Playing Content On Your TV

There are hundreds of ways to get video content onto your TV. Admittedly, there was an easier time when the VCR was the only game in town when it came to controlling the "what and when" of the content on your screen. Now there's DVDs, Blurays, and all manner of devices to stream media, not to mention the services that deliver that media. This article intends to simplify the options and give a run-down of your primary options for delivering content to your TV. Before I move on, this article is an expansion of a briefly-discussed segment of my previous article on cutting the cord, but cord cutting isn't a requirement for the use of these devices. They can add to your existing cable or satellite TV subscription.

Optical Media

Physical discs are still a very popular way of watching movies and TV. It's nice to have a reliable collection and with Bluray the quality is almost always better than streaming video. Plus, these days DVD and Bluray players are cheap, with one of the most popular inexpensive Bluray players on Amazon only costing about $82. At this point, make sure you buy a Bluray player, as they'll all play DVDs.

Many Bluray players will also have the ability to deliver streaming video services. For the most part, this should work ok and is a good way to get an introduction to the various services that are out there. However, the software that runs on these devices - particularly the inexpensive ones - isn't very well made and can be very slow. For that reason  I usually recommend getting a dedicated device for streaming video.

Streaming Video

The options really open up here. There are hundreds of devices out there from all variety of manufacturers. Many of these are poorly made and are limited in what they provide. However, when it comes to the most successful devices there's only a handful.

The first step is to think about what you want to watch with these things. If, for example, you're interested in Netflix, you can go with almost anything. At this point it's harder to find a device that doesn't play Netflix! But there are other considerations to make when looking at these devices.

I find that the easiest place to start is with the Apple TV. If your whole household has gone Apple (computers, phones, tablets), then the Apple TV is the device for you. It'll work with your other devices much better, and tie into your App Store and iTunes purchases. The newest Apple TV also has Siri, a touchpad remote, and the ability to play games with a controller. It's on the pricier end, though, and while the built in app store is getting more and more services, there are still some that haven't gotten there yet, like Amazon Video.

Roku is the device I recommend most often. They've been around the longest, but they haven't stagnated. Instead, Roku boasts the largest support for streaming media services, and there's very few services that you can't find on a Roku. Their newest model, the Roku 4, is $120, but unless you need ultra-hi-def 4K video (most people don't yet), the excellent Roku 3 is around $93. Their interface is simple and easy to use, and the best feature is the ability to search. One of the biggest challenges with streaming video is finding where to watch things. With Roku's search feature, you can search for a movie and see which of your installed channels are carrying it. You can also see how much it'll cost to rent or buy the movie. If you're a fan of a particular actor or actress, you can search for them and see most of the movies they've been involved with and where to see them.

The least expensive (but still great) media streamer is the Google Chromecast. For a measly $35, you can stream all the same content you can from these other devices. The reason it's so much less expensive is that it utilizes your phone or tablet to tell it what you want to watch, effectively offloading most of the interface to your mobile device. When you're in a video (or audio) app on your phone or tablet that's capable of sending video or audio to a Chromecast in your home, a little icon will appear at the top of the screen. Tapping that icon and then selecting the Chromecast will immediately send the video you're watching to your TV. All control of the playback is handled by the phone or tablet. This works with iOS and Android devices, and merely requires the app developer to add Chromecast functionality. Most of them have at this point. The main absence is Amazon Video. But again, the Chromecast is a winner because it does most of what its competition does, but at a third of the price. You can outfit your entire home for the cost of one Apple TV.

One of the less often considered options is the Tivo. I love the Tivo for its ability to treat streaming video content just like recorded DVR content. You can read more about that in a previous blog post.

The last specific device I'd like to mention is the Amazon Fire TV. This is a device very similar to the Roku 4, but more tied into Amazon's services for video and music. It has very good voice controls, and works with Amazon's Echo personal assistant device.

