The geek's guide to running faster

25:28But everything you've just described is like, just wants this one obsession to be the only thing that you care about because it'll make you better at everything else. Well, except you block it out, right? So, you know, like this is, this is the hardest challenge, which is I love running. It's so fun, right? Like I like being fast. Yeah, this is where you lose me. I do. I'm with you on being fast is fun, but I don't want to run enough to be fast. Well, right. But like also if I devoted my whole life to running, right. And like, it's all I did. Right. And I like optimized every variable and I like got as good as I could do.

26:00Like what would be my annual income? It would be like 2 ,500 bucks, right? Like you got to get like 50 bucks. You're coming at like winning the master's race at the like dash for donuts. You know, I don't know. Like I'm not. Like 10 turkey trots every Thanksgiving. part of the reason i ask is uh one of the things we've talked about a bunch on the show is the the problematic like streak type things that you get with a lot of these things and the the apple watch ring closing stuff and the way that all of these tech tools in particular try to incentivize you they're basically like engagement hacking metrics which is so dangerous for a lot of these things and also just like makes you feel bad and there's this sense of like i i it goes back to this sort of like transcendence versus optimization thing.

26:42You're like, I want to do this well and I want to be good at it, but I'm also a whole person outside of this app. Yeah. And that's just a really hard balance to strike. I think both like on your devices and just like as a human in the world. Yeah, you have to, I remember you wrote a great piece at Wired when I was there. It was like, turn off all your notifications now, all of them, right? I can't remember what the headline was, but it was like - It was basically that. It was like, just don't screw around. Like, it's not like you should keep some and not others. You should actually just turn them all off, which is great advice.

27:13And I tell my kids, okay, you can have a phone, but just no notifications. That stuff is garbage. It's evil. And with running, you have to make sure that you don't get addicted, that you don't get pulled in, that there's not something that you're too obsessed with a variable. You're too obsessed with, how many miles a week did I run? Did I run more than this person? Where am I in my club ranking? Where am I on the Strava ranking? Did I get this segment? Did I lose this segment? Right? You just let, you got to let that stuff go. And sometimes it can be motivating, but if you don't have a balance in all of that, you're, you're cooked.

27:51Is there anything you found on that front that does work for you? The motivational tools or the notifications telling you to get back at it? Like, is there anything that actually has helped you? No, none of it. Really? There's not a single notification or tool. I mean, the thing that I like, Strava segments are great, right? And like, if you need motivation to go and I, you know, you know, I often like, I say that I have like a very stoic attitude, but like the notion of like one of those old ancient stoics going out, like trying to win the Strava segment for fastest time up Bramley mountain. Right.

28:22Like, but that's cool. It's fun. It's like fun to like race past versions of yourself and it's fun to race, you know, other people on different days and you can't, you lose it. You can't get too upset. But it's cool. It's like a good way. if I need a workout on, if I've traveled to a new place, I need a workout. I need some motivation. Maybe I'll look. I'm like, okay, there's a two mile segment here. I'm going to try to win it. Okay. That, that counts. I like that. Yeah. Um, all right. So I need to let go here in a few minutes, but I do, I have one just big, broad technology question for you before we go.

28:50Please, please catch me up on shoe technology. Uh, this is, this is a thing that I would say I come to like once a year when somebody makes a shoe that is like so fast, it's illegal. Uh, but you, you, I know pay close attention to this. What's the newest thing in fast shoes? so there are a couple of new things in fast shoes one is like like gigantic stack height right and so like the amount of like the between the ground and your heel right and that's where like shoes basically it looked like platform shoes but like nike has the new um uh has these like you know incredible shoes with gigantic stack height that have been ruled like the have been ruled like illegal in races um but they're wonderful for recovery right and they take a lot of pressure off your knees and I use them in, it's called the Romero premium is the one with the gigantic stack.

