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Old 01-17-2021, 03:18 PM   #121
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Lots of ways to save on your cellphone. We have many threads on that subject, here is the most recent one that I could find or just start a new thread and we all chip in.

https://www.early-retirement.org/for...es-106729.html
Thanks. I'll check it out.
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Old 01-17-2021, 03:22 PM   #122
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I live west of you (Chatham County). antennaweb.org can show you tower locations.

I bought my antenna in 2015 based on a recommendation right here at e-r.org. It’s an Amazon Basics 50 mile amplified. I actually bought 3, one I gave to a great bartender, another’s set aside and the last I use. It’s oriented by a first floor window facing east.
Thanks. I looked on Amazon. Seems to be a wide variety with good ratings. I do plan on getting an antenna.

Just got a kick out of using a paper clip.
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Old 01-17-2021, 07:00 PM   #123
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Once you get the antenna then consider an OTA DVR. If you are a Fire TV Stick household then check out the Fire TV Recast.
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Old 01-17-2021, 09:13 PM   #124
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We switched to T-Mobile internet last week. Spectrum raised my monthly rate AGAIN by another $5 so it was now $74.99. T-Mobile is $50 per month with no data cap. Spectrum (Charter) had no data cap but I assumed that was coming soon. The setup was a bit painful but the signal has been adequate and reliable even though I only have 3 out of 5 bars lit on my gateway.

T-Mobile sent a NOKIA gateway that I set up. I didn't realize how many things we had connected to the internet. Light bulbs controlled by voice via Alexa (11), Alexa devices (Taps, Show, multiple Echo's), thermostats (2), Ring door bell, Ring Floodlight cam, Ring security system, tablets, Sonos speakers, chromebook, TV's, and phones. The light bulbs only do 2.4 GHz which is why it was important that I be able to identify and label the 2.4GHz channel as such.

Actually, I had to do the setup twice because there is something funky going on with the T-Mobile internet setup app. We (tech support and I) thought it was a gateway issue so they sent me a new one but it wasn't an issue with the gateway. They recommend you set up the gateway with the app but it really isn't possible to do it right without a laptop and a cat 5 cable.

I now have a 2.4 GHz channel and two 5 GHz channels with the gateway. All 3 initially start with the same name and there is no way to properly rename them on the app. T-Mobile tech support thinks I should only have one 5GHz channel but I can see two. The gateway I received just began shipping on Jan 6th so T-Mobile internet tech support isn't really up to speed on the new device. The gateway I received seems much nicer than their initial one but it's a little painful right now because the reps I spoke to have never seen one. I worked with the tech support guy for about 2 hours setting up the second gateway and making it do weird things on purpose, such as the system renaming all 3 channels when I was only attempting to rename one. He and I both learned a lot about the system and he said he would be passing along the info to the other support folks.

It was really quite a goat rope to get everything set up (twice) but it's worth going through the setup pain because I despise Spectrum. When I called to cancel, the guy said he would get me a better price. I mentioned he should be able to see my prior complaining calls which he said he did. I said it's too late and I wouldn't stay with them even if he gave me internet service for free! I told him this latest price increase was not going to be generating any additional revenue for Spectrum. I am so done with them. I definitely did the happy dance in the Spectrum lobby when I dropped off my modem (and got my receipt to prove it had been dropped off when they later try to charge me for it).

I just did a speed test at speedtest.net and my ping was 33 ms, 75 Mbs download and 34 Mbps upload. I haven't done a test for a few days but I think it was about half those upload/download speeds during the day. Plenty for our uses!
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Old 01-17-2021, 10:47 PM   #125
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We switched to T-Mobile internet last week. Spectrum raised my monthly rate AGAIN by another $5 so it was now $74.99. T-Mobile is $50 per month with no data cap. Spectrum (Charter) had no data cap but I assumed that was coming soon. The setup was a bit painful but the signal has been adequate and reliable even though I only have 3 out of 5 bars lit on my gateway.

