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EL BROMANCE posted:For travel, I always liked my Roku stick the most as it has a neat feature that lets you connect to hotel WiFi via your phone for when you have to deal with captive portal poo poo (the thing where the WiFi access point is open but doesn’t let you in until you go through a web interface and do things like type your room number etc), which from memory the Firestick can’t do. Something has changed with this as I recently discovered. I took my Firestick 4k with me on a business trip and was pleasantly surprised to find it recognize the hotel's captive portal and popup a browser window complete with mouse cursor mode so I could enter the access code.
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Dec 17, 2020 15:43
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TheWevel posted:a good ui The Roku UI is one of the main reason why I told my parents to get one over a firestick or Android TV box. While it's true that it's ugly, it's dead simple to use for people who don't browse forums all day.
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Dec 18, 2020 01:43
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I got bored and built this from scrap I had lying around, and it works infinitely better than the Terk patch antenna I got years ago. Don't have any baluns but I have a ton of ferrite toroids from when I was into RC planes so I made my own 300Ω to 75Ω transformer. I'd hide it away but apparently this design isn't great with VHF Hi signals so it needs to be my the window for the one station in that direction that's right on the edge of the VHF to UHF transition. If I can get my hands on enough solid core wire of the right gauge I'm gonna try building a Gray-Hoverman antenna, apparently they work even better and can also get VHF signals with no problems.
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Dec 22, 2020 03:28
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Coxswain Balls posted:I got bored and built this from scrap I had lying around, and it works infinitely better than the Terk patch antenna I got years ago. Don't have any baluns but I have a ton of ferrite toroids from when I was into RC planes so I made my own 300Ω to 75Ω transformer. I'd hide it away but apparently this design isn't great with VHF Hi signals so it needs to be my the window for the one station in that direction that's right on the edge of the VHF to UHF transition. If I can get my hands on enough solid core wire of the right gauge I'm gonna try building a Gray-Hoverman antenna, apparently they work even better and can also get VHF signals with no problems. 
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Dec 22, 2020 03:42
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Are you sure you're not looking for the Amateur Radio thread?
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Dec 22, 2020 03:46
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I originally posted it there but I figured I'd share it here too for anyone else interested in antenna construction. It's got a hook at the top so when I'm not watching TV I can just stuff it behind the sofa.
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Dec 22, 2020 03:57
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If you have Verizon and one of the compatible plans, they're offering Discovery+ ad-free for a free year.
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Jan 4, 2021 23:46
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Rooted Vegetable posted:Are you sure you're not looking for the Amateur Radio thread? I'm old enough to remember when OTA TV reception questions and tips were this thread's bread and butter. At some point "Cutting Cable" became "switching from cable to cable with buffering."
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Jan 5, 2021 13:01
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Coxswain Balls posted:I got bored and built this from scrap I had lying around, and it works infinitely better than the Terk patch antenna I got years ago. Don't have any baluns but I have a ton of ferrite toroids from when I was into RC planes so I made my own 300Ω to 75Ω transformer. I'd hide it away but apparently this design isn't great with VHF Hi signals so it needs to be my the window for the one station in that direction that's right on the edge of the VHF to UHF transition. If I can get my hands on enough solid core wire of the right gauge I'm gonna try building a Gray-Hoverman antenna, apparently they work even better and can also get VHF signals with no problems. That's awesome. At a high level, can you explain how that particular physical design works? The placement of those rods etc... I bought a $60 antenna off Amazon that works reasonably well but I started contemplating trying out building my own antenna after researching how to improve LTE signals...
