8 Dec 2019

Thinking About Cutting the Cable?

Woot, which is a division of Amazon, offered the Amazon Fire TV Stick for half price in mid October and, even though I don't watch a lot of television, $20 seemed like a reasonable expense for something that might turn out to be useful.

You don't need a smart television to use the Fire TV Stick, just a television with an open HDMI port. That's something that nearly every television has today. Really. A Google search for "cheapest flat-screen tv" turned up the Insignia 22-inch 1080p HDTV for $60 at Best Buy. Even this low-end television has one USB input and two HDMI inputs.

Anyone who doesn't have a smart TV but would like to have some of the free streaming options that are available can use the Fire TV (a larger and more expensive set-top box) or the Fire TV Stick.

Setup is about as easy as it gets. You'll find the device that plugs in to an HDMI port on the television in the box along with a short extension cable that can be used if there's insufficient room to plug the adapter in directly, a USB cable, a power supply, a remote control, and two batteries.

Wait! Don't insert the batteries yet. Start with the power supply. Plug it in to a wall outlet and then attach it to the device that plugs into the television. Plug adapter in to the television, using the short extension cable if needed. Turn the television on and select the appropriate HDMI input.

Now it's time for the batteries. If you already inserted them, just take them out, wait a few seconds, and put them back in. You'll see some on-screen prompts to guide the rest of the setup, which involves logging on to the Wi-Fi router. And that's it. Really.

What you receive with Fire TV is kind of a mixed bag. If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you have access to all Amazon Prime videos and Amazon Music. In addition, you'll find services that are free such as YouTube, Vimeo, and IHeart Radio, and a lot that may have free or free-trial options but that you'll eventually have to pay for such as ESPN, CBS AllAccess, Hulu, Showtime, Spotify, and a lot more.

For many people, a device such as this is the first step in eliminating satellite or cable television service. Anyone who lives in a metro area of any size will have access to over-the-air television signals even with an indoor antenna, so cable isn't needed for those channels. Where I live, some 50 television signals from 15 locations are available although some would require the use of an outdoor antenna. In addition to the usual network and local programming on a station's primary signal, most also transmit secondary signals. For example, the NBC affiliate also transmits Court TV, Ion Television, and Laff. The ABC affiliate adds MyTV and Antenna TV. The CBS affiliate has Me TV and Decades in addition to the primary network programming. The PBS station also transmits PBS Ohio and Create. Telemundo, Azteca, and other signals are available and several out-of-town signals could be picked up with an outdoor antenna.

So over-the-air television delivers ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, and The CW in all metro areas. The secondary channels vary from one area to another. If you're someone who primarily views network programming, the free streaming channels provided by the Fire TV Stick are a good complement to what you can receive over the air.

If you spend more time with cable-based channels, you'll want to add a service such as Hulu, which has its own original programming in addition to providing access to services typically found on cable. Hulu has two plans. One costs $6 per month for, as Hulu describes it, "unlimited access to the Hulu streaming library with limited or no ads ... [and] full seasons of exclusive series, hit movies, Hulu Originals, kids shows, and more." Because there is no free option, it's not clear how "limited or no ads" compares to anything.

The other plan costs $45 per month, but it still has "limited ads." Subscribers can stream more than 60 live and on-demand TV channels and record up to 50 hours of programming in cloud-based storage. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Starz can be added to the plan for additional fees. The offerings compare favorably to those found on cable systems.

Anyone who is tired of spending $1500 or more per year just for cable television in addition to what they pay for internet access does have some choices. One option that many people ignore is simply telling the cable provider that the cost is too high. It is possible to get a worthwhile discount simply by speaking up. But there's more.

• If much of your television time involves watching movies, there's a great alternative right down the street. Your public library probably has hundreds or thousands of DVDs that you can take home and watch for free.
• Another free option is Crackle. It's owned by Sony and each month there's a limited number of full-length motion pictures that you can stream for free. There may be an ad or two inserted, but it's not a bad deal. And PopcornFlix has about 1500 films that you can view on a computer or smart television.