The Roku and Fire TV have alternate versions colloquially referred to as "sticks." These are usually devices that look like large flash drives, but instead of a USB plug on one end they have an HDMI plug. These are usually plugged into the back of a TV, with a power cord going into the other end. These devices usually have most of the features of their larger siblings, but are less powerful. I usually recommend these for secondary TVs like guest rooms and kitchens.

To round out the options, I should mention that all three major video game systems have access to the major streaming services. I won't go into detail here because it's usually best to consider these devices only if you're going to be playing a lot of video games.

Lastly, the most common media streamer is one that most TV owners already have: their TV! Most of the TVs sold today are "smart" TVs. Exactly how "smart" they are is up for debate, but the reason I rarely recommend that people use these smart TV features is that they're usually a pain. Most smart TVs have very slow interfaces, and the remote controls that come with them can make it difficult to navigate the interfaces. I prefer my TV to be a dumb monitor to which I attach the smart devices that make up my home theater. It can be nice to have everything built in, the experience might not be pleasant.

I discussed several streaming content services in my cord cutting article. The important ones are on all of these devices (except for iTunes, which is of course only on the Apple TV). My typical recommendation is to get a Roku, unless you've gone all-in on Apple.

Getting Email Under Control

Are you overwhelmed by your inbox? Does it show that you have 10,000 messages in there, and 4,000 of them show as unread? If you find that this is a difficult situation to deal with and need a way to help organize things, consider the following method:

Over the past couple years, I've shifted toward a practice called "Inbox Zero." It's a strategy that helps you keep track of important emails and makes sure you remember the things you still need to address. The idea is that the only emails you have in your inbox are the outstanding items, and you don't want them in there. Maybe some of them are awaiting a response. Others might remind you of tasks you need to complete. Others might contain information you need to accomplish other tasks. The idea with this system is that once the email is no longer needed you get rid of it, with the goal of eventually getting down to zero emails in your inbox.

When I say "get rid of it," I don't necessarily mean to delete the email (although that's perfectly fine f you don't think you'll ever need that email again). I'm a bigger fan of filing that email away just in case I ever need it again.

GMail makes the practice of Inbox Zero a lot easier. When I'm done with an email, my preferred course of action is to "archive" it. In GMail, archiving is an option that merely removes the email from the inbox. The message  is still retrievable, usually by search but also by looking at "All Mail," but it's not cluttering up my inbox, making it harder to focus on the tasks I have yet to complete.

If you're interested in trying this out, but don't know how to handle your thousands of emails, usually the best method is to simply move every single email out of your inbox. You can move them into another folder, delete them, whatever. You just need to get them out of your inbox. You might try moving everything older than a couple weeks, and then take the rest of your emails one at a time. Feel free to call me for help with this, particularly if you have a complicated email setup that syncs to all your devices.

After two or three years of practicing Inbox Zero, I certainly don't get down to zero all the time. I don't even get to it on a regular basis. On average, I'd say I have about 20 emails that need my attention, and this number will go up and down depending on how busy I am. But I'm happy to know that the only things in front of me are the ones I have to focus on.

Protecting Your Investment

It's a new year, and many people have just purchased a new computer or received one as a gift. Most people spend somewhere from $600 to $1400 on their new laptop or desktop, and whether it's an inexpensive Dell Inspiron or a brand new Apple MacBook, it's a good idea to protect that investment.

The most basic way to protect yourself is with a surge protector. If you have a bunch of electronics plugged into a power strip, it's a good idea to double check whether or not it is also a surge protector. They aren't always. If you're able to find a rating on the strip or the packaging it came in that mentions Joules, then it's probably a surge protector as well. This will be the amount of voltage it's able to protect your equipment from. Many are rated anywhere from 700 to 1500 Joules. Typically, electronics are designed to handle a certain amount of energy fluctuation, but they'll be happier and last longer if they have consistent power. For that reason, you may want to invest in a backup battery.

A backup battery will deliver continuous power to your devices even when the power goes out. The idea is to give you enough time and advanced warning to shut down your desktop computer safely and cleanly, as it can be damaging for a desktop computer to lose its power suddenly. Laptop computers, with their built-in batteries, are of course less susceptible to this, but you'll still want to plug them into a surge protector when they're charging, to protect them from energy spikes.