29:36And I like them for recovery. If like my legs hurt, I have a little tendonitis in my knee, I'll go out in the premiums. You know, there's some weird things, right? You have that giant stack height. The weirdest thing to me is like running through a puddle, right? Because you, you don't know where your foot is, you know? And they're actually, they're hard on like corners, right? And so you wouldn't want to run them. You wouldn't want to run them in like a course where you're like a lot of S's. But if you're running just like flat down a road, they're amazing. so that's something and then the you know shoe technology basically stayed the same from like 1970 until 2015 um where the only difference is it really matters how light your shoe is right if you think of your foot as a pendulum um like an extra extra mass at your center of gravity means very little right so if you're carrying weight like if you're carrying like a pouch or bag you put at your center mass around your waist you're fine you put extra weight on your head you put extra weight on your feet and it's a real burden to efficiency right and so right like running is essentially power output multiplied by efficiency divided by mass and so if you are like changing your ability to move efficiently that's the second variable if you're increasing your mass that's the third variable um we always only focus on the first one which is your power output right your ability to like put force into the ground to propel you forward so anyway back to shoes lighter shoes have always been better.

30:56What happened and what Nike figured out, now everybody else has figured out, is that you can make, there always was a trade-off between like cushion and mass, right? It used to be you needed more cushion in order to get more protection, but that meant more mass. And so like you get incredibly light material. I think it started with airplane insulation. You get incredibly light material in the shoe and you get a lot of support without a lot of mass. And so now people are playing with different variables. So, you know, there's also the other thing people figured out is you put a little spoon in the front of the shoe and it like kind of increases your Achilles rebound.

31:27And the initial designs had the like spoon kind of straight on. And now it seems like maybe like a spoon slightly angled. And so I think that was what Puma did with their new R3s, which have been the shoes that have tested really well in the lab. So anyway, everybody has different kinds of what are called super shoes, which are super light shoes with spoons in them. um and you know so somebody like me what you want to do is you want to like and here's the other thing that's so important that people don't get we all move through space differently and we all race on different surfaces and like every shoe responds differently like there's shoes that are probably better for nick on asphalt but worse on concrete and ones that are better on concrete and worse on asphalt like are they good on a track are they good in sand are they good like on corners and so you know the trick is to identify whatever your goal is identify the surface and like the cut like the amount of cornering you have and then test a bunch of shoes it's not like there's one shoe that's the best it's like you know it's it seems like like nike has these shoes the alpha flies right and they're super interesting right so they had the vapor flies vapor flies made everybody faster than they came out the alpha flies alpha flies have this big stack height and two things one it turned out that like some people got much faster and other people didn't affect at all like i actually am significantly slower in the alpha flies than the vapor flies who the hell knows why other people it's the opposite secondly women do better and respond better in the alpha flies than men do like why is that right we don't know you know something about well women are a little smaller they're a little lighter right like their mass is like different the hip angle is different right you know so okay so if there's a difference between women and men well, there's probably a difference between Nick and David too, right?

33:10And so it's very particular and I don't think you can figure out what shoe is best for you until you try it out. And is this the sort of thing that eventually ends up in like a pair of shoes that regular people buy at Foot Locker or are like elite running shoes always going to be their very own thing with their very own needs? I think there are elements of it. Like I think that the insulation, like the foam, right? Like lighter shoes are better for everybody for everything, right you really don't want a spoon and shoe you walk around because it feels so so weird okay um there's stuff like you know there are days where i like you know like i've got to go to the grocery store it's like hey go to the grocery store we need to get some potatoes and like i look and i don't want to walk upstairs because i'm tired and like my wife needs potatoes next 15 minutes and so i like have to walk to the grocery store and the super shoes which are the only things that are there and it's like it's weird so it's like trying to walk around in the the shoes that clip into bikes and you just end up sort of totally or it's like it's like yeah yeah it's like it's always it's like ice skates actually right it's just like it's so bizarre yeah yeah that's fair all right actual last thing and then i'm like yeah do you run with headphones uh i well so this gets back to the very first thing we talked about depends on the mode like i had a few if i'm in i'm just like running to work i'm running a nine minute mile who cares like this morning yeah i'm running headphones and i'm listening to whatever podcast i'm listening to.

34:32I'm listening to an audio book. Okay. If I'm out on a country road, hell no, never. I'm like listening to the bluebirds. I'm listening to the sky. I'm releasing my mind. If I'm going to work out, and this is where I differ from people, no way in hell, no chance, right? Because what I'm trying to learn is I'm trying to learn about moving my body through space at five minutes and 30 seconds per mile or six minutes per mile. And there's like neurological things that are happening. There are physiological things that happen. Remember, I'm trying to train my brain. I'm If my brain is like listening to hip hop, it's not learning, right?

