Ah, once again, I forsake any technical forum and come here with a computer question (honestly, those computer forums intimidate me). We live way out in nowhere land. We have OTA (old school antenna on roof) TV service. No cable available. Satellite TV, of course is available, but we don't have satellite. We get the normal network stations NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, Public broadcasting.... Have not missed having any extra channels, except lately have been thinking it might be nice to have one of the streaming services....Amazon, NetFlix, etc. Not sure I would actually put down the cash, but have been thinking about it. But, here's the thing. On rare days (very rare), I will hook up my laptop to our TV to catch some March Madness or the rare College football game that is not on the OTA service. It works, but is maddening. Pokey, keeps buffering, etc. I am using the laptop WiFi to connect to our desktop set up, which uses DSL to connect to the internet. Only thing available in my area is DSL, dial-up or "satellite internet," So, I believe that our DSL setup is the chokepoint, and there is no improving that service in my rural area. Right? And, any subscription to any web-based streaming service would just be an exercise in frustration, right?
IF you have the highest speed DSL available AND it really is working up to the advertised speed.......then your are right and it would not work good. And that is typical for rural areas.
I do not have the highest speed. According to ZDNET, I am at 3.076 mbps. Turtle speed, right? ATT says I am at 4.53 mbps download and 0.87 upload mbps But, I do not want to pay anymore....Hey, they just put DSL in about 2o10. Really surprised they did, considering the homes are few and far between here. So, back to antenna for me, right?
When I first moved here I was shotgunning two phone lines at 56k to try for 110k, just saw this from my provider, things change Dear Valued Customer, Great news! We've increased your Internet speed! We increased the speed of your Blast Internet service! You now have download speeds up to 105 Mbps and upload speeds up to 10 Mbps. What does this mean for you? You now have more speed so everyone can get online and do more on their devices all at the same time. Stream HD movies and TV shows, download music and game online – all at faster speeds. It's just another way we're continuing to keep you connected to the people and entertainment you care about. Sincerely, Comcast 3.076m is much better than 56k, a streaming service with a 1g buffer will work great
Hmm. Maybe it is the Rogue Voodoo Ale I just downed, but you lost me at shotgunning....(I was just getting set to pull out our Remington 20-gauge).
And lose the Elk grazing in the fields. The fox flitting through the ferns, the moonlit nights with no streetlights. No noisy neighbors, the beautiful sunsets and sunrises over the mountains....the mice chewing on the Prius wires.....
Probably won't be able to stream HD, but Netflix at the regular quality would probably work (which doesn't look too bad). Not sure what you meant about the laptop's wifi, but I would try using the desktop or whatever is connected directly to the internet to do your quality tests. Then you know nothing else is causing problems, like poor wifi signal. Netflix and Amazon Prime both have free trials, I suggest trying those and seeing how they work out.
Just my opinion. The internet is wonderful. DirecTV is wonderful. My wife complained about our $100 a month DirecTV bill (not including internet service). I told her that our internet service and DirecTV is money well spent for cheap entertainment. It's just the two of us. Add several kids or more, mother-in-law, etc., and it becomes a greater bargain. I'm not suggesting 24 hour per days of internet and DirecTV, but they're both a facet of my life I enjoy.
It's been years since I had DSL but back then its speeds were strictly based on the distance from the TELCO. At that time, I lived on the very edge of town and my service was awful. How do you get DSL living in the country? I had satellite internet when we lived outside of town but it was not good for downloading video as it had a very low data limit/day and would throttle your speeds down if surpassed; otherwise, it was head and shoulders above our 28.8k dialup for web surfing. That was over 10 years ago so things may have improved in that technology. I think your easiest and cheapest solution is satellite TV. Install is free for new customers and most of the stuff on netflix/hulu is repeat of stuff first aired on tv or movie channels anyway. RedBox or the netflix dvd delivery service are your best choices for new movies.
Actually I was looking at it from another point of view . . . blocking the automatic playing Flash videos. They consume a lot of bandwidth; make the browsers run slow, and; seldom add content worth my time. What I want to do is map the ports and put a specific block for 'Flash'. They can 'knock' but the firewall will block all but ordinary
If you use Chrome or Firefox, there's an extension called Flashblock that sounds like it would do the trick for you.
Very likely WiFi's your bottleneck. Does your laptop have a network cable plug-in? If it's possible, a directly wired connection would speed things up.
That could be it. Because if I watch these things on the actual desktop -- which is hardwired in -- the experience is much better. Hmmm. thanks for that tip. I do have a cable plug-in and I actually have some 40 yards of cable. Would have to run it out of the den and down the hall....not really something I want to do on a standard basis or leave connected 24/7. And, then, why not just hook up directly to the desktop and leave the laptop out of it? But then, without the laptop, sound becomes an issue? Currently I use external speakers connected to the laptop. Oh, this is getting too complicated. Think I will just stick to OTA. But thanks for the suggestions all. As usual, you are better than the computer forums!!
We're running an Apple TV (for Netflix, Youtube). It'll connect via wifi or direct network cable. I found it was pausing/buffering a lot with the wifi. I had a long cable running through crawl space, back to the router across the house, for previous game system. Hooking it up made a big difference. Wifi is good, flexible, but a lot slower.
Job offered an Internet Security Seminar a while ago. Best take away was to use a dedicated pc for banking only. Don't go anywhere else on the Internet with that pc but your bank and other https: sites only. Direct enter the url. Only helps not catching a pup on that pc but there's some nasty one's out there now. Bought a used Dell on eBay for it for $50. Run Malware on it freq. So far so good.... Home pc and banking pc.