For now, though, I'm enjoying the Fire TV Stick and I found that YouTube has a bunch of videos with birds, squirrels, fish, chipmunks, and cats that are intended for viewing by .... well, by cats. How is it that cats get their own television channels these days? Chloe Cat finds fish amusing, likes birds, and is excited by squirrels -- but chipmunks are her favorites. Recently she was watching a video of a cat playing with a toy that neither of us had seen before and she let me know that she wanted one of those toys!

Related not to cat toys but to people toys: If you have an Android or IOS device, you can download a Fire TV Stick remote control application that comes in handy if you misplace the remote control that came with the device. The remote control is small and easy to misplace, so I've installed the app on both my Android phone and IOS tablet.

I've been watching more television since installing the Fire TV Stick, but Chloe Cat has been watching so much television that I'm concerned about having an addicted cat. For me, a lot of the new viewing time has been with Walt Longmire, the fictional sheriff of a fictional county in Wyoming. I had read several of Craig Johnson's Longmire novels and wanted to see how the television version compared. Except for having some people with the same names as in the books, there's not much similarity between the books and the television series. But that always seems to be the case.

 The Fire TV Stick is a clever little device that makes any television smarter

If you have a 4K television, you'll probably want the Fire TV Stick 4K that sells for $50 instead of the second-generation 1080p version for $10 less (or, for $20 if you can find a sale). Combine the stick with a good antenna and the selections may be enough that you can discontinue your cable TV service. If not, adding a plan such as the one from Hulu might be sufficient. You will still need an internet connection.
Additional details are available on the Amazon website.

Short Circuits

Will Your Phone Support 5G?

The short answer is "Probably not," but maybe the better question is "Do you really need 5G?" With few exceptions, most phones being sold now don't support 5G and, with equally few exceptions, most mobile phone users don't really need it yet.

About half a dozen phones currently support 5G and the high-speed service will be available in only about 30 or 40 cities by the end of this year. Verizon promises to be active in 30 cities by 1 January 2020 and T-Mobile claims that its 5G services will cover metro areas where 60% of the US population lives.

There's a certain amount of panic about 5G technology, much of it encouraged by sources in Russia. Reports by RT America have been picked up by conspiracy nuts, not to put too fine a point on it. Keep in mind that the "RT" in the service's name stands for Russia Today and one of the service's primary goals is to do anything possible to create dissent in the United States.

The towers used by 5G technology are closer together and generally much shorter that the current widely spaced tall towers used by today's technology. Some of the 5G towers near me are free-standing poles about 30 feet tall. They're painted black. In some areas, 5G equipment can be mounted on street lamp poles.

The 5G tower shown here is located about three blocks from where I live. >>>
This photo was taken from a low angle and the building in the background is across a five-lane street so the tower appears to be much taller than it actually is. It's about 30 feet tall.

The towers need to be closer together because one of the technologies used for 5G places signals in the 20-60GHz range. These are extremely high frequencies with wavelengths ranging from about 5mm (60GHz) to 15mm (20GHz). T-Mobile 5G signals will be in the 600MHz range with wavelengths around half a meter.

The extremely short wavelengths mean that signals won't travel as far as 4G signals, which explains why the towers will be closer to each other. The signals also don't penetrate buildings as well as AM and FM radio, television, and current cellular signals. That's the second reason that 5G towers need to be closer together.

Because 5G towers need to be situated so close to each other (several hundred feet, perhaps) the new service will be used only in urban areas.

So if you decide that you need the faster speeds offered by 5G, you'll probably need a new phone unless you already have a Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy S10, Galaxy Fold, or Galaxy A90; LG V50 ThinQ; Motorola Moto Z3 or Z4 with a 5G module and some Moto Z2 phones; Huawei Mate X and Mate 20 X; Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, and a few others.

The 5G plans will be more expensive than 4G LTE plans that are widely available and more than adequate for what most users need currently. 5G data rates can be as much as 100 times faster than 4G. Phones that offer 5G service will also be capable of operating on 4G systems.

