The person who invented the telephone. Was it Alexander Graham Bell? Maybe. Bell gets the credit, largely due to clever legal maneuvering and light traffic on the way to the patent office. In the late 19th…
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It’s a fact that all batteries, even rechargeable ones, wear out eventually. As wonderful as all our gadgets are, they produce a constant stream of used, useless batteries. Unfortunately, batteries are full of all sorts…
Don’t jump to conclusions. Pretty good advice in life and here on Streaming Saturday, it’s even more true. I’ve taken the reins from Jake Buckler this week to tell you a story, something that happened in my life…
Bigger just has to mean better, right? That’s not the case with the 1.2 meter DIRECTV dish designed for use in Alaska and Hawaii. It’s quite a behemoth, so before you think about using it to improve your…
If you’ve been reading our series, you probably learned a lot about cables. You’ve learned how a well-built cable with a firm connector can keep your signal nice and strong while a poorly built cable can…
I said I wasn’t going to give you equations for calculating gain, loss, and Noise Figure/margin but I will explain how I estimate the Noise margin (NM) of the antenna system. I’ve worked in a…
It’s just a fact of life… signal loss happens. Of course, the image above would result in complete, 100% signal loss. However, there is a lot more to the idea of loss than just broken cables….
Here’s a question for you: If you’re installing a cell booster in your vehicle, and it has an aluminum body, how do you install the outside antenna? The antenna is magnetic, but it won’t stick to…
When you think about it, a cable isn’t just the wire. The ends are important too. They’re the point of contact between the wire and everything else, and if that connection isn’t very good, then you’ll…
The Televes Nevoswitch is designed to help customers who have been left high and dry since it’s almost impossible to get a Spaun multiswitch in this country. The new multiswitches from Televes are perfect replacements for…
There’s a lot to learn about cables. Before we go too far, we need to look at the parts of a cable and why they’re important. Center Conductor The center conductor, marked “D” in the…
So last night I finally went and saw it. I admit that for some reason, I’ve been far less jazzed about The Last Jedi than about prior Star Wars films. Blame that on over-exposure: there was a movie each of…
Are you using the best cable for the job? You may have heard terms like RG59, RG6, RG11, and Slim RG59 but you didn’t know what they meant. There is actually a real difference between these…
My router is in my home office, surrounded by a mountain of cables. I’d love to put it in the attic more centrally located. I could run an ethernet cable up there, but I’m more worried…
A handful of streaming services have announced some improvements in the dwindling days of 2017. Talk about coming in under the wire! Amazon, DIRECTV NOW, and Hulu know how to go out in style. These three…