35:07It's not like the signals aren't processing. And so you're interrupting the whole thing you're trying to do, right? You go out there. One of the things about training hard, you know, when I train for a marathon, if you were to add up like in a 12-week cycle all the time where I'm going hard, which is probably where I get like 75 % of the benefits, it's like eight hours. It's not that hard, right? Because you're out there and you're like, I'm going to run six by a thousand meters. That's all I'm going to do. That's 18 minutes, 19 minutes. It's not a lot of time. But the whole benefit is in those 19 minutes.

35:43And if you're listening to music in those 19 minutes, what are you doing? That's crazy. You lose a little bit of what the point is. But there's bound to be science that says music can help you run faster. There are people who talk about matching the BPMs of their running pace. There's something to the other side of that, no? Okay. There's potentially, this is a step beyond me. There is a theory that if you can match your cadence to your heart rate, it does something about like backflow of blood to your heart, right? And like, there are like elite runners who believe this. And so they try to run at the exact cadence of their heart rate in order to, it's not about what the, how much blood your body pumps out, but it's about like minimizing the amount of blood that like is absorbed back in or something like that.

36:24I guess theoretically you could listen to like a metronome at like 180 or whatever it is and like do better with that that's psychotic behavior i think it's possible running with nothing is is bananas running with a metronome it's like a that's a that's a level i cannot i cannot broker that okay but to your theory david so i if you if i went out there okay let's say i'm doing three by a mile and i'm listening to like the most motivational music ever right maybe i run the first one a little faster because i kind of block some of the pain signals but i'm going to run the second one slower i'm going to run the third one slower and not only that i'm going to have learned less in the first one than I would have if I hadn't had it on.

37:01I'm going to have absorbed the signals. It's like studying. You want to, if you're just like, I don't know, you're just doing stuff, maybe the music blocks out other stuff. But when I'm running and I'm training, no chance. Fair enough. I like it. All right. Well, Nick, congrats on the book. It's really great. Thank you, David. There's so much more in it than we just talked about. So people should read it. I'll put the link in the show notes. Thanks, Nick. All right. Awesome. Thanks. Thank you again to Nick for being here. Read the book, The Running Ground, A Father, A Son, and The Simplest of Sports.

37:30It's very good. Like I said to Nick, I don't care at all about running. Really enjoyed the book. We're going to come right back and we're going to talk about TVs, which ones you should buy, how you should use them, and what settings you need to turn off right away as soon as you get home for the holidays this week. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in.

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42:33John Higgins, welcome to the Vergecast. Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here for the first time. I know this is huge. This is your audition. So don't blow it, John. Okay. Okay. I'll do my best. So I've brought you here because we're running this episode on the week of Thanksgiving, which means two things are about to happen. One, a lot of people are about to go home and hang out with their families and try to like solve various tech problems for their families. two is it's about to be black friday which is like the time to buy a television um one of these things that we're about to talk about is purely self-serving for me because i am currently in the market for black friday television but i think so are lots of people so i just i have brought a bunch of what i hope are like broadly useful questions and we're just going to plow through them does that sound good all right let's do it okay let's just start with the most obvious one which is what is motion smoothing and why do people need to turn it off?

43:28Okay, so motion smoothing is trying to fix a problem that we've had since LCD TVs have been released. It wasn't as much of an issue. It wasn't really an issue at all with CRTs. But because of the way that newer TVs display images, we need a way to make it look smoother. What happens is with the new displays is it's called a sample and hold. So CRTs used to paint displays, right? That's how they would work. And by the time it got to the bottom, it went back to the top and it painted the next frame. But because of that, it wasn't holding the entire frame on screen at one time. Right. But that's what new TVs do.

44:12Because of that, of that image being there, our brains want it to move. So because we have a frame and then a frame and there's nothing, there's no break in between, our eyes and our brains are like, wait, but there should be some sort of motion happening. It's fast enough that it tricks our brain. It's the flicker fusion threshold, if I remember the term correctly. So motion smoothing is trying to correct that. With film stuff, it just doesn't do it super successfully. We're also, we want to see film the way we've seen film for our lives, which is at 24 frames per second. When we go to the movies, that's basically what's happening.

