>> Chris Dechter: AV Super Friends On Topic is an independent production wholly
owned and operated by AV Super Friends llc. For
the highest quality recording of all of our shows, visit
AVSuperFriends.com
this is AV Super Friends on topic, a 30 minute
monthly roundtable focused on a single topic. This discussion
will be opinionated to the point and saturated with our well
known blend of painfully won expertise and deeply ingrained
immaturity.
For July 2025, it's the best sounding podcast
in higher ed. This is the AV Super Friends on topic,
episode number 60. That's five years
of this nonsense.
>> Jamie Rinehart: That's crazy.
>> Chris Dechter: Sorry about that everybody. We, we apologize for the
five years of nonsense.
>> Jamie Rinehart: That'S. That's out of this world. I was asked that question over
during info.
>> Chris Dechter: What? How long we've been doing this?
>> Jamie Rinehart: They go, how many episodes do you guys have? I'm like, well,
total, 200. What?
How long you been doing this? Four or five.
And then just as it comes out of your mouth. Four or five years.
Holy crap.
>> Larry Darling: Crap.
>> Chris Dechter: Yeah, it happens. Anyway, let's do another
one. Broadcasting live from sea to signing she
sea to sea to
shining sea for our Independence Day special,
we're coming to you. From the wide open skies of the mountain west
to the smoky heartland where the grills burn hotter than the
takes. From the rolling hills of Bourbon country to the red
clay roots of the old North State, it's a coast
to coast celebration of freedom, independence,
signal flow and questionable audio routing. And
while everyone else is waving their flags and forgetting to unmute,
I'm, the goon who gets left running the stream, firing the effects, syncing the mics and keeping
the show from declaring full on AV chaos. I'm your patriot with the
presets. I'm Chris Dechter. It's time for another Friday
afternoon podcast adventure. So fire up your
sparklers, settle in your hammock, prepare for
the worst Independence Day special you've ever
heard. Star stripes and signal pass
included in this.
All right, well, let's say hello to today.
Today's panel of AV Super Friends.
I'm joined by the coordinator of constitutionally
protected signal integrity from Kansas City, Mr.
Jamie Reinhart. Whoops, I hit the wrong
button there. Sorry.
>> Jamie Rinehart: The best tin cans and a ball of string
can get you.
>> Chris Dechter: Also joined by the senior manager for Patriot
Enablement Solutions from Greensboro, North Carolina. Say hello to
Mr. Larry Darling.
>> Larry Darling: I'm a senior manager. That's kind of cool. This time
I'm getting into Justin's range.
>> Chris Dechter: Not quite maybe.
And finally joined by our Vice President of Strategic
Fireworks, alignment from Bowling Green, Kentucky, Mr. Justin
Rexing,
left. He's just muted there. Just leaving it on mute.
The intro and he still mutes.
>> Justin Rexing: I muted the intro for the first time in a while and I forgot to
turn it back off. But, yeah, you don't want me doing that
job.
>> Larry Darling: No.
>> Justin Rexing: I'm surprised I still have two eyes and 10
fingers. There's been some close
calls with fireworks in recent history.
>> Chris Dechter: Get prepared for a few more because that's all we're doing today. So on
today's show, we're going to celebrate America by blowing up a small
part of it and things that we don't
like anymore. So can we say that? I
think I just did what?
>> Justin Rexing: Can't we say blowing up what?
Blowing up a small part of America.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Just little bits.
>> Larry Darling: Well, if anyone's worried, Chris said it, not us.
>> Jamie Rinehart: So it's Wyoming. They'll allow you to do it?
>> Justin Rexing: Yeah, well, it is Wyoming.
>> Chris Dechter: It's America. What are you going to do? Not let you blow up stuff.
>> Jamie Rinehart: America blow up.
>> Chris Dechter: so basically this is our Independence Day special. The way we do this
every year for Fourth of July is we all
pick a couple of things or a thing that we don't
like about commercial, higher
education, AV and IT stuff, and we blow it up with lots
of fireworks and explosions. So we've got
lots of things ready to go. It'll be fun. And the fire department
has been notified. But first, before we do any
of that stuff, if you were listening to this As a recorded MP3
later, we do stream live on Fridays at about 3:30 Eastern,
12:30 Pacific, or whenever we get our act together and actually start going.
