1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,720 One day I will go on vacation and pack all the tech that I need. 2 00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:09,560 But it is not this day. I was still in the Uber to the airport 3 00:00:09,560 --> 00:00:12,880 when I realized that I didn't have the webcam 4 00:00:12,880 --> 00:00:16,360 or high quality microphone that I needed for the WAN Show, 5 00:00:16,360 --> 00:00:21,120 which means I've got two options. I could end a five year streak of weekly WAN shows 6 00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:26,480 or I can venture out once again in search of an Asian tech model that has what I need. 7 00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:31,840 Welcome to Yongsan Electronics Market, which according to Flip Korea is the largest in the country, 8 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:35,960 boasting about 5,000 stores across more than 20 buildings. 9 00:00:35,960 --> 00:00:39,400 Now I won't be exploring all of them, at least I hope I won't need to, 10 00:00:39,400 --> 00:00:44,640 but it seems like a pretty good chance I'm gonna end up in more than one because unlike some of my previous adventures, 11 00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:48,480 I don't have a local guide or even anyone who speaks the language. 12 00:00:48,480 --> 00:00:53,480 And if this recent conversation on Reddit, as well as TripAdvisor is anything to go by, 13 00:00:53,480 --> 00:00:58,280 it seems like this place can be a bit of a challenge if you don't know exactly where you're going 14 00:00:58,280 --> 00:01:02,200 and exactly what you're looking for. Things aren't looking much different on the second floor. 15 00:01:02,200 --> 00:01:05,720 It feels kind of like a ghost town. There's not a ton of people here 16 00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:11,840 considering that this is a weekday afternoon. What I would also love to see is any peripherals, 17 00:01:11,840 --> 00:01:15,480 but what I do know is exactly the segue to our sponsor. 18 00:01:24,480 --> 00:01:27,480 According to Wikipedia, soon in Plaza is the place to start 19 00:01:27,480 --> 00:01:31,400 if you're looking for computers and computer accessories. 20 00:01:31,400 --> 00:01:35,800 And right out of the gate, literally the gate. I think we're looking pretty good here, 21 00:01:35,800 --> 00:01:39,960 which is kind of a relief because honestly getting here was a bit of a bear. 22 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:45,880 Anywhere about China, I'm accustomed to using Google Maps, but here because of a data sharing agreement 23 00:01:45,880 --> 00:01:49,400 or rather lack of an agreement that the South Korean government has with Google, 24 00:01:49,400 --> 00:01:53,920 we instead use Naver, which has some stuff that's really good about it. 25 00:01:53,920 --> 00:01:57,280 Actually found the walking instructions to be freaking outstanding. 26 00:01:57,280 --> 00:02:02,200 But it's not really super English optimized. And in fact, even just searching for this Plaza 27 00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:05,400 and it didn't bring up any results. So I've had to look things up on Google 28 00:02:05,400 --> 00:02:09,440 and then cross reference with Naver in order to find any specific building. 29 00:02:09,440 --> 00:02:12,600 I was about to say, look, look, they have RAM, 30 00:02:12,600 --> 00:02:16,280 but they actually don't, most of them are empty. One thing that doesn't seem to have hit 31 00:02:16,280 --> 00:02:19,920 at least too hard here yet though is storage shortages. 32 00:02:19,920 --> 00:02:23,760 Lots of hard drives at this shop, not to mention plenty of SSDs. 33 00:02:23,760 --> 00:02:27,200 How's pricing though? I'm already noticing a pattern I've read about online 34 00:02:27,200 --> 00:02:30,920 where a lot of things don't have pricing and you're just kind of expected to haggle. 35 00:02:30,920 --> 00:02:34,360 Can I have a price? Eight terabyte. Eight terabyte? 36 00:02:34,360 --> 00:02:41,640 Yeah. Yeah, the price buddy gave me for that was about 247 US dollars, which isn't ridiculous, 37 00:02:41,640 --> 00:02:45,880 but it is about 40 USD more than if I just bought it from New Egg. 38 00:02:45,880 --> 00:02:51,200 One nice thing if you're looking for a deal though is there seems to be just tons of secondhand stuff here. 39 00:02:51,200 --> 00:02:55,640 Even the shops that seem to deal predominantly in brand new hardware will unashamedly put, 40 00:02:55,640 --> 00:02:58,480 you know, older used CPUs on display. 