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Tech News & Commentary
Leonard in Raleigh, North Carolina listening on WPTF 680 AM sent us the following question: “I have AT&T as my cable company. Are there DVRs available for consumers. Its not like I have a lot of shows and once I cancel the service I have to erase the shows, so how can I copy the shows. Is there a DVR available for consumers in the 
market.”
Leonard, If you’re interested in being able to keep a DVR regardless of whether or not you’re signed into a contract with AT&T your options are limited.
Tivo still makes DVR that just require a cable card to work so, as long as you’re not ditching cable all together that may work for you.
If you are ditching cable and switching completely to over the air TV, ChannelMaster makes a DVR that you can buy, but it will cost you around $250 and it actually doesn’t come with all the parts you need. You may need to buy an external hard drive, if you need WiFi that’s extra too. However, if you can get past that, it does work and it’s users are generally happy.
You can also look into watching things online, of course, but that won’t help you keep your shows like you want to.
As for copying your shows, DVR don’t typically make it easy for you to copy your shows in a way that will let you keep them and watch them after you have to give up the device.
Tivo has allowed it for a while now, but for the most part with everyone else the files stay in the DVR, probably because it’s hard to sell cable companies on distributing their own piracy facilitator device.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Nathan in Rocklin, California listens to the podcast sent us his comments on “Robloxs” and “Minecraft”
Thank you, Nathan!
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Jacob Klein, Cofounder and CEO – Motion Math
Fun learning games that let kids play with numbers
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Television first got color in 1954 in the US with a shadow stripe mask using the NTSC standard. (jokingly referred to as “Never The Same Color”). Germany had just started TV broadcast in black and white as the allied forces had to authorize the use of TV, and no more than 4.000 TV sets had been sold in 1952, with the not so impressive screen size of 9 x 9 inch. Much later in 1963, first shown at IFA, a European color technology was introduced with the PAL system, which solved the problems of NTSC using phase alternation.
Drake in Ontario sent us the following question: “I am going to be purchasing a VPS and I was wondering what VPS provider will be the best. I’m currently looking at Rack Space and Digital Ocean and I was wondering which one would I will be more successful in and which one is cheapest with the RAM.”
Drake, Virtual Private Servers vary widely from one hosting company to the next. They’re always tweaking how much they offer and how much they charge in an effort to lure new customers. Honestly, we haven’t seen a gigantic difference in pricing between “brand name” hosting providers. They all seem pretty close in their deals.
You’re far better off focusing on reliability, up time, and customer service. For that, the official support forums are a good place to start, but you’ll also want to search the Internet for forums, such as reddit, where users can complain without the company deleting their posts.
Regardless of who you choose, be sure you understand the product you’re purchasing. The best way to understand hosting plans is by what we call the “pool method.” Shared hosting is like a pool that everyone can enter at once. If the pool gets full, you’re a little uncomfortable with that and things don’t work well, so either the pool has to be made bigger or some of the occupants have to move to another pool.
VPS, or virtual private server, is like a pool where ropes are used to divide the pool into segments. You get your own chunk of pool real estate, and even though there are people in the pool with you, you don’t really notice them so much. But you are still sharing a pool. And if one of them does something unmentionable to foul the waters, it’s going to drift your way also.
Dedicated hosting means you get your own pool. Very expensive, but very exclusive and you never have to worry about someone else spoiling your swim.
VPS makes sense if you are going to be installing custom scripts or software that require you to have root access to the host computer (it’s not true root access with a VPS, but it’s effectively the same thing). But it’s not always true to assume that it means better performance for a standard website. Hosting companies do a lot to make certain they don’t have too many people in the community pool at once, and the cost of shared hosting is dramatically less than a VPS plan.
Sorry we can’t give you a cut-and-dried answer, but even if we did, the information it was based on might change before you heard that answer. Compare the specs, check the customer satisfaction levels, and consider carefully what sort of plan you need.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Victor sent us the following question: “I have a hard time hearing my cellphone ring when my phone is in one part of the house and I’m in another. Is there something I could buy or use to make the ringers louder so I could hear it? I have a slight hearing problem.”
Victor, There are some ringer amplifiers designed for the hard of hearing, but be careful with them. If you don’t have hearing problems now you might after using them…
The UniMAX is a cradle that detects the phone going off and plays a very loud audible alert, it can be set to ring at up to 100db, which is about the equivalent of Eisenhower’s old Bell 47J Presidential Helicopter hovering 100 feet over your head. It also looks old enough for Eisenhower to have used it with his phones.
Ironically enough, a company named “Serene Innovations” also makes some very non-serene loud ringers that feature a bright strobing light as well, since they’re also geared towards the hearing impaired, including the fully deaf, not just the hard of hearing. All of their models are somewhere around $100.
A much less ironically named company called “CentralAlert” sells a device that does the same thing and looks very similar, and unfortunately costs about the same too.
If you have a smaller budget, what you can do to ensure you hear your phone is to connect your phone to an auxiliary cable and connect the cable to a stereo or speaker and put the volume all the way high. Auxiliary cables can range from $5 to $15. [JP] & [HB – just took out “there are no ringers” part and added “if you have a smaller budget”]
While it’s not exactly a ringer, you could look into a bluetooth enabled home phone,some of them can pair with a cellphone and have multiple handsets. That means that you could leave a handset in one room, another one in another room and have 2 ringers, plus the cell phone’s own, and you could pick up any of the handsets to answer calls.
It’s not a solution that will make your cellphone louder, and it does require remembering to leave your cellphone by the bluetooth enabled home phone, but you would get extra ringer and you wouldn’t have to run across the house to pick up.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Jerry in Detroit, Michigan listening on CKLW 800 sent us the following question: “How can I play some of the app that are available for phones on my regular computer. I’ve used sendbackies, and other apps. I know I have to change my operation from Windows 8.1 to an android base system. But has someone finally come out with an android base operation that will work with Windows 8.1?”
Jerry, There are a couple of ways to run Android apps on Windows right now, but they’re all pretty terrible, the only one we can really recommend is BlueStacks.
BlueStacks will open Android apps in a window for you to use, but remember that these apps are not built for computers, and even if you have a touch screen the buttons may not be in the most comfortable places, even if you have an accelerometer a computer may not be that easy or safe to tilt. BlueStacks has been out for about 3 years, it hasn’t caught on more because computers can usually run much better software than mobile apps, you may be better off looking for programs that use the power your computer offers.
Although it only supports Android 4.0.1 ICS, YouWave is another Android emulator for Windows. The one advantage that YouWave has over BlueStacks is that it tries to faithfully recreate the Android home screen so things might LOOK more normal.
But as we said, BlueStacks is the #1 choice because of its popularity. Whichever way you go, you will need to create a Google Account, just as you would with an Android phone, in order to use Android apps from the Google Play store.
Good luck with your attempts! We wish we could tell you this will be easy and work well, but we’re bound by the “Laws of Tech Pals” to not lie.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Other World Computing (OWC): NUGUARD KX – Kinectic Energy X-Orbing Case for Samsung Galaxy S4
Joos: Portable Solar Chargers – gives you power anywhere there is sun.
Tylt: ENERGI Travel Chargers with USB ports and built-in cables for iPhones and Micro USB devices
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!