Today was a long discussion about braces. So yes,
yes, you can join us for that Live on Twitter,
LinkedIn, YouTube and Blue Stream whenever they get off their butts and actually
support streaming. if you can't join us live, we still want you to connect with
us on those same social. So follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blue sky,
etc. Just search for ABC for friends. You will find us. We use the logo there and
all that fun stuff. So, please don't forget to spread the word. Share
this podcast with your friends, colleagues, enemies, perfect strangers, and anyone
else who might enjoy it. If you could
interrupt your Fourth of July barbecue this year
to force people to all go subscribe before
you start doling out the first hamburger, hot dog,
bratwurst, whatever it may be, that would be fantastic.
>> Justin Rexing: The grill does not start until we get.
>> Chris Dechter: No, the grill starts, but just no food.
We don't, we don't open that grill.
>> Justin Rexing: Okay?
>> Chris Dechter: Longer we wait, more stuff's burning.
>> Larry Darling: I say we put things on it and
just make everything well done until they,
well subscribe.
>> Chris Dechter: If you don't subscribe, you're getting charcoal briquettes.
>> Larry Darling: Yes.
>> Chris Dechter: If you'd like to support the show, please consider donating your contributions help
to keep us bringing you the honest content, that you love or that you love to
hate. You can find the donation link for that in the show notes of this episode
or on the website or all over the place. We do want to hear from you,
so please reach out on the social medias or via email
mailbagvcperfriends um.com for
topic suggestions or if you know, we're just, you want to yell at us about something,
please, please do that. And finally, when you are
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Amazon, Curio Cast,
I don't know where the heck people are getting this stuff. whatever podcast
app you're using, please rate and review us. The rating bumps us up in
the algos and forces more people to be exposed
to our nonsense.
>> Justin Rexing: Can we rate ourselves?
>> Chris Dechter: You can, but that's a kind of a gauche thing to do,
so at least come up with a username. Okay,
well you can. so anyway,
thanks for your support. We couldn't do the show without you.
Now we're take a quick break, going to come back, then we're going to
blow up some stuff because. Where'd it
go? Here it is. Here's another event we're doing in a few weeks.
>> Speaker E: Get ready to plug in and rock out at
Widget Fest. The ultimate celebration of
audio visual innovation. For three
electrifying days, the biggest names in
commercial presentation electronics take the
stage and showcase the latest and
greatest in adapters and widgets.
Widget Fest. Experience cutting
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exclusive product launches all in
one place. Connect with fellow
enthusiasts, enjoy great food and
be part of the future of AV
technology. Widgets.
Tickets are selling fast, so don't
miss out. Widget Fest, the ultimate
celebration of adapters and widgets.
Coming soon to a venue near you.
Widget Fest
Wife.
>> Jamie Rinehart: We just kind of want to go to that show.
>> Justin Rexing: We just got back from Widget Fest. We just. I
literally left Widget Fest last week.
>> Chris Dechter: Infocom.
>> Larry Darling: this year was really Widget Fest.
>> Justin Rexing: Exactly.
>> Larry Darling: Some of the best stuff was little widgets
we found.
>> Chris Dechter: Everyone went to big booths looking for a big thing. It wasn't there.
It was the Little booths in the middle that had interesting little
widgets, adapters, middleware, you know, whatever
you want.
>> Justin Rexing: You would know that if you were on our tour would.
>> Chris Dechter: Or if you didn't go to pay to play stuff. Anyway, so here's
how the show works. for our fourth of July special, we've all got
gathered a list of things that we would like to celebrate America
by blowing up. Because we're going to set off a whole bunch of fireworks and explosions and
all sorts of fun things like with, with that. So we've gathered up
our, our AV and it related
things and we're going to wrap that in explosives
and blow that up.
That pretty much it.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I think that, I think that covers it.
>> Justin Rexing: Yeah.
>> Chris Dechter: Okay.
>> Larry Darling: Yeah, that's our usual thing. Yep.
>> Chris Dechter: So, Justin, you want to start?
>> Justin Rexing: Yes.
>> Jamie Rinehart: What are we blowing up?
>> Chris Dechter: So Justin, a lot of this is.
>> Justin Rexing: Going to be repetitive. I tried to be unique, but I just.