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Jan 5, 2021 18:54
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On a high level, it's a flat biconical antenna, which is a form of dipole antenna. The dimensions of everything and the way it's wired makes it so that the signal it collects adds together and is at its strongest at the feeder lines at the very center. Behold, the dipole! I'm just a hobbyist and not an EE so I just started with the plans from this page and was gonna do some fiddling afterwards. It ended up working so well I left it as-is with only some modifications for cable management. Broadcast TV is broadband so the antenna has to be capable of handling frequencies from 470-890MHz in the UHF range (63.8cm to 33.7cm wavelength). That 4-bay bowtie antenna is a broadband design, with the 17.78cm x 2 whiskers being roughly half to a full wavelength long, depending on what channel you're tuning in to. More fine tuning can be done depending on what channels are available in your area, but I'm getting every local UHF station perfectly so I haven't bothered.  Here's a picture of it from the other side. The phase lines cross over to the whiskers on the other side on the top and bottom so that the signal each line is receiving is still in phase at the feed point in the very center (make sure that they're not touching or else the signals from each side will cancel each other out). I haven't bothered cutting the extra phase lines on top because it doesn't seem to be affecting anything, and I might want to reuse the wire for later antennas. The only change I might do is to get rid of the feeder line screws in the center, drill two holes straight through the 2x4 and solder the feed lines directly to the phase lines to minimize the amount of dangly bits that can get caught on things. You can add a mesh reflector behind it to get more gain in one direction, but all my stations are directly in front and behind it so I didn't bother. DigitalHome.ca is a good resource for antenna design, and is the home of the Gray-Hoverman design that everyone seems to go nuts for. From what I understand the Gray-Hoverman design was refined by putting the old Hoverman antenna design through a machine-learning iterative process that spit out something that ended up working better than anything else on the market. The only problem is that it's more difficult than it should be to find practical instructions on how to actually build any of their fancy designs that isn't an NEC-2 file with a list of dimensions. The best I've found is this guy from the deep, deep south who's no physicist, but gives good hands on directions and goes through the trouble of testing everything out. The dude doesn't even know what a parasitic element is and while skeptical he tests it anyways; he ends up blown away by the VHF performance he gets after adding some in the second video. There's only one more channel I can't get because the station is still broadcasting in VHF (174-180MHz, specifically), so whenever I can find some scrap 8AWG solid core wire I'm gonna take a crack at this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FovEdu9BaWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yavd9-rl5qQ I think the directions he follows are from this document, although it doesn't have the NARODs from the original design specs. TheScott2K posted:I'm old enough to remember when OTA TV reception questions and tips were this thread's bread and butter. At some point "Cutting Cable" became "switching from cable to cable with buffering." I just found out about FTA satellite feeds and I'm starting to get the itch to get a scrap dish and see what kind of signals I get. Does anyone here have any experience with that or know where to go to do some research? Trying to get signals and data without the use of an internet connection is a fun challenge in itself that I'm finding really enjoyable. I spent a good part of today building and routing an antenna to my balcony to pick up aircraft transceiver signals; I put it on my TV and it was super neat to watch all the planes flying around with just a bunch of scrap coax. Coxswain Balls fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Jan 10, 2021 07:23
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TheScott2K posted:I'm old enough to remember when OTA TV reception questions and tips were this thread's bread and butter. At some point "Cutting Cable" became "switching from cable to cable with buffering." I built my own fractal design hdtv antenna way back in the day and thought it was really neat. A month or two ago I decided to throw an antenna in my attic and just bought a $35 75 mile range antenna off Amazon. I'm glad I've done both.
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Jan 10, 2021 08:20
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Coxswain Balls posted:Cool antenna stuff... This is great, thanks for taking the time to write it up. I agree it's always fun to build something with your own hands and see tangible, useful results.
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Jan 11, 2021 20:24
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I signed up for the Spectrum "TV Choice" streaming bundle. You get all the local channels plus can pick any 10 channels from their package. Ended up building a small bundle with a couple news shows, ESPN, some kids shows and one or two other channels. Only for existing Spectrum customers. It wasn't that much cheaper, price was $25+$8 "broadcast fee"+$2 taxes so around $35 but it had exactly the channels we wanted + locals so it's very needs suiting. Spectrum's app sucks rear end though, every channel is in alphabetical order, including every single random 11.2 OTA channel but at least you can mark some as favorites and filter by that.