T-Mobile sent a NOKIA gateway that I set up. I didn't realize how many things we had connected to the internet. Light bulbs controlled by voice via Alexa (11), Alexa devices (Taps, Show, multiple Echo's), thermostats (2), Ring door bell, Ring Floodlight cam, Ring security system, tablets, Sonos speakers, chromebook, TV's, and phones. The light bulbs only do 2.4 GHz which is why it was important that I be able to identify and label the 2.4GHz channel as such.

Actually, I had to do the setup twice because there is something funky going on with the T-Mobile internet setup app. We (tech support and I) thought it was a gateway issue so they sent me a new one but it wasn't an issue with the gateway. They recommend you set up the gateway with the app but it really isn't possible to do it right without a laptop and a cat 5 cable.

I now have a 2.4 GHz channel and two 5 GHz channels with the gateway. All 3 initially start with the same name and there is no way to properly rename them on the app. T-Mobile tech support thinks I should only have one 5GHz channel but I can see two. The gateway I received just began shipping on Jan 6th so T-Mobile internet tech support isn't really up to speed on the new device. The gateway I received seems much nicer than their initial one but it's a little painful right now because the reps I spoke to have never seen one. I worked with the tech support guy for about 2 hours setting up the second gateway and making it do weird things on purpose, such as the system renaming all 3 channels when I was only attempting to rename one. He and I both learned a lot about the system and he said he would be passing along the info to the other support folks.

It was really quite a goat rope to get everything set up (twice) but it's worth going through the setup pain because I despise Spectrum. When I called to cancel, the guy said he would get me a better price. I mentioned he should be able to see my prior complaining calls which he said he did. I said it's too late and I wouldn't stay with them even if he gave me internet service for free! I told him this latest price increase was not going to be generating any additional revenue for Spectrum. I am so done with them. I definitely did the happy dance in the Spectrum lobby when I dropped off my modem (and got my receipt to prove it had been dropped off when they later try to charge me for it).

I just did a speed test at speedtest.net and my ping was 33 ms, 75 Mbs download and 34 Mbps upload. I haven't done a test for a few days but I think it was about half those upload/download speeds during the day. Plenty for our uses!
Is t mobile providing hard wired internet service in your area, or is this through a cellular modem?

We have the option of spectrum or cox and we’re doing the happy dance last summer when we were able to kill cox and switch to spectrum, so it’s all dependent on your last experience!
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Old 01-17-2021, 11:09 PM   #126
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Is t mobile providing hard wired internet service in your area, or is this through a cellular modem?

We have the option of spectrum or cox and we’re doing the happy dance last summer when we were able to kill cox and switch to spectrum, so it’s all dependent on your last experience!
Yes, I guess it is a cellular modem. It takes the cell signal and turns it into wifi. The device says gateway on it so I called it a gateway.

Spectrum's service has been nearly perfect and I had absolutely no complaints. My complaint is with their constant price increases for exactly the same service. They continue to raise rates on a regular basis simply because they can. There is virtually no competition in my neighborhood. CenturyLink is the other provider and they only offer overpriced DSL. Thank goodness T-Mobile decided to start in our area to put a chink in Spectrum's near monopoly. I am a long-time T-Mobile cell customer and I have been checking regularly to see if I could get their internet service.
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Old 01-18-2021, 06:52 AM   #127
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Interesting thing I found about the TABLO Quad DVR. I recorded Saturday night's NFL game (2 reasons, nights are too valuable to be watching football and the 3 hour broadcast plays in the actual 60 minutes -- sans commercials).

On our main TV, I opened TABLO with Fire TV Cube and selected the game. On our kitchen TV, I opened TABLO with ROKU and selected the game. Then wife and I pressed "watch" on both TVs at the same time. Surprise! The game played (in sync) on both TVs. I would not have thought it possible for two (or more?) devices to access the same saved file at the same time.

Hmmm. Just a thought... I will, later, do the same thing with last night's game but not start them in sync. TABLO DVR may simply broadcast to all connected devices at the same time. Either way, that's kinda neat.
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Old 01-18-2021, 07:59 AM   #128
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Interesting thing I found about the TABLO Quad DVR. I recorded Saturday night's NFL game (2 reasons, nights are too valuable to be watching football and the 3 hour broadcast plays in the actual 60 minutes -- sans commercials).

