here. Like, cable TV services are plugged into Apple TV, you know. If you’ve got a cable subscription, which is essentially— and look, I’ll give you the example. If Australia was like America as a Foxtel subscriber, old man here, you could go on your Apple TV, go, I’ve got Foxtel and here’s my login.

[00:58:18] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:58:18] Stephen: And it would just bring in all the channels and all, just bring in all the channels and all the apps that you’ve got rights to based on your subscription. Yeah. That’s the whole point of it. So you would, your ESPN would show up, your Discovery would show up because you have access to these channels, etc. Absolutely. It doesn’t work like that.

[00:58:35] Trevor: Absolutely. Yeah. But we’re both big sports fans. And I think the— yeah, it’s typical Apple. It’s beautiful, looks great. And if you’ve got an Apple Watch, if you’ve got an iPhone, it all pops up on the screen.

[00:58:47] Stephen: It is genuinely—

[00:58:48] Trevor: really does a good job. It does take advantage of their ecosystem.

[00:58:52] Stephen: Look, if you’re into— I’ve said, if you’re into American or global sports other than cricket, it’s unbelievable.

[00:58:59] Trevor: But— and it’s also men’s and women’s. So men’s tennis, women’s tennis, golf, LPGA, PGA, women’s, WNBA, NBA. Yeah, there’s no women’s MLB, is there?

[00:59:08] Stephen: No, no, no.

[00:59:09] Trevor: Why is that? I don’t know, they’re just no good.

[00:59:11] Stephen: I’m not gonna ask all the viewers right now.

[00:59:14] Trevor: So, but look, all the major sports— tennis, basketball, golf, uh, have both.

[00:59:21] Stephen: So I haven’t signed up for any tennis because I couldn’t give a rat’s about it, but men’s tennis— the French Open’s all right now. But here’s the problem, you can’t click on men’s tennis and go, I want to follow Alex De Minaur. No, that would— that’s what I want. You’ve got to follow the whole bloody event, whereas with your—

[00:59:36] Trevor: not the whole bloody event.

[00:59:38] Stephen: Well, I don’t want to know when the Yankees are playing. I don’t give a rat’s.

[00:59:42] Trevor: Well, don’t they go round for round? Like, you know, this round, what, first round these players won, and second round here.

[00:59:47] Stephen: Yeah, but I want live scores. But I don’t want live scores of every tennis match. I only want live scores.

[00:59:51] Trevor: Did you see Russell Crowe at the French Open the other day?

[00:59:53] Stephen: I did.

[00:59:54] Trevor: He caught a ball.

[00:59:55] Stephen: So it’s funny because I follow him on TikTok and he’s so weirdly honest and open on that, and he does really long videos, widescreen as well. It’s very strange. Anyway, so he’s a movie star, mate. He was talking about his— that’s That’s what he says. He says, “It’s how I work.” He’s talking about his watches and what they wore.

[01:00:09] Trevor: He said, “We went—” He’s a watch man, eh? Oh, I—

[01:00:13] Stephen: Big time.

[01:00:14] Trevor: And you know what? He can afford a lot of money. Yeah.

[01:00:16] Stephen: He shows a new watch and I’m like, “I don’t wanna know.” What are we talking?

[01:00:19] Trevor: Like, hundreds of grand?

[01:00:20] Stephen: Oh no, he’s got a few that are just thousands, but he’s got tens of thousands and he’s got very expensive watches. He’s doing very well, Russell Crowe. He said, “Me and,” what’s his girl’s name? Don’t remember. Anyway, Brittany, I feel like it is. He goes, we were dressed up ready to go to the— and he goes, when then we found out at Roland Garros they don’t quite dress up like they do at Wimbledon. So we were desperately overdressed. But anyway, he didn’t, he didn’t care. And then he goes, look pretty sharp. And it’s funny because in the video he goes, and you probably won’t believe this, but then the serve, service ball came back to me and I caught it. But he said, he said, he said this, he said, I did a search online, I couldn’t find any record of it. So you may never believe me, but But I know it happened.

[01:00:59] Trevor: It was all over the news.

[01:01:01] Stephen: And then someone, I reckon someone saw that and found the footage and went with it.

[01:01:05] Trevor: He did another— well, he didn’t do it himself. Someone else did a video of him coming out of his hotel in Paris.

[01:01:12] Stephen: Yeah, it’s got a lot of— Jonesy and Amanda put up yesterday and said, do you think his actions were appropriate?

[01:01:16] Trevor: He walks out. Yes, because otherwise they rush him and, you know, everyone wants to get their things.