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Jan 11, 2021 23:57
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FCKGW posted:Spectrum's app sucks rear end though, every channel is in alphabetical order, including every single random 11.2 OTA channel but at least you can mark some as favorites and filter by that. Poke around the settings/channel filters; there ought to be a thing to let you display/sort by channel number instead if that's what you prefer.
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Jan 12, 2021 00:07
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I do like YouTube TVs feature of putting channels in whatever order you want
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Jan 12, 2021 00:44
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BonoMan posted:I do like YouTube TVs feature of putting channels in whatever order you want It's surprising this feature hasn't spread to other providers.
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Jan 12, 2021 00:57
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...and you can straight up hide the Q-ANON type channels too.
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Jan 12, 2021 01:14
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phosdex posted:It's surprising this feature hasn't spread to other providers. This was a feature on DirecTV in 1997.
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Jan 12, 2021 09:27
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A channel's position in the lineup and guide is something you can monetize or make a factor of your carrier agreement, so,
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Jan 12, 2021 13:07
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So AT&T is killing off ATTTVNOW. Kind of surprised it took them this long but they've stopped taking new subscribers and I've noticed the service sucking even more than usual lately. I've been subscribed since the first month or two of DirectTVNow with that killer $35 subscription + free Apple TV4. Since then the price has risen year over year to the point where now it's basically in line with the other services, but our HBO addon never increased in price so we kept it since it ends up being about $10 cheaper than equivalent Hulu or Youtube subscriptions. I wonder how long until the service is completely dead.
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Jan 18, 2021 07:56
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Well Peacock just made a big move. https://twitter.com/JBFlint/status/1353685797854081026
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Jan 25, 2021 14:24
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This is a hilariously bad deal for NBC (essentially they are hoping the average WWE Network subscriber will stick around for 200 of the 60 months of the deal), and WWE is making out like a bandit.
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Jan 25, 2021 15:16
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Silly Burrito posted:Well Peacock just made a big move. NBC just killed their sports channel. It's going away at the end of the year. I suspected they were going to make a big push for sports on Peacock and I guess that's what they are doing.
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Jan 25, 2021 16:29
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I had to uncut cable because no one streams the pacer games. Bonus 3 months free tv and internet no contract. Thanks spectrum see you again next year after I cancel in April.
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Jan 27, 2021 03:11
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Elephanthead posted:I had to uncut cable because no one streams the pacer games. Bonus 3 months free tv and internet no contract. Thanks spectrum see you again next year after I cancel in April. If that's the only reason you uncut, did you check out NBA League pass? If you're in a blackout area you might be able to use a VPN or something like that to get around it. The league pass might be a bit of $$ up front but you'd still come out ahead compared to the cable bill even after the free months.
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Jan 27, 2021 16:16
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There's also the upcoming Bally Sports platform, which means you can give your money to Sinclair directly.
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Jan 28, 2021 02:31
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I’m really not looking forward to Sinclair putting their mark over everything. Also congrats on seeing how messed up the organization of Florida is (2 separate groups of channels that show different things in different regions despite having the same names) and doing nothing but changing the Fox bit to Bally.
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Jan 28, 2021 05:14
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lol Bally Sports. Pinball is not a sport.
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Jan 28, 2021 05:41
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Edward Mass posted:There's also the upcoming Bally Sports platform, which means you can give your money to Sinclair directly. Lol I’m not. gently caress Sinclair.
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Jan 28, 2021 07:33
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Jose Oquendo posted:If that's the only reason you uncut, did you check out NBA League pass? If you're in a blackout area you might be able to use a VPN or something like that to get around it. The league pass might be a bit of $$ up front but you'd still come out ahead compared to the cable bill even after the free months. How do we still have blackout areas in the ronaverse? I wish we could just pay extra for a version that has no blackouts since its not 1970 anymore. They need to do the same w / mlb.tv too. Charge me $ 169.99 /year and let me split it with my brother-in-law.