On our main TV, I opened TABLO with Fire TV Cube and selected the game. On our kitchen TV, I opened TABLO with ROKU and selected the game. Then wife and I pressed "watch" on both TVs at the same time. Surprise! The game played (in sync) on both TVs. I would not have thought it possible for two (or more?) devices to access the same saved file at the same time.

Hmmm. Just a thought... I will, later, do the same thing with last night's game but not start them in sync. TABLO DVR may simply broadcast to all connected devices at the same time. Either way, that's kind neat.
I have a Tablo 2 tuner(older one) and use all ROKU devices. I just tried a program I recorded last night and was able to start all 3 a couple minutes apart and start each one from the start. I also tried on one to see if I could see live TV when streaming 2 feeds to other TV's, no problem. I guess the streaming of recorded content does not use a tuner, so your wi-fi speed will probably determine how many you can watch at same time.
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Old 01-18-2021, 08:35 AM   #129
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I have a Tablo 2 tuner(older one) and use all ROKU devices. I just tried a program I recorded last night and was able to start all 3 a couple minutes apart and start each one from the start. I also tried on one to see if I could see live TV when streaming 2 feeds to other TV's, no problem. I guess the streaming of recorded content does not use a tuner, so your wi-fi speed will probably determine how many you can watch at same time.
Definitely a selling point.
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Old 01-18-2021, 09:17 AM   #130
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Yes, I guess it is a cellular modem. It takes the cell signal and turns it into wifi. The device says gateway on it so I called it a gateway.

Spectrum's service has been nearly perfect and I had absolutely no complaints. My complaint is with their constant price increases for exactly the same service. They continue to raise rates on a regular basis simply because they can. There is virtually no competition in my neighborhood. CenturyLink is the other provider and they only offer overpriced DSL. Thank goodness T-Mobile decided to start in our area to put a chink in Spectrum's near monopoly. I am a long-time T-Mobile cell customer and I have been checking regularly to see if I could get their internet service.
I understand your frustration with Spectrum's constant increases. Mine was just raised $5 a month too. We have plenty of competition here but doesn't seem to stop it.

Their service has also been nearly perfect. I did check out T mobile internet service as it recently became available here too. The bandwidth is not enough for my household.

I really have been waiting for Google Fiber Internet. It is available in Raleigh but not in my neighborhood. I beginning to doubt it will ever become available.

Ironically I'm probably going to give Spectrum more business. I've been doing some research on mobile plans and I like what they have. We don't use a lot of mobile data (mostly wifi) and currently paying $70 a month (for 2 of us) to T Mobile.

Spectrum's plan is $14 a month for 1 gig including all taxes. When I researched how much data we're using it is 1/3 of a gig per month. This is a no brainer PLUS they're using Verizon's lines, which in my area offers better coverage. This will save us $504 per year. Until, of course, when Spectrum raises their rate again.

I've decided once a year I will research all options available for internet and mobile. I will never go back to cable tv, just use them for internet.
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Old 01-18-2021, 11:59 AM   #131
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We don't watch a huge amount of TV and haven't been able to totally cut the cord yet, but are finding CBS All Access to be a pretty good service in terms of content. Lots of old shows including some of our favorite comedies like Wings, Caroline in the City and Cheers. Good current shows like Seal Team (really good show - traditional Americanism which we sure need nowadays). All seasons of Blue Bloods with Selleck. Lots of Star Trek content. Old series like Perry Mason. Basically a lot of good old content mixed in with the new shows.

We also have Starz to watch Outlander, but with only 4 episodes left to go in Season 5 will drop that once done.

I'm considering Disney+ and will possibly also add Hulu (since they have a bundle) just to get the Marvel and Pixar content and ABC's Once Upon a Time. (We'd started watching that years ago and gave up after things got weird around S4..might be worth finishing..)

Peacock looks interesting with at least some of the old Law & Order..I 'think' the earlier seasons (which IMHO are the good ones) are not yet available due to some licensing issues with series creator Dick Wolf..but would love to watch those.