>> Chris Dechter: Hold on a second here. So we've got a stack of
200 bottle rockets. We jammed those into a five gallon
bucket, we zip tied it to the wagon. We're calling this project Liberty
Launchpad. Go for it.
>> Justin Rexing: So I guess my number one, not a
big surprise is if you are a
consultant and you draw
lines from Dante to AVB and
put in DMPS systems
everywhere and wireless
presentation in every classroom. You
get shot to the moon.
>> Chris Dechter: Shot to the moon with a big firework. Oh, I
see.
>> Justin Rexing: Like Elon type firework.
>> Larry Darling: I just took my last DMPS system
off campus today.
>> Justin Rexing: I still have NPS one hundreds, but that's a really, that's more of a me
problem.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I, I have a few left. In fact, I have a few
DMPs left from when Chris was
servicing them.
>> Chris Dechter: No, they, they were courses.
>> Larry Darling: Yeah, they were great. Like back in the day. They
also loved them.
>> Justin Rexing: Cost way too much now to do
way too much than what you need. And ah, then I have
AI cameras on there.
>> Chris Dechter: Hey, hey, hey, hey. Can't you see?
>> Jamie Rinehart: What?
>> Chris Dechter: No, you're just. We're taking turns here,
sir.
>> Justin Rexing: Oh, I have three on my list. I thought I'd go all three and then move
on to someone else.
>> Chris Dechter: That's not how this works. Okay, we're just gonna keep round robining until we
blow everything up.
>> Justin Rexing: All right. All right, who's next?
>> Chris Dechter: Sorry, rattle stuff off here. all right,
Larry, why don't you get ready here. we got that propane tank off
the grill. I've wrapped it in sparklers. I placed it inside a
wheelbarrow full of expired Roman candles.
This is science meets freedom.
>> Larry Darling: okay, I'm going to get this one out
of the way first because I'm sure other people have it and I just want to
steal your all's thunder. After coming back
from Infocom, I saw a lot
of solutions that made very
basic classrooms more
complicated. Like if you bought into this
ecosystem, you had to be cloud based or you
had to have it on the enterprise network. Like just for
a tier one or zero
classroom that I used to be able to do really simply, really
cheap. All of a sudden there's extra
hurdles I have to jump through and
I'm kind of tired of everything,
ah, all the basic systems out there requiring me
to get cloud access and to get everything
on the enterprise networks. Sometimes I don't need
to do that. And I tired of having my
options limited by the
solutions. Assuming
everything is going to be the top tier
rooms that might require that.
>> Chris Dechter: I'm not sure what you're blowing up here. What are you blowing up?
>> Larry Darling: I'm blowing up those
devices that are cloud based
for control or the AV
over IP systems that have to have a
director or a navigator or something out there.
>> Chris Dechter: I gotcha.
>> Larry Darling: Yeah. Like we have simplified
our very standard, very basic
classrooms up to small
auditoriums to be very cheap and
like, there's not a lot of extra
frills and all of a sudden ecosystems
are pushing us in this direction. So that's what I'm blowing
up.
>> Chris Dechter: So the extra stuff you need to, do what you used to be able
to do three years ago without a problem.
>> Larry Darling: Exactly. Anything that's forcing me to go cloud based on
a standard system is being blown up.
>> Chris Dechter: All right, well, let me light this candle over here.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Whoa.
>> Chris Dechter: That was a pretty good one.
all right, Jamie, we just spent four hours wiring up a car
battery to a pile of old mortars and in an abandoned mailbox.
So this better be good.
>> Jamie Rinehart: It's not. Larry
stole some of my thunder.
This past year I've had two different
companies, two different
manufacturers send me, a test
unit, a demo unit of
a product. It was a keypad
for one of them. It required,
without a doubt, required cloud access
for a button panel to use the button
panel.
>> Chris Dechter: And was the cloud access the only way it interfaced with
other devices or was just like you had to log in before you even, just set it.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Up to even turn it on.
And they assured to me, they're like, oh, no, you
can put it into local only mode
as long as you can access the cloud. And they went so far as
To. So, like, okay, so if
it can't access the cloud, how do you use it? Well, you can plug
it into your laptop and then use
your laptop as a bridge
so that it can get cloud access through the
bridging of your laptop to it.