41 00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:02,200 As a scrap yard borer, I love to see it. 42 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:06,440 What I would also love to see is any peripherals. 43 00:03:07,360 --> 00:03:10,400 What I'm really here for is a microphone, remember? 44 00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:13,920 And a webcam. Oh, here we go. Well, let's have a look. 45 00:03:13,920 --> 00:03:17,520 That's a microphone already. With that said, I don't want to buy the first thing 46 00:03:17,520 --> 00:03:21,920 that I find, especially when there could be deals to be had. I was on my way to explore other options 47 00:03:21,920 --> 00:03:25,560 and I came across this bin of Logitech G102 48 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:29,640 mice for seven US dollars each. If I could find a deal like that, 49 00:03:29,640 --> 00:03:32,680 but for my webcam and my microphone, I'd be pretty stoked. 50 00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:37,680 I do wonder if some of the deals are because this place has kind of fallen on hard times though. 51 00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:43,480 A lot of the stuff piled up in here seems to be e-waste and there's not a ton of people here 52 00:03:43,480 --> 00:03:47,320 considering that this is a weekday afternoon. 53 00:03:47,320 --> 00:03:52,560 Things aren't looking much different on the second floor. On the one hand, there's all this inventory 54 00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:58,080 and there's plenty of staff, but it just feels kind of like a ghost town. 55 00:03:58,080 --> 00:03:59,640 To the stairs we go again. 56 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:05,200 Nope. Maybe better luck going up one more. 57 00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:09,040 Okay. I think we ran out of stairs here. 58 00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:13,680 Back on the second floor now then, where with my fresh perspective, things seem a little more alive. 59 00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:16,840 Oh, is that? Is that an entire knock to a store? 60 00:04:17,840 --> 00:04:21,360 Okay. Kind of cool. Not gonna lie, this place kind of hopping. 61 00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:25,040 People trying out all the different mechanical keyboards. 62 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:28,520 Great. Made my way back to that first shop where I found the razor mic. 63 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:33,160 And the closed. I guess the adventure continues. 64 00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:37,160 Wait, you gotta be kidding me. I came in on the second floor. 65 00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:41,760 I haven't even seen the first floor yet and some of these shops look big. 66 00:04:41,760 --> 00:04:46,640 Lots of inventory in this one. Mics and webcams though. 67 00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:51,040 Hard to say. And in fact, I don't even know if I'm allowed in there. 68 00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:56,680 I think it might just be a pickup location, which might explain the very limited foot traffic here. 69 00:04:56,680 --> 00:05:00,840 Like that place looks cool. I think it's time to ask directions. 70 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:05,280 Apparently there's someone here who speaks English. At least enough that the rest of the staff 71 00:05:05,280 --> 00:05:08,960 is bullying him into trying. Yeah, they sent me back upstairs. 72 00:05:08,960 --> 00:05:13,840 I really don't know if that's gonna work out for me. Holy crap, how did I miss this before? 73 00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:18,120 A Logitech store. This may be the answer. 74 00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:22,520 Show me a desk microphone. Show me any webcams. 75 00:05:22,520 --> 00:05:26,240 I don't see any. All they have is the most basic of webcams 76 00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:27,800 and no desktop microphones. 77 00:05:29,360 --> 00:05:34,480 According to my new bros at the Noctua store, I might be better off trying Electroland. 78 00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:37,960 So my prediction came true. 79 00:05:37,960 --> 00:05:41,520 We are done at this building and moving on to the next one. 80 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:46,200 All right, it might be time to adjust my objective here. I mean, even back home, I can't think of anywhere 81 00:05:46,200 --> 00:05:50,120 that I would go to buy a bougie webcam. So how about this? 82 00:05:50,120 --> 00:05:55,960 I plan to use my phone as my webcam. I just find some kind of phone tripod 83 00:05:55,960 --> 00:05:59,000 and then as long as I can find a decent microphone, 84 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:03,040 then I'm GDG. Maybe some LED strip lights. 