The one thing we can't get any longer is one of our all time favorite shows - Cold Case. Roku used to carry it (ad supported) and dropped it end of year. Rumor is that it might get added to CBS All Access when that's rebranded as Paramount Plus later this year, but no official confirmation on that yet that I'm aware of..

Net net - all these streaming services sure add up in terms of cost!! If there are certain shows you like, no doubt they'll be spread across services instead of everything being available through one or two main services like Hulu, Prime or Netflix.
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Old 01-18-2021, 12:28 PM   #132
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I have a Tablo 2 tuner(older one) and use all ROKU devices. I just tried a program I recorded last night and was able to start all 3 a couple minutes apart and start each one from the start. I also tried on one to see if I could see live TV when streaming 2 feeds to other TV's, no problem. I guess the streaming of recorded content does not use a tuner, so your wi-fi speed will probably determine how many you can watch at same time.
It's a programming problem, not a hardware problem. It is just packets of bits distributed from the hard drive to different IP addresses. Just like 800 of us can view the forum at the same time.
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Old 01-18-2021, 12:59 PM   #133
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It's a programming problem, not a hardware problem. It is just packets of bits distributed from the hard drive to different IP addresses. Just like 800 of us can view the forum at the same time.
It's still something I had not run into before (TABLO delivering same data to multi-devices simultaneously). Is this commonly found with other Box's DVR playback... or is it unique to TABLO?
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Old 01-18-2021, 04:19 PM   #134
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...Net net - all these streaming services sure add up in terms of cost!! If there are certain shows you like, no doubt they'll be spread across services instead of everything being available through one or two main services like Hulu, Prime or Netflix.
Yes, but the nice thing is that you can add or delete them at your pleasure and control your costs.
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Old 01-18-2021, 05:30 PM   #135
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It's still something I had not run into before (TABLO delivering same data to multi-devices simultaneously). Is this commonly found with other Box's DVR playback... or is it unique to TABLO?
Back when I had Uverse, the main DVR box was a server to all other boxes in the network. Any TV could watch any program, or the same program. It appeared to be single threaded, i.e. a "simultaneous" distribution was really multiple streams that were slightly off.

I don't know if Tablo does this, but true simultaneous distribution can be done using IP multicast. (More here.)

The first iterations of Uverse that were done on the old copper wire used multicast. Each neighborhood had a DSLAM-like device that would multicast streams to you and your neighbors. This way, streams were not terminated all the way to the central office. Anyway, blah, blah, with more bandwidth and higher powered servers, a lot of this has gone away. This way you can start a show any time you like.
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Old 01-18-2021, 06:48 PM   #136
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I don't know if Tablo does this, but true simultaneous distribution can be done using IP multicast.
I am unsure. What I was describing is playing a locally recorded video on multiple devices each independently and simultaneously. In other words each device can pause, fast forward, rewind, etc. without affecting the other device's playback while using the same file.
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Old 01-18-2021, 07:28 PM   #137
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I am unsure. What I was describing is playing a locally recorded video on multiple devices each independently and simultaneously. In other words each device can pause, fast forward, rewind, etc. without affecting the other device's playback while using the same file.
Gotcha. All that mumbo jumbo I blathered about doesn't apply. Most modern DVRs can do what you describe. This is a change from when they first came out years ago and playback was limited to one device per DVR.
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Old 01-19-2021, 08:21 AM   #138
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SiliconDust now has a HD Homerun model with ATSC 3.0 tuners...for those near Raleigh or other major cities which already have some ATSC 3.0 broadcasts.
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Old 01-19-2021, 08:47 AM   #139
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SiliconDust now has a HD Homerun model with ATSC 3.0 tuners...for those near Raleigh or other major cities which already have some ATSC 3.0 broadcasts.
As soon as Washington DC has ATSC 3.0 i will be ordering the new HD Homerun. Hopefully soon.
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Old 01-20-2021, 03:46 PM   #140
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Charter withdraws FCC Request Re Data Caps

https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/char...qpUbZko4FxGybs
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