>> Justin Rexing: Sounds complicated. And you're not solving
any problems.
>> Jamie Rinehart: No, yes.
It's kind of what Larry said. But I find that
there are several companies out there right now that are
just like, they're so in on the cloud game
that to require it to even turn the
device on.
I'm done with it. Like, we need to be able to use these things
prior to cloud. I'm okay
with some cloud things, but, man, the requirement to even
turn it on. Give me a break. I'm not buying it anymore.
>> Chris Dechter: There's environments where you're not even gonna. There's gonna be no option for any sort of
access like that. So.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, and the answer from them, when you start put
pushing back a little bit, it's like, well, just use your cell signal.
>> Chris Dechter: Just.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Just use your cell phone
and use your data plan off your
cell signal in order to.
>> Justin Rexing: Can you imagine telling one of your.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Texts that, no,
no, this is not. This is not acceptable?
>> Justin Rexing: I don't know why people are making this stuff. Like, what triggers
them. Because they're talking to people and people are saying, we need
more cloud stuff, and they just go make a bunch of cloud.
>> Chris Dechter: I think there's a desire to be able to
monitor everything.
>> Justin Rexing: That's different than.
>> Chris Dechter: Well, no, no, no, but there's. But the easiest way to do that
is to say we're going to stand up a portal and you connect to it.
>> Justin Rexing: So, yeah, we want to monitor it
ourselves with our own system, and then.
>> Chris Dechter: They can monetize that.
>> Justin Rexing: So, yeah, yeah, well, that's how to happen.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I feel like you should be able.
Especially with a keypad, you should be
able to stand it up without it
accessing an online portal.
That's just me. now,
once I get it activated and all. Happy, fine.
If I want a portal, let's get a portal. But to require
the portal. Portal to even start,
then it's a waste of my money.
>> Justin Rexing: It should operate in both modes, local and.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Well, yeah, it does, Justin. Don't worry about it. But to put it in a
local only, you got to get on the portal.
>> Justin Rexing: That's not. It's not really the
same thing.
>> Chris Dechter: All right, well, let's roll that out there and blow this stuff up
here.
>> Justin Rexing: That was kind of. It started off small, but,
well.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Similar. So. So we Blew them up.
>> Larry Darling: Yeah.
>> Chris Dechter: Holy smokes. I, realized this entire track has been muted the whole time.
Hold on.
>> Justin Rexing: Oh, we have.
>> Chris Dechter: I can start it over.
>> Justin Rexing: We have.
>> Jamie Rinehart: There we go.
>> Chris Dechter: I was supposed to be running the whole time, but it was muted. My bad.
>> Jamie Rinehart: All right, so Chris, let me dial that. Give us something more than
cloud based.
>> Justin Rexing: Back it down a little bit there. There you go.
>> Chris Dechter: Something more than cloud based. All right, so I went
out, I disassembled three commercial grade fireworks. I
extracted the best stuff, I repackaged them into a kiddie
pool line with aluminum foil and Manifest
Destiny. And into that pool, I'm going
to put in software license
fees and I'm going to fill the pool
with software license fees, especially things tied to
hardware. Because why
do I need this? Why should there be recurring
fees of any sort? I'm buying this device,
I'm buying this stuff. And especially in higher ed,
we might get that budget for that project once every
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15 years.
So this is not a tenable thing. And this
is a big turn off to a lot of people.
Many, many manufacturers are doing it. Some have
dialed it back slightly, but only because of
huge market pushback, but they're continuing with other stuff.
So this is nonsense to everyone listening
right now. Please knock it off. Or if you have
to have a license for whatever
weird accounting reason you want to do it, it needs to be a
perpetual license. And by perpetual, I don't mean five years,
I don't mean seven years, I mean forever
in the sense of the sandlot. And
it should be tied to the hardware itself and just run until
the hardware explodes and dies. So please
stop with these. Like, ah, it's a three year thing to do that. No,
not gonna happen. Because in higher ed, if I take something
out of a room, chances are that doesn't leave my campus, that
gets repurposed somewhere else. So I need that thing to
keep operating, not go do magical other stuff by
buying more licenses. So,
all right, blow this stuff here. this one
pretty good.
Alrighty. okay, Justin, now back around to you. What do you got
for, for round two?