45:07So when we see something that's 24 frames per second forced to be into a 60 frames per second, it's why it looks like video. It's why it looks like soap operas. The soap opera effect is what a lot of people call it. So it just looks unnatural to a lot of people. Some people don't care. And I just feel like the sort of thing that if you don't notice it, go with God. You know what I mean? Like, it's not. I mean, Tom Cruise might be out here like yelling at people to turn off motion smoothing, but it does. It feels like if you don't register it as a problem, you're fine. Yeah. But if you look at your TV and you're like, there is something slightly wrong here.

45:46It's probably motion smoothing. Right. And then you, I think I have said in the past that the better alternative is something called filmmaker mode. What? Give me the brief rundown on what that is. So filmmaker mode came out a few years ago. The idea was that you could put your TV into filmmaker mode and you would get what the creator intended. We hear that term all the time, the creator's intent. And that's what the purpose was. And basically what it did is it just turned off processing. It turned off motion smoothing. It turned off upscaling enhancement. It turns off a lot of stuff and just displays the image.

46:26The interesting thing I've actually been noticing recently, though, is filmmaker mode now on some TVs has motion smoothing enabled. What? It's a very slight one. It might be called like film enhancement or something like that. But yeah, so filmmaker mode. I mean, I recommend that anybody you just put on filmmaker mode and it will probably make your TV look better. But you're still going to, you might see a weird little look to the motion. And if so, it means that there's a very slight motion smoothing happening. And you'll still need to dig into those menus to turn it off or your parents' menus when you're home for Thanksgiving to turn it off.

47:09Got it. Because it's still there. But for the most part, that's the best way to try and negate it. Okay, that makes sense. So that actually leads me to my next question, which is what is a good set of instructions to give people for like I take my TV out of the box, I plug it in, I turn it on. What should I do? Is it as simple as go find the filmmaker mode, turn it on and see how that. That's one of the. Yeah, basically, that's the first thing I would recommend you do. So, you know, get through the setup and sign into your Google or Roku or Fire or whatever. And then go into picture settings and change to filmmaker mode.

47:46Or there are a few places, few TVs that don't have filmmaker mode. So you might want to do like cinema or movie. Those are generally going to be the most accurate. Most TVs ship in a low power or energy saving mode nowadays. Some still ship in standard, but they want to meet eco requirements. And so they ship in eco modes. Those are generally changing the brightness of the TV as you watch it. Those are very cool. So whites look blue. So you kind of want to if you want an accurate picture, you want to switch it to hopefully filmmaker. but if not that, cinema, movie, sometimes, or theater. TCL uses theater sometimes.

48:38Or if you see ISF modes, those are generally accurate, but that's the first thing you should do. And it will look warm. It will look a little red at first, but I guarantee you it's more accurate. And you'll get used to it, and you'll like it. It will just look more realistic. You know, the greens of the grass will look like grass. Yeah. Okay. So what about people who, I mean, I think, like you were saying before, this is the kind of thing that is really geared toward specific types of things shot a specific kind of way, right? And that mostly pertains to, like, what we watch on television. But I also, like, I watch a lot of sports.

49:20I play video games on my TV. Like, is it, are TVs good enough now at sort of smartly adapting to what you're doing? Or do I need to go in and like develop a bunch of presets that I can switch between every time I change activities? Well, for like gaming, you're generally going to want the gaming mode, primarily because it's going to give you the lowest input lag, which is also because it's switching off extra processing that it doesn't need. Sure. Because that's what's slowing you down. uh is it the most accurate color wise no it's not going to be um i personally like to go like i'll switch over to filmmaker mode i'll look at what the settings are particularly color temperature which will usually be on a scale of warm to cool and then i'll look at i'll just take that setting and switch back to game mode and change the color temperature to that.

50:18So it looks redder, but, you know, a lot of people like the more bluish tint, especially for gaming. And there's extra things with gaming that can help you see better in the shadows, you know, raising that shadow detail level a little bit, which is not accurate, but if it keeps you from getting killed it's it's worth it um i do like the idea of playing games and just immediately cranking like brightness and contrast to a hundred and i'm like i can see in the dark baby let's go yeah right i mean i've seen people do it i believe it yeah um okay i think that that's super helpful um in terms of like the tvs themselves um i think we we can sort of argue until we're blue in the face about like the the full price range of televisions but i'm curious like for you as you're looking at just sort of tvs in general right now what specs do you feel like matter the most like what what should somebody care most about for how they should spend their money i hate specs because manufacturers lie or okay fudge the truth a little bit lies I'm good at lie.