A report by Ericsson, the Ericsson Mobility Report, says that there are now about 13 million 5G subscribers, even with the limited number of phones, and that 5G networks will carry nearly half of the world's data within 6 years. Is it any wonder that Russia has established a disinformation campaign that's intended to slow development in the United States while both Russia and China move ahead to expand their 5G networks?

The United States is already far behind the rest of the world in available internet speeds and costs. We pay more for slower connections and both Moscow and Beijing are quite happy for things to remain that way.

The Eriksson report says that mobile data traffic grew 68% from the third quarter of 2018 until the third quarter of 2019. It suggests that mobile traffic will grow by 27% annually at least until 2025 and that video will be slightly more than three quarters of data on the network. Video uses more bandwidth than phone conversations and website traffic, of course, and far more data than email or SMS text messaging.

Current 4G technology is up to 10 times faster than 3G, a huge difference. Consider what a 100-times increase over the current standard would mean. It's also worth noting that the terms 4G and 4G LTE are often used as synonyms, but they are not the same. LTE stands for "long term evolution" and is a special type of 4G. LTE.

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint all have "active" 5G networks, but major limitations still exist. To be able to use 5G now, you need the right plan from the provider who happens to have a 5G tower near your location and you'll need to have one of the phones that can operate on the 5G network. Some providers play a bit loose with branding. AT&T has phones with "5GE" logos. These phones are not 5G phones and 5GE stands for "5G Evolution". With a name like that, it's no wonder that a lot of AT&T subscribers think they already have 5G service. The phones have expanded LTE capabilities, but the data rates come nowhere near what true 5G will provide and sometimes falls short of the company's 4G data rates.

So even thought it's too late to make a long story short, here it is: 5G is coming. It's not yet really here, so don't turn in a perfectly good phone to buy a 5G model just yet. And when somebody tries to pass off some fake science that says radio waves are dangerous, point them to Live Science and the New York Times.

Why Q-Dir is Better than the Windows Explorer

Windows comes with a perfectly good file explorer, so why should you download and install another file explorer? That's a reasonable question and it speaks to the definition of "perfectly good". Sometimes "perfectly good" isn't enough and you need "exceptional" instead.

If you need to drill down through a bunch of directories to run a file or delete a file, the Windows app is perfectly fine. If you want to move files from one directory to another or compare directories, it comes up short because the Windows Explorer shows only a single directory at a time. Yes, I know you can open one instance of the Explorer and then open another instance of the Explorer and move them around so that they're side by side or even pin them to the left and right sides of the monitor. Q-Dir can display two directories side by side, three directories, or even four directories. Better still Q-Dir plays favorites.

If you have directories that you visit frequently, open them once in Q-Dir and then define that arrangement as a favorite. Here's an example: Most of the development work for TechByter occurs on the D drive in a directory ever so cleverly called "WEBSITES-Dev" while the website files that get uploaded to the server are on the E drive in a directory called "htdocs". It's not uncommon for me to need access to both of these directories simultaneously, so there's an entry in the Q-Dir favorites list. Other favorites include the Windows AppData directory on one side and a list of all mounted drives on the other, and a link to all mounted drives on one side and the network attached storage drive on the other.

Q-Dir has been around since 2006 and comes with a cautionary message: "WARNING: Once Q-Dir, always Q-Dir." That has been the case for me. Having tried this file browser once, I installed it on every computer and it's in my initial setup for every new computer. Maybe you're interested now and you wonder how much you'll need to pay for this Windows Explorer replacement: It's provided as freeware although the author does accept donations. He also offers a bunch of other free applications on his Software OK website.

Nenad Hrg is the developer and the application goes well beyond the basics of just being a file explorer. The ability to display thumbnails in one panel, icons in another, and file details in still another makes the little utility program even more useful. The color coding is helpful, too. Colors can be set by the user. Buttons at the top of the application allow users to choose how many panels are displayed and how they're arranged. So if you occasionally wish there was a better alternative to the Windows File Explorer, yes there is.