>> Justin Rexing: Well, I'm gonna skip AI cameras because I slid that in.
>> Chris Dechter: What's wrong with cameras?
>> Justin Rexing: They're just, they're not AI. It's just like stop.
Okay, anyways, how about
large oversized DSPs with like
75 inputs and 52
outputs of analog?
>> Chris Dechter: You're gonna blow those up.
>> Justin Rexing: It just like we need to be not doing
those much more. Like,
who has a need for 12
analog inputs besides
I don't know.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Performance theater, like, going
forward.
>> Chris Dechter: Yeah, yeah.
>> Justin Rexing: Like, because even if you have five,
six, like Dante's there as, 67's
there, there's a lot of widgets and gas modes to combine that down
to a single cat 6. It's like, why do
you. I can understand
modular DSPs that, you know, let's add a
couple analog inputs, but. Because that makes a lot of sense,
but not 12 or
18 or 24. I
don't need eight outputs. I don't know the last time I
used an, analog output.
They're all DANTE enabled.
>> Chris Dechter: Just so, something you said for little analog amps,
something you said for them. As far
as the amount of IO, I think those devices have
their places. I think companies who make big
DSP boxes put too much stock into
how important those are and are listening to the
wrong people who keep saying they need
15, 20, 25, whatever, card slots, all that stuff. Yes,
we all have specialized cases where that is needed. But
if this is part of your standard, I'm just, you know, that's my
only option. Well, Larry, to your earlier comment about, like,
I'm starting with the giant box and then I'm putting a ds,
it's like, stop. Rethink what you're doing. Make it
simple. Yeah,
all right.
>> Justin Rexing: Let's just blow it up.
>> Chris Dechter: All right.
>> Justin Rexing: We may regret it, but
I can solve the problem with smaller
DSPs and widgets just fine.
>> Chris Dechter: And. And the network.
>> Justin Rexing: And network stuff. Yeah, that'd be
fine. I'm even
taking. I'm converting
audio output at the projector into
Dante now, instead
of just running.
>> Chris Dechter: It analog, you're missing a step there.
>> Justin Rexing: Audio out of the projector which comes
out.
>> Chris Dechter: Which comes out analog, though, huh?
>> Justin Rexing: Uh-huh.
>> Chris Dechter: And then what's the magical device?
>> Justin Rexing: What, for summing or for Dante?
>> Chris Dechter: You're saying you're going from projector to Dante, and there's a step in there that
has to happen. So I'm curious, what are you using?
>> Justin Rexing: Well, actually, experimenting. so we've been using rdl.
RDL is really noisy. And then we're moving.
We're going to try Turtle and a, few other
widgets. so if you're using rdl, Dante stuff,
especially on mic level, be very careful. It adds a
bunch of noise.
>> Larry Darling: Interesting.
>> Justin Rexing: Yeah, I know.
>> Chris Dechter: We found a mic level out of a
projector.
>> Justin Rexing: No, well, not in that case, but in other cases,
like line level, it's not as well if you turn
the.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Projector all the way down to, like, one.
>> Justin Rexing: Not, not in that case, like, if I, if I stick my,
if I stick my two mics somewhere and I'm like, all, right. I don't
really. Let's just buy a widget to convert
both channels. If you buy an RDL one.
Be careful.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I'm just trying to work out
why you're using the projector for D embedding.
>> Justin Rexing: Because I don't have anything else there. Yeah. Do it all the time. No
dsp.
>> Larry Darling: Why not just stick a little amp up there at the
projector and I.
>> Chris Dechter: Do it all the time.
>> Justin Rexing: Well, because now you're, now you're getting into like the
mount. And how does that amp fit on there?
I need a bigger amp. So now I don't have the space
and I can't put it above ceiling.
>> Chris Dechter: Ceiling box.
>> Justin Rexing: Ceiling box is too expensive for us because that requires
contractors, et cetera, et cetera.
Dante, if I already had something there. Yeah.
Like, it's usually like a lectern or a rack.
>> Chris Dechter: Here's the other thing that I find projector audio D embedding great for
is, assisted listening systems, which need to be up in the
ceiling. And you're already up there and you already have power.
You already have connectivity and signals, so why not?
And you know what else that that D embed off the back or projector is doing
in most cases? Nothing.