51:30Okay, they lie. Like contrast ratio is the most, it's useless. It's absolutely useless. Especially when you look at OLEDs because, well, and really LED TVs now too, black parts of the screen, they just turn off the pixels. So your contrast ratio is technically infinity. Through the roof, yeah. Right? Yeah, I mean, so it's just, it's useless in my mind. even with like projectors it's not really all that accurate. I mean you want obviously a 4K TV forget about 8Ks for probably ever. So wait real quick on that my general assumption about 4K versus 8K is that 8K is better but is it such a like plateau of diminishing returns that it's probably not worth the extra cost unless you're buying like a gigantic TV you intend to stand three inches away from.

52:23That's really the only... way you really see all that much difference. And also there's like eight videos on YouTube that you can watch. Right. I mean, it's just, there's nothing out there to watch an 8k and there won't be for a really long time. Uh, and right now the only one you can get is Samsung. I mean, people are stopped. They they've stopped making 8k TVs because they're just not selling. So is there a spec that you're like, make sure it says this thing on the box before you buy the TV? So if, if you like watching movies, I keep an eye on brightness. You want over a thousand nits, which is most major, you know, mid-range and up TVs.

53:06In fact, they're doing 5 ,000 nits at this point for some of them, which is not super necessary at this point. Maybe a bit of future proofing. Yeah, it's wild. But you're also looking at like small little specular highlights that are hitting that, if they're hitting that. But the content isn't hitting that generally. But that's a whole other issue. But so if you're watching a lot of movies, I would say you want good brightness, especially if you're in a bright room and you also use it during the day because you want to counteract the sun or any lights you have on in the living room. I'd look for HDR formats like Dolby Vision or HDR10 +, particularly.

53:53Those are the dynamic HDR formats. Dolby Vision is more prevalent, although HDR10 +, has increased, particularly this year, being added to Disney +, and stuff like that. Beyond that, if you're gaming, you want a high refresh rate. If you're on consoles, you're going to want that 120. even though the tv might say it's 120 it doesn't mean that all of the hdmi inputs are 120 some might be 60 so careful about that and then if you know if you're doing if you're hooking up your pc then you might want 144 165 to get that benefit beyond that i mean not really TVs are a lot they're getting really similar.

54:45Yeah, it seems like that. And actually that's a thing that I have started to look at more and more because I think like Neel I spends a lot of time on this show making fun of me for my television choices because he's like what if I spent many thousands of dollars on a television and I'm like I found one on sale on Amazon for$98 and it's 4K like I don't understand the problem. But it does seem like this like Like,$98 is probably too little. But I do wonder, like, do you have a rubric in your head for, like, whether it's a particular set or just a price point of, like, here is kind of the bare minimum good TV you can get?

55:27Like, are you just out of your mind if you try to get a good TV for, like, anything under$500? So, like, I don't know what the number is, but, like, do you have a sort of baseline? You can get$400, especially during sales, Black Friday sales. or Super Bowl sales. Those are going to be the times to do it. And you can get a 65-inch TV for$400. I mean, is it the best thing in the world? No. Is it great? Yeah. I mean, you can get a good TV for$400 for sure. Who's doing it the best in that range? Like, what brand would you send me to first? it's a toss up between TCL and Hisense really this year I kind of prefer the TCL sets so the UM6K, the Hisense U6, both of them are excellent purchases for that price $500,$500 and I haven't looked at the 55 inch within the past week or so but I know the 65s are around $400,$450 so you're going to be even less for a 55 inch if you want and you're getting decent brightness you're getting great HDR support you know they have both of them are going to have Google TV which runs quickly and it has all of the apps I mean you need to let them know your blood type and everything but you know it's that's part of the course now i mean they know it anyway so yeah i would go with the the sort of low-end quantum dot uh tcl and hisense tvs that's sort of like my low like insignia should be thrown off a cliff um any of these like real bargain brands that are 98 for or a 4K TV.

