Quick first impressions of the LG StanbyME briefcase TV

Thought I’d post some quick thoughts on the LG StanbyME after seeing The Verge has posted another story on LG’s suitcase TV that is still making the rounds of the tech trade shows. Despite the fact that it is still up for preorder on LG.com, I’ve actually had the TV (though that word doesn’t really seem to do it justice) for a couple of weeks and have used it several times.

My main use cases for this delightfully dumb idea for a TV when I ordered it were to use it out by the pool with the kids and next to my main 65″ 4K TV during college football Saturdays. I’ve already had a chance to do both and it worked pretty darn well both times. It’s only 1080p and not super bright but I knew that going in and at 27″ I personally don’t think those are big issues. We had a decent amount of shade so using it outside worked well and it worked even better for football. Watched an entire game and the battery was still above 70%.

As mentioned by The Verge, it is indeed heavy. Easy enough for me to carry around but too heavy for the kids (though I wouldn’t trust them with it anyways.) My 7-year old spent maybe an hour playing the games that came preinstalled and they were pretty shallow. Kind of like the sort of thing you’d get on the tablet restaurants were briefly putting onto every table.

My biggest complaint so far is there is no MLB.tv app on the LG WebOS store so hoping to find a way around that (other than just using Airplay.) Was it worth the money? Probably not, but in the end it’ll actually be cheaper than buying two TVs and hiring an electrician to wire up and mount one on the patio.

The state of the podcast advertising market

I’m not sure if it’s a indication on the state of the podcast ad market as a whole or just of iHeart’s always awful ads, but it sure is annoying to hear the same 2 minute ad for a dumbass “smart” oven 3 times during a 12 minute episode of a podcast.

And even worse when listening to the The Ticket Top 10, to hear it back to back because the next episode is another episode of the same 8-12 minute podcast.

I mean I guess it’s less annoying than hearing all their ads for other iHeart shows that always sound SO AWFUL. I won’t name names that aren’t huge evil media conglomerates, but pretty much every podcast ad I’ve ever heard on any podcast network (other than RelayFM) always sounds like the absolute dumbest thing ever. Is that what ads for podcasts I like sound like to normal humans?

Valve Announces Steam Deck portable PC console

Steam Deck

Ok, I was already starting getting the itch to buy a gaming PC and then (thanks to watching a lot of LTT) and then today Valve announced the portable PC Steam Deck console.

It looks extremely cool and the price (compared to desktop PCs or even just graphics cards) is surprisingly affordable at $400 for the cheapest model. It looks like a big ass Nintendo Switch with a bit of a kitchen sink approach to control inputs. The claims of power/performance look solid for the tradeoffs of portable hardware and battery life.

As someone who has trouble finding time to sit and game in front of TV, the Steam Deck may be the thing that finally lets me catch up on a huge backlog of games I’ve been missing out on as a console gamer. We’ll see if I pull the trigger tomorrow when preorders open up.