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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss MoviePass’ new plan and canceled cancellations, body scanners in the LA subway, Google recording people’s movements, a Taiwanese man’s Pokemon Go rig, Samsung’s Note 9, and more
Our guest this hour:
Ed in Brunswick, Georgia listens on 93.7 WBQO – “When you need to know.”
asked: “I’m about to travel to Scotland. Dave, when you travel, you’re traveling, you always seem to be connected to the Internet. What do you use to be connected to the Internet so you don’t have to use hotel Wi-Fi or anything like that? “
Ed, if you want to skip hotel WiFi and roaming charges, the Skyroam Hotspot maybe the answer.
It’s been an Into Tomorrow staple for years and we’ve taken it to China, Korea, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and plenty of other places.
The Solis model will get you LTE service all over the world and it will also work as a battery pack to charge your devices.
The speeds are solid, the device is as easy to use as any WiFi device
The way Skyroam works is that you buy day passes for as many days as you’d like to use the device, those are loaded into the unit, and one pass gets you 24 hours of internet access. If you don’t use it, you don’t use up any day passes, they only get deducted if they’re used.
Buying a Solis will cost you $149, and each day pass will cost you $9 for 24 hours. You can also rent the device for $9.95/day including the pass.
The speeds are solid, the device is as easy to use as any WiFi device. You pair it with your phone once and then it will connect when it’s in range, and you can get internet access in more than 120 countries.
Rich in Purcellville, Virginia listens to the Podcast and asked: “I want to cut the cord because DirecTV has gotten too expensive but I am very much in love with my DVR and I don’t want to give it up. I know I can get a DVR for my over-the-air channels, but those aren’t enough channels for me. So, I’m looking for online services. Some of them look like they’re just live stream to TV, which I’m not sure if I can pause, rewind and especially skip through ads with those. So I was wondering can I cut the cord and still keep the DVR?”
Rich, you can’t keep your old DVR. You actually don’t own the content recorded, so if you stop paying for a monthly plan they can just block you out of it.
You can however get an online streaming service with a cloud DVR. Hulu Live, YouTube TV, Sling TV, they all include some level of DVR in their plans.
Have a look at what each tier means. For example, Hulu Live’s $40/month plan includes 50 hours of DVR time, you can extend that by paying extra, but you may not need to since you’ll have access to everything in Hulu’s streaming library.
Since YouTube TV doesn’t give you access to a library like that, they’ll give you unlimited DVR without asking for any extra fee.
Look at your options, they’re not all the same, and make sure it’s worth it to you since you do have to keep paying for internet access, but it probably is cable companies charge pretty exorbitant prices.
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