57:31My whole view is you're buying something that will hopefully last you at least a few years, four or five, sometimes longer. Price it out over how much you're spending over the years, and the cheaper sets will fail quicker, and they won't look as good, and I don't necessarily think it's worth skimping in something that you're going to use that often. I mean, I like that you put it that way because that is kind of exactly how I think about it, where I'm like, I realistically, kind of going all the way up the quality curve does nothing for me, right? Like I'm the guy who can't tell a difference between like a$25 bottle of wine and a$250 bottle of wine.

58:18So like I'm going to buy the$25 bottle of wine. But what I don't want is something that either sucks or will break. right and like sucks you can you can suss out pretty fast but the like there is there is a quality way in which you get what you pay for up to a certain point and then that starts to play so too so i think that that price point seems right to me and uh tcl and hisense are both companies that are like thrilled to give you giant deals around the holidays so i'm optimistic for everybody on that one um you mentioned google tvs let's talk about that right now because one of things I wondered you you use all the interfaces uh what's your favorite if you were if with with no other information about what other gadgets I use or anything else what do you think just out of the box what's your favorite smart TV interface right now built in yeah Google TV mine too I would not have expected this to be the case but I think you're right uh it's been now for the past couple years.

59:15It used to be Roku. I was diehard Roku. But it's also a lot harder to find built-in Roku. Yeah. They, they, I, so they came out with TVs a few years ago. And I think when they did that, the companies they were partnered with might not have been too happy about that fact and made a switch over to Google TV. And so it's, it's almost impossible to find a Roku TV unless it's made by Roku. Like TCL and Hisense have switched to Google. Sony uses Google. And it's just, it works better than the other ones. For me at this point, it's the home screen. Google just does a better job of like collating a bunch of stuff you might want to watch in one place than anybody else right now.

1:00:02Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the ads and the suggested content stuff. I kind of generally turn that off on my own TVs if I can. Uh, you know, I obviously have to test out how it works when I'm testing a TV, but, um, I'm just, I'm not a fan of them thinking I'm going to want to watch something. Um, honestly, I, myself, uh, we use Apple TV. Okay. Yeah. Don't end up using the built-in stuff. Yeah. I just, there's something about turning on an interface just to get to another interface. Oh, for sure. That just like in principle drives me crazy. Well, but what you can do is when you, you can go into your TV settings and instead of having it open up on the homepage, you can open it to the last used HDMI.

1:00:55And so when you start off your TV, every time you start it up, it goes to your Apple TV or it goes to your whatever stick you have plugged into an HDMI. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. Because that's a great way to get around WebOS and Tizen for LG and Samsung. On that note, do dumb TVs exist anymore? Like, is this just, can you find a TV that doesn't have any of that stuff anymore? I mean, yeah, but then you're getting into the, you know,$100 4K TVs. You know, I think like Westinghouse makes some dumb TVs. And I understand the allure for it. but in order to get a dumb TV, you are getting a bad TV.

1:01:38It's just, there aren't any well-made dumb TVs. Yeah, the advice I give to people is if you really want to do that, just skip all the setup and then just like block your TV from your wireless network. Like that's what I did. I have a TV with a, I have a Roku TV that is slow and bad and drives me crazy. So I just don't let it connect to the internet and I use the Google TV streamer and it works fine. Yeah. Or get a projector that doesn't have a built-in OS. Ooh. All right. We're going to come back and talk about that sometime. There is, my wife is desperate for us to just get rid of all of our televisions and go full projector.

1:02:19She loses this dream every time I tell her what this dream costs. But it is a dream. But at some point, I want to talk about projectors because I think they are like sneakily interesting technology. I'm a big projector fan, just to put it out there. All right, we're going to come back and do this because there is a lot to do here. But my last question is the me question, and this is like sincerely the situation that I'm in. My living room only works if it's set up in such a way that you put the TV over the fireplace. And I have a great philosophical aversion to putting a TV over the fireplace.