85 00:06:03,040 --> 00:06:08,400 Why am I adding things? I just left the last building because I couldn't find anything on my list. 86 00:06:08,400 --> 00:06:13,280 There it is. The f**k is that? 87 00:06:14,120 --> 00:06:19,120 Anywho, here we are and okay, I could get a camcorder. 88 00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:25,080 That would be a camera solution. Already, this is looking way more promising 89 00:06:25,080 --> 00:06:29,200 in terms of what I'm likely to find for consumer electronics. 90 00:06:29,200 --> 00:06:33,120 Here we go. This looks promising. 91 00:06:33,120 --> 00:06:38,400 Not bad. It's a little over a couple of hundred US dollars for the mic, which is more than I wanna spend 92 00:06:38,400 --> 00:06:42,280 for something that I'm gonna use once. So I'm gonna go ahead and get my camera. 93 00:06:42,280 --> 00:06:45,520 It's something that I'm gonna use once, but is a high quality enough mic 94 00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:50,120 that could just be part of my travel kit permanently. And then I'll never be in this situation again. 95 00:06:50,120 --> 00:06:55,120 And there's a little vlogger kit that has a little stand that you can put your phone on 96 00:06:55,120 --> 00:06:58,400 and then a little LED panel. 97 00:06:58,400 --> 00:07:01,920 Didn't actually ask for the pricing on that one because I was like, well, hey, look, 98 00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:08,080 if the second place I walk into here already has what I need, who knows what else I'll find? 99 00:07:08,080 --> 00:07:10,960 Oh, dude, totally unrelated to my quest, but this is so cool. 100 00:07:12,520 --> 00:07:14,480 Wait, it actually works. 101 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:21,640 Floor two looks like it can serve all of my portable CD player needs. 102 00:07:21,640 --> 00:07:26,760 Whoa. I don't even wanna know how much this stuff costs. 103 00:07:26,760 --> 00:07:27,960 Nevermind, I found out. 104 00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:34,840 And that's just scratching the surface of the crazy hi-fi stuff in here. 105 00:07:34,840 --> 00:07:37,880 Check out this place. Next door is another one. 106 00:07:37,880 --> 00:07:42,280 Are enough people buying this stuff that we can sustain multiple of these shops 107 00:07:42,280 --> 00:07:46,880 right next to each other? It, is that, is that an old CRT projector? 108 00:07:49,200 --> 00:07:53,280 What? What is this place? 109 00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:57,080 Even more of this stuff. Look at this damn turntable. 110 00:07:57,080 --> 00:08:03,200 That's enough bougie audio stores for me. Let's see how things go on floor three, where, okay, we're back in, 111 00:08:03,200 --> 00:08:07,440 build a PC out of parts land. Really close to finding a phone stand here. 112 00:08:07,440 --> 00:08:10,680 That's only about seven American dollars. 113 00:08:10,680 --> 00:08:16,840 Unfortunately, the build quality feels like seven American dollars and my iPhone doesn't fit with its D-brand case on it. 114 00:08:16,840 --> 00:08:20,000 So I don't wanna have to take off every time I go to use my phone as a webcam. 115 00:08:21,280 --> 00:08:26,520 All right, let's go up another floor, I guess. Where we find gaming land. 116 00:08:27,480 --> 00:08:30,520 Also arcade and cinema. 117 00:08:30,520 --> 00:08:35,040 And that seems to be about it. Other than this trippy aorist lounge, 118 00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:38,860 whatever the heck this thing is. After the spooky hallway, we get to new building 119 00:08:38,860 --> 00:08:44,060 where they've got this Lego themed cafe with a little build it yourself workshop next door 120 00:08:44,060 --> 00:08:47,500 and a little racing ramp. That's pretty cool. 121 00:08:47,500 --> 00:08:51,580 Just found another place that carries a road, but they don't have any other desktop mics. 122 00:08:51,580 --> 00:08:55,380 And I just realized I'm back to the CD Walkmans. 123 00:08:56,300 --> 00:09:01,220 I somehow ended up back in the old building, which means I've pretty much seen this place 124 00:09:01,220 --> 00:09:06,220 and I only found the one spot that had a high quality desktop microphone 125 00:09:06,220 --> 00:09:09,820 and the price, I looked it up after. Turns out, not great. 126 00:09:10,740 --> 00:09:13,740 Let's see if he can do anything to help me with that. There is good news though. 