Boy, it's so cold.
I hope Eric's waiting for me with some hot chocolate.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[KNOCKS]
Hey, Jack, I saw what you did.
Eric, are you outside?
That was my wife's favorite plant, man.
Eric, where are you?
I'm in the doorbell.
Door-- hey!
There's a video camera in the doorbell, Jack.
I've seen these before.
How does it work?
Why don't you come on in.
I'll show you.
Eric, I'm sorry about knocking over your plant.
You want to see the scene of the crime here, Jack?
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
I've got the video right here.
There's you.
Oh, no.
There's my plant.
[LAUGHTER]
So we've got the evidence right here.
If you were trying to steal something from our front porch,
I'd have it on tape.
Why did you get it?
Peace of mind.
It's security.
I can tell when my kids come home from school.
If I have a package, I can see when that was delivered.
It's just a way to know what's happening
on the front porch of my house.
Are they very expensive?
Most of them are around a couple hundred bucks.
And that's not the only cost.
If you buy one of these and install it,
it's recording video.
Those are big files, and that needs to be stored somewhere.
So most of the companies will charge you a subscription fee--
You gotta add it to the budget.
Exactly.
That could be $5 a month on the low end.
It might be $20 a month.
Are there any more drawbacks?
If your power goes out and you don't have Wi-Fi,
then it's not going to work.
Do you test these at Consumer Reports?
Well, we found that there are big differences
in video quality.
I mean, you want to know who or what is at your door.
So we evaluate the cameras using unique scenes
that our engineers design.
And those expose weak spots in the cameras.
So we use different lighting situations-- for example,
good light, low light, zero light, to test night vision.
We also backlight subjects to see
if the camera can pick up the object when
it's in front of the light.
So is this the same thing as a home security system?
Well, yeah, basically.
I mean, you can either have just the video doorbell
all by itself or you could use it as the core
to a bigger system with cameras around the house, which
actually is what I did.
Oh.
I can show you right here.
There's the back of the house.
Hey, there it is.
Right?
There's the garage, right?
There's the nursery.
Ahh.
Now do you have to have it professionally installed?
I installed it myself.
It took me maybe 25 minutes.
So it was that easy to install, huh?
If you have an existing doorbell,
you can usually pop that off and connect the new video doorbell
right to the same wiring.
And then you screwed it on the wall.
And the physical installation for the cameras
is no big deal at all.
All you have to do is plug those into the wall.
And if you don't want to hassle with the setup,
there are some services that'll do it for you.
It's the app on your phone, and the password--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
So if you're good with that stuff,
you would have no problem setting it up.
Eric says beyond capturing video,
some smart doorbells come with high-tech features like facial
recognition, voice control, and what's called "geo-fencing,"
which can turn the camera on and off as you come and go.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
All right, bye, Eric.
You know, this is kind of a cool gadget.
[TAUNTING SOUNDS]
See you later, Jack.
Bye!
Take it easy.
Sorry again.
[MUSIC PLAYING]