1:02:55Like, I hate it, John. I hate it as much as you do. I know this. There's a reason there's a subreddit against it. I know, but the living room doesn't work any other way. And the good news is the fireplace is relatively low. So it's like, it's like, I think I saw something that the average TV is mounted like 42 inches off. We're going to mount it like 45. So it's not like, it's not horrible, but it's a little high. But the compromise has been in order to not look like a family who has a TV above our fireplace, we're going to get a frame TV so that it mostly just sort of blends in and it doesn't sort of scream television above the fireplace.

1:03:28So my question to you is, should I buy a frame TV? If I ask Neelai, he'll give me like a 45-minute speech that ends in, I don't know, yes, definitely do it. So I'm asking you, you're the expert. Should I buy the frame TV or something like it? Yeah, I notice you're asking this when Neelai's not here. Yeah, I can't ask this to Neelai anymore. I know the speech. I can't do it anymore. Okay, so the frame TV and its ilk, you know, Hisense has their own version. TCL has a version. are not good TVs. Okay. How not good? This is actually an interesting question because this is a relatively well-known rap on frame TVs.

1:04:09Yeah. I think people mostly understand that they are not good. But are we talking like not as good as what they cost or just not good? They, if you want to watch a movie that it's not a great experience. Oof, okay. That's tough to hear. Well, the reason, so there are design elements that are important for making these TVs, right? You want them to be thin, you want them to be able to be close to the wall. In order for that to happen, they use edge-lit technology. So instead of there being a backlight directly behind the LCDs, it's shooting light in from the sides and the top and the bottom. So you're not going to have a consistent panel look, especially in blacks.

1:04:54And you're not, you know, there aren't dimming zones. So you can't control, pinpoint control all areas of the screen. So your black levels are not going to be good. for that reason is number one. Also, they're not going to be good because they have a matte finish because they need the artwork to look like artwork and not like a glossy screen. That's like a feature of the thing, yeah. It's a feature and it's an understandable feature. And honestly, the edge lit is understandable too because if you're looking at art, you don't want it blinding you. So you don't want the direct light. You want the light coming in from the sides.

1:05:34it softens it a little bit. And it also, so it allows it to be a little thin. It softens the light. The matte also softens the light a little bit, which also means you're not getting as bright an image. It's the, with the less expensive ones being the Hisense and the TCL, you are not getting a very bright image even when it's turned all the way up. And that's just the way it is. But even with the frame, it's not super bright in comparison to other TVs. Will it hold up in a relatively bright room? Yeah, sure. But there's just a lot of drawbacks. The viewing angles are not great and stuff washes out pretty quickly, like especially on the TCL.

1:06:22Really, the viewing angle is not good. Is there any room for these to get better? Or is this just an inherent problem to this kind of product? I mean, could they? Sure. But I don't know if the companies are going to put the effort in to make them better TVs. Right. When the people that are buying them aren't buying them to be TVs. I have a great friend. I mean, that's the thing that Eli always says that is true, is what you actually want is not a television. Yeah. Just don't buy a TV. You want something that will display art. And, you know, they do a pretty decent job doing that. Even, well, that's not generous enough.

1:07:02They do a good job, especially like the frame does a good job. Do I think the frame pro is worth it? That's a really tough sell. Okay. But even the frame is pretty expensive.

1:07:16The high sense is pretty good. I actually have it in my living room right now, as well as the TCL, which I would not recommend buying. if you want to turn off the lights and have a real good movie experience, get something else. Please get something else. It's just not worth it. Get a nice TV that has a screensaver that will display art. Right. Maybe somebody should just start making really beautiful frames that just go around regular televisions. And then I can be like, what do you mean? This is a frame TV. Just gaslight my family. The frames that they go around they're interesting too because um they still kind of look like a tv with a just a bigger frame you know like or they're like ostentatious you know like the the frame has this really frilly gold uh frame that you can get around it and i'm like i i don't live in the oval office so this is not for me that's very fair all right well you've you've like accidentally successfully convinced me even more that maybe a projector is the answer.

1:08:26So we're going to have to come back and do that shortly here. But until then, John, thank you for doing this. This was great. I'm excited to have you back. We get a lot of TV questions and feedback. And I think, as you know, this is a tricky thing to figure out how to shop for and manage. And it's a big purchase in people's lives. So we're going to have to keep doing this. But until then, we're going to take a break and then we'll be back. John, thanks a lot. Thank you for having me. Be right back. Oh, hey, welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa, Zoe Saldana. Hey, can you wrap these, please? Wow, iPhone 17s.