In the end, though, there's not much that a surge protector can do to protect your electronics from a direct lightning hit to your house. If you're experiencing a particularly bad lightning storm, you may want to shut down all your computers and unplug them from the wall entirely. Maybe do the same for your big expensive TVs, too.

The best and most important thing you can do to protect yourself, though, is to BACK UP YOUR DATA!! I know I harp on this a great deal, but it's really the most important thing to do in all of computing. Expensive, $1300 MacBooks can in fact be replaced, but the photos of your family cannot. I still recommend the cloud backup service Crashplan over all others for its simple pricing and unlimited backup space. For $60/year (one computer) or $150/year (up to 10 computers), it's a small price to pay, especially when a failed hard drive can cost $1200 for professional data recovery services. Make sure you and your friends/family put a backup plan in place so that no data is lost this year. Lets make sure that no data is lost in 2016!

Why Tivo?

I've been a Tivo user for over 14 years. I bought my first Tivo in 2001 and I've had one ever since because, in my opinion, Tivo has made the best DVR on the market. Since the first Tivos came out and created an entire product category, they've seen an heavy competition, mainly from cable and satellite providers themselves. These cable company DVRs have gotten much better over the years, but in my opinion they've never really matched the superb user interface of the Tivo, which I would argue has one of the all time best user interfaces of any consumer electronic device in history (let the hyperbole and superlatives begin). Even today, cable company DVRs don't handle adding a series to record as well as Tivo, and nobody has ever improved on the classic Tivo "peanut" remote.

Clearly, I'm biased towards Tivo, but that's because I consider them a superior product. For the most part, this is due to subjective reasons and the overall "feel" of the product in its day to day use. In this article, however, I'll cover a few of the most important new features that make Tivo different and stand out from the rest of the crowded field, and why you just might want to consider trading in that cable company DVR.

Remote viewing - Tivo lets you watch your recorded content from anywhere you have an internet connection, and play everything on a mobile device (iOS and Android are supported). Cable companies like Comcast are just starting to catch up to Tivo here, but as usual Tivo makes it easy to use and doesn't place the kinds of restrictions you'll find from companies like Verizon.

OnePass - If you've used a Tivo before, you're familiar with the "Season Pass." This is how you tell Tivo to record every episode of a show. This was recently changed to "OnePass" to reflect that you can now add streaming services as a source for your recordings. There's two ways that this is extremely helpful. First, it lets you add shows that only appear on streaming services to your list of DVR recordings, so that they show up right next to your normal recordings, giving you a single place to go to for all your TV viewing. The other great thing this gives you is a way to catch up on shows that you were turned on to mid-season. Lets say you heard that the new "Limitless" show was good, but by then it was 4 episodes in. When you add a "OnePass," it'll record the new episodes when they air on cable, but it'll show you where you can buy individual episodes that have already aired. OnePass works with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus.

Other advanced features - The brand new Tivo BOLT is the most advanced DVR on the market. It has all the usual great Tivo features, but adds support for the new high-resolution 4K format for any cable channel, Netflix, and Amazon. The BOLT also adds some interesting playback options. Many primetime shows on the major networks will support a new feature that lets you skip entire commercial breaks at the press of a button. Another nifty feature is the ability to play a show at 30% faster speed (without chipmunk voices). So if you just really want to get through the news quickly so you can watch a sitcom, this is the box for you.

It's difficult to make the pitch for Tivo. For those who have never used it, it's hard to convey what makes the boxes superior to their cable company alternatives. To those who have used a Tivo in the past, they might not be familiar with great features like the OnePass. When considering a Tivo, there's still the large upfront cost to consider. I would urge anyone interested in Tivo to look at the recovery time needed if they dropped a ~$15-20 monthly charge for a cable company DVR. Additionally, the Tivo BOLT can be a great transition device for those interested in cutting the cord by switching to an antenna later and filling the gaps with OnePasses that include more streaming content.