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Andy Dingfelder
In the next phase of my mediaPC project, I bought a tuner card today – I selected a WinTV-dualHD TV Tuner, because of the following reasons:
tuner
more to come once I get my media box.
After much back and forth, I have selected my Media Centre aka TVBox
I ended up choosing the fastest AndroidTV solution on the market that I could find.
Here it is: the H96 Max
H96 Max
I did a lot of research into components. I really liked the look of the Nvidia Shield – fast with loads of great features, but I would have to buy from the US (so needed a converter -not a huge deal, but was annoying) and costs a lot more than the other solutions I looked at, plus shipping would cost $ and take time. So the H96Max won out. It should arrive on Thursday, more then.
I believe I am done looking at cord cutting solutions.
There are many solutions out there, and they all claim to be superior. Basically it comes down to the following requirements:
I have decided to go with:
More details in the next few days about my decisions (and whether they were wise)
You probably need a VPN.
Do you have any idea how many details of your life is transmitted over the inherently insecure internet? There is a huge array of forces pitted against your privacy, including (foreign and/or domestic) governments, ISPs (who may be up to no good) .
A VPN creates a “virtual encrypted tunnel” between your computer and the remote VPN server. All your internet traffic is then routed through this tunnel, securing your data from prying eyes, masking your identity by allowing your computer to appears to have the IP address of the VPN server you are using.
After reaching the VPN server, your data exits the tunnel onto the public internet. Even better if the site you’re accessing is using HTTPS to secure the connection, in that case you’re still secure. But even if the data is not using HTTP and it is intercepted, it appears to be coming from the VPN server so it is much harder to figure out that it comes from you.
Why does this matter?
Note. VPNs do not stop sites from looking at your cookies, and some VPNs have been forced to disclosed user activity to government agencies, so be careful to choose VPN services such as NordVPN, for example, which operates out of Panama and is not subject to laws which require it to retain user data (they supposedly keep no logs). They are the provider that I choose – their plan is roughly about 3$ a month.
I’ve looked at a lot of devices now and I know what I want. Must have:
Going through a number of review websites, it is remarkable that a number of really highly rated devices are well under this spec – e.g. quad core with 3/16 or 2/32, and a number of them don’t support usb 3 or the latest version of android.
Narrowing it doesn I think I know what I want… more soon.
I’m still looking at Media PCs and selecting one is very confusing
Trademe has a heap of AndroidTVs
Very hard to weed through all these, and even within one product, there are variations
Then if one were confused… ignoring Trademe, one might go the route of reading reviews to see which is best. For example: http://androidboxtv.review/
These reviews tend to rate devices like the ShieldTV very high, and most I have seen don’t rate devices I am seeing on Trademe at all.
It will be interesting to see what the best option is.
Someone asked me today what channels you will get on NZ Freeview.
I found a list:
Using a Sat dish, the list is much smaller, and not in High Definition quality:
I’ve been looking at NZ Freeview, to see if I will get reception.
It looks like you can get High Definition Freeview only over the air (via a Digital antenna)
The alternative is using a satellite dish, but that doesnt offer HD and also provides less channels. I found this page that offers maps – so you can check to see if you will get coverage
They say:
Looks like that address is either situated in a valley or is near something that might obstruct signal transmission, like trees or tall buildings.
You can use an elevated UHF aerial to pick up regional channels and enjoy better pictures and sound.
So… it might be tricky.
I’ve been looking at cord-cutting solutions, as I want to get rid of Sky TV which costs over 60$ a month.
The plan is to get a media box and do a combination of streaming services (as we have a fast internet connection) and local NZ FreeView. Stay tuned for more details
