WEBVTT

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the original drop cam took the home monitoring Market by storm and the drop

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cam Pro claims to be even better maybe it's as amazing as they say maybe it's

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designed to pre on people with more money than sents maybe the truth lies

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somewhere in between watch on to find

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out the Jazz mini phone and tablet stand from coolermaster is now available in a

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variety of cool colors from these great retailers click now to learn more the

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unboxing experience for consumer-friendly products from Smart Brands is always good and was actually

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kind of fun in this case because other than hearing ads on the radio I did no

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research on the drop cam Pro before buying one to do this review the camera

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comes pre-installed in a simple aluminum Mount there's a quick start guide that

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I'll be using to test their 60-second setup claim there are some screws and a

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wall mount that the bass clips into and then I was a bit surprised to find out

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that it's powered by a long thick micro

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USB cable on a wall wart instead of something thinner easier to find

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sensible places to plug in and more durable let's go back to the camera

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though at the front there's an all glass 130° wideangle lens not good for a

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cinematic look but definitely useful if you want to monitor a large area since

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there's no support for pan and tilt and behind that lens is a new high

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sensitivity thir in sensor that's about two times the surface area of the older

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HD model making it better for load light situations you can't see them now but

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around the lens are some unexceptional IR LEDs that it uses for night mode and

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then at the bottom we find the micro USB plug for power or setup if you decide to

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use a PC finally internally we find a speaker as well as a little microphone

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port for two-way voice a dualband wireless end setup and Bluetooth low

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energy for setting up with a smartphone or tablet if you choose to go that route

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now on to setup but first story time now I'd heard of drop cam but I never really

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cared about it because I've been burned by subpar our consumer grade network

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cameras so many times that I was just over them as a category all the ones

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that you're looking at now I was given for free and still never bothered to use

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because they were just too useless and horrible and it was always the same

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issues complicated setup flaky apps

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rubbish image quality and worst of all feature lists that were so short it was

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almost like the manufacturer was intentionally nerfing the product to

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avoid cannibalizing the sales of a higher-end offering in spite of the fact

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that many of these companies didn't even have higher-end offerings anyway the

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thing that made me say maybe there's something to this was the fact that Nest

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owned by Google acquired them and then I knew I had to review it when I saw their

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claims of 60c setup did they really find

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the Holy Grail of networking product development was it that easy to deploy

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the answer is actually yeah um it takes a lot longer than a minute and their own

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website seems to have been updated to reflect that even if Amazon's hasn't but

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for PC setup you plug it in with a USB cable and follow the onscreen prompts

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and for smartphone setup you pair it via Bluetooth install the app and follow the

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onscreen prompts the guide they guide you through creating a Dropcam account

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connecting to your Wi-Fi network and placing the drop cam within Wi-Fi range

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somewhere that it'll monitor something useful so not the inside of your petery

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drawer then once it's configured the Simplicity keeps on coming using a

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browser on a PC or the app you can monitor the camera live you can zoom you

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have two-way voice communication with people or pets on the other side albeit

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with a significant delay and you can

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categorize repetitive events so that drop cam will either notify you when a

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certain important thing happens let's say whenever the front door opens or

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ignore it when uninteresting things happen let's say when the cat jumps up

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onto the bookshelf this is cool because these events also enable you to much

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more quickly scrub through save footage in the PVR uh sorry CV ER feature where

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it marks them on a timeline so finding out when little s came home last night

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is super easy too bad this functionality is let down by a couple of small

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problems so first it's still Beta And there are some Kinks to work out basic

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stuff's okay but the more complicated uh classifying things on its own yeah is a

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little bit rough right now and second CVR stands for cloud video recorder a

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subscription based service that you need to pay for monthly in order to do

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anything other than monitor the drop cam live yeah after your pathetic 14-day

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trial of CVR to make the let's face it

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not that special plastic camera that you already paid $200 for useful for

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anything other than live streaming you need to pay $100 a year for your first

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drop cam and $50 a year for each subsequent one and that's if you only

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want the last 7 Days of Saved footage 30 days costs triple there is no Hardware

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reason that drop cam can't store footage on a drive or a PC on the same network

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which would save bandwidth from your monthly data cap and improve the quality

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of your internet use experience since constantly uploading 720p video will

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affect your network speed especially if you start adding more than one camera

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and while I'm aware of the feature that turns off video recording when you're at

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home that's kind of ridiculous to me I mean what if a couple robbers team up

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for the classic you make sure they stay in the garden while I empty out the

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house strategy I guess I don't need footage of that when it comes time to

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report it police right no so in conclusion while drop cam solves some of

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my original complaints about network cameras yeah those ones it really is

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amazingly easy to use I mean here look I'll log into it right now you can go

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from not being logged in to being logged in and live monitoring your camera or

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reviewing your DVR CVR excuse me in that

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much time zoom in zoom out it's really

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easy to use sadly it's yet another device

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designed to deliver as little functionality as it can unless you're

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willing to Fork out what I really think is an unreasonable amount of money for

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the subscription but honestly I don't blame drop cam for any of this for over

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a span of let's say 3 years charging each customer $500 to maintain 7 Days of

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recorded video from a camera that isn't weather resistant is powered by USB for

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some inexplicable reason and becomes nothing more than a fancy baby monitor

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the instant that they stop paying for the subscription drop cam saw customers

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paying 30 to 50 bucks a month for much less useful home alarm systems they

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delivered a better product saw amazing success and got bought out good for them

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no the one that I blame is the other consumer networking and video

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surveillance companies who had years to get their act together and deliver

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something that works half decently and couldn't manage to do it so now we have

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this it works I just think it's too expensive speaking of things that work

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half decently and aren't too expensive and let you watch videos Hulu Plus that

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was wow that was a terrible segue anyway the plus part of Hulu Plus is key

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compared to regular Hulu this gives you access to all current season episodes of

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a bunch of network TV shows on your own schedule and lets you stream videos on

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pretty much any device you already own like your iPad or Roku Hulu Plus gives

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you access to more obscure stuff like Korean dramas kids shows and Criterion

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movies so you can be watching an anime like sort out online then switch over to

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the latest episodes of a network TV show like bones all within the same service

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you'll also get access to Originals that you can't get anywhere else like The

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Awesomes created by Seth Myers and Mike Shoemaker an animated comedy about a

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misfit group of superheroes all 10 episodes of season 1 are available now

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and season 2 premieres on August the 4th so guys be sure to check out Hulu Plus

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using my link huluplus.com Linus to get a free twoe trial it costs only $7.99 a

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month once you're done with the two-e trial and if you use the link in the video description again that's H

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plus.com Linus you get that extra week free since they actually give you a onee

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trial for free no matter who you are even if you sign up without a code but

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two weeks is better than one week right yay unless it's community service for

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that time that you anyway I what was I talking about uh thanks for watching the

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video guys like if you liked dislike if you disliked leave a comment tell me am

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I being unreasonable is is $10 a month

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totally fine and making you pay more with each one I mean is it just a matter

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of well lus it's that much better than everything else so you know that's why

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I'd love to hear from you guys do you have a drop cam what do you think of it

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let's just leave it at that there's a support us Link in the video description

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where you guys can buy a t-shirt give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmarks to one that gives us a

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little Kickback whenever you buy I don't know drop cams or whatever else is

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you're buying on Amazon and I think that's pretty much it as always don't

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forget to subscribe if you haven't

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already