[01:01:20] Stephen: He’s leaving a hotel and there’s, let’s say there’s 30 people there wanting an autograph and he just goes, goes, listen, because he’s experienced it before.

[01:01:27] Trevor: He goes, listen, if you rush up on me, I’m out.

[01:01:29] Stephen: I will stand here for as long as— and I’ll sign everyone’s thing, but if anyone rushes up on me and acts like a dick, is what he said. Yeah, I’m out.

[01:01:35] Trevor: I’m effing out of here. Good on you. Yeah, exactly.

[01:01:38] Stephen: Set the tone. How many times he threw a phone at someone?

[01:01:42] Trevor: How many times you reckon he signed a Gladiator poster or something? Yeah, like something like that. Like, that was his— I saw all the things I was signing in. I reckon Newsflash, I reckon 90% of that stuff would have been straight on eBay.

[01:01:55] Stephen: Which, how much money you making from a Russell Crowe autograph or something?

[01:01:57] Trevor: Decent. Yeah, you’d go, you know, there’d be there, there’s A-class and then there’s, you know, there’s D-class. But it’s, yeah, he’d be in demand, mate, for his stuff, especially with the Gladiator stuff and all of his, what other films did he do?

[01:02:15] Stephen: Gladiator, Master and Commander, which by the way is on Sam’s TV Plus at the moment. Master and Commander.

[01:02:20] Trevor: Master and Commander, yeah, cracking movies. We haven’t done Gladiator. We’ll do Gladiator soon. Why haven’t we done Gladiator? It’s coming up soon.

[01:02:26] Stephen: You said it’s not in his top 3 movies.

[01:02:28] Trevor: Well, I know you sort of quoted me out of context there. The— if you tuned into this week’s, uh, movie show, which is The Insider starring Russell Crowe— funny enough, it’s Russell Crowe— I said that he was nominated 3 years in a row for an Oscar Oscar. Won— first year was The Insider, second year was Gladiator, third year was Beautiful Mind. And he won the Oscar for, I think, the worst of those three movies. Still brilliant. Gladiator’s great, but I reckon his performances in the other two movies were better. Anyway, he still won an Oscar. I’ve held that Oscar, by the way. I’ve held his Gladiator Oscar. He was— there was something— he tells people that Stephen Phoenix held this. No, not at all. But, uh, he’d had something at Channel 9. There was a new show they were launching. This is like 15, 20 years ago. And I happened to be invited with Joe Quesimonto was doing the Sydney Confidential. She said, oh, you wanna come to this? Said, yeah, so let’s go. And then she got in the green room and there’s Rusty with his Oscar. And then I said, oh, g’day. He wasn’t a Souths owner yet. Actually, no, he was. He’d just been involved with Souths. And I introduced myself, said, oh yeah, Marra’s brother. He goes, oh yeah, how’s it going, bubba? And then I had the hold of the Oscar. Yeah, there we go.

[01:03:41] Stephen: He’s brilliant on TikTok. Yeah.

[01:03:44] Stephen: And by the way, he doesn’t use his own name. You can’t see, he’s not Russell Crowe. He’s IGP. Maximus. Is it Maximus? IGP366. And then his name is IGP Indoor Garden Party, which is his band. I thought it was 30 Odd Foot of Grunt. No, IGP, mate.

[01:03:44] Trevor: Oh, I follow him.

[01:03:58] Trevor: Indoor Garden Party. T-O-F-O-D was the something Fear of God as well.

[01:04:02] Stephen: Stay with it, mate. Mate. Yeah, IGP, Indoor Garden Party. And you know what he loves?

[01:04:07] Trevor: He’s in Europe, he’s already in Europe now, but he loves Malta. And he said this publicly, he filmed Gladiator, filmed a lot of movies here, loves going back there. He is revered in Malta, loves Malta. Yeah, he’s one of us, Rusty.

[01:04:22] Stephen: He’s got a great voice.

[01:04:23] Trevor: One of us, he does.

[01:04:24] Stephen: He’s narrated a few things. I could listen to him talk about his watches even if I didn’t like watches. Really? It’s just so— Well, mate, yeah, you know, I’ve become—

[01:04:32] Trevor: I’ve got into the Blessington.

[01:04:34] Stephen: Stephen’s into it.

[01:04:34] Trevor: I’ve got a Blessington, so God help me, like, I’m gonna get hit by the bug bites.

[01:04:39] Stephen: There’s like 4 Blessingtons sitting on the top.

[01:04:41] Trevor: Oh my God. Like, that’s it now. You know what I’m like, mate. It’s full on or not on. This is it.

[01:04:46] Stephen: Do you remember when you got your first Lego?

[01:04:47] Trevor: Yeah, thanks, you dickhead. Yeah. Anyway, let’s see what happens, mate.

