I've tried a few on my laptop, my only complaint is that it automatically analysis my connection with no option for higher quality. I'm on about 1.5-2mb/sec so the movie starts within seconds but the quality is not the best. I would rather have the option of waiting 5-10 minutes for a higher quality feed to stream.
HD TV-Love it, hate it!
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I've tried a few on my laptop, my only complaint is that it automatically analysis my connection with no option for higher quality. I'm on about 1.5-2mb/sec so the movie starts within seconds but the quality is not the best. I would rather have the option of waiting 5-10 minutes for a higher quality feed to stream.
Senate voted yesterday to extend the date from February 17 to June 12, 2009 so we all can figure it out.
With pretty much all the TV stations currently operating both an analog and a digital transmitter simultaneously, with each transmitter using 5-12 million watts of electricity,
that would mean wasting an awful lot of money, and energy, for yet another four months. This extension certainly goes against environmental concerns. That's around 1700 stations, using an average of 8 extra mega watts, equaling 1360 million watts of power.
An average U.S. household uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity each year.
One megawatt of energy can generate about 8.77 million kWh annually. Therefore, a megawatt of energy generates about as much electricity as 800 households use.
So, the 1360 megawatts wasted, is enough to power over 1 million homes, for a year.
Surely after another four months, Since years of preparation has not done the trick, there still will be people not ready, then what?
RonMar
Elite Member
With pretty much all the TV stations currently operating both an analog and a digital transmitter simultaneously, with each transmitter using 5-12 million watts of electricity,
That's around 1700 stations, using an average of 8 extra mega watts, equaling 1360 million watts of power.
An average U.S. household uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity each year.
One megawatt of energy can generate about 8.77 million kWh annually. Therefore, a megawatt of energy generates about as much electricity as 800 households use.
So, the 1360 megawatts wasted, is enough to power over 1 million homes, for a year.
Surely after another four months, Since years of preparation has not done the trick, there still will be people not ready, then what?
Excellent post! If you were basing those numbers on transmitter power, the numbers are actually worse than what you say. Transmitters are not 100% efficient, so 8MW of transmit power probably takes 9MW-10MW of electrical power...
DANOCHEESE
Gold Member
We the cable compnaies would love to offer Al-carte programming. The FCC will not allow this. I suggest that you take the issue wup with your locla politician we have. We can make as mcuh money probably more with ala-carte than with all you can eat.
The numbers are from a web site of a manufacturer, and are based on actual power usage.
RonMar
Elite Member
Either way, it is a incredible waste of power...
On this Roku Netflix device, you can go into a debug screen and fix it to a set rate. I have fixed mine to 1.2 Mbps and its very watchable on a 58" TV.
It will not perform the test now.
To get into the debug screen, press home, home, home, home, home, rewind, rewind, rewind, fast forward, fast forward. Select the speed from there.
dmccarty
Super Star Member
Regarding DVRs and such.
We looked at buying one a few years ago but we wanted one that could burn DVDs. This drove up the price such that the DVR was almost as much as a decent PC. When it was time to buy a new PC we got a Media PC that acts as a DVR. I can watch TV on the computer, record or playback shows. I have burned some of the shows to DVD....
But that is a real pain and time consuming. What I quickly discovered is that we just needs gobs on disk space. We had a 500GB drive for backup. I just bought a 1TB drive to be the backup drive and the 500GB drive is for recorded media both TV and ripped CDs.
We have not done it yet but we might by the device that will receive streamed media from the PC to the TV/audio receiver. OR we just might move the Media PC to the TV stand and use it purely as a Media PC. This won't happen until the PC starts to age out which will take awhile.
Later,
Dan
We looked at buying one a few years ago but we wanted one that could burn DVDs. This drove up the price such that the DVR was almost as much as a decent PC. When it was time to buy a new PC we got a Media PC that acts as a DVR. I can watch TV on the computer, record or playback shows. I have burned some of the shows to DVD....
But that is a real pain and time consuming. What I quickly discovered is that we just needs gobs on disk space. We had a 500GB drive for backup. I just bought a 1TB drive to be the backup drive and the 500GB drive is for recorded media both TV and ripped CDs.
We have not done it yet but we might by the device that will receive streamed media from the PC to the TV/audio receiver. OR we just might move the Media PC to the TV stand and use it purely as a Media PC. This won't happen until the PC starts to age out which will take awhile.
Later,
Dan
With pretty much all the TV stations currently operating both an analog and a digital transmitter simultaneously, with each transmitter using 5-12 million watts of electricity,
That's around 1700 stations, using an average of 8 extra mega watts, equaling 1360 million watts of power.
An average U.S. household uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity each year.
One megawatt of energy can generate about 8.77 million kWh annually. Therefore, a megawatt of energy generates about as much electricity as 800 households use.
So, the 1360 megawatts wasted, is enough to power over 1 million homes, for a year.
Surely after another four months, Since years of preparation has not done the trick, there still will be people not ready, then what?
"One megawatt of energy can generate about 8.77 million kWh annually."
This fact is incorrect, as Moss pointed out, I did not fact check it, before using it.
Currently, I have recalculated the number of homes that could be powered for a year, to be around 350,000. and I am waiting to see if this number holds up.
germ-X
Member
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2009
- Messages
- 28
definately..