>> Justin Rexing: So you know what I've noticed though? Anything
I need to check all manufacturers, but anything above
6000 lumen have stopped putting those things on there.
And that caught me off guard. I was like, when did that happen? I was
like, that I'm supposed to. And then.
>> Chris Dechter: So I was gonna say I've not seen. I've not seen that at lower ones. I've
seen those in big, dog projectors.
>> Justin Rexing: Big, like 7,000 features off
7,000. 8,000 lumens and up. doesn't
have audio D embedding on them M anymore.
Be careful with that.
>> Chris Dechter: More either. but I've noticed some projectors now
don't have speakers in them. Finally. So
I'm spending four grand on a projector. I don't need a three
dollar speaker in there.
>> Justin Rexing: That does sometimes help for troubleshooting.
Sometimes. Sometimes.
>> Larry Darling: Or cause the problems that require.
>> Justin Rexing: Yeah, More problematic than
solving a problem. But I've, I've used it for troubleshooting.
I'm like, why am I not getting audio? It's
like, oh, it's getting here. Why am I not hearing it?
>> Jamie Rinehart: You know, I don't, I don't understand.
>> Justin Rexing: All right, you don't Understand me? My. My
M. What? Which part?
>> Chris Dechter: Who went second? Larry, Were you second last time around?
>> Larry Darling: I am. Yeah. I went second last.
>> Chris Dechter: Okay, so moving on, Larry. We've got this, we rigged a
washing machine drum with time bottle rocket
dispensers, and we've gonna cut that propped up on four
carjacks that's ready to go. So.
>> Justin Rexing: Four carjacks.
>> Chris Dechter: Wow, that sounds very nice with my redneck engineering here.
How do you build explosive devices?
>> Justin Rexing: Tannerite. We're in Kentucky.
>> Chris Dechter: Gotten there yet? Oh, that's a brand name, sir. And they
are not a sponsor, so,
reach out to us. Tannerite.
>> Larry Darling: So part of my classroom replacement cycle this summer
involves a couple of active learning
rooms that were designed before I got here.
>> Chris Dechter: Oh, by people who don't understand active learning rooms.
>> Larry Darling: Well, I've seen this at our university. I've seen this at
other universities. People. There was this phase
where everybody was pushing out active learning rooms. And I love
active learning rooms, but I love them when they're done
right with everybody at the table. Who needs to be at
the table and ours weren't. I mean, just straight up,
the ones we're refreshing right now.
When they were installed, they.
It didn't seem like everyone who should
have a voice did. And I've seen this at
other schools I've worked at, and
I hear this every time we're at a conference. So
if you're doing an active learning room and
you don't have space management,
the registrar, instructional designers
assigned to the project, and
also a detailed plan to support the faculty
after the fact, you should just blow it up.
Like, just immediately fill it with the terminite or
whatever it is in Kentucky.
>> Chris Dechter: Termite, Terminite, Termite.
>> Larry Darling: And we have this up.
>> Justin Rexing: We got termites, too.
>> Chris Dechter: all right, well, I. I don't disagree with you, Larry. I've got an active
learning room that we're. We're building now. We're doing it with the right
people, but they keep trying to exclude certain parties from
that. I don't think it's intentional. I think it's more of like, well,
why do you need to be on part of this conversation? And then you saw. Well, you
guys saw. I was sharing internally
what sort of nonsense came out of this consultant. So. And, it
was not technology. It was like, just from like the general
space planning layout furniture. It can go real
side real go sideways very quickly, very
fast.
>> Larry Darling: So, yes, and I think everybody needs to be
at the table, because if everyone isn't
there, then the needs of any one
Particular group becomes elevated.
Like, the registrar needs a certain amount of seats in
the room, which goes against the instructional
designer requirement. Four, square
footage per student. Like it's. You need
everybody there to get all the voices.
>> Chris Dechter: What number, by the way, just got curious. What number are you using for square
footage per student in an active learning with flexible seating?
6. 400.
>> Larry Darling: 6.
>> Chris Dechter: 6.
>> Justin Rexing: Is that the right answer, Larry?
>> Jamie Rinehart: Larry needs an Amazon warehouse for every class.
>> Justin Rexing: I was guessing. Is it?
>> Chris Dechter: I've been using 24, but I have been.
>> Larry Darling: I've been pushing for 24. Because right now we don't. We don't even
have that.