127 00:09:13,740 --> 00:09:19,700 On my way over, I found this selfie stick tripod combo unit for 27 US dollars. 128 00:09:21,500 --> 00:09:26,140 Am I stoked to pay that much for it? No, but it seems sturdy enough 129 00:09:26,140 --> 00:09:29,660 and I'm kinda running out of time here. So I think I'm gonna go for it. 130 00:09:29,660 --> 00:09:33,680 Starting to run out of options. Found a place that had a little panel light. 131 00:09:33,680 --> 00:09:38,500 They wanted about 50 US dollars for it. It looked like it was worth maybe 10. 132 00:09:38,500 --> 00:09:43,060 However, there is a shop right over here that has the same road mic in stock, 133 00:09:43,060 --> 00:09:46,340 so maybe I can get a price quote for that. How much is this one? 134 00:09:46,340 --> 00:09:51,780 250. 250? Can you do a discount for this and this and this 135 00:09:51,780 --> 00:09:56,100 all together? No. No, okay. Well, I didn't love negotiating with that guy, 136 00:09:56,100 --> 00:09:59,380 but Stahl B106, gotta give him credit. 137 00:09:59,380 --> 00:10:05,560 He gave me a far better price on the NTUSB Plus and while I paid a little bit more for this small rig light 138 00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:12,180 and a matching stand than I would have liked, the overall bill was $223 US dollars, 139 00:10:12,180 --> 00:10:16,480 which is honestly fine. Now I just need to stand for my phone. 140 00:10:16,480 --> 00:10:20,920 I think I'm gonna go back and get the one I just saw. Add another 23 US dollars for this mama-jama 141 00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:24,040 and it's time to have a look at the results. Let's start with what I would have had 142 00:10:24,040 --> 00:10:28,400 or may very well still have because it just occurred to me, right, 143 00:10:28,400 --> 00:10:34,080 I'm doing the Linux challenge right now. I actually don't know if I'm gonna be able to use my phone 144 00:10:34,080 --> 00:10:37,560 as my webcam. Anyway, here's our camera. 145 00:10:37,560 --> 00:10:43,400 Not too impressive. Also, I'm not getting any audio capture off of this thing. 146 00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:48,360 Where the hell are my audio devices? These were working. 147 00:10:48,360 --> 00:10:53,320 Or, wait, were they? Come to think of it, had I only used Bluetooth headphones on it? 148 00:10:55,960 --> 00:10:59,100 Well, if the point was to show that this would have been a disaster, 149 00:10:59,100 --> 00:11:04,800 I guess mission accomplished. Horrible camera and nonexistent audio. 150 00:11:04,800 --> 00:11:07,280 All right, let's see the new setup. All right. 151 00:11:08,920 --> 00:11:12,960 Well, this is progress. 152 00:11:12,960 --> 00:11:17,600 Okay, all right. Checkity, check, check, checkaroo. 153 00:11:18,440 --> 00:11:21,560 Nice. Okay, we've got audio now. 154 00:11:21,560 --> 00:11:28,280 Okay, now we just gotta figure out how to get video from my iPhone to my Linux laptop. 155 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:31,480 All right, is this working now? I think so. 156 00:11:31,480 --> 00:11:36,720 I've got monitoring, I've got video with actually surprisingly low latency. 157 00:11:36,720 --> 00:11:40,200 I've got audio. I think I'm ready to go. 158 00:11:40,200 --> 00:11:45,080 And I haven't even shown you guys the best part yet. Haven't even turned on the light yet. 159 00:11:45,080 --> 00:11:48,320 Oh, oh lord, is that ever worse? 160 00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:51,640 Okay, well, not everything about this was a huge success, 161 00:11:51,640 --> 00:11:56,800 but this entire setup, assuming that I already had a pretty nice phone, 162 00:11:56,800 --> 00:12:00,720 cost less than what I spent on the Razer webcam 163 00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:06,480 that I did my last away from home stream on. So as far as throwing something together at the tech mall 164 00:12:06,480 --> 00:12:10,040 goes, I am pretty freaking happy with this. 165 00:12:10,040 --> 00:12:13,680 I'm sorry, but no amount of trying to make Steam 166 00:12:13,680 --> 00:12:18,440 the same thing as the App Store and the Google Play Store is going to make it the same thing. 167 00:12:18,440 --> 00:12:21,960 And I'm pretty freaking happy to tell you about our sponsor. 168 00:12:21,960 --> 00:12:25,240 If you guys enjoyed this one, and you liked the whole Linus checks at a tech mall vibe, 169 00:12:25,240 --> 00:12:30,240 you might like the time that we built a $12,000 custom gaming rig in a Taiwanese tech mall 170 00:12:30,240 --> 00:12:33,320 that was freaking awesome. And then we gave it away at the end.