Home stereo or car stereo?

[Oonrahnjay]

I WANNA GO!!!! I WANNA GO!!!

How much is the tuition???

ROFL!!!!!  

TOM

      Tom, I think that you have to have approval of The Dean, and pay it off in crab cakes.

[mung]

Wireless routers range from about $50 to $100 depending on the setup.

Now for the TV stuff.  A Roku runs about $99 for the new version, Hulu is $7.99 for an account, Netflix $8.99.  You can use any windows 7 computer for a media server and a Plex license is about $25 a year.  With that you can be totally free of cable and with the Plex server you can stream anything on your windows 7 computer to the Roku or smartphone/tablet.  Add a TV card to the computer and you can use Windows media center to record over the air broadcasts (like a DVR) and play them back through Plex even if you don't have an internet connection.

[eagle19952]

how do you get the "signal" into the tv .... is the roku the "receiver" ?
if you had a iphone 5s...with unlimited data...could you use it to fill in for the plex server.... could it serve as the internet source...
ps. .... why windows 7 ?

Wireless routers range from about $50 to $100 depending on the setup.

Now for the TV stuff.  A Roku runs about $99 for the new version, Hulu is $7.99 for an account, Netflix $8.99.  You can use any windows 7 computer for a media server and a Plex license is about $25 a year.  With that you can be totally free of cable and with the Plex server you can stream anything on your windows 7 computer to the Roku or smartphone/tablet.  Add a TV card to the computer and you can use Windows media center to record over the air broadcasts (like a DVR) and play them back through Plex even if you don't have an internet connection.

[mung]

The Roku is like having a smart TV.  It takes content from the Internet and allows you to play it on your TV.  The Hulu service is one of the channels on Roku and they play most shows the day after they are aired on regular TV, plus they have a ton of original content. 

Plex is a server that you run on your computer and it allows you to watch videos, listen to music, view pictures, etc from that computer on various devices.  There is a Plex channel for Roku.  Plex isn't 100% needed but for very little money it is a way to store content (recorded, downloaded, ripped from a DVD or CD) on a computer and play it back on the bus even if you aren't in range of internet at the time.

Hope that clears it up a little, but if not, I will be happy to go into more detail and provide links to the products as well. 

All I know is that I was paying around $180 a month for DirecTV before and now I pay around $50 a month for all of the services I use and I have a lot more content.  You can get by with as little as $7.99 a month for one Hulu account if you have good internet. 

[eagle19952]

is unlimited Verizon 4g lte "good internet" ?

again..why WIN 7 ?

[sparkplug188]

Mung- If you had unlimited $$$ to build a setup for very long range (2000ft+) 2.4ghz G and N, what exactly would you buy?  If it isn't over $500, I will do some comparison testing.  Omnidirectional is my preference, but I understand why directional antennas are better for long range.  I am hoping you know of something that will blow the R7000 out of the water, like double the range or more.

[digesterman]

Mung that is all great stuff when you are at home with a fast cable internet, but what you have described would eat the hell out of a 20 gig data plan in no time, and being mobile how else are you going to get internet other than a cellular data plan?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[mung]

OK, so many questions!!

First, LTE is good internet for sure, why Win 7 is because it includes the media center package for free and it was an add on for all other versions.  Even a basic machine will do for running it.

OK now on to the radios, http://routerboard.com/RB411AR has a built in 2.4 ghz wireless card and a slot for another card which can be http://routerboard.com/R11e-5HacD to get your 5 ghz radio.  add a couple of high gain omni antennas and you should be good to go.  Gives you the radios and the MikroTik router which as I said before blows the lame routing software in home routers out of the water.  Takes a little to get it configured right, but once you do, you have a lot more control.  You can even black list IPs so that you can knock down some of the "activity" from China.  With this setup the router/radio would be inside with the antennas outside, but that isn't a huge deal on a bus.

And lastly on to the question about being mobile and how to make this work.  Well, first there are a lot of hot spots and a lot of campgrounds have free wifi.  But that is the purpose of the media/Plex server, see if you load it up with content when you are in wifi range, you can view the content you have saved when you are out of range.  That coupled with an over the air antenna will get you a lot of content to watch.  You also don't need an internet connection to use the windows media server to record from the over the air antenna and save that for later viewing.

[digesterman]

From my experience campground wifi sucks, I like my private network.

Not into downloading a bunch of stuff that normally I don't watch later on.

With DTV and three receivers that are recorders also we can watch whatever is on any of them with the whole house feature, but we don't watch a lot of TV when traveling anyway. 

What most people want is fast internet on the go, and yea it's out there but spendy if your using a lot of gigs.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[mung]

Everyone has their own priorities, I just know that I am getting much more content for much less money since I dropped DirecTV.  Oh and I was quite upset when I realized that DirecTV's HD that they charged me $10 extra a month for for all of those years was not really HD and how much better real HD is.

[oldmansax]

      Tom, I think that you have to have approval of The Dean, and pay it off in crab cakes.

Bruce, I think I already blew that!  You are supposed the bribe the powers that be BEFORE you need a favor!  LOL!  Anywho, no crab cakes around this time of year.... at least, none around I would feed to my friends!

Maybe I can get in on next year's class!  

Still ROFL!!

TOM

[sparkplug188]

Mung- Thanks for the taking the time to work with me on this.  One more question- Would the QRT 2 perform better than the 411AR at very long ranges?  There are a few posts on the MikroTic forum about the QRT 2 connecting to networks 1-2km away without any modifications.  To me, that is very impressive.

411AR
802.11g:
Rx Sensitivity –87 dBm @ 6Mbps to -69 dBm @ 54 Mbps
Tx Power Up to 20 dBm
Antenna: Customer supplied 15dbi omni

QRT 2
802.11g:
Rx Sensitivity -96dBm @ 6Mbps to -80dBm @ 54 Mbps
Tx Power 31dBm
Antenna: 17dbi 22° directional
http://routerboard.com/RBQRTG-2SHPnD

I know, the 22° directional antenna goes against my want for a quick and dirty omni antenna... but I am thinking the extra setup time may be worth it for those times when an omni just won't reach out far enough.

[mung]

Yes you will get more range with that radio and with a directional (even a 180 degree panel) you will get a lot more distance.  We were getting 2 miles out of the pico stations here in Florida.  Keep in mind though that 2 radios with directional antennas tuned to each other are going to get the best distance.  But you can't go wrong with having a directional antenna on your side.  In fact if you want to have a fun cheap project to mess around with, take a USB wireless adapter and mount it in the center of a rice skimmer (used in Chinese food cooking) and see how much that increases the signal and distance.  Before they had all of the fancy antennas, we used to use them to get signal where we normally couldn't. 

[sparkplug188]

Vern- Good   The QRT 2 will be on my doorstep in a couple days.  

I built a "can-tennna" out of a Pringles chip can a few years ago.  It actually worked really well, but only if you could get it aimed dead nuts straight at the access point.  It was probably 1-2 degree directional.  If it was off even the slightest bit, the signal dropped off to next to nothing.  I also found out Pringles cans don't like rain.    

http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/has.html

[mung]

Yeah the wok-fi antenna was much better than the Pringles can.