[01:04:53] Stephen: Yeah, just Google—

[01:04:54] Trevor: My algorithm is just all watches now, by the way. All watches, all the time. And you know, there may be a purchase or two down the track, who knows.

[01:05:04] Stephen: The thing about watches is you don’t have to spend stupid money. Just spend, like the Blessingtons are nice ’cause they’re like $400 and it’s a nice looking watch. And it’s funny ’cause I wore them for the last kind of 2 and a half weeks and twice, once Carl, but someone else at the channel, they go, “That a new watch?” I went, “Yeah.” Like it’s ’cause it stands out. An Aussie brand.

[01:05:21] Trevor: Two brothers, hey, the Blessington brothers. Hope they’re hearing this, if it’s coming up in their media monitors. Yeah, send us a watch as well. I bought one. You’ve bought—

[01:05:29] Stephen: how many have you bought? I’ve got 6. I reckon I bought 3 of them.

[01:05:33] Trevor: Oh yeah, hello!

[01:05:36] Stephen: Maybe 4. Um, yeah, here’s the thing about me, by the way. Yeah, um, podcasts are included now. Uh, well, because I transcribed this automatically, so as soon as I publish, it comes up on you. And now within the, within the next hour, it gets transcribed. And then we publish the transcript on AFTM underneath the podcast. And so media people—

[01:05:58] Trevor: so you publish, like, you cut and paste the transcript and publish it on AFTM?

[01:06:02] Stephen: Thanks for reading AFTM and looking at the— so the whole thing? Yeah, so if you look at Two Blokes Talking Tech under the last podcast there, it’s a cartoon of us. So here, look at this one, and you scroll down, you get the video, yeah, you get the audio, should generate here, and then there’s the full transcript.

[01:06:17] Trevor: Oh, so you just Is that included with a different code that you put in the bottom or you just cut and paste the whole thing?

[01:06:22] Stephen: Well, Rob Ruby does it. Oh, it just gets emailed to him.

[01:06:28] Trevor: So the transcript from my AI. Okay.

[01:06:31] Stephen: Ah, my AI. I’ve got an AI bot that runs every hour and looks for a new podcast. And if a new podcast has been published, it sends us the transcript.

[01:06:38] Trevor: Because on the podcast app that you can see the transcript too.

[01:06:42] Stephen: Yeah, but that’s Apple. That’s Apple Podcasts. Yeah, that’s a different— and it doesn’t know names.

[01:06:46] Trevor: So this is your Claude—

[01:06:48] Stephen: ah, Claude, it’s just a cloud. Yeah, Claude wrote it, Claude wrote the software. And so what my point is, I had someone text me the other day or email me and go, oh, you mentioned this on the podcast. And I went, just stop you for a minute, did you read it or listen to it? I said, where did you— they said our media monitoring picked it up. And I went, I’m curious, which media monitoring looks at podcasts? And they go, I’d found it on EFT And I went, oh, so the, the, because the word, the brand appears in the show, it gets a hit. So the, the company knows we mentioned them. Ah, so good news, companies are going to know more. Blessington, Rolex, Breitling, Tag Heuer, Patek Philippe, Richard Mille.

[01:07:33] Trevor: Yeah, Star Wars Lego.

[01:07:36] Stephen: They’re all the big watch brands you’re thinking about.

[01:07:38] Trevor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fru Phantom.

[01:07:42] Stephen: Swatch, I wouldn’t mind a Swatch. Yeah, they’re massive, eh, Swatch? Yeah, they’re cheap, they’re real trendy.

[01:07:47] Trevor: Yeah, cheap. And they have limited edition runs of things, eh? I remember seeing— where was I? I was with Joe, we were in, um, were we in Italy or somewhere? Somewhere I was with Joe and there was a line around the corner for some Swatch watch that was just released. Yeah, right.

[01:08:03] Stephen: Yeah. All right, well, that was half private, half real.

[01:08:05] Trevor: There we go.

[01:08:06] Stephen: Good stuff, folks. Uh, Stephen, I guess we’ll do it all again next week. We’ll do it live from London.

[01:08:11] Trevor: Yeah, live from London town.

[01:08:12] Stephen: Uh, it won’t be about Amazon though because that’s later in the week.

[01:08:15] Trevor: So, well, we’re going to make some other crap up, eh, for early in the week like we did for this.

[01:08:20] Stephen: We made a lot of crap up for this show, so— and we got there somehow. We made that work. So we’ll make it work again next week. Stephen, see you next week. Bye-bye. See you, mate.

[01:08:28] VOICE OVER: Everything about tech you you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.