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Jan 28, 2021 09:25
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otter posted:How do we still have blackout areas in the ronaverse? Because if they do that they won't have the "we don't make any money on streaming" when they pitch for broadcast rights/exclusivity to networks
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Jan 28, 2021 14:46
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Does youtube only offer stereo sound? They have all these videos to test your surround sound, but they never work with my rear speakers.
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Jan 29, 2021 23:25
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otter posted:
You basically can do this. You just have to sign up for yonder.tv separately and change your DNS (if you use AppleTV this can be done at the ATV level - I'm pretty sure Roku doesn't let you specify DNS so it would have to be done at the router level which might annoy some people) and now you have no blackouts. $30 for the year.
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Jan 29, 2021 23:48
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Or hehestreams, which is better in every conceivable way.
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Jan 30, 2021 21:22
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OldSenileGuy posted:You basically can do this. You just have to sign up for yonder.tv separately and change your DNS (if you use AppleTV this can be done at the ATV level - I'm pretty sure Roku doesn't let you specify DNS so it would have to be done at the router level which might annoy some people) and now you have no blackouts. $30 for the year. I use Yonder for no blackouts on nhl.tv with my rokus and PC, works great. I have it at the router level.
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Jan 31, 2021 03:29
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OldSenileGuy posted:You basically can do this. You just have to sign up for yonder.tv separately and change your DNS (if you use AppleTV this can be done at the ATV level - I'm pretty sure Roku doesn't let you specify DNS so it would have to be done at the router level which might annoy some people) and now you have no blackouts. $30 for the year. I don’t need my account getting banned for circumventing mlb.tv’s system. If any of the major leagues are tracking ips and logins to use against us it’s mlb.
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Jan 31, 2021 09:08
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otter posted:I don’t need my account getting banned for circumventing mlb.tv’s system. If any of the major leagues are tracking ips and logins to use against us it’s mlb. I've been using an alternate DNS to get around MLB's blackouts for years with no problems. From what users figured out in the MLB.TV thread, it's VPNs that might get you dinged.
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Jan 31, 2021 18:26
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otter posted:I don’t need my account getting banned for circumventing mlb.tv’s system. If any of the major leagues are tracking ips and logins to use against us it’s mlb. They don’t care because it generates extra revenue, and DNS checking is the bare minimum requirement they have to do to comply with attempting to blackout local games for tv providers. A DNS switch out won’t affect your IP address either, and you don’t have to tunnel traffic through another server.
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Jan 31, 2021 19:25
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I think League Pass doesnt give you TNT or ESPN games, which is a lot of marquee matchups. Hehestreams is ok but I never came back because “HTML5 video!!” and “CHROMECAST!!” is a poor substitute for a proper phone or streaming box app
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Feb 4, 2021 06:34
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phosdex posted:It's surprising this feature hasn't spread to other providers. fuboTV has a hamfisted but workable version where you can put a favorite at the top of your list by clicking on its star icon. The problem is that they don't allow you a truly spreadsheet-like control over that list; whatever you favorited last gets put on top. So you have to spend five minutes or so to get the channels in just the order you want and if you gently caress up, you have to unfavorite everything and start over. I still think their program layout is the best to look at after trying PlayStationTV, Hulu, YouTube, PlutoTV, and LoCast. PlutoTV doesn't even have a search feature, that's like super loving annoying. Oh, and I find that fuboTV seems to go 'oopsie, I forgot all your favorites' about every six months or so, probably to live up to aforementioned paid favoritism.. They have every drat news channel EXCEPT CNN, but I'm learning to live with it. They're probably run by chuds, though (fubo, not CNN) Edit: also, their movies on demand selection is super pathetic too; its stuff rejected by Netflix and literally public domain, like Prince Planet and poo poo. Binary Badger fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Feb 4, 2021 |
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Feb 4, 2021 15:37
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