>> Chris Dechter: Yeah.
>> Justin Rexing: How about two?
>> Chris Dechter: Two. You understand what a square foot is, right?
>> Justin Rexing: Square yard?
>> Chris Dechter: No.
>> Justin Rexing: Can we do it in yards?
>> Chris Dechter: We're gonna do it in hectares. It's only in hectares. All right, well, let me.
Let me blow up. Bad act of learning design, not including the right
people at the table.
All righty. So,
Jamie, we've got this, old satellite dish over here. We
welded that to the back of a lawnmower. We filled that with,
of course, we filled it with old
artillery shells. And we're calling this the Freedom Catapult,
so fire away.
>> Jamie Rinehart: devices that require a software base
that is not built around the user
access level of the computer. Oh,
right.
>> Chris Dechter: The. It works fine in our test bench, but not in actual
production.
>> Jamie Rinehart: You have to right click and say run as an admin.
Then it was built wrong.
and I find these. This is happening on, like,
user level devices. we're looking at you, Logitech,
Elgato, where you can't run some of
their things on a user level on a managed system,
they have to have admin privileges which aren't given
away. And,
and then, like, the. The fact that they're dumbfounded when you
bring this up. Like, I can't use
NDI tools on a standard PC
because it has to run on an administrative level
that is not given to anybody.
Oh, well, why would you do that?
>> Chris Dechter: What?
>> Justin Rexing: Ah.
>> Larry Darling: Yeah.
>> Jamie Rinehart: So if it is sold through B and H or CDW
or Amazon, then maybe
write your software in such a way that the
standard user can use it.
Ideally, it's whatever default driver is out there,
that. I don't know why we have to get too far away from the default
driver drivers for video and audio. I don't get
it. But we always have to throw some stupid
wrinkle in there that says that you need to be able to do this.
I've even had issues with,
sound bars from Some of the bigger
manufacturers. Oh, that's great. Well,
it will show as a thing, but you have to download this
driver and this software in order to make it
work. wireless share devices.
You can't use it unless you have our app.
Oh, come on, come on,
help us out.
>> Chris Dechter: And so help me to piggyback on that. So help me. If your device
requires. I use a you know, a smartphone or a
tablet to enable features on it. That's
getting boxed up and shipped back to you in pieces. It. I found it that
way.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, it showed up this way.
>> Chris Dechter: How I got it. All right, well let's let's let's blow up
non enterprise friendly
PC software applications.
This.
All right, let's see.
>> Justin Rexing: Well we need one big one, one.
>> Chris Dechter: Last one here and then we'll do our grand finale. So I'm
gonna. And I thought Jamie had stolen mine, but he went a
slightly different direction. So I'm gonna kind of
be a similar topic here. So
I've stacked a pallet of firewood into kind of a crude
obelisk shape. I threw a Bluetooth speaker in
there that's on a constant loop playing Hulk Hogan's Real American
and I'm lighting it using a magnifying glass. So this has been
cooking for a while here. So.
And if you need a reminder of that it's.
>> Justin Rexing: Anyone I'm going to run through a wall now
I got goosebumps.
>> Chris Dechter: So this is this is. So I'm like I said,
similar to Jamie's but not exactly. This is devices that
require a software application on
the PC at all to use features on
that and as part of it.
The biggest concern I have with that is even if it's
enterprise friendly and you can package it and deploy it and it's you
runs at the user level and all that stuff. And if you get past all of
that, it's the software
updates that are making hardware
worse. So things that were much
better two or three years ago and they have added new
features to the little software helper application, which I already
hate for all the reasons Jamie just described. I hate that I
have to have a little software helper app. But even if I get
beyond that and I get one that does work in my
enterprise environment at the user level and it's invisible to
users, it's just hap. It just has to be there. But it's the
software updates that make the hardware perform
worse. Thus taking the thing as we described earlier,
we're buying Something to go into a room, it's going to be there for 6, 7,
8, 10, 12 years until it physically fails. But if it
now has a helper app doing some of the processing on the computer
and that app is either reducing
performance, it's removing features, things are just in general
not working as well as it used to,
that's terrible. Please stop doing that. And for
many of you who have, many of the app, m. Manufacturers, out
there who have little helper apps, you're all guilty of
this. some of these that used to be, like, until about
two years ago, this was my default auto framing camera
company. And you know who you are. I don't buy
a single one of your devices anymore because of your software,
not your hardware. So your software team has
ruined your hardware and you're off the list.