1:09:00You splurged. At T-Mobile, you can get four iPhone 17s on them. It's the perfect gift for everyone. I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe. Well, it's better than socks. So I have to trade in my old phone, right? No, at T-Mobile, there's no trade-ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone, too, for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with... Hey, where are you going? To T-Mobile! Thanks, Zoe! The holidays are better at T-Mobile.

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1:12:03Welcome back. Let's do a question from the Vergecast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. You can come yell at me in this podcast studio that I'm sitting in. We love hearing from you. Get at us with everything. For this one, I want to do some follow-up to a question we took a couple of weeks ago, which was essentially saying, what are the best reasonably cheap earbuds I can buy? Do I go with the like alphabet soup stuff that exists all over Amazon? Do I just buy AirPods and live with them? and I asked you for your recommendations and I got tons of them and I will put links to a bunch of them in the show notes because I got a lot of really good ones.

1:12:39But I wanna call out two things in particular. One is a company called EarFun, which is like not quite Amazon alphabet soup, but not that far away from it. But I heard over and over from a bunch of you that you really like their earbuds, that they're relatively cheap, relatively good, have pretty good noise cancellation that like if you want something kind of AirPods-y for a lot less than a pair of AirPods, EarFun. I believe at least last I checked, that was also the Wirecutter at the New York Times, their recommendation for the best cheap earbuds. So by and large, people seem to like these, and that's a good brand to start with.

1:13:14The other one surprised me, and I wanna start just by reading an email. This comes from Sean. Sean says, the easiest recommendation for wireless earbuds ever, the CMF Buds 2 Plus. They're on Amazon right now for$69. Bonus, they're literally what I use to mow my lawn with. IP68 rating, you can wear them while mowing the lawn and sweat isn't a problem. Uh, the ANC is pretty good and has an adaptive mode enough to drown out my gas mower. I also just wore them for the first time on a plane. No issues there either. The nothing X app. It's a nothing sub brand is amazing unless you customize everything.

1:13:43Battery life is amazing. So yeah, just buy these. I heard versions of this over and over from people the last couple of weeks. And I think the main thing that I came away from this thinking is that people love, love, love love nothing's headphones so there's nothing the company that makes like the the nothing phone and that kind of stuff carl pays the ceo he's been on the show i think that company is fascinating and i think their earbuds in general are probably the best products they make they have the ear they have the ear a they have a line under the nothing brand but then there's the cmf brand which is this kind of designy less expensive sub brands of the company it's very confusing it's like a startup within a startup.

1:14:30I don't totally understand why they're doing it this way, but that doesn't matter. CMF stuff has consistently been much better than it kind of has any right to be. There's a CMF phone, which had some really clever accessories and you could actually like snap off the whole backplate. Really good Android phone for not that much money. The CMF buds have been pretty good all along. This is just a company that makes a series of good products at relatively affordable prices. And so if I were to send you at one company for like, I just want a good set of headphones without spending like Apple level or Samsung level, or even Google level, in some cases money, it's probably nothing.

1:15:08This is the company I heard about by far the most from anybody. Even I expected a lot of people to say like, buy last generation Sony earbuds, which I did hear from a few folks. And those are generally very good. Sony revs its headphones so often that you can get a pair that is even like two or three generations old that is still likely to be pretty new and pretty good. But nothing the hands down winner of my call for ideas about what good headphones to buy. So to our first caller, Sean, to everybody listening, to everybody who wrote in, to everybody who called, thank you. This has been super helpful.

1:15:42Like I said, I'll put a bunch more ideas and links into the show notes for this episode because I did get a lot of recommendations and wanted to share as much as I can. But if you're looking for a pair of headphones, and it's about to be Black Friday, so it's a good time to be doing so. Start with nothing. That seems to be the right answer. I hope that helps. All right, that's it for the show for today. Thank you to everybody who's on and thank you as always for watching and listening. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk.

1:16:11We will be back here on the Vergecast next Tuesday. We have a lot of fun stuff planned. We got some wild like year end stuff coming up. We're gonna have to see how all of our predictions from last year went. It's gonna be a ton of fun. Have a great holiday. We'll see you soon. Rock and roll.

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