So. All right, let me blow that up.
>> Justin Rexing: Real quick and blow up the
bloatware.
>> Larry Darling: All right.
>> Justin Rexing: I feel like somebody needs to be on an Apple device right now
and like, doing the hand signal to make fireworks go off
while the sound's happening.
>> Chris Dechter: Where is it?
>> Justin Rexing: Can we do that? that'd be cool for you
youtubers out there.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I am on an Apple device and I.
>> Justin Rexing: What's the hand signal for that?
>> Larry Darling: I'm Windows.
>> Chris Dechter: Is it this one there? Nope, that's not it.
>> Justin Rexing: Oh, this one.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Laser show.
>> Chris Dechter: Oh, there it is.
You know how much crap I disable to get past that?
By the way, here's another similar pet peeve is the, the stuff I
want to blow up is software features like that, that ship by
default on that. I have to go turn off.
>> Justin Rexing: Look at that. You figured it out.
>> Larry Darling: I'm kind of jealous at this point.
>> Chris Dechter: Buried way down in there. Oh,
Happy birthday to you, sir.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I don't ever use these things.
>> Justin Rexing: All right, well, we just lost.
>> Chris Dechter: That said, I think it's time for our, our
to wrap up the show with the grand finale. But before we do that,
any last items we missed? Anything that I know? We all brought three or four
different items to this. Any last things someone really needs
to get out there that we just want to say as part of, higher
ed IT and AV stuff. Please stop doing this
because we're going to blow it up every year. And again, if you want to,
contribute, please write in with what you'd like us to blow up next year.
>> Justin Rexing: Listen, there's a few consultants that really didn't like what I
had to say at Infocom, and they gave me
the stink. Look, all you have to do like. I really
hate bashing consultants. I know. You all are people, too.
>> Larry Darling: Don't. Because you do it all the time.
>> Justin Rexing: I know. just pay attention to what you're doing.
Slow down. I know you all are
overworked. Relax. Calm down,
and figure out what you're drawing out.
And make sure it's detailed.
>> Larry Darling: Make sure the name on the side matches the actual
place.
>> Justin Rexing: Stop to copy and paste.
It's not. I mean, it's not rocket science here. I just don't understand
why there's so many mistakes with consultants, unless you're
doing.
>> Chris Dechter: AV for NASA or something.
>> Justin Rexing: And then they're paid. It is four or five times
what we do, and we're the ones solving their problems. And
it's just a slap in the face knowing what.
What they're getting for pay. It's just.
>> Chris Dechter: And if you find a good consultant, hang on to them.
>> Justin Rexing: Yes.
>> Chris Dechter: Because they're rare.
>> Justin Rexing: They are rare.
>> Chris Dechter: They're out there.
>> Justin Rexing: They're out there. Yeah. They exist. It's just
Mo. Every one of them I've dealt with is.
>> Chris Dechter: Stretch. All right, well, while we're closing up, let me go set off
every other fire we've got over here.
>> Justin Rexing: Sorry, I went on a little bit there. Yeah,
well, I thought it was gonna stop, and then.
>> Chris Dechter: Yeah, no, this is 27 minutes of this,
so. Yeah, just hold on to that.
>> Justin Rexing: We're just gonna look at each other for 27 minutes.
>> Chris Dechter: This is your life now.
Well, thanks. Thanks for, for joining us for our, our Independence
Day special where we celebrate America by blowing up a little part of it.
we'll be back next month with some other topic of things that may or
may not be the topic we want to talk about, and we'll just ignore that as well,
so. And all that
fun stuff. All right, see you guys. Thanks.
Thanks for putting up with yet another episode of AV Super
Friends on topic. You can contact us with questions,
topic ideas, or General
complaints@avsuperfriends.com.
>> Justin Rexing: Nice work, everyone.
>> Chris Dechter: Sharp broadcast. Really good. Everyone on the floor as
well. Really a lot of hustle. I liked it.
The opinions expressed by the AV Super Friends are solely those of the
individuals and do not represent their respective institutions,
organizations, companies, or clients.